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Featured Item: Lily Branches Flush Mount
Article: MY COVID ESCAPE: Fun Memories of Springtimes Past
SPRING 2021 NEWSLETTER
Greetings!
Yeah, Spring has arrived! Remember that popular cartoon in the 1970s of a run-away building hurdling down a river, flames waving out of every window, about to plunge over a waterfall? Reminds me of the world today. Things being as they are, I need to escape back to happy memories of springtimes in the good old days of my youth.
This is a time of hope when Mother Nature signals for all to come out - the world is alive again. The annual miracle of flower and fauna being born yet again is happening. And too, it is colorful Easter time with its holiday traditions both commercially and spiritually. This month we feature our flush mount ceiling fixture, Lily Branches. It so beautifully depicts an eternal spring. See it in the Lily Branches Featured Item section.
I remember how exciting springtime was for us kids; growing up fast, experiencing strange new feelings especially during the spring season, going along for the ride without option just like the birds & the bees. Here are a few of my fun memories of how we used to celebrate spring. Maybe you have similar ones? Read all about it in the Article section.
Happy Spring!
Lorena & Crew
Lily Branches Flush Mount
Imagine looking up at a canopy light fixture depicting intertwined branches full with lily flowers in various stages of bloom.
A striking feature of this springtime shade is the “waxy” looking hand rolled art glass used that gives a dreamlike softness to the overall scene in lovely pastel colors of purples, pinks, turquoise, greens and pale blue background for the sky.
Featured Item
Note: Each item presented is a one-of-a-kind work of art available for purchase. Should any item sell, there are no duplicates. Contact us about any similar items.
Article
MY COVID ESCAPE: Fun Memories of Springtimes Past.
The Traditional Easter Outfit
It was the same old argument every year – “Joe, I need money for the girls’ Easter Outfits”.
Of course, he would eventually hand it over to my mother. After all It would be a thing sacrilegious not to have brand-new Easter outfits complete from underwear, to socks, dresses, coats, shoes and topped off with an Easter bonnet.
This tradition is set in stone.
Me, holding my Easter basket so proper in my Sunday Easter outfit. Stationed on a farm in Pennsylvania during the war, 1945.
Came Easter mornings we were all blooming in pastels of pinks and purples, yellows, and greens. The earth dons a new cloak at this time, so should we humans.
By my teens I chose my own Easter ensembles. I thought myself so beautiful as I sashayed around on Easter Sunday showing off my new outfit.
Like the Easter Parade, buying new clothes to wear on Easter Sunday was an event we looked forward to each year.
Joe & his girls pose in their new Easter outfits. (me in the middle). Easter Sunday morning. The Bronx, 1949.
My sisters on Easter Sunday.
The Bronx, 1949.
Choosing my own Easter outfits.
My sister (l.) & me Easter Sunday. Hicksville, L.I. N.Y., 1954.
I thought I looked beautiful - what a dork!
A vase of daffodils sets a sunny mood for spring.
DAFFODILS ON THE HILL
We Bronx kids played stickball, pottsy, ringalevio, wooden go-carts with skates attached and fought on the streets. But I remember one day our third-grade class took a field trip to nearby New York Botanical gardens and I saw for the first time a wonder of wonders. It was a bright yellow hill and beyond as far as I could see were crowds of blooming daffodils! It took my breath away and I never forgot it. From then on, for me daffodils herald in the start of spring.
COUSIN LARRY AND THE CHOCOLATE BUNNY
Sunday morning and our Easter baskets were filled will traditional holiday treats – pretty hand-colored hardboiled eggs, jelly beans, weird yellow marshmallow peeps with little black beady eyes (uggh! who eats this goo?). But the cherished prize of them all sitting in the middle of the sweet heap was the king - the big chocolate rabbit!
Where to make the first bite on your chocolate bunny was a personal preference. Do you start at the bottom feet? Into the middle bulge? My cousin Larry (Esposito), of my 2020 Halloween newsletter fame, always started at the top. He bit off the rabbit’s ears first. Then he poured milk down into the body and shook it to make chocolate milk, he said. I don’t think chocolate milk ever came to pass but it seemed like a good scientific experiment to us kids at the time.
Where did you take your first bite out of your chocolate bunny?
The Chocolate Bunny King.
THE BIRDS AND THE BEES AND ROCK & ROLL
A note about Cousin Larry:
My Cousin Larry (Esposito) would knuckle thump our arms when passing by or zap us from across the room with spit balls. Ow! That hurt! He was so creative. But then he grew up to be quite handsome and oh so smooth with the girls and the girls went crazy over Cousin Larry.
They rang the phone off the hook day and night and especially more so when he became famous as the original base singer of the rock and roll singing group, The Mello Kings. Their big hit out of New York was Tonight Tonight. I remember it was Happy Days 1955, and the birds and the bees were buzzing around in full force that spring. Being a teenager was all new and thrilling to us. (Of course, our square parents could never understand.)
The Mello Kings, 1955
IN MEMORY OF AN EASTER CHICK
Spoiler alert! This story does not have a happy ending.
You might remember back in the late 40s, early 50s parents bought fuzzy little baby chicks for their kids as Easter pets. The chicks were even dyed various pastel colors. We got one, a cute little yellow peep. It scurried around saying peep-peep, peep-peep!
At night my mother put it away in a cardboard box by our bunk beds and told us not to take it out of the box. But on that second night my 4-year-old middle sister did sneak it out of the box and brought it into the bed with her.
The peep that went to heaven
The next morning, we couldn’t find the chick and when my sister rolled over there it was - flattened out like a pancake, dead as a door nail.
We wailed, and even ‘till now tease her about the day she killed our Easter peep. Looking back, though, that chick probably didn’t have much of a future, living in a small Bronx apartment; might have ended up in Nona’s cooking pot as chicken soup, anyway.
MY THREE KIDS CELEBRATE SPRING - 2021
Boycat, the handsome man of the family, sniffs some tulips.
We often fight about who’s the boss around here – him or me. I say it’s me.
sotto voce, “that’s what you think”.
Baby Fannie – she’s young and fresh.
My Bat-Cat. Fannie’s favorite drop-down position to interact with the family.
Ava, a classy lady.