Mennonite – Page 16 – Plain and Fancy

Relatives, Reunions, and Forbidden Drink: Part II

June 19, 2013June 20, 2013 marianbeaman2 Comments

Lititz Springs Park

At the reunion, Uncle Clyde walks over to my mother and Aunt Cecilia to say something. We’re nosy and so we move closer to get within earshot. “Ruth, I believe Uncle Monroe’s and Uncle Herman’s bunch think you’re serving wine and won’t come over to the table.”

“Oh, for goodness sakes: I don’t believe it. Don’t they know us better than that!” Mom exclaims to Uncle Clyde.

“Shall I tell them what’s in the punch? Maybe then they’ll get in line,” Clyde suggests.

“Cal-lyde, they shouldn’t act so dumb . . . tsk – tsk! Ach, well, I guess you’d better tell them then,” she finally agrees.

Uncle Clyde walks over to the other two tables, and I see a lot of heads nodding and bobbing up and down. In a minute or so, Uncle Monroe and Uncle Herman’s families lead the way to the party table, and the others follow meekly behind like sheep behind a shepherd.

“Why in the world would they think we’d put wine in the punch? Why, that would be a sin,” I think. “And why wouldn’t they make sure what it was before they decided they couldn’t drink it?” I reason. Acting like that doesn’t make any sense to me. Why, the way they were behaving might even make my Grandma Metzler feel bad too.

Cousin Janet and I feast on angel food cake, more peanuts and bubbly gold punch. We act goofy and pretend we’re getting tipsy. Mom comes over to shush us up. “Quit acting so dumb; what do you think the others will think!”

“Why does it matter so much what other people think?” I wonder. Isn’t it all right to do what we want to do now? We’re just kids, not stuffy old people.

Do you believe the what-will-people-think mind-set is a thing of the past? Or does it persist? What about your family?

Relatives, Reunions, and Forbidden Drink: Part I

June 15, 2013February 16, 2015 marianbeaman4 Comments

I can hardly wait to go to the Metzler reunion in Lititz today. At Lititz Springs Park on the 2^nd Sunday in July, I get to play with my cousins from my mother’s side of the family. My mother’s father, Abram, and her two uncles, Monroe and Herman, form the three branches of our Metzler family tree.

Grandpa Abram and Grandma Sadie who died when Mother was 9

On the way to Bossler’s Mennonite Church this morning, Mom told my Daddy that he can’t talk long with the men after the service because we have to get home to load up the food in the car before we can go to the reunion. Yesterday I helped my mom make Aunt Verna’s potato salad with lots of celery. After I went to bed last night I smelled the sweet, rich aroma of angel food cake baking in the oven for the special surprise for Grandma Metzler.

The whole family is packed into the 1949 blue Studebaker again: Daddy behind the wheel, Mommy up front, and Janice, Jean, and me in the back. We all keep our church clothes on, so we can show how plain we still are. Daddy wears a white shirt and dark pants, and Mom and Janice and I have dresses with capes and sleeves to the elbow—Jean hasn’t gotten saved * yet, so she’s still a cute, curly-headed girl with regular clothes. All the Metzlers are Mennonite and notice the details of our dress, I imagine.

About a mile or two from Lititz, I stick my head out of the left rear car window and sniff, “I bet I can smell the Wilbur Chocolate Factory.” Now Janice and Jean lean out of the right window and say they can smell Lititiz Springs pretzels, but I catch a whiff of the rich Swiss chocolate aroma just before we reach the town limits.

Soon we’re on Broad Street, and we cruise past neat, two and three-story brick and stone townhouses. Like us, people here don’t lock their doors either, unless maybe when they go off on vacation to Atlantic City.

Lititz Springs Park is our playground. As our car rolls to a stop, we all fall out and head for our cousins. Mom calls us back to help carry stuff, of course. From a distance I notice Aunt Clara uncovering her Bavarian Cream dessert, and Uncle Leroy with his bags of peanuts for the peanut scramble about three o’clock. All my aunts look like pears, and my uncles like apples except for Clyde. And, believe me, my uncles have mirth to match their girth. Each of my mother’s brothers can do something funny or strange. Uncle Landis can click his false teeth up and down on his gums clickety-clack, Uncle Leroy can wiggle his ears, both at the same time, Uncle Clyde’s hand-shake includes a tickle with his index finger on the palm of my hand, and Uncle Abe can play his harmonica with no hands.

