“You’ve got a new cat,” I say upon seeing a beautiful black and white mixed feline—almost like he/she was dressed in a tuxedo.
“Yeah … Beatinst thing I ever did see,” our former neighbor, Charles exclaims. His eyelids thicken and he swallows hard. “When Molly died this’un came over and curled up on the grave I made for Molly, then came in and slept with me on the bed,” he said slowly, pausing when the lump in his throat overcame his speech. We had moved about six miles away seven years ago but still try to check in with Charles as often as we can.
“Molly died?” we both asked, saddened and ashamed that we had totally missed this important passing for Charles. For months we had discussed who would be more bereft if the other died first: If Charles (in his upper 80s) died first, he had made it known to us that he wanted Molly put to sleep and buried in his casket with him. If Molly died first, we knew Charles’ heart would again be broken.
So Molly died at the foot of Charles’ bed on Father’s day. Certainly Charles had been a “father” to Molly and Molly a much-loved child for Charles. “I bought her a casket, made a grave and a stone out there along the drive,” he motioned with his head. The dear man was nearly blind, now on oxygen 24 hours a day. “Gets kind of monotonous” he said of the tank, “but things could be a lot worse.”
Molly’s gravestone
That Charles can say that is truly a tribute to his steadfast faith. A lifelong Baptist, Charles has had more “lives” than Molly, surviving various heart ailments and near death episodes.
His wife died about ten years earlier, and their companionship had faded away with her increasing Alzheimer’s, but he had cared for her until she succumbed to heart issues. His most steadfast phone caller now is his 60-something step son with mental disabilities, who lived in a group home. A nearby neighbor and family are faithful helpers who stop in a lot.
So Molly had seen him through all this and more. Many a time when we’d go to visit, Molly would be curled up beside him on his bed, arm chair foot rest, or outdoor glider, and Charles would caress Molly’s head endlessly.
But now Molly was gone. I asked what the new cat’s name was. “I just call him ‘Tommy,” he said with a laugh. Tommy had moved in as a temporary resident at the neighbor’s house, but the cat stayed when the man moved on. The new cat came down and made friends with Charles, and tried to make friends with Molly.
“He used to come in and try to play but Molly would bat him,” Charles explained. I could see the scenario in my mind. But with the marvelous sense that animals have, after Molly died the cat must have sensed there was a newly open slot in Charles’ heart.
We were happy that Tommy moved in when the time was right. And marveled that Someone was watching out for Charles’ needs, who we pray for almost every day, especially since my husband’s work schedule currently doesn’t allow us to visit nearly as often as we should or want.
Isaiah says, “Before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear” (65:24). The writer of Philippians says “My God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus” (4:19).
That night I thanked God for Tommy, and I know Charles does too. R.I.P. Molly.
***
More on Charles & wife: Earlier I wrote about Charles’ wife Letha and her cookbook collection he passed on to me. And in my Another Way newspaper column I wrote a tribute to Letha here.
I’m having a blast these days, preparing talks on my Mennonite heritage and cooking for two days of a Road Scholar week at Amigo Centre in September.
Courtesy of Amigo Centre
For a number of years, Amigo Centre (my camp when I was growing up!) near Sturgis, Michigan, has organized a week of lectures, field trips and activities for anyone (well, basically retired folks, through Road Scholar, a program of Elderhostel) interested in learning more about Mennonites and Amish heritage and faith. They’ve tapped various scholars from nearby Goshen College just across the line in Indiana (and from Hesston College, Kan.) to talk about the beginnings of the Anabaptist stream of faith in 1525–an outgrowth of the Protestant Reformation in Europe–which led to Mennonites, Amish, Old Order, Church of the Brethren and Baptists (although that’s another story).
Short Anabaptist history/theology: Most of my readers know that Anabaptist means re-baptizer because of the belief that adults are best equipped to take the step of baptism as a symbol of rebirth in Christ, rather than participate in what was basically a state/government ritual of the time: automatic baptism of any infant, which put an individual on the roll to be a due/tax paying citizens of a ruler’s domain. Refusal to have a child baptized, or performing a second baptism as an adult was viewed as rebellion or insubordination of the kingdom, punishable by death. Thus the martyrdom of many early Anabaptists, which also fueled the movement. Learn more here. (Infant baptism today is a different step of faith taken by parents as a symbol of God’s grace extending to us before we can even recognize it and parents’ and congregational commitment to raise the child to the place they can make their own confirmation of baptismal vows taken by parents. But that too, is another story.)
In any event, Mennonites and Amish seem to fascinate some folks: witness the popularity of Amish reality shows, as low brow and distasteful as they are; Anabaptism theology is experiencing a resurgence of scholarship and study; and Amish romance novels are hot, while they’re not (not technically steamy, as Valerie Weaver-Zercher writes in The Thrill of the Chaste, reviewed here earlier).
