Twist of Faith Read online

  Coming away from one of them, I turned to Jonas.

  “I just don’t know what’s wrong,” I said in desperation. “All these people know me and know I’m a good waitress. Why don’t they hire me?” I felt I had exhausted all of my options and gave in to tears. Then a friend of mine found out I was looking for work and offered me a temporary position at their stand in Green Castle Farmers’ Market making $100 a weekend. Jonas also worked a little for his dad, and between the two of us we were making around $1,000 per month. In our “spare” time we worked on Jake’s mobile home (in which we lived)—Jonas did the plumbing and some electrical stuff while I worked on things like cleaning and painting. Life was busier than ever, but we all felt happy to be around family again.

  Then came another blessing out of the blue, another fateful moment putting me even more firmly on the path to starting Auntie Anne’s Soft Pretzels.

  Late one Thursday night, Jonas and I sat in the small mobile home we were fixing up for my brother Jake, when one of his kids knocked at the door.

  “You’ve got a call, Auntie Anne,” one of my nieces told me.

  We didn’t have a phone line to the trailer, so if someone wanted to reach us, they would call Jake’s house and then we would go in and take the call.

  I walked the short distance to Jake’s house and picked up the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi. I know you don’t know who I am, but I heard you’re back in town and looking for work. I started a market down in Burtonsville, Maryland, and need some help on Fridays and Saturdays. Are you interested?”

  “Sure,” I said, a little disappointed that it wasn’t a waitressing job. “I have nothing better to do. When do you need me to start?”

  “How about tomorrow morning?”

  “Sure.”

  That was that. I worked for him that weekend at the Burtonsville Farmers’ Market, and it went great. The job was all about customer service and cleaning, which suited me perfectly. But there was one other important point—our main product was soft pretzels.

  Anyway, I worked hard that weekend and enjoyed myself. But there were still a few restaurants I was waiting to hear back from regarding being a waitress. I would have been more comfortable waiting on tables, and I thought I could probably make better money through tips. Plus, the five-hour round-trip drive to Burtonsville seemed like a waste of time.

  On Tuesday the stand owner paid me another unexpected visit.

  “Anne, you did a great job this weekend.”

  “Thanks, I really enjoyed myself.”

  “Good. Good. Anne, I’d like you to manage the stand for me.”

  Silence.

  Me, a manager? I nearly laughed in his face. I had no managerial experience, no idea what to even do with the money at the end of the day. Payroll? Employees? Inventory? I had never done any of it. Yet somewhere deep inside of me, I felt intrigued by the challenge and knew I could do it.

  “Well, I don’t know. I’ve never done that type of thing before. I don’t have any experience.”

  “That’s okay, Anne. You’re a hard worker. I saw you flying around that place on Saturday. I can teach you everything you need to know. I really think you’re the right person for the job. I know you can do this.”

  After talking a little longer with him, my mind was made up.

  “Okay. If you think I can manage your store, then I’ll give it a try.”

  The next day I got two calls back from restaurant owners who said they would hire me. I turned them down simply because I didn’t want to let my new employer down—secretly, I desperately wanted to accept their offers, and if they would have called a day earlier, well, who knows how things would have turned out. In any case, I began my short stint as manager—little did I know that only a few short months stood between me and owning my very first business.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The $6,000 Loan

  Being in your own business is working eighty hours a week so that

  you can avoid working forty hours a week for someone else.

  —RAMONA E. F. ARNETT

  I sat in one of the front pews in our old church, the same church I worried so much about returning to. A deep red carpet lined the floor, and the open ceiling peaked high over our heads.

  A ten-foot dark wood cross hung solidly on the wall behind the pastor, witnessing his every move. On that particular day I can’t remember who gave the sermon. Absorbed by what he said, I leaned forward, all of my attention focused on the platform.

  Suddenly, in the middle of the sermon, I felt a gentle tapping on my shoulder. I looked around and saw a stranger. The person didn’t say a word, only beckoned to me with her index finger to follow her out of the main auditorium, and even though I didn’t know who she was, for some reason I trusted her. I stood up, feeling slightly embarrassed about getting up in the middle of the service, but no one else in the congregation of more than three hundred even acted as though they saw me moving—it was as if I didn’t exist.

  I followed out the back doors and into the foyer, then around a side hallway and down a long corridor with rooms on each side. I recognized the hallway—it led to all of the Sunday school classrooms in the church. The tile floor felt cool under my feet, and the walls were cement blocks painted white. One of the doors on the right led into the nursery, the same nursery where twelve years ago Angie played with her little friends and cousins. The person I followed turned into the nursery. As I followed her into the small room, I heard a child laughing.

  Standing there in front of me, could it be?

  “Oh, Angie,” I said, running over to her and getting down on my knees, looking into her deep blue eyes.

  “Hi, Mommy,” she said as plain as day.

  “Oh, Angie,” I said again, unable to say anything else.

