by Anne Beiler
Mom would check on the same three things every time: bread, water, and chairs. Did everyone have bread, did everyone have a glass of water, and were there enough chairs around the table? There were ten of us, and sometimes finding all of the chairs took a little time.
Finally I wrapped my sweater around my shoulders and dashed back out to the barn. When I returned inside, Daddy and the older ones came right behind me.
Fast-forward twenty-nine years to a Saturday in February 1988. Enter a busy farmers’ market in Downingtown, Pennsylvania, a rather run-down sort of place that seemed tired and fading. Yet there I was, proud store owner for nearly a month, and I couldn’t have been happier. Working hard and making a few minor changes meant the store was busier than ever, and I couldn’t believe my good fortune. But something that made me even happier: the fact that my whole family could again work together.
The girls joined me on the weekends: LaVale, now eleven going on twenty-one, was our little pizza maker. With Aunt Fi helping, she made the dough, formed the pizza, added the toppings, and baked them to perfection, loving every minute of it. LaWonna even came back into the fold, so to speak, leaving her job at the pharmacy to work with us at the market stand. Her main task was making the strombolis and helping customers. I found myself continually amazed at both her and LaVale’s ability to handle even the toughest of customers. But I also know I demanded perfection, perhaps too much at times. Still, we worked together in rhythm, busier every weekend, as a family. The girls even started getting along better—instead of seeing that as a potential threat to LaVale’s innocence, I chose to see their positive relationship as evidence that our family was growing closer. I can see now how unrealistically optimistic I was in those days, grasping at any sign of familial happiness, feeling as though perhaps my girls and I were coming back together, perhaps old wounds were mending. Perhaps, but in the end it proved a brief period of peace.
In the meantime Jonas tinkered with everything: he made the pretzel dough, put up new signs, fixed broken cabinet hinges, put up more signs, and on and on he continued, always fixing things. During the week he continued to work hard at counseling. I didn’t know until recently how awkward it felt for the girls to have strangers constantly parading through our living room, but LaVale once referred to those ladies as “forever trapped in the 1980s with their bad perms, smelling of cigarette smoke.” I never thought how strange it must have been for my daughters, eating a dinner they scraped together for themselves (while I ran a business) and hearing women they didn’t know crying in their daddy’s study. I think some of the discomfort came from LaWonna and LaVale’s not knowing what to say or do—do you say hi and risk embarrassing those being counseled by even acknowledging their presence (and the fact they were searching for help), or do you do what the girls normally did and just stare at the television, the floor, or blankly into space? But no matter how odd the situation, LaWonna remembers thinking to herself, If anyone can fix these people, Daddy can.
While Jonas experienced success in helping others with their problems, the pretzels proved to be a riddle I could not answer. They were, quite simply, horrible. They always came out pale and crusty around the edges, and we tried everything we could think of to make them as good as the pretzels we made at Burtonsville: more flour, less flour, more water, less water, bake them longer, bake them hotter, and on and on it went. I didn’t have a particular affinity to pretzels at that point, but I did enjoy making them. Rolling the dough provided me with a therapeutic busyness, and I liked giving the customers a show to watch. But finally, after about a month of tinkering, I decided to focus on the pizzas and strombolis that sold so well. Besides, all of this tinkering with pretzel dough cost me a fortune in inventory, and I felt sick from all the money we wasted trying to get them just right. Jonas and I even sat down one evening and prayed together about it, asking God for wisdom regarding how to make the pretzels! He didn’t seem to pay us much attention, though, as our attempts got worse and worse. But I wasn’t giving God enough time.
Finally, on one particular Friday morning, I grumbled to Jonas.
“You know what,” I announced suddenly, “I am just going to quit making these pretzels and we are going to focus on strombolis and pizzas. I’ve decided to take them off the menu board today.”
“Well,” Jonas said mysteriously, “before you give up on the pretzels, let me try something that might work.”
