Growing Up Amish - A Memoir Part 3

The scene still sends shivers of horror down my spine. Especially because I knew better. Nicholas and his sister often walked home the same way we did, and on those walks, I quickly realized that they were both starved for even the tiniest crumb of human kindness. I can still see Nicholas as we walked along the road in the late afternoon sunlight, stammering his words, smiling hesitantly and shyly, and glancing furtively at me now and again to see if I would mock or scorn him. Gaining confidence when I didnat. We had many normal, lighthearted conversations. Laughing and chattering as children do. I suppose that was as close as I ever came to seeing the innocent, relaxed child he would have been in a safer, saner world.

It is no surprise that from the brutal foundation of such a tortured life, Nicholas developed a mental disorder as he grew older. While some of those mental problems likely were genetic, I am convinced that no normal child could have remained emotionally stable after enduring what Nicholas did growing up.

In 1994, the Herrfort family moved to Bland, Virginia. What drew them there I do not know. It was a poor, remote community. Of Nicholasas life at this time, I have few details. Some say that after the move to Virginia, he stopped taking medication for his mental problems. Whatever the facts, I do know that his mental condition deteriorated steadily.

In June 1996, Nicholasas parents decided Nicholas would be better off living with relatives in Aylmer, as he was becoming a bit too much for the family to handle in Virginia.

Nicholas was vehemently opposed to the plan. He did not want to leave Virginia, but his parents insisted. At four thirty on the morning they planned to leave, Nicholas got up and left the house. After the sun rose, he was nowhere to be found.

His family searched and searched. And called and called his name. There was no answer. Sometime around midday, they found him. Lying facedown in a shallow pond just sixteen inches deep. He had taken his own life by drowning. By the time his body was found, the turtles had already eaten away part of his face.

No one can know the depths of his motheras raw and bitter sorrow for her oldest son, her firstborn. I do know, however, that I couldnat stop thinking about Nicholas and all that he had endured. Rather than being accepted and treated as an equal among his peers, he had been rejected and ridiculed simply for being different. My heart ached with regret, wondering how his life might have been different if just one of us had cared enough to be his friend.

They buried Nicholas in a remote country graveyard in Pearisburg, Virginia. A busload of relatives from Aylmer attended the funeral. A simple wooden marker was erected above his grave.

I thought about the shy, stammering, smiling boy who laughed and chattered as we walked along the road in the afternoon sunlight on the way home from school. And then I thought about the cruel injustices inflicted on him by those who should have known better and should have protected such a weak and defenseless child.

We knew who we were. And we know who we are today. We can mourn and grieve our thoughtless and cruel actions. We can say we were just children. We can say we didnat mean it. We can even ask forgiveness from the Herrfort family and from G.o.d.

But not from Nicholas. Not ever from Nicholas.

7.

My father was a man of many gifts and skills.

Farming was not one of them.

He dutifully tilled the earth and planted the seeds each year, and they produced. But his heart was not in such work. And it showed about the farm. Fences in a state of semi-repair, rusting skeletal hulks of old junk machinery parked about, w.i.l.l.y-nilly, in the field just south of the barn. We didnat realize it then, but our farm was just plain trashy.

Thatas not saying my father was a lazy man or that he didnat provide for his family. Far from it. Dad was a born salesman who loved the art of the deal. He sold nursery stock, fresh produce, and raised and sold purebred Landrace hogs.

Dad was also a gifted dowser, or awater witchaa"although he stridently rejected that label. Dowsing has always had a bit of a shady reputation. During the Middle Ages, it was even believed to be from the devil.

It has never been scientifically proven to work, and most people today still view it with suspicion, fear, and skepticism. But growing up, I saw it with my own eyes, many times. If there was water to be found below the ground, not only could my dad locate it, but he could even tell you where to drill for the best flow and the clearest water. His record for accuracy was 100 percent.

Chuck Norman was the local well driller. He was known to everyone as simply aFine and Dandy,a because that was his automatic response to most questions. He used the phrase to answer anything from a question about how he was feeling to a comment about the weather.