After my sisters and I make the rounds of our crazy uncles, we match up with cousins our own age. I play with my favorite cousin, freckle-faced Janet who has glossy, bright red hair. Janice and Jean play with spunky, brown-haired Ruth Ann, Anna Mae, Gerry and Dorcas. Rachel too.

Soon, Uncle Monroe rings the dinner bell and all the young ‘uns come running. He’ll say grace in his high-pitched voice, and we’ll stuff down our food so we get to play again. Under the roof of the pavilion are three sets of long, wooden picnic tables, arranged parallel to each other. The Uncle Herman family branch sits along the first row of tables: the women and girls mostly wear pale-colored dresses with capes that have such tight necklines and wristbands they seem to cut off their circulation. I would just die if I had to wear thick, black stockings and shoes like they do, but I never hear them complain. And as hot as it is, some of the men are still wearing their buttoned-to-the-neck shirts from church.

The next bunch of relatives, the “Monroe” branch of the family are a little looser. They let their young girls wear skirts and blouses, and everybody else pushes their sleeves as high as they will go. When Mary, Monroe’s daughter got married, tongues wagged because her bridesmaids wore pastel satin fabrics on head bonnets to match their dress color. Later I realize she got that out of her system then;. Her plain dress complies with tradition now.

My Mom’s side of the family, the “Abram” side, is the least conservative, except for Clyde’s family because he is a preacher, and Abe’s family because they take pride in sticking to tradition.

In a few minutes all the cousins tumble off the benches for the peanut scramble. I make a basket out of the skirt of my dress and scoot around madly trying to fill it with roasted nuts. Soon we sit on the ground and stuff ourselves with peanuts, all except Clair who is kneeling by the springs floating his plastic boat, first prize in the contest.

Now I see Mom, Aunt Verna, and Aunt Cecilia arranging another table for the birthday surprise. Out come the cakes and the punch-bowl which is soon filled with white grape juice and ginger ale, all gold and bubbly. In a few minutes, Uncle Herman rings the bell again. “It’s time for our surprise. Annie is 75 today, so you’s all come on and have some cake and punch.”

Our family is not bashful, and so we rush to the head of the line, after Grandma Metzler of course. The table looks so pretty. Someone has brought a garden bouquet of daisies and roses with a lace tablecloth. Cousin Janet notices that the relatives at the other tables are not budging. “Why aren’t the others coming over?” She wonders out loud to me.

I don’t know. Maybe they’ve just eaten too much to move, I surmise, but I do see the older folks whispering among themselves and wonder what they’re saying. What happens next? Part II

* ARTICLE VI, Of Salvation: We believe that man is saved alone by grace through faith . . . in Christ; that through the new birth he becomes a child of God, partaker of eternal life. Statement of Christian Doctrine and Rules and Discipline of the Lancaster Conference of the Mennonite Church

Wedding on the Cheap

June 8, 2013September 9, 2014 marianbeaman13 Comments

The year 1967 was historic: It was the year of the world’s first heart transplant. There were race riots in Detroit. Polaroid cameras were all the rage as was Twiggy. The average annual income was $ 7300.00 while a house cost about twice that much. Gas was a mere 33 cents a gallon.

It was also the year of our wedding. On the cheap. In August, not June. After moving from Lancaster, PA to Charlotte, NC, my teaching salary increased by only one hundred dollars to about $ 3500.00 stretched to pay for most of the wedding expenses. I was on a pay-as-you-go, no-credit-card system! Today’s Bridezillas would freak out at my teeny tiny budget for a church wedding. Ever the list-maker (call me OCD), I began my planning with a double-columned list: item + amount spent. The cake, flowers, napkins, photographer, and honoraria are missing here. Probably on another list! I was not very good at justifying my bank balance. I remember standing in front of a teller at Wachovia Bank unable to choke back tears at my overdrawn account just weeks before the wedding.

January through May was consumed by pattern-buying, fabric-cutting and sewing a gown heavily influenced by Jackie Kennedy’s style. How is it that the fabric for the bridesmaids and the bride, including a train with appliques cost only $ 83.05 then?

