When the Roll is Called a Pyonder

WHEN THE

ROLL

IS CALLED

A PYONDER

TALES FROM A MENNONITE CHILDHOOD

DIANA R. ZIMMERMAN

eLectio Publishing

Little Elm, TX

www.eLectioPublishing.com

When the Roll is Called A Pyonder: Tales from a Mennonite Childhood

By Diana R. Zimmerman

Copyright 2014 by Diana R. Zimmerman

Cover Design by eLectio Publishing, LLC

ISBN-13: 978-1-63213-047-1

Published by eLectio Publishing, LLC

Little Elm, Texas

http://www.eLectioPublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

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This book is dedicated to

my parents

who steered me with love through the adventures of a

happy childhood

and to my sisters

who have grown up to be my

best friends.

The author, Janey and Hoppy.

The kitchen floor, 1972.

Foreword

This is the memoir of a childhood in the 1970s on a Mennonite family farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. It begins where my first hazy memories dawn—in the spring of the year my parents purchased and moved to the farm where they would raise my sisters and me. Through it unfolds an indecipherable mix of the real and the imagined: a family, a faith, dogs and cats, and the antics of growing children as our minds are being shaped to fit inside the world as it has been prescribed for us.

The Mennonite community in Lancaster took root in the days when the states were still colonies, when William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, opened his territories to Swiss and German immigrant Mennonites who were escaping persecution at the hands of the protestant church in the Old World. They crossed the Atlantic in search of a land where they could practice their religion without fear. One of the displaced noblemen to purchase to a large tract of land from Penn was Christian Brubaker, my maternal grandfather 11 generations removed. His descendants farmed that same land for 200 years, until the city of Lancaster that was once a crossroads enveloped and swallowed it. I am a child of the last generation to remember the original farmstead as grandma’s house.

Mennonite tradition emphasizes the importance of being different from the (rest of the) world, and from the time of my earliest memories I have been aware, on some level, of a split between us (the Mennonites) and them (everyone else). I realized the uniqueness of the dichotomized universe I was born into only as I became old enough to leave it. I puzzled long over how to tell these simple stories, finally settling upon letting the child tell them in her own voice, in the way that she experiences them.

The story ends on the day that my mother gives me the thin red notebook that will become my first diary, a day between my 10th birthday and the start of spring. All of this is the forward to the book of my life that is still being written.

Part One

Hunting Bunnies

Daddy holds me up where I can see the big cows. It’s dark in the barn and the steers are huffing through their noses and pushing each other. I hold on tight because they are looking at me with their big watery eyes and I don’t want Daddy to put me down.

Outside in the sunshine we can look at them over the fence. They walk in the mud and chew with their tongues going in and out. Outside in the sunshine I am not scared and Daddy helps me stand on the fence and hold on.

There is a hole in the bathroom floor and I have to be careful or I could fall in. Daddy is fixing it and I want to watch.

Daddy says, "Be careful," and I am careful. The floor is broken and you can look at the broken wood and the dark underneath it.

My leg goes in the hole and I scream because I’m going to fall in and go all the way under the bathroom into the cellar.

Daddy tells me I’m ok and asks me to be careful again. I don’t want to watch anymore.

At our house, we have doggies. Jack is our daddy dog. Playgo is the mommy. They’re beagle dogs that Daddy goes hunting with. Playgo has puppies. She lies on the porch and I pet her. I like her. Her nipples have milk for her babies.

I lie on the porch beside Playgo. I bite her nipple like a puppy. Playgo bites me. She doesn’t bite me very hard, but I cry because she scared me. Mommy runs outside and says, What Did You Do?

I say, Nothing. Playgo bit me.

Mommy knows I did something because Playgo doesn’t bite.

We have kitties too. Some kitties are wild and live in the barn. Daddy throws them dead chickens from the chicken house. Other kitties are tame and eat kitty food on the porch. I love kitties. I hold them by the head like my dollies. They scratch me.

Daddy and Mommy tell me, NO! They make me say it:

Not by the ears,

Not by the tail,

Not by the fuzzies,

But by the BELLY.

One day I put a pinchy clothespin on the tail of a kitty to see what it does. It meows at me and runs away before I can take it off. It never comes back, ever. I think it runs around the whole world and no one can ever catch it to take the clothespin off.

That wasn’t nice of me. I feel sad about that.

