My Amish Childhood

by Jerry S. Eicher

  This feeling clashed with my other world, and I was puzzled. How could one be two things at the same time? How could I belong in two places? These people had never looked at our mountain. They had never smelled tortillas frying on an open-drum barrel top. They’d never awakened to the sounds of parrots passing overhead. And yet they were a part of me. It simply was, and I let it be.

  We soon moved over to the Red Mansion, and the next few weeks were spent in frequent trips to medical facilities. Honduras had no chiropractors that I knew of—that staple in every Amish community. All of us older children had to visit the chiropractor where our necks and various others parts of the body were given the wrench and the push.

  On the top of the list though, was Mom and Dad’s concern for my continued stammering. Apparently they’d begun to lose faith in the basic assurance everyone gave them—that children grow out of such things. The truth was, I wasn’t growing out of it. And I was developing deep bouts with depression, which they thought might be associated with the stammering.

  Sitting in the doctor’s office, I filled out pages and pages of questions. Questions about my feelings, my faith, my experiences in life. I answered them the best I could. The doctor asked some follow-up questions, nodded sagely behind his huge desk, and then said there was nothing wrong with me. I would grow out of it.

  That was advice Mom and Dad had already heard for free.

  I don’t remember feeling anxiety over the situation at that point in time. I was happy in my own way and keeping largely to myself. I’d learned how to stay out of situations where uncomfortable speaking was required. How I sounded the rest of the time, I already knew. But no one was making a big deal out of it—at least to my face.

  We soon felt comfortable enough in the Red Mansion, a vast place of tall rooms and bare walls. One day when Mom and Dad were gone on business, John and Susanna went exploring in the basement—a place I stayed out of with its half-dug dirt walls and unlit darkness. After exploring for some time, the two came rushing up the stairs, wild-eyed and dusty. They’d seen a ghost, they claimed. A real live one.

  I was skeptical at first, but they ended up convincing all of us children. So we spilled out to the yard, afraid to stay inside until Mom and Dad came back. When we tired of waiting, we trooped down the road to Uncle Elmo’s place, where John and Susanna repeated their tale. Uncle Elmo didn’t say much, but he followed us back to the old house with eyes shining. I think he wanted to find a ghost for himself. But there was nothing in the basement. Even with Uncle Elmo’s careful search of whole place.

  “It might have been some pigeon trapped in the basement,” he said, looking quite disappointed.

  Chapter 32

  Our time in Aylmer included a trip to one of the provincial parks lying along the edge of Lake Erie. These were the “Sand Hills,” a local attraction where a mountain of sand borders the lake. We could drive there in a buggy, which helped make it Amish friendly.

  Two of the Eicher aunts, Rosemary and Nancy, took us. We packed our lunches and headed out, arriving a long hour later. We rushed out of the buggy, dazzled by the sight—even after living in Honduras. We could run for long minutes, clawing our way upward on the sand. It was almost scary, the steepness, until we realized that rolling back down would cause no harm. In fact, my brothers loved to propel themselves down on purpose, their arms flying. I tried to stay on my feet.

  We spent most of the day there, taking our time exploring the sand hills, making our way down to the water and splashing around, running along the tops of the immense dunes. It seemed like I would never tire of the place.

  We ate our lunch under the trees at picnic tables near the entry. The minute we finished, we jumped up to run to the top of the dunes again. Eventually though, tired but happy, the aunts gathered us up and we headed home.

  The plan, we children soon discovered, was to spend four to six weeks of our vacation stateside. Part of the plan, though, was to travel to Pennsylvania to pick tomatoes to pay for our trip out of Honduras. A wise idea, I’m sure. And as it turned out, a memorable one for us children.

  We said our goodbyes at Grandfather Eicher’s place, not a lot of tears shed because we were a practical bunch of people. Relatives stood around smiling as we loaded up, even though we didn’t know when we would see them again. They waved goodbye as we drove down the lane.

