1950 Beginning School

1950  Eva Sterling Humrichouser, beginning elementary school,Christmas and Santa Claus, anxieties and my parents’ consolation, German measles, death of grandfather Martin Miller, April 1950; Holmesville classmates Benny Miller, Eli Hostetler, Patty Dilworth, Alice Ramseyer, Joyce Paulocsak, Roy Snyder, Sarah Miller, Mary Miller, Joe Gooding; Goodwill Book Exchange, Andrew’s publishing and piety.  

Fair seed-time had my soul, and I grew up

Foster’d by beauty and by fear;

Much favor’d in my birthplace,

I started school at the Holmesville Elementary school at age five with Eva Sterling Humrichouser; we called her Missus Humrichouser. School would begin early in September and I think my parents wanted me to go to school behind my two brothers, so we were always a grade apart. Eva Humrichouser was a patient and friendly, even jolly, woman. Having taught in a one-room school in the country-side earlier in her career, being a farmer’s wife, and having a son Sterling our age, she seemed thoroughly at home with young children. 

If Eva Humrichouser ever became angry with any of us, I do not remember it. She grew up in Prairie Township, had graduated from Holmesville High School in 1926 and was an experienced teacher by 1950. She, Roy Stallman and Nellie Siegenthaler all graduated in the same year (but the latter two are separate stories) and all three would be teachers of our family children by the time the three retired together in 1972.  Mrs. Humrichouser had already had my brother Roy in her class so she knew our family. 

Almost all of that first year I’m sure was a good experience, but I remember mostly the anxious moments. I may have been somewhat of an anxious child. For starters, I felt I was not drawing correctly a rabbit and a tree when we had art class. It was basically an assignment of drawing circles on top of each other for a rabbit and a tree with a trunk and a circle for a rounded and leafed maple type of tree. I knew I was not doing it right, would feel sick, lost sleep, and finally cried and one morning I went with my brothers as far as the railroad tracks. But then I shuffled around, told Paul and Roy I was sick, and turned around and went back home. I told my mother and father that I was not able to do my work at school and anyway, I was not feeling well with an upset stomach.

My father then went along to school with me; school was already in session when we arrived, and I took my seat while Andrew visited with Mrs. Humrichouser at the desk. It seemed like a long time. Then they came back to me, and both my father and my teacher assured me that my drawing was quite okay. Mrs. Humrichouser even stroked me on the head with her soft hand. It was an early learning that my anxiety could go high for no rational reason if not checked by other people. Later in life family members and office colleagues often helped me on this anxiety on a fairly regular basis, symbolically, stroking my head much as my first grade teacher and my father had done.

But there were other anxious moments. Another one came perhaps more at my teacher’s assumption about what would happen at the Holmesville School Christmas. Mrs. Humrichouser told us that Santa Claus would come to our class, and there was some feeling that he may be scary to me and the Amish children. In the Pennsylvania German culture, we already knew of a Santa Claus character called Belsnickle, and I recall one time my Uncle Melvin dressed up in red and white Belsnickle suit at Grandpa Levi L. Schlabach’s family. It was all kind of a joke, and we all knew it was Melvin. 

Still, my mother went along on the last day of school before Christmas when we had gift exchange and Santa appeared and gave us a little brown bag with an orange and candies, mainly what we called hard tack and chocolate drops. There were a number of parents there, and Santa like Belsnickle turned out to be funny rather than scary. Later in school Calvin Klingerman, the school custodian and also the town marshal, would often be our Santa, but I’m not sure who served in that first class. But it turned out to be simply a pleasant experience of having Mattie visit the school.  

Anxiety would be a regular visitor with me during my childhood and would visit me off and on for the rest of my life, whether real or imagined danger. I was not always a good judge. During this time, it began to show up early in sickness. Early during my school years (actually 1953), I got what we called the German measles, (Rubella); my brothers and I brought them home from school, and eventually the rest of the family got them. Most of my brothers and I got through it okay, but I developed a fever and some swelling along with the little red spots on my body. In my fever I would begin to hallucinate and have bad dreams of someone chasing after me with a club. I tried to run away, but I could never quite outrun the club because of the soft clouds in which I was walking; it was a terrible fright. The dream would go on and on, and then I would wake up all sweating and wet. One time I went into shaking and convulsions and my mother got cold water on a towel and put it on my forehead until I stopped shaking.  Whether this was my physiological sickness from the fever of the measles or my fear of dying I do not know.

Then just as we brothers were getting better, things got worse for the family. A few days later my parents got the measles, and now my mother and father were very sick. Rubella measles generally come to children at a fairly young age and are mild, but for my adult parents especially, it all was terrible and severe as they were in bed. My mother got a high fever and our family doctor Luther High came to visit our house. My mother lay on a sofa right in the living room, and she seemed so pale and weak, and I thought she was going to die.  During these days, Uncle Abe Schlabach came up and helped with the chores while Dad was sick and Grandma Martha Miller came up too while my mother was down, so their presence brought some excitement while fear of death was going on. About this same time it became quite common to take rubella immunization shots, but my father was quite skeptical of taking immunization shots, even several years later when polio was abroad.

