I love Easter.

It is a holy day for much of the Christian world, where many hold fast to the ancient doctrines. Bless them all.

For some, especially those caught up in the strangeness we call American politics, it is just another day to hammer the other side with one more snarky insult. It is too bad, for the Easter season provides a quiet chance to savor precious memories.

Here is a test. There are no wrong answers.

Do you remember the first time your parents took you shopping for an Easter outfit?

Did it mean your parents stuffed you in the car and drove to the big city center, like Portland, Bangor, Lewiston, or Boston? If you lived in a city, did you go downtown on a streetcar that rattled and shook as it plowed through traffic?

Here is an extra credit question. Was your mother wearing white cotton gloves? Or was she carrying them?

Once you arrived, did your mother or dad march you into a wonderful old-time department store?

Did you ride an elevator to reach the floor where the kids' outfits lived? Do you remember a nice uniformed lady who ran the elevator and called out the items on each floor?

I remember my mother asking the saleswoman for trousers (always trousers, never pants) that might fit around the middle of a tubby little boy. You might look at aisle three, where we keep the “husky” sizes, she said.

For the girls, did they lead you to an aisle with racks stuffed with bright, frilly outfits? Was there a conversation between your parents and the saleswoman about the costume you would be required to wear? Were you ever asked for your opinion?

Here is another extra credit question. Did you visit the shoe department where the salesman measured your foot and brought out a selection of stiff, uncomfortable shoes? Then he marched you to a large, tall dark-colored cabinet and told you to step up on a platform and put your feet in a slot?

As you stood on the stoop, you could peek in a viewer to see green, glowing images of your feet inside the shoes.

I remember the salesman using a pointer to show mom how the shoes he selected fit just right.

Of course, no one said anything about the device, called a fluoroscope. It used X-rays to illuminate your feet. In addition to showing your feet and the shoes, you, your parents, and especially Mr. shoe salesman, were exposed to tons of radiation.

Think of it for a minute. When the dentist takes an X-ray of your teeth, you are given a lead-lined blanket to cover your middle to prevent radiation exposure. Not so in the shoe store.

In our neighborhood, we spent many happy Saturday afternoons in a movie theater. There was a fluoroscope in the shoe store next door. They would let us try it out and we giggled while watching our wiggling toes. For some reason, these machines disappeared in the mid-1950s. Do you wonder why?

Do you remember Easter egg hunts?

The newspaper where I spent my adult years cranking out thousands of stories owned a recreation area where they hosted an annual Easter egg hunt for our kids.

It was fun, but not much of a hunt. Volunteers wearing bunny costumes set out hundreds of plastic eggs in the grass. At the appointed time, the bunnies lined up the kindergarteners, dropped a ribbon, and got out of the way as the kids raced to pick up eggs and stuff them in their baskets.

I remember one girl who was not interested in hunting eggs. She would just follow other children waiting for an egg to tumble out of their basket. Then, as they bent over reaching for another bright egg, she would casually swoop up the fallen egg and walk away.

In the early 1950s on a rainy Easter Sunday, my folks decided to hold the family egg hunt indoors. It was before the invasion of colored plastic eggs. Mom had decorated real eggs that had been hard-boiled and dyed.

On Easter morning after church, the kids ate breakfast as father went into another room, closed the door, and secreted two dozen eggs, carefully placing them behind chairs, under the coffee table and behind the drapes.

As I recall, we raced into the room and took a couple of minutes to gather up the booty. We quickly found 23.

A month or two later, mom spent an afternoon searching that room until she found the last Easter egg still hiding under a radiator, but that is another story for another time.

Happy Easter to all.