My Amish Childhood

by Jerry S. Eicher

  At nighttime her bark would alert us to any caller arriving. We trusted her completely, and she rarely let us down, yapping up a storm when anyone approached. We would rush to the window if we weren’t already in bed. After dark, Dad would use her barking as a signal to turn on the emergency lights he’d rigged up along our driveway.

  Being an ingenious man, he’d run a starter wire from the engine in his shop to his bedside, a distance of 300 yards or so. With another wire, he could bring the huge engine to a stop. A throw switch inside the front door of the shop activated the wires at night, so they weren’t turned on during the day.

  I didn’t know until later how un-Amish such a thing was. It was another of those things the community ignored, I guess. It certainly was a far cry from Dad’s days in Aylmer, when his brother haunted his worksite trying to catch him using electric tools. Now the use of electricity was out in the open, and no one said much about it.

  I did overhear a visitor from stateside exclaim one day, while looking over Dad’s setup, “No wonder the Aylmer community keeps the bann on you fellows.” The Aylmer community didn’t keep the bann on anyone in Honduras, and at no time would they. The man was exaggerating. But it was a huge joke, and he and my dad bent over laughing. I stutteringly repeated the line to Uncle Stephen’s boys sometime later, expecting the same reaction. Both of the twins stared at me like I’d just admitted being a witness to an awful crime. I promptly strangled my laughter and didn’t repeat the matter again. Apparently some people took the opinions of Aylmer more seriously than Dad did.

  Uncle Joe and Uncle Stephen’s families were close at heart. Perhaps due to the fact the two Stoll brothers married sisters. But it went deeper than that, I think. The relationship was a bond, one I often wished I were a part of. I never succeeded in gaining entrance, and I’m sure my actions didn’t always help either.

  I once overheard the boys from the two families making plans for an all-day cattle drive to some ranch east of Guaimaca. A desire to participate seized me.

  “Can I go too?” I asked one of them. “I have a horse and everything.”

  They knew I had a horse. That wasn’t the problem. But they were too nice to elaborate. After long, silent looks between themselves, one of them said, “I guess you can if you’re allowed to.”

  I was ecstatic. Now all I had to do was convince Mom. Surely that wouldn’t be too hard. Why would there be objections? They were my cousins. But once I arrived home, I had no more than begun to explain when I saw by the look on Mom’s face that this wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought. She was not agreeing to this. Obviously she knew things about me and my cousins I wasn’t willing to admit.

  I begged and explained until she cut to the chase. “Did they invite you to go along?”

  Her decision hung on my answer, and I was not about to pass up this chance.

  “Of course,” I lied. “Paul asked himself.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Well, that’s different.”

  I imagine Mom suspected I was lying. She wasn’t thickheaded like I was when it came to personal relationships. She probably figured I needed a lesson. Or perhaps she felt sorry for me. I didn’t have that many friends, and even an imagined invite from my cousins was worth pursuing.

  I looked forward to the day with great anticipation. I would be riding with boys I looked up to, and doing so on an outing I would thoroughly enjoy. Plus we’d be traveling by horseback, and this for a whole day. I got up early that morning and headed out to where the rendezvous was to take place. My cousins were organized and efficient. It was soon obvious they had brought along enough people to do what needed doing. I was only along for the ride. An uncomfortable entity thrust unwillingly into their midst.

  We went through Guaimaca driving the cattle and arrived at the ranch around noon. I was consumed by thirst by then, having failed in my excitement to bring along water. We headed toward home, and I thought I would die before we finally made it back, creeping along those last miles on our tired horses. We didn’t arrive home until late afternoon, and I was experiencing raging thirst by then. Local tap water couldn’t be drunk, I knew, nor could water from the rivers, even though we’d crossed several. And you couldn’t buy water in those days. Besides, I didn’t have any money along anyway—for water or Pepsi.

  I didn’t ask again to go along on any jaunts with the cousins. Or with anyone else. The searing memory of not belonging didn’t go away quickly. Nor did the memory of burning with thirst. I made it my business to buy a plastic canteen from one of the stores in town, an item I would take on any extended horseback trip from then on.

  No doubt my cousins’ aversion to my company was not without basis. They didn’t know everything I did in those days, but it couldn’t have been hard to figure out that I was a walking menace. My worst escapade involved Rosa Sanchez, whose shack was just beyond the dam. She lived there with her brood of youngsters on Stoll generosity. All of her children were girls, I think. The only male around the place being the one we never saw.

  I had no animosity toward Rosa, and she was well liked in the community. But I did bear a great grudge against her dog. He was a little critter in that land of long-legged, skinny, raw-ribbed dogs. Whenever I (or anyone else for that matter) went past Rosa Sanchez’s place on horseback—or worse, on foot—the dog would pursue me, nipping at my heels.

  Any dog of decent respect and deportment should know people were allowed to walk there. But this one seemed not to care about correct opinion. He would nip, and I would stop in and complain to Rosa.

  “You’re going to have to do something about that dog. It’s biting me.”

  She would laugh heartily, throwing her head sideways in her mirth. “He’s not hurting anyone. He’s just a little thing.”

