Mennonite – Page 5 – Plain and Fancy

2 Tales from Roxann and Cheeno, Our Fresh Air Children

July 8, 2015July 9, 2015 marianbeaman30 Comments

His yellow tag says: Cheeno Duncan – Host Family: Ray & Ruth Longenecker

How would you feel if you were an 8 or 10-year-old from New York City and after a 3-hour train ride landed you in the farm pastures of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, lush but unfamiliar? Cheeno and Roxanne Duncan were part of the Fresh Air program designed to give urban children summer vacations away from their hot tenement building apartments.

My parents, always alert for ways to serve God through their church, Bossler Mennonite, offered a home to two of these children in 2-3 consecutive years in the early 1960s. A side benefit would be playmates for my 10-year-old brother Mark, who was 7 years younger than his closest sibling, my sister Jean. And for the first time, the whole family would be brought in close contact with children of a skin color and culture different from our own.

These two tales about Roxann and Cheeno come verbatim from letters my mother sent to me while I was enjoying a 5-week cross country road trip. One was addressed to Grants Pass, Oregon, delivered, and another addressed simply to Los Angeles, California, no street address, from where it was “returned to sender, unclaimed.”

TALE # 1 Crying

July 27, 1964 Written in my mother’s handwriting, unedited:

Good morning Marian It is all but 8:30, quiet peaceful around here as yet. Sat. night Roxann decided she has homesick. Wasn’t to long till Cheeno saw her crying. Mark came down and said Mommie now they are both crying. So I went up into the bed room. There they were, two sets of tears. I asked Cheeno why are you crying. He said because she is crying. Then I said well now I will cry because you are crying. So I tried to start pretending [to cry]. Roxann had to laugh. It didn’t last to long. But they decided they would feel better if they slept in one bed. So I left them.

TALE # 2 Leaving

August 4, 1964

Dear Miss. Marian Well we took the Duncans to the train station today. We were about 2 blocks away from the station Roxann said we don’t have our yellow tags on. I rushed in quickly and explained the situation. He said they must have tags on. But we can make some others. Well that was finally straightened out.

But oh horrors what could be next. Cheeno picks up his lunch bags and lets it fall to hard on the cement. There goes a broken jar with root beer all over the bag and the floor. I quickly got some Kleenex but not quiet enough. Ruthie [my Aunt] goes to the car and comes back with an old pair of her silk “panties” Oh she said we don’t even have paper to put them in. she had taken the broken jar and paper bag to the car already. There we were left holding some-thing we didn’t care to be seen with. Luckly we did see a trash can. Ruthie laughed and said if any body finds or see’s this they will think she just took off her ____??____

* * *

The program, originating in 1877, is flourishing to this day. See more about the Fresh Air Fund here.

There are many ways to experience independence and freedom. Here’s one example. You can think of some others as you reflect on this past holiday weekend. Hope you had a Happy Fourth!

Coming next: A Plate, a Parade, and a Song

Marian, Janice, and Jean Go to Laurelville

June 24, 2015June 24, 2015 marianbeaman43 Comments

Lacing a belt of green and yellow gimp in crafts class
Trips to the snack shop for an orange Nehi
Bible study on the rocks, girls like us with braids, some with prayer caps

These are my sharpest memories of Girls’ Week at Laurelville Mennonite Camp just off the Pennsylvania Turnpike not far from Pittsburgh, PA. along with . . .

Cottages with cute names like Dew Drop Inn
Toasting marshmallows around a fire pit
Singing rounds, our voices echoing each phrase: “My paddle’s keen and bright, flashing with silver, follow the wild goose flight, dip, dip, and swing”
“Do, Lord, oh, do Lord, oh do remember me wa-ay (big voice dip here) be-yond the blue.”

What we didn’t do at Laurelville:

Set fire to the boys’ swim trunks hanging on the line (There were no boys)
Paint each other’s toenails hot pink. (No one had makeup – verboten)
Sneak a smoke in the woods after dark. (We didn’t have matches – or cigarettes!)

The postcard I sent to my sisters from Laurelville reveals the price of postage stamps, an address that winds around the edge in cursive script, and simple declarative sentences. It also tells how I felt, what I saw, where we worshiped.