But I’m particularly excited not just because of the opportunity to lecture for a day and a half about Mennonite and Amish food traditions but because we will get to learn how to make real Amish noodles with a real Amish cook (take that, you Amish reality TV shows). Since I wrote about my two experiments making Amish noodles here and here, I have observed that one of the more common search terms here at my blog is “homemade Amish noodles.” Who knew?
My first attempt at homemade Amish noodles.
There are other people out there looking for recipes and methods and tutorials! So, coming sometime in October, you will get right here, an Amish cook’s recipe, method and tutorial. As a group, the participants will get to make homemade noodles to dry and take home, along with a small noodle drying rack. And me too! (Complete program description here.)
I’m not sure who is more excited: me or Mandy Yoder, the Program Director at Amigo Centre who has been planning this event for close to a year. She contacted me last September after a book signing for my book, Whatever Happened to Dinner (with nearly 100 recipes) at the huge Das Dutchman Essen Haus restaurant and conference complex in Middlebury (Middlebury is where I went to elementary school). And of course one of the specialties of the house at the Essen Haus (Pennsylvania Dutch for basically “eating house,”) is Amish homemade noodles. Beef and noodles. On mashed potatoes. Yum. A special shout out to my sister Pert, a special fan of the noodles.
At Das Dutchman Essen Haus Middlebury Ind., Sept. 2012, meeting faithful Another Way reader, David, age 88.
Mandy and I are also working with Carol Honderich, who was in school with my sister Pert, and who I enjoyed working with at Mennonite Mission Network (based in Elkhart, Ind.—so we were long distance colleagues but got to know each other better at retreats, meetings and conferences) who is also leading a Road Scholar program that week at Amigo Centre called Amish-Mennonite Sampler Quilt: A Quilter’s Legacy in Blocks. Carol leads Amigo Centre’s annual Spiritual Quilt Retreat and offers private instruction for individuals, quilt retreats, and presentations for groups and has a quilting specialty website called Patterns of Faith. We’ll be teaming up for a Thursday night special evening that week talking about our own experiences “Growing up Mennonite: Pigtails and Ponytails,” with participants working on a comforter together to give to relief—to needy persons. We thought that was a good way for the Road Scholar participants to truly experience a little of the Mennonite ethos—to help make a beautiful quilt/comforter to share with someone else.
More pigtails and ponytails: me far right as assistant counselor at another Mennonite Camp, Lakewood Retreat, Fla.
I will also be pleased to share these experiences through this blog. If you don’t already receive my posts in your email, sign up if interested so you don’t miss it. Beginning THIS FRIDAY Aug. 30, I’m beginning a new “Finding Harmony Recipe” weekly blog feature with a new recipe every week, especially geared to helping families keep family dinner time. More about that in September.
And check out the fascinating opportunities available through Road Scholar, where instead of just taking a touristy tour you can LEARN something behind the scenes and meet people if you are at the stage of life (and wallet) when you can enjoy such things. Mandy hopes to be able to offer a similar program again next year at Amigo Centre.
***
A final shout out to a new memoir of Shirley Hershey Showalter’s days of growing up Mennonite called Blush: Mennonite Girl Meets a Glittering World (Herald Press). Shirley is former president of Goshen College. On prepublication 30% discount, $11 until Oct. 22, 2013.
***
Growing up _______. How do you fill in the blank? You don’t have to wait to write a book or give a talk to enjoy putting things into a form your children and grandchildren can enjoy. My mother has loved writing in a book my sister gave her with memory jogs and prompts to write about, like “What was your favorite song when a teenager” or “Your favorite movie,” to which she scoffs, “What movies?” Such as this.
On Alcatraz Island, San Francisco
Back in the day, I vaguely remember going to Audubon slide lectures and Travelogues with my family because we weren’t allowed to go to movies and had no TV and this was Real Entertainment and Educational, my parents said.
I have three more areas from our travels this past summer so I’ll do them like a travelogue for my own records/journal but they will only be interesting if you’ve been there or are going there or are my family. You are welcome to quit reading now if none of these fit you. Or just skim the photos, I really like some of them.
I’ve skipped around from our travels and if you’re now lost or heaven help us, INTERESTED in any of the other posts and itinerary: (with links to prior posts, if there was such)
July 6 Phoenix, Ariz.
July 7 Grand Canyon National Park
July 8 Navajo Reservation and Zion National Park, Utah
July 9 Hoover Dam, Nevada/Ariz. and Las Vegas
July 10 Bakersfield, Calif.
July 11 Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, Calif.
July 12-13 San Francisco
My only pretty-pathetic picture of the landmark Saguaro cactus
Grand Canyon. On the way to Grand Canyon from Phoenix, we drove by Sedona which I’ve heard a lot about and would have loved to make a side trip. But now I know why everyone says it is so pretty, with much greener scenery and many shades of red soils in the hills near Verde Valley. My biggest regret is I didn’t insist on stopping to photograph the many Saguaro cacti we saw through this whole area—thinking oh we’ll surely see them many more times so I’ll wait, but once we got out of Arizona we didn’t see any in all the other desert and wilderness areas we drove through, which seemed like a lot. Now I know why the Saguaro is so proudly on Arizona license plates.
