1974 Lookout Camp

1974  Lookout Camp. Family gatherings on weekends; Andrew’s Lookout Camp, ponds and fish, signs; Paul and Carol, Roy and Ruby, David and Brenda, James, Rhoda and Jon Mast, Miriam and Veryl Kratzer, Ruth; Mennonite Publishing House editing stresses; moving to Bowling Green, Ohio, sources of income during graduate studies year.

In January we spent two weeks in the Caribbean, doing an article on our Puerto Rican friends the Josian and Auria Rosario family and having a week of vacation on St. John’s of the Virgin Islands. After our return from Puerto Rico, our family regularly got together on weekends at my parents’ place, often culminating with everyone gathering for the Sunday noon dinner. My mother would prepare a big noon meal and everyone would wander in. By this time David and Brenda had moved back to Wooster, and Paul and Carol and Roy and Ruby were nearby in Canal Fulton and Medina, respectively. Even James who had done a belated hippy and bohemian sabbatical to the West Coast had returned to Cleveland, although he was irregular at family events. Another event which pulled us all together was a mini-barn raising one Saturday when we built Andrew and Mattie a small chicken house for their Buff Orpingtons.  

These family gatherings changed from being largely young adults and dogs to the appearance of children. By 1974, Jacob and Kent were around and Amy was coming along in 1975. We had our usual discussions and debates at the table and the large kitchen dining room, and then went out into the large lawn for touch football. We were young and healthy and younger sisters and our wives would join in the games. Probably because we could all join together, touch football replaced basketball and softball as the Miller family sport during these years. The unwritten rules were that you could pound on your brother or brother-in-law at the line of scrimmage, but you made adaptations for his wife or a little sister. Often one of the teams would end the day with a trick play of sending a woman up the middle and everyone forming a wedge to protect her, or everyone blocking for a small child as the ball carrier. I don’t remember anyone ever getting seriously hurt in all the blocking, throwing, jumping and falls.

My father during these years was developing our woods into the Lookout Camp. We had about 20 acres of mainly woods along the east side of the Holmesville Fredricksburg Road, and my father slowly upgraded it. He initially placed a few picnic areas to putting in travel trailer sites, an office, an assembly building, and cabins. On Sundays during the summer, Andrew conducted worship services in the forenoon which provided a kind of outlet for his earlier pastoral role. More changes came when Andrew drilled for water and had a faucet for drinking water, and to provide for two small ponds, one for fish and one for swimming. In the shallow swimming pond, he placed a diving board, and the grandchildren enjoyed it although their mother’s had some question of its sanitation. There was no outlet to the pond, except drainage into the ground, hence a stagnate, dirty but comfortable little pool for the children. Still, I know of no one getting sick from it.

In the small fish pond Andrew stocked some goldfish and large carp, the largest of which he named Shamu. My father advertized Shamu on leaflets and on a sign announcing the Lookout Campground along Route 83 near Holmesville. Occasionally out-of-town visitors, who apparently had seen the mock heroic publicity, would drive up to Lookout and discovered that this Shamu was a large carp and not even close to the famous killer whale (orca) of Sea World fame. Andrew seemed unfazed by these misunderstandings and would show his prized fish along with some other animals and birds (all with individual names) in a petting zoo. He invited the big carp to the water’s edge with some little feeding pellets. Andrew was quite protective of his fish, whether from unauthorized fishing or from natural predators such as the Great Blue Heron. He kept a 22-rifle at the camp office, and one day when a heron was overhead looking for a meal, Andrew got the rifle and shot him out of the sky. He told us with some satisfaction that his action should teach the herons to leave his fish alone.

Aside, from Shamu and the carp, Andrew also advertised Lookout Camp’s Indian mounds. Some subsidence types of hollow spots were on top of the ridge, and my father considered them to be Indian creations, possibly to give off smoke signals. One time when I visited, he had a group of students and an Old Testament professor from Malone College digging for Native American artifacts; I think they found mostly glass bottles and shards. The professor had done archeology digs in Israel, and for Andrew this seemed quite conclusive evidence of the authenticity of these Indian mounds.

