Ira Wagler's Blog, page 14

Country Child in the City…

…the everlasting stranger, who had walked its stones, and

breathed its air, and, as a stranger, looked into its million

dark and driven faces, and who could never make the city’s

life his own.

—Thomas Wolfe: Of Time and the River

__________________________________

“I’m going to be in Philadelphia,” she emailed me a month ago. “Over Easter Sunday. What are you doing that day? Do you have anything lined up?” Oh, boy, I thought. Just watch. She’s going to invite me to Philly. The city. I hate cities. But I answered. Nope, got nothing going on. My church is having an Easter service, sure. And I was planning to be there. But nobody’s invited me home for lunch afterward, or anything. So I’m not committed. Actually, I’d say I’m free.

And a few nights later she called me. Janice, my niece, the wandering efficiency specialist for Waste Management. They fly her all over the country. And that weekend, she would be in Philly. Could I come in for the day on Sunday? Wilm was coming on Friday evening, already. “We’re going to be tourists in the city all day Saturday. Come over then, if you want. You can get a room at my Hotel.” When I didn’t bite, she went on. “It would be great if you could come in Sunday, then, to hang out.” Gaaah, I thought. I knew it. I knew she was going to invite me in there.

I don’t like cities. I don’t trust cities. I don’t go to cities, unless I have to. Doesn’t matter what size. I even avoid downtown Lancaster, for crying out loud. The radius of my daily world always skirts the edges of any city. And now Janice was inviting me into a real, big city. Philadelphia. And I couldn’t turn that down. Didn’t want to. We haven’t seen each other since Beach Week, back in September. I mean, I’ve got to do what it takes to get there. And Philly isn’t that far. I couldn’t see driving, though. I’d take the train.

So that’s what we decided, and that’s how we left it, back then. And I put it out of my mind. No sense fretting over anything. The day would come, I’d walk into it, and it would be fine.

And last week, I checked the Amtrak schedule. A train left Lancaster for Philly at 8 AM. And at 10. The second one would work best, I figured. Give me a little more time. And so, last Sunday morning, I packed a few items in my messenger’s bag and took off for Lancaster. Parked and walked in, past the little booth. The attendant greeted me cheerfully. I’m parking for the day, I told him. “Five bucks,” he said. “What’s your parking spot number?” I didn’t even check, I said. It’s that blue Dodge pickup out there. “That’s fine,” he said, handing me my receipt. “I’m taking a walk out there in a little bit. I’m sure I’ll recognize your truck. I’ll get the number then.” I thanked him and walked into the station.

The Lancaster train station is a dump. Old and battered. They’re trying to repair it some, but I think it’s falling apart faster than they can fix it up. Cheerful little signs stood here and there. Bear with us as we remodel. The ticket lady was cheerful and friendly, too, I gotta say. Out there working on Easter morning. Nineteen bucks. That’s what it cost one way. You can’t beat that. You could never drive in for that. “Happy Easter,” the ticket lady proclaimed, handing me my ticket. Happy Easter to you, too, I said.

I was a good half hour early. A few other passengers were scattered about. More were coming in. I took a seat on a long bench and looked around at the other travelers. They were of every stripe and nature, looked like. There was one big difference from back in the days when I used to travel the land by Greyhound. Back then, people talked to each other. Chatted. Where are you going? We connected, even though we knew we’d never see each other again.

I don’t see how anyone connects with other passengers these days. Everyone is wired. Either pawing at their cell phone screens, cruising the internet on their iPads and laptops, or listening to music through ear plugs connected to their phones. You can hear the music blasting if you’re sitting close by. Brains are frying. And I’m not knocking it, people doing that. It’s just where we are. It is what it is. I just miss how it was.

It’s been years since I traveled anywhere on the train, or any public transportation. The last time was back in May of 2000, when I boarded Amtrak for Clemson, South Carolina, to visit my brother Nathan for one last bachelor’s party before Ellen and I got married in August. That party came down, four guys in a rented RV camper parked inside the oval of the Coca Cola 600 for two days while the races roared on around us. But that’s another story.

