Thursday, March 28, 2013

Eggshelland

This wonderful thing is on the east side of Cleveland O., the suburb of Lyndhurst. The snow all melted on the west side by Tuesday. Easter is a movable holiday. This year it is on the last day of March. Cleveland has had a consistently cold March, with moderate bursts of snow, and rarely is there an even distribution.
A young married couple, Ron and Betty Manolio, began decorating their front yard for Easter in 1957 with painted eggshells. Every year since they have done so. Ron has died. This year's display would be a farewell.

For years, new television reporters on the local television stations have come, filmed, and sometimes interviewed for this story. People that have never gone to see the sight in person have enjoyed it on the television. Such a soft, and warm story stands in contrast to the grubby, dismal stories, and the ever growing weather extravaganza presentations. These reporters go elsewhere, and perhaps remember this simple but extraordinary sight of Christian* goodwill. Perhaps, for over forty years this has stayed as a lovely, local story. At one time such a story could have made CBS's On the Road with Charles Kuralt. In the last several years, some national shows did bring this yard national. It is a mystery which stories get promoted, and which do not. Ron Manolio had been a local television cameraman, and still this was only a Cleveland story for many years.

There have been grandparents that have taken their grandchildren (and before that, their sons and daughters) to see the colored eggs and snap fotos. There are in existence many such fotos.
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*Yes, Easter is a Christian holiday, the chief holiday, Paschal Sunday, Resurrection Sunday.

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