Easter Egg Hunt

I grew up in Eagle River, a town of a thousand people in far northern Wisconsin. Every year the community held a big Easter egg hunt in Riverside Park, where real eggs were scattered around the large grassy expanse. There was little or no attempt to hide them, so every kid would be able to snag one. Each egg had a number painted on it and the stores along the main street had their shelves filled with baskets with numbers that corresponded to the eggs. The stores weren’t normally open on Sundays except during the tourist season in the summer but I never thought to wonder how the merchants liked being open on Easter Sunday, while throngs of kids scraped along their wooden floors, riffling through the baskets on display. Somewhere out in the park there was a gold egg and a silver egg, kind of like the Golden Ticket in Willy Wonka. The gold egg entitled the finder to a year’s worth of free admission to the local theater. The silver egg was worth six months. When I was seven or eight I went to the park along with the other kids in town and there, under the bottom of a bush, was the silver egg. Not really hidden at all. Just lying there on the ground. I picked it up and was so nervous about it that I took it home instead of claiming it. I don’t know if I thought I had cheated because it was such an easy find or if I didn’t think I deserved so great an honor. But when I got home with it my older sister said, “Get back down there and tell them you have the silver egg!” I was scared but she convinced me. And I enjoyed my free movies for six months. Now I would tell that little girl to be proud and not so scared. And I want to tell her to go back and look for the gold one too. I mean, why not?!

Photo courtesy Alexas_Fotos at Pixabay.com