Tall, wiry, and toothless, he was always dressed in stained olive-green coveralls and wore a dented, dirty, yellow hard hat, his ever-present cigarette dangling from his lips or cradled in a grease-blackened hand.

He usually showed up at our farm in the evening, after supper. Dad always walked out and greeted him. aHow are you tonight?a aFine and dandy. Fine and dandy,a he would reply, smiling his toothless grin and lighting another cigarette.

Dad would then walk out to a tree in the yard and break off a slim, Y-shaped branch. Then with one or two of us boys, he would pile into Fine and Dandyas dilapidated old pickup and we would roar down the gravel road to the place where Fine and Dandy was fixing to drill another well.

Dad would get out of the truck holding his little forked tree branch straight out in front of him, with his palms up and his thumbs out. He would then begin to walk slowly back and forth across the lot in the general area where Fine and Dandy wanted to dig a well.

It must have been quite the sighta"an Amish man in a battered, wide-brimmed, black felt hat, holding a forked stick and slowly crisscrossing the yard, while a dirty, chain-smoking roughneck and a ragged little boy in galluses lounged off to the side watching.

Sooner or later, the branch in Dadas hands would lunge downward, quivering, as if alive and pulled by some invisible force.

aThis is where you want to drill,a Dad would announce, standing over the spot.

Fine and Dandy would smile his toothless smile, hand Dad a crumpled ten- or twenty-dollar bill, and take us home again in his dilapidated pickup.

Fine and Dandy always drilled exactly on the spot Dad had marked. Sometimes hundreds of feet down. And he alwaysa"alwaysa"found good wells with abundant supplies of fresh, clear water. Thanks to my dad, Fine and Dandy developed quite a reputation as a top-notch driller of wells that never ran dry.

I donat know where Dadas agifta came from, and I donat know why he had it. Or how it worked. It may have been a latent ability, a remnant of ancient practices, buried deep within the psyche of his Swiss-German heritage. I donat think even he knew quite what it was or why he possessed it.

All he knew was that he had the gift and he could use it.

But when it came to pa.s.sion and purpose, my father was committed to the one true calling of his heart. He wrote.

For decades he was a scribe for The Budget, a weekly newsletter for the Amish and Mennonites, and he developed quite a fan base. By the time I was born, he was already widely known throughout the vast majority of Amish and Mennonite communities in North Americaa"and even overseas. But after he cofounded Pathway Publishers in the late sixties and launched the monthly magazine Family Life, his name became legend. Aylmer had been well known before, but after the launch of Family Life, it became something akin to a pilgrimage destination for Amish families from other communities.

Family Life was Dadas baby. His dream. His impossible vision. A magazine published by the Amish, for the Amish. To fund it, he mortgaged the farm (despite my motheras protests).

He must have seemed insane. Such a thing had never been attempted before. But he plodded determinedly forward. He placed ads for subscriptions in The Budget, formatted and published the inaugural issue, and then sent it out free to thousands of Amish households across the United States and Canada. Amazingly enough, it worked. Subscriptions poured in, eventually reaching thirty thousand.

Family Life was (and is) a very nice little magazinea"if you like didactic stories in which the protagonist always repents after harboring heretical notions of leaving the Amish faith, or some such similar crisis. And the wayward son always returns in true humble repentance to court the plain but upstanding girl who is actually very beautiful inside, which, as we all know, is what really counts anyway. A glad light springs from her eyes as she modestly welcomes his return. Or maybe the glad light springs from his fatheras eyes. I canat remember. Whatever. The fiction was all pretty formulaic and predictable.

To be fair, Family Life also published a lot of useful, practical stuffa"farm tips and such. Yet as unrealistic as a lot of the magazineas content was (and is), it was read with great gusto and satisfaction across a broad spectrum of Amishland.

Naturally, a pocket of hard-core, conservative Amish people resented and resisted my fatheras efforts. These people felt that one should read only the Bible. And maybe The Budget. Any other supplemental reading was deemed unnecessary and possibly sinful. Sad to say, those people still exist out there.

Regardless of the response, when I was growing up I could never admit my last name to any person even remotely connected to the Amish without being asked if I knew David Wagler. I always admitted reluctantly that, yes, I knew him. Not because I was ashamed or anything, but because it just got really old really fast.

