Palm and peeps Families reminisce about Easter traditions
It's spring 1955 in the little town of Forestville, and people are bustling about, preparing for Easter.
Rooms are being scrubbed from ceiling to floor. Families are piling into their cars to shop in Butler for Easter bonnets. Intricate crosses and baskets are being constructed of palm, and all along Boyers Road the smell of Easter bread wafts into the street.
In our fast-paced world, getting ready for Easter is not nearly the big deal it used to be. Still, some traditions have survived.
"We always would have to have it done for Easter, and it used to be every woman tried to beat the next one to see who could get done first," said Anna Ferrere of Forestville, who used to "strip" a room, then scrub windows, blinds and walls.
"You'd pick up your rug, take it out to the clothesline and beat the daylights out of it," added her husband, Regis. They still have the old carpet beater out in the garage.
This was before "tumble dry," said Anna, who used to take down all the lace curtains, make a heavy starch of water, cornstarch and bluing, and dip the curtains in.
"While they were real wet, we'd stretch them on curtain stretchers" — wooden frames with tiny nails at one-inch intervals that fit holes in the delicate fabric.
"We'd put as many as five or six pairs out in the sun and within an hour or two they were dry. The sun would make them whiter," said Anna.
While she was busy with the curtains, her six children would rub doughy balls of wallpaper cleaner over the endless walls of patterned paper until every trace of black soot from the previous winter was erased.
"It was sort of like Silly Putty," Anna explained.
"Back then we had all that coal dirt. After (the wallpaper cleaner) would get real black, you'd get a fresh piece."
By Palm Sunday, the Ferrere home was shining and ready for the family's big dinner. After the meal, the whole family gathered to make crosses and other objects from the blessed palm they had received at Mass that morning.The palm is distributed to commemorate Jesus Christ's entrance into Jerusalem, where he was welcomed with palm branches.At one time, most Roman Catholics spent Palm Sunday transforming the long, narrow, yellow-green leaves into crosses and more, but recently, the practice has become something of a lost art. Even the palm itself has changed."Palm isn't like it used to be. You used to get nice, long pieces. Not anymore," said Regis.But the Ferreres continue the tradition, and each of their children has become an expert at making tiny, curvy baskets, shafts of "wheat" and a variety of crosses.
People driving past the Ferrere home before Easter may think they have their holidays confused. In the front window, miniature lights twinkle each night until the holiday is over.For the past 57 years, Regis and Anna have perpetuated another tradition by putting up an Easter tree. The tree is not one of those tiny, little ceramic knickknacks, but a real tree, 6 feet tall and about as wide."Regis' mother always put one up, and we have put one up every year since we were married in 1950," Anna said.Each year, Regis or one of his two sons goes out into the woods behind their house to get a "little thorn tree," said Anna."It's really a crab apple tree, but we call it a thorn tree 'cause it has all the thorns to hang the eggs on."The thorns are also a reminder of Christ's crown of thorns, Anna said.The delicate eggs are mostly actual eggs that have been "blown out" and dyed by members of the family."We used to make Easter bread and blew the eggs out and used them for the tree," Anna said.Over the past half-century, she has collected about 100 eggs for her tree; some are gifts. She also decorates the tree with artificial dogwood blossoms, palm crosses and baskets, also created by the family on Palm Sunday."We put a little bit of everything on it," said Anna, noting her three adult daughters have also adopted the tradition.
In the late 1940s, getting ready for Easter included the biggest shopping trip of the year for Donna Ross of Slippery Rock. For the really important clothes, families went to Butler, said Ross, who grew up in Boyers."We'd all pile into the '49 Plymouth. Dad would drive and the whole clan, grandma and everyone else, went along. It was so important," said Ross, who shopped at Diane Paradise, The Darling Shop, Montgomery Ward or Troutman's, all located on Main Street."Whatever outfit you had on, you had the gloves to match, and you always got an Easter hat."After lunch, always at the Hot Dog Sandwich Shop, the Ross family would head to the shoe stores on Main Street."When you went in to get your shoes, they had an 'X-ray' machine. You slipped your foot under to see your bones and how your foot fit into the shoe."The machine was a large wooden box with view scopes for both customer and salesperson called a fluoroscope. Popular in the 1940s and '50s, fluoroscopes helped clerks determine how feet fit inside the shoes."We used to have one (fluoroscope), but they were outlawed in the late '50s," said Jim Chiprean of Miller Shoes, in business since 1893 in Butler.But that is not all that has changed in the shoe business since Ross was wiggling her toes under the light green glow of the fluoroscope."I don't know if the holidays matter anymore," said Chiprean. "You used to get a pair (of shoes) for Easter, a pair for Christmas. We still sell patent leather and colors, but not like we used to. I think the athletic shoe has a lot to do with it."
Though she doesn't remember much about shopping, baby boomer Claire Ricketts Schmieler of Harrisville also recalls the days when primping for Easter was such a project, you had to start on Saturday."I remember how much my mother fussed over me, starching my dress and fixing my hair," said Schmieler, who had two sisters and three brothers. "I remember going to church a lot the week before Easter — Stations of the Cross, and silence between noon and 3 on Good Friday. On Saturday, we girls all had our hair washed and in curlers."She might just as soon forget the scratchy dresses with matching dusters, but she loves the memory of finding her Easter basket filled with chocolate and brightly colored chicks and ducks.
Today's preschoolers are content with pink-and-yellow marshmallow chicks peeking out from their Easter baskets, but kids in the early 1950s weren't happy unless they woke up to the "cheep, cheep" of artificially dyed, live peeps on Easter morning.About a week before Easter, the local Murphy's, McCrory's and other 5-and-10-cent stores sounded more like a barnyard, with chirping peeps in purple, lime green, orange, turquoise, and hot pink crowded into traylike shelves along the counters or on the floor.When Betty Watson of Slippery Rock was about 6 years old, she would get two or three live peeps from the Easter Bunny.But after a week or two, those little chicks began to grow into chickens that city dwellers didn't want — a problem that Watson's family was able to solve.A week or two after Easter, Watson and her eight cousins would squeeze into her uncle's "Woody" station wagon, leave their neighborhood of East Liberty and head north to her grandma's farm on Route 8."I remember sitting in a small space behind the back seat, looking over boxes stuffed with colored chicks, chirping away," said Watson. "It would have been the chicks of all the kids in the relationship, I guess. By the time we were ready to get rid of them, the color was fading and combs were beginning to grow out of their heads. I remembered that all of them would eventually end up as Sunday supper."Though artificially coloring peeps has since become illegal, Zanella Milling and Feed Store of West Sunbury keeps today's children happy with chicks and ducks that are colored by Mother Nature."The latter part of Easter week, we have about 800 head (of baby chicks) coming in," said John Zanella."We bring in all different colors. We get the black giants and Rhode Island reds; Buff Orphingtons are orange and golden comets are gold."Instead of ordering direct from the hatchery, parents can order just a few chicks from Zanella's the week or so preceding Easter.But for those who have opted to eliminate colored Easter peeps — fake or organic —along with other seasonal traditions, perhaps the only tradition left is dying and hiding Easter eggs — or maybe not, according to Schmieler."Easter was a time to be with my grandparents and cousins. … It was always a treat for us to be together. I remember the grownups yelling up the steps for us kids to settle down before the ceiling came down in the living room. … Families are smaller — fewer cousins — but they still come to Grammy's house for Easter," Schmieler said.The main difference now: Schmieler is Grammy.
