Crazy Were We in the Head

By Paul Enns Wiebe

Growing up in a Mennonite family in Inverness, Idaho back in the forties and fifties, John Reisender is perplexed. Why had Great-grandma been married in a Muslim mosque way hell and gone out in the wilds of Central Asia?

 

With a Dickensian cast of characters brimming with eccentrics, Crazy Were We in the Head hilariously and often movingly chronicles a singular American boyhood.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Komos Books
• Release date: Sep 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201802981

Paul Enns Wiebe

Armed with a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, Paul Enns Wiebe taught comparative religion at Wichita State University until taking very early retirement from his tenured position to become an independent writer. He has published nine novels and counting, as well as a pair of nonfiction books and a passel of articles in his academic specialties.  

Book preview

And I gave my heart to know wisdom,

and to know madness and folly.

—Ecclesiastes 1: 17

CAST OF CHARACTERS

THE REISENDER CLAN

Great-grandma Reisender, a fine old Christian lady who had been married in a Muslim mosque somewhere in the middle of Asia.

Grandpa Christian Reisender, oldest son of Great-grandma; author of the book, The Complete History of the World.

Grandma Lydia Reisender, Christian’s wife; maker of the best pfeffernüsse in all Inverness.

Waldo Reisender, oldest son of Christian and Lydia; father of John, Karen, and Judy.

Emma Unruh Reisender, oldest daughter of Jake and Lizzy Unruh; wed to Waldo; mother of John, Karen, and Judy.

Karen Reisender, oldest daughter of Waldo and Emma.

John (Dutch) Reisender, the Narrator; only son of Waldo and Emma.

Judy Reisender, youngest daughter of Waldo and Emma.

Tanta Anna Hamm, sister of Christian; tries with no success to keep her husband on the straight and narrow.

Onkel Abe Hamm, an in-law whose favorite Bible verse is Eat, drink, and be merry.

Stan (Snake) Hamm, the Hamms’ adopted son, who had been rescued from either an orphanage or a reform school.

Uncle Herb Reisender, son of Christian and Lydia; an occasional farmer.

Aunt Lena Reisender, wed to Uncle Herb; the family wit and baby machine.

Uncle Edgar Reisender, son of Christian and Lydia; enjoys strolling the sidewalks of the City of Angels passing out tracts predicting the end of the world.

Aunt Marie Reisender, daughter of Christian and Lydia; missionary to a tribe in the African jungle.

Tanta Martha, sister of Christian; historian of family recipes.

JOHN’S MATERNAL GRANDPARENTS

Grandpa Jake Unruh, escaped the Russian military draft in 1906 and entered America equipped with two English words, Yes and No, and his brother’s passport.

Grandma Lizzy Unruh, Jake’s longsuffering wife.

MEMBERS OF JOHN’S GENERATION

Gary Albrecht, John’s closest friend; budding cartoonist who often borrows his big brother Cat’s ’39 Ford for the gang’s escapades.

Billy Bauman, friend of John’s who is rumored, perhaps erroniously, to be unaware of the difference between Jesus and Santa Claus.

Bobby Joe Runningwater, the leader of the gang; a lover of horses, his favorite, Penny, being the namesake of his girlfriend.

Penelope (Penny) Dyck, the banker’s daughter.

Margaret Siebert, who sports a backside reminiscent of that of the screenstar Betty Grable, storied pin-up girl of the 1940s.

Annie Jantzen, perhaps the best athlete of her generation.

Rayburn Kroeker, young Bible-toting evangelist and antagonist to John and his pals.

Jaques (Jock) Buffone, a class clown.

Ervin Huddleston, John’s classmate.

Jose (Buck) Cardenas, Inverness High football star; object of Margaret Siebert’s sometime affection.

Clarice Johnson, a Mormon girl; object of Rayburn Kroeker’s evangelistic zeal.

JOHN’S TEACHERS

Reverend Menno Prediger, a.k.a. Dearly Beloved because his sermons always began with that phrase.

Miss Annabelle Claassen, a.k.a. Little Miss ABC; a Bible School Teacher.