My hair was still in a bun but without the prayer veiling. One day in June, about six weeks before the wedding, I got the courage to dramatically change my hair-do. Off I went to a beauty salon, recommended by my roommates, to experiment with a bob. The stylist began, oddly, by braiding my hair into one long braid, almost waist length. And then she CUT IT OFF! I will never forget the sensation of hair still attached to my head swinging free. Was it in shock? Dancing? I’ll never know, but I do know the agony of trying to get my hands and fingers to contort themselves in odd ways to comb, brush, tease my shorter locks into the new style.

Heaven only knows why I still have this hank of hair!

Half the guest list were Mennonite friends and family from Pennsylvania, and they came to North Caroline in droves. Frugal Daddy gladly footed the hefty bill for the full course rehearsal dinner. Families from Charlotte Christian School put up my immediate family. Grandma and Aunt Ruthie were thrilled to stay in the home of Billy Graham’s mother, who had also hosted a bridal shower for me. Except for the bridal party, the wedding itself was a curious blend of plain and fancy: plain-coated, bow-tied Daddy with fancy bride.

You may ask, “Why didn’t the groom help more with the wedding expenses?” A teacher/preacher at the time, he spent the summer as a rigger at the Jacksonville Shipyards carrying heavy chains on his shoulders up and down ladders trying to pay for the honeymoon and all that followed. No metaphor intended here!

The summer months are traditionally wedding months, particularly June. Do you have a wedding memory to share? Your own? Someone else’s?

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Hats, Fire and Ice

June 5, 2013January 17, 2015 marianbeaman7 Comments

The dusty, brown Pennsylvania Railroad train clatters along the tracks behind the woods as we approach Grandma’s house. Mame Goss, Grandma’s cousin, sits close to the bay window with a bag of hats. I notice her merry eyes and smile lines, but Mother comments on her wrinkled skin, skin made so by too much makeup. Mame’ll let my sisters and me see inside the bag, but not before she chats with Grandma over a cup of garden mint tea. Mame Goss clerks in Laverty’s Millinery Shop, a store I’ve never seen but which shimmers with forbidden delights in my mind, nonetheless.

Janice, Jean, and I think our older girl neighbors are allowed to express themselves properly. When I go down to see “Howdy Doody” on the Rentzels’ TV (Mennonites didn’t have TVs back then), I notice that Sissy Rentzel has a parade of nail polish bottles lined up on the windowsill of her bedroom: bright red, baby pink, orangey red with Tangee lipstick to match, darker red, hot pink, and a bottle of clear polish like Karo syrup. I’d love to experiment with what’s inside, but I don’t now. I feel uncomfortable asking Sissy Rentzel to try some.

Anna Martha Groff, Sis Groff to us, is another story. And she is so grown-up, we think. I see her palette of lipsticks on her vanity table, one of them Revlon’s Fire and Ice. She’ll probably let me try some on. I could become a siren in red or an ice princess. So I experiment and cavort around in her bedroom with the painted lips of a hussy. Soon I’ll have to rub off the evidence with tissue before I go home and hope nobody, especially Mom, notices. My sisters and I are crazy for color. Out by the rose bushes in summer, we paste bright, velvety petals to our lips. Banned from the world of bright lipstick and matching nail polish, we improvise with natural blooms. We act silly.

We’re back in Grandma’s kitchen again. Mame is one step closer to revealing the treasures in her bag now. Soon we lay eyes on the partly smashed trousseau of hats, left over from the spring season. We fight over who gets what, of course.

“Here’s a straw hat with a polka dot bow, “ I say but cast it aside. Janice and Jean don’t pick it up either. They are eying the red satin bows and lavender netting attached to other headgear.

“Hey, I want this one,” Janice and Jean tussle over a swoopy hat with pink flowers. Jean finally picks up a white thing that looks like an upside-down, flat-bottomed boat with a wad of blue tulle tied in a fluffy bow in the back. Janice’s is flat and round and dark, not my taste, with black-eyed Susan circling the straw hat. I get the best hat, I believe. It is flat and round too, but navy, and studded with azalea pink silk flowers around the edges. Best of all, I can pull a dark blue net over my face. Instantly, I become a woman of mystery and allure.

