"Legendary Family Easter Activity" - Time Out #133

As Easter Sunday is upon us, my mind wanders back to our past family experiences during this beautiful time of year.

Growing up as a 1950's lad in Our Town, I remember my father, Col. C.H. Breedlove, taking me to various Easter egg hunts around our wonderful community. I also remember getting dressed up more than usual for Easter Sunday church, possibly getting my clip-on tie secured to my juvenile dress shirt. I definitely felt like a GQ guy with my Easter duds attached!

It was all good during those formative Easter years for yours truly in Our Town.

Fast forward to the late 1970's in "America's Finest City"--San Diego, when lady Debbie, shortly thereafter my bride, introduced her unbelievable Easter baskets to our 2 children; baskets she built to dazzle our offspring. I vividly remember older Michelle and younger Allan with eyes bigger than plates when they first caught sight of each other's basket early those Easter mornings.

In 1981, our small family left the San Diego area when I returned to Our Town to continue my professional career I had started in Chula Vista, CA. Our first home here also played host to Debbie's beautiful Easter baskets for our children, but the real tradition began in 1983, when we re-located our home to the southwest area of town. It was from this long-time home we really kicked the Easter afternoon celebration into high gear, year after year after year.

It would usually start with my Easter costume, sometime traditional (think rabbit head or rabbit ears), or simply something outrageous, such as a referee's jersey, hat and whistle?

Bride Debbie would sometimes join me in the dress-up portion of the festivities, as well as all our smaller people. Usually, either our children or my bride, would also put some type of costume on our dogs and cats, not that our 4-legged family members always enjoyed their added Easter outfits?

The main event of the special Sunday activities was the legendary Breedlove neighborhood Easter Egg Hunt, truly a spectacular happening, folks!

The hunting area was huge, our vast wooded backyard, our adjoining neighbor's spacious backyard, with some spill over to both smaller front yards. Few areas were off limits, and usually my bride and I were the principal egg hiders. Each year, the egg hiders would try our very best to make finding the treasured eggs as difficult as possible. Simply put, it was a challenge; hiders versus finders.

Just who were the official lookers/finders?

The entire neighborhood kids, plus a few others from the outside; usually always a double-digit number of egg seekers, armed with their paper or cloth collecting bags.

What about the eggs?

Oh, yes, that's where the true excitement was generated.

First there were LOTS of eggs. Second, there were various types of eggs--chocolate, solid hard candy, hard-boiled, and the most cherished of all, the plastic 2-half eggs, with their prizes contained on written pieces of paper placed inside the hollow eggs. In all, probably over 100 colorful eggs, carefully hidden all over our Mother Nature area.

After the REAL reason for the day, attending Easter morning church, our annual hunt usually began with everyone assembled in our front yard about 2 p.m.. All hunt hopefuls started their mad dashes to the hidden areas when my official's whistle was loudly blown.

For the next 20-25 minutes, it was pure chaos, with lots of laughing, screaming, and smart detective moves tried over and over again. After I felt like almost all (NEVER all---we always discovered some unfound eggs by accident months later) eggs had been located, we all re-assembled, and looked over the individual finds.

The normal candy egg-eating began, but the jewels were opening the plastic egg halves, and reading the message prizes contained within. Regular prizes were movie passes, Braum's ice cream delights. snowcone outings, out-of-town excursions, and many other sought-after winners. For each sought-after prize, there were also an equal number of humorous ones, such as kissing the dogs/cats. running around the block, jumping on one foot while singing a popular song, and other ridiculous requests.

I was reminded about this legendary Easter egg hunt recently at a formal reception on the OSU campus, when one of the previous neighborhood egg hunters (now a man in his mid-30's) and I sat down to chat. He reached in his pant pocket, and pulled out 3 of the hand-written message prizes of long, long ago. We both laughed, and re-lived a few minutes of the incredible hunts of about 25 years ago.

Fortunately, he didn't ask me to pay up on those long overdue prizes.

Memories are absolutely solid gold!

Happy Easter, Our Town and beyond.