by Ira Wagler
I remember, too, how Dr. Bob III, a gaunt giant of a man, ranted and raved against the beautiful people one day in his chapel sermon. They had all the wrong priorities, he roared from the pulpit. All their beautiful clothes and their cutting-edge styles would go down in flames and end up as dust and ashes. The Lord was not ever pleased with such things. I heard that sermon, dressed in my detestable plain-cut suit coat. I looked around and felt a little bad for the beautiful people. It took so much effort to look and dress like that. And now Dr. Bob was hollering at them. Oh well. I shrugged. It was a world I never knew or could even remotely imagine. I was a peasant, judging the elites of worldly society with disdain.
I walked on through life, far from the beautiful people. And it’s not that I considered myself particularly ragged or uncouth. I was just a guy who had emerged from a plain and simple place. I was clean enough, I felt. I splashed my face with Skin Bracer or some sort of cologne every day before heading out to classes or, in summer, to work in the construction world. Around that time, a friend pulled me aside one day. She was the wife of a friend of mine, and she told me, “You’re wearing too much cologne. It’s too strong. Be more discreet.” I was very embarrassed, but I thanked her and meant it. After that, I splashed on way less of whatever it was I was using.
Going forward, I never paid much attention to the beautiful people. I was too busy to be bothered by them. And I had my own issues in life. But there was one other place I saw where those people proliferated. Law school. There, they were beautiful, and they were just a little bit better. Always impeccably polite, of course. And nice, too, and friendly. But it sank through my dense head in those three years. These people lived on a different planet than the one I came from. I would have little chance of ever associating with them, of ever really being accepted by them. Their women were off limits to me. Not that the realization of any of that was a big deal. But at this level, relationships mattered. Connections mattered. And the beautiful people looked out for each other. I was never really perturbed by it back then. In retrospect, well, that’s how it was and how it went. I saw what I saw.
I entered my third and final year of law school. I wasn’t intimidated by the law school schedule anymore by then. A bunch of us were older in the Dickinson Law graduating class of 1997. We’d been around and seen a few things. We weren’t swayed easily from what we knew. “Make me,” we said. In academia, there are always visions of utopia. Teachers and students discuss how this law or that law could improve our lives. We weren’t taken with such talk, me and many of my older classmates. We knew better. Life is inherently unfair. And life gets messy. You can’t make things better by decree. Someone, somewhere, is going to hold the power. Either the individual or the state. I always sided with individuals. Leave people alone to make their own decisions. Like the Amish. The more laws, the less freedom. I got a minor reputation for my “cranky” libertarian views.
Three years. A law degree is strange like that. Different. They probably got tired of us, our professors. For sure by our third year. The final year. Didn’t matter. We were who we were, and we all greatly anticipated our upcoming graduation. And it came down, in the spring of 1997. Decades ago, already. It was a clear and beautiful summer day. The ceremony was outdoors. I had some friends show up, even. After that first, lonely graduation from Vincennes, someone from my family always made it to the others. My brother Stephen had moved into the Lancaster area with his family a few years before. He came, along with his wife, Wilma. And my youngest brother, Nathan, flew up from his home in South Carolina. It was a big deal, I guess. Looking back, it still is. You graduate from Dickinson Law, you’ve done something.
I walked across the stage when my name was called late that beautiful, sunny morning. With a last name like Wagler, you’re always going to be at the end of the line alphabetically in any graduation. The dean handed me my precious diploma, all nicely rolled up and tied with a ribbon. It’s still all nicely rolled up and tied with that same ribbon, never framed. I guess my attitude reflects the world I grew up in. The Amish believe in doing, not in making a big fuss about what you’ve done.