We take our new-found treasures up to Grandma’s bedroom and indulge in more fantasy. The space between her marble-topped vanity and tall headboard becomes our runway. We take turns prancing in front of her vanity mirror with wavy glass, cocking our heads just so and smiling at our reflections.

Later back at our house, Mom takes a picture of us in front of the garden of peonies and zinnias in the back yard. She holds the black square Kodak camera firmly with fingers plump as the butter she loves. I stare at her blue and white checked feed-bag apron over a matching home-made dress, so I don’t blink. In an instant, the shutter freezes our fashionable images at ages 3, 5, and 8. There’s plenty of time later to coax our long braids into the Mennonite style, pinned tightly to our heads with black wire hairpins.

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Ruthie the Cheater, Part II

May 22, 2013September 9, 2014 marianbeaman6 Comments

I’ve told my students if they ever see me in a bank behind the teller’s window—RUN! Math has never been my strong suit, but I can spell well.

In fourth grade, I always win the spelling bees on Friday. In fact, my winning is so predictable that my friend Wayne tells me he’s going to find a word in the dictionary that I can’t spell. “Somebody else deserves to win sometimes,” he whines.

Ruthie the Cheater Cheater-in-Training, 4th Grade

And so he searches for just the right word, finds it, and whispers it into Miss Longenecker’s right ear. I see him form the word with his lips, but I can’t decipher what he is saying. That evening, Grandma invites the five of us—Mom, Daddy, Janice, Jean and me—down over the hill to Grandma’s house for chicken pot pie.

As always, before Dad parks our blue Studebaker, three-legged Skippy rushes out on the porch to greet us. Soon I’m standing on a chair beside the stove watching Grandma cut out little pieces of dough for me to place one by one carefully in the boiling liquid to cook. I love to find a little space of bubbling broth in the kettle and seal it over with a dough-y square. Chicken pot pie with fresh cabbage slaw . . . wunderbar.

Aunt Ruthie comes in the back door from school with a yellow pencil over her ear. After she puts down her papers and books, she quizzes me, “How do you spell reconciliation?” Without hesitating, I enunciate: r-e-c-k-o-n-s-i-l-l-y-a-t-i-o-n!

“That’s close, but not quite right,” she encourages, as she pulls down the dictionary from the left bottom door of the red cherry cupboard over by the kitchen table.

“Here, take a look at this.” And I see how the dictionary says to spell it. Now I put the right letters in my memory bank for tomorrow’s spelling bee. When Teacher asks the class, “Does anyone have a word to stump Marian?” this might be the word, I surmise.

It’s Friday, and once again I’m the surviving speller. Wayne jumps to the mound to strike me out, but I deliver fourteen correct letters in rapid succession: reconciliation!” Wayne is dumbstruck for a few seconds and then mutters, “Holy Cow, Holy Cow,” as he reconciles himself to the fact that it’s useless to try to stump Marian.

Once again, Aunt Ruthie is a cheater, but so am I. We’re in cahoots!

Can you admit to a time when you got some unsolicited help? Some help that came with wobbly ethics? Tell us your story!

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Ruthie the Cheater, Part I

May 18, 2013September 9, 2014 marianbeaman5 Comments

Yes, my Aunt Ruthie is a cheater. I’ll admit that she also has an honorable resume that includes a principalship of Rheems Elementary School, Tax Collector of West Donegal Township, mother to refugees and immigrants. But, you heard right, she also has a rap sheet. Let me explain.

Aunt Ruthie – Miss Longenecker

The scent of ply-board takes me back to the patterns that we cut out in her classroom on a jig-saw machine . . . a scent that has an oaky-piney fragrance that compares to the fragrance of a wine with some nutty notes: But what does a Mennonite know about wine, anyway!

Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.

–Vladimir Nabokov

Whatever the aroma, the scent bypasses the brain and takes me straight back to third grade at Rheems Elementary School. While Miss Longenecker reads us stories after lunch, we color pictures of fairy tales or fables outlined in purple (always purple) ink cranked out by the hectograph machine that imprints images from a jelly surface onto paper.

Hectograph machine – gelatin duplicator with hand crank, 1940s

Our teacher loves art and she has a very “hands on” teaching style. Sometimes we finger paint with thick, gooey pigments, or paste pieces of colored construction paper into loops with white paste from a gallon jar. Some kids even eat the paste when the teacher’s not looking.