Another time of anxiety would come during the night when I had bad dreams. These would come it seemed to me quite often as in nightmares I described above during the measles, and I could never get away. I would wake up frightened and shivering and would go down the winding steps and to my parent’s bedroom. At door entrance to the little bedroom off from the living room, I would say, softly “Mom, Dad,” and if no answer a little louder “Mom, Dad, I can’t sleep.” Then there would be a rustle and one of them would grunt “Okay, come on in.” It did not matter summer or winter; I would crawl in between my parents. They never said anything, but mumbled something like “There, now lie down, it’s all okay.”

Their bodies were warm and they had the slight and friendly smell of human perspiration. I could hear them breathing evenly and imagined that I was a little Duroc piglet (those were my father’s red breed) which was lying down with its litter, and soon I was asleep. Generally, when I woke up, it was morning, my parents were already gone from the bed. How often I did this, I do not recall, but I do recall that my parents always responded the same, as though this were the most natural thing in the world, that a child should have bad dreams and that the parents were sleepy old codgers. It had such a favorable impression on me that later in life as a young parent I always wanted to have our children finding their parents’ bed a safe haven when they had bad dreams. And now writing this as a grandparent, I discover that the good practice continues to the next generation.    

But we did have a real loss that year when my grandfather Martin Miller died on April 20. I had never known my Grandfather Martin very well so it did not make a big impression on me, except at the funeral itself; it was the first burial I ever attended. After the funeral, we went up to the family burial ground behind what is now Holmes Door and Lumber buildings near Sharp Run west of Berlin. At that time, it was then mostly an open field. The wooden coffin was transported up to the open grave and then there was a delay as the coffin had already been lowered into the rough box but not closed. The pall bearers all at once got out a screwdriver and the coffin was opened up, the top head part. I was standing in front of my grandmother Martha, and she kindly said, “Now, take your last look.” I later visited the grave site with my Aunt Betty Weaver, and she said that it was because she was sick with measles and could not come to the funeral inside a house, only to the burial outside so that they opened the coffin for her viewing at that point. 

The final thing that I remember about school was a pleasant one on one of the last days of school, either first or second grade, we had a class outing which probably was planned with my parents and the teachers; we had a school picnic at our family’s front lawn. I was so proud to have the students and teachers visit our farm, and I remember we gave our fellow classmates pony rides with our little pony called Patsy. In this early school experience I also met some friends which I considered life-long friends during my eight years at Holmesville School. These classmates are only a sampling, and from my first grade; I may mention others in later years.

I don’t have a grade one class photo, but standing next to me on the grade two photo was a good friend Ben Miller. Benny, as we called him, was the smartest student in our class, somewhat eccentric, and loved to read. Benny’s father Reuben was a minister in our church which had its complications given our family’s uneven relationship to the Amish church during those years. But somehow that issue never seemed to interfere with Benny and my friendship. Standing on the other side was Eli Hostetler from the large Tobias (Tobe) Hostetler clan who lived north of town. Eli seemed the strongest and healthiest of all the boys in our class. When we studied health and brushing teeth, he had the cleanest and whitest teeth, even though he claimed never even have had a toothbrush at home. 

Patty Dilworth lived west of town on a farm and was always a good friend. She had similar farm roots, and her family was a loyal member of the Church of Christ, and later in school when I sometimes read teenage romances of a pretty and virtuous small-town girl, I’d think of Patty. Alice Ramseyer was the closest we had to a bluestocking in Holmesville; her mother Della was a Patterson. And she was exotic; her father Robert was a veritable Swiss and our cheese maker.  The Ramseyers even had big many-toned cowbells, and her father once yodeled for us at a school assembly. Joyce Paulocsak was a Catholic, about the only one I knew during my elementary school years. But she and Patty were neighbors and friends, and it didn’t seem to matter. Joyce was smart too.  

Roy Snyder lived in Holmesville and was my best English-speaking friend in class; we affectionately called him Butch. He often visited our farm in the afternoons and summers, and when I heard later in life that Roy had some distinction in riding horses I was not surprised. Sarah Miller was from the large Melvin B. Miller family west of Holmesville, skipped school quite often to help her mother at home and still was usually the last one standing on spell-downs (well, along with Benny). She was really smart too. Another Miller who often sat near me alphabetically was Mary Miller, a very proper and pretty Amish girl who later married William Hochstetler and moved to Walnut Creek. 

Joe Gooding was the son of our church friend and the poet Lorie C. Gooding. The Goodings lived up on the woody hill, we called it a mountain, west of Holmesville. Joe missed school off and on, and did not have a very big interest in school studies. He had a Huckleberry Finn mystique (getting into trouble but well-meaning), and we boys liked him. I could name others, but these are some which stand out as I view the photo and think back of those days. 

