Artisans and Minor Misdemeanors

Artisans and Minor Misdemeanors

One of my favourite places to go on a Saturday morning, despite the crowds, is the Mennonite Farmers’ Market in St Jacobs.  I am told, because I have not really done any significant research in order to write this book, that next to Niagara Falls and Graceland, St Jacobs is the greatest tourist attraction in Southern Ontario.  This could be yet another rural myth.  Whatever the stats say Canadians  have a passion for anything Mennonite, which may explain why you bought this book in the first place.  As observers we revel at the opportunity to see Mennonites in their natural habitat.  Mennonites are a modern day enigma.

Now I would be the first to admit that there are lots of things at that farmers market that have nothing to do  with  either farmers or Mennonites, in fact I have no idea why certain obviously non-Mennonite vendors are there other than sheer opportunism.  In addition to the genuine Mennonite products such as pork sausages, pork chops, pork by-products, pork bacon, complete living pigs, (sorry I am writing this while still living in Kuwait, a Muslim country with a hate on for all things pork and I am hallucinating), one can also buy cheap toys from capitalistic Red China, plastic models, tube socks, velvet paintings picturing sad street kids and Hispanic looking women with large eyes, and once I bought a soft and cuddly blanket with a picture of a zebra on it.  My wife got a toe ring;  so there is a range of items from which to choose.  However, the genuine Mennonite produce and products are characterized by a high level of skill, quality and craftsmanship. 

As a Mennonite in the more ethnic sense of the word, coming from good German/Dutch  stock I too take great pride in my own craftsmanship, although I’m  not really known as a technical person, a handyman or  even the type of person a woman would call on if something needed fixing. I did replace a light bulb once.  I hasten to add, as I rise to my own defense, I did, as a kid, make a pretty mean alley-gun.  Some Mennonites, in the true Gandian sense of the word are well steeped in the realms and philosophical constructs of non-violence and passive resistance.   While others like myself and my childhood friends thought that a “people’s underground militia” was not necessarily a faulty back up plan. 

Remember that scene in the movie entitled Witness, starring Harrison Ford in which he posses undercover as an Amish?  In this particular scene he is baited into a fight by some secular asshole, and as the Harrison Ford character rose to the heckler’s taunts, he struck out and punched one of them.  It was a good clean punch by any standard.  This scene has high viewer ratings (I just made that up); I still remember it though, because everyone likes to see the underdog win. It is part of the American ethos.  

What’s the moral of the story?  It’s this, as a result of Ford’s most excellent, well placed and timely punch the secular-asshole-hecklers gave the Amish a wide birth and maybe lived to respect, or maybe even fear the potential threat posed by any Amish male.  Assuming for a moment that Harrison Ford actually is Amish, and Hollywood movies are real, his actions may, i.e. that of a single person, be generalized to the larger non-Amish population to the point that all Amish can be viewed as potential and latent secret urban street fighters and therefore should not be messed with.  

Obviously some degree of transference had taken place for me personally, when as a kid, and despite the fact I had not yet seen Harrison Ford play his Amish roll, I wanted to be that secret Mennonite super hero with the black cape, the speedy black stallion (buggy optional) with a long whip, and a hot Amish girl friend modeled after Penelope Cruz. I guess much like a modern day Mennonite Zorro.  I think I look good in basic black.

 As a kid I took great pride in Mennonite craftsmanship and tended to embrace the concept of “urban Zorro-like street fighters” because of my fascination with guns. And so it came to pass I fabricated my first marble gun, so called because it fired a small alley or marble with an incredible muzzle velocity enough to severely dent the door of any moving vehicle.  I know.

I can’t actually take credit for the invention of this crude but effective weapon because living in the shadow of my more technically ept brother who probably got the idea from a friend and this tradition has been passed on likely since the early days of the Protestant Reformation.  However, in 1958, lacking the capacity to Google building instructions for hand held weapons, as spoiled kids are able to do today, we had to improvise.  Times certainly have changed and literally knowledge is power.