Today Miss Longenecker has brought in a jigsaw and some fresh plywood. We inhale its pungent fragrance, just as we have smelled the paste or the paints or the glue. We’ll take turns each cutting out an animal as the tooth of the electric saw bites into plywood, following a pattern, guided by our teacher’s hands, hers on top of ours.

When it’s my turn, I trace the outline of a dog and a cat with the sawblade. Back then, we hadn’t heard about OSHA laws of course! Later I paint the dog blue and the cat pink with black dots for eyes, a few whiskers, and wobbly lines for ears and front paws. To me, they look wonderful, if I don’t say so myself. My Teacher/Aunt is taking me home after school today, so I can play outside until she’s ready to go home.

I come inside for a drink from the fountain after a while and find Aunt Ruthie, paintbrush in hand, adding some eyebrow lines here, a few more whiskers there, a touch of red for the mouth, and more defined forepaws to my jigsaw creations. “I think these are good enough to enter into the art contest in Elizabethtown this year. Maybe you’ll win first prize,” she remarks, wiping black paint from her brush. “But you’re helping me too much,” I think.

Actually, I don’t care much about winning a prize for my art. I just want to add hooks to the back and hang my new plywood pets on my bedroom wall. Nevertheless, Blue Dog and Pink Cat enter the contest in the third-grade category, and my aunt and I are awarded a Blue Ribbon for our pains.

Guided by her hand, though, I learn to sew and knit, play the piano, take trips to the zoo, the symphony, make fasnacht dough. . . .

A cheater? Let’s just say I’ve destroyed her rap sheet long ago.

Hair: Historical to Hysterical

May 15, 2013October 17, 2015 marianbeaman33 Comments

Baskin-Robbins offers nearly 60 flavors of ice cream at their shoppes. The varieties of dress among Mennonites and Amish, who split from the Mennonites, is nearly as long and equally fascinating. In recent research, I counted dozens of sub-sects.

By far the most conservative group that maintains plain dress is the Old Order Amish church. The Amish have unfortunately reached pop culture status with hideous reality shows that exploit their way of life including their dress distinctives:

Herr Frau

Beards Headcovering with tie strings

Hair cut off straight in back, banged in front Uncut hair parted in center in bun

Coats, vets fastening with hooks & eyes Long dress with cape in solid color

Suspenders and broadfall pants Pleated or gathered skirt

Wide brimmed hats Black shoes and stockings

As though frozen in time, attire of the Old Order Amish church has not noticeably evolved, reminiscent of their European origins.

Then there is the Brethren Church with its various branches. “The Old Order River Brethren continue to wear traditional garb.” The men look much like Amish but the women “wear opaque white headcoverings, capes, aprons, and a peplum on the dress bodice,” which tapers to a V-shape. An excellent source for detail of other sub-sects: http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/D74ME.html

Typically, my visit to PA includes an appointment with a perky River Brethren woman who gives massages. You gasp “Massages!” but it’s true! Esther has my vote for the Most Modest Masseuse on Earth; she gives head-to-toe therapeutic massages in her home for a shockingly modest fee. Were she fancy, and not plain, she would fit perfectly in a chiroparactor’s office. Note peplum, short ruffle attached at waistline in photo below:

Finally, there is not simply a Mennonite Church, but a cluster of branches, including a very conservative branch called Black-Bumpers, who drive cars but paint their shiny chrome bumpers black (less flashy)! Once in Lancaster I spotted a sleek Mercedes-Benz sedan with black bumpers and very plain girls spilling out—an image of paradox if there ever was one.

My own brand of Mennonites is the Lancaster Conference Mennonites, who have driven cars rather than horse and buggies but have long adhered to a strict code of dress since their emigration from Europe in the early 1700s. However, plain dress among these Mennonites has been falling by the wayside since the 1960s and 70s when these photos below were snapped.

Smith, Elmer L. and Melvin Horst. “Meet the Mennonites in Pennsylvania Dutchland,”
Lebanon, PA: Applied Arts Publishers, 1997.

