I have been working in the studio this week, Faithful Reader. So diligently that I have lost touch with the real world and was startled when the Guelph daughter phoned with Easter plans. This weekend? What a surprise! I do like the plan. Everyone is coming here, bringing lunch. Not only do I not need to conceive a plan, I need not travel.

There was a time when, as with the holidays, we trekked from Oakville to Queenston to augment the gathered clan at my mother's house. A dozen grandchildren in their finery until one or other became chocolate-coated.

Chocolate chickens and rabbits as large as the smallest child. It was an outdoor event. I cannot recall snow. I do recall a dinner as ritualized as Christmas.

And, of course, the new Easter hat to wear to church. If not a new hat, then the old one must have new ribbons, veil or flowers. There was a popular song praising a young woman wearing an Easter bonnet- "with blue ribbons on it"- in the Easter parade. That happened in New York, or possibly Toronto, certainly not in Queenston.

Do you read Bill Sherk's column in The News? Tales of old cars. Last week Sid Copeland, I think from Brantford, wrote about his father's 1918 Model T touring car and the part it played in his life. I suspect male or female, everyone has a first car story. These stories are more vividly recalled than other firsts in one's life. Well, perhaps not.

My first vehicle was a Reo truck that my father stripped flat and was used to pick up the baskets of fruit in the orchard. At first, when we moved to the farm, my grandfather's team of horses was hitched to a flat-bed wagon. Mac was an old Clydesdale and Bill was a bony quarterhorse. Not much of a team, F.R., particularly because Mac, either from old age or boredom, would simply lie down, upsetting not only Bill, but the lad who was driving and the wagon loaded with fruit baskets.

The Reo truck was the team's replacement. I learned to drive it. It had a hand crank, a push-button starter, a lovely wooden steering wheel, no cab and an open flatbed to load with the fruit baskets. It was a matter of driving slowly without stalling. I seem to recall it did not reverse, or was it that I did not acquire that skill? The horn had a very loud, rather rude sound, just short of a bull moose in mating season. Yes, I do know that sound.

We moved from that treasure to a new 1947 green Ford pickup. I learned the finer points of driving in that gem. I learned to parallel park between two wooden fruit baskets, down the farm lane and away from the teasing eyes of the male farmhands. At 15 (and-a-half) I got my driver's licence, a story for another day. At 16 I relieved my parents on occasion, driving truckloads of fruit to Toronto via the QEW when it was a gravel road used mainly by military convoys travelling from the encampment at Niagara-on-the-Lake.

I smile when thinking how far removed automobiles are from those humble beginnings. Simple items...windshield washers, side-view mirrors, heaters, radios were modern miracles. I also smile when I think of the laundry room of my childhood and the scrub board, the flat irons. Or the vacuum cleaner.

My father loved gadgets. We had a first pop-up toaster, food mixer, a blender. A record player replaced the elegant gramophone. And, F.R., we were among the few in the village with an indoor toilet and bathroom. Which brings me back to the Dundas Museum's current exhibition, Sitting Pretty, a history of the toilet. You have only until March 26. Do not delay. Take a friend.

The Carnegie Gallery annual general meeting is March 27, 7:30 p.m. It should already be on your calendar. Fred Vermeulen is to make a presentation of plans for the building's future.