Murrah’s Mule Barn, Richland GA

Easter has always been a really special holiday in my family. This year was no different! Besides the fact that today is our anniversary of being given the gift of eternal life, it’s also the one where we get to do the egg hunts! We always get together and eat, and I’m the one that’s expected to “bring the tea.” I did ok this year. Last year, I had to get old school and brew some up on site. This time, nobody beat me to the last batch at the local Dollar Gen’tral. It was my lucky day!

Because we’ve always gotten together, I have a lot of Easter memories. The first of course…is waking up to my Easter basket from that spooky rabbit every year! We always had to have a few rounds of homemade egg hunts at the crack of dawn… but were soon off to the church for Sunrise Service. My Uncle Jerry Croxton had this deep sounding tenor voice, and I can still remember him singing “Up From the Grave He Arose!” from the choir box and sounding like the Oak Ridge Boys. I thought he was a Rockstar. I’m pretty sure he thought so too. I miss you Uncle Jerry!

Speaking of church! I also remember going to several egg hunts at the church as a kid. I may or may not have bullied my way to that prize egg in the Legg’s pantyhose container. You gotta do what you gotta do! $5 is a lot of money when you’re 7 and on a steady diet of penny candy and Slush Puppies from the S-Mart. This is one of those things I hope I was forgiven of when all my sins were washed away that very first Easter. I probably still have a few earthly folks mad over that $5 Legg’s egg….but I digress…..

This year, we spent our Easter out at Murrah’s Mule Barn in Richland like we’ve been doing a few years now. This is the very same location that my great grandparents housed thier mules back in the day. My great grandaddy G.G.’s initials are still carved in the wood of a barn door. Pretty cool!

The best Easters we’ve had have all been filled with bluegrass music. I grew up with it that way; and it’s that way today… though we have a new generation pickin’ the tunes and hunting the eggs.

Speaking of eggs! I think my family might hold the record for the number one FRESHEST egg in Easter egg history. One year, my brothers were in the midst of a beautiful, God given rendition of “Amazing Grace”….and the entire family was gathered together in praise and comraderie. The day, though, was a rainy one. Because of the rain, we were all packed inside the little house my brother made from an old general store. I suppose given the fact that we indeed had live chickens, and that one or two occasionally trip-trapped its way over the threshold and into the house…that something was eventually bound to happen. Well, right about the time Mark struck that super sweet blues harp note in the second verse…a dang red ol’ hen came in and let out a big “$quawwwk!” and laid a dern egg right smack dab in the center of the living room floor. I say that with a $, because it was definitely a money shot. This dern hen literally laid a fresh egg right in the floor in the middle of Easter Sunday. It about got squished by the stand-up bass fiddle, it was so close. You can’t even make this stuff up. It’s a 100% true story. Something about that harmonica just made it….lay.

We’ve all gotten a little older and a little lazier, but it’s always a fun time. We missed the ones who were no longer with us, and we loved on the new ones that have joined our family through the last few years. I hope every one of you had a happy Easter, and I hope those woven Easter baskets don’t get in too much of the way in the closet. Don’t forget…bluegrass music never has hurt anybody, but blue grass out of the Easter basket will bust up the vacuum!

Love to you all! HE IS RISEN!

-Meg Johnson

Little Maggie and the Cosmic Zoo

He IS RISEN!