My Amish Childhood

by Jerry S. Eicher

  However, one night his oversight took an odd turn. When Gallo arrived on his usual rounds, he was staggering drunk. His antics woke up Uncle Joe.

  “Let me in!” he warbled, beating on the outside of the house with his machete. “I’m in love…so in love with your daughter.”

  “You’re not coming in!” Uncle Joe told him from inside, astonished at this turn of events. “You’re drunk. Now go home.”

  “I want in!” Gallo insisted, growing even angrier. “Don’t you think I’m good enough? Is that the problem?”

  “That’s not true,” Uncle Joe said. “We like you just fine. You just aren’t getting my daughter.”

  Gallo charged the house and the door, threatening to beat both down. Uncle Joe wasn’t too worried. They’d been through this enough times with thieves trying to get in. The house was secure.

  Notorious for his temper even when sober, Gallo launched at the house with bloodcurdling screams, keeping up the fuss for quite some time.

  “I’m not drunk,” he insisted. “I’m in love. Let me take her home right now. You gringos think you’re really something. A high-and-mighty people who will not let your daughters marry us. What is wrong with you? You pretend to help people, but you won’t help me now.”

  Uncle Joe soon gave up persuading Gallo, and since most of the family was up by now and not likely to sleep anytime soon, they gathered in the living room and sang hymns for awhile even as Gallo hollered and whooped it up outside.

  Eventually someone came up with the idea of getting a blanket out to him in the hopes he’d take the hint and settle down for the night.

  Perhaps with the coming of daylight, they told each other, and with the wearing off of the whiskey, sanity would return. Gallo was consulted through the window and agreed. Throw out a blanket, and he would settle down on the front porch.

  But how to get the blanket out to him?

  A blanket wouldn’t fit through the slatted windows, and if they opened the front door, that would be the end of the matter. Gallo would come charging in.

  A solution was finally arrived at. They would throw the blanket out the small escape hatch in the back of the house that was built as an emergency exit sometime earlier.

  So the trapdoor was opened, and the blanket was thrown out. Gallo’s machete came back in after them, thrust with full force. They slammed the trapdoor shut and hoped things would soon quiet down outside.

  And it did for short intervals, during which Gallo would fall asleep…only to awaken and set forth on his rants again. The words always punctuated by his horrible screaming. The entire family was worn out by the time daylight arrived. But with the dawn came no relief. Gallo was now sound asleep on the front porch. He’d awakened long enough to make it known he still had designs on Rosanna, after which he nestled into the blanket again. The family stirred restlessly inside the house. There were chores on the farm that needed doing, and Gallo obviously had no plans to leave so they didn’t dare venture outside.

  Now enter Mom on the scene. Mom had awakened Dad in the night, making him aware of the horrendous screaming coming from the direction of Uncle Joe’s house.

  Like men tend to do, Dad assured her that the sound came from Guaimaca, misdirected by the winds, no doubt. Dad said there was nothing to worry about.

  Now with the dawn appearing, Mom was on a scouting trip, determined to hunt down the source of the awful sounds she’d been hearing all night. She felt foolish now that the sun was shining as she came sheepishly over the last knoll in front of Uncle Joe’s place. There was probably a perfectly good explanation, one they could all laugh about and chalk up to the eccentricity of the country.

  As she climbed the hill to the house, her uneasiness returned. There was no activity going on anywhere. Uncle Joe’s place was always crawling with people, especially early morning when the chores needed tending to. So where was everyone?

  Gathering her courage, she approached the front door, stepping over a pile of blankets in the process. As she knocked, Gallo awakened and stuck his head out to see who had arrived. Mom turned to see his grizzled, unshaven face, peering at her from the porch floor. She screamed—piercing shrieks of sheer terror. Mom ran like she hadn’t run in years. Gallo told me his side of the story later, bending over with laughter.

  “Whish!” he told me, swinging his hand through the air. “Could your mother ever run!”

