An easter egg is a message, image, or hidden feature. The easter eggs that I’ve added to the mural relate directly to Henri’s boyhood diary of 1880 (he was 15 years old). I read through it a couple of times, paying close attention to the little details of his everyday life.
Poison Ivy
Poison ivy is mentioned many times. Often he gets into it while fishing or swimming by the river, and sometimes while working.
“During the day I found out that I had got poised again over on the island the other day. “
“I have found out that when Wild Iva poision does get a start, it keeps a person in constant torture. It makes a person want to scratch and when he does scratch it eaches [sic] and stings all the more, besides scratching makes it worse.”
(I harvested a little bit from a patch on our farm so that I could use it as a reference in the painting. I used rubber gloves and a plastic bag and tried to be very careful. My bravery paid off, I managed to escape unscathed.)
Gooseberries
He refers to ‘gooseberries’ a few times in the diary, most likely the native currants that grow in abundance in Nebraska.
(We have these on our farm, and foraging for wild berries is one of my favorite pass-times. They often don’t make it into the kitchen because they’re so delicious, but I use them to make a variety of things from kombucha to drying and using them like raisins.)
A Mink with a Fish
Young Bobby Cozad spent a lot of time fishing on the Platte River. In the diary, he refers to the way that he would put a fishing pole out in the evening with many hooks on the line. The next day, there were often fish on the line. Sometimes opportunists would take advantage of this technique.
“John R. and I fished a little at night, but we had a nice little mess stolen from us by a mink.”
(I chose to put this image in the mural because mink are delightfully cute and mischievous, and I think it adds a lot of personality.)
Rattlesnake Tail
“When I came home Lewis Owens presented me with a rattle snake’s rattles. The button had not been taken off the snake, so the rattles were not complete. The age I think was about 9½ years old.”
(I assumed that the common rattlesnakes there were Prairie Rattlers, so that is what I painted.)