Postcard with rhododendron sent from Laurelville Mennonite Camp in 1953

Memories of family week with my sisters and parents at Laurelville left a different imprint.

Family swim time
Doggie roast (Hot dogs, corn on the cob and roasted marshmallows)
Big plaque on dining room wall: “Come ye apart and rest awhile” Jesus’ invitation to his disciples in Mark 6:31
Morning blessing in song: “I owe the Lord a Morning Song” written by Amos Herr, Lancaster County pastor and farmer who couldn’t get through the snow drifts to church one Sunday morning in the 1850s and was inspired to pen both words and music to this song of gratitude. First two stanzas here:

We also sang something new to us: How Great Thou Art, a Swedish hymn written in 1885, which became an instant sensation in Christian circles in 1955 because of the Billy Graham Crusades.

When through the woods and forest glades I wander, I hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees; when I look down from lofty mountain grandeur and hear the brook and feel the gentle breeze.

What are your memories of camp? Here’s the place to share them – songs, games, mischief – other memorable moments.

Coming next: Creation Clips

4 Months, 4 Gifts: A Tribute to My Dad

June 20, 2015June 20, 2015 marianbeaman56 Comments

March 1986: Mom and Dad Longenecker visit the families of my sister Janice and me in Jacksonville, Florida. We all enjoy Epcot in Disney World, Dad’s chance to see a faux version of the Switzerland he never actually visited but planned to some day. My super-charged Dad seems more mellow now, slower, even takes naps. “Hey, Dad, I see you’re getting a pooch here,” says son-in-law Cliff, commenting on my dad’s weight gain as he playfully pinches his waistline.

April 1986: We get a call from Pennsylvania, “Dad has been diagnosed with lymphoma. Blood cell tumors have developed in the lymphatic system. Stage 4 . . . it’s too advanced to operate . . . they can try chemotherapy, maybe radiation after that . . . .” Like an earthquake, the news sends shock-waves through our family. Why, we just saw him a month ago.

May 1986: My father is now dying of lymphoma. I leave my husband and children and fly up to Pennsylvania, alone, to see him alive for the very last time. He looks nothing like my image of him in March. His skin, scorched red-brown from chemotherapy, reminds me of a starving Indian. He is wasting away. “I don’t want to live like this,” he says, calling a halt to the treatment. Too weak to climb to the upstairs bedroom, he reclines now almost motionless on the pull-out bed in the living room, a solitary pillow under his head. On May 17 his 71st birthday comes and goes.

My flight south leaves a few days later. This is probably the last time I will see my father in this life. I approach him to say goodbye, and I add: “I love you, Daddy.”

June 18, 1986 Daddy breathes his last, less than three months after his cancer diagnosis. We get the dreaded call and make plans to drive north for the funeral. My mind flits around in reminiscence. And then leaps forward with prediction: Now Dad won’t be attending the ceremony where I receive my Master’s degree in December. He won’t stand up to be photographed at any of his grand-children’s weddings or get to play with his great-grandchildren any more. At age 71, he has reached his heavenly home.

Had he lived, he would have turned 100 years old this year, like Aunt Cecilia.

On this Father’s Day nearly 30 years later, I pause to give thanks for the gifts my father has given me:

1. Love of nature He went on walks in the wide meadows and sun-dappled woods close to Rheems, PA on Sunday afternoons. Sometimes I went with him.

2. Love for music He played a banjo, guitar, and piano with gusto and bought me a violin. Music has formed the sound-scape of my mind since then.

3. Intellectual curiosity He perused US News and World Report and The Wall Street Journal, listened to Edward R. Murrow, Paul Harvey, and Lowell Thomas, engaged in conversation about world events.

4. Value of hard work There was the tomato field, the sweet potato plot, the shop . . . .

Framed needlework above one of the kitchen doors in Grandma Longenecker's house — Framed needlework above a kitchen door in Grandma Longenecker’s house

Exodus 20:12 Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. (King James Version)

My father’s deep faith in God included honoring his own parents.

* * *

Thank you for your thoughts on Father’s Day 2015. You always make the conversation richer!