I laughed.
“Hey, if you’ve got this great idea, just go ahead and give it a try!”
He listed a few different ingredients he wanted to add.
“What makes you think that would work?” I asked.
“I used to do some baking of my own when I was a kid,” he said with a twinkle in his eye, “and my aunts taught me some things that I think might work with this recipe.”
“If you think it’s going to work, then go ahead and get the ingredients.” I felt rather skeptical.
He took off his hat and apron and went to the local grocery. When he returned, he brought an air of excitement along with the special ingredients. He put his apron back on and mixed the batch himself. He swept up everyone else with his enthusiasm, and soon our employees stood around the mixer waiting to see how the new recipe would turn out. Everyone, that is, but me. I just kept rolling the old dough, ready to take pretzels off the menu and be done with them.
In some ways Jonas’s childhood resembled mine very closely: we both grew up in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in conservative communities (my family was Amish-Mennonite while Jonas’s was Old Order Amish); we both learned the importance of hard work at an early age; and we both felt the importance of family and community in general. But even within a community such as ours, everyone experiences a vastly different life.
When Jonas reached the age of two, and his younger sister was only six weeks old, his mother went into hospital for gallbladder surgery. She arrived at the hospital a strong, healthy mother of four children, the type of person always on the move, always running from one project to the next. Months and numerous infections later, she arrived home, her motor skills completely deteriorated, near to death. Jonas had two unmarried aunts who moved in with the family, cooking the meals and raising the children. While his two older siblings worked the farm with his father, and his mother remained confined to her bed, Jonas was mostly told to stay inside and help his aunts with the cooking and cleaning. At first it would seem an insignificant event in Jonas’s life, his learning to bake, but who are we to know when a seemingly minor event might prove to be otherwise? If not for Jonas’s early exposure to cooking, Auntie Anne’s Soft Pretzels never would have come into existence.
For years Jonas’s house hovered under a cloud of sadness—on rainy days the children would have to play as quietly as possible while their mother lay in her bed. Would she ever get better? On a hot, dusty Sunday, Jonas, only three or four years old, walked to church, his little hand completely swallowed by the rough, calloused hand of his father. They went quietly down to where church was being held at Jonas’s uncle’s house. The dust rose, swirling around them as they walked. Jonas looked up at the bearded face, so high above him, and saw tears welling up in his father’s eyes.
“Vas is letz?” Jonas asked his father in Pennsylvania Dutch. What is wrong?
His father looked down at him and sniffed his nose, hastily wiping the tears from where they sat around his eyes, pushing some of them deep into his long beard. Then he picked Jonas up and carried him awhile.
We could all tell a difference even before we baked that dough—it smelled so good, and it rose in a way the other dough never did. We rolled a tray of six pretzels and put them in the oven. After only a minute in the oven, we were once again hit with the amazing smell!
“Jonas, those smell great,” I kept saying. At that point I forgot about the old dough I had been rolling and felt just as eager as everyone else to taste one of these new pretzels. We stood around the oven, waiting.
Our lives in 1958 we
ren’t all hard work and scraping to get by, boxing tobacco and making pies for market. No, our family always found ways to have fun. In fact, we would wait for weeks and weeks for a certain piece of news to arrive from a neighboring farm, and when it finally came there was a buzz around the farm all day. Chores were done quickly, in the hopes that the day would pass in the same way. We swallowed our dinner nearly whole. Daddy’s silent prayers seemed to last an eternity. Evening chores never seemed to take so long. But after we finished everything, and after the sun had nearly set, we raced around putting on our warmest clothes, searching desperately for the skates we had put away the previous year, because, after all, the news had arrived that day: ice on the pond had frozen thick enough for skating!
