The Preacher and His Wife

Posted on by Mitchell Toews

January 23, 2017

“The Preacher and His Wife” is a comical look at the comings and goings of Mennonite life in a small town in the sixties. It is as pure as the view from inside the cocoon can be — but it’s just one cocoon.

The story goes live TODAY (January 23) on Fiction on the Web

Please find below a few short excerpts and also a couple of links to two other “Mennosphere” stories of mine that are in the FOTW archives.

On FICTION ON THE WEB JANUARY 23
“All family congresses were held in the tiny house and we sat packed as tight as two-yolks in a shell. Chair legs intersected like a village of miniature wigwams, and above that, our arms and forearms were in constant contact; sometimes linked. Our Zehen freundschaft heads – complete with high, overhanging brows – bobbed as one as we laughed or bowed in prayer or swiveled to see the facial expressions of the storyteller of the moment. The incoming newlywed uncles and aunts who found themselves part of this household became used to the close quarters. They soon grew adept at stepping over overlapping legs and socked feet as they picked a path through from the kitchen to the living room, doling out fresh coffee and buns with jam while a dozen conversations hummed and budgies squawked in their cages.”

[SNIP]

“One fall day, when winter parkas were in order, Sarah ran into our house to announce that, ‘Grandma can’t find her engagement ring and she is pretty sure that the Preacher’s wife has it.’
‘What?’ my mother said, stopping in mid-paw as she dug through a box of warm clothes to outfit us for winter. Grandma’s ring was her lone extravagant luxury and unlike other items of some beauty in her possession – furniture and rugs for example – this ring had no redeeming practical use. It symbolized love and fidelity and was purely a thing of pleasure. Grandma loved her ring, which had set a much younger Grandpa back almost a whole season of timber cutting in the Redekopp forests south of town.
‘That’s impossible,’ Mother said, with no opportunity for rebuttal, standing up straight with her hands on her aproned hips.”

[SNIP]

http://www.fictionontheweb.co.uk/2016/07/nothing-to-lose-by-mitchell-toews.html

http://www.fictionontheweb.co.uk/2016/10/heavy-artillery-by-mitchell-toews.html

You may also enjoy, “Our German Relative”. a Christmassy tale from Russia found on Red Fez, or other tales from the fictional prairie darp of “Hartplatz”, on Literally Stories or CommuterLit.

Copyright Mitchell Toews ©2016
Copyright Mitchell Toews ©2017

Our German Relative

Posted on by Mitchell Toews

http://bit.ly/RedFezOurGermanRelative

Red Fez’s Story of the Week. Next: world peace. Stand by…

In 2015, I was told this story – parts of it at least – by a resident in a predominantly Mennonite senior home in British Columbia. Some friends and I were there for lunch — the restaurant in the building had famously delicious food. One of the women at our table told us a moving account of incidents that had happened in Russia, during the early days of Communist rule.

Later, on the way back to work, we discussed her story. All of us had heard versions of it before even though the three of us were raised in Mennonite communities in BC, Alberta and Manitoba, respectively.

This story is a fiction based on true experiences passed down from that place and time. Whether it was a Christmas cookie or a Bible (or the Koran, for that matter) or a cross necklace; the danger was real for all those who dared to stand against the will of the state. This is possibly instructive, as some would banish religious symbols-practices-peoples in our free society today. In the 70’s, a friend of mine smuggled Christian Bibles into East Germany. He risked prison but did it gladly, working for a group organized at his Mennonite bible school in Switzerland. Prohibition makes its opponents bold.

I knew then that I wanted to share it as a piece of Mennonite lore. It speaks volumes, in a soft voice, about Mennonite culture and the quiet constancy that is common to many within the community.

I won’t say any more – it’s a short story and I don’t want to spoil it for you! A fiction based on certain historical accuracies, I hope you enjoy it, regardless of your beliefs. I also hope that it adds to your “Christmas spirit” and feelings of thankfulness.

