Easter Basket of Memories

 

Here's wishing all of you a Joyous Easter!

Above is the obligatory full-page ad for the holiday that ran in the Journal on March 28, 1964. Unlike other sponsored ads I've posted, several businesses listed on this page are still around (with slightly different names), including Anchor Lodge Nursing Home, Rebman's Recreation, Steve Polansky Markets and National Waste Paper.

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Assuming the weather cooperates, there should be a good crowd down at the Lakeview Park Easter Basket (subject of many posts on this blog over the years). As noted back on this 2010 post, when it was first introduced at Lakeview Park in 1941, it was referred to as a floral basket. 

I was poking around eBay the other day, and came up with a postcard for the basket that I hadn't seen (or posted) before. This one calls it a floral basket as well.

It's a good time to remember David Shukait, the man who received the patent for the design and construction of the basket.

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Photographs next to the basket on Easter is a cherished tradition for many families, including the Bradys. For several years from the mid-1950s up to about 1960, Mom and Dad brought us down to Lakeview Park for the annual Easter portrait. It was, and still is, a 'Lorain' thing to do.

Here are two pictures from my parents' first photo shoot at Easter 1956. My sister was a year and half old at the time. (The photo of Mom and her ended up on the front page of the Chronicle-Telegram as part of a photo montage back in 2009, when Rona Proudfoot wrote a comprehensive history of the Lakeview Park Easter Basket.)

The trips down to Lakeview Park at Easter concluded with this portrait below, taken at Easter 1960. Mom's holding your friendly blogger. The little girl at the left hand side of the photo doesn't look very happy.

Earlier in the day that same Easter, we had our fun at home. I've mentioned before how my parents would hide Easter baskets around the house for my siblings and me. We actually had a few baskets each, with candy and hard-boiled eggs in them. I don't remember retrieving the hard-boiled eggs from the baskets and putting them in the fridge. I do remember we ate one a day until they were gone.

And here's me, looking perplexed and puzzled. Note the grass from a basket in on the floor, with eggs strewn about.

Little did I know that I was dressed just like Bob's Big Boy!

The trips down to Lakeview may have ended, but we still managed to get a few more photos of us in our Easter duds in the following years. Here we are at Easter 1965, in front of the house on W. 30th Street. 

Happy memories.