Growing up Mennonite...

Night Rides

There were so many “No’s” in my religion.  I grew up Mennonite. NO!  NO!  NO! You can’t play cards.  You can’t go to movies. You can’t own a TV. You can’t drink. You can’t date until you are 35, then you have to date a Mennonite girl. You can’t do drugs, street racing, cross border cigarette smuggling, steel cars, watch lap dancers, counterfeit money, lust thy neighbour’s wife, get a divorce or watch Elvis Presley even if you could find a TV to watch it on.  The list just went on and on.  I grew up in a very legalistic and black and white world.  I think I was the only kid in my school who never stole a car, and I had pimples. 

I am exaggerating a bit because we actually were allowed to play cards, but not the regular normal cards that high rollers in Vegas would use with pictures of medieval figures on them.  No, we played something invented to avoid the evils of medieval symbolism called ROOK. 

What is ROOK you may ask. Well I told you it is a card game that only Mennonites play.  The sad thing in my case is that I neither am comfortable with the secular, worldly, sinful,  English cards, nor do I know how to play ROOK.  To this day in many ways because of my Mennonite upbringing I am a social misfit.  I am forever trapped between two worlds. All Mennonites can play ROOK and all Canadians know poker.

In Mennonite circles on New Years Eve or Friday night when someone says, “Hey, let’s play some ROOK.”  I usually shrink against a wall because I don’t know the rules and I really don’t want to play.  Or, if I am at some non-Mennonite function, like a stag or an Islamic wedding ceremony, for example, and the guys are saying phrases like, “Lets play Texas Hold-um, jacks are wild, one free card, five card deal.”  I am equally baffled.  But I just fake it, look intently at my hand like I actually know what I am doing and sip slowly on my Labatt’s Blue and hope that no one finds me out.  

I shouldn’t say I am a total social misfit when it comes to cards because my friends in Fort McMurray, where I lived for 20 years, would on occasion, when they were either bored, desperate or restless invite me out to play cards at five cents a point.  I know I was invited because of my zero capacity drinking ability coupled with my propensity to lose money in poker because I didn’t know a queen from a jack, which sadly I might add also had implications in other facets of my private life.

I could never catch on to Bridge either.  So this may no longer be a Mennonite thing and more an ADHD phenomena. I can’t remember which cards have been played an essential skill in playing Bridge, or any other card game. I don’t do well with sequencing or short and long term memory skills.  My lack of spatial skills are near legendary.  I once even took a evening course to study the intricacies of the game, but the classes took place after work during my first year of teaching and I was way to spent to pay attention to an instructor, no matter how pretty, telling me how to bid.  I do know how to play Fish, Crazy Eight’s, and Strip Poker, but those skills came much later in life.  

I’m serious about the Elvis Presley thing though.  I think most conservative church groups, not just Mennonites, Baptists and Muslims and reactionary Budhists were also banned from watching Elvis rotate his hips.  I could be wrong but when Elvis first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show (okay my family had a TV, more on that later) he was only filmed from the waist up. 

I did see the Beatles, also on Ed Sulivan, and these mop head guys were full figure and the most amazing thing I have ever seen. In their black suits and bowl cut haircuts they almost looked Mennonite. My favourite songs today are still Beatle tunes and I still want to do my Haj to Abbey Road one day. How could such pure joy be a banned substance.  I could never understand that. Lady Madonna sounded like a religious theme to me.

Church officials, or just my Sunday School teachers in general would get all excited when certain suggestive lyrics were played on the Buffalo WKBW FM station. For example, for some reason I remember the lyrics “Love the one you’re with...” from a popular song.  I also recall that it caused a real shit storm of activity and was a particular favourite amongst young listeners.  Even to this day I think affectionately of WKBW as being my "Radio Free Europe" during the Cold War of growing up Mennonite. 

I did get to see a few movies. Walt Disney feature animations and other family type entertainment eventually gained the good house keeping seal of approval.  The first movie I ever saw in a theatre was in my hometown of St Catharines, Ontario in one of the downtown theatres, which is probably condemned today. Have you seen that place recently?  I saw A Swiss Family Robinson.  I remember the day and the movie clearly.  

Disney created a yearning in me to see movies which fell beyond the bounds of sanctioned material.  I saw non-Disney movies at the drive in with my non-Mennonite friends. That was another crazy thing.  I had two sets of friends.  My school friends who were of the world and my church-Mennonite friends who wanted to be of the world.

On sleep over nights, adventurous camping in our back yard we would set up our canvas refugee style tent, the one without the floor, get out our kerosine lanterns and flashlights with our Canadian Tire flannel sleeping bags and prepare to “rough it.”  It was  during these special nights, (and for some reason our parents trusted us), we would quickly betray that trust get dressed and silently walk our bikes off the property.  We were en route for the Lakeshore Drive In a mere three miles away, no idea what it was in metric back then, but things did seem further as a kid.

We drove our bikes to the back of the drive end, through fields that are probably sub divisions today.  Military style we would crawl on our bellies through the thick grass to the very edge of the gravel covered drive in parking lot.  One of us would dash to the back row and turn on at least five speakers to full volume, then run back to camouflage in the grass cover. We saw ourselves as commando-like theatrical voyeurs  From our excellent vantage point we could see the big screen and hear it in all its splendor.  This was far better than Dolby surround sound today.  Somethings do not get better with technology.

If we were really feeling brave and had some extra money we would, one at a time, casually walk up to the refreshment stand and get some popcorn and while walking back to our “car” we would be sure to check out what couples were doing in their cars other than watching the movie.  I don’t think any members of the Swiss Family Robinson did any of this stuff.  This was a real adventure and a marvelous education for me. Thankfully, by the time I became a parent drive in theatres had died a slow death.  No daughter of mine would be allowed to go to one.  I know a double standard when I see one.

On the way back from the feature presentation we might pass by a local owner operated Texaco gas station for a bottle of pop.  We made sure we brought some straws with us from the drive in and to select a type of pop machine now out of production for obvious design flaws, which I will now illustrate.  

A special feature of the machine in question gave access to the pop bottles by opening up the lid like a horizontal refrigerator.  The various types of pop were arranged in rows.  The consumers, that would be us, simply had to put in their dime (yeah pop was 10 cents) slide the pop to a latch that would open for the convenient extraction of a single bottle.  

We circumvented the dime and the sliding part, because in addition to the straws we also had bottle openers with us.  It was a simple matter of opening a bottle in a vertical position sticking in a straw and drinking. Mind you we had to drink fast and certain conveniences and civilities were lost in the process, but it sure tasted good after watching a fine movie during our night rides.  Like I said for some reason this make of pop cooler did not stay on the market long. I guess they never included me in the market study. 

Yes, growing up Mennonite had its specific set of challenges and as you can see presented certain limitations to a normal childhood, but in retrospect when does No really mean No?

Now let me tell you about stolen cars.