Above are a few favorite shots soaking in the Grand Canyon most of Sunday afternoon until evening, made much more enjoyable by using a free environmentally-friendly shuttle bus system from our motel to the Canyon, all along the southern rim at various stops, and a few short hikes between lookouts. Highlights were seeing a California condor and its nest (bottom two pictures here); an elk; muledeer; and a desert piney lizard (again, so said the ranger). And hats off to the National Park system offering a LIFETIME pass for just $10 to any National Park once you reach the ripe age of 62, for which my brother-in-law qualified. You pay $10 one time and the pass covers you and anyone with you the rest of your life. So score! We spent nothing on park entrance fees or shuttle buses in the four parks we were in.
Navajo Nation. Leaving Grand Canyon to head to Utah’s Zion Park should have been a couple hour drive. We ended up detouring about 1½ hours for road construction and when you detour in the desert, there’s not another crossroad a mile down the road. No, 50 miles down the road comes the next highway.
I didn’t quite realize when and where we entered Navajo lands or Nation, except for seeing makeshift roadside stops for tourists with locals selling jewelry, pottery, blankets and the like. When my family went out west in 1964 we spent a day and evening on what was then called the Navajo reservation visiting a Mennonite mission there.
I didn’t take a lot of pictures, which is maybe good because it is always sad and perhaps invasive to take pictures of poverty. But the land and the homes were so very humble and hot looking: shells of long abandoned trailers and forlorn mobile homes or shanties with lots of stuff outside baking in the sun where people currently lived. There were great expanses of just nothing—land, a few scrub bushes or trees, outcroppings of rock, distant plateaus.
Fast forward to the end of our trip, San Francisco.
San Francisco. After many days of 100-115 degree heat everywhere, in San Francisco we donned jackets, yes, and layers of clothes and still were chilly on the bus tours we took to get acquainted with the city’s various parts.
I was thrilled to have almost two full days there: my mother confirmed that when my family visited in 1964, we only went across the Golden Gate Bridge and that was about it—farmer Dad didn’t much like cities. In 2003 I attended a Mennonite Health Assembly there and several of us did side trips to Alcatraz and the wharf district, but this was my first time seeing the financial district and all of the many lovely neighborhoods with their unique and interesting architecture and of course the famous Haight and Asbury streets of the “peace and love, man” era of the city’s history. We enjoyed blue skies and clear waters but I was hugely disappointed to learn that the much-loved and hilarious-to-watch sea lions were off making their own kind of love and peace, sea lion style (mating season). On Alcatraz, we lucked into a ranger tour and got to go in some abandoned tunnels and hear even more of the inside story of the famous prison, once a military prison, and eventual home to Al Capone and the Birdman of Alcatraz, and many others, including families of guards who also lived on the island.
Scenes from Alcatraz Island, Haight-Asbury district, one of many lovely parks, and Stuart and I with Golden Gate Bridge in the distant background. It was rainy and cloudy by the time we got to Golden Gate that evening with not very good pictures.
Summer’s almost over and so is our long anticipated western adventure. I’m very grateful to my dear husband for planning this trip with me and to his brother for joining us. When my family went out west in 1964 Dad figured we averaged spending $20 a day for our family of six. Twenty bucks for six over six weeks. Of course, then we Mennonited-our-way staying with friends, acquaintances and anyone who would let us camp in their yard, but stopped once a week for a motel break and pretty much saw whatever we wanted to see (even Disneyland) while having most of our meals in the camper. This trip was not cheap but we too ate a lot of cold meat sandwiches in our motel rooms (even in Vegas, see earlier entry) or McDonald’s salads to keep costs down.
But it is always good to go home again.
And to get there, safe and sound.
I knew that somewhere on our western trip this summer we (I) would need to do laundry. We packed light enough to have only one suitcase (carry on size) per person so that we wouldn’t have to check any luggage (or pay the fees), so in traveling eight days, I packed for four basic days and planned to scrub up about half way through.
I also knew that I would somehow enjoy it. Traveling with two men—my husband and his brother, a bachelor—I didn’t have a lot of alone time. As something of an introvert, I was beginning to crave some space by myself. One of my favorite bloggers, Jennifer Murch, (Mama’s Minutia) talked about doing laundry for their family of six on a recent joyous but emotional visit to a village where they lived 13 years ago in Guatemala. She wrote “I welcome the solitude, a brief reprieve in the storm of emotions.”
When I was 12, our family traveled and camped for six weeks out west and once a week, whether at a campground laundry or commercial business in a town, doing laundry was something of an adventure for us kids. We loved using the change machine, putting the right number of coins in the washers, buying the little boxes of soap, pushing the laundry carts around, and even drying and folding things into neat stacks—with a chance to start over in having our clothing nicely organized (not easy in a tiny camper and six people).