I studied for the Pennsylvania bar exam that summer. That whole thing is a racket, the bar exam. Dickinson prided itself back then—and still does, for all I know—on the fact that more than 90 percent of each graduating class passed the bar on the first try. I think it was 90 percent. It was high. My class did not disappoint. We kept the tradition going. I passed, too. I moved to Lancaster City, to a little apartment in a big complex on East Walnut Street. Up on the third floor, at the very top. I’d always had a hankering to be a city dweller like that. I walked every morning to the law offices of Clymer and Musser, on the first block of North Lime. I lasted four years as a practicing attorney. It was the only period in my life that I wore a suit and tie to work every day.
Law school was the closest thing to an aberration in all the decisions I made after leaving the Amish. I’ve never been able to articulate a really good reason why I went. It just seemed like a good idea at the time. Not sure why. Oh, there’s a new door. Let’s peek behind it. Law school. Why not? That’s how lackadaisical it was, the whole journey. Go. Walk through it. See what happens. So I did.
Ellen
Christmas Day, 1998. I can’t remember if it was cold. The skies were overcast. As was the norm on a holiday like that, I stopped at my brother Stephen’s house for the noon meal. The Christmas feast. And we were just hanging around that afternoon. At some point, she arrived and walked in. Ellen. I had heard the name. She was a cousin to Stephen’s wife, Wilma. From Missouri. She was a Yutzy, like Wilma was. Their fathers were brothers. And I heard her voice before I got up from the couch to meet her.
She was beautiful. That much was established in my mind in about two seconds. Medium tall at five feet four. And her smile dazzled me. We hit it off, right there, right then. Introductions were made. Ellen, this is Ira. Ira, this is Ellen. I offered my hand and smiled. And in minutes, we were laughing and chattering as if we had known each other for a long time. She hung out in the kitchen with the women then. And I sat with the guys there in the living room, by the nice crackling fireplace. By midafternoon, I made noises to leave. Still, I watched for my chance. And when she stood alone off to the side for a moment, I swooped in.
It was Christmas Day. New Year’s Eve was coming right up. I had nothing planned. I mean, it wasn’t like the lovely women were knocking down my door or anything. So, out there in the kitchen, standing by ourselves, I asked her, “Are you doing anything next Thursday night? New Year’s Eve?”
She smiled at me. And she didn’t hesitate. No, she didn’t have much going on. “Would you like to go out?” I asked. And she smiled at me again. A big, warm smile. Sure. She’d love to go. I smiled back. I got her number and promised to call in a few days. And then I left for my dumpy little trailer home over in the Welsh Mountains of Lancaster County. My head was spinning.
I was pretty set in my ways back then. I guess I still am. I was in my late thirties. I had battled alone for so long, I just got tired of looking for someone who would walk with me. I drank lots of scotch whiskey to dull the pain of all I had seen and lived in the past. And all I had lost. So I wasn’t really looking for Ellen when we met. It was a total aberration for me to ask her out like that.
I called a few days later, after the weekend, one evening. It had always been a freaky thing for me to call a woman, even though I had promised Ellen that I would. And she had welcomed that. Still. What if she regretted our little agreement to go out? What if she didn’t want to talk to me all that much? I’m a little shy around women I like. Always have been. And if I get even the slightest inkling that the woman I’m talking to would rather not speak to me, well, I don’t hang around long to analyze things. I don’t beg or plead or stumble about with my hands in my pockets. Ah, shucks. You don’t want to talk? I don’t take the time to ask. I’m just gone, without a lot of noise, without much fuss or hassle. Still. I had promised Ellen t
hat I would call. So that night, I took a deep breath. And I dialed her number. This was in 1998. My phone was a landline. That’s startling. I called her on a landline, and she answered on the first ring.
It had been a few days since we’d met, but her voice was just the same. That lilting laugh. Yes, she had been expecting my call. And yes, she was eager to go out, still, on New Year’s Eve. I relaxed. And we chatted. I told her, “I’ll pick you up this Thursday at six thirty.” And she told me where she lived. A few miles away, along Route 340, in a basement apartment with a friend. “I’ll be there,” I told her.