In recess, we played softball but in the early grades we mainly played together with swings, a merry-go-round, and teeter totters. A railing on which the high part had swings provided endless enjoyment. And the lower rails had long teeter totters; if you were a little first grader like me you might have a friend join you if at the other side was a big heavy third-grader. The railing also provided a place where the English girls would do entertaining flips. For a first-grade-boy in a household of boys, this exhibition had all the entertainment of the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes.

In the meantime, our father Andrew continued his literary activities, especially in translating, writing, publishing and book selling. Goodwill Book Exchange, Box 3, Holmesville, Ohio, became the address of a new bookstore which Andrew started up in the small room behind our kitchen. People would visit the little store with German and English books mainly for Amish and conservative Mennonite readers, but Andrew also started a mail order business to the Amish constituency by advertising in The Budget. This broader distribution brought a stern rebuke from Levi A. Miller (better known as L.A.) who was editor of the German section of Herald der Wahrheit and operated a book store in Arthur, Illinois. He considered himself the exclusive Amish supplier, same as the Scottdale publishing house was for the Mennonites. Miller wanted to know why Andrew was advertising in The Budget when he had not bought out anyone’s book business or book store. And is this advertising not to “covet someone else’s trade; the Bible teaches us we should not covet.” Miller said John A. Raber of Baltic, Ohio, also said he was only going to serve the local community but soon he “worked some dirty tricks on me,” getting into the mail order business, so now several Amish book suppliers emerged.

L. A. Miller’s dismay may have over-estimated Andrew as a competitor because Andrew’s mail-order distribution which he did the rest of his life in various books and musical instruments was more a hobby than a business. Andrew sold German Bibles, Bible commentaries (Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, a favorite), hymn books and other mainstream Amish Mennonite books, but mainly he promoted specialty books which caught his attention. Among these were his grandfather’s deathbed admonitions to his children (below), Joseph A. Yoder’s Rosanna of the Amish, and the Dorothy Snapp McCammon missionary story in China, We Tried to Stay. He loved to get mail, and opening the mail was clearly a highlight of his day, but he never was seriously in the book business.   

In 1949, Andrew translated a copy of his grandfather Jacob A. Miller’s witness to future generations called “A Writing of Admonition.” His grandfather often called Andy Jake had written the admonition for his twelve children before he died on July 6, 1911, and the pamphlet was first published by Samuel D. Guengerich of the Amish Mennonite Publishing Association of Kalona, Iowa. The genre was a fairly common literature, to write a last confession or admonition to the next generation, at its best, a gift to the next generation. Miller urges his children to surrender themselves to God, follow the narrow way of Jesus and honor their parents. Andrew wrote in his 1949 introduction that he hoped the booklet “might encourage us to all to do good, and to have faith in Jesus, who is the salvation and hope to all of us, so that we, as children and descendants, may meet our dear parents and grandparents in yonder, beautiful land of the Redeemed. This is our wish.”  Andrew distributed many copies by mail from Goodwill Book exchange, and then re-issued it in 1992.

Admonitions were common among the Amish, and Andrew was already poised to present his own counsel to the young people or older people of his own generation or anyone who would listen, especially in regards to their personal piety, morals and habits. He was among the young Amish leaders often called the Amish Mission Movement who were concerned about some laxity in the community about such issues as bed courtship and tobacco use, traditional practices among some of the Holmes County Amish. One weekend his uncle Nathaniel and Elizabeth Miller came down from Hartville to visit us and go to church with us. Nathaniel (we called him Zeniel) was a minister, but this office and respect did not exempt him from being asked, more likely insulted, by us boys on why he used tobacco. This was a time when tobacco use was quite common among the general population, as well as the Amish, and I’m not sure whether he smoked cigars or chewed. But our parents mentioned the incident quite often to us, as though this rhetorical question were a badge of honor for their young children.

Actually, my father Andrew was not a purist during these years either; he carried cigars in the pocket in back of the buggy and would sometimes light up on the way home from church. I would later in life use my father and the British author and Christian apologist C.S. Lewis’ example to legitimize my own Sunday evening cigar or pipe smoke with a neighbor or friend.  Now, of course, our smoking came during much less tolerant and innocent days. Smoking was now proven to cause cancer, and considered a threat to public health, banished from the workplace and public spaces such as restaurants and school property.

“Fair seed-time had my soul” is from William Wordsworth, The Prelude, 1805, lines 301-3.   Jacob A. Miller’s A Writing of Admonition was published in a third edition (Holmesville: Miller Publishers, 1992). A copy is in the Andrew A. Miller collection in the Archives of the Mennonite Church. The book distributor Levi A. (L.A.) Miller’s comments are from a December 9, 1950, letter in the Andrew A. Miller collection in the Archives of the Mennonite Church, Goshen, Indiana.  Background on L.A. Miller came from a telephone conversation with David L. Miller of Partridge, Kansas, November 12, 2011.