Going Male: Amish Romance Novels

June 17, 2015June 17, 2015 marianbeaman47 Comments

Cool Amish guys have replaced the dreamy looking girl with a huge covering and plain dress popular on the cover of some Amish romance novels. The images have done a flip. Now the young Amish-man with suspenders and broadfall pants and straw hat takes center stage.

Last week I finished reading my second Amish romance novel ever. These novels, usually with a female main character on the cover, are still wildly popular and stock shelves at Barnes & Noble and Amazon warehouses to the hilt.

Truthfully, I have resisted reading these novels for two reasons:

The plots seem formulaic to me: there’s a lover’s triangle, often with an “Englischer” from the tempting world beyond the farm.
Also, I have lived an authentic Mennonite life, and some plot-lines and details about the characters seem barely plausible.

Still, I took the time to read The Amish Blacksmith, starring a handsome dude named Jake on the cover with a plain Amish girl, grooming a horse in the misty background. I was curious about two things: the new trend in Amish romance fiction with a male protagonist plus the high profile of the authors within this sub-genre: Mindy Starns Clark, who has published more than 20 books including the Christy Award-winning The Amish Midwife and co-author Susan Meissner, whose novel The Shape of Mercy was named as one of the 100 best novels of 2008 by Publisher’s Weekly.

With five novels in the Women of Lancaster County Series (Mindy Clark and Leslie Gould). Clark and Meissner have begun the Men of Lancaster County Series: The Amish Groom, The Amish Blacksmith and mostly recently, The Amish Clockmaker.

Here’s a thumb-nail of The Amish Blacksmith from Goodreads:

Apprenticed blacksmith Jake Miller is skeptical of Priscilla Kinsinger’s innate ability to soothe troubled horses, especially when he has own ideas on how to calm them. Six years earlier, Priscilla’s mother died in an awful accident at home, and Priscilla’s grief over losing her mother was so intense that she was sent to live with relatives in Ohio. She has just returned to Lancaster County.

Not that her homecoming matters to Jake, who is interested in courting lighthearted Amanda Shetler. But Jake’s boss is Priscilla’s uncle, and when the man asks Jake to help his niece reconnect with community life, he has no choice but to do just that. Surprisingly, he finds himself slowly drawn to the beautiful but emotionally wounded Priscilla.

Jake then determines to prove to her that it’s not her fault her mother died, but what he discovers will challenge everything they both believe about the depth of love and the breadth of forgiveness.

Though the pace of the book slowed toward the end, I found the book a satisfying read. It is certainly more pleasurable to gain equestrian knowledge via a novel than from an equine textbook. In fact, the authors give credit to the Riehl and Fisher families of Lancaster County for helpful on-the-farm visits and to Elam and Elias Stoltzfus, for sharing their knowledge in their own Amish blacksmith shop. I applaud the authors too for their extensive research on horsemanship, particularly horse-whispering. I felt myself being both educated and entertained as I read.

Interestingly, male readers admit to enjoying Amish romance novels too. Valerie Weaver-Zercher reports in her book Thrill of the Chaste that an elderly farmer, Glenn Swartzendruber read almost ninety Amish-themed novels during the last three years of his life. And “a physician with degrees from Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania shared that he enjoyed listening to the audio version of Beverly Lewis’s [Amish} novels.” (249)

Do you enjoy Amish romance novels? Tell us why or why not. Do you know any men who read them?

Coming next – 4 Months, 4 Gifts: A Tribute to My Dad

A Corny Post

June 13, 2015June 13, 2015 marianbeaman45 Comments

The Corn Palace

Bird beaks peck away at grains of corn on the walls of The Corn Palace. Still, the murals created with several colors of dried corn and grain arrest the eye. On our trip West we visited this grand monument to farmers and the grain industry they represent in Mitchell, South Dakota.