  “They are taking good care of me, Mommy,” she said in her pixie voice, and then I knew the others in the room, as well as the one I followed, were angels. I bent forward and felt Angie’s diaper, one of those “old-fashioned” cloth ones, nothing like the ones my daughters use on their children. On the day of the accident, I let Angie leave the house in a wet diaper, and it had always bothered me so much that she had died that way.

  Angie laughed.

  “Don’t worry, Mommy,” she said again, smiling, as I checked her diaper.

  Her diaper felt soft and dry. What a relief!

  “They are taking good care of me, Mommy. Don’t worry. When Aunt Fi drove over me, two big beautiful angels carried me into heaven. Now I’m picking flowers, playing with all the other children, and I even get to sit in Jesus’ lap.”

  Then came that strange feeling of emerging into reality. The room and Angie and the angels all started to fade and swirl. I fought to stay there, to stay in that dream, but the reality of that cold autumn morning somehow gripped me and pulled me into real life. Through blurry eyes I looked at the clock: 4:30 a.m. Time to get up, time to get ready for market.

  I took a quick shower, the water and the heat helping me wake up, before walking out into the kitchen and grabbing a mug of coffee. Our living quarters were small and cramped and left quite a bit to be desired, but I had purpose. I was a manager. The morning still slept in darkness, but I hummed while closing the heavy door behind me and walked out to the narrow sidewalk—I spotted my van and smiled. I was so proud of that van.

  My boss had told me that part of my job as manager would be to pick up the Amish girls who worked for us, which is why I had to leave so early. He told me I should buy a new van to taxi everyone around in, so I went on down to the local Dodge dealer to look around. There was a particular kind of van popular back then, and I had always wanted one, but when I looked at the sticker price, my heart sank. I knew my and Jonas’s credit fell well short of the requirement. But I needed that van. I talked to my boss about it, and he said to go ahead and buy it—he would even co-sign on the loan for us! And the money he paid me for mileage covered the monthly van payment! Every morning I climbed in
to that van so thankful to God, and my boss, for the blessing.

  By the time I picked up the last Amish girl and headed for the farmers’ market in Burtonsville, Maryland, light began creeping up over the eastern edge of the world. A feeling of warmth and happiness filled me, a satisfying feeling that only comes when you are making something of yourself, forging ahead in the world with hard work and willpower. On those early mornings, I felt that I could do anything.

  We arrived at market, and everyone piled out, yawning and waking up but usually laughing too—we were a fun group, we worked hard together, and we knew that smiling and laughing made the long days go faster. We walked down the aisles crowded by produce and baskets and barrels overflowing with things for sale. The stands were brand new but simple, nothing fancy. Some of the food stands looked more permanent, with walls and high ceilings. The main hall was large; in the mornings you could hear it start to wake up as people called out to one another. The market’s grand opening lay only a few months behind us, and an air of fresh excitement radiated throughout the building.

  In our stand we cleaned and prepared for the day, turning on ovens and stocking up inventory. We sold soft pretzels, homemade potato chips, and mountain pies, pastries filled with beef and vegetables, while also selling candy in an adjoining stand. Usually we got ready with time to spare, and I headed down to where one of the tenants served an inexpensive but hearty breakfast over a tall counter. We sat on the round stools and chatted about the goings-on in the market—who was getting married, who was having children, who was selling their stand or hiring more help. In some ways that market group seemed extremely diverse, but there were more similarities than differences: most of us who worked there grew up in Lancaster County, most of us were Amish or grew up in the Amish-Mennonite community, none of us was scared of hard work, and we were all trying to get ahead. I felt responsible for my family, trying to bring in some extra money so that Jonas could push ahead with his dream of providing free counseling to those who needed it. Already he counseled two days a week and studied two more days, and I felt proud that by working I could allow him to continue. Yet that feeling of responsibility brought back a lot of memories from my childhood.

  A Thursday afternoon in 1961. I was twelve years old at the time and had only recently heard the whispers, the crying, the hushed discussions about how relatives would help us in our time of financial difficulty. I entered the house that afternoon, like every Thursday afternoon in those days, knowing Mom would be at market with Dad. We had suffered some serious financial setbacks in the previous years, so Mom would go along to market to try to save on labor costs while the eight of us kids stayed home and looked after things. My allergies forced me inside while the rest of my brothers and sisters worked in the garden or the barn, and I looked around for the note I knew waited for me, a note from Mom addressed to “Annabetz” listing the number of pies and cakes needed for that weekend’s trip to market.

  “10 cherry pies, 10 apple pies, 10 shoefly pies . . .” The list went on. Occasionally the heaviness, the responsibility, the wish to run outside on such a beautiful summer day, the sadness that Mom wasn’t home—all of these things would combine and bring tears to my eyes. Yet arriving in the basement meant a time for action, and action has always formed a welcome distraction. Soon I was making pie crusts, pie filling, and icing for the cakes, all the while humming to myself, wishing my sisters could be there singing with me. In what seemed the blink of an eye, the work vanished, fifty or sixty pies and cakes baked slowly in the huge stone oven, and I thought to myself with a smile how Daddy would yell out to the customers in the market that they had the best cakes and pies around.