  And since I never had teeth marks to prove anything, things stayed as they were. I kept walking past, and the little animal always tried to take a chunk out of my leg. I had to find a stick each time I went by, and even then I didn’t dare make liberal use of the weapon. Hondurans love their dogs. They love their children and their food, but nothing stirs their passion like their dogs. They can starve their dogs until they are nothing but skin and bone, turn them out to fend for themselves, but physically harming them is strictly verboten.

  In this matter, the Honduran natives conduct their lives a little lower from even the peoples of India, who at least put platters of food out for their idols. Here a dog, being protected by heaven, was also expected to eat by the hand of heaven.

  I knew if the dog was hit by my stick, there would be sharp yelps of pain followed by a mad dash toward the shack. Then Rosa would appear and yell, not at the dog but at me. From there, Aunt Sarah would hear the story and tell Mom. And then I would be in more trouble than even I wished to be.

  So I endured the chases. But it was all getting to be a little too much. Clearly something had to be done, and it wasn’t long before a plan occurred to me. The dog lived under the shack, which was set up on blocks. This left spaces in the crossbeams where he could hide, spots that ran for the whole length of the shack and were excellent positions from which to launch his attacks. He would flatten his body almost level with the dust, thrilling thoughts of the chase no doubt running through his mind while he waited for a victim.

  When the plan came to me, it seemed simple enough and totally foolproof. I’m ashamed of the plan now, but back then it seemed a good option. I would take a patty of raw hamburger and fill it with poison. Then I’d leave it for the dog to eat. Presto! There would be no dog hiding under the floorboards of the house ever again. But from where would the poison come? I didn’t possess sufficient money to buy such an expensive item. Nor would I have known a place that sold it. Then it came to me. The Stoll uncles constantly mixed chemicals to spray the fruit trees at the orchard. They handled the mixture carefully, like it was poisonous. Why wouldn’t it kill a little dog? I calculated that it would if I mixed in enough.

  So I placed a handful of pesticide from Dad’s s
tock inside a handful of hamburger I took from Mom’s refrigerator. So armed, I set forth, walking past Rosa Sanchez’s place. On the first try I got chased by the dog, but I continued on my way. On the way back, Rosa must have left for somewhere—perhaps a visit to Aunt Sarah—and the dog had tagged along as Honduras dogs were inclined to do.

  Running quickly toward the shack, I threw the patty of hamburger under the crossbeams. The dog would smell the meat the first thing when he came back, I figured, and leave this world soon thereafter.

  Heading home, I calculated the job done and felt no remorse.

  The next day, though, the dog was still there. He chased me as vigorously as before. So apparently he’d eaten the hamburger with no ill effects. At least that’s what I thought. I soon learned the truth. My plan had indeed succeeded. Only not in the way I thought it would. Rosa Sanchez’s flock of chickens had found the hamburger well before the dog arrived back from wherever it had been that day.

  Aunt Sarah told Mom the story in horrified tones how Rosa had mysteriously lost her whole flock of chickens in one day, coming home to find them lying dead all over the backyard. And all for no discernible reason.

  I was struck to my heart, but I kept my mouth shut. What could I say? I would have received a well-deserved thrashing and had my already rough reputation besmirched even further. I left the chemicals alone from then on.

  Chapter 23

  With the memory of that night when the armed robbers appeared drifting ever further from our minds, it now seemed unlikely such a thing could happen again. But events would soon conspire to drive any such illusion from our minds. Thieves and misfits lurked in the community after the setting of each day’s sun. If we had paid more attention to the small incidents occurring around us, they might have served as fair warning.

  One night Bishop Monroe had a visitor after dark. A man arrived, shouted about the house, and demanded they open the door. When Bishop Monroe refused, the man stomped around for awhile before firing off a shot into the night and disappearing. That didn’t seem too threatening, we told ourselves. At least he didn’t shoot into the house.

  Uncle Joe, who lived in the first house coming in from the main road, had someone arrive in the middle of the night. A man whose voice they didn’t recognize awakened them in the night demanding a flashlight and money. When they wouldn’t comply, a long conversation occurred, but went nowhere.

  “Give me money and a flashlight.”

  “No, we won’t.”

  This was repeated back and forth several times.

  Finally the man thrust something into the tilting glass windowpanes. Uncle Joe thought it was a machete. A common enough implement carried about by almost all Honduran males. The oldest boy, Paul, overcome by youthful vigor, grabbed a wooden pole they kept in the house and gave the protrusion in the window a mighty whack.

  The result was a splaying of glass as several of the panes broke. Whether the man ended up with glass in his eyes or not, no one ever figured out. But he did leave after that ruckus without money or a flashlight.

  We listened to the stories, smiled, and stayed inside after dark. During the daytime we pretty much went where we liked.

  In my mind there are two defining events in the community’s thieving history. One was the night of the “Great Robbery,” when Dad had guns stuck in his ribs. Two was the day of the “Great Thievery.” I am apparently unique in seeing this day as a watershed moment in the life of the community. There is no record of the event, at least that I could find, in two other books written about our years in Honduras, so I have only my memory to go on to piece together that day and what followed.