When laundry is your biggest chore of the week, it is a respite from the “work” of sightseeing, traveling, finding your next meal, finding the next highway or motel.
In this case we were in Bakersfield, California, and when I asked at the desk of the Doubletree Inn (a shout out to a Mennonite pastor, Brenda Isaacs, now at Bakersfield Church of the Brethren congregation who recommended it when I asked her on Facebook), the desk clerk quickly paged through a supply of printed directions from Google and handed me a sheet with turn-by-turn directions to the nearest laundry. (And oh yes, a second shout out for the fresh warm cookies given at Doubletree check in!)
At the laundry I was intrigued that some machines near the back had a large sign “Oilfields” over them and I surmised that was where you were supposed to do your laundry if you worked in the nearby oil fields.
While the machines did their work, I penned some postcards home, wrote in my journal, and watched with some intrigue a quartet of women who appeared to also be on either vacation or attending a conference, who were doing their laundry together and seemed to be enjoying it, too.
I had to think of one of my favorite writers, Anne Morrow Lindbergh and her reflections in Gift from the Sea:
“We are all, in the last analysis, alone. And this basic state of solitude is not something we have any choice about. It is, as the poet Rilke says, “not something that one can take or leave. We are solitary. …
“How one hates to think of oneself as alone. How one avoids it. It seems to imply rejection or unpopularity. …We seem so frightened today of being alone that we never let it happen. Even if family, friends and movies should fail, there is still the radio or the television to fill up the void. Women, who used to complain of loneliness, need never be alone any more. We can do our housework with soap-opera heroes at our side. Even day-dreaming was more creative than this; it demanded something of oneself and it fed the inner life. Now, instead of planting our solitude with our own dream blossoms, we choke the space with continuous music, chatter and companionship to which we do not even listen. It is simply there to fill the vacuum. When the noise stops there is no inner music to take its place. We must re-learn to be alone.” [From Gift from the Sea]
Laundry is a time to enjoy being alone with our thoughts and the “quotidian” of daily life.
Can we celebrate that we have clothing, machines (or a nearby laundry), or a well or river–and the health to do the chore?
Jennifer writes a once-a-week photo essay she calls the “Quotidian” and includes this definition of quotidian: “daily, usual or customary; everyday; ordinary; commonplace.” And if you need a reminder of how easy most of us in North America have it regarding laundry, see Jennifer’s post from earlier this year after arriving in Guatemala for a 9 month term of service with MCC.
What chore is really not a chore for you? Where do you listen to your inner music?
***
If you wonder where my husband and brother went, I was only too happy to let them escape to the nearest Costco and Home Depot without me!!
It is family reunion time. I whipped up a fast and easy Arnold Felcher cake to take to my husband’s family reunion this past Sunday. If you don’t stick your nose up in the air at doctored-up cake mix recipes, and have a potluck or reunion coming up, this is always a crowd pleaser and showy when made in three layers, light and fluffy.
I like the back story behind this cake almost as much as the delicacy. Every time I take it somewhere someone wants to know what’s in it and why it is called Arnold Felcher cake.
Arnold was a beloved radio announcer in our community on WSVA, Harrisonburg, beginning about 1962. Before that he helped launch WBVP (Beavertown, Ohio) and came up with the nickname for its call letters. He was a true personality making frequent community appearances, and Shenandoah Valley residents enjoyed waking up to his lively and sometimes outlandish (radio announcer, after all) banter with co-anchor Wip Robinson. I’m a little too young to know the legendary stories they sometimes concocted, but the duo were popular enough to publish at least one cookbook, Wip and Arnold’s Seconds Please Recipes and one volume of household hints, Wip and Arnold’s Household Hints: Like Having a Handyman Around.
The valley loved Arnold even though historically it has been a predominately Christian region and Arnold was a practicing Jew. Truly there were not a lot of synagogues in this rural valley although Harrisonburg has Beth El Congregation. Those were also the days when likely it was sometimes difficult to be different in a place like this—just as it is today for other ethnicities.
Food and friendliness can go a long way in reaching across whatever ethnic and religious differences separate good people today. David Shenk, a devout Christian who has written/co-authored a trio of books encouraging friendship and understanding between Muslims and Christians told a seminar group this summer that the way to have peaceful and harmonious dealings in our towns and valleys is the long standing simple act of asking a neighbor or associate to have a cup of coffee or tea with you.
Whip up and share a cake like this and you never know what kind of friendship will start. It has a faint citrusy taste owing to the pineapple and mandarin oranges, and you can pretend you are eating fruit instead of fattening cake. It doesn’t need ice cream BUT if you save a huge spot in your tummy, it is over-the-top-creamy-good.
I was pleased to learn you can find the exact recipe on at least one website and many variations for it (and alternate names like “Pig Cake” at Pioneer Woman Ree Drummond’s popular recipe blog). Ree Drummond has complete blow by blow pictures so I won’t repeat those here. It was also featured a couple years ago as the Shaping Families radio program recipe of the week.