On the trip down, I wandered about in the train. In the snack/lounge car, I chatted for a while with a lady who was playing solitaire with real cards. And later, as the sun set and dusk settled over the land, I sat at a table with a small group of guys and we passed around a paper bag holding a pint of Jim Beam that had somehow magically appeared from someone’s pocket. We poured shots from the bottle into our plastic cups of Coke and ice when the attendants weren’t looking. It was all quite illegal, bringing your own whiskey to drink on the train, which of course made it taste even better.

And we sat there in a little knot around the table, talking. A couple of black guys from Philly, heading south to see family. A traveling salesman of some kind. Another guy, I can’t remember where he was going. None of us knew each other. We’d never met before, anywhere. But we talked and talked like old friends about a whole lot of things as darkness closed in and the train pulsed and throbbed into the night. Eventually the little pint bottle was emptied, and we all drifted off to find our seats and settle in to sleep. I never saw any of them again, nor expected to.

That’s how you ride a train.

The ticket lady’s voice blared over the loud speaker. Due to the mechanical problems, the westbound train was running 25 minutes late. That’s Amtrak for you. It’s run by the government. Highly unreliable, and, of course, loses billions of dollars every year. But I was relieved, because I was heading east, not west. My train was running on time. Knock on wood.

At ten o’clock, when the train pulled in and hissed to a stop, about 50 people had somehow materialized to get on board. The doors whooshed open, and we poured in. The coaches were half empty, so I had no problem finding a seat for myself. The train slid out, starting so smoothly that you wouldn’t even know you’re moving unless you looked out the window. In a few minutes, we were heading east full speed. I texted Janice. I’m on board. Yay! She texted back.

And I sat there and looked out the window. From a train, you see the underbelly of things. The backyards of homes and businesses. Where people put stuff they don’t want you to see from the road. Grills with tattered covers. Old junk cars. Stacks of firewood. Piles of this and that. Old pop-up campers and junk machinery. It all slid by as we headed toward Gap. And then we swooshed through the little town. I looked for the steeple of my church. Chestnut Street Chapel. And there it was. I glanced at my watch. It was 10:20. On most Sunday mornings that’s about the exact moment I arrive for church. But not this morning. They’d have Easter services without me.

Atglen passed, and other little towns. All with their decrepit old train stations. No longer used at all, many of them. I remember my father talking about when he was a little boy in Daviess County. How they would get on the train in Montgomery, and head west to Washington or east to Loogootee. He saw the high point of steam train transportation in this country. Back when the rails were an important connection to the outside world.

One of my earliest memories came on the train. I was probably about three years old. We were traveling to a funeral in Daviess, where I saw my first view of death. A grandmother, I believe, faintly recalled, lying in a coffin wearing wire-rimmed glasses. I remember more vividly the train trip to the funeral, how the towering dome of the train station fascinated me. I looked up in awe, imagining exotic and distant places, perhaps, even, heaven itself. And I remember how thirsty I was that night on the train, and there was no water. I cried and cried. Mom, Mom. I’m thirsty. She offered me what she had, an apple. “Eat that,” she said soothingly. You can have water when we get there.” I’ve looked back on that memory now and then over the years, and wondered how my tears must have made her feel.

After a few stops at small town stations, we approached the outskirts of Philadelphia. I looked out at the rows and rows of bleak tenant houses. Slums, is what they are. Who could live there? Who would want to? Maybe people are trapped in their circumstances, I thought. I’d rather live in a tent out in the country.

We slid into the 30th Street Station a few minutes after eleven, right on time. I walked up. No Janice or Wilm. I’m here, I texted. We’re on our way, she texted back. A few minutes later Wilm walked in. I waved at her, and we walked out to where Janice was waiting in her rental car. I got in and gave her a big hug. Janice, dear. And then she shot right out into the traffic and we headed toward downtown.

Mostly, I hate cities because I hate driving in them. Well, that, and getting lost if you don’t know your way around, lost in some bad section where you’ll get killed for looking at someone wrong, or just for being there. Get someone else to drive, and I’m fine. Within minutes, I saw that Janice was utterly fearless. Even though she didn’t know the city that well. Wilm sat in the back seat with a map, and calmly called out directions. Once or twice, we missed our turn and had to loop around again. No problem.

