"An Easter Anecdote"

 Today is Good Friday, or Holy Friday as it is called in many places, and Sunday will be Easter. I wish you the best for this holiday, as we celebrate Christianity’s most important day. (The photo is one I took from the internet.)

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“An Easter Anecdote”

April 3, 2026

 

“Let all the flowers wake to life;

Let all the songsters sing;

Let everything that lives on earth

Become a joyous thing.”

                                                                                                “Easter” c.1870, Fannie Isabelle Sherrick (c.1840 - ?)

 

While the United States is a religiously pluralistic nation – with the right of free exercise of one’s religious beliefs guaranteed by the 1^st Amendment of the Constitution – we are, still, predominantly a Christian nation. And Easter is Christianity’s most important holiday. On Easter we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, redemption, and the promise of eternal life.

 

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But it is also a day we associate with rabbits and Easter egg hunts. Rabbits, with their high reproduction rates, symbolize fertility. And eggs – unless boiled, fried or poached – are indicative of new life. German folklore provides a connection. The Ostern Hase (Easter Hare) was a mythical creature that judged whether children were good or bad. Tradition has it that the Easter Hare gave colorful eggs to the former.  

 

Most of us have childhood memories of Easter, of warm spring days, church services and Easter egg hunts. The latter was a fixture in my young life. Growing up on a small farm, with artist parents, we were outside every day. Easter came when the damp earth smelt sweet and trees began to bud. Snowdrops and daffodils, if not out, were about to enter stage left. Forsythia shrubs were not far behind.

 

Our family attended the Unitarian Church in Peterborough, New Hampshire. My mother generally gave us a nickel or dime to place in the collection basket. Once, the youngest, George, reached into the basket and grabbed a handful of coins, which promptly fell on the floor. Us older children then spent the next ten or fifteen minutes scouring the floor, picking up coins and replacing them, while the minister droned on. Following Easter service we adjourned for the highlight of the day – the Easter egg hunt. My mother had hidden eggs in a field that abutted the front yard. It was a field usually occupied by goats. 

 

Neighbors and friends would come. And as we were a large family – nine children when my parents had completed their spawning duties – there was a crowd. Eggs were abundant, for our Rhode Island Reds had been busy laying in a supply. Prizes were awarded for the most eggs and for the individual who discovered the “golden” egg. One time that sticks in my mind was when my father thought he had lost my sister Jenny. She had been born in 1948 and was about a year-and-a-half old. He became angry when we all laughed instead of searching for her. Finally, my mother, through tears of laughter, told him she was on his shoulder. He did not find the incident funny.

 

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While such memories are rewarding, we should not forget the real reason we celebrate Easter – the death and resurrection of Jesus, and Earth’s rebirth as spring surges ahead.

"In college, I drove a school bus"

In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal Gerard Baker had a beautifully expressed, memorable and oh-so-true line: “...relative extremism in pursuit of persuasion is all the rage...” Political extremism has been enhanced by media extremism.

 

However, onto a lighter theme, for life goes on; this essay has nothing to do with spring or April Fools’ Day, but celebrates grandchildren and memories. I hope you enjoy it.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“In College, I Drove A School Bus”

April 1, 2026

 

“Now I drive the school bus.”

                                                                                                              Otto Mann, school bus driver

                                                                                                              The Simpsons

 

In 2009 my youngest grandson, George, attended Christ Church Nursery School in Greenwich, Connecticut. A highlight was Grandparents Day, a way to celebrate the bond between students and their grandparents. On the day we attended each child was asked to introduce their grandparents. When it came George’s turn he was excited to introduce me as a school bus driver. I could not have been happier, knowing that he had listened to stories of my youth.

 

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George was correct. While I had spent the previous forty-two years as a stockbroker, I did drive a school bus between September 1963 and January 1965.

 

In high school and in my first two years of college I was an indifferent student, a cynic with no goals. My grandmother had paid my tuition at Williston Academy and at the University of New Hampshire. After two years I dropped out. I spent the summer working at Canada’s Falconbridge Nickel Mine, and later as a lab technician at the Metal Hydrides Corporation in Beverly, MA. Then, by a stroke of good fortune, on New Year’s Eve, I met the girl who would become my wife, and my life began to turn around. My cynicism dropped, and I had a goal, convincing Caroline (and her parents) that I would make a responsible husband.

 

I enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserves to fulfill my military obligation and then returned to college for the spring term of 1963. However, given my past academic record, my grandmother would not pay my tuition; so I was on my own. While taking classes, I worked a number of jobs, making sandwiches and writing a sports column for the Dover Daily Democrat. That summer, while also continuing my studies, I secured a job driving a school bus for the city of Dover, NH. I kept the other jobs, but driving the school bus became my most consistent source of income. In April 1964, Caroline and I married, and I continued my school bus-driving duties.

 

Transporting students, I came to know the children, and we had fun, so long as they behaved and stayed seated. However, one episode remains fixed in my memory. It was a winter morning after a snowfall, which narrowed streets with cars parked on either side. I stopped at the top of a hill. The street went down to where a right or left turn could be made, but my route went up the other side. I sat for a minute or two, calculating whether there was room for the bus to navigate between cars that lined the street on the hill beyond. The children were in no doubt that the attempt should be made. After a few  minutes, I agreed.

 

The bus picked up speed going down, knowing it would be needed to crest the hill opposite. With children cheering, “You can do it! You can do it!” down we went and up the other side. Like taking a camel through the eye of a needle there could not have been more than an inch or two to spare on either side! We made it. 

 

I am grateful to George for his introduction of me that day. It brought back memories.