Braids, also known as pig tails Braids circling head with hairpins, middle school

Engagement: transition to fancy

Marge Simpson wannabe

Little known fact: The family of Milton Snavely Hershey, the Chocolate King, were Reformed Mennonites; his mother was a member and his grandfather, Abram Snavely, was a bishop for 37 years. Milton married a non-Mennonite. (“Meet the Mennonites”)

There is a connection, I think, between chocolate and access to memory both plain or fancy, expressed so distinctly by Barbara Crooker:

“. . . for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.

I Samuel 16:7

10 Reasons My Husband Does Not Hear Me

May 11, 2013September 9, 2014 marianbeamanLeave a comment

10 Reasons Why My Husband Does Not Hear Me:

1. He is listening to an audio book CD

2. He is listening to music

3. He doesn’t have his hearing aids in

4. He does have his hearing aids in but they’re tuned to TV/BlueTooth

5. He is upstairs

6. He is downstairs

7. He is mowing the lawn

8. He’s at the computer

9. He is indisposed

10. He is not here

12 Do Overs: In honor of women (and men) everywhere who keep house

o Toilet paper in all bathrooms

o Liquid soap in all dispensers

o Milk in the frig

o Juice in the pitcher

o Paper towels on holder

o Light bulbs in the pantry

o Water the plants

o Staples in the stapler

o Paper for the copier

o Kitchen clock wound

o Garbage out

o Gas in the tank

Thank the Lord!

Tell us your addition to either list. Click on Reply/Comment.

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Dutch Goose 101

May 8, 2013May 11, 2013 marianbeaman7 Comments

As I shove the casserole dish into the oven, I notice the olive oil spray can, the top of the paper towel holder, knives, and a scissors all besmirched with sausage. When did stuffing a Dutch goose (euphemism for pig stomach) take so much time and effort? It seems my mother just sits on her stool in front of the sink, peels and dices potatoes, mixes them with sausage, fills the stomach cavity, and slips it into the oven. A few hours later she asks me to take it out, all done. Easy as that!

On my last visit to Pennsylvania, I bought chipped beef, a pig stomach (yes, the organ from a hog) from Groff’s Meats, and 7 1/2 pounds of ham loaf from Wenger’s Meats in Elizabethtown. Now at home I’ve thawed the pig stomach and am preparing it as a mystery dish for our daughter’s family. For future reference, I must assemble all the tools required: knives for dicing potatoes, darning needle, white thread, scissors before I begin. And start sooner, for goodness sake!

Has anyone ever written out a recipe for pig stomach? I don’t know, but I’ve never seen Mother use one, so I call her mid-way in the process to ask for direction.

“How many potatoes should I use?”

“Oh, just however many you think.”

“Eight . . . ten . . . twelve?”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter. You can always put the left-overs in a casserole dish on the side,” so I see now it’s a guessing game.

No other dish I know off blends the culinary and sartorial arts so handily as filling a pig stomach, hence the needle and thread. To begin: the organ does have several orifices: intake, outgo, and a pyloric valve in there somewhere. This particular one has a tear, so I’ll have to stitch up 4 openings. Heaven forbid any of the sausage-potato stuffing leaks out. Mid-way through my first sew-up, I realize I’m stitching the large opening best suited for stuffing, so I have to undo it all, retracting thread through a gooey mess of fleshy tissue. Drat!

Finally the dish is ready for the oven . . . almost! As I pre-heat the oven, I recall the end of my phone conversation with Mom:

“How long do you bake it?” I ask.

“Oh, whatever you think.” she says.

“Well, I don’t know what to think . . . 2 hours? 3 hours?”

“Just take a look at it, and when it’s golden brown on top and a little bit around the side, it’s done.”

Using the convection feature on my oven part of the time, the baking time turns out to be about 2 1/2 hours and after “resting,” ready to serve.

After gobbling up his first serving, Patrick speaks up, “NaNa, this is as good as ham loaf! May I have some more?” Jenna joins in with yummy sounds. There are requests for more all around the table now, and I’m happy it’s a hit.

Sustenance for the body, that it is. But more than that, it has occurred to me, we are experiencing what always happens when family gets together: stuffing memories into the space of our hearts as well.

So, I’ll do it all again with our son’s family after my next trip north when I visit Groff’s. Incidentally, Groff’s Meats has begun selling pig stomachs already filled for the princely sum of $ 15.00.

I have to say, I’d charge $ 25.00, more if I have to re-stitch!