Please see it here on the RED FEZ website. A great place to read, submit, discuss or lurk. 🙂 “Our German Relative” is just one of an entertaining and eclectic mix of stories posted in this Christmas-themed issue (No. 96).

“Red Fez is a melting pot of people interested in creating, sharing and discovering writing, music, art and more.”

The Business of Saving Souls

Posted on by Mitchell Toews

11.8.16 – Here is an excerpt from a new satirical piece I am working on, “The Business of Saving Souls”. I previously had it posted here in full to gather some feedback from ‘early readers’. Once I have collected all of their notes, I’m gonna shine’er up and submit for consideration to a literary journal!

Let me know if you would like to enlist as an ‘early reader’ for this story. I’ll send you a full draft — just put a note in the comment section below. And, thanks!

My complete collection of published stories, with links to the online pieces, is here: Publications 

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11.26.16 – OK, I have received some wonderful edit notes and I am shutting the story down for early readers. (That was that unease you sensed in the force just a few minutes ago.) Thanks to early readers and editors!

Here, below, is the new intro excerpt. I hope to submit this to a few literary journals in the next little while. The rewrite is around 3,200 words.

 

The Business of Saving Souls

By Mitchell Toews

THE SMALL HYUNDAI COUPE circled the church parking lot slowly. The car’s driver peered anxiously to ensure there were no homeless people around the dumpster or congregated near the large hot air outlets on the rear of the building.

Pastor Penn Benner hated to see homeless people on the property.

“We pay to support four separate homeless shelters here in Tribune and I’ll be damned if I have them people piling up on our spotless yard. This is The Lord’s home and I aim to keep it neat and tidy,” he had said covertly to Jason on more than one occasion.

Jason found it pleasurable to hear Benner say, “I’ll be damned,” and he felt guilty for it. Benner was, after all, the Head Pastor of the Southern North Tribune Church of Christian Fellowship and was also his boss.

“We’re in the business of saving souls not picking up old blankets and all the other crip-crap they leave behind,” Penn Benner would say in the empty church as Jason Halpnuscht listened. The words would echo in the immense chamber, bouncing off the acres of white drywall, the glimmery pot lights and the inlaid glass diamonds that formed a sixty foot cross in the ceiling, stretching from nave to second balcony.

“God loves them, but they are messy. You are the Youth Pastor, Halpnuscht, why don’t you organize the youth into an outreach group for when they – the homeless – congregate on the yard? Have the church youth interact with them. There should be a paucity of homeless on our property.”

Jason Halpnuscht hated Penn Benner’s Word of the Day desk calendar.

Halpnuscht patrolled the yard with particular care today. It was Senior Council day — the second Saturday of each month, the SNTCCF’s senior group met to review church business. The meeting consisted of Jason; Head Pastor Benner; the Chairman of the Senior Deacon Council, Ronald Himmelstrup; and the church Secretary, Jedidiah Davidson. If there were issues concerning specific church functions that were managed by one of the three Associate Pastors (APs), or their assistants (the Sub-Associate Pastors) then they would also be required to attend.

Jason often wondered about his presence at these meetings. Interested and eager to contribute though he was, he was seldom called upon to participate. Furthermore, when issues became controversial, he was routinely asked to leave. “Give us the room please, Jason,” Benner would say. The Pastor started using this expression after he heard it on an episode of “24”.

As he made the last of his inspection rounds, Jason noticed a few pansies, growing yellow and purple in the weak November sun. The flowers were huddled in a sheltered spot near the clothing drop off bins.

“They neither labor nor spin,” he said quietly to the Hyundai’s Camel interior with Burl Oak accents.

#

As he unlocked the council chamber and began to make sure all was in readiness for the meeting, Jason thought back to his patrol of the yard.

If there had been homeless people there, so what? Some churches – even some businesses – take a more direct approach and set up small structures or distribute clothes and blankets. Sending them to the downtown homeless shelters seemed a little cold. Did Jesus point to the nearest Long John Silver’s and yell, “All you can eat, maximum two sides…it’s on me, multitudes!”