In the bathroom is a wash basket full of washcloths and in the basket a black kitty is sitting. The washcloths are all bright colors and the black kitty is looking at me. Its eyes are yellow and it sees me.

But then I’m in my bed and we don’t have that many washcloths and no kitties are allowed in the house. Mommy says that’s a dream. I want the black kitty, but it isn’t there.

I go to sleep in my own room. I can look over the end of my crib through the doorway into Baby Kelly’s room and see her crib. I have Peter Rabbit bunny curtains. Mommy made them. The walls are green and the floor has green and yellow linoleum. Two windows look out over the front porch at the pond. The back yard and the cornfields are out my other window.

Kelly’s room has two front-porch windows too, but it’s darker. It’s blue and has a dark rug, and the curtains Mommy made her have big purple flowers. I love my bunny curtains.

There’s a green wooden rocking chair in Kelly’s room. It has flowers painted on it. Sometimes at night Mommy rocks us and sings. She sings Jesus Loves Me and Jesus Loves the Little Children and The Lord’s My Shepherd and Dare to Be a Daniel and I Know the Lord Will Make a Way for Me and It Is Well with My Soul and I Come to the Garden Alone and A Wonderful Savior Is Jesus My Lord. I don’t like that one too much. It scares me. It’s about Jesus hiding and a cleft of a rock and shadows and a dry, thirsty land and covers me there with his hand. Mommy says cleft is like a crack in a steep mountain. That song makes me sad. It makes me think of a thirsty desert and shadows and broken mountains. I don’t want Jesus to be lost in the desert in the cracked mountains. I wish she wouldn’t sing that one.

My Daddy goes deer hunting. He goes hunting for bunnies and pheasants with Playgo and Fancy. I have a bunny named Hoppy. He’s pink and I ride him. Hoppy can’t hop; he’s plastic and he has wheels. I want a real bunny. They’re fuzzy and nice. I don’t want to shoot bunnies like my Daddy does, I want to catch one.

I have a good idea about Hoppy. Daddy looks in the field for bunnies. I can look in the field for bunnies too. Bunnies are scared of me because I’m a girl, but bunnies aren’t scared of other bunnies. Hoppy is a bunny. I can take Hoppy. When the bunnies see another bunny with me, they’ll know I’m nice. They’ll know I won’t hurt them. I think they’ll hop up to me and Hoppy.

I take Hoppy outside when Mommy isn’t looking. Mommy won’t understand about the nice bunnies. She’ll say, No, Honey to me. I hold him by the handle on his head and pull him across the yard. I pull him over the dug-up dirt in the garden. It’s hard to walk. I’m looking for bunnies, being really quiet. Daddy says you have to be quiet. I’m walking with Hoppy over the bumpy brown cornfield and looking around.

Then I see Mommy walking up to the garden.

Diana, what are you doing? she says to me.

I’m hunting bunnies, I tell her.

Sometimes I have bad dreams. That’s the only time I can sleep in Mommy and Daddy’s bed. We always have to wake up Mommy if something happens like we have a bad dream or a wet bed or if we throw up. I say, Mommy, I had a bad dream, and I push on her arm and her eyes open. She opens up the covers and makes room for me in there in the warm. I tell her what I dreamed and she says not to think about it anymore, to think about good things and ask Jesus to help me have good dreams. I don’t know why Jesus sometimes forgets. Sometimes she says a prayer for me. Then when I’m sleeping she wakes up Daddy and Daddy carries me back to my bed and puts me in. I like it when Daddy carries me. Sometimes, if I have a bad dream, Mommy or Daddy comes to my room with me and lays on my floor beside me until I go back to sleep.

The other time Daddy carries us is if we go to Grandma’s house and we fall asleep in the car. Or sometimes we go to a church program at night. I think I’m floating. I wake up and I’m going up the stairs with my head on Daddy’s shoulder. I float through the bathroom. Daddy takes my dress off like a dolly and puts my jammies on and covers me up. Sometimes I wake up when the car stops outside the house, but I pretend I’m still sleeping so Daddy will carry me.

I save Baby Kelly and Mommy and the house from burning up. I’m in the kitchen coloring on paper and Baby Kelly is sleeping and Mommy isn’t with me. There’s clothes in the drier. I smell a funny smell and I look up at the air. It’s full of funny little white smoke curls that look like macaroni. I heard stories on Children’s Bible Hour about good children who obey Jesus and help to save their mothers and