Crocktown

LINVILLE - While worldly throngs flock to New Orleans this week to celebrate Mardi Gras and Shrove Tuesday, some folks here in the Shenandoah Valley celebrate in a different, simpler way. According to Hannah Anna Waltshower-Druberschwarzen, head of the German material culture program at Kookstown University near Lancaster (Pennsylvania), many people of Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry celebrate “Fastnacht” Day instead.

This tradition came from the need to clear pantries of all sugar and lard on the “eve of the fast”, or “fast nacht”, in preparation for the Lenten season. As a result, women would make large chunks of deep-fried dough rolled in sugar. Unlike doughnuts, fastnachts were often made from potato dough and did not have holes. These treats became known as “fastnachts.”

Menno Rhodes, a local farmer near Dayton, says the tradition provides a more acceptable way “for us to stuff ourselves happy before the farming season begins.”

His wife, Miriam Beery Burkholder Brunk Rhodes, agrees: “Vile vee don’t alvays agwee wids de ways of de Englischers froms does odter churches, vee do likes to haf a gut time as much as anaboddy else.”

Mrs. Rhodes, who comes from a long line of Mennonite cooks, has been married three times. Her first two husbands died of heart diseases that she believes may have been related to her good cooking. “But, you knows, I sinks dat dis husband I has now is differnt caus his last name begin wits ‘R’,” states Mrs. Rhodes with a twinkle in her eye.

Mrs. Rhodes confesses that she has, in recent years, succumbed to modern convenience by purchasing the sugar-laden gems at the local Martins grocery store.

“I sinks der gut Lort unnerstans,” she says. But she’s not so sure what Menno would think. That is, if he ever finds out.

Thanks to Dutch Valley Girl for submitting this news item.