Writings
Memoir Stories

The first time I saw a covered farmer’s market was around Thanksgiving 1997, two weeks before I arrived in the USA and was in the middle of exploring the area. We lived in an old farmhouse in Vera Cruz, PA with others and had two rooms. The wooden buildings looked rustic, and the parking places were filled. You really had to drive around and around to find an opening or wait till somebody was leaving. Finally, after we parked all the way down from the entrance we could enter a double door. The first I saw on my left was a place with paintings of local art like old barns and houses. But in the back, I found art of famous musicians like John Lennon, Roy Orbison, Mick Jagger and John Denver. I still could smell the paint in this location and liked it. Everything was in the light of Thanksgiving. A little bit further on my left was a place with soft pretzels—which I never saw before—and it smelled great. On my right there was a big place where I saw so many screws and tools. I never saw a place like that, a kind of hardware surplus store. My husband went in to look for tools because we had to begin from the start since I only came over with a suitcase of clothing. There was on my left a place with handmade wooden furniture and I loved the style which was Amish. This wood smelled so good and wherever I went at this market there were so many smells especially from all the food places. There must be together a few hundred vendors spread over the main building and the buildings outside. When we got further into this market it became very crowded and I had to hold on to my husband's hand because you had to move step by step. Cell phones didn’t exist yet so if I lost my husband I could be lost for sure. On this very first day we bought our cheese fondue ceramic pan. The owner was an older man who immigrated from Greece with his wife and sold kitchen appliances. I never saw so much of it as at this small place he had. He was a very friendly man and liked to talk with people. He introduced himself as coming from Greece and built up a living here and a family. So of course he found out that I just immigrated and gave us a nice discount on this cheese fondue pan to celebrate my immigration and let me feel welcome. We still have this cheese fondue pan. It felt so good to see this kindness in people. Everyone was very friendly. I discovered fudge which I had never seen before and I loved it very much. The taste was heavenly. The caramel covered apples on a stick looked so good but I never ate them. We spent a few hours there because there was so much to see and my husband's cousin had a home crafted basket and dried flower store. So we stopped by and drank her own grown tea while she was talking away. She looked so happy and I could tell she liked what she was doing. Lots of regular customers came by to talk to her but also went home with something they loved from her. I liked her too for her peppy behavior which gave me a smile on my face - she definitely treated me like family because she was giving away some family rumors. I didn't even know who they were yet. I saw her later at big wedding parties or funerals and she always came to me for a pleasant chat. She had a pretty face with make-up and very long blond hair. In one of the back buildings where you first had to leave the main building, I found a co-worker with his wife selling home crafted jewelry. He also sold rock lamps and crystals and all kinds of different polished stones. Very interesting to look at and his wife was a great artist because I loved her style of working with silver and rock beads and polished stones. Her crafts had very beautiful colors of all kinds of different yellow or all kinds of different greens. I just loved it and my co-worker said that I could receive some discount because we worked for the same employer. I felt so welcome from day one when I came to this covered farmer’s market. This market which most people know in Pennsylvania is named: Zerns in Gilbertsville. On Saturdays there was also a car auction outside or there was a band playing inside the main building and people just started to dance. I never saw anything like it but enjoyed everything about it. At the end of the last day on Saturday there was a green grocer who gave boxes full of leftover veggies and fruit away for only $3.00. My husband and I were standing in front of this inside store too between the crowd where you moved up slowly to the front. There was no number, so you had to take care to get it with $3.00 cash. It was always great to receive good quality fresh produce so cheaply. September 30, 2018 Zerns unfortunately closed the doors after 92 years in business. We still miss going to Zerns, but now we sometimes go to the Quakertown farmer’s market.

