Growing up next door to grandparents can leave an interesting perspective on your life. I know. I grew up next door. My maternal grandparents were Fred and Bertha (Althaus) Hahn. They were in the December of their lives when I knew them - 85-plus to be exact. They lived at 216 W. Elm St., where Irene Hamman lives today.
Sometime in the late 1940s, my grandmother started an Easter tradition. She painted Easter eggs for her grandchildren. She had all the eggs she needed because she had a chicken coup in the backyard. Bantams - small eggs.
Every year about one month before Easter she'd start. Eggs were all over the place in her front room, hanging in various stages of completion. Every year, more eggs.
It's a funny thing. We all kept the eggs. My brother, my sister, most of my cousins. In fact, we bring them out on Easter Sunday. Then on Easter Monday, they return to their storage. In my case, I have three one-dozen egg cartoons, tucked safely in a box, safely on a shelf.
I have no idea where her idea came from or why. All I know is that my collection of Easter eggs is pretty interesting. Actually, quite unusual.
Each egg has a specific background color, Bible verse, painted with the year it was created, a brief Easter message, and my name on it. There's also a design painted on each egg.
My egg collection ranges from 1952 to 1962. I know this because each egg has a year on it. I remember that we'd have an "egg tree" each Easter in our house. It would be a small scrub bush about three feet high mounted on a stand. All the eggs - I mean, ALL the eggs, from every past year, hung on this Easter egg tree. It was sort of like a Christmas tree, only with Easter eggs.
The funny thing is this: I tried creating a painted Easter egg one year. I totally lack the patience.
If you wish to try one for yourself, here's what you do:
1 - Take an egg. With a needle break a hole in both ends. Then, with all your might, blow the egg white and yoke into a bowl. This takes more time than you may think.The holes must be large enough, but not too large.
2 - Place the empty egg shell on a stick (using the holes). Paint the background a solid color. Grandma used oil-based paint, thus all the hanging and drying eggs in her front room. You might try spray paint. She didn't have that luxury.
4 - Once dry, using a very small brush, paint a design or message on the egg. It's a lot trickery than you think.
5 - Meanwhile, if you create lots of eggs, like my grandmother, you need to come up with things to do with the whites and yokes. I recall she scrambled lots of eggs the month before Easter.
I've attached a photo of some of my eggs and a close-up of one of them.