  “Machatest gut!” Grandmother Eicher hollered after us. And we hoped we would “make it good.”

  Some three hours later, we stopped at Niagara Falls. This is an essential stop for all Amish children living in Canada. And also from other places if their travels take them anywhere close by. Amish life doesn’t afford that many wonders, and few pass up a stop at Niagara. To stand looking at all that water plunging over the falls was a sight indeed. Even for us, though it didn’t quite have the feel of Honduras with all the cars and people around. Still, we were impressed.

  Later that evening we arrived at the place we were staying in Pennsylvania—an old, dusty, brown two-story house—a huge place it was, as it needed to be because it would be housing four families. That little tidbit of information we were soon told, along with the fact that our portion of the house consisted of two rooms upstairs. Even in Honduras math, that placed all of us children in one room. We commented on this, and not exactly favorably. Mom was having none of it. Three-year-old Sarah Mae, we were told, would sleep in the room with Mom and Dad. That left the six of us with the other room to ourselves.

  We boys pushed the girls’ beds as far to the other side of the room as we could manage, keeping our two beds near the door. I have no idea why, as everyone got along fine.

  That evening we were introduced formally to the family already there, the Ed Schlabachs. A decent enough bunch of people, they were cousins of both Bishop Monroe and Emil Helmuth’s families in Honduras. So the adults had a common bond. I don’t think anyone arranged this. It’s just the way things happen in Amish country.

  Ed’s oldest boy was also named Jerry, and he was around my age. We immediately hit it off, drawn together by our age more than anything.

  The third family was Harry Warner and his wife. It soon became obvious to us that Harry was a novelty among the Amish. He took both the Lord’s and the Amish’s mandate to bear children quite literally. He arrived with over a dozen children in tow. I can’t remember the exact number, but it would be in the high teens before Mrs. Warner passed away years later. His second wife would continue bearing him children.

  Harry was breaking an unspoken taboo among the mainline Amish who don’t have children above maybe twelve or thirteen before something is done—and that mainly for the woman’s health. In this matter, they do have some sense and common decency. But Harry didn’t believe in the prevailing opinion, as was obvious.

  Harry also held forth on other religious matters during the long evenings after work when the men would gather to talk. Harry wasn’t a minister at the time. He was more of a wanderer of sorts, moving about the smaller Amish communities—some he helped to found and others that had just started up.

  Common opinion had it that Harry was fishing for a minister’s ordination, which was frequently a necessity in the younger communities. But after the lot fell to another man on both the first and second ordinations, and the quota having been filled, Harry would move on again.

  If we thought Harry was different, the final family outdid even Harry Warner. The David Byler family arrived a day or two after we did…by covered wagon.

  They didn’t believe in riding in Englisha modes of transportation—none whatsoever. They climbed out of the covered wagon, the men wearing robes that fell all the way to the ground, as if their modesty might somehow be exposed. They looked like biblical patriarchs.

  The oldest boys were in their late teens, all of them attired like Dad. The women and girls looked fairly normal to us in their homespun dresses. We didn’t ask any questions in the family’s presence, but we had plenty for Mom and Dad later.

  “Who are
these people?” we asked. “What are they doing here?”

  I don’t think Dad knew either. We eventually got it all straight. David Byler believed that the mainline Amish churches had drifted far from the truth. That plain living required a return to the ancient ways, including shunning all modern conveniences—as in motors, driving in vehicles, all modern food, and of all the crazy things…breakfast.

  I have no idea where that one came from, and I never could follow the explanation when it was given to me. “Why is it wrong to eat breakfast?” we whispered, astonished at this new practice.

  And it wasn’t like we had to go looking for a display on how they lived. There was only one kitchen in the house, so all four families had to share it in common. I think the women had some arrangement between themselves on who cooked which mornings for everyone. Or perhaps they all worked together. I wasn’t paying that much attention to this detail. What thunderstruck us was the sight of the long line of Bylers, the men in their robes strolling out to the main road with the women walking behind them. They were heading for the tomato patches while we sat there eating breakfast.