  “Get your fresh, hot, soft pretzels here!” I would yell out to the morning, thinking about Daddy and how he would bring in the customers with his loud voice booming through the market. But this was Burtonsville in the fall of 1987, and I was managing another stand, not working at Daddy’s. I often thought of Daddy, how proud he would be to see me in there managing and working hard. I find that a lot of times I’m still working hard for him, even though he’s not around anymore.

  Just before 9:00 a.m. we started work in earnest, filling up the pretzel display and waiting on the first customers to arrive. From that point on the day blurred in one long hustle and bustle and whirlwind of work: roll pretzels, help customers, clean, roll more pretzels, help more customers, make sure all the employees get their breaks, prepare for the lunch and dinner rush. Finally the day eased off to a slow finish as the market emptied. Clean the equipment. Wash the dishes. Pile into the van. Drive home.

  I got home late Friday night dog tired but happy. Sales were good, not as good as we needed them to be, but every week showed steady improvement. I stayed up for a little while talking with Jonas about the day but went to bed at a decent hour—the next morning it all started again.

  Saturdays were even better than Fridays because my daughters went to market with me. Both of them worked hard, and LaVale, even though she had only just turned eleven, pretty much ran the candy side of the stand by herself. I found myself completely surprised at how well she dealt with customers and handled the money. At the end of the day, she even gave me a complete inventory with a list of her recommendations as to how much I should buy for the following week. She always knew exactly what I wanted her to do just before I told her—I often called her my little soul mate. I felt so close to her in those days.

  Of course there were trying times even then, like the time I found LaVale and her cousin smoking a cigarette behind my brother’s house. Or the time LaVale and that same cousin took her older sister’s car for a joyride. But even those things seemed rather innocent at the time—sure, they gave me some stress and worry, but worse things could happen, right? LaVale and I still remained close, even through those relatively small conflicts. Unfortunately, things would get much worse in our relationship over the coming years.

  My relationship with LaWonna was another story. Things changed when we first arrived in Pennsylvania, and I worried about her constantly. One of the major changes was her getting a driver’s license. I could feel her pulling away from me and felt disappointed at the choices she made. I also thought she was getting into trouble, but little did I know just how serious her trouble was becoming, or how much her past haunted her. Anyway, some of that frustration, on both of our sides, spilled over into our time working together at the market stand, until one day she approached me.

  “I just can’t work for you anymore, Mom. I like you as a mom, but I just can’t work for you!”

  I felt devastated. The fact that LaWonna didn’t want to work with me hurt me deeply. We found her another job at a local pharmacy, but despite eliminating the stress that came from working together, our relationship continued to deteriorate. I took her decision not to work with me as a very personal rejection, something that made me feel inadequate as a mother and also as the friend I thought I should be to her. Couple my crumbling relationship with LaWonna with lingering guilt regarding my past, and depression began creeping in.

  As always, I hid my feelings well by staying busy and rushing about from here to there, an easy thing to do since being the manager of a small business required it: market on Friday and Saturday, church on Sunday, banking on Monday, running errands on Tuesday and Wednesday, looking over the inventory and picking up ingredients on Thursday, and then back to market again on Friday. And I loved every minute of it. I made $200 per week plus mileage. That meant I was making $800 to $1000 a month plus the use of the van basically for free, and Jonas was able to counsel more people, spend more time studying. We were really doing it, we were living out our dream, and apart from my low self-esteem, I enjoyed life and work and never considered doing anything else.

  We could both feel the momentum gaining: week after week more people came to him about their troubles, their broken marriages, their difficult children, their past abuse or current addictions. Soon he met with eight to ten people each week, and I joined him
in the sessions if I could. But running the market stand began taking over my life.

  I completely immersed myself in the business, adjusting the menu and eventually emphasizing the soft pretzels as much as possible because of their low cost and increasing popularity. I eventually persuaded my boss to go to just soft pretzels on the one side of the stand, while still selling candy on the other side. I also took care of the books, tracking payments and sales and deposits. When Christmas came around, there was a Christmas party to attend, something I never even thought about, and I received a generous Christmas bonus! Financially we still lived month to month, but things felt secure.

  Then another turning point: early in the new year a friend of mine told me there was a market stand for sale at the Downingtown Farmers’ Market. They sold pizza, stromboli, and (the reason she called me) soft pretzels. I never planned on buying my own business—far from it—and felt fortunate just to be managing the stand I already worked at, but Downingtown was only a thirty-minute drive from our house, and the long journeys to Burtonsville every week were starting to wear on me. My friend gave me the details of the people who owned the store and even found out by asking around that they had been trying to sell for quite some time. My initial thought was that they would want way too much money, yet they seemed to want out, and I began to wonder if I should look into it.

  But I also felt very committed to my boss. I couldn’t leave him without a manager. The whole idea of abandoning him and his business nearly kept me from even calling the stand owners, but in the end I thought, It can’t hurt to just call, and besides, a lot of market stands sell for $100,000 or even more—most likely it will probably be well out of our price range. I wrote their names down and decided to give them a call when I had a chance.