After leaving Grandma Himsel on Sunday afternoon, we drove past open fields, farmhouses, and barns and silos, through Jasper and across the Patoka River to my mother’s parents. We turned onto Schnellville Road and crested Pete’s Hill, where my grandparents’ farm came into view: the white farmhouse, the summer kitchen, and the still-in-use outhouse that my grandmother referred to as “a damn-filthy, stinking shithouse.”
Tumbling out of the car, we’d often find my grandfather and uncles in the middle of butchering a pig, conversation between them limited to how much they should freeze, how much to keep. My brothers usually ran off with some of the other male cousins to fish down at the pond or maybe shoot at sparrows or go turtling at the creek.
The five youngest at the time—Abby, me, Liz, John, and Sarah—immediately asked our grandmother if we could hunt eggs. She gave us little plastic buckets and reminded us, “If the egg is marked with an ‘x,’ don’t you take it! That’s a nest egg, and if you don’t leave it, the hen won’t have her egg to hatch.” So we scooped up eggs from the smokehouse, the tractor seat, the combine, the hayloft, and behind the barn, placing them gently in our buckets. We were as careful to leave the nest eggs as my father had been not to disturb the wren’s nest.
We brought the eggs back to the kitchen, where the aunts reigned, peeling potatoes, opening jars of homemade turnip kraut, and making Jell-O salad and ribley soup (from the German Riebelesuppe), which consisted of eggs and flour beat together then crumbled into hot chicken broth. Should a barn cat venture into the kitchen, my grandmother would mutter, “You little shitass,” and kick it out. I delighted in hearing my grandmother say such forbidden words in her dismissive way. She not only called the cats shitasses but also her husband and grandchildren.
We then returned to the barnyard, maybe checked out the baby kittens in the hayloft, or sat in the corncrib, where corn covered our bodies up to our waist, or we asked my grandfather if we could help slop the pigs. I liked the word “slopped.” There was something in it of sun-spattered mud puddles and late-night giggles. When my grandparents said “slop,” though, they pronounced it “schlop,” and the word became an earthy, sensual thing—the sound of pigs squealing and snorting, swallowing and salivating.
In his bib overalls, heavy work boots, and the John Deere cap that covered his half-bald head, my grandfather was a lonely figure. Tagging along at his side, we helped slop the pigs and pluck the chickens. Cigarette dangling from his lower lip, ax in one hand and chicken in the other, he lowered the ax, and the chicken’s head was a small bloody mess next to the concrete block while the body flew and hopped and jumped around until it came to a sudden flopping stop.
Then he dipped the chicken into a pot of boiling water, swirled it around, and after it had cooled, he handed it to us to pluck. We sat in comfortable silence on wooden crates, ripped off the feathers, and brought the bare chickens into the kitchen, where we rested them on the table covered in newspaper. My mother and aunts made quick work of gutting them, saving the liver and gizzard and heart, and tossing everything else away.
My father often said that our mother was just like her dad. “They are both stubborn as all get out,” he declared. “Hardheaded, them two stick up for each other. They’re thick as thieves.” He meant many things by this, but one of the things he was referring to was my grandfather’s excessive consumption of Falls City Beer and my mother’s refusal to either criticize him or listen to anyone else’s criticism of him.
We usually didn’t leave until night fell, when big clusters of stars crowded the black sky. Then we made our way sleepily to the car, and all around us the farm was quiet save the chirping of crickets.
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I grew up with these hardworking, beer-drinking, potbellied, red-faced, old-time, bib-overalled men and gray-haired, Dutch-talking, coarse-handed, strict, and reserved women. I went to Strassenfests, or street fairs, and at parties I sang, “What’s that smell comin’ from over the sea? Must be the smell of old Germany. Singin’ glorious! One keg of beer for the four of us! Glory be to God that there ain’t no more of us, ’cause one of us can drink it all up. Damn quick!”
If the world didn’t end before I became an adult, I would take my place among them, continuing the traditions that had been passed on for more than a century, from the barn-raising and butchering days of old, to the Sundays of the 1960s.
I couldn’t imagine that in just over a decade, the wren would give up the wooden shoe and leave the nest, exchanging ribley soup for matzah ball, the Midwest for the Mideast.
CHAPTER 3
If Sunday belonged to family, then Saturday, the seventh day of the week, belonged to God.
The Sabbath began at sunset Friday night and ended at sunset Saturday night. On any Friday night, as the sun set behind the red barn and after we’d eaten the usual fried chicken and mashed potatoes and gravy for supper, we then-ten children gathered in the living room for Friday night prayer and Bible study. We took turns reading aloud from the church’s children’s Bible stories.
The gray, soft-backed books retold biblical events and were illustrated with black-and-white drawings: innocent Job, covered in boils, though he was sinless; Lot’s wife looking back over her shoulder, though warned not to, her eyes wide and frightened, before being turned into a pillar of salt, God’s punishment for her disobedience; Joseph, full of himself in the multicolored coat that got him into so much trouble.
I loved the stories, loved thinking about them and trying to figure them out. Joseph was thrown into a pit by his jealous brothers and then ransomed into slavery in Egypt. God destroyed the world in the flood, and only Noah and his family survived. Cain killed Abel, his own brother. They were harsh stories, and within them, God walked and talked and communicated with people. I was a literal-minded child, and I imagined God hanging out in their neighborhood, popping up on the street unexpectedly. I wished God would do that still, show up at the courthouse square in Jasper or maybe just appear in the backyard while we were playing red rover.
Friday evening ended with us kneeling at the couch and chairs, heads bowed, and our father led the prayer. “We thank you great God for your Sabbath, and for all of the spiritual blessings you’ve given us, and we pray that you will continue to bless us and open our minds to your Truth, in Jesus’s name we pray, Amen.”
I added my own private prayer: that my parents would get along; that my extended family would join our church so we could all be saved; that I would get into the Kingdom; and that I would receive God’s Holy Spirit.
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On Saturday mornings, my father roused us with “Boys, girls, get up! You got to make hay while the sun shines!” We exited our rooms—there were two or three or four siblings per room, depending on the year, and we fought over access to the one bathroom. My brothers had it easy—they could go outside and pee behind the garage.
Then we ate a quick breakfast of oatmeal or Cream of Wheat. My mother was a devotee of anything natural and unprocessed and authentic. Wheat germ and blackstrap molasses were mainstays. We looked suspiciously on Cap’n Crunch.
My four brothers, scrubbed and pink-cheeked, ears jutting out below the almost military-style haircuts the church demanded, wore ill-fitting hand-me-down suits. My five sisters and I wore dresses that came to the middle of our kneecaps, in accordance with church doctrine. Just as Saturday was set apart from the rest of the week, I felt distinctly set apart from, and indeed superior to, our neighbors
