Pueblo County, Colorado
An Easter Memory

Contributed by R.J. Samp

Sretan Uskrs (Happy Easter in Croatian). I can’t wish you a Happy Easter in Slovenian since I never learned the language that my Skube grandparents spoke.

I guess I was about 10 years old when my aunt Rachael Skube & I each carried a huge, heavy basket of food down to the Grove on Holy Saturday to have them blessed. It was a long walk from 1715 E. Routt Ave. in Pueblo, Colorado through empty lots and across streets over the Railway bridge that spanned the Arkansas river.

Carefully we slid down the embankment to Saint Mary’s. The food carrying people wound around the inside of the church like a holiday confessional line waiting for their turn to have the food blessed.

Inside our heavy baskets were: kifli (nut & sugar encrusted rolls filled with courant jelly), potica, kielbasa, ham, fresh horseradish, boiled eggs, and spring onions. Symbolically the kifli were twisted as the ropes that bound Jesus as were the strings of kielbasa – The encrusted nuts were the thorns – the lumped sugar crust served as the bitter sweet of his passion - the courant jelly, the blood of Christ.

On the tiring way back from the church we felt like eating some of the contents but decided not to, lest we incur Grandma Matilda’s displeasure!

After Easter Mass it was a double joy to eat the blessed food by hand.

Then on to 1729 E. Abriendo to Grandma Mary Simonich’s where we finished the day with more food and cordiality.

At evening tide we headed back out to the farm to milk the cows, slop the hogs, and feed the horses and chickens.

I sure miss the Easters of old . . . Happy Easter!

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