Easter 1976

The Sagemeadow Easter Egg Hunt, with 1200 real eggs boiled and dyed for the occasion.

The Haygood boys' Easter baskets

Ah, Easter baskets. Filled with fake green grass (if memory serves, most of the other colors came later) that you'd be finding by the strand in dusty corners of your house for the rest of the year. They'd stick to your bare feet like nothing else.

We always dyed eggs with food coloring, although I think we tried out some of those kits that had the thin little stickers you could apply to your boiled eggs. I remember their warm weight as you dunked them, as patiently as you could, willing them to turn some brilliant hue instead of the pastel color they would inevitably turn out to be. 

We had plastic eggs around this time, but they weren't nearly as fun, except when you were hunting them all over your backyard to try and discover the most diabolical hiding places your grandmother could come up with. It made sense to use plastic in those cases, because there'd always be that one no one found or remembered hiding that showed up in August. 

And, of course, there was always the pièce de résistance of every basket: the chocolate bunny. Ears first, always and forever.