Mrs. Dolores Habegger, a.k.a. Fanny, the most infamous Sunday School teacher in all Inverness.

Reverend Milo Jantzen, brother of Annie Jantzen; seminary student, later a minister.

Olga Ericsson, a fifth-grade teacher; determined to impress the Lessons of History on her students, some of whom remain skeptical.

Madame Gertrude Gratz, a tobacco-chewing piano teacher; lover of dogs and cats, which she names after the classical composers.

Nick Monokov, the excessively short keeper of Inverness City Dump; doubles as the local philosopher.

Miss Ruth (Ruthless) McGovern, teacher and grade school principal.

Victor H. (Pork) Andason, the Inverness High football coach whose main goal is to teach his players the art of withstanding adversity.

Mr. Mucker, the Inverness High principal; lacking in two anatomical areas: a brain and a spine.

Mr. Horace Bland, a popular Inverness High English teacher; a clone of Mr. Mucker.

Miss Evangeline Fortwright, an unpopular Inverness High English teacher; introduces her students to fine literature.

THE POOL HALL CROWD

Boswell, proprietor and manager of Boswell’s, a bar.

Bugs Enchilada, Boswell’s sidekick; widely considered a Mob member.

Sam Samson, the Inverness Chief of Police; the only cop on the force.

Herman Habegger, unequally yoked to Fanny; no doubt the best pool player in all Inverness.

Jackpot, the town nomad and panhandler; had been gassed in the war, though it was not known which one.

Cat Albrecht, big brother of Gary; adversary of Sam Samson.

MEMBERS OF THE INVERNESS MENNONITE CHURCH

C. Jonas Dyck III, occupier of a front pew; the town banker and father of Penelope.

Eustasia Dyck, mother of Penelope; sports a fur coat at all seasons.

Netty Yoder, sister of Madame Gratz.

Pete Yoder, relative (unspecified) of Madame Gratz.

Minnie Epp, prayer champion; later, a bride.

The Reverend Mrs. Hildegard Prediger, preacher’s wife and amateur pianist.

Heinrich Jantzen, father of Annie and Reverend Milo; a member of the school board.

Reverend and Mrs. Reimer, former missionaries; Bobby Joe Runningwater’s retired parents.

Mr. and Mrs. Albrecht, parents of Gary and Cat.

Pete and Gertrude Trudy Bauman, parents of Billy.

EXTRAS

Lady in the bar; sports black chicken-wire stockings.

Freddy the Barber, a former sheep-shearer.

Dr. Hertz, the town physician.

Mrs. Kroeker, mother of Rayburn.

Split Town Kroeker, fugitive father of Rayburn.

A pair of anonymous undertakers.

Mrs. Enz, town librarian; a crossword puzzle fan.

Beaver High School students, revelers.

The Meckenbergers, a family that keeps their general store open on Sundays; thought to be atheists.

Rudolf Petkau, an elderly, inattentive gentleman.

Mr. Awdly, a member of the School Board.

Reverend Eldon Kroeker, uncle to Rayburn.

Otto Gratz, Madame Gratz’s husband; resident of the Old Homestead Cemetery.

Reverend Claus Epp, Jr., a minor prophet of the subspecies false.

Overture

The advantage of living in Inverness back in the forties and fifties was the number of churches you could choose from, nine, which averaged out to one hundred souls per religion. The advantage of being born into the Mennonite religion was that you didn’t need to waste your time shopping around for a church with a better plan for working out your differences with the Almighty. The advantage of belonging to the Reisender clan was that you had no end of family reunions—and in those days a family reunion was considered just about the highest form of recreation. In our case a reunion was the only form of recreation, being the one pleasurable activity that could stand up to Grandpa’s two strict tests: a religious connection, and affordability.

