PALM SUNDAY - 1965

 

It was a Palm Sunday no different than any other.  The young ones meandered the aisles of the sanctuary waving their green fronds, followed by a not-real donkey and a not-real Jesus.  I wondered how many palms from the South sacrificed their boughs for a Northern Indiana ritual.

The reward for making it through Sunday morning was dinner at Sam and Anna's.  Grandpa Sam had caught a boat-load of perch at the marl pit and Grandma Anna fried them up in butter along with thinly sliced potatoes.  She also had her standards - beans cooked with bacon and strawberry rhubarb pie.

The afternoon light suddenly turned dark.  A storm was moving southwest to northeast. The thick low clouds were angry, swirling like an eddy in Turkey Creek and colored like a rainbow gone bad.  Johnny and I stared at the sky, oblivious to the dangers.  Then a siren went - and then another - and another until they were continuous.  For hours.  Slowly we learned that one of several tornadoes was a double funnel that touched down for miles. For over 200 souls, it was their last Palm Sunday.

HIRED HANDS AT EDWAMAR FARMS

 Sometime during the 1950's, our parents Edward and Mary Swartzendruber decided to combine their first names to identify their chicken-raising business Edwamar Poultry Farm.  The first place that this name appeared was in the August 1957 Bulletin of the Indiana State Poultry Association.  Not too long after that, they shortened the name to Edwamar Farms since corn, oats and wheat [and one off-the-rails year of tomatoes] were also being raised.  Ed was the first in the area to put in an irrigation system for the corn, and most everyone thought he was crazy.  However, after a few dry summers, others decided it was not such a bad idea, and now virtually every farm in the area has an irrigation system.

When Ed got more involved with Wolfe Grain in Shipshewana, and then later with EDD'S Supplies, a fertilizer business, he decided to hire a full-time farm hand.  I did my share of chicken catching, manure shoveling and irrigation pipe moving, but the farm needed a full-time worker.

There were only two hired hands in the history of Edwamar, and the first was Jim Boyer.  The Boyers had a farm not too far from ours, and Jim was available.  The Boyer family all flew small airplanes, and Jim was a good mechanic.  One thing that I clearly remember about Jim was that he was never in hurry to get anywhere or do anything 😃 You can read about Jim in this obituary.   I'm not sure how many years Jim worked on the farm, but when he departed, his replacement was Devon "Slugger" Bontrager. 

  

To say that Slugger was a character would be an understatement!  He grew up Amish, but like many, left that group to join the Mennonites - "jerked-over" as such folks are affectionately known!  He spoke Platt·deutsch throughout his adult life, and never did lose that low-German accent.  He was a bear of a man, and there was nothing farm-wise that Slugger couldn't do.  Some particularly great memories include the sweet corn patch that would always be planted so that we kids and cousins could sell corn in a makeshift stand along the road; the Concord grapes that grew behind the chicken houses and at Slugger's house that he and Esther built on the farm; and of course the barbequed chicken!!  When Slugger would fire up the multiple grills for a big barbeque, there was never a shortage of helping hands who knew that they would be the first to taste the freshly grilled chicken.  You can read about Slugger here.