  We felt an instant need to justify our own practice of eating breakfast. Because surely these people were the truly holy, suffering in the morning while we ate our fill. But it didn’t take long for us to figure the whole thing out. I can’t remember who came up with the logic, but it sounded right to me. All of the Byler men were overweight it was observed. And no breakfast naturally caused overeating on the next two meals. And that observation bore out. The Bylers loaded the food on their plates at night. Everyone cooperated with the Bylers’ strange food requirements though. At least at the community meals. They also couldn’t eat prepared foods from the Englisha stores. Everything had to be made by hand, but that didn’t cause a problem.

  I don’t remember the backstory to the night our family purchased store-bought ice cream. My sisters think the Bylers couldn’t eat desserts at all. I’m thinking there was no homemade ice cream maker on the place and no way to get one. What I do know for sure is our family loved ice cream. It’s totally possible we would have purchased store-bought even with an ice cream maker on the grounds. We did have a hankering for the treat.

  So Dad brought a gallon back to the house, and we had Englisha ice cream up in our rooms. Just our family. No one complained that I heard of. The Schlabach and Warner children didn’t give us second glances, no doubt being used to such things themselves.

  Susanna though, went outside later that evening and happened to walk past the trash bin where Mom had thrown the ice cream carton. There she found one of the Byler girls licking the last of the ice cream from the carton.

  I think the sight did Susanna permanent psychological damage, watching the young Byler girl trying to get the last taste of ice cream off that carton. She never quite got over it.

  On that first morning, after the Bylers had disappeared down the road and we had finished our breakfast, we gathered together and headed down the road. I had no idea what tomato picking meant or what lay ahead, but I would soon find out.

  Acres of ripe tomato fields lay along the highway, well within walking distance of the old house. Scattered among the green, dying plants were the brown robes of the Byler males. Tractors pulling wagons sat waiting for their loads. Hampers were piled at regular intervals along the rows. We milled about until the owner showed up in his pickup truck. Dad seemed to know him; they shook hands. The owner rattled off his instructions in a no-nonsense tone. Clearly the man had other tasks awaiting. We would be paid by the hamper, he said. And each family was to keep its own count, turning in the number at the end of the day.

  “I’ll trust you,” he told Dad. “But my workers will keep track of how many they load over all. And if the numbers start to conflict, I’ll let all of you know.”

  Dad nodded and the owner moved on to the others.

  Mom made sure all of us children understood how to carefully drop the tomatoes into the hampers without smashing them, and she told us we didn’t have to worry about the stems. “That’s from the bygone days,” the owner had said with a smile after Dad asked him. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

  We picked away until close to dark, all of us staying in the field, including little Sarah Mae. Susanna and Miriam took turns tending her if she needed anything, singing a jingle they had picked up that summer in Aylmer, and which Sarah can still repeat today. It comes from a song called "Little Sally Walker." This song had been passed down through so many mouths of Amish children by then—children who had never heard the original—that the words had gradually changed:

  Little Sally Waters, sitting in the sun.

  Crying and weeping for another one.

  Cry, Sally, cry, wipe off your eyes.

  Point to the east, point to the west.

  Point to the one who loves you best.

  Sarah could totter about at three years of age, but there wasn’t any place to lose her really. The open fields stretched for long distances in all directions.

  We children must have been allowed to take our time filling the hampers because I never felt like complaining about the work. None of us did. We just picked tomatoes, stretched our backs, and picked some more.

  At night we slept well, the evening spent lounging around the place. David Byler and Harry Warner soon had heated religious discussions going. Both Harry and David felt the need to convert the other to his position. The other two men joined in only if they felt like it. Ed mostly. Dad didn’t hang around much. Deep religious arguments weren’t down his alley. He could confront Danny Stoltzfus at home about the Da Lob Lied, but trying to convince a robed man he ought to ride in automobiles wasn’t worth the effort. Harry, though, launched his best shots.

