Shots Across The Bow

Easter Eggs and Pump Organs

Easter was always a big deal around the Hailey home as I was growing up. The night before, we'd dye eggs for the Easter Bunny to hide the next morning. I always wondered about that bunny. What does a rabbit have to do with Easter?

I asked my priest about that one day.

"My son," he said, "Jesus was scourged, crucified, died, and buried. If rising from the dead three days later ain't pulling a rabbit out of a hat, I don't know what is!"

Those Jesuits always had an answer for everything.

Anyway, we would spend the night before Easter waiting for the eggs to cool enough to dye. Now, there's a special property about eggs you have to understand; they hold heat.

Forever.

Second degree burns from grabbing a too-hot egg can really slow down your hunting technique the next day. Just a friendly tip from me to you.

Dying the eggs is always a lot of fun. But you have to throw out those little wire hoops they pack in those kits. Those things are worse than useless. You put the egg on it, bring it over to the cup where your dye is, begin to lower the egg gently, when it rolls off the wire, drops into the cup, splashing dye all over the table, your shirt, the floor, and the dog. We had a miniature poodle called Choo-Choo, because he used to tear around the yard in circles, and after two or three drops, he looked like a LeRoy Neiman painting.

Dying eggs requires a strong spoon, preferably slotted, to allow the dye to run out, and a steady wrist. Oh sure, you can just dump the egg into the dye and let it be one color, but where's the fun in that? You have to dip the egg halfway into one color, then halfway into another color to get that lovely two tone effect. The more daring go for the tricolored eggs, but that does require some knowledge of the colorwheel to avoid the dreaded brown band, which results from adding two many colors. After all, eggs come in brown naturally, why dye them that color?

Along with a strong spoon, the right cup for the dye is important. It has to have a wide mouth, otherwise the egg won't fit. A bowl is too big because the egg can't be covered by the dye. A coffee cup is perfect, but a word of caution: The dye can seep in and stain the cup, so you might want to stay out of the fine china cabinet.

True artists will use the little crayon that comes with the dye kit to make intricate designs and drawings on the egg, transforming a simple egg into an amazing work of art. The rest of us are lucky to be able to scrawl our initials legibly on the egg.

Once the eggs were dyed and stacked in their cartons, we'd go to bed, and Mom would hide the eggs, usually in the house so they wouldn't be eaten by the neighborhood dogs. The next morning, we'd get up and rush to the kitchen to find our Easter baskets, filled with candy and chocolate rabbits. A solid chocolate rabbit makes for an excellent breakfast, by the way.

Once Mom and Dad were up, we began the search for the eggs. We'd scour the house to find the eggs, having a great time. Eventually all the eggs were found, and then an ugly reality would set in.

What do you do with 3 dozen hardboiled eggs? Even CoolHand Luke would have trouble with 3 dozen hard-boiled eggs. Mom would peel all the eggs and make egg salad with them.

I can't stand egg salad, and neither could my brother and sister. It would sit in the fridge for a week or two, then Mom would throw it out. Eventually, she saved herself the aggravation and threw the eggs out immediately without going through the intermediate egg salad phase. It seemed to work out better for all concerned.

I think I started this to tell you about my last Easter Egg hunt.

I was about 10 or 11, and this was before Mom gave up on the egg salad maneuver, so the eggs were still there after church. Mom and Dad went to take a nap, and my brother, sister, andI decided to hold our own Easter Egg hunt. We took turns hiding the eggs for the other two, and passed a happy afternoon.

What none of us noticed was that, after several games of "hide the eggs", we finished with fewer eggs than we'd started. When Mom made the egg salad, she assumed we'd eaten a couple eggs, so she made the egg salad and life went on.

For several months.

Now, in this house where we used to live, we had an old pump organ. For those of you who haven't seen one, a pump organ is a small pipe organ that you play by pumping two pedals with your feet. It was pretty cool, and we would play on it every now and then, but keeping the air flowing was pretty hard work. My mom wanted to play it though and came up with a creative way to avoid the work. She looked all over the organ until she found the vent for the air, and she hooked up a vacuum cleaner to the vent. The vacuum pulled air though the pipes so she didn't have to pump the pedals.

Anyway, one July afternoon, Mom decided to play the organ, and didn't go to the trouble of riggin the vacuum cleaner. She started pumping the pedals and playing the organ, and noticed a foul smell coming from the organ. Apparently one of us kids had hidden an egg under one of the pedals, where it sat and fermented, just waiting to release one of the foulest odors it has ever been my misfortune to experience.

Dad was out of town on business when this happened, but the sulfurous stench still clung to the drapes when he got home. Mom explained about the egg in the organ, and Dad decreed that there would be no more Easter egg hunts in the Hailey house. I do have to give him credit though; despite what must have been a terrible temptation, he didn't make any jokes about how Mom's music stunk.

Posted by Rich at April 21, 2003 12:23 AM | TrackBack