More Easter Memories

After reading Fran and Mary's memories, here are more of my own:

Getting patent leather Easter shoes and trying them on in the store and how slippery the soles were on the rug.

Me, too, with the smell of the vinegar.

My mother would make her annual Easter cake which was an angel food cake and she would dye coconut green for grass and frost the cake with thin white icing and then make little tufts of grass and put a few jelly beans in them so they looked like eggs.

Speaking of eggs, I love the marbly-covered or are they speckled? eggs that are actually malted milk balls. I know they still sell them.

Having a new pair of white anklets and I would put them on while keeping the cuffs turned down so they'd be extra neat.

Going to church on Good Friday and having it bleak and dark with no flowers and everything was draped in black... then returning on Easter Sunday with hundreds of flowers and all the ladies dressed in their Easter finery. Each kid could go to the alter and get a little begonia plant with colored foil wrapped around the little plastic pot.

The big coming of age transition and I remember pleading with my mother was to get Sunday shoes that had no strap. One year there was a style of shoe where the strap would either go across your arch or you could push it back and it would go around the back of the shoe... I remember my (older) sister was allowed to get those shoes, but I was stuck with the kiddy strap shoes.

And, finally, a more modern day memory. I had taken my assistant who is Jewish to Oshkosh around Easter time and one of the Oshkoshers asked her cheerfully, "Did you buy your Easter ham yet?" And I just smiled knowing that the fact that she is Jewish would not compute and so she honestly answered, "no."