Growing Up Amish - A Memoir Part 8

Another major irritant often occurs when the deacon, whose only job is to read a bit of Scripture, forgets his calling and decides to deliver an impromptu sermon of his own. Some deacons have been known to ramble on for up to twenty minutes. Whatever good they might imagine results from their words disappears in the hostile gaze of seething listeners whose only wish is that the speaker read the a.s.signed verses and sit down.

Everyone is greatly relieved when the bishop instructs the couplea"if they still feel as they did that morninga"to tread before him. They then rise, walk carefully up to him, and stand in front of him. At this moment, the Nava Hocca stand at attention. This is their official purpose, to awitnessa the ceremony. After a prayer, the bishop administers the vows, places the coupleas hands together, and p.r.o.nounces them man and wife. Then they return to their seats as such. From that moment until death.

After we turned sixteen and joined the youth, or Rumspringa, we looked forward to weddings because we could ask a girl to the table for the evening meal and singing. This was not considered a date, and the girls rarely turned down an invitation. It always created a buzz, to see which guy would escort which girl. More than a few married couples began their relationship at the evening wedding feast of someone else.

Thatas how it goes at Amish weddings, with a few minor variations, depending on the community where itas all coming down.

Before Rachelas wedding, we spent weeks getting ready. Junk machinery that had been littering the yard for months, sometimes years, was pulled up the hill behind the woods and out of sight. All the barns were cleaned. And the house, well, the house was scoured from bottom to top, scrubbed, wiped, mopped, and cleaned until it was glistening. It was a busy, frantic time, but when the big day arrived, we would be ready.

Itas an important event, a wedding. Simple, but important. There are many relatives to invite, and in our case, many guests from Aylmer. We hoped they would come so we could show them how progressive a Bloomfield wedding service was.

Guests began trickling in the day before the wedding in large pa.s.senger vans loaded with people and luggage. The exceptions were, of course, the Aylmer people, who came by bus or train, as they were not allowed to hire a van driver for overnight trips, due to the dictates of preacher Elmo Stollas regime.

We were happy and excited to see everyone. And, of course, we were busy preparing, right up to the last minute.

Then the day was upon us. The benches for the service were set up in Josephas house, and the tables for food were set up in our house. Dad walked about importantly. Mom beamed and fussed and worried. And I was a table waiter. Looking back, it was a plain affair, but to us, it was huge. Things seemed to be going very well for the Wagler family in Bloomfield.

I donat have a lot of specific memories of that day, other than the fact that Rachel and Lester were properly married, and a large crowd of guests a.s.sembled to witness and celebrate the event.

I do have vivid memories of what came down the day after the wedding.

17.

After the wedding, my uncle and his family stayed for a day or two to visit. His son Eli was a year older than I was, and we had always been close friends. On those rare times we got together, everyone could be sure of one thinga"somehow, someway, we would get into trouble. When we were kids, it was usually just harmless pranks: pa.s.sing around comic books and bragging about which brand of car was the best. (Eli was a Ford man. I liked Chevy.) And a few other verboten things, things so trite they actually escape my memory. As I said, absolutely harmless. But as we grew, we graduated to more serious offenses, like smoking, drinking, and buying radios. Now we were adults. I was eighteen. Eli was nineteen. And we were about to graduate to the big leagues of wild Amish living.

The morning after the wedding, Eli and I announced that we were hitchhiking up to Ottumwa, twenty-five miles northeast. The adults frowned. My dad strongly discouraged us from going, but we ignored him, and shortly after breakfast, we headed up to Highway 2, stood beside the road, and thumbed a ride into Bloomfield. I knew some English people there, and one of them readily agreed to take us up to Ottumwa, fifteen miles north.

Once there, we decided to pool our meager funds and look for a used car to buy. After all these years, Iam not sure whose idea it was, or when it first came up. I donat remember who suggested it. Might have been a mutual thing we both conceived at the same instant. I know that in the ensuing months, my family blamed Eli, and his family blamed me. But Iall take the full blame right now, just to clear up that ancient tiff. It was probably my idea anyway, being more experienced in leaving and all.

We had probably five hundred dollars between us. So we headed to a car lot along Highway 34, just east of the city. It was a dreary, rainy day, and we arrived on the used-car lot dressed in Amish barn-door pants with galluses and plain denim jacketsa"all homemade, of course. The smarmy salesman greeted us with a shifty smile. Could he help us? Plainly, he doubted that he could.