  Arriving back at the house, now panting for breath, Mom got out what she’d seen.

  Dad believed her and set off in the other direction for help, finding Cousin Ira and two locals to accompany him on a rescue mission. As the men approached the house, Gallo sauntered off in the other direction. Uncle Joe’s family poured out of the house to begin their chores.

  As the milking began down at the barn, they looked up in astonishment to see Gallo coming back with his milk container to collect his morning’s supply as usual.

  Conversation ensued. Apologies were made. And peace returned…at least Uncle Joe hoped so.

  Gallo did keep his peace with Uncle Joe’s family for the time being, but his antics didn’t stop.

  Emil Helmuth’s family was awakened one night by the blowing of someone’s foghorn over in La Granja. The horns were a crude alert system fashioned after Dad’s siren at the shop. If someone came under threat during the night, he would blow his horn, hoping either to scare away the thieves or summon help. Emil was gone that night on a business trip, and neither his wife, Edna, nor his boys entertained any thoughts of venturing forth on a rescue mission for whomever was in trouble. They did start their generator though, flooding the yard with light. This was a system also fashioned after the one in Dad’s shop since Emil worked there. Only Emil hadn’t bothered installing a shut-off switch in the house like Dad. After the danger passed, Emil would have to walk outside to turn off the diesel by hand. Not the most desirable exercise on a dark Honduran night.

  When the foghorn had died down and no danger seemed evident outside, two of the boys ventured outside and succeeded in turning off the diesel. They made their way back to the house. En route, their flashlights caught an odd bump protruding from the top of a wagon bed. Further investigation revealed a sleeping man, whereupon their retreat back to the house turned into a rout.

  They met Edna halfway there, on her way to lend any aid that might be required.

  “Get back!” the boys wailed, horrified at this impediment in their path. A mother couldn’t be left behind.

  Urging her into a run, they stumbled inside and bolted the door behind them.

  Now what to do with the man outside?

  The first order of business was to fire up the diesel again. Then the now-awakened household watched Gallo as he stumbled around the yard, stone drunk again and sending screams piercing into the night.

  Emil’s household kept watch as Gallo circled around the house. He didn’t attempt to enter. He then seemed to head for home, nearly falling into the deep ravine that ran between Emil’s place and Bishop Monroe’s.

  Unbeknownst to Emil’s household, several of Bishop Monroe’s boys were already watching from the other side of the drawbridge that connected the two places. They held back until Gallo finally decided to move on, motivated no doubt by signs of a rescue party approaching from the other side of Turk Road.

  The Peachey family had heard the commotion and sent out two males with bright flashlights. They now approached, spotted Gallo, and urged him to leave, kindly thinking that by lighting his path ahead of him they might help the poor man find his way home.

  Instead, Gallo launched himself straight at the boys all the while letting fly with his unearthly screams. The boys took off in the other direction on a dead run, not stopping until they were back home and safely inside with the doors barred. The Helmuth family would have to fend for itself until daylight.

  Gallo decided to continue on home once the bobbing flashlights of the retreating Peacheys were out of sight. Then Bishop Monroe’s boys stirred up enough courage to come acr
oss the drawbridge to make sure the Helmuth family was okay.

  Whether Gallo retained negative memories about this night could never be fully ascertained. When approached on the matter, he freely admitted that he’d been there, laughing his actions off as those of a man who was a little out of it but perfectly harmless. He’d gotten lost, he claimed, and was only looking for shelter for the night. It was all good.

  That it wasn’t all good was apparent to everyone except Gallo.

  Another incident occurred soon afterward when Bishop Monroe approached Gallo in his potato fields. After a friendly greeting from Bishop Monroe, Gallo simply exploded and began running toward Bishop Monroe with his machete waving.

  With the machete swipes coming within inches of his chest, Bishop Monroe retreated beyond the gate.

  “Let that be a lesson to you!” Gallo said in finality.

