Easter Sunday

Our lane is 3/4 of a mile. At least thats what we always call it. Actually it's a bit longer than that. When I was a small child, and living here, the lane was a formidable foe. At that time it didn't have the nice crushed rock base that it does now. And in the spring, there seemed at times to have no bottom to it. As the frost 'went out', we would begin the 'process'. First we would park the cars up on the main road. Then we began driving the jeep up to the cars. The jeep was about a 1945 Willy's with a cab. The heater put out about the same amount of warm air as I do during normal respiration. Dad always carried the spare tire in the back. This means the back seat passengers sat on little ledges on the side of the jeep facing each other with their feet on the tire. The top of the spare was almost as high as the seat you were on.
This is often the way we started to Easter Sunday Church. We weren't the type to miss a service. We went every Sunday. I have a 'perfect attendance pin' that goes for 14 years to prove it. But Easter Sunday sticks in my mind. There would sometimes be Mom, Dad, and 5 or 6 of us 7 kids in that jeep, plowing thru the mud up to the main road. We were all in our "finest". The jeep we were getting in to was coated with wet, fresh, mud inside and out. And we were expected to stay clean.
Now here's the good part. The road would reach a stage that made it impossible for the jeep to go up the lane. Did we stay home? No. Dad would get out the Allis D-14 farm tractor chosen because of its' wide front end. (The tires were 4 feet apart as opposed to a narrow front with the tires together, also called a tricycle front. Tricycle fronts would immediately clog with mud and start to slide) Dad would hook the D-14 onto a small 2 wheel trailer. There we went, 7 well dressed people, in a trailer with 12 inch sides, Dad with his suit and tie driving the little tractor, on our way to Easter Sunday. Slowly. Any speed at all and the tractor would start to sling chunks of gumbo (our local name for crappy soil) into the air and they would land on the people in the trailer. Gumbo builds up on the outside of the tires if it is in the right stage. (about half dry) It will then peel off and go airborne and you don't want to be under it.
Getting home from Church was the same process in reverse. Only on Easter Sunday we had a lot of company who had to be picked up at the end of the lane with the Allis. (the cooks got to go first)
Today my two son's, a daughter in-law and a granddaughter, and Marilyn and I, will walk out the front door, get in the minivan, and drive the all weather roads to Worship. After Church we will come back and eat the dinner that is cooking on time bake.
This all seems too easy.