I looked out of our bay window and there she was on that December morning in 2021. Walking proudly straight up through the snow on our sidewalk toward our house. Wow, where is this black cat coming from? I called my husband Mike to come over so he could see. At the time, when he arrived, the black cat was gone but it left footprints in the snow. “Oh,” Mike said. “Very probably a neighborhood cat who got out.” “I don’t know Mike because there is something special about this cat, I never saw a cat like this as only on tv.” We had a male cat at that time, Felix, an orange tiger. We rescued him two years ago from a cat lady. He was excited about something outside and ran back and forth from the front to the back windows. At the time when we looked, we didn’t see anything and there was no snow to give footprints away. The next morning, we saw a lot of snowy footprints around our house and even on our snowy patio. This might be a cat that is lost through pandemic circumstances where so many people and families died? A few days later Mike and I got a good look at the black cat. Her behavior of cleaning herself and the way she walked we could tell it was a female cat. All the way in the backyard of our house is a small shed, and woodchucks usually have their housing there. But now we saw her going under the shed and that afternoon the sun came out and so did she. I took a photo from behind my kitchen window to get a closer look by expanding the photo. Wow her black fur was shining in the sunshine and she was rubbing away on empty bush with her back and face. Later on, I learned that she was marking her territory. She had long black hair which we only saw on cat shows or tv commercials. What was a cat like her doing in the wild? If we tried to get close to her, she didn’t let that happen. She would run away and hide. I gave her a name: “Poezeke" which is a Holland Dutch name for a female cat. One time she was at our patio door with her nose on the window and our Felix was at the other side with his nose up against the window. Mike and I thought maybe it would be a good idea to make friends with her to get them together. We started to feed her at night because she wouldn’t come close to our house during the day. It took a few days till she felt comfortable to enjoy the good food which Felix enjoyed on a daily basis. We used the big airplane cage, which we still had from our first cat Jasper who we took over with us from the Netherlands when I immigrated to the USA in 1997. We made a nice bed with a special warm blanket for cats in the cage and some open space for the food and water. First just in the front because she was very cautious to even come close to the cage, but she was hungry, so our plan succeeded. She came at night when we were sleeping so we never had a chance to catch her. Poezeke was a smart one and probably used to surviving. Mike talked with his co-workers about Poezeke, and one of his female coworkers had a trap cage. Mike was able to rent it from her and that would be only for a few days so we really needed this time to get her. We used the same blanket we gave her all those times in our airplane cage, so the smell was the same. We put some tuna in her own bowl she was used to and put some prayers up with the burning Padre Pio candle. That night we caught a black cat. We had our guest room prepared for a cat room - took Felix’s cat tree away that he hardly used and put them in the cat room in front of the window. The hood of the airplane cage was set to give the new cat a hiding place and a feeling of safety. The black cat was very scared and I felt so sorry. We had also set up a litterbox that we were hoping she would use it because they don’t always use one right away. If she wouldn’t, then we couldn't keep her in the house. The following two days there was a big surprise waiting for us. The black cat looked very depressed and sat on the top of the cat tree with the tail hanging down. It didn’t eat or drink and also didn’t use the litterbox - he peed a few times on the carpet. It was horrible and the more we looked at the cat, the more we thought that it was not the cat we saw before. But we didn’t see Poezeke anymore, so we didn’t know what to think. The third day I looked out of our bay window, and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. There was Poezeke running in our front yard with a happy smile on her face. I called Mike at work and was happy to get a hold of him: “You never will believe what I saw in our front yard.” He guessed it right away and said: “did you see Poezeke?” “Yes, how do you know about it?” And he answered he had some questions about the cat we caught. This poor cat we caught was very probably a neighborhood cat that somehow got out. When Mike came home that night from work, he let the black cat go right away and as the little cage door was opened, he spurred away with a high speed and never saw this cat again. We still had the trap for one more night and set it up again and hopefully now for Poezeke. Yes, we got her right away and she was upset and hissed. The guest room was cleaned as much as possible. Mike went into the room with her talking calmly to her and then opened the trap cage door. She rushed to the window. I went out because Felix was crying at the door. When I came back, I spooked poor Poezeke and she ran up up on the wall and the window, as afraid as she was. I left the room right away and let Poezeke calm down with Mike. I called the trap organization and explained the situation and asked if they could come down the next day to catch her in the room for a doctor's exam and to clean her up and maybe a sterilization - we would pay for everything. A woman whose name was Caroline caught her very easily in a cage and said right away she is sterilized and I asked how can you tell? Look at the top of her left ear is clipped and that means that she has been living in the wild for years. Only cats living in the wild are getting sterilized to prevent more kittens in the world. Caroline came back the next day with Poezeke nicely cleaned up and with all the vaccines given. She had bloodwork done and she seems to be in very good health. Caroline said it is not an adoption cat for families but you and your husband with love and care will get a good cat out of it. Because of our love for Poezeke, and willingness to give her a home and good life we didn’t need to pay anything. I gave her a $50 donation for the trap organization and thanked her up and down. It took Poezeke two years to adjust but she became and still is the best and sweetest cat we ever had. She is a special race: she is a full blood Norwegian Forrest cat - long black hair with a smokey collar - beautiful cat. Poezeke is a full member of our family.

