Shoofly Pie: My Dad—Jake's grandfather

My father, Alvin E. Miller, was born in Fair Oaks, Indiana on January 22, 1913. His parents were Old Order Amish and he was raised in that tradition. Being raised Amish, however, is not the same as being a member of the Amish church. Part of what is called the "Believers' Church" tradition is that only adults can comprehend the gravity of the decision to join church, so only adults are permitted to join. Although the modern TV presentations are almost invariably wildly over-hyped, Amish youngsters so sometimes spend time "running around," before they join the church and settle down to the kind of sober life that is expected of Amish adults.

Dad was no exception; however, it just happened that the Great Depression coincided with his time of "running around," so most of his time was spent "running around looking for work." He left two tapes of memoirs, and the first one covers the time he spent running around looking for work. I transcribed those tapes and later annotated them and inserted headings to help with the text flow. What follows in the next post is the annotated transcription of the first tape he left.

Dad passed away in March, 1978, so neither Jane nor Jake ever met him.

A technical note: if you put your mouse on the footnotes, you should get a little pop-up with the footnote text in it. You must, however, open the jump to the full post for them to work. Grateful thanks to Ruth Kitchin Tillman, whose HTML fu is very strong, for making these work.

From L-R: unknown, Allen Fisher, my dad, Sylvester Fisher, Elias Fisher
The picture was taken in 1940 in front of the Millwood Mill,
where Dad was working then. Sylvester Fisher and Dad traveled together sometimes.
Sylvester would marry my mother's sister,thereby becoming my Uncle Sylvester.