Letter about Dirks house

Courtright, ON

May 10, 1996

Dear Irene,

You asked me if I could still recall the house of my grandparents (Heinrich and Aganetha Dirks) in Gnadenfeld (Ukraine). After my mother’s (Alide Ottas)  death in 1926, my father (Herman Dirks) moved with me back to his parental home. I lived there with Aunt Maria (Dirks and Uncle Heinrich (Dirks, Jr.) until 1928, when I went to live with my mother’s relatives in Estonia. I can still remember the house well.

When I recall this house, I cannot help thinking of our dear Savior’s words to His disciples, “In my Father’s house are many rooms…” It was a large house built of clay bricks, white-washed on the outside with a tiled roof.

After the death of their parents, the brothers and sisters agreed not to sell the house because Aunt Maria and Uncle Heinrich Jr. were living in it. They had faithfully cared for their parents. Aunt Maria had never married and thus had never left her parental home. Uncle Heinrich had been a teacher somewhere, had saved his money and bought a small farmstead that he rented out. So even before the death of his mother, he returned to his parental home to be an assistant pastor to help his father (the leading minister of the Gnadenfeld church). The rent from his farm was his income because only his father was paid by the church.

Yet, as time passed, other siblings found refuge in their parental home. In the year 1918, the Gustv Aron Rempel family from Marinskaya lived there for a time. Later Uncle Hans came with his family. In the year 1926, my father and I also moved in. Uncle Hans and Aunt Warya and their children lived on one side of the house (corner room and large dining room), while Aunt Maria, Uncle Heinrich and my father lived on the other side and shared a common household. Aunt Maria cooked for us. Thus, I got to know her and Uncle Heinrich very well. Later when my father remarried, he stayed in his paternal home and thus Otto and Waldemar spent their early childhood in this house.

The usual older Mennonite home had a “grosse Stubs” or parlor. This room was for visitors. Children were not allowed to play in it or be there except for special occasions. At Christmas, the parents decorated the tree in the parlor and the door was kept closed. After the church service on Christmas Eve when it was dark outside, the parents lit the candles and the doors were opened. The family celebrated Christmas Eve and exchanged gifts in the parlor.

At that time, there were still no cars and transportation depended on horses.That took much longer and guests often stayed overnight. For this reason, besides the usual sofa, table and chairs, there was always a large bed in the parlor. It was piled high with extra pillows and quilts. This way the guests always had a place to sleep. Because of my grandfather's position, our grandparents often had guests and thus found it necessary to have a guest room as well.

As I have heard, the corner room was the master bedroom. Thus Aunt Maria mentions in her account of grandmother’s illness, that grandmother was moved from the corner room to the parlor because that room was bigger and she could breath more easily. Also, visitors could reach her more conveniently than in the bedroom.

The summer room, which usually had no stove and was used only in the summer as its name suggests, did have a stove in the Dirks’ home. It was my grandfather's office. After grandfather died, Uncle Heinrich moved from the attic to the summer room and lived there until the day he was sent into exile.

There were nine children in the family. As I have heard, the boys slept upstairs in the attic room, which was a nice big room. The girls slept on hideabeds, two together in the large and the small dining rooms. A single room for each child was unknown at that time. There was not a bathroom. The outhouse was outside behind the summer kitchen. My father told me that my grandfather liked to wash himself every day with cold water. The water had to be carried into the house in pails and the used water had to be carried out again. What a lot of work!

The winter kitchen also served as passageway to the stable, which was commonly attached to the house. The summer kitchen was especially large and was built onto the house. In hot weather, the cooking was done there so that the house would not get so hot. The family ate in the summer kitchen too. It was also the laundry room. It contained a huge built-in vat for boiling clothes. 

All this meant much hard work. Running a household was surely much more difficult in those days than it is now.

The house was surrounded by tall acacia trees that reached over the roof. In spring, when the acacia trees were blooming, the house stood in a sea of white blossoms. In summer, the trees provided a welcome canopy of shade so that it did not get so hot in the house. Summer in Ukraine is dry and very very hot. Behind the acacia trees was an orchard. There was also a garden, in which vegetables and potatoes were grown as well as some wheat for bread and barley and oats for the animals. The neighbors on one side were called Voth. The boundary between them was a mulberry hedge. On the other side was a vacant lot. I don’t know to whom it belonged.

I have just looked at the photograph of our grandmother’s funeral. My father, my aunts and uncles are there. Suddenly, I became aware that they were living only in my memory, that they have left this world, except Elfriede Ediger Penner, who turned 90 this year. In the picture, she is a little girl, looking honest and brave and she has been like that all her life.  We are like guests, who arrive today and leave tomorrow.

Charlotte Dirks