We were just looking for a used car, we told him. Might be in the market for a purchase. His eyes immediately perked up. We told him we had about three or four hundred dollars to spend, and he led us to the back of the lot to an old two-door Dodge painted an ugly avocado green. I donat remember the model name, but it was built in 1972. The salesman claimed it was a good old car.

aHeck, it only has seventy-five thousand miles on it,a he said. aThis car will run and run, way over a hundred thousand miles.a aHow much?a we asked, trying to act uninterested.

aFour hundred dollars.a What a coincidencea"almost exactly what we had to spend.

aCould we take it for a test drive?a aOf course.a And, of course, the car wouldnat start. Dead battery. So the salesman dragged an old black charger from the jumbled mess in his garage and hooked it up. Then he took us inside to draw up the paperwork.

Looking back, if either Eli or I had expressed even the slightest reservationa"if either of us had had the sense to say, aWait a minute. Letas think this through. Should we really be doing this?aa"we would have backed out. But we didnat. Thatas what always happened when we got together. Wead step out on some bold adventure, and neither of us wanted to be the first to break. And so we hurtled on, straight over the cliffas edge.

By the time the salesman got the car started and drew up the paperwork, it was getting late. We handed him a fistful of crumpled twenties, and after carefully counting it, he slapped a license plate on our new car, and that was that. So, without a shred of insurance, we edged the car out of the parking lot and onto the highway.

So far, so good. But now what? We hadnat planned ahead at all. What to do? Head back home? That wouldnat work. We had a car; we couldnat go back home. Park it somewhere, maybe, at my English friendsa place in Bloomfield? That would have actually made some sense. But on that day, we were devoid of sense. After the excitement of buying a car, we couldnat imagine heading back to my house. We wouldnat be able to keep our secret. Besides, we wanted to hit the road in our new car. Head out into the big, wide world.

We decided to head south on Highway 63, into Missouri, toward Elias home in Marshfield, three hundred miles away. So off we went, through the darkness, with only the clothes on our backs, a few bucks, and an old green Dodge with no insurance.

We headed south through the darkness, and the old Dodge hummed along. It seemed like a decent car, and it actually turned out to be. We drove through horrible weather as biting rain turned to sleet, icing the roads. Around the Missouri line, I almost lost control. The car skidded violently from one side of the road to the other while I frantically cranked the wheel. We very nearly landed in the ditch. After regaining control, we crept along until we came to a motel and restaurant, where we pulled in, booked a room, and ate.

We had no bags, no extra clothes, nothing. By the seat of our pants, and with no forethought, we were leaving home.

We sent no word to our families to let them know our plans or where we were. That was the cruelest part of that black and wicked day. Back home, as the afternoon began inching into evening, Iam sure the folks became increasingly restless and worried. Eli and I had our reputations; our families probably had no doubt that we were involved in some sort of mischief. Years later, my father told me how frantic and worried they were when we didnat show up. His voice heavy with emotion, he spoke of how his younger sister, Elias mom, stood in the rain at the end of the walks and peered into the darkness. To the south, out our long lane toward the road, she strained and looked and called her sonas name. There was no answer. Only the mocking sound of rain and the wind slashing through the trees. And intermittent silence.

Eventually she gave up and straggled back into the house, soaked and chilled to the bone. No one ate supper that night. And sleep was far away and fleetinga"a hopeless thinga"as the two families, Elias and mine, sat there and wondered if theyad ever see us alive again.

At the motel, twenty-five miles south of our worried, frantic families, we slept soundly. The next morning dawned, a nice clear day. The roads were good. But our green machine wouldnat start. Dead battery. The smarmy salesman had taken us. After purchasing a new battery at a nearby garage, we headed south again, down Route 63, with not a care in the world, except that we were running low on funds.

We reached Elias home turf late that afternoon. Still no plan for how we would survive or where we would live.

We scrabbled some odd jobs here and there for money on which to live. Eli claimed to own some calves on his fatheras farm, and at night, we would sneak in and grab a few from the pasture, tie them up, place them in the trunk of the old green Dodge, and sell them to a local English farmer. Technically, of course, the calves didnat really belong to Eli, but to his dad. I knew it and he knew it. But we took them anyway, and sold them. We were flat out stealing. Each time, the money kept us going for a few more days.

The news flashed three hundred miles back to Bloomfield about what the wicked boys were up to these days. (Or down to.) People clucked their tongues and shook their heads, and wondered aloud if wead land in jail.

