My Amish Childhood

by Jerry S. Eicher

  When Willie weighed two hundred and forty pounds Fred butchered him and sent him to Tegucigalpa. He sold him for ninety-five centavos a pound, and that was the end of Willie the Pig.

  Both Fred and Dick enjoy this job.

  Source of information—Abner Stoll and Alva Stoll.

  Chapter 26

  Our family developed an evening routine that continued throughout my growing-up years in Honduras. Dad shut down the shop by five or six every afternoon, and we were all inside the house for supper by six-thirty. The door was locked and the bar dropped. Steel bars covered our windows and doors.

  Across the field in his little hut, Fausto and his family shut down about the same time. Fausto had nothing to steal, so he had no need for bars. He did have his machete and now his gun, neither of which any locals took lightly. While the gun stayed home, Fausto carried his machete at all times, as did most of the local men. And they were experts at handling the huge knives.

  Hardly a year went by without stories of fights in town with at least one of the combatants sustaining fatal injuries. Usually this happened over the Christmas holidays.

  Fausto told me the story of someone he knew who found himself defending his honor. Not long into the fight, the man was cut badly. However, the sight and smell of his own blood had the opposite effect from what his opponent expected.

  “The more he bled, lo mas el brinco” [the more he jumped], Fausto told me, grinning from ear to ear. So energized, the cut man’s opponent was soon vanquished.

  In the case of such a death, there was never an inquiry into who had done what. The one who killed was always at fault, and it behooved him to flee for a time…usually for a few years at least. Not just from the arm of the law necessarily, but from angry relatives. The killer would flee to another town a sufficient distance away so as to discourage pursuit or he would go to our mountain, La Montaña.

  During Christmastime we often heard shots fired around us at nighttime, most of them coming from the direction of Guaimaca or somewhere in the foothills west of town. For the most part, we ignored them.

  Fausto claimed two rich men were shot one Christmas. They had drunk too much whiskey. Usually a woman was involved, but Fausto said this time it was about money. Probably gambling. They pulled their pistols, Fausto claimed, and fired at the same time. Both died.

  At least Fausto said so, and I believed him.

  I believed most of what Fausto told me. Even when he had me in terror for a few days. He once told me that hearing the whistling of some rare local bird, the name of which I have now forgotten, brought death within days. But when I kept waking up days after hearing the bird’s call, I assumed Fausto mistaken.

  Against all the violence and altercations we retreated inside and locked the doors. Supper was served at six-thirty and was over by seven. That left an hour until bedtime at eight. So what did we do with an hour of evening time with no television? No music. No computers. No appliances running in the house. Just silence.

  My siblings have memories of eating popcorn, but as for me, I remember books. Dad puttered around with his office work and Mom with the housework. We children sat on the couches with our noses in books. Our choices weren’t many. The ones available we cherished and passed around. Copies of the Pathway Papers—three of them: The Family Life, The Young Companion, and Blackboard Bulletin. All were devoured with relish when they arrived after traveling slowly down from Canada, usually a month or so after they were published.

  From somewhere I obtained a copy of Anne of Green Gables. I quickly became lost in the story of the young orphaned girl. For years I thought I’d dreamed the story because I was unable to find the book again.

  In my reading I fell in love with stories and, of all things, political news. I have no idea why Dad approved it, but I ordered a year’s subscription to Time magazine. I was hooked from the first issue, which of course arrived weeks after it was issued, but I didn’t care. I sat on the couch with our gas lantern hissing above my head and read things I didn’t understand. But I was mesmerized nonetheless.

  I think I was the only one in the community who followed the Watergate scandal. At least no one else talked about it, and neither did I, for that matter. Instead I read pages and pages of fine print about break-ins and cover-ups, about political outrage over something I couldn’t understand accompanied by wild denunciations.

  And then came President Nixon’s resignation. I thought he must have killed someone. That was the worst sin I could think of. But Time didn’t write about a killing. The writers were just angry, really angry.