We live in a wooded area of Bethlehem but still in a residential location. In my previous story of last month in July I talked about the rescue of our Pussycat (black longhair Norwegian Forrest cat) in the wild. One day, a few years ago when my husband was still working, I saw a Pussycat with her nose on the front door window and another animal with his nose on the other side of the door and was looking her in the eyes. I came closer and saw that it was a raccoon and he looked at me with his black eyes but believe it or not they looked friendly. Pussycat was not at all afraid and actually it looked as if they were friends. I read at one time on the internet that cats in the wild can connect with raccoons and be friends. I didn’t like the racoon coming to our front door because they can be carriers of rabies. With that in mind I started to bang loudly on the door window, and he just looked at me I thought with sad eyes and then he ran off to the bushes at the end of our front yard. Pussycat looked at me like she wanted to tell me that she didn’t like what I did. In a way I felt bad about myself but I didn’t want a raccoon to visit our house and Pussycat was now an indoor cat. A few months ago, a young beautiful grey cat came to our patio in the back and we thought it was a straight cat and I started to feed him with Pussy cat’s very good food and some water in a bowl. I called him Mauwmauw and asked Pussycat if she saw Mauwmauw and well mostly Mauwmauw came late at night between 9:00-10:00 PM and Pussycat let me know. I put some food and water out and Mauwmauw came back to eat it but if he saw me or my husband he was not feeling comfortable enough to stay. So I started to put the food out by 8:00PM. The next day we saw that the food was gone but the water was all spilled over the floor and the bowl with food was somewhere else on our patio. I thought that was strange, but I didn’t think anything about it. We didn’t see Mauwmauw anymore but the spilled water and bowl with dirt left behind was strange. And then one night we discovered that Mauwmauw was not coming anymore but a raccoon was eating his food. Oh my Gosh, we attracted a racoon to our house. No wonder that we didn’t see Mauwmauw anymore so I stopped leaving food behind on the patio. Mike always has a compost bucket on the edge of our patio and in the house next to the sink we have a compost bowl. We put the vegetable skins and leftovers in, but several times a day we empty it in the bucket on the patio. The racoon who didn’t find the cat food anymore started to empty the compost bucket and ate what he could. My husband gave him the name “Rocky” who was interested to find a way to seal this bucket. Rocky found his way by biting into it in the plastic to get his way to the food. My husband went out several times at night to chase him away, but he just stood there. My husband and was not impressed. He threw a clay pot at him which hit his head, but he still stayed there. My husband told me about it the next day and I was so upset because I don’t want any wild animals around our house to get hurt. Rocky was after food because he was hungry and maybe had to feed a family. My husband didn’t expect me to be upset and thought I was approving of this behavior. I definitely didn’t and even told him that if I found out that he hurt a wild animal because it is hungry he shouldn't live in this location. I was very firm with my husband, and I am usually not, but he got the message and became kind and understanding. He now said that Rocky was smart and felt challenged him to outsmart Rocky. Raccoons are very smart animals, you know. Several times Rocky got a chance to open the bucket and my husband patiently cleaned up the next day. We went to home depot to look for a raccoon protected bucket, but that was too easy for Rocky to open. After back and forth my husband tried different things but Rocky outsmarted him all the time. Then my husband got an idea to work with rope and knots over this bucket and explained to me how to open it with the knots (my husband has a book about ropes and knots). Well finally he outsmarted Rocky and since then we didn’t see him. Now I miss Rocky because he was in a challenge match with my husband. We both hope that Rocky is okay and I am happy that my husband could feel like that. Mauwmauw came back one more time by accident. I saw him at night around 9:00PM and was so happy to see him. When I opened the door, he ran off and I ran on the patio and was calling him- “Mauwmauw come back!” You will not believe it, but he came back and I told him I am getting food for you to wait here. He understood it was unbelievable and waited till I came out with his food and water. I sat down on the floor and he ate the food in front of me and then came to me to get petted and I could hold him in my arms I was stunned. He was so happy to see me, and I was so happy to see him. Are you interested in Pussycat? I asked him. And guess what? He ran to the kitchen door window and looked inside like he understood everything I was saying. He was young and playful, and I played with him and it was such a pleasure. This is the end of Mauwmauw because I didn’t leave food behind anymore for him and I didn’t see him anymore. My husband always thought that he was a neighborhood cat who they let out in the evening and night.