“I’m looking forward to it. See you then.” And she laughed her lilting laugh. My head was spinning again as we hung up.
I don’t know. What all do you include in one more story about a man meeting a woman and taking her out? It’s a universal thing, and this is only the ten millionth time such a story has been told. Still. I guess the first date should take up a bit of space, some description. After that, it’ll just be chunks and pieces. Too much detail is too much detail. The big day arrived, then evening came. I was driving a little white four-door Dodge Spirit, a fairly late model for me. 1990, I think it was. Compared to the ugly tan T-Bird, the white Spirit made me feel like a bold knight in gleaming armor, astride a gallant steed. And on my gallant steed, then, I rode to the lovely maiden’s castle to get her out of there for the evening.
I won’t pretend to remember what either of us wore that night. I could describe just about any spiffy outfit, and it would be completely credible. But I won’t, because I don’t remember. I was cleaned up pretty good in those days, at least for me. I wasn’t overweight, not by much if any. And I was working as an attorney. I had to dress professionally for that. I had nice shirts and stuff. What Ellen wore, well, it was a dress of some kind. She looked stunning. And the one thing my eyes kept drifting to as the night went on was her beautiful chestnut hair. It was cut. There was no shred of a head covering. I knew where she had come from, and what a Plain place that was. As Plain as the Amish world I had come from, just in different ways. And I knew. To pull it off as comfortably and naturally as Ellen did that night, not to have any kind of head covering, well, that took a person with a lot of strength. You don’t get to a place like that without fighting hard for it. So I not only admired Ellen’s beauty on that first date. I respected it.
The Quality Inn and Suites over on Oregon Pike. That was where I took her. The place is gone now. Long since demolished. It had a pub and restaurant, and there was a New Year’s Eve party. You had to have reservations to get in. It was one of the few venues that had anything open when I called a week before, after asking Ellen out. There were very few spaces left anywhere to book. So I was probably scraping the bottom of the barrel, going there. I thought nothing of it. I was just happy to have somewhere to take this beautiful woman.
The dining room was pretty much packed and hopping. We were seated at a nice little table for two, out in the middle of everything. I remember almost nothing of the food and just a few shreds of our conversation. And we danced. That I remember vividly. Slow tunes and fast. And as midnight approached, we danced to Prince’s classic “1999.” We whooped and shook our noisemakers as the new year swept in. 1999. It would be an interesting year. There would be good things.
It was bitterly, bitterly cold that night. That I remember, too. I had Ellen home by one thirty a.m. or so. We held each other and hugged good night. There was no question in my mind. I don’t think there was any in hers, either. We definitely were going to be seeing a little bit of each other in the near future and beyond. You don’t know after one date. But you know you’d like to know.
My little white Dodge steed crunched home through the snowy roads. I parked and walked through the bitter cold and ducked into the lovely warmth of my dumpy little trailer house. My dreams would be sweet that night.
And that was my first date with Ellen.
She came from a hard place, like I did. The Plain Mennonites. Similar to the Amish world I had emerged from. But tougher to break free from, if such a thing is possible. I didn’t know that then. I learned it later, simply from getting to know Ellen and seeing how hard she tried to reach back into that world for some closure and acceptance and love that her father would never give. And I could see the hard place she came from because of choices she made years later, after we were married.
It certainly attracted us to each other, that we came from similar places. Her parents, Adin and Fanny Yutzy, had been raised Old Order Amish. Adin was a brother to the Yutzy men who had settled in Bloomfield. So Ellen was a first cousin to the five Yutzys who had married my siblings. Two of my brothers, Stephen and Titus, had married into the extended Yutzy family. As well as three of my sisters: Naomi, Rachel, and Rhoda. All of them had married Ellen’s cousins. The blood mingled well, it seemed like. Yutzys and Waglers. And that was fine by me. As far as I was concerned, it could mingle one more time. And show the world that it works when you mix two wild bloods such as ours were.