Every year we had a pair of reunions, one on July 24 and the other on March 8. July 24 was Pioneer Day, when the local Latter-Day Saints celebrated their ancestors’ arrival way hell and gone down in Salt Lake City after trekking halfway across the country by parading down the two blocks of Main Street, all dolled up in Mormon pioneer costumes, and the Reisenders chose that day to get out of town and engage in a little of our own ancestor worship. I didn’t figure out the reason behind the March reunion till I was ready to leave town. But early in the game, I guessed it was related to Grandpa’s belief that somewhere down the line there’d be a final gathering of the true saints. This would include all the Reisenders, except for our three or four black sheep, and maybe a few others who’d played their cards right and found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

We held those reunions out at Onkel Abe’s and Tante Anna’s—Dad recommended that we refer to his uncles and aunts in the old German style, out of respect—despite the fact that there was some doubt about whether Onkel Abe Hamm was playing his cards right. The reunions had to be held out there, Dad explained to us kids, because that’s where Great-grandma Reisender lived. What he meant, according to Uncle Herb’s wife Aunt Lena, was that Tante Anna was busy taking care of Great-grandma, who was busy dying.

The Hamm farm was located a few miles northeast of Inverness, which sat smack dab in the middle of the irrigation country on the Snake River Plain. The house and farmyard were perched at the top of a long, sloping hill and had a spectacular view of Beaver Reservoir and beyond. The beyond was filled with sagebrush and mountains, and between them there was Pocatello, which Uncle Edgar used to refer to as Gomorrah because of the smokestacks and the drinking and gambling and whoring and perversion and the taking of the Lord’s Name in vain and, Dad would add, only half joking, the Democrats.

Ω

My first memory is of the Hamm orchard.

When we were little kids back in the mid-forties, the first thing Karen and I would do when Dad’s brakeless ’36 Plymouth came rolling to a stop just before running into the irrigation ditch at the July 24 reunion would be to tumble out of the doors and windows and go thundering off to the orchard to join our cousins and Stan. Stan, who was unofficially known as Snake, had been adopted by Onkel Abe and Tante Anna and would still have been a student at Inverness High if he’d paid more attention to the rules. They’d picked him up either from an orphanage, which was Tante Anna’s story, or from a reform school, which was the more widely accepted theory. There were also different opinions about how he’d picked up the nickname. It was either because he enjoyed swimming in Beaver Reservoir on the Snake River, which was Tante Anna’s explanation, or because the name fit the reform school theory, which was Aunt Lena’s view of the matter. I myself leaned toward Aunt Lena’s opinion, figuring that she was probably the one who’d started the practice of calling him Snake.

But be that as it may. As soon as the cousins were all gathered, Snake would give us a tour of that enchanted orchard. Then he’d climb a tree and shake down a dozen or so apples, which we’d eat as appetizers, worms and all. We knew our parents wouldn’t approve, but as Snake pointed out with his big-as-a-football grin, wasn’t that the whole idea? And to top it all off, he took us to the farthest corner of the orchard, where an old Model A Ford had found its final resting place. He let us take turns sitting in the driver’s seat and told us to pretend we were driving to Inverness or Beaver Falls, or, he said, even all the way hell and gone to—and here he imitated Uncle Edgar’s righteous voice—Gomorrah. And then he’d bust out laughing.

When we got back from our travels, it was time to scramble under a barbed-wire fence and head for the backyard picnic. I say backyard though it was more like a pasture, because of the goats. But they didn’t bother anybody. Tante Anna had laid down the law that they were to be tethered for the day and that Onkel Abe was to be the tetherer, so they minded their own business, which was sniffing around a pile of tin cans.

After the menfolk had carried Great-grandma outside in her rocking chair, pall-bearer style, planted her in the shade of the poplar trees, tucked her in with a wool blanket, and then propped her up with half a dozen of Tante Anna’s fancy crocheted pillows, Grandpa Reisender would officially open the reunion. He’d bless the food, making sure to mention every dish the womenfolk had prepared. Then he’d go on to recite a list of all the ancestors he could remember, starting with Adam and Eve and half the other Biblical characters, moving on to those Reisenders who were stashed away in safe deposit boxes in some churchyard back in the Old Country, and ending with Great-grandma, even though she didn’t quite qualify as an ancestor, because she was sitting right there with her eyes closed and her head on her shoulder and her mouth wide open, sleeping like a baby. Finally, he’d end up by saying, Thy Kingdom come, Amen, which was the signal for Onkel Abe to wave the starting flag by booming out, Amen, now let’s everybody loosen up and have a good time, which was the signal for Great-grandma to give a twitch and open her one good eye and say something in German to Onkel Abe, probably advice on being reverent in the Lord’s presence. But as Aunt Lena enjoyed pointing out, that kind of advice had absolutely no effect on the man.