  I listened the best I could, but I couldn’t make a whole lot of sense out of things. David mostly talked about the inconsistency of the thing. If automobiles were wrong, he asked, then how was it right to ride in them? Before we left, David had written up a long treatise on the subject and passed it around to the other three families. I think I was the only one of our family who read any portion of it. I can’t remember much of the content, but there was lots of Old Testament scriptures and a little logic thrown in here and there.

  One evening toward the end of our stay, supplies had run low and the two oldest Byler boys were driving into town to replenish stock. I asked if I could ride along. I think I needed some small item—or thought I did. When they said I could, I ran inside to get permission from Mom. She okayed the venture, and I was already seated on the open buggy with the two Byler boys when Dad came out at the last minute.

  “You’d better take a coat along,” Dad advised, more of a suggestion, I thought, than a command.

  I looked up at the sky, trying to see if there was an approaching storm. I couldn’t see anything.

  “It gets cold around here,” Dad added.

  I shrugged, finding that hard to imagine.

  When I wasn’t interested in taking the coat, Dad retreated.

  Both of the Byler boys looked at me with incredulity written on their faces.

  “Aren’t you going to get your coat?” one of them asked.

  “No,” I said. “I’ll be okay."

  They looked at each other in horror, clearly expecting I would be struck down from heaven for this defiance of higher authority. When nothing happened, they shook the reins and we were off. Our destination was over an hour away, and it was well past dusk by the time we’d finished shopping. Sure enough, on the way home I froze most of the way. But I kept my mouth shut. Next time, I determined, I would listen to suggestions from Dad.

  Chapter 33

  Neil and Carol Wright were long-standing Englisha friends of Dad and Mom. We kids were told that the Wrights would drive us back to Honduras in their station wagon. We would travel overland all the way to Honduras, following the Pan-American Highway for much of the journey, once we were in Mexico. Dad figured he would save some money by paying Neil by the mile, and for Neil
’s part, he would have the time of his life making the trip. So when the tomato picking slacked off, Dad decided the time had come to leave. Neil was notified back in Aylmer, and the date was set.

  When the couple pulled into the driveway for the beginning of our adventure, I was horrified. How in the world would eight of us, plus Neil and Carol, all fit in one station wagon?

  “No problem!” Neil boomed.

  He was a big man and always happy and sunny. Carol was the opposite—pessimistic and a little short-tempered. But this was our ride back to Honduras. Everyone must have arrived at the same conclusion I had though. We needed more room. The men talked and decided to purchase a trailer for the luggage. So Neil set off to find one while Dad got in one last day of tomato picking.

  Finally Neil returned with the news that he’d found a trailer to buy. “I thought the man was going to finish me off,” Neil joked when Dad and I went along to pick up the new purchase. “He was taking me way back in the sticks.”

  Dad chuckled and nodded. It was true, we were driving into the sticks. However, once we arrived, the trailer seemed suitable enough, though it was little more than a white box on two wheels. They hitched it up, paid the man, and then spent considerable time getting the lights hooked up to the car so they would work properly.

  On the day of our departure, we all piled in. John squeezed in between Neil and Carol up front. Mom and Dad got into the backseat with Susanna and Miriam. That left three of us boys lying on our sides in the luggage compartment (minus the luggage, which was packed in the white box trailer).

  Neil started the car and then pulled out his camera for a shot of the old house through the car windshield. David Byler was sitting on a bucket on the front porch. He leaped into the air, his robe flying, as he dove into the kitchen doorway. He wouldn’t take a chance on being photographed, even accidently. In my mind’s eye I can still see him scrambling. Neil and Dad roared with laughter all the way out the lane and long afterward. The story of David Byler’s flying leap became a tale our family still remembers with smiles. When the picture was developed, the dim form of David’s wife can be seen scurrying toward the kitchen doorway too, left behind to fend for herself by her panicked husband.