Sherry, the younger of my two younger sisters, sent a “Happy Easter” message to our family yesterday, attaching a photo of herself, age 20 months, visiting the Easter Bunny. The look on her face is a perfect combination of bewilderment and fear, and her little left hand is completely drawn up into her sleeve. “The Easter Bunny may have eaten my hand; no wonder I look somewhat skeptical,” she captioned the photo. “Cindy and Leslie also have pics from this visit to the hutch,” she added.
My sister Sherry, age 20 months, with the Easter Bunny.
She's right, I still have my own photo of that outing, taken in the Spring of 1950, shortly after I turned seven. A few years ago I posted it on Facebook on Easter Day, and one of my friends observed that the Easter Bunny looked a little creepy. I can no longer look at the photo without thinking of that comment, and Sherry's “missing hand” photo only serves to increase the vague sense of uneasiness the images evoke. My brother, who missed the Easter Bunny photoshoot for the excellent reason that he hadn’t yet been born, opined that the registration number (visible on both photos) just adds to the creep-factor. (Fortunately for our tender little psyches, I don't think any of us ever believed in the Easter Bunny with quite the same uncritical fervor as we did in Santa Claus.)
 My turn. |  |
If Leslie’s photo turns up, I’ll update this blog entry and complete the series.
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Bunnyland, as I recall, was located in Steinbach’s, which at that time billed itself as “the world’s largest resort department store.” The Asbury Park Steinbach’s, founded in the late 19th century, was the flagship store of what eventually became a chain, with branches dotting the Jersey shore. The store later fell on hard times after racial tensions flared in Asbury Park and was permanently shuttered in 1979, but when I lived there Steinbach’s was in its heyday. The trapezoidal “flatiron” style building that I recall, on Cookman Ave - a real eye-grabber - had been built in the 1930’s with four floors and a basement; by the time I arrived on the scene, a fifth floor and a clock tower had been added.
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Bunnyland, as I recall, was located in Steinbach’s, which at that time billed itself as “the world’s largest resort department store.” The Asbury Park Steinbach’s, founded in the late 19th century, was the flagship store of what eventually became a chain, with branches dotting the Jersey shore. The store later fell on hard times after racial tensions flared in Asbury Park and was permanently shuttered in 1979, but when I lived there Steinbach’s was in its heyday. The trapezoidal “flatiron” style building that I recall, on Cookman Ave - a real eye-grabber - had been built in the 1930’s with four floors and a basement; by the time I arrived on the scene, a fifth floor and a clock tower had been added.
Steinbach department store in downtown Asbury Park, New Jersey, as it appeared at the time of its closure in 1979.
I actually found Steinbach’s a little intimidating, with its multiple floors of merchandise and elevators run by uniformed attendants, and I don’t recall ever going there alone. I was more comfortable in the “five-and-dime” variety stores like Woolworth’s (sort of like what are now, what with inflation, called “dollar stores”), with at most two floors, connected by moving staircases that offered the illicit thrill of reaching the second floor by running very fast up the down escalator. But when my mother wanted to go a little more upscale - to buy her lingerie, for example - she went to Steinbach’s. And since Steinbach's had the only Easter Bunny in town, that's where she took her three young daughters to pose with the big guy with the floppy ears (the cute photos - available for purchase, of course - being the main object of the encounter, since wish lists and naughty-or-nice issues weren't part of the Easter narrative).
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Even for those of us who weren't particularly religious, Easter was a wonderful, happy holiday that signaled the arrival of Spring - a time of rebirth, a time when we could don our fanciest finery without freezing our bare legs, a time when we could start dreaming about summer vacation, about hunting for lady slippers and catching box turtles.
It also brought out our latent artistic impulses. When it came to the dyeing and decorating of eggs, families aligned themselves in two camps, those who hard-boiled their eggs and a smaller faction that hollowed them out. We were in the latter camp (and for that reason I still have eggs decorated by my daughters when they were children). We punctured both ends of the eggs and then blew on one end, somehow avoiding the twin hazards of salmonella from placing our lips on the raw eggs and apoplexy from the eye-popping effort required to blow the entire contents of an egg through that minuscule opening. (Trust me, this is no easy task, especially if you want the holes to remain small and inconspicuous. I usually ended up cheating and making the pinholes a little larger. It also helps to break up the yolk with your pin.)