Carrying our skates by their cold blades, we all raced to the pond. Usually we would arrive to find at least thirty or forty children laughing, tying skates, or warming themselves around the flickering bonfire. If snow had fallen recently, some of the boys busied themselves clearing the pond for ice hockey while others built snowmen or threw snowballs. Eventually a hockey game would start in the middle while the girls skated in circles around the game, holding hands, all smiles and laughter and light.
I would laugh and chatter with my sisters Becky and Fi and our friends from church, warming ourselves around the fire. At the end of the night when the hockey had ended, all of the children would hold hands, form a chain, and skate in circles around the ice, the innermost person acting as a pivot and sending the outermost person flying at breakneck speed as they “cracked the whip.” I hung on to the end of the whip as the cold air burned against my teeth and made my eyes water; then they let me go and I shot off through the night, gliding on skates in a never-ending line, right up to the stars.
Eventually the time came to go home. The long walk on blistered feet with ankles sore from wearing skates for the first time that year didn’t even seem a chore, so much fun the night had been. Plus, I knew that when we arrived home Mom would be waiting up for us with hot chocolate and mounds of buttered toast. When I finally managed to stumble to our bedroom, I would go down on my knees in a warm nightgown and say my prayers in front of the radiator, then snuggle into bed with thirteen-year-old Becky and seven-year-old Fi, arguing playfully about who got to sleep in the middle. Our room was so cold that sometimes when we woke up in the morning, the glasses of water we took to bed with us were frozen blocks of ice.
As we grew older, the parties changed. When I finally turned sixteen and was allowed to go out with my older sister, it felt like cracking the whip at a skating party, and I flew out into that new life with all the same speed and energy. One of the first people I met during this time was Sonny Beiler, a friend of Becky’s. Stocky with curly jet-black hair and a love of life, he was nearly always playing pranks or making jokes or laughing, just for the sake of it. He embodied the way I saw my new life: full of fun and excitement.
One night I went with Sonny and Becky and another friend to a concert. Sonny seemed the center of attention, the life of the party. His eyes shone mischievously as the four of us spent the evening together. Then another one of those fateful encounters, when something happens that changes the course of your life: Sonny’s younger brother appeared in the crowd, just for a moment. He smiled, came over. Sonny laughed and shook his hand, introduced him to me and my sister Becky.
“Becky. Anne. This is Jonas.”
I can’t say it was love at first sight. I was being swept up into a new life, a life of independence, and my first, brief introduction to my future husband came and went without much fanfare. That first meeting stood in line as only one of many exciting things that took place in those busy months, but it was a seed sown, a seed that was starting to grow, though still unseen.
Then came Sonny’s birthday party, a surprise event arranged in Sonny and Jonas’s body shop where they worked, beating old cars into shape. We went to so many of those parties: the frantic shushing, whispered yells of “He’s here!” and “Quiet!” Then someone walks in—“Oh, it’s not him!”—and the excited chatter rises again. Finally it is him: a hush falls over the room, the door opens, the light flashes on, and everyone hollers, “Surprise!”
During this party I saw Jonas for the second time, and this time he caught my attention. At sixteen, I had been on a few dates but nothing serious, and I felt nervous and giddy, wanting to talk to him but finding myself hanging back, waiting. Then came walk-a-mile.
Walk-a-mile was an Amish-Mennonite party game we played that allowed couples a semblance of privacy in a world where everything revolved around rules of propriety. The game went like this: a girl and a guy would decide they wanted to walk a mile, couple up, and do just that. During the walk we could get to know one another.
The suspense drove me crazy—I kept seeing Jonas across the room, kept wondering if he would ask me to walk a mile, and if he did, whether or not he would also ask me out on a date. The more I wondered, the more I found myself liking him. Finally, the moment came.
We walked and talked for a mile, and Jonas captured my heart with his boyish good looks, his charm, the way he and Sonny seemed so full of life when they were together. Plus, by that time Sonny and Jonas had left the Amish, which meant he dressed differently, stood out in the crowd. Old Order Amish dress is very plain, the men wearing hats and the women wearing head coverings. Their trousers and shoes and coats are black, and their shirts are solid colors. When Jonas was old enough, he decided he wasn’t going to stay Amish, so he wore more contemporary clothing.