A Quote about Corn:

“A light wind swept over the corn, and all nature laughed in the sunshine,” said Anne Bronte, poet and novelist of West Yorkshire, England, 1800s

Corn Sex, according to Elizabeth Kolbert in “The Big Heat,” The New Yorker, July 23, 2012 issue

Mennonites and Corn

Mennonites in Lancaster County, including the Longenecker family, participated in the whole process of corn production: planting, hoeing, harvesting, husking, canning, freezing – and best of all – eating the succulent grains of corn on the cob, the buttery juice running down our chins and forearms.

In her book Mennonite Women of Lancaster County, Joanne Hess Siegrist features photos of Mennonite women hard at work husking and cutting corn off the cob (pages 124, 124)

My Mother Ruth loved making her baked corn recipe from the Mennonite Community Cookbook. She served it in a chocolate-brown Pyrex casserole dish nested in a basket of tight weave. We loved every bite, especially tasty during corn season.

Baked Corn Recipe

Want More Corn?

Pablo Neruda, Chilean poet, diplomat and politician, apparently loved vegetables too. He wrote about tomatoes, corn and more. Here is the link to his poem “Ode to Maize.”

Share something corny here. We are all ears!

Coming up next: Going Male, Amish Romance Novels

Mennonites and the Marlboro Man

June 10, 2015June 8, 2015 marianbeaman46 Comments

The Marlboro man, pictured as a cool-guy cowboy in a fresh country setting, ruled cigarette advertising from 1954 -1999.

Smoking then was considered glamorous and cool, a way to fit in with the crowd. One of our most popular presidents, Ronald Reagan, was formerly a cigarette model for Chesterfields, even advertising that he would give cases of the product to his friends for Christmas.

As the Marlboro Man’s ads evolved, the Surgeon General’s warning of health hazards appeared on cigarette packs. Now of course, smoking is taboo in stores and restaurants, and smokers are often viewed as outcasts.

* * *

Mennonite farmers in Lancaster County during the 1950s and 1960s grew tobacco as a prime cash crop. But as Shirley Showalter points out in her memoir, growing tobacco was both a tradition and controversy among Lancaster Conference Mennonites. “After George Brunk’s tent revivals, many farmers plowed up or stopped planting tobacco,” she comments. My own Dad stopped planting tobacco then, substituting tomatoes and corn in our acreage in Bainbridge, Pennsylvania. Shirley divulges her dad’s decision about farming tobacco in her book BLUSH (173).

Here are some photos of young tobacco plants, Mother Ruth in the tobacco fields and then a snapshot of the drying process before the crop was sold to a tobacco company.

The issue of tobacco production and use appears in the Statement of Christian Doctrine and Rules and Discipline of the Lancaster Conference Mennonite Church (July 1968) but as an advisory to only ministers and their wives:

“Inasmuch as ordained brethren and their wives by their teaching and example exert strong influence within the brotherhood, it is required for the spiritual welfare of the church that they give evidence of willingness to subscribe to . . . the following standards of faith and life.

Listed as “f” in a range of a – h points is this directive but only to the ordained: “the non-use and non-production of tobacco.” (29) Apparently the issue of smoking and its health hazards posed a serious dilemma to the church with lay members who relied on tobacco growing as a way to pay the mortgage.

Many of my uncles smoked cigars when they were together. Even my dad would occasionally join in as a way to socialize.

* * *

I recently found a map of Yellowstone with a Conoco ad in the 1960s using the pleasures of smoking to promote their brand of gasoline:

* * *

A young boy named Jeremy learns about the dangers of smoking in an imaginative book entitled The Boy Who Grew Too Small.

Leave a comment below if you want to contact Author/Illustrator Cliff for more information about his book.

Other comments about this post – welcome here too!

Coming next: A Corny Post

Two Mennonite Girls: a Cross Country Road Trip, continued

June 6, 2015May 19, 2016 marianbeaman40 Comments

The postcard says Metzie and Molly if you look closely, but Joann and I were unofficially known as Mighty Metz and Sister Styx, the dashing duo that rode in the back seat of a Chevy Impala on a road trip with Joann’s parents, John and Mary Metzler.

Feeding a hooded squirrel at a stop off in Glacier National Park

Our Southern route included the cotton fields of Alabama . . .