A marble gun is actually a simple project.  The main raw material is a piece of pipe about a foot long, either copper or lead and readily available at most residential construction sites.  Today kids can buy the pipe at Home Depot, but where’s the fun in that?  The pipe must be flattened at one end, but not sealed.  This procedure is easily done with a hammer also available at the above mentioned outlets.  To fire this handheld instrument one only has to insert a fire cracker, which must, in diameter, correspond to that of the opening of the pipe. The wick of the fire cracker should extend through the slit at the flattened end of the pipe.  Insert one marble being cognizant of the fact that the closer the marble diameter is to the inside diameter of the pipe the more forceful the fire power, as little energy will be wasted. A marble too small or a pipe too large would be an ineffective weapon, or as I like to say, a kinetic toy.  Now try to imagine those same directions I just gave you done by an IKEA artist using key Swedish terms and I think you are at a mastery level.  

Now there you stand with pipe in hand, loaded and all that is lacking is a target.  Stationary targets pose little challenge and we, my friends and I, quickly graduated to moving targets, and really what moves better than a car, a rhetorical question I know.

Disclaimer:

It is safe to finally come out of the “closet” so to speak and tell this story now as I am a grandfather and soon to be 60 years old at the time of this writing, which means the statute of limitations has by this time run out about five decades ago.  I am no longer liable in a legal, and I’m sure in any moral sense, to any of our youthful pranks, miscellaneous misdemeanors and lives I may have ruined along the way.

It was a warm summer evening about dusk near an abandoned warehouse at the edge of town.  I have always wanted to write those words in a story, but since they don’t really apply here it should actually read: It was a warm summer evening about dusk as my friends and I walked through a vineyard about a half mile north of base camp, a tent in my backyard.  We had been practicing with our alley guns the previous week and soon grew to know the characteristics of each in terms of range and force.  Shooting at and denting metal garbage cans was fun for awhile, but our quarry that day was anything with wheels on Vine Street.

In debriefing with my cognitive therapist many years after these events transpired and when asked, by my support group, the fundamental question.  “Why would you do such a dumb-ass thing?”  I really couldn’t answer.  I would like to say I was just following orders, or it was all about peer pressure, or simply I suffered from some mal adaptive personality disordered caused by generations of suppressed aggression due to the Mennonite propensity towards and support of a passive resistant life style.  Who really knows?  Maybe I just liked Harrison Ford.

In our adolescent minds the parallel rows of a vineyard were much like the rows of trenches used in World War I land battles on the Western Front.  We fancied ourselves soldiers.  Each row in a vineyard has a mound supporting the roots and probably keeping in moisture which also served as a good place to hide behind and observe the enemy.  Kurt, Walter, John, Marv and I lay side by each waiting for the first car.  We really only had American automobiles to target because our automobile markets had not yet been breached by cheaper high quality foreign imports.  The phrase, “What was good for GM was good for America” still had some meaning back then. In retrospect I view our collective actions as a very early preemptive strike against NAFTA.  We weren’t delinquents we were enlightened political activists and as in any righteous protest their would be some collateral damage.  Retrospective rationalization is a marvelous tool. 

I lit a match, held it to the fuse of my alley gun, stood and held it away from my face.  I led my target by about fifty feet, it, a 54 green Pontiac was at a range of about 100 feet and then the ensuing explosion.  My hand recoiled slightly there was a pause, the acrid smell of gunpowder and then nothing.  I missed my first shot.  Shit! 

If nothing else my religion had taught me to be persistent and like Nelson at Trafalgar we held our firing line and waited.  Each of the five alley guns was primed and loaded.  We timed the lighting of the fuses with the next approaching car and then bang, bang, bang we fired in quick succession.  Just as in a firing squad no single individual knows who hit the target, but we all knew that someone did. 

The driver of the target car, the one with the huge dent in his door, slammed on his brakes and leapt from the car and ran wildly into the vineyard.  Our “target” had the advantage of an angry adrenaline rush cursing through his veins.  He ran like a madman.  By this time we took off like Jack-the-Bear at warp speed.  If we had Klingon cloaking devices we would have used them.  We did have the advantage of a head start and our foolish energetic youth. We also had the adrenaline rush from extreme levels of fear.  Our big plus, which put us over the top was that we knew the terrain.  We had home team advantage. We also had trained for years in many of our hide and seek games as to how to travel between rows of a vineyard at top speed.  It was all about drop and roll.  Leap through the vine, roll, stand, two steps and leap.  It was all about pace and rhythm. We were poetry in motion. We also knew that when we got out of the vineyard into the residential streets on the other side we had to split up in five directions and not return to base camp.  

