Like any other young mother, an Amish housewife has many responsibilities. Some are easier, some made more difficult by the Amish lifestyle.
By Jim Butterfield
Ida roused herself to call Betty, their first grader. While Betty got dressed, Mother packed a lunch box for her. She made a sandwich of sausage slices on brown bread and filled a small jar with canned cherries. Then she wrapped a piece of chocolate cake for dessert.
Soon after 6 o’clock Father and Adam were back in the house for breakfast with Mom and Betty. Mom served fried eggs with soft yolks in which to dip bread. Dad put off morning devotions until after breakfast so all the children would be awake to take part. Little Benjie with the sore gums was fussing again, and that roused 3 year old Clara, too. So four children gathered at the living room couch to hear their father read a German prayer.
“Adam and Betty have been saying their own prayers at night when they go to bed,” Ida told her husband. “That way they learn to pray from the heart.”
At 7 o’clock a school bell down the road gave its first ring. It was 8 o’clock daylight savings time, but the Mullets prefer to keep their clocks on slow time. Betty put on her coat and bonnet and took her lunch pail from the kitchen counter.
“Wait for the Beachy girls to come by,” Ida told her eager daughter. “We like you to walk with some of the older scholars. I’m going to Mt. Hope today, and I should be back before school’s out. But if I’m not here, you just go to Grandma’s house.”
Just as Betty met other children out on the road, Roy’s ride to work came. Roy and his unmarried brother on the home farm have a roofing business that takes them to new construction sites as far as Millersburg and Canton. The panel truck driver is a local man who picks up the brothers in the morning and brings them back in the late afternoon. Now Ida hustled to wash the breakfast dishes and get her smaller children dressed to stay at Grandma ‘s house.”
By 8 o’clock, slow time, a van pulled in the driveway.
“Dobbah kum” (Hurry come), Ida called to her youngsters. “Mrs. Bixler iss doh” (Mrs. Bixler is here). She sent Adam out to tell the driver that they weren’t quite ready. As a pre-schooler he hasn’t learned much English yet, but Mrs. Bixler could understand what he said, “Die Mam is noch net ganz ready.” (Mother is yet not quite ready.)
A few minutes later the three children and their mother were riding back a long lane to Grandmother’s house. They saw Grandpa driving a team of horses in from the corn field with a load of stalks for the silo. Grandma came across the yard to collect the youngsters, and soon the van was heading for Mt. Hope some 16 miles away.
“I’ve gone that far already in the buggy,” Ida told Mrs. Bixler. “But it takes a couple hours, and then to come back the same day makes a long trip for the horse.”
“People didn’t go that far very often when I was a girl,” Mrs. Bixler replied. “Every little town had a good general store then and we got along all right.”
“I want to get to Tea John’s before he’s too busy,” Ida explained.
“Oh-the herb fellow?”
“Yes, he has hydrogen peroxide that I like for cuts and scratches. He keeps it in a drum. Here’s my plastic jug to fill. It makes a good mouthwash too. And I use it to wash vegetables from the store if I think they might have been sprayed.”
“I’ll get a bottle of hawthorne berry extract while we’re there,” Mrs. Bixler said. “It’s good to strengthen the heart. I used to have irregular heartbeats, and now I’m hardly ever bothered with them.”
Traffic into Mt. Hope was a mix of trucks and wagons bringing cows and calves and pigs to the weekly livestock auction. Flea market vendors were setting up tables in the open air outside the sale barn.
Tea John’s country place was a mile or more south and east of town. The van turned left at Spring Meadow school and into a lane across from a quiet woods and small pond. Three steps down to a basement door led into the herbalist’s small waiting room. One of his daughters said hello.
“He left already to help where the barn burned down,” she said. “They’re getting ready for an ‘uff-schtelling’ (barn raising” next week.” But the daughter could fill Ida’s jug with hydrogen peroxide and point to a shelf of bottled remedies for Mrs. Bixler.
