Vacation plans did not include playing a round of The Mennonite Game of finding a mutual person whom two strangers know. That did not stop my husband from looking for a playing partner. He roused me from the stupor of riding hours through the wheat fields of Kansas to ask, “Do you want to go to the Mennonite Heritage and Agricultural Museum?”
“The what”
“Do you want to go to Mennonite Museum?” he asked as he turned toward it. We found a cluster of old school buildings, barns, farm houses and a long building which houses the museum. The museum tells the story of a group of low-German speaking Mennonites who emigrated from the Ukraine in Russia in 1874 and settled near present day Goessel, Kan. The agricultural part of the museum relates mechanization of farming from the 1800s to the mid-1960s and the impact of the hard, red, winter wheat the Mennonites brought to America which made Kansas the world’s bread basket.
Dressed in country casual, the museum curator and the gift store clerk welcomed us. My husband made the first move in the Mennonite Game by identifying himself as a Hershberger (a very Amish/Mennonite name). I don’t play the game. I drifted away to look at the museum. The curator approached me and held out a copy of the children’s book ‘Lenka of Emma Creek.’
“Would you like a copy to take with you? No cost. We have plenty.”
I looked at the cover done in water color. The book relates the story of a girl who discovers that the old woman whom the children fear and mock needs food and friends.
“Sure and, just a minute, I have a book for you.” I went to our van. I happened to have a copy of my book, ‘Twenty Gallons of Milk and other columns published in the El Dorado News-Times.’
“Enjoy,” I said. “These are some of my columns from the years I worked at a newspaper. You can open anywhere and read.”
We thanked each other. I returned to viewing the displays. One room replicates the people and furnishings of the long house where families initially lived together. A display of ancient medical books and instruments proudly portrays the founding of the first Mennonite hospital in America. A wooden model shows the church building these Alexanderwohl Mennonites built near modern Goessel, Kan.
Goessel. I had heard that name before. I approached the curator. “I think I mentioned Goessel in one of my columns. Let me see.” I started to check jottingjoan.com where I save all my columns for reference. Then I realized I could just check the book I had given her. I found the section on meal times and the column it includes about “Macaroni and Cheese.”
“Yes, here it is on page 125.”
Back in 2008, Terah Yoder Goerzen of Goessel wrote me that through an Internet version of The Mennonite Game she had found my colu about making old fashion macaroni and cheese. She wanted the recipe. In order to send her a recipe, I made the casserole, measuring the ingredients as I prepared the dish.
The curator looked at the name, “I know her.”
I never met Goerzen. We corresponded about macaroni and cheese and I wrote the column. So there I was years later, in her town, handing the book with the column to a woman who knew my correspondent. I still have yet to meet Goerzen, but that day I met someone who knows her.
I may only be a Hershberger by marriage, yet I too can play the Mennonite game.
Joan Hershberger, who is not a Mennonite, can be reached at joanh@everybody.org.