Diana R. Zimmerman - 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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Publishers Note

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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 dawnin 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 grandmas 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 10 th 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. Its 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 dont 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 Im going to fall in and go all the way under the bathroom into the cellar.

Daddy tells me Im ok and asks me to be careful again. I dont want to watch anymore.

At our house, we have doggies. Jack is our daddy dog. Playgo is the mommy. Theyre 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 doesnt 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 doesnt 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 wasnt 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 Im in my bed and we dont have that many washcloths and no kitties are allowed in the house. Mommy says thats a dream. I want the black kitty, but it isnt there.

I go to sleep in my own room. I can look over the end of my crib through the doorway into Baby Kellys 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.