We never found a fixed place to stay in Marshfield. Instead, we slept in seedy hotels, and sometimes in the car. But we hadnat quite reached our low pointa"yet.

After a few weeks, we decided to head back to Bloomfield in search of greener pastures. Iam not sure what we wanted there or why we went. I guess I just longed for my old stomping grounds. I missed my friends and wondered how they were. Eli and I were pretty much social outcasts. Outlaws. Drifters. With only each other for support. And that got a little tricky, in our heads. We argued and fussed sometimes. The stress of our situation went far deeper and affected us far more than either of us could possibly recognize or comprehend.

We needed to hear words of affirmation. Words that would never come from anyone in our families. But we might hear them from my friends back in Bloomfield. And so, lonely and longing for something we did not have and could not find, we returned.

Back in Bloomfield, we skulked about the community, hooked up with my old buddies, and ran around at night. We had no place to call our own and often slept in the car, huddling under blankets to fend off the night chill. We lived from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour, never really sure what we were doing next.

Regardless of how bad conditions might have been at home, they werenat as bad as that. But home was off limits to us now, after the stunt wead pulled, leaving as we did with no word or warning. Besides, Dad had an ironclad rule: No son of his could live in his home and own a car. The line was clear. And I had crossed it. So the thought of returning didnat even enter my mind, even though my ahomea was only a few miles away.

After a week or so, our funds depleted, we decided to head to Arthur, Illinois. Willis Herschberger, one of the old gang of six, agreed to go with us. He came from Arthur and knew the place and the people. Maybe wead be able to find work there.

And therein lies another paradoxa"Amish kids who leave and yet donat. Instead, they hang around their own communities or, as in our case, head for larger communities where their language is spoken. Where there is some sense of familiarity, even though they remain outside the boundaries of acceptance in the Amish culture.

Some invisible force draws them, as it drew us. Some sense of belonging, even outside the lines. And some sense of security, a sense that if everything fell apart, at least we would be among our own people. That is a strange thing, one that cannot really be defined.

We planned to leave the next Sunday morning. I donat remember who had the idea, and it doesnat matter, but before heading out, we decided to tour past Amish places. We knew everyone was in church, and we figured we could find a place to steal some gas. The Amish wouldnat call the cops. We knew that. In our clouded minds, it actually seemed like a good idea at the time.

We cruised slowly through the neighborhood. Found where church was that day and then headed to the other end of the settlement, to Jake Schwartzas farm, up on the north side. That would be the place, we figured. There were no close neighbors with prying eyes. We approached and pulled in cautiously, just in case someone was home.

No one was. We located the gas barrel behind a shed and backed up the car. Then we discovered a lock on the nozzle of the hose. One of usa"I canat remember whoa"ran to Jakeas shop and returned with a hacksaw. We made short work of the padlock and threw it into the bushes. Then I removed the nozzle and began to fill the tank. We stood nervously, waiting for the tank to fill.

Then Willis looked out toward the road. aUh-oh,a he muttered.

I looked up from where I was filling the tank.

Out by the road, a pickup truck had pulled up and stopped. A neighbor. He had seen us and come to check on what was happening. The three of us stood there, momentarily frozen, our hearts tripping fast. We were discovered. Caught. Maybe the neighbor had already called the cops.

I snapped the nozzle back onto the tank. Shut the gas tank lid on our car. We scurried around frantically. Eli and Willis both leaped into the car. One of them went for the pa.s.sengeras seat, the other into the backseat. That left me to drive. Frantically, I circled the car. aI donat want to drive! I donat want to drive!a I hollered.

Eli and Willis were having none of it. aGet in and drive!a they shouted back in unison.

And so I did. We barreled out the lane and onto the road, gravel spitting behind us. Come on, old green Dodge, donat let us down now. I turned right, shot past the waiting pickup, and roared full speed down the road.

It was a time before cell phones, or we would have been caught dead to rights. I turned the car south, fishtailing a bit on the gravel, then onto the paved highway. We flew toward Route 63, the pickup in hot pursuit.

Eli and Willis kept a close eye on the pickup right on our tail, the man inside motioning us to pull over. I paid no attention, just focused on the road ahead. I kept driving, right through the community, past several Amish homes, and up to Route 63 South. More often than not, a cop would be sitting at the intersection there. If one was there today, we would go to jail for sure.

