Spring Chicken

Spring is here!  (At least in the Southeast.)  The smell of hyacinth  flowers always reminds me of Nana and Pop Sherry because we used to go visit them  every Easter.

 What I loved most about Easter was shopping for my Easter outfit. Everything new head to toe.  New hat, dress, gloves, lace trimmed ankle socks, patent leather shoes, and of course, I had to have a  new purse.  I never carried anything in it, but I had to have it.

Notice Ned's foot in a cast.  That's a story for another day.

Every Easter, the Easter Bunny would hide our candy-filled baskets and we'd have to find them.  (If you wonder why we didn't dye Easter eggs and hide them, reread my blog entry about Christmas and my dad's attitude towards holidays.)

One year, possibly after receiving our dental bills, my parents thought instead of candy the Easter Bunny would give us 3 baby chicks dyed in bright Easter colors!?!  Maybe they thought they'd produce colored eggs and we would stop pestering them to dye eggs.  We named them Napoleon, Illya, and Mr. Waverly, characters in our  favorite TV show, Man From U.N.C.L.E.

"Why did we name them after  TV spys?" you ask.  I have no idea.  I also have no idea why anyone thought it was a good idea to dye live chicks and sell them and give them to small children.

Of course, we thought they were great.  We took turns picking them up and putting them down. (Which is all you can really do with baby chicks.)  That is until my very young brother Jim decided to give Illya a hug.  It may have been Napoleon… either my memory has faded or I was so traumatized by what happened next I have tried to erase all memory of it.
When Jim put the little blue chick back in its box (home) it fell over with its neck dangling.  I am surprised the other two chicks didn't drop dead of fright from the screams that followed, not only from us five kids, but also from Dad and Mom.

We never saw Mr. Waverly or Napoleon again.  My dad whisked them and their box into the car, drove straight to the Nichios' house, (the closest farmhouse around), and told us they had a much happier home there.

We were perfectly fine with that until about a year later when my sister, Renee, asked her classmate Tommy Nichio how Mr. Waverly and Napolean were and he answered, "Delicious!"