  On that Sunday morning the day dawned bright and clear. By eight-thirty, the slight fog along the riverbank had lifted, and the sun was left by itself in the sky with only a few fast-moving clouds as company. All of the Amish from La Granja were on their way to church, walking either in pairs, singly, or in family groups. Even from the outskirts of La Granja they rarely used buggies.

  Dressed in their white shirts and dark pants, the men cut straight figures beside the women in their long dresses and white headdresses. Before leaving for church, they all made sure everything was shut up as usual. Perhaps they would have checked better if they’d been able to see over the riverbank that ran along the eastern property line of the ranch. But it’s doubtful this would have made much difference. With the condition the houses were in at that time, entry would not have been denied. Staying home would have been the only possible solution.

  Unbeknownst to the Amish, eyes were peering at them, counting who was leaving and checking to make sure the only solution that would have stopped them wasn’t in place. Perhaps they’d already been checking the Amish out for several Sundays, since, at times, sickness kept some members at home.

  Sometime after nine, the watchers on top of the riverbank gave the all-clear signal. They poured out of their hiding places, gunny bags in hand. Keeping to the fencerows where possible, they scurried toward the homes of Leroy Hostetler and Minister Vernon. Leroy’s house was the first target. Like the flying locusts that come in for a landing and eat everything that lies in sight, they picked up anything that looked usable—first from the barn, then from the shop, and then from the house. They probably couldn’t believe their good fortune. The doors gave way easily to their crowbars. At Minister Vernon’s place they kicked in a window and climbed in.

  They moved quickly through each building. The gunny bags soon heavy with shop tools, housewares, saucers, kitchen knives, and any money they could find. The search for money turned every dresser into a mess of strewn clothes. Every closet was emptied. Some money was found in a jar on top of the refrigerator, which caused an intense search of the pantry for more jars.

  When they were done, the group left, following the fence line again, to disappear over the riverbank with their gunny bags full. It must have then become obvious to them that they made quite a sight hauling their bags. If anyone saw them the person would instantly know they were up to no good. No one in the third world walked around on Sunday morning carrying gunny bags packed with loot.

  I suspect they stayed holed up for the afternoon in the thickly wooded lower area of La Granja. Perhaps in the bamboo patch below Uncle Alva’s place with a few sitting as guards while the rest meandered on home, trying to keep the grins off their faces and unable to fathom their good fortune.

  At twelve-thirty the first of the Amish came back up the road, walking home from church. The open front door at Minister Vernon’s place caused some curiosity, but they figured someone had forgotten to shut the door properly. The wind, they thought, must have blown it open in their absence.

  When they walked in, the littered indoor landscape lay before them. Their first response was to have someone run across the field for help. Although what help could have been offered? Comfort was more likely the goal, a common instinct that runs deep in Amish blood.

  The person sent forth with the news found Leroy Hostetler’s place in a similar condition and the just-arriving Hostetler family in shock.

  “It’s happened here too?” the messenger from Minister Vernon ventured the obvious. “What do you think we should do?”

  “Do you think we should go to the police?” someone asked. The police were a motley crew from town, hardly able to defend themselves. A fact everyone was aware of by now.

  “We almost have to, don’t you think?” someone else offered. “What will happen if we don’t? Something so awful as this can’t just be left to itself.”

  Word spread quickly of the event. Minister Vernon and Minister Richard thought of calling an emergency members’ meeting at the church house but decided against it. They met instead that evening with only the family members affected, after their places had been restored to some semblance of order. It was a gathering full of long faces and sober talk.

  “Who would have thought something like this would happen?”

  “We were just starting to feel at home here.”
r />   “Will any of us be safe anymore?”

  “What will life be like if we have to lock up everything we own?”

  The talk went on until late. Then a consensus was reached. The police, however dysfunctional, would be contacted in the morning. Some weren’t sure about that, but they gave in after the others were adamant in their arguments.

  The objection to contacting the police came from strong Amish beliefs of peace and nonresistance that have been passed down for more than 400 years. But outside it was dark, and the memories of how their houses looked that afternoon were still fresh in their minds. Besides, they were far from home and alone in this strange world. Maybe if they had called the members’ meeting, things would have turned out differently. But they didn’t.

  So without the meeting, the others in the community didn’t get involved. In the Amish world, someone doesn’t jump into others’ affairs uninvited. Not unless the ministry invites the move. And in this case, two of the ministers were already involved. So for whatever reason, plans were made to contact the police about the break-ins.

  In the morning, the local workers showed up for work as usual. Upon hearing the news, general expressions of consternation were made.

  “Que lastima!” [What a shame!] “We cannot believe this happened to you. You’re all good men. You’ve always been so good to us. But don’t you watch your houses on Sundays?”

  From the looks on the Amish faces, it was obvious no one had ever thought of that.

  “Then we can do that,” they said, nodding in unison.

  “For you, we watch house on Sunday. We watch first two Sundays for free. No one else watch better than us.”

  They were thanked, but the offer was declined. “No, we will look after things ourselves. There will be no more easy pickings. Now we’ll place protection on the windows and doors and lock things up well.”