Arnold Felcher Cake
1 box yellow cake mix (do not add water or other items the box calls for, just use the items below.)
11 ounce can mandarin oranges, undrained
4 eggs
1/2 cup oil
8 ounce container whipped topping
20 ounce can crushed pineapple, drained (do not use juice in cake)
1 large box instant vanilla pudding
Directions:
Mix together cake mix, oranges, eggs, and oil.
Pour into three greased 9-inch cake pans. Bake at 350° for 15-18 minutes. Remove from pans and cool.
Mix together whipped topping, pineapple, and dry pudding. Spread between each layer and over top and sides.
Refrigerate until served.
Makes 16 servings.
***
Do you have any Wip and Arnold stories to share? Have you ate, or made this cake or a variation?
The transformation starts on the drive out to Bergton. Most of us have to drive 10, 15, 20 or more miles to get to the Bergton Fair, known as the “biggest little fair around.” You can be harried and hot from a bad week at work and the spell of the eastern-facing slopes of the Shenandoah Mountain range of the Appalachians begins to fall over you with the deep green trees waving a wand as the winding highway carries you back to old Virginia.
… Past Martin Luther Lutheran Church and the steep road to the cemetery where my husband’s grandparents and great grandparents and scores of cousins and aunts and uncles are buried
… Past the hollow (low place between hills where a path and then a dirt road gets beat down) where Stuart’s uncle used to live, way back at the end. All the cousins remember the fun of playing in the creek near the fresh water spring.
The “homeplace” for my husband’s grandfather, Perry Hottinger, near Bergton. Top, Uncle George with two of his sisters, Aunt Leila and Aunt Ressie, 2001.
At Bergton Fair, the admission price is $1 per person, paid as you enter by car.
The tomatoes and green peppers and canned goods and needlecraft are shown off in the old white clapboard school house, where some of my husband’s relatives went to school.
Privacy and prudence forbids me from snapping and sharing the best photos, such as the ones of:
… a young father struggling to pull leggings onto his toddler after her tiara competition; she stifles late day toddler crankiness with a snuffle or two, while the mother puts away a poufy blue princess dress.
… young couples holding hands or pushing a stubborn stroller over the trampled grounds.
… older couples all spruced up in their fair-goin’ best, lined up in lawn chairs as you enter the grounds and enjoying an evening’s respite from canning green beans (I remember hearing of folks canning 110 quarts, 150 quarts. I do not lie.).
And harmonies: whether it’s a soulful “Rock Me Mamma” or splendid “Bringing Mary Home,” you’re sure to find toes tappin’ and hearts lifting.
And no matter how hot you were down in the valley, there’ll be a chill back here; you always tote a sweater or jacket, just in case, and generally use it.
You have to line up for the fried chicken; tonight we’re early and lucky, the line is short. Cousin Johnny is somewhere in the booth helping but he’s too
busy and too deep among the cookers to see him just now.
If you’re from these parts you will probably sit down to eat beside a second cousin or third cousin once removed you’ve never even met and if you’ve got Swiss-German roots, way back you too are likely related.
For seconds on eats there might be a country ham or tenderloin sandwich, or a hamburger or hot dog, all the better in the crisp mountain air.
Then dessert, later in the evening, maybe right before going home: shall it be ice cream, funnel cake, cotton candy or kettle corn? I’ve long since learned to be wise in these indulgences which sometimes wake you during the night.
In earlier years of course, I’d supervise the kids on the rides, my husband chatting up the tractor, implement and outdoor woodstove dealers circling the grounds, I’d play a round or two of bingo. The coins flow at the booths and tables no matter how lean the year and who was just laid off. The money all goes to a good cause, they say, as they plunk down another quarter in hopes of winning a stuffed bear, or toss another dime for some discount store glass.
Fair season is just beginning in earnest in these parts. So go to your county fair, your state fair, your world’s fair (do they still have those?) but next year, pencil in August 5-9 in the Shenandoah Valley, just over the line from West Virginia (almost heaven), where the food is real and the people are too.
Just ya’all don’t all come at once or there won’t be room for ya’ll and they’ll run out of chicken and country ham early. That’s the only thing that will make for a bad night at Bergton Fair, our little fair of the heart.
***
The beauty of Bergton Fair, along with the prices, is that there’s not even a website, but here, here and here are a few pieces and photos others have snatched at the Bergton Fair.
In my book, Why Didn’t I Just Raise Radishes: Finding God in the Everyday, I wrote about Aunt Mae’s “Dinner plate dahlias” in a loving tribute to Uncle George’s wife, grown at the homestead in the hollow near Bergton Fair. In years past we would see both Aunt Mae and Uncle George lined up among the unofficial greeters you pass through when getting to the grounds.
This is a two parter: in my Another Way newspaper column today, I give most of the how-we-got-there-and-why of a stop at Hoover Dam while on a week traveling through some of southwest U.S. earlier this summer. Here I’m posting our photos of Hoover Dam and a (loose) connection to the grandfather I never knew.