In any case, identification signs went up. The camp was well marked, and one could drive up a winding lane with round signs noting speed limits, no hunting, Indian mounds, and one pointing in the general direction of the woods for a Great Horned Owl’s nest. Andrew loved signs and regularly added new ones and updated old ones whether by a professional sign pointer, a [William, I believe] Faught in Wooster, or with his own script. After Andrew’s death, there were plenty of signs to be distributed among the off-spring. Here’s one I kept:

Take NOTICE  

No Fire-Works (No Water Pistols) of any Sort in the Park

No Guns, Toy Guns & BB’s

--Public Law Code B44

I once commended Andrew on his research in referencing the state's "Public Law Code." No, Andrew said, he had simply written his own law and code for the sign. He seemed pleased with its effectiveness. Meanwhile, In business, Andrew was now in the Skyline Mobile home business; he and Mattie put macadam on the field behind the house, put up an office on our old basketball court, and sold mobile homes. Generally, he was successful, and when my father had money, he gladly gave it away too. During these early seventies years, as we were leaving for home back to Scottdale, Pennsylvania, he would often write out a check of fifty dollars, saying here, this will pay for your gas and get a good meal.

My mother helped Andrew with his with mobile home and camp projects and provided some financial management or as she called it brakes (from impulsive decisions). But the main change in her life came in 1975, when at age 57 Mattie got her chauffeurs license and started driving the school bus at Holmes Training Center. By this time her youngest daughter Ruth was heading for college, and the bus driving was a good match for Mattie, getting up early in the morning, meeting with Andrew for brunch and returning on her route in the early afternoon. For fifteen years, she carried on this morning and afternoon routine, becoming somewhat of a legend among the Holmes County families with handicapped children, and retiring with decent state benefits at age seventy-two. I’ll catch up with various members of the family.

Paul age 32 and Carol Stevens were living in Canal Fulton, Ohio, and Paul had joined the law office of Amer and Cunningham in Akron, Ohio.  Carol was an English teacher at the Jackson High School near Massillon. I’ll backtrack a little on Paul life; he had graduated from the University of Akron Law School in 1972 where he had studied for three years. He and Carol were married on June 10 of 1967, and for the next two years, he taught of English at the Central Christian High School in Kidron while Carol was finishing her undergraduate degree at Malone. I well remember Paul and Carol while they were still in Canton, one day he told me he was heading for Law School that Fall. It seemed the most natural thing in the world, although I knew he was also considering graduate studies in history. By the summer of 1975, Paul and Carol moved to Millersburg where he joined the brothers John and Judson Schuler Law office, and they built a new house in Millersburg, and their daughter Amy was born on November 21, 1975.

Roy age 31 and Ruby were in Cincinnati from 1969 to 1973 where Roy was at the University of Cincinnati Medical School. I remember visiting them several times, in fact attending one of his graduation exercises with my parents; they were so proud. Then Roy and Ruby moved to Medina, Ohio, where Roy joined another partner in a family practice in a bedroom community. Roy developed a good medical practice and among his patients were the families of some of the Cleveland Browns players. He and Ruby at this point joined a fairly affluent suburban young professional set in hosting dinners, golf outings and various benefits.  Roy, however, always kept one hand in mechanics, and bought some 1930s Ford Model A roadsters which he kept in good shape. Ruby had a little Schnauzer dog or two which she kept well-groomed and behaved. But by September 13 of 1976, little Andrew was born, and they were busy with family issues. They called him Drew.  

David age 26 and Brenda left the Washington D.C. International Guest House in 1971, and moved to Elkhart, Indiana, where he was invited to becoming a Voluntary Service (VS) director and later placement officer when Kent was born October 13, 1972. Although David was a history and secondary education major in college, after student teaching he soon trended toward administrative and financial positions. After Kent’s arrival and the untimely death of Brenda’s father James Bricker, David and Brenda moved to Wayne County where in 1974, David became Central Christian High School’s first development director. A year later, when the Central principal office became vacant, David filled in as the school’s executive for a year. By 1977, he joined Wayne Savings as a branch manager. A daughter Abigail (usually called Abby) was born December 29, 1976, and Brenda was busy with the two young children.   

James age 23 by the mid-seventies, having seemed such a promising adolescent, was on a prolonged detour, the destination unknown; he had returned to Ohio from Berkley, Oakland, Portland, and other stops along the West Coast. After leaving Central Christian High School in 1970 where he had considerable achievements in student leadership, James went to Goshen College for a year(1970-71)  and then to Washington D.C. (1971-72) where he joined a radical Christian men’s commune, largely male graduate students. The group seems to have been related to International Christian Leadership and the Church of the Savior, but James was always vague to me about this year, and I had the impression that something went bad during this time. By Summer of 1972, James fled the commune and was living as a bohemian poet on the West Coast, ushering at movie houses, and eating and sleeping at shelters; our brother Roy went out to visit him, once in California and another time in Oregon. James loved alcohol (as well as some other substances) to excess during those years, and I remember one Sunday when a bottle of wine was served at a family gathering, James drinking most of it himself, talking animatedly and causing considerable embarrassment. When James returned east in the mid-seventies, he moved into the coal bin in our parents’ basement for a while and then into the corn crib in the back of the barn. By the Fall of 1974, James made his way up to Cleveland, and within a year or two had a night job at the emergency room reception desk of St. Luke’s Hospital and by 1977 was starting to take university classes again.

