CURVE:Easter minus the beans

I messed up my beans on Easter Sunday. I mean they were inedible. See, everybody brings a community dish to our annual neighborhood Easter egg hunt. After the kids — more of them every year; I think they bused a load in from Bakersfield last Sunday — finish scavenging for 1,771 (somebody counted) plastic eggs full of candy and sometimes money, we eat copiously of these dishes. And maybe drink a little.

Over the years, my beans have become a modest tradition — at least in my own head. A recipe right out of northern Indiana for lima beans mixed with brown sugar, molasses and ketchup, underneath strips of bacon that drip in the mix when cooked gently in an oven.

But last Sunday, I didn't pay proper attention and they cooked too long.

The result was dry beans that looked as bad as they tasted and sat forlornly on the serving table, surrounded by dishes very much in play.

Watching this rejection, I was forced into an extra martini to carry me through.

One high point of the day turned out to be when folks who live several streets away brought their horses over to graze in the uncut high grass in front of the forlorn house two doors down from me. It has a note tacked to the front door that says: "This property has been repossessed and is now bank-owned." It seemed morosely out of place surrounded by the enthusiasm and neighborhood good feelings the former owners never really explored.

Like, for example, our godfather, Jim Altobelli, and Ron Darling providing clues to the resting place of eggs with money in them for the older kids. Having just paid my taxes, I gave serious thought to joining this search, but backed off when I was told the stakes had been reduced considerably from previous years.

If this modest commercialism seems inappropriate for the occasion and comes off as irreverent, it's not so. The festivities are thoroughly grounded in a kind of joyous communal togetherness that so well reflects the celebration of this day.

Have you been following the machinations of high finance that have replaced journalism as a driving force in the path to be followed by the Los Angeles Times?

I don't know who I'm going to be working for when this finally shakes down except that it won't be the Chicago Tribune, which I found to be a considerable embarrassment for someone who grew up — as I did — under the aegis of Little Orphan Annie and Dick Tracy, both spawned in the Tribune.