. . . and Rock City, Georgia with a view of seven states

. . . and a tapering Falls

How I Paid for This Trip: I wrote an adult study series for Herald Press during May and June of 1964 for which I was paid $500.00. I brought cash and Traveler’s Cheques. Credit cards like the Diner’s Club Card were in circulation back then, but we didn’t have any. Actually, like many Mennonites, we thought credit cards were a little shady because of the possibility of misuse.

Frugality, Joann’s and Mine:

Joann says to her mother in Canyonville, Oregon: “Mom, give me the map, let’s stop at some little hick place for dinner. Then I’ll have money to buy some more myrtle wood!”

In Oregon, I remark to Joan: “Boy, oh, boy, my future husband will have a wife who can keep on a budget, thank goodness!” Little did I know my future husband Cliff was living not so far away in California at the time.

Joan and I alternated weeks in paying room costs. I paid tolls and park entrance fees instead of gas, which was probably less than 30 cents per gallon then.

I remember paying 50 cents to drive through a redwood tree!

We both kept diaries and photo logs. Mine looks battered and torn. Still, there’s a record.

Church: We attended a service at the Mormon Tabernacle but the choir was missing, gone to the World’s Fair. Ugh . . . so disappointing!

I was accosted by a Mormon guy in the tabernacle gift shop: He thought I was Israeli and mistook my black bonnet for a feminine yarmulke and tried to convert me to Mormonism.

We also visited Sweet Home Mennonite Church in Oregon with Rev. Orie Roth, pastor.

Sin: We drove by garish casinos and hotels down Main Street, Las Vegas. Among the glitter and glitz of sky-high, flashy neon lights, we noticed advertisements for $ 10.00 weddings. Do you think people got married drunk? we wondered.

Western Hospitality: On our way to Sequoia National Park we pulled off the road and discovered a friendly guy mowing his lawn. Thus we met the Shaefers. Mr. Schaefer showed Uncle John his orange grove, and Mrs. Schaefer loaded us up with a 12’ x 15’ box of peaches, oranges, two bags of grapes, 2 bags of oranges, and a quart of raisins she had picked/dried herself.

Thanks to the miracle of “General Delivery,” I got mail from home at planned intervals. Here’s a note from Aunt Ruthie with a cascading series of cartoons

And a birthday card from my sister Jean with a letter . . .

. . . and a note from Mother chiding Jean for not leaving any space to write: “I don’t know who she thinks she is . . . didn’t leave any space for Mother!”

Two letters sent to me addressed simply as Los Angeles – General Delivery came back with a note “Unclaimed – Return to Sender.” Imagine that!

I brought back gifts for all the family. Janice received a myrtle-wood vase from Oregon, brother Mark a table lamp with a cactus base, and Daddy, a polished piece of petrified wood. My ledger shows I bought Jean a pretty blouse for $ 4.10, but alas no picture here!

Aunt Ruthie, brother Mark, and Mother Ruth — Aunt Ruthie with Christofferson paintings from Albuquerque, brother Mark with lamp, and Mother Ruth with a myrtle-wood pedestal dish

And something for myself too

I'll still using the bookends I bought in Tijuana, Mexico — I’m still using the alabaster bookends I bought in Tijuana, Mexico

The strangest thing I brought back: Water in a Gerber’s baby food jar (Aunt Ruthie’s suggestion) from The Great Salt Lake, where we floated with no danger of sinking.

Photos I took almost two hundred photos on Kodak Ektachrome color slide film and sent home film rolls in heat-resistant pouches to be developed. Joann took photos and movies.

We don’t make a photograph just with a camera, we bring to the act of photography all the books we have read, the movies we have seen, the music we have heard, the people we have loved.

– Ansel Adams

Two Mennonite Girls Survive a Cross Country Road Trip

June 3, 2015June 6, 2015 marianbeaman57 Comments

Yes, imagine two Mennonite girls tripping across the country . . .

In a blue-gray 1958 Chevy Impala sedan
With a chauffeur and navigator
Through 47 states + Mexico
Five weeks in 1964: July 18 – August 24

My Travel Partners: The Metzlers, whom I call Aunt and Uncle, and their daughter Joann

Unlike John Steinbeck who wrote Travels with Charley about his one-man, one-dog travelogue in the 1960s, we were a four-some, Joann Herr, my new best friend, her parents, John and Mary Metzler, and me. But like Mark Twain, we were “innocents abroad,” leaving our cozy Mennonite countryside and venturing through the wild and wooly West to the Pacific coast, eyes agape with wonder.