My grandpa on my mother’s side, Ivan Stauffer, was killed in a car accident when I was about seven months old. I’ve always wished I could have known the “Grandpa Stauffer” piece of my family history.
Originally called Boulder Dam, my mother says she remembers her father, Ivan, talking about the dam while she was growing up in northern Indiana. I figure anything that you remember your father talking about when you were young must have been something he talked about more than once.
This was the 1930s and like everyone else, they were struggling just to pay rent. Mom was born in 1924, so she would have been just seven years old when construction on the dam began in 1931 and 11 years old when the dam was dedicated in 1935. Had her dad ever thought about heading west with some 5,000 others to make what was a decent wage at the time, 50 cents to $1.25 an hour doing anything from carpenters helper (50 cents an hour) to shovel operator at $1.25 an hour (top pay)? The wages were not bad by 1930 standards, with $1.25 an hour equating roughly to a doctor’s wages then. I’m guessing the thought might have crossed my grandfather’s mind.
Workers on a jumbo rig used for drilling Hoover Dam’s tunnels.
I do know this from a note Mom wrote about dad in some reflections earlier:
“My dad made us fun things to play on, he was quite clever really. We always had most of the neighbor kids there to play ‘cause we had the fun stuff. My parents were poor but always had plenty of food and nice clothes because mother made them all. We were too poor for a phone in the 30s and always went up to my grandparents to call someone.”
More back story: Ivan’ s mother died when he was eight. When he was 12 in 1905, his father sent him to live with a Christian family who raised him well.
Meanwhile, Ivan’s father, John went to work on a farm in North Dakota and eventually moved in with another son, Eli, in Port Susan, Washington, where son, Arthur, also settled. So I don’t think it is a far stretch of the imagination for Ivan, given his penchant for coming up with clever toys for his kids during the depression probably had an adventurous, imaginative streak. He was likely fascinated by what he heard and read of the innovative building of the Hoover Dam. Later, a similar huge dam, the Grand Coulee Dam in Washington where his father and brothers were living, was built in the 40s.
In the 1920 census Ivan’s occupation was listed as being employed by Sidway Mercantile, a baby strollercarriage factory that operated in Elkhart County, Ind. By the 1930 census he was listed as farming, but he did not own the farm; his father-in-law did and according to some reports, Ivan was frequently told what to do by his father-in-law. His own father, John, came home to Indiana for a while but eventually died back in Washington state. The only time I remember meeting the “Washington” side of the family, Uncle Arthur, was on my own family’s six-weeks-long western trip in 1964. I’m so grateful to my daughter Michelle who researched some of these pieces of the family tree puzzle on Ancestry.com
I don’t want to make too much of this weak family connection, but the creativity and excitement that surrounded the build, as well as the terrible sacrifices of human life certainly caught my imagination in ways I had not expected. And I’m glad it made me go back and ponder more of my family tree.
This photo is from 1940, where my grandfather’s whole family was reunited. Ivan is in the far left corner in the back row. (Double click for caption and bigger view. Sorry about the funky framing.)
What do you wish you knew more about your family tree? What are the traces of stories you’ve tried to piece together? What do they hint about your background?
(And if you happen to know more about my grandfather’s history, don’t hesitate to send edits and corrections! This can be like Wikipedia–open to anyone’s additions!)
Photos from Hoover Dam
A small scale display of the seven state area impacted by the Hoover Dam water project which changed agriculture, industry and life for the southwest, even today.
Inside Hoover Dam, a view of some of the mammoth generators powered by the flow of water.
Lake Meade, created by the dam project, has receded to disturbing low levels.
That’s a lot of concrete; the creative folks who worked on the dam thought of innovative ways to dry all that out which allowed them to finish the project two years ahead of schedule.
My brother-in-law, Nolan and yours truly with a highway spanning the Colorado River in the background.
My daughter was home for three blessed weeks the middle of this summer, on a break from her grad school projects and studies in urban ecology.
Doreen at one of her work sites for grad school, last fall.
She couldn’t have come at a better time for the garden and she actually kind of grooves on gardening, partly because of her interests in ecology. She whipped our garden into shape, especially the tomatoes which had started to run amok while I was on vacation (the amok dilemma I covered in detail a few years ago in this Another Way column). Her visit was also nicely timed with the beginning of our harvest of tomatoes and beans and corn and cucumbers and green peppers.
Canning and daughters (I’m sure if I’d had sons they would have helped too) has long been an honored tradition. But yesterday morning my mind was filled with melancholy because she was leaving to go back to school, and I was thinking about a woman named June Marie who died Aug. 2. My husband and I had gone to the family greeting time the night before. June was the wife of a man who had been my boss for 25 years as the director of Mennonite Media (and all the names it was called before that). I’m not actually sure how much gardening they did (Ken always implied they had stopped gardening because in drought years, nothing much grew and in good years, everyone was sneaking zucchinis into your car in the parking lot at church).
