Easter Memories in Hathaway

When I think about my childhood Easter memories, I always think of Hathaway, Louisiana.  That is where my maternal grandparents Fred and Myrtle Phenice Bucklin (Grandpa and Grandma) lived.  It’s also where my mom grew up.  Since Easter is coming up soon, I thought I’d do a post about those memories at Grandpa and Grandma’s house.  I wanted to find a picture that showed the fun of finding eggs at their house when they had the Great Bucklin Egg Hunt of Hathaway every year.  That was not the name of it – I just made it up.  But it fits the epicness of it in my head.

I didn’t think I had a photo of us hunting Easter eggs, but then I noticed this photo and realized it was from Easter, it was in Hathaway, and I had some colored eggs in my hand!  How have I never noticed this before?  I worked on this photo several times, but never noticed it.  I was just thinking that it was a cute photo of me when I was about three years old.  But it is me during the Great Bucklin Egg Hunt of 1963.

I wasn’t even looking for this photo when I sat down to write this post.  I was looking for some other photos that showed the layout of the Bucklin house back then.  But I have a stupidly slow computer (maybe my thousands of photos bog it down!) that doesn’t show previews to all of my photos.  But this photo showed up and when I clicked on it, I realized the photo showed that I had eggs in my hand.  It was meant to be!

What I remember was that all of the kids (or just the little ones?) would be confined to the house while the adults would go outside to hide the eggs.  Of course they had someone inside with us to monitor that we didn’t look through the windows to see where the eggs were being hid.  There were lots of colored eggs hidden (like the ones in my hand), but there were also some plastic ones with prizes inside.  But the best one of all was a golden egg with all sorts of goodies inside.  I don’t know if I ever found that one, but I seem to recall one hidden in the electric box on the side of the house. 

I’m posting these other photos to show some of the layout of the house on the property “out in the country.”  We always referred to it that way, because we lived in the big city of Jennings.  Ha!  I think the population was only around ten thousand back then.  I got these photos from Aunt Loris a few years ago, but they include all of my siblings. The side of the house facing the road didn’t really seem like the front of the house.  There was no door there.  I don’t even think there was a walkway to the door.  Could that be right?  When you walked to the right side of the house from the road, you would come to the first picture. 

Sitting on the steps to the “front” of the house are my cousin Brent Woolley and my sister Karen.  It looks like they were having a fun time eating watermelon on a warm summer day.  That was always enjoyable.  Those steps took you into the living area of the house.  I think there was a room closer to the road, but there was no access to outside.  Toward the back of the house, you would go to the dining room.  I’ve shared photos of that before.  Then at the back of the house was the kitchen.  The kitchen had a door to outside.  That’s the steps that are shown in the second photo.  At the top of the steps you see my sister Jodie, then my brothers Rob and Al. 

The third photo has my sister Jamie and cousin Rhonda.  All of these photos were taken the same day.  If you look at that first photo, you can see the other photo areas in the background.  Just above Karen’s head you can see Jodie, who is now sitting closer to Jamie and Rhonda.  Standing up back there is Aunt Alma (my mom Betty Lou Bucklin Landry’s younger sister and Rhonda’s mom).  She is standing near the back steps.  Comparing these to the photo of me, I was in the area behind Jamie and Rhonda. 

But that was just the right side of the house.  There were two large bottlebrush bushes between the two sets of steps at the house.  Past that was a planting area that Grandpa used for his plant nursery.  That’s where we made mud pies when we were kids.  This photo shows the front of the house.  It was just a large circle of grass with trees and shrubs in different areas.  I wish I had more photos of the area so I could see exactly how it was laid out.

The other side of the house had some green space and then a driveway that went back to the old barn. That was another fun place to explore, though I’m sure they never hid any Easter eggs there.  It was mainly confined to the areas around the house.  So, as I was saying, us young kids were confined to the inside while the adults hid the eggs. 

Then it was time for the hunt!  We all rushed out down the front steps and ran around frantically finding those wonderful colored eggs, hoping to be the one that found the golden egg and be proclaimed the Ruler of the Great Bucklin Egg Hunt.  Yeah, yeah.  I made that up, too.  But the memories are real.  Can you feel it?

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April 17, 2022 – Update

Found another photo from that long, long ago Easter of 1963. The date was April 14, 1963. The place was Hathaway, Louisiana, at the home of my grandparents Fred and Myrtle Phenice Bucklin. This is in the front of their house and it includes Rob Landry, cousin Rhonda (I think), Pilcher cousins Larry, Toni, and Paul, and myself – Van Landry. I’m not sure what I’m holding in this photo. It looks like most of us have taken a break from Easter egg hunting. Yet Rhonda looks like she is skedaddling past Rob to find some hidden treasure! I think there’s someone else behind him as well.