  I didn’t know what to believe. I doubted half of the stuff I read. It’s hard to explain the surreal experience of reading news that has no supporting structure in your environment. I didn’t even approach Uncle Joe about the matter; rather, I pondered these things on my own. Not until we returned to the States in my teens did I discover the context and begin to make sense out of what I’d read years earlier.

  Political news wasn’t the only thing I devoured. Mom had an old copy of a children’s Bible storybook around the house. This storybook taught me Old Testament history. I read and reread the stories. Beginning at Genesis, I’d stop just after Solomon. For some reason I always got lost in all those kings of Israel and Judah, the men who reigned after the two great ones, David and his son Solomon.

  But no story so gripped me like the account of Joseph that begins in Genesis, chapter 37. Joseph was the boy whose jealous brothers sold him as a slave to a passing caravan. I think I cried every time I arrived at the place where Joseph revealed who he was to his brothers during the famine, when the brothers had to go to Egypt for food and unknowingly encountered their brother all grown up and in charge. There were pictures that went along with the stories, but the pictures painted in my heart were the ones that endured.

  I could see Joseph living in his father’s tent surrounded by the desert and the sheep. I could see the coat of many colors his dad had given him. And I could see the family gatherings where Joseph announced his dreams while wrapped up in his innocence of how the world worked.

  At the end of Joseph’s harrowing story, goodness wins. We should still tell stories like that. And we should still believe them! That’s the important thing.

  Chapter 27

  Early that winter of 1973, a wedding was announced at church. We were all invited. Bishop Monroe’s eldest daughter, Iva, had been wooed and won over by an Amish boy from stateside. Joseph Wagler was his name. He’d stalked through the community a few times. He was a quiet man of grim countenance. Iva didn’t talk much either, unlike her younger sisters, who could chatter away at a mile a minute. Apparently enough conversation ensued between Joseph and Iva to suffice. Their wedding was one of several the community put on during our time in Honduras. Weddings were events of great importance and excitement even in the midst of our already-interesting lives.

  To the locals, weddings were mega events. My suspicions are that many people went to them, whether invited or not. The slightest connection to the family was reason enough to show up.

  We gathered at nine o’clock in the morning, the usual time for services. The ceremony began, the happy couple seated up front, their backs outlined against the slatted shutters. The church house was filled to the max, with the women and smaller children on one side and the men on the other.

  We still sang the slow German at that time, our voices filling the rafters above. We were a sight to behold, I’m sure. I wouldn’t have thought it back then, being in the midst of it all, but it must have been so, with us wearing our hats, our suspenders, our long-sleeved plain shirts, and our women in their long dresses.

  Some of the families still kept the rule from the Aylmer ordnung, that men and boys could only have three buttons on their Sunday shirts. All of them near the top, of course. Not that I would have noticed one way or the other. I wore whatever Mom gave me. But I overheard Uncle Joe holding forth on the issue with Mom and Dad. Uncle Joe had apparently spotted a visiting Amish
man who came from a community with buttons allowed all the way down the shirt. Uncle Joe maintained he was influencing our members, though perhaps unconsciously, to allow or make the change.

  “His shirt was bent open between the buttons!” Uncle Joe recounted in horror. “Right outside the church house. And you could see his chest hair hanging out.”

  The adults were silent at this news. The reasons for the three-button rule was finally fully explained to me.

  “I guess we can see now why Aylmer only allows three buttons on the men’s shirts,” Joe added for good measure.

  I didn’t have any hair on my chest yet, so I didn’t care. But I did understand that forces were at work to change things. Changes from which no good could come. And that I cared about.

  But such undercurrents were laid aside on a wedding day. We were all one happy family rejoicing to see another young couple in love and marrying.

  After the vows had been exchanged in German and repeated in Spanish for the benefit of the attending locals, we poured out onto the hillside. The sky was a lovely blue above us. The day a balmy mid-eighties even in February. Strangely it never rained, not during any of the weddings we held on that hilltop. Not even in the rainy season. I have no idea why, as the rains certainly didn’t always respect the other public functions we held.