The night before Easter, my mother filled our baskets (each of us had her own, recycled and restocked year after year) with Easter grass, the eggs we’d decorated, and a mouthwatering assortment of chocolate bunnies, jelly beans, and gumdrops. (No peeps - those weren’t mass produced till 1953.) My own favorites were those large crystallized sugar eggs with windows looking into a miniature alternative universe - not because of the sugar (though that was delicious when the confection finally dried out and crumbled) but because I liked to fantasize about crossing through that window into my own little Wonderland. You can still buy these eggs but somehow the interior landscape doesn't seem nearly as elaborate or compelling. Or maybe it's I who have changed.
After the baskets were assembled, my mother hid them, and the next morning we had to search for them. And by "hid them" I mean she really hid them, and never in easy, obvious places. One year she hid Sherry's basket in a seldom-used closet and swarms of ants found their way to the candy, so Leslie and I had to share our goodies with our little sister. Life’s like that sometimes.
Later in the day, having already stuffed ourselves with candy, we gorged on ham with pineapple slices studded with cloves, or perhaps on roast lamb with green mint jelly - both typical Easter fare of the era. Only Thanksgiving was a more tradition-laden dinner. For our friends who gave up something they cherished for Lent, the Easter feast ended forty days of deprivation. We enjoyed the goodies without the deprivation. Life’s like that sometimes, too.
* * * * * * * * * *
Even for those of us who weren't particularly religious, Easter was a wonderful, happy holiday that signaled the arrival of Spring - a time of rebirth, a time when we could don our fanciest finery without freezing our bare legs, a time when we could start dreaming about summer vacation, about hunting for lady slippers and catching box turtles.
It also brought out our latent artistic impulses. When it came to the dyeing and decorating of eggs, families aligned themselves in two camps, those who hard-boiled their eggs and a smaller faction that hollowed them out. We were in the latter camp (and for that reason I still have eggs decorated by my daughters when they were children). We punctured both ends of the eggs and then blew on one end, somehow avoiding the twin hazards of salmonella from placing our lips on the raw eggs and apoplexy from the eye-popping effort required to blow the entire contents of an egg through that minuscule opening. (Trust me, this is no easy task, especially if you want the holes to remain small and inconspicuous. I usually ended up cheating and making the pinholes a little larger. It also helps to break up the yolk with your pin.)
The night before Easter, my mother filled our baskets (each of us had her own, recycled and restocked year after year) with Easter grass, the eggs we’d decorated, and a mouthwatering assortment of chocolate bunnies, jelly beans, and gumdrops. (No peeps - those weren’t mass produced till 1953.) My own favorites were those large crystallized sugar eggs with windows looking into a miniature alternative universe - not because of the sugar (though that was delicious when the confection finally dried out and crumbled) but because I liked to fantasize about crossing through that window into my own little Wonderland. You can still buy these eggs but somehow the interior landscape doesn't seem nearly as elaborate or compelling. Or maybe it's I who have changed.
After the baskets were assembled, my mother hid them, and the next morning we had to search for them. And by "hid them" I mean she really hid them, and never in easy, obvious places. One year she hid Sherry's basket in a seldom-used closet and swarms of ants found their way to the candy, so Leslie and I had to share our goodies with our little sister. Life’s like that sometimes.
Later in the day, having already stuffed ourselves with candy, we gorged on ham with pineapple slices studded with cloves, or perhaps on roast lamb with green mint jelly - both typical Easter fare of the era. Only Thanksgiving was a more tradition-laden dinner. For our friends who gave up something they cherished for Lent, the Easter feast ended forty days of deprivation. We enjoyed the goodies without the deprivation. Life’s like that sometimes, too.
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