Interestingly, for all the theological flavors of Maple Grove Mission and our father’s flings with exotic Christian movements, my brothers and sisters, with the exception of James, invariably attended a Mennonite church or fellowship where ever we lived. Mattie and Andrew associated this pattern with the effectiveness of their prayers.

Rhoda age 20 graduated from Central Christian High School in 1972 and studied at Goshen College for a year. Rhoda was an extrovert and a leader and may have been singular in our family as a high school cheerleader. She loved music, and while still in high school teamed up with Clyde Sundheimer’s close harmony quartet called “The Journeymen,” a regional phenomenon, even having a bus and singing "I Wouldn't Take Nothing for my Journey Now." They made a 33-long-play record which I wish I could hear again. Rhoda sang a high tenor as an alto, and played all over the piano keyboard. I believe the only time I heard them in person was when they opened for a visiting Southern gospel quartet at Hiland High School; it was all so beautiful until the featured group sang Merle Haggard’s “Walkin’ on the fightin’ side of me,” an angry backlash anthem to the Vietnam peace movement. On May 19, 1973, Rhoda married Jon Mast, a dairy farmer from the Abram and Mary Mast family near the Martins Creek between Berlin and Millersburg. The Masts had a large herd of Holsteins which they milked three times a day in a new electronic milking parlor; it seemed as though Orlando’s Epcot Center had moved right up to Holmes County and automatically fed, bred, and milked the Mast cows. Rhoda soon continued her studies in education at Malone College.

Miriam age 18 had a busy year in 1974. In May, she graduated from Central Christian High School in Kidron and by August 3, she and Veryl Kratzer were married. Veryl was from the Kidron Loyal and Rosa Kratzer farm family. Miriam did a senior paper on Amish tourism for one of her classes, and I remember we went over to Lancaster County to check out the scene. We visited with Joseph and Sadie Beiler near Gordonville, Pennsylvania. Miriam loved a cause, and the Beilers were ready for her; Joseph had even written an article on the negative aspects of tourism calling it the Amish Trojan Horse; I helped him get it published in Gospel Herald (June 8, 1976). 

I don’t know how Miriam’s paper turned out, but she and Veryl graduated in style—their own of course. I think Miriam refused to wear a gown and Veryl wore a short one with the pant legs rolled up and no socks. Miriam’s theatrical simplicity also extended to a charming peasant wedding later that summer at Millersburg Mennonite Church. As I recall, orange juice and donuts were served for the reception. The main drama was the rumor that James had come back from the West Coast with plans to stop the wedding ceremony, Jane Eyre style; I don’t remember what James’ reasons were. Miriam and Veryl moved to Berlin for a while and took care of Grandpa Levi L. Schlabach. But Miriam had a heart for children, and by January 6, 1976, Amos was born, more to come.

Ruth age 16 was a student at Central Christian High School, and I remember one evening attending a basketball game where she played and brother David gave the introductions. Of all of us children, Ruth probably had the longest unified church experience attending and joining the Millersburg Mennonite Church during her childhood and youth. I remember one evening she went to her instruction class with Bishop Roman Stutzman and preparing for baptism. Ruth and her sisters helped Andrew during his Skyline mobile home business years. He often talked proudly of the girls helping set up the trailers, blocking them and seeing that they were level and then attaching the aluminum skirting below the trailers.

Ruth was the last with Andrew and Mattie, and already in high school she had a colorful fraktur Heinz Gaugel painted hope chest. My parents’ hopes were not in vain; in high school she had a classmate John Roth who by his telling had already spotted her as a little pig-tailed girl who had accompanied our mother Mattie when she visited the Roth family, Mattie selling them a set of World Books. Mattie sold enough World Books to get our own family a free set to see the world—at least in print--and John and Ruth became friends during high school and later at Goshen College. Often at family gatherings and Christmas, we had talent shows. During these years, Ruth and John regaled the grandchildren and all of us with their original puppet shows. 