The questions always continued: Are you related? Again, a grudging affirmative. More persistent and increasingly excited questions would invariably follow. Eventually the truth always emerged to rapturous exclamations of disbelief and accelerated heart palpitations. Seriously.

Once, in the mid-1980s, my brother Nathan and I were staying in Sarasota, Florida, for a few months over the winter, and an elderly Mennonite man from Arthur, Illinois, drilled us with the usual litany of questions until he finally got us to admit who we were. After our confession, he leaned on his tricycle in stunned silence for a few moments. He seemed drained.

I couldnat resist, so I said playfully, aJust think, now you can go back home and tell everyone you met David Wagleras sons.a He stood mute for another moment, still leaning faintly on his tricycle. I thought he might not have heard my comment. Then he quavered, aThey probably wouldnat believe me anyway.a Today, my father is still well known in the Amish world, though his star is receding. The middle-aged to elderly speak of him, but the younger generations increasingly know him not.

Dad wrote steadily for many decades, producing many thousands of pages. Some of his stuff was good, some was okay, and some was, well, hard-core Amish polemics. Writing was his lifeas focus, and he neglected many other important things in pursuit of his pa.s.siona"including, to a large extent, his wife and his children. Thatas not a judgment. Itas just a fact.

He was a strong, driven man, and I deeply respect his accomplishments. But I wonder sometimes how far he could have gone had he not been hampered by Amish rules and restrictions. And whether he could have found a broader audience for his writings.

I have often tried to imagine what my father would have been like as a young man. Knowing him for the dreamer he is, I have wondered what he thought as he listened to his friends share local gossip and their meager dreams and humble goals.

Like me, Iam sure he was always painfully aware of how much more there was beyond the boundaries of his unsophisticated world.

Perhaps, lured by the modern conveniences of the surrounding society, he longed to drive one of the roaring roadsters that pa.s.sed his plodding team and wagon in the heat, leaving him strangled and choking in swirling clouds of dust.

Perhaps, tempted by the throbbing dance music wafting from the pool hall in town, he allowed himself to briefly roam far and free from the mental chains that bound him.

Perhaps at times he questioned his roots and his background and the value of the traditions his elders clung to so tenaciously.

Perhaps he chafed at the narrow confines of the simple, unquestioning Amish theology that demanded his abject submission to an ageless tradition that taught any other path would lead to eternal d.a.m.nation in the fires of h.e.l.l.

Perhaps all these things and more occurred, calling to him, daring him to forsake forever the seemingly senseless traditions that confined him.

Perhaps.

But unlike me, in the end, he chose to stay.

8.

On the outside, Amish communities seem stuck in time, immune to change. But in reality, even places like Aylmer are in a constant state of flux. Nothing stays the same.

Events unfold. Below the surface, things are always happening. Disputes arise. Tensions flare. People come and go. By the time I was ten years old, some minor tremors had shaken the little community that was my world.

In 1968, my uncle Peter Stoll, a great jovial bear of a man and one of Aylmeras founding patriarchs, abruptly decided to leave and move to Honduras.

Honduras.

Halfway across the world.

His goal was to start a new Amish settlement there, help the natives live better lives by teaching them Amish farming methods, and gain converts. This was a strange and startling thing, coming from an Amish man. The Amish traditionally live their beliefs quietly and donat go around proselytizing a whole lot.

But Peter Stoll was different: softhearted and driven by a fervent desire to help the less fortunate. And once gripped by his vision, he didnat waste a lot of time tolerating second-guessers. In short order, he sold his farm, held a public auction to dispose of excess goods, and set off for Honduras, thousands of miles away.

A few other Aylmer families got caught up in Peteras vision and moved with him. Their departure really shook me up, especially because several of my cla.s.smates and good friends left with them.

Just like that.

Gone.

Out of the community, and out of my life.

There must have been something in the air around that time, because no sooner had the Honduras settlers left than our austere, barefoot preacher decided to scratch the itch that had been bothering him as well.

