Dear Folks, I continue to put together the stories for my book and just a minute ago I came across this one that I wrote on Good Friday, 2002. Since today is Good Friday, I feel that it's a good time to post it again. Happy Easter, vee It's Easter Weekend March 29, 2002 I just can't let Good Friday go by without remembering what my mother told me about her father, my Grandpa John DeWees. I was a little girl when he died in 1937 and I remember only a few things about him. I believe I had asked Mother one time whether Grandpa was very religious. I believe she admitted that he didn't attend church all that often but there was one day that he stated was the holiest day in the year. And that was Good Friday. Why he felt that Good Friday was holier than Easter Sunday I don't know. But it was nice to know that Grandpa was a religious man in his heart. But oh my, the Easter vacations I spend visiting my grandparents in Steelton, near Harrisburg, PA, as a child. Of course Mother had bought me a brand new dress to wear to Sunday School on Easter Sunday and a new spring coat and a new hat and I knew that I looked my best in them. What would Easter be without a new outfit? My cousin Jackie was/is the same age as I and we pretty much grew up together. I went to Sunday School with her on Easter Sunday and how I loved to sing the familiar hymns along with her Sunday School class. What was so special is that all of them sang at the top of their lungs and it was such a joy to join in at equal volume! After Sunday School Jackie and I always went over to her other grandparent's house for Sunday dinner. Jackie's other grandparents were from Croatia and her grandmother always prepared the best chicken dinner in the whole world. And for dessert she always made a luscious "povateetsa." Obviously I don't know how to spell the word but that's how I remember that it was pronounced. It was layers of pastry spread with layers of honey, butter and chopped nuts and rolled up and baked. And Jackie's grandmother always welcomed me with a big hug. And what would Easter have been without the colored Easter eggs in our Easter baskets? But along with the Easter eggs and jelly beans was the best tasting chocolate candy ever made in this world! You see, my Aunt Teeny's husband and his Hoerner family made Hoerner's Chocolates for years. Easter was a very busy time for the Hoerner family. But after Easter Sunday, the Easter eggs were peeled and pickled in a combination of canned beets, beet juice, sugar, vinegar, cloves, allspice and salt. And after a couple of days in the refrigerator, the whites of the eggs turned purple, and the flavor of the eggs was out of this world! It was the flavor of Easter. Although the Easter season starts out as a solemn one, it ends as a joyous one. Good Friday is solemn as is Holy Saturday. But on Easter Sunday when you sing, "Christ the Lord Is Risen Today" and you remember what Easters were like when you were a little kid, you sing at the top of your voice with joy!