Last Class

Photo: Mary Swander

This is the last day for Bunny. The last day she will make the two-mile trek down the road, bridle slipped over her head, bit in her mouth, past my house to Shady Grove School, carrying the three Kauffman kids in their cart. Mahlon, the oldest Kauffman boy, drives Bunny, but there isn’t much work to it. Bunny knows the way.

Down the gravel road to the four-cornered stop, look both ways, take a right, and it’s up and down the rolling hills, and into the Shady Grove schoolhouse gate. Bunny makes her way home in the same manner. Through the winter snows and the spring rains, she trots steadily along, no stops, her eyes straight ahead on the road.

But now Bunny is retired. For a few months, at least. School is out for the summer, and Bunny, the beautiful black and white spotted pony with the swishy tail, will have a rest for a few months. She will graze in the pasture, her skin turning sleek and shiny from the bright green grass.

Now that they are out of school, the Kauffman kids will take on more responsibility with chores around the farm--feeding the goats, helping their mother in the garden, and their father in his shop. They will also have more fun, going fishing and on camping trips with their cousins. And they will play ball, four or five balls strewn across their yard at any one time: softballs, baseballs, tennis balls, kickballs, and soccer balls. Even a shiny croquet set comes out from time to time.

“I need four softballs,” I’d said to Bob yesterday at the hardware store. “I’ve been asked to pick them up on my way home from town. Am I wiping you out?”

“No, we stock up at this time of year. With 12 Amish schools all having picnics this week. . . We know we’re going to have a lot of demand.” Bob took 4 softballs back to the old wooden counter, adding up the receipt with a pencil on a tiny piece of white paper.

Today at Shady Grove all the children, parents and grossmommies and grossdaddies will gather for a picnic and a game of softball. Horses and empty buggies will be tied to the fence in a long, neat row. The bench wagon will be parked next to the school, supplying tablecloths, silverware, napkins, and plates and cups. Fried chicken and potato salad, coleslaw and lime Jello-O with tiny somersaulting marshmallows will be spread across the picnic tables. Ice water will be drawn a 10-gallon Igloo water cooler that will have been filled with ice earlier in the morning.

Later, I drove by Shady Grove School and the bases were loaded, three children crouched and ready to run toward home, a softball zooming through the air, over the fence and into the surrounding cornfield. The whole group went up in cheers.

Often, non-Amish, or English people, think the Amish are severe, dressed all in black, having little fun. After all, they don’t dance nor play any musical instruments but the harmonica. These English people have never been to an Amish end-of-the-school-year picnic.

Home, I thought about all the devices that weren’t carried into my school. No iPhones nor iPads, no laptops, no cables nor adapters. No cars parked in the yard. Instead, the Bunnies. Instead, softballs. The balls hit for practice caught on the fly, all the easy outs with the help of the short stop. All the balls that ended up over the fence on the last day of school, scoring at least one point in a game where no one kept score.

In 1988 when I purchased The Fairview School, an old abandoned one-room schoolhouse where I now live, you could still see the faint outline of an old ball diamond. The backstop, a rotting wooden frame covered with hardware cloth, jutted up into the sky on top of the hill.

My place had been a public school with a certified teacher commuting 15 miles every morning from Iowa City. Neighborhood children attended--mostly Amish with a few English mixed in. But when the district decided it would close Fairview School and move the students into town, the Amish built their own schoolhouse—Shady Grove—and staffed it themselves.

In 1990, a big storm bent the backstop over as if it were one of the grossdaddies in the neighborhood hobbling along with a cane. In 1991, another storm hit the backstop from the other direction, straightening it back up again. Finally, in 1999, a straight-line wind flattened the whole backstop. I carted it off to the burn pile, the grass creeping over the diamond and the sheep nibbling up the grass.

In 1999, we had our first Fairview School Reunion with three generations of former students stuffed in their buggies, pulling into my lane. They brought a potluck dinner and old report cards, song books, and of course, a softball, a few mitts, and a bat. They sang some songs out of the book like Red River Valley, and even a rousing version of The Itsy Bitsy Spider. Then they told stories of playing softball, teams divided up in a quick and easy fashion. 1-2, 1-2.

This afternoon at Shady Grove, this non-competitive, semi-communal society engaged in a game designed to be competitive. Instead, the baseball game became co-operative, collaborative. The point wasn’t to beat down an opponent. The point was the fun of it—the smack of the ball against the bat, the thump of your fist into the new leather mitt, the race from one base to another, the cheers and laughter, the good sportsmanship, the encouragement and congratulations when something went right.

Photo: Mary Swander

In the late afternoon, I had to run an errand at the Kauffman’s. There was Bunny at the hitching post, her cart still attached, her passengers delivered. Mahlon was playing with a bat and ball in the yard.

“You try.” Mahlon handed me the bat and ball.

I threw the ball up in the air, then took a swing with the bat. A big whiff. Strike one.

“Good try,” Mahlon said.

“I haven’t done this in a long time,” I said, then made another attempt.

This time, the bat connected to the ball and I hit a line drive down the circular driveway, bouncing up and off of the manure spreader, onto the tin roof of the goat shed, and rolling down again near Bunny’s front hooves.

“Woman on first base,” I said, handing the ball and bat back to Mahlon.

He tossed the ball in the air and hit it hard, up and over the barn, sailing, sailing through the air, flying over the next field-- plowed and ready to be planted-- making a slow arc over the rich dark earth, the very ground, the very neighborhood that had taught me so much, disappearing into the warm spring air, disappearing from sight.

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