But June Marie’s granddaughters at least remembered and treasured the homemade applesauce she made and gave them. I couldn’t help but tear up as I worked thinking about all this, but I think the tears were also for myself. We get emotional thinking about legacies and how our children and grandchildren will remember us, don’t we? The poet John Doone alluded to this in his well known passage (originally written as prose, not poetry), “No Man is an Island” written in 1624:
“No man is an island, entire of itself, each is a piece of the continent, A part of the main. … Each man’s death diminishes me, For I am involved in mankind. Therefore, send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.”
Canning is a wonderful “community” or family activity in terms of having at least one other helper, each of us a “piece of the continent” making faster work of the washing and chopping and snapping beans and cutting corn off the cob and peeling and what not. I admire those who organize getting bushels of peaches or apples and together producing pints and quarts of canned produce but our family efforts are mostly confined to the vegetables we raise and can or freeze.
There is no more satisfying sound for a home gardener than the ping of a sealed jar after a long day’s work—which often runs far into the night (or early morning). I remember my mother getting up in the night to remove a boiler load of green beans (16 cans) that had boiled on the stove for three hours. Now that was hard work. I use a pressure canner which reduces the boiling time to a mere 25 minutes, but still, if you work away from home and have canning to do at night when you come home, you end up dealing with things at 11 p.m. or later. I wrote about the “ping” in my book, Whatever Happened to Dinner in a chapter on canning beans called “Waiting for the Ping,” excerpted briefly here (Herald Press, 2010, p. ):
[Children] even learn to appreciate the peculiar smell of green beans being canned by a home canner in the kitchen. To me the smell is evocative of home and family: not a pleasant smell like a fragrance, but simply unique.
I discovered how evocative it is for me the year after we moved to a new home. We didn’t plant a garden or do any canning the year we moved so it was a year later when I processed my first canner load of green beans in the new house. As the jars sat cooling on the counter, I waited for them to “ping” so I could finally crawl exhausted into bed. (The cans make a sound of “ping” as the lids seal, which happens as the cans cool.)
That distinctive smell came wafting back to our bedroom. I thought, “Now this really seems like home.” That was a good feeling. One of my daughters also confessed to liking the weird smell of freshly canned beans—I think for the same reason. It evokes harvest season, home, hearth, love, relationships.
So I guess I was teary for all of the reasons above.
Doreen in the garden, (not this year). For fun, enlarge this picture (click click)
to see the standoff going on with the 3 animals in the photo.
When Doreen pruned our amok tomato vines this year we ended up with about a gallon of discarded green tomatoes. Here is a link to a recipe I should have tried with them (we ended up contributing them to our compost pile). From a guest column by Jodi Nisly Hertzler where she talks about end of summer gardening: Curried Green Tomatoes.
I also love swapping and sharing vegetables and recipes.
Here’s a can of pickles my friend Barbra brought me “like her mother used to make” in exchange for a load of cucumbers from my garden.
Do you like the weird smell of green beans as they are canned? Does preserving food evoke any strong family memories for you (good or bad)? Do you have any favorite canning recipes to share?
***
A variation of the green tomatoes recipe is also included in the Whatever Happened to Dinner book, on sale until Aug. 18 at the “Summer Harvest Sale” (30% off (along with a bunch of other recipe books) including the two highlighted below at http://store.mennomedia.org/
- Saving the Seasons: How to Can, Freeze or Dry Almost Anything, written and compiled by a mother/daughter team, Mary Clemens Meyer and Susanna Meyer.
- Simply in Season has oodles of recipes collected by Mary Beth Lind and Cathleen Hockman Wert on using food purchased or grown locally and in season.
For hardcore community canning, off grid no less, check here!
For a nostalgic look at “canning with daughters” check here.
There was an ominous cloud of smoke from a wild fire hanging over the outline of Las Vegas, Nevada
as we approached it from across the desert.
I should have taken it as an omen.
Flashbacks to evangelist descriptions of Sodom or Nineveh burning flitted through my mind.
What was I, a good Mennonite-Presbyterian doing in sin city?
My long anticipated exciting night in Vegas on our recent western trip–us and his brother–had come down to eating Popeye’s chicken in our hotel room. With only water to drink. (See here for other blog and Another Way column pieces on this trip.)
Popeye’s chicken? Isn’t that about the bottom feeder of the fast food industry? We were staying in Excalibur, one of the famous whimsical but cheesy hotels along the famous Vegas strip, so it wasn’t like we were in a low rent suburban motel with no better options nearby.
My husband may want this secret to stay in Vegas.
I must have looked a little crestfallen when I was sitting at the table in our room waiting for his brother to join us. Stuart looked at me earnestly and asked “Is everything all right?” like a worried groom on his honeymoon.
Well, it wasn’t exactly the romantic evening I’d dreamed of so I just mumbled something like “Sure.”
How had it come to this?
I thought I wanted to go to Las Vegas to know what it was all about. I thought I wanted to watch people around a gaming table, maybe play a few slot machines, flirt with my husband, enjoy an evening out.
