Growing Up Amish (12 page)

We wore jeans and Western shirts and cowboy hats, and we felt cool. That summer I began smoking cigarettes for real, a habit that would stay with me, off and on, for almost ten years. From what I'd seen and read, the ideal cowboy smoked, so I did too—filterless Camels, the real deal. In my mind, I can still taste them—not an altogether unpleasant memory.

On Saturday nights, we all hit the town. Allen and I usually met the others there, and we would all hang out at the drive-in movie theater, still a staple of small towns back then. That's where all the action was. Teenagers converged every Saturday night and hung out, drinking beer and socializing.

We got to know the fairer sex too. I'd never had much to do with girls in my seventeen years. Not that Bloomfield lacked girls—even beautiful ones—but they were mostly prim and proper. And unapproachable, we felt. Plus, we were actually pretty shy when it came to such things.

The painted, pretty town girls of Valentine seemed like goddesses to us, visions of splendor and worldliness. They were bold, aggressive, and available.

Late one muggy Saturday night, in the summer of 1979, I kissed a girl for the first time. She'd been around. I had not. I still remember her name.

We saw and lived all the things we'd never seen or done—parties, drinking, and dancing on the large hardwood floor to the fiddle and guitars of some two-bit country band at the Norton Dance Hall, an old converted barn out in the country. We heard the arguments and saw the fistfights triggered by the cowboys' sensitive code of honor, which is quick to take offense at the slightest insult, real or perceived.

One night, outside the dance hall, one of our townie buddies tangled with a cowboy from the range. One had said something offensive to the other, and without delay, they faced off and began whacking merrily at each other. The townie's friends and the cowboy's friends hovered close but did not interfere. Had anyone stepped in to help one or the other, a general melee would have ensued. But no one did.

The townie got the worst of it by far. He was beaten and pitched around like a rag until his face was a pulpy and bloody mess. And then, after a few minutes, it was over. The townie's friends helped him up and took him away. Everyone else headed back inside to dance and socialize.

It's a wonder that none of us, the six from Bloomfield, got beaten up. Maybe it was the fact that anyone could glance at us and instantly know we were innocent rubes from another place. Or maybe it was that the real cowboys viewed us with bemused condescension. Whatever the reason, all of us passed through our Valentine days unscathed.

Come Sunday, we always returned to our jobs, broke and hungover, then got up early the next day and slaved in the hot summer sun. We told ourselves we were in the real world and making it. And we were. But we weren't getting ahead. Work, party, drink, blow your money, then go back and do it all over again.

By late summer, the thrill was gone in more ways than one. Gary, the jovial ranch manager with the great booming laugh, turned out to be a hard-driving, volatile man with a fiery temper. He was tough, worked like a maniac, and demanded the same from us. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But on the slightest provocation, his mean streak would surface like a shark from the waters. We never came to blows, he and I, but we got close a few times during sporadic in-your-face shouting and swearing matches. We always patched things up, but I never forgot.

By late August, I was ready to get out of Valentine. I was sick of ranch life, and to be honest, memories of home tugged at me. I missed the security and stability of it—the quiet life, the old Bloomfield haunts, and my family.

And therein lies the paradox that would haunt me for almost ten years: the tug-of-war between two worlds. A world of freedom versus a world of stability and family. A world of dreams versus a world of tradition. And wherever I resided at any given moment, trudging through the tough slog of daily life, the world I had left called me back from the one I inhabited. It was a brutal thing in so many ways, and I seemed helpless to combat it. Torn emotionally, moving back and forth, always following the siren's call to lush and distant fields of peace that seemed so real but, like shimmering mirages in the desert, always faded away when I approached them.

Before heading back home, Mervin Gingerich and I decided to take a two-week trip on Greyhound. After fourteen days of traveling—through Wyoming, the empty beautiful stretches of Utah, into California, to New Orleans, and back north—we ended up in Ottumwa one Sunday evening, flat broke. We didn't have a dime between us—just a couple of candy bars and half a pack of cigarettes.

We called an English friend from Bloomfield to pick us up and take us home. Around dusk that evening, we pulled into the long drive that led to my family's farm. I stepped out, lugging my faithful black duffel bag—the same one I'd carried down the lane the previous April. Slowly I walked up the concrete walkway to the house.

Mom met me at the door. She smiled in welcome. My younger siblings, Rhoda and Nathan, clamored about excitedly. The older children were all at the Sunday evening singing. Dad was in his little office, typing away. Eventually, he heard the bustle of excitement and walked out to the living room. By then I was downstairs in the bedroom, unpacking.

As I walked back upstairs to the kitchen, I met him on the landing, halfway up. We paused in the semidarkness and faced each other.

“Ira.” It was a half question, tinged with disbelief.

“Hello, Dad,” I said.

“You came home.” His voice quivered slightly.

“Yep,” I grunted.

I walked on up. And he walked out. There just wasn't a whole lot to say.

* * *

I didn't particularly have my pulse on Bloomfield's gossip lines at the time, but I'm sure the news swept through the community very quickly. Two of the six outlaws had returned. Ira and Mervin.

We were back inside the box and the perceived safety of that world. Back to what we had left, not that long ago, in search of adventure and freedom. Back to the world of horse and buggy, barn-door pants, and galluses—and a whole lot more. The world of home. We settled in uneasily.

Those first few weeks were strange, almost surreal. We were forced back into the slow pace of Amish life. No more trucks. No more running to town on Saturday nights. No more hanging out with the English girls of Valentine. We worked on the farm. Attended church on Sundays. The singings on Sunday nights. The other youth welcomed us. Whatever they thought inside, they were friendly enough.