  What the lesson was supposed to be wasn’t very clear.

  Eventually things flared up again at Uncle Joe’s. There was a big ruckus one evening down at their place, and someone came running up the hill to let us know. We all went down to watch, walking as close to the house as we dared. There Gallo was prancing around outside with his machete, in broad daylight this time, holding the family hostage again.

  This went on for an hour or so until the police from Guaimaca arrived in their pickup truck. I have no idea who drove into town to call them because it wasn’t us. Perhaps Fausto, if I had to guess. He’d probably run down to flag a ride by the road.

  Upon seeing the truckload of police approach, Gallo hightailed it toward the river, made it across, and disappeared into the underbrush. The police asked a few questions of Uncle Joe, and we meandered on down to offer what consolation we could.

  All of a sudden a shout went up: “There he goes!”

  Sure enough. Gallo was making a break for it below his house. I have no idea why. The police wouldn’t have bothered looking for him in the underbrush by the river. Now the hounds had sight of their prey. The truck roared to life, and the police all piled in. They easily caught the running man before he could cross the main road to find refuge in the foothills. The truck stopped in a cloud of dust. The men jumped off and proceeded to beat Gallo to the ground with their rifle butts.

  That was another reason besides their pacifist convictions the Amish didn’t like involving the police. People seemed to get hurt without justification.

  They threw Gallo into the back of the pickup truck like a sack of feed and took off. A week or so later, Gallo was back home much subdued. We never heard what happened during that time, but that was the end of our troubles with him. So I guess the Honduran version of justice was not without its benefits.

  Chapter 39

  In February of 1976, a 7.5 earthquake struck Guatemala near the capital, the worst such incident in Guatemala since 1917. Newspapers estimated the death toll at 23,000, and most of the adobe-type homes in the Guatemala City area were demolished. The quake lay along the Motagua fault, and aerial sightings would soon show a break along the surface running for a hundred miles.

  When the news arrived in the Amish community, a meeting was called to plan a response. By then the heart had gone out of Amish mission ventures. Only three men were dispatched to Guatemala, and they were given the instruction that aid should be limited.

  At the same time, as if he were taking lessons from the earthquake, Bishop Monroe chose to release his own tremor, which caused a spiritual rattling and shaking. I’m sure Bishop Monroe did what he thought was best, making what he considered a bold move that would satisfy the liberal side and thus show his good faith intentions. And too, he must have figured the conservatives would eventually get over it. Because, after all, his decision involved only bicycles.

  Liberals and conservatives had been forming increasingly clear lines in the community, but no one wanted to leave over the differences. Too much was at stake. To a man, they enjoyed Honduras in spite of its obvious drawbacks of thievery and the problems in the church. The liberals asked for votes on the issues troubling them, no doubt feeling confident that their side would carry the day. The conservatives weren’t objecting to the voting, at least not under the old way of doing things. The old way of voting required a unanimous vote before any changes could be made to the ordnung. The liberals wanted a simple up and down majority vote.

  The problem was that a unanimous vote—or at least something very close to it—is the bedrock of Amish church politics. It’s how they hold the line against drift. It’s how they keep straying members in the fold. It’s how they keep large, sentimental changes from happening. Either way the issue goes, there will always be someone who objects to the change, so the old way keeps change from happening. Or if change does happen, it happens very, very, slowly.

  Bishop Monroe missed the cue entirely, falling for the emotional claptrap behind the push for a straight up or down majority rule. It’s an old issue that percolates not just among the Amish. It’s a much wider battle, reaching from the jungle tribes in Africa to modern nations. How does the majority rule without supplying some safeguards for the minority?

