Easter Dawn

This is another in the “Sunday Story” series.  No politics today – just remembering Easter Sundays.

Dogs (of course)

It’s a gray Easter morning here in Pataskala, Ohio.  But I was definitely up to see the “dawn”, even if it was just a gradual lightening of the gray.  The dogs are “trained”, get up at 5:15 to go out.  Maybe, some days, I can persuade them to go back to sleep for a while afterwards, but by 6:30 it’s definitely time to go – BREAKFAST!!!!  Dogs are wonderful time keepers, but they don’t have calendars.  Easter Sunday isn’t on their plan. so I got to see the Easter “dawn”, like it or not.

Easter was never a huge deal in my family, certainly not like Christmas.  As a kid, I remember getting up, excited for Easter baskets.  It was all chocolate, all the time, plus a stuffed bunny.  Then we had to get dressed up for church.  After services when I was really young, Easter was also a day to visit “the aunts”.  We only had one “real” aunt nearby, my Dad’s sister Auntie “Del” (a child’s version of Aunt Adele).  And my Mom’s sisters were far away in England, people we saw on summer trips, or the occasional American visit.

Aunts

But we had other “Aunts” in Cincinnati, Aunt Leah and Auntie Fran.  And there was also Libby and Maggie, not “Aunts” in name, but good older friends of Mom.  Easter was often a day to visit some or all of them, particularly Auntie Fran Fries. 

Her son was an old school friend of Dad’s, and we were included in her family Easter plans.  The Fries had a family business, Fries and Fries in Cincinnati, that manufactured “flavors”.  If you grew near the Mill Creek Valley (where I-75 north of downtown in located today), you grew up to the fragrant smells coming from the Fries and Fries “flavor factory” just south of Galbraith Road.   It was on the “line” of fragrant smells on I-75 from north to south.  First you’d detect the Jim Beam Distillery, then Fries and Fries, and finally Proctor and Gamble’s “Ivorydale” works, now the St. Bernard Soap Company.  

Auntie Fran had a big mansion in College Hill (I think – but I was pretty young), and there were lots of kids there.  I remember Easter Egg hunts and a stairlift on the big winding formal stairs to the second floor.  I think we went there around the Fourth of July as well.

Scouts at Dawn

Later on, when we were living in Dayton, Ohio, my Boy Scout Troop worked at the Easter sunrise service at the Carrillon, the bell tower located on the southside of downtown.  We were up at 4:00am, and arrived by 5:30 in “full dress” Scout uniforms, with sashes (merit badge and Order of the Arrow) and the official red “lumber jack” jackets.  We got to see the sunrise and hear the bell selections, as we handed out programs and directed folks.  What I remember most, was wrangling my young “Tenderfoot” Scouts, eyes full of sleep, cajoling and prodding for to get their jobs done.  It wasn’t that they weren’t trying, they just couldn’t wake up.  That was back in the mid-1960’s, and it still goes on today (at least the service does, I’m not sure if they still use Scouts or not).

Track Season

But since I’ve been an adult, Easter is in the middle of track season.  And since Easter follows a different calendar than high school interscholastic sports, it was always a “challenge” for scheduling, particularly in the “road trip” days.  We would often take the team on an overnight trip in the early part of the season, to find different competition but also as a teambuilding plan.  And if that happened over Easter weekend, we worked hard to find Good Friday services, and made sure kids got home for their Easter plans. 

Easter became another “recovery Sunday” for me, after a big meet or a road trip, or worse, after our home invitational.  I’d just try to catch up on sleep, (and school work), before the roller coaster of practice and meets started up again on Monday.   Easter dinner wasn’t a big deal, even for Mom.  My parents were OK with our 9 am phone call, or sometimes drove up for Easter Sunday lunch.

Dawn Thirty

I’m not coaching anymore.  But I was at a meet yesterday, the Watkins Icebreaker Invitational that I started seventeen years ago.  It was one of the first meets of the year, and I decided it was easier to freeze at home, with a hot-tub only ten minutes away, than at some meet with a two-hour bus ride.  And that proved true yesterday.  The meet began in a steady rain and mid-forty degrees, my least favorite track weather (give me snow flurries anytime).  But, as Coach Severino says, there was a “window”.  By 11:30 the rain stopped, and by 3:00 I was officiating the pole vault in my shirtsleeves.  

So today is a “traditional” Easter for me – recovering from the track meet, seeing the dawn with the dogs (it’s looking better, maybe a partly-cloudy Easter this year after all), and prepping for our “new” Easter tradition.  I’m smoking a spiral ham this afternoon, a lot of food for just Jenn and me.  But it’s “tradition” (along with a Bloody Mary at breakfast about noon).  A calm, quiet Easter celebration, just us (and the dogs). 

Happy Easter, everyone!!!

The Sunday Story Series

Author: Marty Dahlman

I'm Marty Dahlman. After forty years of teaching and coaching track and cross country, I've finally retired!!! I've also spent a lot of time in politics, working campaigns from local school elections to Presidential campaigns.