Best Bud: Joann Metzler (Herr) whom I met while she was student teaching at Rheems Elementary School, where my Aunt Ruth Longenecker was principal. “She’s such a nice girl. You ought to meet her,” Ruthie said about Joann. She was right! I even thought so at the end of the trip.

Chauffeur Extraordinaire, Uncle John: One day he drove 748 miles! John Metzler, who raised crops and cattle, is related on my mother’s side of the family through a common ancestor, Valentine Metzler, whose immigration to Pennsylvania was celebrated in the reunion in 2013. During this thousands-of-miles-odyssey behind the wheel, he sometimes came up with quotable expressions:

“Oh, schmatza (PA Dutch for pain),” he frets when there are too many switchbacks on mountain roads.

“Now we’re caught with our pants down!” when he makes a wrong turn.

“I thought I’d be hen-pecked with three women around and by golly I am already!” he exclaims 11 days into the trip.

Navigator with a Built-in Compass, Aunt Mary: With only a road map and keen sense of direction, Joann’s mother “Aunt Mary” was quite a trooper. She made sure we were ready to roll between 6:30 and 7:00 am every day. When I felt road sick, she doled out Chiclets. She was eager to see her spry, 81-year-old Aunt Susan in Los Angeles.

In Cheyenne Uncle John was taken for a German because of his PA Dutch accent, and Mary tells him “ta be more English!” Here are the two smiling at Crater Lake, Oregon.

The Big Loop – Like Steinbeck, we did follow a northern route across the Mid-west, angling down through California and sweeping across the Southwest into Texas and further east to Florida and then north back home to Pennsylvania. Along the way, we sometimes fancied ourselves in foreign lands: Parts of Utah looked like Greece to us, the Rockies like the Swiss Alps, and some of Oregon, the Holy land because of myrtle trees.

In the Rockies, I make a snowball on my birthday!

We were entranced by presidents, puffy clouds, national parks . . .

Yellowstone, 12 million acres of gorgeous scenery - even bears want a part of the action — Yellowstone, 12 million acres of gorgeous scenery – even bears want a part of the action

And the Magnificent Grand Canyon

Oregon and California: Myrtle trees, Joshua trees, Dates and Olives!

Navajo Indian Reservation: Family was pleased to pose in exchange for some pesos

Tijuana, Mexico: sombreros, a heady substitute for our prayer caps. Joann had no idea she was inviting kisses!

What We Wore

The photos prove our plainness. We always had something on our heads: prayer coverings, black bonnets on top of our caps for Sunday in Salt Lake City, Utah. Accordion pleated plastic wind-breakers for stiff breezes or rain. Dresses or skirts – absolutely no slacks or shorts.

Grandma Longenecker gave me a travel iron – no permanent press fabrics yet in our wardrobes in the Sixties.

Closeup of prayer covering and bonnet like Joann and I wore on the trip with Kodak Ektachrome slides, letter home and post card from the Petrified Forest, Arizona

Days were HOT!

One day it was 110 degrees in a car with no AC. Our Boontonware cups melted in the rear view window. Our backs made puddles on the seats, so we tried the feet-in-air position, backseat monkeys! Here below are the Boontonware cups before they melted! And, yes, photos at state lines were staged – part of our ritual.

Uncle John couldn’t wait to get to Cheyenne, Wyoming to see the Rodeo, The Daddy of ’em All during Frontier-land week.

What We Did at Night

Sometimes Joan and I disturbed the peace of the Metzler pair next door in the motel. Once I kicked down a picture on a motel wall in Wisconsin and nearly fell on my head to try to retrieve it. Daily we wrote in our diaries and totted up our expenses down to the last penny.

Usually we snacked and read books. One night I lowered the hem on a skirt with my sewing kit to comply with standards of Lancaster Mennonite School, where I would return to teaching in the fall. Here I’m making a feast of boysenberry bread near Kanab, Utah.