The longer the walk went on, the more desperately I wanted him to ask me on a date. But it didn’t happen. Jonas was a shy boy, much less outgoing than Sonny, especially when Sonny wasn’t around. Soon our walk-a-mile ended and we arrived, reluctantly, back at the party. I returned to my circle of friends.
I didn’t have long to wait, though. Before I left that night, as I stood on the sidewalk outside the body shop, Jonas came outside and talked with me again. And he finally asked me out on a real date.
On the night of our first date, my nervous excitement couldn’t be contained. I stood in the kitchen looking out the long lane, waiting, my stomach flipping and turning, my hands sweating. My three youngest brothers, Dale, eleven years old, Merrill, nine, and Carl, seven, stood in the kitchen with me, making me feel even more on edge. They wanted to meet this Jonas character; I just wanted him to arrive so that I could get on with the evening and stop feeling so jumpy.
Finally he arrived. I heard his ’53 Ford with the loud muffler long before I actually saw it, but when I finally saw him turn the bend, I couldn’t help smiling in giddy anticipation. The car arrived in three or four colors, in the middle of being rebuilt, and it charged up the lane, slowed beside the house, then turned around. When he shut off the engine, the silence it left behind stifled my breathing. Soon he came inside and I introduced him to the boys. Then we left, and the rest of that night is history. That marked the beginning of a long road, one full of much happiness and despair, one that would take us through some of the best, and most difficult, times of our lives.
But there is one other image I remember about that night: after Jonas dropped me off and drove away, I sat by my bedroom window and listened to his car. I could tell exactly which corners he turned and how many stops he made by the sound of his muffler, and if I counted the stop signs I could stay with him until the sound of the muffler faded, miles away.
Back in Downingtown in 1988, I stood around the ovens with the rest of our family and employees, waiting for those pretzels to come out. We all felt eager to try them, especially with that amazing smell starting to circulate around the stand. I looked at Jonas—he grinned and his eyes sparkled, but that didn’t surprise me.
The pretzels came out, and those of us waiting tore into them like a bunch of vultures . . . and we couldn’t contain our amazement! The difference in taste between those pretzels and the ones we had been making was completely indescribable. The new ones were soft and fluffy on the inside and
crisp on the outside, tasted incredible, and melted in our mouths. I couldn’t wait to sell them.
The first customer who bought a pretzel completely verified the success of Jonas’s experiment. We all kind of watched as they bought their pretzel and walked away, reached into their bag, and took their first bite. They stopped. Turned around. Stared in amazement at the stand from which they’d just bought that small piece of heaven, then looked back at the pretzel as if they couldn’t believe how good it tasted. And nearly every new customer we had from that day on did the exact same thing: taste, stop, turn, and shake their head in amazement.
By the end of that very first day, we were already selling more pretzels simply because the word had spread around the market. People were talking. “So and so told me I have to come down here and try one of your pretzels. They said it’s better than cake!” I became more and more amazed at how the pretzel almost challenged people to compare it to something. “This is better than . . .” so many people would say, completing the sentence with some rather shocking examples! By the end of the day, business forced us to up our pretzel production, and I already wondered about the following week, how much inventory to buy and how many pretzels we would sell. Once again, Jonas had found a way to fix things.
During the next couple of weeks, business completely took off. In those days we sold pretzels for fifty-five cents each or three for $1.50, and soon we couldn’t make the pretzels fast enough. We stopped selling pizza and stromboli just so we could keep up with pretzels, but to no avail. Soon it became normal to have a line of over thirty people stretching down the length of the hall and out the door that led to the other side of the market.
“Six pretzels for Mr. Brown,” and I’d write the order on a receipt.
“Six pretzels for Mrs. Schmidt.”