*SNIP*

allfornow – m

Copyright Mitchell Toews ©2016

Hartplatz Sitings

Posted on by Mitchell Toews

The fictional Mennonite community of Hartplatz, Man., has been seen in print and on the wing at several locations on the WWW.

Tell-tales include red wing blackbirds, killdeers, grackles, budgies and pelicans…icing sugar…the smell of an old baseball glove when you hold it right up to your face…the sound a bible makes when it is dropped – for emphasis – on a large wooden desk…followed perhaps by the sound of Grandma shouting at the TV while watching All-Star Wrestling.

Hey, we all have our guilty pleasures.

Here is a spotter’s guide:

CommuterLit.com has run three of Mitch’s short fictions: “Encountered on the Shore”, “A Vile Insinuation”, and “Without Reason”. Two more of his stories, “Nothing to Lose” and “Heavy Artillery” (Oct 30) appear on Fiction on the Web (UK) and, “A Fisherman’s Story”, was published in Rhubarb Magazine Issue 39 (Available at better book stores – like Sam’s Place, 159 Henderson Hwy – or ORDER  COPIES HERE.)
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Literally Stories (UK) published Mitch’s twisted yarn, “Breezy and the Six-Pack Sneaker” as well as his nostalgic walk down a dangerous alley in 1932 Winnipeg, “The Fifty Dollar Sewing Machine”, and the contemporary tale, “Frozen Tag”(Oct 27).
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“And So Are They All” won second place in the Fiction category in the 2016 “Write on the Lake” writing contest and will be published in the Lake Winnipeg Writers’ Group’s semi-annual journal, Voices, Volume 16, No. 2. Mitch will present the story at the Voices launch at McNally Robinson book sellers in Winnipeg, on November 20 at 2 PM. Voices will be available online HERE and at McNally Robinson after November 20.

THANKS to the editors and publications who have run my stories so far. I am grateful and always nervous when a story goes, “out there”! I wouldn’t want this to get around, but the truth is, I just make this stuff up!

Let’s keep that last bit between us and the mergansers out in the bay.

allfornow – m

P.S. – Click here to think of springtime.

P.P.S. – If you caught the PUN in the title, you’re better than me. I put it there by accident and then realized it and thought, “sitings, that’s pretty good,” and left it in. Ahhh, the creative process, it’s a sacred trust.

 

Copyright Mitchell Toews ©2016

Re-post: http://slklassen.com

Posted on by Mitchell Toews

Here is a re-post of an SL Klassen blog item (The Drunken Mennonite). Enjoy!

Creatures of the (Menno) Night

The drink recipe/description harked me back to a trip to Belize, where Janice and I sat incognito in the Water Taxi terminal, acting for all the world like “Englanders” as we secretly listened in on the Plautdietsch conversations of Old Colony Mennonites in the waiting room.

So quaint, our specious faces said. Oh bah NAY! our true voices, right out of a Steinbach church basement, rang out inside our deceitful heads.

I think we were outed though, my white eyebrows and Russian cro-magnon forehead gave me away – a map of Moltoschna is printed on my scowling mug.

Speaking of mugs, the glass from which I will drink my Halloween El Diablo/Devil in a Thrift Shop will be one of our remaining Belize Belikin Beer glasses. I have captured it digitally, in empty repose, calmly awaiting its beverage.

“Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine…”

P.S. – I loved Halloween and because we were not churchy people (yes, we were THAT family) I had no holds barred. My friends were more constrained, so a fun part of those early Halloweens was to help them sneak out, get costumed, eat a crap-load of candy and come home without showing any effects. As I recall, my more churchified friends would eat sunflower seeds and drink Wonder Oil afterwards to remove the tell-tale STANK of sugar from their breath.

P.P.S. – Fresh from BC, “Halloween Apples” were permitted, even for PKs and HPKs. (Preacher’s Kids and Horny Preacher’s Kids. BTW, I always thought that meant that the KIDS were horny, not the preachers, but I did not go to bible school, so I can’t say for sure.)