Many thanks to photo-enhancer Cliff for bringing faded memories back to life!

How did I pay for this trip on my slim school teacher’s salary? What secrets did my diary and expense book reveal? Did anyone from home remember my birthday? Find out in my next post!

Memorial Day Snaps: A Truck and a Quilt

May 23, 2015May 23, 2015 marianbeaman42 Comments

Catchy caption needed. Your suggestions please!

Just as every issue of The New Yorker features a cartoon in need of a caption, today’s post offers a photo calling for your input. There’s one below to get your wheels turning, but I think there are other possibilities.

Even eighteen wheelers have patriotic ties.

The back story: This photo was taken in 2005 when Cliff was in the Chicago area doing his art/music shows. Most likely our son Joel, who was in graduate school in the city at the time, was driving as Cliff snapped the picture of this truck on the Interstate.

* * *

Carl Stoneseifer was one of my dad’s best employees at Longenecker Farm Supply in Rheems, PA. He was both personable and competent, as my dad would say, a “crack” mechanic. I remember how sad Daddy felt when Carl moved on.

His wife Helen was a talented quilter. On May 20, 1976 Helen’s picture and write-up appeared in our hometown newspaper, The Elizabethtown Chronicle. The quilt, in honor of the American bicentennial, was a cooperative effort by her sister, her daughter-in-law, and another friend. However, the designs featuring various patriotic symbols were her own.

Memorial Day is a time to remember all those who sacrificed for our country. This weekend also heralds the first official holiday weekend of summer.

How do you observe it?

Can you provide a caption for the photo? I’m excited to see your suggestions!

Coming next: Purple Passages: Secrets of the Grimké House, Charleston

My Dad’s Bachelor Trip to Florida

May 20, 2015May 21, 2015 marianbeaman43 Comments

Nose-to-the-Grindstone, that’s my dad. But I have proof in pictures that he once took a fling to Florida with his Lancaster County Mennonite buddies. Judging from the photos that remain and Mother’s comments, I can pretty much guarantee that there were no stops at a roadhouse, nights spent bar-hopping, or brothel visits.

According to their Swiss-German work ethnic and the spirit of the times, these five men, Parke Garber, Dick Sauder, Bud (Wilbur) Martin, Howard Longenecker and Daddy were destined to be dutiful farmers or businessmen, faithful husbands and fathers. But until they hit the groove for the rest of their lives, they would see the world, traveling over 800 miles from Pennsylvania to Florida.

My Dad

They traveled in a car of this vintage with a road-map, certainly no GPS!

To Cypress Gardens, Florida 1939

The craziest thing recorded is a snapshot of the men playing church under the skinny wooden banner Jesus Never Fails. I say they were playing church because that was what Mother told me and I never heard anything to the contrary. The “preacher” was a farmer turned car salesman and my sanctimonious-looking dad (at right), a farm implement dealer, holds a hymnbook or Bible.

Richard Sauder in pulpit, to the right Parke Garber, extreme right Ray Longenecker, my father (Unidentified man at left) — Richard Sauder in pulpit, to the right Parke Garber, far right Ray Longenecker, my father (Unidentified man on left)

All these pictures were stored in a heap inside our family’s piano bench for decades. Only recently have they seen the light of day.

Based on the date here, my dad was 24. He was married in 1940 when he was 25, a year younger than my age at marriage. Men of this era did not usually marry until they could support a wife. The first question Daddy queried Cliff when he asked for my hand in marriage was “Do you think you can support her?” Looking back, the question seems a little strange as I was already a teacher of four years with a salary.

What I’d like to know:

Who’s idea was this trip?
Where did they eat? (These men were used to home-cooked meals.)
What did they talk about?
Did they ever wear casual clothing? (All I see here is white shirts, suspenders, ties and long trousers.)
Did they send postcards to their girlfriends?
Did they laugh and carry on?

Wouldn’t Dad have been astonished back then if he had known two of his daughters would be raising their families in Florida, so far away from their Lancaster County, PA childhood roots?

Do you have photos in your family albums that pose questions without answers?

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