But, after all is said and done and the dust settles, what did we learn from this bizarre and scary foray into the dark side?   And I hasten to add that we only did that same dumb stunt with the marble guns one more time before finding some other mindless diversion.  I’ll talk about potato guns in a later chapter. 

I can tell you in all honesty I, and I can’t speak for the others, learned lots. I learned that with proper training, practice, steely nerves with the use of a strategic group plan with proper communication and logistics one can accomplish almost anything. We were apt students. Growing up meant living on the edge.  I think we did our Anabaptist ancestors proud. They often had to flee from their Catholic oppressors; somehow history has an odd way of repeating itself.

Marty Rempel

From..

“Growing Up Mennonite”

Growing Up Mennonite: An Entrepreneurial Legacy

An Entrepreneurial Legacy

Mennonites are also renowned for their entrepreneurial skills. The Russian Mennonites from the Ukraine were not only land owners, they created and controlled the means of productions, ironically a skill set that cost them dearly during the Russian Revolution a time when ownership, wealth and control were actually a bad thing, who wants to own the land when the peasants finally revolt?

My family, on my mother’s side, were wealthy land owners while on my father’s side they owned a farm implement factory. Later my grandfather sold his share in the family business so he could finance his training as the first professional photographer in his village. He cornered the market. I come from great stock.

As a child I think I had the potential to continue the entrepreneurial legacy as a representative of the first Canadian born generation of my family. My father who actually lacked those entrepreneurial skills did possess a strong unionist mentality yet never joined a union. I’m not sure what he saw in me, either a social agitator for workers rights or a capitalist king and the peasant be damned, at any rate, my father launched my brief retail merchandizing career. Perhaps, he was looking for a wood working project to keep him busy and out of my Mother’s hair, or he wished to rekindle, in the New World, the Rempel flair for entrepreneurship.

My dad built me what I considered to be a state of the art retail roadside lemonade stand with franchise possibilities with great potential for expansion. With no training and lots of enthusiasm I established the first family retail outlet on Vine Street conveniently located and the end of our gravel drive way. My supply chain was a short one.

I was no stranger to retail as my older brother had earlier that year split his lucrative paper route with the St Catharines Standard and sold me at current market value, 8 paper route customers. I think these were the outliers to his rather concentrated core route. By selling these fragmented scattering of customers he could focus on his main route and be done much faster. For me it was an opportunity, eventually the neighbourhood grew with development characteristic of the sixties and my paper route soon numbered over 36 paying customers. I realized before my time the potential of the “Freedom 55” concept. I was motivated to succeed.

I’m not sure if Donald Trump ever delivered papers, but he should have, it would have given him some of the people skills he now lacks. I learned much about organization, planning and dealing with unreasonable customer rage, miscellaneous dog attacks and deadbeat customers who would not pay and never tipped at Christmas. Despite the various hurtles to success I delivered the paper with the ardor of a pony express rider of the previous century.

It was the night of the” Perfect Storm” when the elements of nature conspired against me to challenge my natural born zeal. I shielded my face against the icy gale force winds that had quickly arisen from the NW as the barometric pressure did a brief pirouet on the barometer dial and dove to record lows. I could barely see the sidewalk as I struggled against the icy tides to get the days news, stories of intrigue and disaster, rape and mayhem, safely and firmly planted behind a storm door, into a snug mailbox or milk box as prescribed by my customers who are seemly always right.

The first abdominal pains I felt that evening while delivering in the Arctic temperatures were generalized, but as the rest of my body progressively grew numb from the cold the pain began to focus on my right side. It was intense. As I struggled to keep my balance, with folded newspaper in hand, I eventually succumbed to the searing pain as my appendix smugly snug and warm at the end of my intestine was about to burst. I stumbled, went to my knees and finished with a rough little tumble into the ditch. Cold, in pain and now hidden from the rest of the world in a hard hitting winter snow storm I lay waiting for my redemption, a rescue I thought in my delirious state would be nice at this point.