I don’t know what to say about our courtship, really. It was the same as thousands of other courtships, I suppose. The same but different. Because it was us. We got along well. We really did. And it didn’t take but a month or so for me to tell her that I loved her. She knew it. She could tell. Still, to hear me say it kind of threw her for a loop. That’s how women are, I guess. Or that was how Ellen was, at least. It didn’t take her long to come back and tell me she loved me, too. Spring flowed into summer, and in August, I think, I was ready to pop the question.
And that night, I do remember. I made reservations at the Hotel Hershey in Hershey, Pennsylvania. It’s about as high class a restaurant as you’re going to get to in this area. It’s very formal. And expensive. I remember the suit I wore, and I remember the color of Ellen’s dress. Burgundy. And how beautiful she looked. She glowed. After a very nice formal dinner with wine and all the good vibes you could ask for, we went for a stroll out in the garden.
I was nervous. Of course I was. I knew she was half expecting to be asked, because we had talked about it. And we had even looked at rings in the mall a few months before. Still. Near as I can tell, a man is pretty much perpetually petrified when he’s dating a woman. Especially when it comes time to ask her to marry him. He feels unsteady. Unsure. He weighs it all out in his head. The scales have to tip way over to one side before he’ll ever convince himself that there’s actually a better chance than not that she’ll say yes. Then he lumbers about, all mysterious, to make it happen, and she acts gracious and does her best to look surprised and pleased. That’s how all that works.
We strolled about, hand in hand. Dusk was settling in, and the pole lamps were lit. There weren’t a lot of people around. And I waited until we were off on a side path, alone. And I tightened my arm around her. Whispered her name. “Ellen.”
“Yes?” She stood, looking up intently into my face, into my eyes.
“Will you marry me?” I asked as I was getting down on one knee. You can plan all you want. In the actual moment, you stutter and stumble like a flustered schoolchild. At least, I did.
She smiled down at me. And she opened her arms wide. “Yes, Ira,” she said. “Yes, yes, yes.”
Relief washed through me in waves. Wow. How about that? She said yes.
We held each other, there in the lamplight. I murmured things, like you do when you’re in love and just asked your woman to marry you. Ellen huddled close in my arms. We looked around then. She had a little camera with her. And we asked a guy who was strolling by, “Would you take our picture? We just got engaged.” The guy of course claimed to be delighted to oblige. We posed in each other’s arms. I haven’t seen that picture in a long, long time. It’s in a box somewhere in the garage. But I can still see it in my mind, as vivid as it actually was. Two smiling, beautiful people, looking eager and excited and happy. And ready to walk a new road together.
The fresh scent of sweet clover and the flowers in the garden drifted in the gentle evening
breeze. And the banquet of life with all its rich and ample fare was spread before us like a feast. We were alone, lord and lady of vast domains, king and queen of all our eyes could see.
And midnight seemed far away, and we knew that we would be forever young.
Wedding
We got married on August 4, 2000. That’s a pretty simple anchor date for me to remember as I get older and things that once were important aren’t anymore. It was an exciting time in both our lives. Neither of us could ever have imagined how short a time this world we were in would last. We were young and free. Ellen beamed on my arm. I stood proud and tall beside her. Nothing would ever shake this world from what it was. Except death, of course. After we got old.
There was no doubt in my mind that Ellen and I were going to be together for as long as we both lived. I don’t have any clue how English couples feel when they get married, the ones born English, I mean. Ellen and I both came from worlds where divorce was not an option, although it should have been. Well, maybe that’s a little strong. Still. It’s a fallen world, and every system gets abused. Divorce gets abused. So does not having the option of divorce. In any world where divorce is strictly forbidden, the women usually get suppressed pretty severely. A lot of Plain women (and English women in hard religious settings) out there just shut down emotionally. They have to, to survive. Not all of them, by any stretch. But a lot. There is simply no denying that.