But back to Scottdale. After four years, I was ready to leave for a while. And since the rest of our staff had graduate degrees, the MPH management agreed I could continue with a master’s degree in English. I had some success in editing; Paul Lederach had me pull together a number of family essays and turn them into a discussion guide The Family in Today’s Society which went through several printings. I also picked up editing the Youth Bible Study Guide for Sunday school classes which hit a complication one quarter when my friend Arnold Cressman wrote the lessons. Arnold was enthralled by the sixties youth culture (his idea of a good Lord’s Supper was now of a group-sharing with Coke and chips), and he loved the colloquial Gospel writings of the Southern farmer theologian Clarence Jordan.  The word dude regularly entered his Bible study lexicon; I don’t remember if dude was applied to Jesus or some other New Testament character, but I unwisely allowed it to stand. Boxes of quarterlies were returned to Scottdale, and letters complained that we used slang terms in our church literature.

This incident and some others related to With, the youth magazine, evoked a one-day editorial, marketing and management meeting on how we were serving our constituency, our market, and the Mennonite churches. These meetings gave ambivalent tones because two signals came across; one was that we should not offend the traditionalists too much so that they stop buying our curriculum and periodicals. The second message was that we should offend the conservatives sufficiently to remind them that they are on the wrong side of history, and that we were the prophets announcing the future. We were resurrecting the left wing of the reformation, and hence on the vanguard of history’s 1960s, what we considered to be progressive. In essence as editors, we could largely do as we wished, and most wished for the prophetic mantel.

One need hardly comment on what this posturing meant for our eroding market share and evoking customer loyalty.  I remember walking home with my neighbor Jan Gleysteen after the meeting and asking whether I should resign. No, he said, this is simply a part of publishing and teaching the unwashed American Mennonites, apparently still not up to the European Dutch standards; to him it was all understandable. And then there were our General Conference (GC) cousins; that Fall, I went to Mennonite historical committee meetings at Wichita and Newton, Kansas where these Russian Mennonites were celebrating 100 years of living in North America. It was a trip I would often take for the next three decades because we cooperated with them on many projects.

For our immediate family that Fall was a time of moving to an apartment at 300 Napoleon Road, Bowling Green, Ohio, to start graduate school classes. MPH had a generous education program for employees called supplemental education in which gave a grant of up to $3,200 a year for training, with the understanding that one needed to work six years to redeem the cost. I used to call it indentured servitude, but with no complaints; it was a fair exchange.  I had already been accepted in Bowling Green State University back in 1968 and they simply renewed my application. So a part of the financing came from my graduate school graduate teaching assistantship which covered tuition costs.

I also mentioned to my mother that I may need another thousand, and she said why don’t you go back and talk to Uncle Roy; this would have been her brother the Amish bishop who was guardian of our grandfather Levi L. Schlabach’s life savings. Now in his eighth decade, my grandfather was in a stage called in Pennsylvania German kindisch (childish); today, it would probably be called an early stage of Alzheimer’s. So I went to see Roy, and he said, sure come back tomorrow and I’ll go up and draw some money out of the Killbuck bank at Berlin. The next afternoon, as I was driving back to Roy and Iva’s home on the Weaver Ridge near Berlin, I passed him along the road; he waved me to stop. He leaned out from the buggy and handed me an envelope with the check. He said pay it back but no interest which I did within the next few years. I don’t think I ever paid interest on any family loans.   

Additional income that Fall at Bowling Green came from a sign on a bulletin board at school announcing good hourly pay for unloading tomatoes at night on weekends. I went to a nearby Heinz processing plant, was hired on the spot, to help unload large semi and dump trucks of tomatoes onto a conveyer belt with the foreman happily shouting obscenities with each sentence. By the end of the night I had a new appreciation for the word fuck and all its variations as a verb, noun, adjective and adverb. I remember about midnight taking a lunch break in a dining room with a fellow worker who was on a 40-hour weekly shift. I asked him how he liked it, thinking he may feel a little demeaned as I did. On the contrary, he said he really liked it; it was a good pay check for his family. After two weekends, our tomatoes unloading season was over, and I decided to take my co-worker’s point of view. It helped to pay groceries.

But then I soon learned we could buy our groceries at no or low cost; many of my graduate school neighbors were getting food stamps. So I went in to the welfare offices and applied. The counselor seemed as eager to provide them for me as I was to get them, and that winter we had plenty of food. When I mentioned the food stamps to one of my family members, they were taken aback, as though we had stolen some money. So I don’t think we said much about it or to Gloria’s family although they all knew. In any case, we managed okay with additional income from Gloria herself working at a Lawson Store at the end of our street. From our first meeting at the ice cream eatery The Spot, I have noticed that Gloria’s unruffled goodwill and efficiency makes her a natural at retail where ever she goes. Still Lawson retailing ended at Christmas. Gloria was pregnant, and expecting our second child in January.  

This chapter comes from memory, family conversations, and my personal files of this period.