Since Tea John wasn’t there to consult about other health concerns, Ida decided to go back into Mt. Hope and see if the Yoder sisters there would give her a treatment for sore neck muscles and a stiff shoulder. The three Amish sisters use gentle massage to relieve aches and pains. Their treatment space is in an unmarked house close to the village grocery store. Today one of the sisters could see Ida right away.
“I don’t mind waiting for you,” Mrs. Bixler said. “It’s sunny, and I’ll look around the flea market.”
Fully half the crowd on the sale grounds were Amish as Mrs. Bixler walked past new and used pots and pans, hand crank meat grinders, a bottle capper, push mowers, used books, old toys, and assorted iron skillets. Her eyes rested on pretty green Depression glass dishes, but she decided to buy a $3.00 bag of apples instead, and $2.00 worth of oranges. She carried them to her van at the Yoder sisters’ driveway and then stopped in the grocery store for this week’s copy of The Budget. While waiting for Ida she looked up a news column about Mt. Hope:
This neighborhood had quite a shock last Tuesday evening around 6:00 when the large barn and straw shed where Emanuel E. Miller’s live burned to the ground, caused by one of the boys playing with a lighter. Six horses, some calves and pigs, and a bull and goat perished in the blaze. Some machinery was lost too.
Plans are to rebuilt and they want to put in the footer today. The cows are at our place and are being milked here until they can be moved home.
Mrs. Jacob R. Mast
Ida came out about 10:30 and walked to the town’s bank to cash a check. At least two of the tellers wore white caps and spoke to customers in Pennsylvania Dutch. Then she went to a health food store next door to buy lobelia and myrrh to put on little Benjie’s sore gums.
It was nearly noon when the van turned past Ida’s house to pick up her children back at Grandma’s. The silo was full and Grandpa was digging potatoes in the garden.
“How much for my trip?” the young mother asked her driver when the family was safely home.
“Thirty miles at 50 cents a mile would be fifteen dollars,” Mrs. Bixler said. “It’s too bad you didn’t have more people along to share the ride.” They set Ida’s jug of peroxide and her pail of coconut oil under a shed roof. The rest of this article is Ida’s own written account of what she did at home after her morning trip:
First I headed for our small greenhouse to let in fresh air. It had been too cool yet when I left. We have some fall lettuce and late tomatoes in there. Now the temperature was about 104, but went down fast once I opened it up. Back to the house. I rounded up some tomato soup and grated some cooked potatoes for a quick lunch. We had maple leaf cookies from the store too.
Then I put two smaller youngsters to bed for a nap. Adam and I fed the calves. He gave the biggest ones grain while I gave the smaller ones milk out of buckets.
Then to the kitchen work - washing dishes, baking several loaves of whole wheat bread, and baking a cake. I made a big double cake last night, but the wood stove cool down too much and it flopped.
Betty came home from school later than usual - all the pupils were to Apple Ridge school for the afternoon. Benjie and Clara woke up and soon were practicing writing. But they tired of that after awhile and went on the back porch steps to eat a gram cracker snack, then head for the swings. Benjie isn’t feeling well, he’s having a hard time cutting two molars and two front teeth at once. But the children entertain him outside, so he’s better and I can fix supper.
When Roy comes home around 5:30, the children all head for Dad, like usual, and he spends time with them and wants to hear how my day was before doing the chores (with the children’s help) and I finish putting supper on the table.
Just as we’re almost done eating, a friend stops by to tell me the church ladies are planning to clean house for one of the families next week. The mother had been in the hospital.
Roy has to leave right away to go to the viewing of a neighbor whose funeral is the next day. He’s back before the children are in bed, so I finish reading a Buster Bear story to them and after devotions we tuck them in - tomorrow morning will be here soon enough.
Roy lights the greenhouse heater and settles down to read awhile, but I’m too tired to think. That bed is much more inviting than a book. In about five seconds I’m asleep - till Benjie wakes up fussing a little later...
© 2004 Traveler Publications
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