  American democracy has never been, contrary to popular opinion, a pure 50/50 split. We elect representatives who then vote on our behalf during their prescribed terms. This removes decisions, at least in theory, from the passions of the moment. The congressional House functions on a 50/50 vote, but the Senate does not. They have the filibuster rule in place, where it takes a 60/40 vote to move most legislation. But even that’s not the whole picture. Each state, whether large or small, sends in two senators. So in theory the 40 percent side of the vote could contain many senators from small states, which skews the results even further in terms of the popular vote. It could actually produce a split, where perhaps 20 percent of the population is holding up the wishes of the 80 percent.

  And this system of protecting the minority goes even further. In presidential elections, states are assigned electoral votes based on their population. Once any candidate wins a majority of that state’s votes, he is assigned that state’s electoral votes but no more. The genius of the system is that it reduces the temptation for candidates to campaign only in states sympathetic to their cause.

  If you had state A and state B, with equal size populations, and state C with a small population, under a straight 50/50 split, candidates would campaign primarily in either of the two large states. They would use the tactic of swelling their majorities to overwhelm state C.

  With electoral votes assigned to each state: State A=5; State B=5; State C=1, State C is now in play. No matter how passionate the issue is in state A or B, their influence is no greater than the 5 electoral votes. So all candidates now have to visit state C to gain the one extra vote needed for a majority.

  I’m sure Bishop Monroe wasn’t fully aware of this complicated matter. It probably looked simple enough to him. How was it fair that over half the church should be held back by the minority? So the unanimous vote—the old way—was to be discontinued. A meeting was called, and it was simply announced. The ministers were all in agreement, Bishop Monroe said. And bicycles, one of the festering issues nearest the surface, were now allowed. Just like that.

  I’d been aware of the push for bicycles for some time—as far back as my school days when Paul Schmucker had written a research project on bicycles. It had really been a clandestine effort to extol the virtues of bicycle riding. The article was all about the efficiency of man-powered equipment, its environmentally friendly nature, and its peaceful operation.

  I got the message and was persuaded. I made no secret to Mom and Dad of my desire to own a bicycle. I even had one in town on standby. The bicycle was for sale if we were ever allowed to own one. But so far there had been opposition from the conservative Aylmer contingent.

  Many of the Amish, especially those from Northern Indiana, came from communities that allowed bicycles. That may have played a large part in Bishop Monroe’s reasons for overriding the dug-in conservatives. He failed to calc
ulate the forces he would unleash.

  First, there was the spiritual shock that was still sinking in after the stunned conservatives had gone home. Then within days, the community was filled with bicycle riding young boys—me among the lot. Mom and Dad, for whatever their reasons, went with the flow on this one. We went about whooping it up with our newfound freedom and creating an awful racket by blowing our horns and ringing our Honduran bicycle bells.

  Cousin Ira and Uncle Mark accosted me at once and let it be known that this nonsense would be stopped. And within days, the rest of the horn blowing and ringing bells had been silenced. The Stolls weren’t able to buck Bishop Monroe, but they knew how to take horns and bells off bicycles.

  Uncle Joe, I’m sure, understood the deeper implications of the controversy. Without the unanimous vote, there would be no chance of keeping further changes out of the church. Any such proposals would simply need to gain the sympathy of the majority, and it would be done. The line had been crossed, and the whole community was little better than a tree caught in the currents of whatever winds blew up the valley. If the people felt like it, they could change anything if they could get half of the people plus one to agree to it. Today it could be this, and tomorrow it could be another thing. This was a prospect not acceptable to Uncle Joe.

  The Amish firmly believe that it’s not possible to practice and maintain truly biblical Christianity in today’s culture. The Amish vision is simplicity itself. Freeze things at some point in the past, and so preserve the benefits of that time. They believe that the culture of 200 years ago had much to do with the mindset of that culture. Horses and buggies are really incidental. At stake is the best way to live out the practical applications of scriptural Christian living.

  Women way back then generally wore some form of headdress. The general culture dressed modestly. Divorce was minimal or unknown. Young people didn’t need chastity pledges to stay virgins until marriage. There were, of course, exceptions, but very few.