 

 

 

 

Lunch with a Mennonite

Posted on by Mitchell Toews

HERE IS A QUICK RECOLLECTION of a lunchtime talk I gave at a Charlotte, NC advertising agency.

I worked for a Southeast Manitoba manufacturer and our weltlich new VP of Marketing – a Ka’toolsch from Montreal – had hired a new agency. As the advertising manager, it was my job to work with them.

The agency was made up mostly of transplanted New Yorkers, New Jerseyites and Penn State folk who had moved to warm and charming Charlotte. They all had pre-conceived notions of what a Mennonite was and now they had a new Canadian client spending money like it was znackzote.

Our contact at the agency conscripted me to give a presentation about Mennonite culture and religion. I felt largely unqualified, but I agreed to step up to the plate.

I sat on a tall stool in the centre of the office bullpen, surrounded by mostly female media people, graphic artists, creative types, PR professionals and copywriters. They sat with their pens poised expectantly above unsullied, lined notebook pages, legs crossed.  Their freshly glossed southern lips made me nervous and unsure.

Piety anxiety of the highest, and most distracted, order.

I spoke and they, well, they listened. Intently. They nodded silent approval as they played with their hair; tiny beads of perspiration dotted the bridges of their pert noses and those belle cleavages. I gulped back my self-doubt and forged on past einbach and zweibach and beyond, my figurative cleats digging up clods of antebellum red clay as I rounded second base and bore down on the Holy Ghost. I slid home; safe in a cloud of mixed metaphors.

It was astounding – I had discovered . . . Mennoporn!

Afterwards, there was quiet conversation together with rollkuchen and watermelon and I allowed to my agency contact, in my very best Barkman Avenue utsproak, that it had been a successful, and tasty, “launch”.

allfornow – Mitch (from one parallel north of Minnesota)

 

Copyright Mitchell Toews ©2016

 

 

 

 

The Blog Post I Always Wanted to Write

Posted on by Mitchell Toews

As a high-functioning anonymist, I sent this note to two of my low-brow friends. OK, I am low-brow; they are actually quite cultured. I liked it and wanted to share it with other friends — any brow will do — and so, here it is.

“Hey,

Greetings from the most beautiful place on earth. Jan and I love life, BUT, we are old and we are working too hard. We are almost done — then we can revert to being lazy sloths!

Cheers to slothdom.

So…you two and various cousins and friends from the Stein (for whom I have no email addresses) are my imaginary audience when I write my shitty little stories. (Oh no — am I over-selling?) Anyway, I have a blog.

Highly writerly. Although there is little ennui. A definite lack of ennui. Some angst. A bit of introspection. But mostly Mennonite guys blowing stuff up and putting it on YouTube.

You, as my imaginary audience, should be my literal audience, I reckon. If you don’t like it, you can revert to the imaginary.

My Blog is called Flies in the Outhouse. NO, WAIT — that’s my soon-to-be-a-major-motion-picture life story.

My blog is just called Mitchell Toews. http://bit.ly/MitchellToewsBLOG

Snip: I recently registered mitchellaneous.com

I have nine stories accepted to lit journals; eight published and one undergoing some edits. <he spits, derisively>

In other news, we had wieners & beans last night. I had three wieners and no regrets. THAT is the kinda guy I have become, Goddammit! Writerly like crazy.

We should have a fall event. Daaaaave?

allfornow – m

P.S. – I admit I had to look up how to spell ennui. BTW, I hope Satan is not bothering you too much, now that you have the gays in Steinbach.

Yours, in ennui,

which is rather risky,

Sincerely,

Mitchy”

 (Always close with a poem. Tres writerly.)

Copyright Mitchell Toews ©2016

Red River Valley – Stories 2 & 3

Posted on by Mitchell Toews

THE SECOND STORY in the Red River Valley Trilogy takes place within a year of the first. It is set in Manitoba in the early Seventies.

A Vile Insinuation  At a bordertown baseball tournament, several young Canadians meet a ballplayer from the States. The issue of the Vietnam war and the draft comes up. The boys, from Hartplatz, a largely Mennonite village not far from the border, speculate on how life could have changed had their forefathers chosen to re-settle in the USA instead of Canada.