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Secrets of the Ra-Ra Sewinghood

May 4, 2013September 9, 2014 marianbeaman19 Comments

Thread 1

All Mennonite girls of the 1950s and 60s made their own clothes. Hager’s, Watt & Shand, or Garvin’s in Lancaster city was not the place to shop for dresses with capes or any other plain clothing. So, we made our own frocks on Mother’s foot-powered treadle machine.

Creating a ward-robe entailed buying a pattern by Simplicity, McCall, or Butterick that we could adapt, finding fabric by the yard at one of the department stores or a specialty shop like Mohr’s Fabrics. Usually, my sisters and I were allowed to buy any material we wanted within reason. We knew solid bright red was out and probably purple, now two of my favorites. One shopping spree as a young teen, I found a pretty, multi-colored repeat pattern on a black background and pulled the bolt out of the stack for Mom to admire:

“Look at this!” I chirped.

Mom looked at the material with squinty eyes, and gasped, “Don’t you see there are guns!”

Now it was my turn to look squinty-eyed. “Guns!” I had to look harder. Yes, you could imagine that those tiny figures on black fabric were shaped like guns. On principle, guns were forbidden in the Mennonite church. Our household had a little cap gun which we outfitted with rolls of red ribbon with black dots of ammunition for the 4^th of July, but otherwise guns were used only for hunting deer, pheasants, and other game by men. Using guns to kill people, even during warfare, was strictly forbidden.

The fabric with the offensive repeat pattern? You guessed it—I did not buy it, which according to my mother, shrieked GUNS!

We always attended public school, and now that I think of it, our family observed a double standard: skirts and blouses for school but always caped dresses for church. When I joined the teaching staff at Lancaster Mennonite School, caped dresses of course were de rigeur. And when my life took a different path, I gave away such dresses to a Mennonite consignment shop with strict instructions about my identity to the lady in charge so that no student would embarrass herself by showing up to class in a dress worn by the former Sister Longenecker. Here is a pattern with a pleated skirt and cute neckline I adapted into a “plain” dress:

Thread 2

My light blue Singer sewing machine is portable, so I can use it at home on weekends or put it into the Studebaker to use at my campus home when I’m not making lesson plans or grading papers.

Months earlier I have met my neighbor’s best friend, Cliff, who is now my boy-friend. Now that he has completed his Bachelor’s degree and working on his Divinity degree, he is allowed to live off campus with 3 other students with whom he shares rent, utilities, and fuel bills. He works in the dining common to pay tuition. Since December we have been writing letters back and forth. Of course, there were no cell-phones in the 1960s and long distance calls were way too expensive, so we made do with letters–lots of them.

Cliff: “It’s reee..aa..ll..y cold here.” A rare snow has fallen in the Carolinas and the nasty cold air wheezes beneath the open crawl space in the rental house. “We ran out of oil until the 25^th when we get paid, so the guys and I are sleeping in overcoats and tons of blankets until we can get more oil. The only way we can get drinking water is to thaw snow in a kettle on the stove. Every thing is frozen up.”

Marian, the nurturer, clicks into gear: “Really! That’s awful. Isn’t there something you could do—space heaters?

Cliff: “No, that would take too much electricity!”

I formulate a plan to make him a robe for Valentine’s Day, so I buy heavy marine blue terry cloth and set to work, adding the appropriate initials in sturdy, white thread. Vintage robe below!

My blue Singer sewing machine moves with me the next school year from Lancaster, PA to Charlotte, NC where I make the transition from very plain to less plain. During the year I get engaged to the formerly frozen student who has quickly thawed out, and we make plans for an August wedding. My machine goes into high gear in full fancy mode stitching the thick white peau de soie (French for “skin of silk”) gown with an empire waist and a train attached to a belted bow. First Lady Jackie Kennedy has an enormous influence on style evident in this pattern.

Settling into the hectic life of big city Jacksonville, I keep a connection with my roots with my trusty Singer. I am bold enough to use the fancier Vogue patterns, experimenting with multiple fabric colors in the same outfit.

Next I buy a host of patterns for a little girl and boy to wear—and of course a teddy bear!

What vintage clothing in your wardrobe have you hung onto? For sentimental reasons? Some other reason? Let us know: Click on Reply/Comment.

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