Long considered somewhat of a fringe element in Aylmer, Nicky Stoltzfus and his wife, Lucille, sold their farm and moved to a small, isolated community somewhere in the Midwesta"someplace where they could live in extreme simplicity, where Nicky could allow the bristle of his mustache to sprout into the real thing, and where he could preach his long, bone-dry sermons in peace.

Even Bishop Peter Yoder got caught up in the moving frenzy. Shortly after Nicky and Lucille pulled up stakes, Peter and his wife, Martha, decided to leave Aylmer as well and join a new settlement that was starting up in Marshfield, Missouri. And once again, several other Aylmer families followed.

Why they went and what they were searching for was beyond the comprehension of my young mind. They just moved, and that was that.

Amish people do that once in a while, for reasons not readily apparent to little children.

But not our family.

We stayed put. My fatheras feet were firmly planted in Aylmer. He had no intention of moving anywhere, and that was fine by me. Aylmer was the only home I had ever known. I couldnat imagine living anywhere else.

Some of my older brothers and sisters, however, could.

My sister Maggie was the first to leave. Fed up with Aylmeras harsh rules and stifling discipline, she moved to Conneautville, a small town in northwestern Pennsylvania, where she took a job working in a nursing home. For a while, she attended services at the New Order Amish church in the area, but after a few years, she decided to leave the Amish altogether and joined a local Mennonite church.

When she informed my parents of her decision, they made a hasty trip to Pennsylvania to try to convince her to change her mind. Mom didnat say a whole lot. But Dad did. He bl.u.s.tered and cajoled and begged and threatened, but it was all in vain. Maggie remained firm.

Frustrated, Dad could do nothing, and they returned home defeated.

Those were tense and turbulent times. It was a huge blow to my fatheras ego to have a daughter up and leave the Amish like that. My father was among the leading intellectuals of his people. A writer of many great stories, all laced with moral lessons and conclusions. Not to mention a strident defender of the Amish faith and lifestyle. What would his readers think?

Of course, even as Maggie embraced her new life of freedom, she still felt a connection to her roots, and returned home now and again to visit for a few daysa"truly a brave thing for her to do.

Dad always accosted her from the instant she walked in the door, berating and admonishing her incessantly during her entire visit. Frankly, Iam amazed she ever came back at all. But she did. And the other children were always delighted to see her.

Then it was Jesseas turn. At eighteen, Jesse was a strong, silent, burly young mana"an intelligent loner who didnat say much but thought a lot. And somewhere, deep inside, he instinctively knew there was something more, a better life, somewhere out there.

Quietly, secretively, he made his plans. And then one night, without warning, he just slipped out through an upstairs window and disappeared.

He turned up a few days later in Cleveland, Ohio, where he was soon visited by Dad and a small but strident contingency of Aylmer preachers.

Jesse sat there silently as they cajoled, pleaded, and admonished.

Would he not just come home and try it again?

Surely it couldnat have been so bad.

It was all a misunderstanding.

Things would be better if he just came home.

Finally, against his better judgment, and after months of unrelenting pressure, Jesse allowed himself to be persuaded, and he returned home.

He tried to settle back into the flow of things, but it was no use. Dadas shimmering promises drifted off in the wind like the fluff they were. Things had not changed and would not change. Less than a year later, Jesse packed his stuff and walked out. This time his face was set. He would not return.

He lived for a few months in St. Thomas, about ten miles west of Aylmer. Eventually, he moved to Daviess County, Indiana, the area my parents had left decades before. There he connected with his Yoder relatives for the first time. They received hima"a total stranger bound to them by blooda"with great joy and open arms. He settled in, joined a Mennonite church, and built a stable, happy life. Eventually he married Lynda Stoll and moved to her home community in South Carolina.

Unlike Maggie, however, Jesse rarely returned to Aylmer and pretty much became a stranger to his younger brothers.

Naturally, my parents were shocked and stunned both times Jesse left. We all were. Mom broke down and wept as if her heart would break. It was a brutal thing, the thought of her child out there all alone in the cold, dark world.

Jesse was the first of her sons to pack a bag and simply walk away into the night.

He would not be the last.