“So, it’s a low draft number. I’m going to Vietnam, unless the war ends, ya know,” Marty finished the thought, and his beer. “They are already in the eighties now. I’ll be called up almost right away after my birthday. You betcha’.”

.

We were quiet for a minute. “Smoke on the Water” by Deep Purple drifted across the beer garden from a boom box near the bar.

.

“What song is that?” said Marty.

.

“You said your Mom was a Menno from Winkler, right?” Cornie asked, ignoring Marty’s question.

#

The last installment of the Red River Valley Trilogy takes place in the present. The characters from the ball tournament have aged. (Or, they may have aged.) One of them is facing a situation he had hoped to avoid.

In Without Reason, the concepts explored in the preceding stories are tested and re-evaluated.

He loved that old truck. Dietrich had it just the way he wanted it. His one prideful excess – Lord knows he could afford it – was the retro Cragar chrome mags. There were two other customizations: he had one handle from a favourite pair of ski poles as the knob on the stick shift lever. Also, the kids had given him a Reggie Jackson autographed number 44 Louisville Slugger bat. He had mounted a gun rack in the rear window for the lovely wood bat to reside, riding shotgun with him on the still streets of Hartplatz.

I hope you enjoy these stories and I would love to hear your thoughts. Your perspective may be entirely different than mine and there may be things about the incidents that you can refocus. I welcome critical comment. (Honest!)

Even if these stories are not your bowl of borscht, CommuterLit is a wonderful – free – resource for readers. Give it a try!

In the future, if my stories pass this ezine’s strict editorial scrutiny, I hope to have more work published on CommuterLit! For a linked list of my published pieces:  http://en.gravatar.com/mitchtoews

…allfornow – Mitch

 

Copyright Mitchell Toews ©2016

 

 

Henderson has Scored for Canada!

Posted on by Mitchell Toews

Paul Henderson scored his first NHL goal on January 29, 1964, against the Chicago Black Hawks. According to Wikipedia, “it came late in the game against goaltender Glenn Hall and resulted in a 2–2 tie.”

You probably did not know this.

But if you were born north of the 49th parallel between the Atlantic and the Pacific, you likely know about another of Henderson’s goals – one that came later in his career. (Americans who are drawing a blank can find plenty of appropriate, alternate sports references: from Bobby Thompson to The Miracle on Ice. Brits might conjure up Roger Bannister.)

Unforgettable moments – “against all odds” – are a staple of sports. Just ask Jesse Owens, or maybe better yet, Kevin Costner.

As an “emerging” writer (more often submerging) I had a Henderson moment recently when I received a copy of Rhubarb Magazine Issue 39. Looking at the cover, I saw a credit; my name, Mitchell Toews. I may have raised my arms. Just a little — my chewed-up rotator cuffs only allow for a limited joyous celebration. Besides, as my friend Dave sometimes reminds me, too much gesticulation is off-putting.

Anyway. My little story is not on a par with THE GOAL, but it was kinda cool. Por moi.

And the little town slept.

#

Here is an excerpt from, “A Fisherman’s Story”, which is in this issue of Rhubarb:

The birds flew without effort, in trail formation, gliding into the wind with their wingtips inches away from the curling edge of a breaking wave. They suddenly banked up and out toward the dim, salt-misted far shore of the bay, snaking around in a circle and landing clumsily behind the wave. Rising and falling on the swell, the birds floated quietly until a big male took off, flapped twice, then dropped to scoop a fish. The pelican nodded strenuously to reposition the quarry in his large bill pouch while his wingmen watched the water around him with unblinking eyes.

“Pescadooooo!” Jose had said, flashing his bright smile.

Find more published works, here: http://en.gravatar.com/mitchtoews

…allfornow – Mitch

 

P.S. – The photo is of my dad, Norman “Chuck” Toews. Early Sixties here — he might have been just a bit better than Henderson.

 

Copyright Mitchell Toews ©2016