On March 8, the reunion had to be held indoors. So instead of exploring the orchard, we cousins would explore the old lava-rock house. Snake would give us a tour of the cold upstairs and tell us about all the murders and kidnappings and mysterious disappearances that had taken place in each bedroom, and he’d explain the strange noises and groans the attic ghosts were making. He’d whisper that it was because they were hungry for more victims. Then he asked us if we wanted him to save us from the ghosts. Yes yes! we whispered back, and after he thought it over, he wanted to know if we had any loose change in our pockets. He did his best work with ghosts, he explained, when his efforts were appreciated. So we gave him all our pennies and nickels and an occasional dime; then he left us and climbed up into the attic and pleaded with the ghosts while we listened to the conversation through the trap door. He called out, What do you ghosts want? and we heard one of them answer in a high, quivering voice, Ve vant . . . zhe soul . . . uf a Reisender . . . chilt. He said, No no! Over my dead body! and there was an awful racket and then he came dropping out of the attic like an acrobat, moaning in pain and expecting us to be grateful for his bravery. Which we were; we thought we were getting a bargain for the money.

When Karen and I got older, we caught on. We figured out that the noises were just the wind blowing through the cracks and that ghosts don’t necessarily speak with a German accent and that when Snake was rolling around on the floor pretending to be moaning from his fight with the ghosts, he was really laughing at us. This newfound wisdom made us eligible for helping him initiate the younger cousins into the mysteries of that old house.

But one March, our secret society was broken up when one of the little kids got scared and went downstairs and ratted on us. The adults sent Uncle Edgar up to lay down the law, and he preached one of his sermons reminding us that you couldn’t be a Bible-believing Christian and still believe in ghosts. Snake asked, What about the Holy Ghost? and Uncle Edgar had to explain that the Holy Ghost wasn’t a ghost in the regular sense; he belonged in some other category that was too hard to explain. But when Snake asked him to give it a shot, he said we could take his word for it. After that we had to cut out the monkey business and play Rook and Monopoly. Even though Rook is a card game, it was okay with Uncle Edgar and Jesus, because none of the cards had sacrilegious kings and jacks and queens, which in worldly cards represented God, who created us, and the devil, the guy we were supposed to be on the lookout for, and Mary, who happened to find her way into the Catholic religion by mistake. Monopoly was safe too, because we weren’t playing for real money—besides, as Aunt Lena pointed out with a sly wink, we were learning how to make change, which might come in handy in case the Lord decided we weren’t missionary material and led us into the grocery business.

One of the main attractions at those reunions, right behind the orchard and Snake and the ghosts, was Onkel Abe himself.

The first thing you noticed about Abe Hamm, besides the fact that he’d show up in church sporting a bright orange tie under his striped bib overalls and hadn’t gotten around to shaving that morning, was that he was a lover of life. It’s not that he wasn’t religious; it’s just that he could hardly wait to get up in the morning and spread some joy around the place. This would sometimes get him in Dutch with Tante Anna, who could easily be embarrassed, being a Reisender born and bred. He’d say something a bit out of the orthodox, like, If Jesus was around, I bet you anything he’d be the life of the party.

She’d tut-tut and sigh and shake her head and say, Abe, Abe.

He’d grin like a little kid out from under that ring of electric reddish-grey hair and repeat, Yessir, the life of the party.

Then she’d whisper something to him in German, and he’d turn on the twinkles in his little green eyes and say, That’s what I love about you, Sweetheart, you always keep me on the straight and narrow. Which was an exaggeration, because as Aunt Lena had the habit of remarking, the only road Abe Hamm could ever keep on was the one that was paved with good intentions.

