The year? I forget. It was probably around 1960. Maybe later. But there’s one thing I won’t forget. It was the Easter that was cool and it rained all day long.

Most likely I’ve shared this story before, but it’s one that has come to mind every Easter for nearly sixty years. So I’ll share it again for some of my newer Facebook friends.

When I was a kid my mother would boil a lot of eggs the Saturday before Easter. We lived on a farm so eggs were plentiful. We had chicken eggs, banty eggs and sometimes a goose egg. My two older brothers and I would dye them under the watchful eyes of our mother. With three boys we kept her on her toes.

We’d divvy them up and put them in our baskets. Then like all the other little boys and girls we’d take them to church with us the next morning. You should’ve seen some of the kids’ eyes the Sundays we came to church with dyed goose eggs! They probably thought we had monster chickens.

After we had returned home from church, and had lunch, my brothers and I would go outside to hide the eggs. Easter in the South was always seemed to be warm and sunny. Or so it had been for us until “that” year.

A cold front had moved south from Canada that year, bringing with it a chilly rain.

There would be no Easter egg hunt for us that Sunday. But wait. My older brothers were thinkers. They came up with a plan B. We would hold our annual Easter egg hunt indoors. It was a great idea. What could possibly go wrong?

We took turns hiding our eggs. One would hide them and the other two would go around the house looking for them. The older ones hid them first. Finally it was my turn to hide the ones in my basket.

I don’t mean to brag, but I was great at hiding things. I was especially good at hide and seek and my expertise carried over to the egg hunt.

After my brothers finished with their treasure hunt we counted them up. They were one short. They wanted to know where I had hidden the missing egg.

Try as I might I couldn’t remember where I had hidden all of the eggs. All three of us fanned out to try to find the missing egg. We looked high, and we looked low. We looked in every nook and cranny in our house. (Have you ever wondered what a cranny is?) Dr Seuss could have written another book about our exploits that day.

At days end that egg was still missing. As the three of us lay in our beds that night we rationalized that it really wasn’t a big deal. After all, it was just one egg. And who knows, we thought, it would probably turn up tomorrow.

Well tomorrow came and went. No egg. By the third day we had more important things to worry about.

A week rolled by and the egg hadn’t turned up. Then another. By the end of the second week we began to notice what we thought was a musty smell at one end of the house. What was it? A couple more days passed. The musty smell became an odor. Hmmmmm. Where was that stench coming from? The smell began to permeate our home.

My brothers and I knew it was the lost Easter egg coming back to haunt us. Another day passed and we determined that it was definitely coming from somewhere in our room. Our bedroom reeked. Even the cowboy wallpaper seemed to be buckling and took on a green tint. We had to find that darn egg before we all succumbed.

Just when we had given up and considered burning down the house I opened my closet to retrieve a pair of shoes from the shoe holder attached to the backside of the door. That’s when it dawned on me where I’d hidden the missing egg. It was in an empty shoe slot hanging on the door.

Eureka! We were saved! Carefully, I removed the rotten egg and carried it out of the house, hoping that it wouldn’t explode.

Day by day the odor dissipated. If Febreze had existed back in those days it would have been a Godsend. But there was no Febreze. Mother dribbled baking soda into the empty shoe slot to absorb the smell. Day by day the odor wained. Eventually things returned to normal. Well, as normal as things could be in a bedroom holding three boys.

There was never another Easter egg hunt held indoors again. Once was enough for all of us. We had learned our lesson well.

To this very day I cringe when I hear any mention of an egg hunt.

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Rick Algood
April 9, 2020