Easter Eggs and Easter

Letters to my Grandchildren: Easter When I was Young

As a young child, I remember we always dyed eggs using Paas Egg Colors.  We mixed the dye in with water and vinegar, I still sometimes think of Easter when I am using vinegar.  A dozen was the number we usually dyed.  I remember there was a wax pencil with the set of dyes that we could use to write on the eggs before we dyed them.  Since there were only two of us, I suppose I would hide them and my little sister Martha hunted for them, and vice versa.  Once Betty Jo was our neighbor, there would be three of us to hide/hunt for the eggs.  Hiding and hunting probably continued long past Easter until the eggs were probably a bit on the rank side. New Easter Baskets were out for us on Easter Morning usually filled with candy eggs filled with marshmallows (they were awful).

Even in my 80s I still enjoy dying eggs, but I haven't done so this year.  Once when we were in Shelby for Easter, I went over to Lattimore on Saturday night before Easter to Martha Mason's, set up a card table, and dyed eggs as Martha watched and gave me instructions on what colors to use.  That was one of my many fun visits over the years with Martha.

Easter Sunday I always had a new outfit to wear to church.  As a teenager, when I began wearing hats to church (That was the style back in the 50s.) I would always have a new hat, and I enjoyed seeing what others were wearing.  Once I remember when I was sitting in the Youth Choir and looking out over the congregation, Dr. and Mrs. Hunt from Lattimore, brought their five little girls all decked out in their Easter outfits. The seven of them took up almost an entire row.   I thought they were adorable.  Mrs. Hunt's family was from the Double Springs Church community so I guess she was visiting with her family because I don't remember the Hunts being members at Double Springs.

Easter 1955 was special for me.  I was a senior in high school and it was the first Easter I had a serious boyfriend.  Back then, girls who had serious boyfriends would get a corsage for Easter from their boyfriend.   So I proudly went to Church that Easter sporting my very first corsage from a boy,  but my mother had made corsages for me when I was in piano recitals as a child.

This Easter, April 2020, is sad for me because I am separated from my family, and usually, I would see them over the Easter Holidays.  The Covid 19 virus and the "stay at home" orders are making Easter unusual for a lot of people.  Let's hope we will be able to have a normal Easter in 2021.

p.s I  made little Easter treats for the children on our street, and I hid them in their yards last night for them to find this morning.  Fun, fun, fun for me playing Easter Bunny!

Hanging Out with Grandpat in the 1948 Polio Epidemic

The front of the book that Martha authored with a photo of her and Gaston on the front. 

One of my friends asked if I would write about the polio epidemic of 1948, so here is the letter to my grands that describes what I remember about it.

 Letters to my Grandchildren:  

Summer of 1948 in Cleveland County, NC

In May of 1948, my classmates and I finished the fifth grade and were looking forward to a fun early summer before we returned to begin the sixth grade in mid-June.  However, the poliovirus changed that summer for us and changed one of my friend’s life forever.  My classmate, Martha Mason, contracted polio. *

I remember that summer we did not go to school, churches were closed and everyone was warned to pretty much stay at home.  For my sister, our friend Betty Jo, who lived next door, and me polio interrupted our summer very little.  We were out in the country where we played outside as we always had, but we did listen to a Sunday school lesson on Sunday mornings broadcast by WOHS, the local Shelby radio station, rather than going to Double Springs Baptist Church. My parents read the daily papers and commented on the many cases of polio that were occurring in the county, mainly children, and often there would be mention of a child dying. It really didn’t hit home to me, because these were children I did not know.   I don’t remember being frightened but I can imagine my parents and other parents were terrified of the epidemic (I don’t know if it was a pandemic then or not.)

Neither we nor my Grandma had telephones but received news through the newspapers or through the grapevine.  One Sunday my Aunt Frances who lived in the Pleasant Ridge community, closer to Lattimore, brought us very bad news via the grapevine. She had learned that my classmate, Martha Mason of Lattimore, had contracted polio and that her older brother Gaston had died from the disease. She knew that Martha was in a hospital, in Asheville I think, but she was not aware of how sick she was. Now that someone I knew, someone who was my friend had the disease, polio suddenly seemed real to me.  It was pretty sobering to eleven- year- old me.

Another event that occurred because of polio, perhaps the same summer of 1948, but it could have been during another outbreak, really scared my parents. We did not have a washing machine at the time, so whenever we had a load of dirty clothes (once or twice a week) Daddy on his way to work would drop these off with a lady who lived across from Eskridge Grove Baptist Church and who laundered our clothes.  The basket would be returned with the clothes clean, beautifully ironed and folded. Then one of her children contracted polio while a basket of our clothes was at her house.  When Daddy brought these home, although they were clean, ironed and folded, he built a big fire under a black wash pot that belonged to Grandma, filled the pot with water, and boiled them for a long time, before he would let us near them. (That washpot is now in my yard filled with pansies.) One of you will undoubtedly inherit it so please cherish it.)

The polio epidemic of 1948 is the only epidemic I experienced before this current 2020 Covid-19 pandemic.  I think many more people are going to die from this one.  Our state is now on lockdown where citizens are encouraged to “stay home”, and I am following those suggestions. 

Photo from the internet of some unknown patient, not Martha, but the iron lung is like the one she lived in.

*Martha not only survived, but she led a remarkable life despite being a quadriplegic and spending most of the rest of her life, she lived to her early 70s, in an iron lung.  She graduated from Lattimore High School, Gardner-Webb College, and Wake Forest University with honors (Phi Beta Kappa) and lived to write a book about her life.  I have several copies of her book so I think there will be one for each of you, and please read it. What an inspiration!

There will be more letters about my friendship with Martha.

Grandma Greene's Birthday

Grandma Greene, Aunt Frances, and cousin Steve. (Still from home movie.)

My Grandmother Greene was born on January 5, 1871.  This photo must have been made at a birthday party for her or maybe for Aunt Frances who was born on Grandma's birthday. Frances was the youngest of Grandma's eight children.

Four octogenarians. (Still from home movie.)

This was made at a Hawkins reunion at Double Springs Church in Cleveland County, NC probably in the middle to late 1950s.  Grandma and her siblings were all in their eighties when this photo was taken.  Grandma is on the far right.