It wasn’t that Tante Anna didn’t love life; she just did it in her own quiet, prayerful way. In fact, all the Reisenders were lovers of life, though not in the same way as Onkel Abe. His idea was that the time to live and rejoice is now, and the standard Reisender idea was that there’d be plenty of time for that later, at the last reunion, when you wouldn’t have to bother with a long blessing before meals, because you’d have all the ancestors gathered around God, who’d be right there at the head of the table, and the true rejoicing could begin.

There were other family members at those reunions. One of the oldest family photos shows Great-grandpa and his bride of thirteen years surrounded by the future heads of the twelve tribes of Reisenders. Those who’d come from Kansas in the early thirties to help pioneer and irrigate the Idaho deserts, including Great-grandma and Grandpa Reisender and Tante Anna, showed up for those reunions with their own children, including Dad and Uncle Herb and Aunt Marie and Uncle Edgar and their wives and husbands and their grandchildren, including Karen and me and later, Judy.

Aunt Marie and Uncle Edgar were considered special, because they were in the Lord’s work. Aunt Marie was usually off somewhere in the African jungles converting the heathen and Uncle Edgar was parading around the sidewalks of Los Angeles decked out in a sandwich board and passing out tracts predicting the end of the world. But they’d sometimes come back for a reunion, just to show Grandpa some pictures of the four or five heathen and scoffers they’d converted and to see their parents and brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts and to remark how much we nephews and nieces had grown and to find out if we’d been listening for the Lord’s call. And of course they came back to see Great-grandma, maybe for the last time, because who could tell when God would take her Home and put her in charge of the upstairs kitchen for that very last reunion?

Great-grandma was a true Reisender, which, we were regularly reminded, is the German word for traveler. In her lifetime, she’d covered half the world, from Prussia to Russia to the heart of Asia to Kansas and finally on to Idaho. She’d been born in old Prussia back in the middle of the nineteenth century, and her family had moved to Russia when she was a young girl. Before coming to America, she’d been married to Great-grandpa in a Muslim mosque out in the wilds of Central Asia, which is a story in itself. At the time I didn’t know the details; in fact, the whole thing was a big secret. Grandpa told us kids that we were too young to understand, so after we looked up Muslim and mosques and Central Asia in the encyclopedia, Karen and I came up with our own theories. I dreamed up the idea that Central Asia was the ancient version of the Wild West and that Great-grandpa had borrowed a horse or two that didn’t belong to him and when this was discovered, he and Great-grandma decided Russia wasn’t the best place to raise a family, after all, and became outlaws. Karen had it figured that Central Asia was the ancient version of Reno; it was where you went to get married if you’d jumped the gun and this happened to be reported to the preacher. But our theories were only guesses. And they didn’t account for that old mosque.

The kids of my generation never knew Great-grandpa in the flesh. We knew him only by way of another old photograph, which shows him dressed up in a black suit and white shirt and sporting a bushy beard and sitting up extremely straight and staring fiercely ahead. He’s seated next to an equally straight and fierce wife and surrounded by a few sad-faced children, including the young versions of Tante Anna and Grandpa, who in real life wasn’t nearly as depressed as he looked in the picture—fact is, you could actually enjoy talking to him, if you had the good sense to keep on the right subjects, which included how we were doing in school and how much we liked our teachers but didn’t include whether we were being taught the Biblical account of first things or the godless theory that all God’s children are descended from a long line of jungle animals.

Other than that ragged photo, our best source of information about Great-grandpa was Onkel Abe, who’d joined the Reisenders by way of Tante Anna and figured that since he wasn’t born into the family, he wasn’t obliged to follow its rules. He told us, for example, that Great-grandpa, who’d been a preacher back in Kansas, would have no second thoughts about giving a grand sermon on Sunday morning and then going home to celebrate with a fine dinner and a glass of wine and afterwards, a choice cigar. He’d mention this by way of comparison to our own reunions, because even though we had fine dinners—he wasn’t denying that fact—whatever happened to the wine and cigars?