Then, a stroke of lucka"no cop. I turned south and floored the accelerator. The old green Dodge rocketed along, with three desperate, panic-stricken boys inside. After ten miles or so we approached the Missouri line, and the pickup, up to now riding our tail, slowed and stopped, then turned around and headed back north. I slowed the car to the speed limit, and we all sagged in our seats, breathing huge sighs of relief as our heartbeats slowed to normal speed. We had escaped.

After an experience like that, there isnat a whole lot to say. We actually shook it off as just another event in the normal course of things. Thatas how screwed up we were. Of course, back in Bloomfield our reputations took another serious. .h.i.t as the storya"greatly embellished, Iam surea"made its inevitable rounds.

We were officially outlaws.

Renegades.

Wild Amish youth.

And we were lost. We knew ita"at least I did. We didnat talk about it, but we knew that if something happened and we were killed, we would straightaway enter the fiery pits of h.e.l.l and burn forever because we had left the safety of the protective box. We had scorned our birthright. Left the Amish. If we died, the punishment for such blasphemy would be more severe than we could possibly imagine. We knew that, beyond any shadow of a doubt. But we plunged on anyway. Grimly focused on what we felt we had to do. If G.o.d struck us down, well, then, so be it.

It takes a desperate mind to be willing to take such risks against such eternal consequences. But we were beyond desperate.

For the next two months, Eli and I b.u.mmed along. Our cash flow improved some, but mostly the times were lean. We had a saying, aIf weare too broke to buy a pack of smokes, weare truly broke.a We reached that point a time or two. But mostly, we survived okay.

We worked at odd jobs around the Arthur area for a month, hanging out with Willis and his buddies. Then Eli and I decided to pull up and go to Daviess County. We didnat know many people there, but at least my brother Jesse lived there. We said good-bye to Willis and left Arthur, heading south and east.

We found Jesseas place and showed up at the door of his trailer home. Although surprised and not all that pleased to see us, he gave us shelter and some work, cleaning up an old burned-out house site he had bought in a nearby village. We meandered along for several weeks with no long-term plans, and everywhere we went, the whispered stories of what wead done back in Bloomfield preceded us.

On the weekends we ran with the Daviess Amish youth. We made a lot of friends because we had a car. Many a time, the old green Dodge creaked along on the narrow gravel roads, loaded to the gills with rowdy Amish youth.

After another month had pa.s.sed, we realized that we were pretty much spinning our wheels. We didnat want to face it, but it was becoming clearer with each pa.s.sing daya"our options were running out. We could continue down this bleak and desolate road, struggling for survival. Struggling for our daily bread. Or we could return to our homes, where at least we would be warm and sheltered and fed. Mine in Bloomfield and Elias in Marshfield. Initially, we recoiled from the thought. But gradually the conditions of our surroundings closed in. We had no support. Not from any source, not from anywhere. No prospects for a brighter future out here, outside the box. Our only option was to go back. Back to our respective homes. Back again, to the Amish life. Wead had a lot of excitement on this little run. Wead seen and done things wead never seen or done before. It was time for some rest and some stability.

Eli left by bus one morning for his home in Marshfield, and I drove home to Bloomfield. Itas impossible to describe that feeling, of approaching home after an infamous extended foray like that. Had I been honest with myself, I would have admitted that I did not want to go. But I was not honest with myself. Besides, the economic conditions of surviving out there were tough.

And thus ended my second desperate flight from home.

18.

I returned late that Sat.u.r.day night, after dark. Pulled the car right up the drive and parked. Dad was surprised to see me, as were all the others. I was tired, so tired. But they all welcomed me.

I already knew that Marvin, Rudy, and Mervin had started joining the church a few weeks before. I wondered if it would be too late to join with them. Not because I had suddenly seen the light and turned over a new leaf. Not because I had turned from my sins in a dramatic conversion. But simply because I wanted to be with my buddies.

And so, the very first day after returning home, on that Sunday morning in church as the preachers walked solemnly from the room, I got up with my friends and followed them.

Itas an impossible jolt to the mind, the thing I was attemptinga"running wild, from town to town and state to state for months, then abruptly changing back. And not only that, but changing to the point that I was joining the church. I should have known better than to try. And the church leaders should have known better than to allow me to try.

The effort was doomed from the start.

At least I finally discovered what goes on inside the preachersa conference for baptismal instruction. Itas all pretty formal. The applicants, my buddies and I, sat there solemnly as each of the preachers, beginning with the bishop, instructed and admonished us for about five or ten minutes. Nothing unique or personal. They never addressed us directly or spoke our names. They barely even glanced at us. Mostly they spoke pious clichs and vacant generalizations: aWe thank the Lord this morning for his blessings. Today, we have much to be thankful for. We have life, and health, and the church to guide us. And this morning, we are thankful that the future of the church will come through young people like all of you. We are so thankful that you have made the choice to come and take instruction and admonishment and be baptized. This is one important step in your lives that you will never regret.a And so forth, and so on. And so on.