  On wedding days, tables appeared from somewhere. Men and women mingled with the locals as the food was laid out. The spread was a bountiful affair consisting of meat loaf, casseroles, cakes, and pies. We ate well, even for Amish people. For the local people raised on tortillas and beans, the feast was heaven on earth. They loaded up their plates because the meal was served cafeteria style. Many went back later for seconds. Laughter was everywhere. Even the mountain smiled in the background, and the two graves on the eastern slope couldn’t dampen the joy.

  I overheard one of the local men while eating his second plate of food tell the Amish fellows, “No he comido para días, esperando este momento.”

  “I haven’t eaten for days, waiting for this moment,” someone repeated for the benefit of the stateside visitors who didn’t understand Spanish.

  I joined in the laughter as the local fellow laid aside his plate and symbolically loosened another notch in his belt. He didn’t look that thin, so I doubt he really hadn’t eaten for days. But he’d made his point.

  We never had an evening service after a wedding—something that had been a solid tradition stateside. Another change in custom was the civil ceremony required the day before. The Honduran government didn’t recognize church weddings or give ministers the authority to grant marriage licenses to couples. The papers had to be signed in front of a judge.

  So the day prior, the couple made the short trek into Guaimaca, dutifully answering the questions and signing their names. Mostly it was about leaving behind the proper fee, as it is for most government functions the world over. Now legally married, the couple always waited until the church wedding before spending the night together.

  After the wedding, Joseph Wagler stayed a few days at his bride’s family’s home. After that the two said their goodbyes to Bishop Monroe’s family and left for stateside.

  Chapter 28

  I believe it must have been sometime that winter that Fausto referred me to a friend he knew. A friend who could tell me where grapes grew on the mountain slopes. The friend would take me himself, if I wished to go, Fausto said. I accepted, happy for the chance to explore the mountain. The search for grapes was only an added incentive.

  I’d recently obtained the horse I would ride for the rest of my time in Honduras—a beautiful, dusty-white animal. I’d gone down to pick him out from a group of horses Uncle Mark had for sale. They were grazing behind the pond near the water’s edge. I looked them over, and it didn’t take long to make my choice. I snapped a rope on his halter and led him home. Lightfoot, I called him.

  So Fausto’s friend and I made our plans and set out early one morning mounted on our horses. With creaking leather, we rode up Turk Road and turned right, going around the upper edges of La Mansion, a very large ranch. As we rode in the foothills, I gazed in awe at the open, cultivated fields of La Mansion that were interspersed with their grasslands. We didn’t have this kind of acreage on either of the two Amish farms.

  As we climbed higher, the vista below turned into splotches of farmland with the town of Guaimaca off in the distance. If I hadn’t been in love with Honduras before, I would have fallen in love that morning.

  Our horses heaved and sweated as we climbed higher into the chilly morning air. The trail led around the edges of ever higher hills and into the clouds. I soon lost sight of the peak, hidden now by the nearness of the mountain itself. We passed the first hut clinging to the hillside and then others. No one paid us any mind. Busy with their own lives, I guess. Cornfields hung on the sides of the slope, planted and harvested by men possessed with the agility of goats. Lazy smoke drifted downward, swirling to mix in with the clouds.

  We stopped to water our horses beside a rocky stream glittering with the glint of gold. I climbed down to dip my hand in the cool water and run the sand through my fingers. My hand sparkled.

  My guide grinned. “No es oro,” he said.

  “Come on,” I replied. “It’s looks like gold.” I’d read of fool’s gold, but I hadn’t known it looked so real. And a riverbed full of it, beckoning and drawing me in. What if it really was real? The thought dazzled me. Riches unimaginable ready for picking.