On a few previous occasions my short little insignificant life had flashed before me in other near death out of body experiences, but when least prepared, with no prep time the story is usually brief and fragmented with many gaps and poor character and plot development, no dramatic arc, sub plots or nemesis or cathartic insights. It was like puff this is it. You are going to freeze to death in a ditch.

Today, I keep my complete and totally unabridged life story on a flash drive in case any near or potentially near death experiences should arise. I wear clean underwear like my mother taught me and I am prepared. That frigid night was different. My retail world, of being a paper delivery boy in sub-Arctic conditions brought me many painful lessons about sacrifice and duty and other miscellaneous insights about life that I cling to this day. Values to a little Mennonite boy are sometimes learned in a ditch.

My dad, realizing that I was out in a storm, and very late in getting home launched an organized grid search with my brother who was toasty warm after quickly delivering his paper route, you remember the concentrated one designed for ease and efficiency of delivery, while I had the Resolute Bay version lying in a ditch as my appendix was about to burst. They found me that Spring in surprisingly good form. I had learned remarkable survival skills while waiting for a rescue and had bonded with an old volleyball I discovered in the culvert. I called him Spalding. We became life time friends.

My appendix was operated on at the Hotel Dieu Hospital, which I thought was actually either a soft drink or a Holiday Inn type bed and breakfast. Dieu really has something to do with heaven, as many of their patients eventually go there, the hospital is somewhat like a staging area for the doomed. They treated me well even though they made me walk on the first day after my operation. I shouted obscenities somewhat like a Panamanian sailor, words my parents didn’t know that I knew, but out in the business world you pick these habits up quickly. They were quick to forgive me.

I at the least expected to see my picture in the very same paper I delivered. You know a tribute to my youthful bravery and sense of duty and the heroic, but slow rescue by dedicated and loving family members. I remained quietly bitter to this day although I proudly carried that paper through all types of weather until my earlier retirement at age 13.

My lemonade stand, operated in summer months concurrent with my newspaper delivery business. It served as a good introduction to the concept of moonlighting which was to serve me well in my adult life.

I sold a variety of goods that I could easily find around the house. My main product line of course was Kool-Aid which I bought at the local Dominion store. The term Lemonade stand is actually a misnomer as I sold no lemonade, unless on those rare occasions when I could get a lemon flavoured Kool-Aid. My mom supplied me with home made baked goods that I’m sure, although I did not know at the time, I sold at a loss, but it kept my mom happy that I was out in the business world.

My inventory also included old Dell Classic Comic books, and Marvel Comics. Although I enjoyed the classic stories such as Moby Dick, A Tale of Two Cities and Frankenstein that joy was only superseded by my love of super heroes. I have always harboured the wish to be a super hero as I have this odd affinity for capes and like to change my cloths in phone booths, a practice made progressively difficult today due to the overwhelming advent of the cell phone.

My biggest day at the lemonade stand was on a very hot humid July day when to my delight and surprise a city bus stopped in front of my humble stand. I sat there in shock as if a Great White Shark had just leaped on the shore where I was walking and scooped up a seal while shaking it furiously in its mouth than playing with it out to sea in a rare scene of raw natural predatory barbarity, a seen to appear on Planet Earth much later in my future.

Shark, fade to bus. There in front of me bigger than my world with air brakes hissing sat a red on white bus. The side folding doors opened slowly this being a” close encounter of the third kind”. From each perch the bus driver looked down at me sitting behind my little plywood stand while asking if anyone in the bus would like some refreshing Kool-Aid. This stranger, my bus driver was my sales agent. My vision of early retirement loomed large.

The scale of my operation had exponentially expanded with one single, large vehicle. With encouragement from the bus driver and to the bewilderment of the passengers I brought him some refreshing nectar from my dispensary. I thought he might pay with bus transfer tickets, but instead he chose to give me an entire quarter for a 2 cent drink. I have never forgotten his generosity and although I dread using public transit as an adult I have a deep and abiding respect for kind, thirsty bus drivers.

By summers end and before Labour Day I closed down my operation and got my mind around going back to school all the while doubting in my heart of hearts that I would learn the lessons in the school that I had out in the harsh real world of hard knocks in retail and paper delivery. I had brought the news of the world to the common man and I had eased the thirst of the masses. I was now mentally prepared for my formal education a process of life long learning I could not escape.