But their words, although relevant and at least partially true, were devoid of life and pa.s.sion. After about half an hour, they wrapped it up, and we were dismissed to return to the congregation.

So we went through the motions and waited for the internal revelations. The mental transformation, where all would be clear to us. Where we could see and walk the path our parents wanted for us.

Sadly, it was not to be.

A mental choice, absent real internal change, is no choice at all. We couldnat force ourselves to be something we were not. That just couldnat happen. And it didnat.

Most of the group stayed with it, but Marvin Yutzy and I ran into trouble almost from the start. We werenat quite ready to give it all up, not just yet. And the more we resisted, the harder the preachers crushed their heels on us.

We were closely watched.

And strongly criticized, everything from our att.i.tudes to how we combed our hair. And, of course, the cla.s.sic gripea"our sideburns were too long. Like countless others before us through the years, we simmered under the pressures. Hung together. Sneaked around. And as the weeks pa.s.sed, we knewa"at least I knewa"we could not continue. Marvin might have made it had I not been in the picture. But as my best friend, he remained intensely loyal. Whatever happened, we were in it together.

The preachers saw it coming. So did our parents. They did all they knew to do to stop it (which wasnat a whole lot). They fussed and scolded. Pleaded and threatened. We were deluged from all sides. We should just straighten up and behave. Decide to do right. But their words seemed empty, like so much sound and fury, signifying little of value to us.

And so things continued uneasily for a few months until it all came to a head one Sunday night at the singing.

Church had been at our home that day, and the singing was that night. After supper, we hung out as usual, and as eight oaclock approached, we filed into the living room to sing. Marvin and I sat together, not quite at the back. We were having a merry old time, whispering and laughing between the songs and during the singing. We werenat greatly disruptive, but our actions triggered a furious response from my father.

As we whispered and laughed, I caught sight of him now and then out of the corner of my eye, motioning fiercely. Be quiet. We paid no attention.

Finally, he could not take it anymore. During the next song, he got up, walked to the bench in front of us, and motioned people to move aside to make room for him, and plunked down. If we wouldnat behave, by George, he was going to embarra.s.s us in front of everyone. The song faltered along, and he rocked back and forth on the bench, throwing back his head and roaring loudly, off-key.

We sat frozen in disbelief, too stunned to react. Then, in one motion, we stood and walked out. No one followed. I was so angry that I shook. We hitched up my horse and drove off toward West Grove. Once there, we tied the horse behind Chuckas Caf and called some English friends from the pay phone. They came out from Bloomfield and picked us up.

We hung out with them until late, raging against my father. After midnight, one of them took us back.

The next Sunday, we stopped following church. As the others got up and walked after the preachers to receive their instruction, we remained seated.

People stared, but we just sat there, grim and rebellious.

We hung together, the two of us. We were closely watched as evil young men, and we were instant suspects as the source of all things bad that happened in the community.

Late one Sunday night, a few of us were hanging out at the schoolhouse, just horsing around, when one of my buddies who was joining church was somehow pushed into the front screen door. After a choice phrase or two, he proceeded to tear the door right off its hinges. I donat know why. Of course, the next day, shock waves reverberated throughout the community, and Marvin and I were instantly and conveniently blamed, although neither of us had had anything to do with it.

Tongues wagged: aThe wild, wicked young boys tore up the schoolhouse.a aWhat will they do nexta"burn someoneas house down?a aHow can it be?a aWhat can be done?a Everyone clucked sadly and dramatically. One young preacher even began spreading the rumor that we had admitted to the damage.

Marvin and I were indignant. Things were getting out of hand. Should we just hunker down, or should we confront the situation head-on? After discussing our options, we got together one night and went to visit the young preacher.

We rattled into his drive and tied up the horse. Although stunned to see us, he greeted us politely enough, if somewhat stiffly. We visited for a brief strained minute about other things. Haying. The weather. Then we bravely plunged into our subject matter. We told him he had been mistaken and that we had not damaged the schoolhouse door. But we did not betray our friend who had done it. The preacher was in a bit of a quandary. He was convinced in his mind that wead done it, but there we stood, telling him we hadnat.