But home, I soon discovered, wasn't quite the same. It would never be again. And I could never truly return, even as I participated in the community, its life and customs. On one hand, I loved the camaraderie, the feeling of belonging. But, wherever I was at any given moment, the grass always seemed greener on the other side. When I was home, I heard the siren's song of the outside world. I had followed that song into that outside world until the memories of home had tugged at my heart and pulled me back.

Always I grasped, with tenacious grip, at the anticipation of something rare, something great and grand and fine. Something beyond.

I grasped for tomorrow, with its visions of splendor and a shining city. I dreamed of adventures in strange and distant lands, and of a brighter future of happiness and contentment that always seemed to be just beyond the tip of my outstretched hand.

I would find it tomorrow. Always tomorrow.

16

Mervin Gingerich and I slowly settled into the rhythm of what passed for normal life in Bloomfield. But I had a sinking feeling in my stomach, a sense of quiet desperation. I didn't think about it much, but it was there. Desperation and tinges of despair. Deep down. Way deep down.

I went through the motions. I worked hard that fall on the farm. Harvesting corn. Plowing the fields behind jangling teams of horses. The world I had inhabited a few short months before in Valentine now seemed far away, in both miles and time.

On the surface, I'm sure I seemed like a normal eighteen-year-old kid, with normal teenage issues. And I fooled most of the people, most of the time. I smiled and laughed, at least in public.

Mervin seemed to genuinely settle in and settle down, and we still hung out on Sundays. Meanwhile, our four buddies remained in Valentine, doing who knows what. I thought of them a lot.

And then, sometime in September, word trickled in and quickly spread through the youth grapevine—the four remaining rebels were coming back home.

They returned a few weeks later—a group of four swashbuckling kids, mildly subdued but still defiant, sporting long hair and worldly haircuts. By then I had reverted to the upended-bowl haircut.

One night during the first week after their return, I hitched up my horse and buggy after supper and rattled over the five miles of gravel roads to my friend Marvin Yutzy's place. He emerged from the house, grinning. We shook hands and then sat on the buggy and talked.

“We've been pretty calm since we got back, me and Mervin,” I said. “I'm not sure what's going on, but I think Mervin will probably join the church next spring. He seems to be heading in that direction.”

Neither Marvin nor I were particularly inclined to join church quite yet. I had just turned eighteen. And he was about to, in December. In the end, we both thought it would be best to wait another year and see what developed.

Nevertheless, we were back—the six of us. Back safely in the fold. But somehow, after the Valentine experience, we never quite connected like before. Sure, we still hung out. Rehashed our experiences. Told war stories. Got together with the other youth on Sunday nights, and one night a week we played hockey out on the iced-over ponds. But it just wasn't the same.

January passed.

February.

Then March arrived. And with it came a huge event. The wedding of my sister Rachel. She had been dating Lester Yutzy, Rudy's older brother, for a couple of years, and they had made plans to marry that month—March 6, 1980. The wedding was to be held at our home.

The last time we had held a wedding at our house was my sister Naomi's wedding to Alvin Yutzy, an intense man a few years her junior, in the spring of 1978.

And I faintly remember my oldest sister, Rosemary's, wedding in Aylmer. I was four or five years old. I recall much commotion about the house, nothing at all of the service itself, and boxes and boxes of hot dogs Dad had bought for the noon meal. Red boxes, with a picture of a chef waving a spatula. Hot dogs were a rare treat, entirely suitable for a wedding feast.

There weren't many weddings in Aylmer when we lived there, because the church fathers had dictated some very stringent rules on dating. For example, when a couple started dating, they could see each other only once a month, or every four weeks. Then, when things got really serious (expressions of love, talk of marriage, and so on) and they were “going steady,” they could increase that schedule to one date every two weeks. (Love made the days fly, I'm sure.)

And the couple had better not get caught sneaking around or even looking at each other between dates. Anyone caught in such verboten activity could expect a prompt visit from the deacon, a grizzled, imposing man. And he wouldn't be there to chat about the weather, either. At least not for long.

I don't know if the Aylmer church fathers thought the end of the world was imminent and procreation was therefore unnecessary, or what. But that's the way it was. Talk about regressive conservatism.

After we moved to Bloomfield, we discovered that dating couples there could see each other every week. We felt very liberated. Or at least my siblings did. Within a span of about six or seven years, five of them got married.

Needless to say, over the years I took part in many weddings. My favorite job was waiting on tables for the noon meal. As a table waiter, you got to putz around getting ready in the morning, and you could leave the wedding service immediately after the vows to go and prepare to serve the meal. All told, a table waiter might have to sit for maybe an hour as opposed to the full three or four hours the regular guests had to sit quietly on those backless benches.

Being a witness attendant, or “Nava Hocca,” was the least favorite job. The wedding couple had two sets of such attendants with them all day. It was considered the higher honor, to be Nava Hocca, but it was vastly more tiresome and boring. More than once I fell sound asleep sitting straight up with no support to lean against. (Try it sometime. It's hard to do.)

Anyway, an Amish wedding is an all-day affair. The morning service begins at nine or nine thirty. A good preacher can make the time pass relatively unnoticed, but chances are that the preacher will be as boring as chalk on a blackboard and drone on and on.

Few things in life are more irritating than a boring Amish preacher who likes the sound of his own voice and doesn't pay attention to the time. And there are plenty out there. Sometimes the hands on the clock seem to stand still, or even go backward, resulting in what feels like an endless day and restless guests.

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 assigned verses and sit down.

Everyone is greatly relieved when the bishop instructs the couple—if they still feel as they did that morning—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 “witness” the ceremony. After a prayer, the bishop administers the vows, places the couple's hands together, and pronounces them man and wife. Then they return to their seats as such. From that moment until death.