  We rode on, ever higher to the slopes where the grapes grew. And they really did. Wild and free for anyone who wished to take the trouble. We filled our bags and draped them across the back of our saddles. The clouds had lifted away by then, and I was more entranced with the view than with our bags of grapes. From here it took my breath away. Honduras in all its wildness and wonder spread out like a feast for the eyes. I lingered for long moments, taking it all in. My guide didn’t seem impressed, but he’d obviously been here before. Yet for me, I decided it would never grow old, no matter how many times I returned. That day La Montaña truly became my mountain. My personal playground to which I would return as often as allowed. Here the air was always fresh, the currents always shifting, the clouds washing the land and touching the people living in their huts. All of it fashioned by patterns hundreds of years old yet always new. It was as if everything had been placed here only yesterday.

  I would sometimes come back on my own, but often my friend Louis came along. He was always ready for adventure. Once I shared with him the existence of the grapes that served as our ready excuse when we asked our parents to let us go up there. (They couldn’t always see the benefit of wandering the mountains with no specific end in mind.)

  Even Joseph must have come along at least once. I know because I embarrassed him thoroughly one day in front of half the community. I’d carried some of the “gold” sand home packed in sealable plastic bags. I stored them under my bed. On the day of the embarrassment, a miner arrived in the community. “Just passing through,” he said. He’d stopped in, attracted by the gathering that day on top of the church hillside. It couldn’t have been a Sunday or a wedding. Perhaps it was the last day of school or some such thing. The men grouped around him, listening with great interest to his tales of the metals he’d mined in Honduras. They peppered him with questions.

  Gold was mentioned, and my ears perked up. This could be my day to find out for sure. Was the gold on the mountain real? I needed to know. And so I raced home for my stored plastic bag of sand filled with glittering pieces of ore.

  Arriving back on the hilltop, the crowd was still there. Dozens of Amish men and boys were listening to the tall American holding forth about Honduras’s hidden treasures.

  I caught my breath and approached Joseph with my bag in hand. There was no way I could ask the question myself. Not with my stammering speech.

  “Could you ask him if this is fool’s gold?” I whispered in Joseph’s ear.

  “But you know it’s not real,�
� he whispered back.

  “I want to know for sure,” I insisted.

  I had no concept of public relations back then or how this might appear to the gathered men: a couple of stupid Amish boys who thought they’d found real gold in the mountains. Joseph was astute enough to know, but he still went forward on my behalf. Being a true friend, I suppose.

  “We found this in a mountain stream,” Joseph told the miner. “What kind of metal is it?”

  The glitter in the bag clearly said what kind of a metal we hoped it was.

  The miner opened the plastic bag, running the sand through his fingers. Silence hung over the hillside. I watched with bated breath. It couldn’t be real, I thought. But still, maybe it was.

  “No,” the miner shook his head, rattling off some Latin term I couldn’t pronounce. I knew the meaning from his tone though. It wasn’t gold.

  He smiled. “This is an oft-found metal in Honduras but perfectly worthless. Sorry to disappoint you, boys. It’s fool’s gold.”

  Joseph kept his composure, but he was deeply embarrassed. That’s what he told me later. I was too unaware to know I should be too. The men chuckled around us, but I was just glad to have my question answered.

  Happy times on the mountain lay ahead, including an excursion to the top the young boys took upon themselves. I personally had no interest in conquering the peak, so I’d never ventured that far. But when I was told the group was going, I was willing to tag along.

  Several of the men claimed they’d reached the top accompanied by stateside visitors and had returned the same day. I’d always been skeptical of that claim and wasn’t shy about voicing my opinion. The mountain peak could perhaps be reached in one day, but you couldn’t get back before dark. Whether the other boys believed me or whether they simply wanted to draw out the adventure for another day, I don’t know. But a two-day trip was planned.

  On the day appointed, we made our way on foot leisurely up the foothills following the path so familiar to me. The excursion quickly took on a festive air with so many boys traversing together. What provoked the following action, I don’t know, but some of the boys shed their suspenders, blaming the extreme exertions they were under. The suspenders, they claimed, dug into their shoulders. I didn’t think much of the matter, since suspenders were neither here nor there to me. But I did keep mine on. Not as much out of virtue as from the fact that my two school tormentors, Daniel Hostetler and Paul Schmucker, were the ring leaders in the suspender shedding.