It didn’t start out well. We found our hotel ok but that was just the beginning of navigating an immense hotel complex and casino where even once you walked into the lobby, you couldn’t find the registration desk. Our party of three decided to split up (often a dumb idea, especially when one doesn’t have a cell phone), with my brother-in-law and I scouting out where to check in while my husband was to find a parking place. Well, truly it was overwhelming and when we finally found the registration desk, there was a line of about 50 people waiting to check in, the middle of the afternoon. On a Tuesday.
But the room was the cheapest of our trip and my spirits were somewhat buoyed by the book of coupons we received upon check in. I had always heard about the great buffet deals you could score in the hotels because everyone said the casinos hoped to make serious money off of the gaming tables. But the coupon book had print so tiny we couldn’t read it without great effort—and we were by far not the oldest customers there! There was a lot of switcheroo going on—we went to one restaurant venue in our hotel only to find it wasn’t the venue honoring that coupon and some of the deals were $20 off IF you spent $100 on your meal for two. Not even I was willing to put down that kind of cash for a meal in Vegas.
There was a food court for the bottom feeders so the guys, also disappointed but wanting to make the best of it, decided they had “always wanted to try Popeyes” and we thought we’d eat in the food court but when our standard drink of water was only available in bottles for $3.50 each, the guys thought it best to just carry our food back to our room where we already had bottled water in our ice chest. Since it was a food court I should have picked up Chinese or something a little more exotic, but then the bucket of chicken would have not been as much of a deal. Call us cheap or frugal or living more with less.
So it won’t surprise you that our evening’s entertainment consisted of riding the Monorail two times along the strip because once you paid your fare, you could stay on it and ride all night if you felt like it.
I got over it. The chicken wasn’t bad and yes we finally did enjoy a lovely dinner out at a Black Angus steak house two nights later in Bakersfield, Calif. with superb prime rib, tasty salad and sides, and a to-die-for free dessert special.
We decided we were truly nature lovers at heart: give us the mountains, the desert, the beach, the river, the forests, the hills, the meadows. I can enjoy cities a lot but Vegas was a little too much, too overwhelming to try and cope with in one night with little orientation.
The whole trip was a huge splurge for country kids so I just appreciated my husband indulging my travel addiction and in the end, I didn’t really want to fritter away our hard earned cash in a slot machine either.
We’ve been working at finding harmony for over 37 years now. Maybe the only sin I committed in sin city was envy.
***
*John Calvin is known as founder of the Presbyterian or Reformed churches. Menno Simons was an early Anabaptist leader whose followers gradually became known as Mennonites. I’ve been a card carrying Presbyterian for 33 years. I’ve been an “ethnic” Mennonite since birth.
Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forever. As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds God’s people both now and forevermore. Psalm 125:1-2
I’d never been to Zion National Park in southwestern Utah so I was excited to see a new park and hit a new state on our recent Western trip. It wasn’t until we were actually in Zion that I realized that whoever named Zion and its various mountains and formations, truly had religious significance in mind.
Views along the road entering the park, including through an old tunnel.
In the 1860s, early Mormon pioneers arrived in the area. Even though the surrounding area is desert-like, the Virgin River flowing through the area and terraced ground made it habitable for these pioneers who settled the area and farmed the river terraces. So water, diverse vegetation, rich red formations and trees—and frequent azure skies make the park a colorful and vibrant sanctuary. Something to just enter, enjoy, and say little—letting the witness of the ages bless your spirit. The park literature used words like “haven” and “sanctuary,” and I like that. In that light, I’ll write less and mostly just post some of my favorite photos of the park.
Aspen, cotton wood, fir and less common trees lined the river bottom. Part of the park is open to shuttle buses only (which are free) during the busy summer season (roughly spring through fall) which made meant none of us had to drive and we could just gaze and absorb.
Court of the Patriarchs
Names of mountains or formations like Altar of Sacrifice, West Temple, Court of the Patriarchs, The Grotto, The Great White Throne, Temple of Sinawava, Mountain of Mystery, South Guardian Angle, Tabernacle Drive, all bring to mind Old Testament religious significance.
We were able to follow Riverside Walk back what they call “The Narrows” where the canon gets, obviously, more and more narrow and the coolness of the rock allows climbers to test their endurance up its walls—and we were able to spy one such on a distant wall. Our own hike was not strenuous but I loved being able to really see some of the inner depths of the park. My park brochure says that “stratigraphy, the study of rock layers, reveals rocks formed in environments as varied as sand dunes and shallow sea bottoms.” The various layers of colors and lines all have significance in Zion.
It was indeed a haven that I’m thankful to have had the opportunity to experience and share here, and to remember God’s promise, “The Lord surrounds God’s people both now and forevermore.”
View from our motel, Bumbleberry, in the nearby town of Springdale. I was delighted to find goats and chickens inviting me to talk to them. Mr. Squirrel was enjoying the remains of a peach in Zion Park.
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