Roots

 

 

I've just returned from visiting my family in Indiana and celebrating my Dad's 80th birthday with my brothers and sister.  Nancy and I picked up my brother Dave in Albany at the Amtrak station after a ride from his home in Brooklyn and headed west.  As the landscape became flatter and flatter we all reminisced about our upbringing in the great Midwest.

 

It was pretty much a given that while we were in the area we would make a pilgrimage to Grabill, a town of just over 1000 people in northeast Indiana.  Grabill stands on land that was my Great Grandfather's farm.  He sold half of the land to Clifford Grabill, then when the railroad came through just after the turn of the (20th) century the town was born and the population took the name easier to spell.

   

Squash at Smucker's market

Dairy Case

 

After a visit to Smucker's Amish farmer's market for some supplies for Dad's birthday dinner, we headed across country to Grabill, passing Yaggy cemetery on the way.  This small plot is home to the earliest generations of American Klopfensteins - including our patriarch John born in Balfort, France in 1813.  The Klopfensteins were Swiss Anabaptists and had been expelled from their native Switzerland for religious purposes.  They had settled in the Alsace-Lorraine region in the early 1700's before emigrating to the new world, settling in the fertile farmland of the Midwest.  Northeast Indiana and Northwest Ohio have a large population of Swiss, including many Klopfensteins. The name means "pounding stone" in German and my ancestors were probably quarry workers or stone masons.  When they came to the Midwest they established small family farms and lived much as the Amish do today.  I have Amish blood and am only a couple of generations removed from these hard working people.

 

The Grabill area certainly feels like home. We made sure and stopped by the Steury farm - home of a young Amish nanny that my father hired to care for us after the death of my mother. I was seven at the time, and the oldest of four, so my Dad needed the help. It was at the Steury farm I was first exposed to farm life as we often visited the homestead and sometimes stayed the night. Looking across the small pasture brought back memories of sleeping under layers of quilts and stepping onto a cold hardwood floor (with a decision to make - brave the walk to the outhouse or use the chamberpot). Family dinners around a simple hardwood table with the soft, flickering light of a kerosene lamp. Heartfelt prayers followed by meals of beef and noodles with pillowy, thick homemade noodles, warm just-baked bread and fresh vegetables simply prepared. I like to think that the Amish aesthetic of hard work, simplicity, honesty and generosity somehow found a purchase in my childhood self that has lasted the years since. I do know their love of animals and farming found its way into my blood.

 



The Menno Steury Farm near Grabill, Indiana



P.S.  While driving through Indiana farm country I couldn't help but notice the effects of this year's drought.  Cornfields were stunted with misshapen ears full of mold.  This year, at least, we have the advantage in the rainy Northeast. 

Indiana Corn

Vermont Corn