Family Roots

What’s it like to grow up in a horse-and-buggy community?

Here’s an essay I wrote recently for one of my writing group assignments. I belong to two writing groups: one meets in person and we can write whatever we wish. The other group is virtual and one member picks a topic every other month.

For February, the topic was “roots”. Family roots, tree roots, hair roots—whatever roots we wished. I thought about writing about my Swiss-German ancestors. But the two hundred or so forebears of the Lancaster Mennonite community have been written about and researched extensively, and so I decided to stick closer to the present.

(Mom and Dad are the subjects of the crayon drawings in the photo at the top of this post. I made the drawings while in the Little Room of Penn Johns School.)

Horse-and-Buggy Roots

 My father was once nearly trampled by a horse. 

My parents were dating at the time, and Dad arrived to pick Mom up for a youth supper. My mother, wearing a brand-new dress, sat inside the buggy while my father stood next to the horse, with the reins in his hands. The horse spooked, and Dad lost his footing and fell. Hooves pounded past his head as the panicked horse began to run, pulling the buggy away. My father slipped into the narrow space between the hooves and the wheels as the buggy lunged forward. 

“I’ll never forget the sight of the bottom of that buggy passing over my head,” Dad said.

Without reins, the only thing Mom could do was yell, “Whoa!” at the runaway horse and stomp on the buggy brakes. Neither slowed the horse. Mom envisioned Dad being dragged behind the buggy, which she knew was a real possibility. But Dad had let go of the reins in time. After the buggy passed over him, he got up, jumped on the nearest bike, and began to chase the runaway buggy.

The horse ran down the road, and at the first crossroads, the buggy overturned. A shaky Mom crawled out of the buggy as it scraped along the road on its side. Her new dress was torn, and she had a scratch on her arm, but no other injuries.

My parents walked away from a near tragedy, got married, and went on to raise a family of six children. It was many years until they left the horse-and-buggy Mennonite church, and my five siblings and I were all raised in that culture. We lived in town so we mostly used bikes and the bus to get around, but used the buggy for church and trips to the grocery store or relatives’ homes. My parents disliked hiring drivers and Uber didn’t exist. Fortunately we were able to ride a school bus instead of having to walk or bike to school. 

Looking back now, I’m amazed at the energy it took to live that lifestyle. Loading children and a week’s worth of groceries into a buggy. Biking to church in the snow. Walking to the library on hot summer days. Once I left my bike at my cousin’s house, and rollerbladed five miles over to pick it up.

Recently, a coworker told me how her sister-in-law with several kids always gets groceries delivered— “because strapping toddlers into car seats is so much work”. I smiled, thinking of Mom loading her bike cart full of groceries and pedaling home from Giant. 

Once I biked home from Sharp Shopper with a dozen eggs, and every one was broken because I biked over the bumpy sidewalks.

Growing up horse-and-buggy definitely wasn’t idyllic, but we had a pleasant childhood despite all the inconveniences and even dangers. The creativity and grit demanded by such a lifestyle has served me well as an adult. Last November I rode the bus to work every day for a month, just for fun. When the weather is nice and I have the time, I like to walk or ride my bike to the post office or bank. I enjoy historical stories and movies in a special way, and I think I understand the past better because of the old-fashioned way I grew up.

We don’t regret leaving the horse-and-buggy lifestyle behind, but it’s part of our story, even if a runaway horse nearly ended our family before it began.