But Great-grandpa had passed away many years ago. He hadn’t lived long enough to make the trek out to Idaho during the Depression. He’d gone to be with his Maker—at least that was the theory, as Aunt Lena once remarked to a select audience—and Great-grandma was getting ready to join him. Except for the July 24 picnic, she just laid there on a cot in Tante Anna’s parlor with the gunny sack curtains drawn, all dolled up in a big black dress and a little black silk hat and giving off old lady smells and staring at the cobwebs on the ceiling and probably thinking about the good old days and sighing for the chance to meet God and Great-grandpa when her time came. I say probably, because she and I never had an actual conversation—her English wasn’t too good, and neither was my German. Fact is, the closest I ever got to her was at those March 8 reunions, when all the cousins would be herded into the parlor after dinner to sing her a hymn called Ich Weiss einen Strom. We didn’t have to learn the language to sing it; the hymnal had the words in both languages, so we knew we were singing the German version of O Have You Not Heard of That Beautiful Stream, a song about going Home to lie on the golden sands of the Fatherland.

After we’d finished cheering her up and all the adults had had a good cry, Great-grandma would pull us kids toward her with her skinny finger like the witch in Hansel and Gretel and whisper Danke schön, which was how the old folks used to say thank you. She’d take a little sack of corn candy out from under her black dress and give us each a piece, which made it all worthwhile, at least while we were still at the candy stage of life. Then Tante Anna would nod to us, which was the signal that it was time to leave so that Great-Grandma could get her beauty rest. Then we’d tiptoe respectfully out of that dark, smelly parlor and go thundering up the stairs to play Rook and Monopoly. And to deal with the ghosts in the attic.

Ω

That was all many decades ago.

We haven’t had a reunion in ages. Almost everybody is gone. Three whole generations, including Great-grandma Reisender and Grandpa and Grandma and Onkel Abe and Tante Anna and most of my uncles and aunts, are out at the Old Homestead Cemetery west of Inverness, some probably waiting for the last trumpet to announce the last reunion, the rest of them just catching up on their sleep. My cousins have turned out to be like Great-grandma—true Reisenders, travelers every one. The Lord led two or three of them off to the mission field, and after he’d gotten his quota, he led the rest of them all over creation into other careers—teaching and social work, banking and real estate and life insurance; in fact, just about everything except groceries. I’ve heard that one has even tried her hand at dealing blackjack. Snake Hamm, who didn’t have a drop of genuine Reisender blood in him, was the kind of a guy who couldn’t be led anywhere he didn’t have a mind to be led. The last time I saw him—this was in Pocatello, just before he was wiped out in a freak accident—he winked and flashed his famous grin and handed me a business card advertising himself as S. Stanley Hamm, Esquire: Specializing in Personal Injuries.

As for me, I’ve also lived up to the Reisender name. After spending over half a life checking out the world beyond Inverness, I settled down in the general area the Lord once led Uncle Edgar to evangelize, though I should probably point out that I’m not in the habit of strolling around decked out in a sandwich board and offering people free advice on how to prepare for the end of the world. As Aunt Lena used to say, It’ll happen when it happens, probably later rather than sooner, and Onkel Abe would add, Amen, now, let’s all loosen up and have a good time.

Ω

Speaking of Uncle Edgar and signs of the end, a year ago I spent a night in the town he used to call Gomorrah.

This was not by design. While I was coming back to Inverness on business, I checked in at a motel. I thought I was in Pocatello, but at dinner, just as I was finishing my glass of Chablis, it struck me that I was actually in Gomorrah. When the waitress came with the bill, I tried to make a joke about this, but she’d never heard of Gomorrah. So I dropped the subject, paid for my meal, went back to my room, and got ready for bed. Being tired but not sleepy, I decided to watch a movie. I picked a comedy that was supposed to have brief flashes of nudity, but it turned out that the flashes were too brief to keep me awake. As I dozed off, I remember wondering what Uncle Edgar would have thought about his oldest nephew spending a night in Sin City. Would enjoying a glass of wine and watching a slightly naughty movie be enough to cancel my reservation for that last reunion?

While I was driving to Inverness the next morning, I got to thinking about those bygone Reisender reunions and about Snake and the orchard and the goats in the backyard and the ghosts in the attic and about all us cousins gathered around Great-grandma, singing her an old German hymn to ease the pain of going home to the Fatherland. Then, as I crossed the dam at