They had the day pretty much planned. First, a late brunch at Silk City Diner, a place that was featured on the hit TV show, Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives. A show I happen to watch now and then, and enjoy very much. I never saw that episode, though. We parked and walked in. A classic little diner, right here in the city. I was amazed. This was the kind of place you find in small towns. We didn’t wait long to be seated at a booth in the back corner. And we ordered breakfast, good greasy food that only diners serve. And Janice and I caught up. She’s been so busy traveling and working all around the country that it makes my head spin. Houston. LA. Boston. Detroit. Buffalo. And other cities. The girl gets around. I can’t imagine such a hectic travel schedule, although at her young age I probably could have.

Waiting for a table. Janice and Wilm.

The food was better than advertised, and after that we headed out. Janice and Wilm had a few things planned. Touristy things. “We’re tourists.” Janice said. “And not one bit ashamed of it.” First stop was a few blocks down from the diner. The German Society of Pennsylvania. Of course they were closed. But we stood outside and took pictures. “We take lots of pictures,” Janice said. “Of everything and every place. That way, we can go and look it up on the internet and read all about it.” Made some sort of mad sense to me. We headed on then, for the Edgar Allan Poe house. Stood by the big mural and snapped pics. Three young Europeans, two guys and a girl, were snapping pics, too. So Janice handed the girl her phone and asked her to take a pic of the three of us. She gladly obliged. I didn’t even know there was an Edgar Allan Poe house in Philly. I thought he was pretty much a Baltimore guy. I mean, the Ravens are named after his famous poem, and all.

Posing with Poe.

And then we headed out for the main activity Janice had planned. She had texted me a few days before. Hey, we’d like to go tour an old historic prison, here in Philly. Eastern State Penitentiary. It’s the oldest prison in the country. I texted back. Whatever you plan is fine, as long as we can hang out. A prison is going to get me all gloomy and depressed. But, hey, I’m game.

I hate prisons. And I hate the fact that this country has the highest incarceration rate in the world. It’s one of my deepest passions, this injustice, because about 75% of the current prison population in America could be free and productive people. The only reason they are behind bars is because of arbitrary state and federal laws. Most prisoners have committed no crime against any other human being. They simply ran afoul of some insane law, often involving drugs.

It is a harsh and brutal thing, to deny freedom to any human being for any reason. I’m not saying it’s never justified. It is, of course, for actual violent criminals. But those are relatively rare, when you look at who all is incarcerated. And here we are, feeding the giant private corporations that run prisons. Laws are passed and countless people are snagged in the dragnets and locked up, simply for profit. And that is a vile and contemptible crime against all of humanity. It really is. It makes me half crazy, when I stop and think about it, absorb it.

After merrily missing a turn, and looping around a time or two, Janice got us on the right street. And we drove on out. I figured we had a ways to go. But suddenly, there it loomed on the right. A huge castle complex. Old, old stone walls, thirty feet high, with turrets jutting up here and there. I pointed and yelled. The prison. That has to be it. And Janice and Wilm agreed. It had to be.

Not only is Janice a fearless driver in the city, she also has an uncanny knack for finding parking spots where there should be none. And right at the end of the row of parked cars in front of the prison, at the very last possible spot, it was open. She swooped in. We got out. The day was gloomy and overcast. The walls towered high above us. We looked up in awe. I felt my spirit closing in around me, like a cocoon. How many untold unfortunate souls had gazed upon what I was seeing, knowing that they were entering those walls against their will? Knowing they would be held there, to pay their “debt” to society? I couldn’t fathom it at that moment. But I could feel it, their spirit of despair.

We walked in, and paid the admission. They gave us each a little electronic keypad with headsets. It’s all pretty much a self-tour. You walk through. See a sign, with information and a number. You punch in that number, and a voice speaks. Tells you what happened in history. Right on the spot where you’re standing.

It was a bleak and desolate place. All of it. The very concept of its birth appalled me. You take people who have broken the law. Stuff them in dreary stone cells. Keep them in isolation, so they can be penitent of the wrongs they’ve done. No noise. No nothing. For 23 hours a day, day after day. I don’t know who dreamed up this concept. Whoever did was a sadist. Period.

And we walked through. Took the tour, like the tourists we were. The place is crumpling. There is a central hub. All cell blocks flow from that hub. We stood and looked into the cells. Tiny, cramped rooms, with entrances so small you had to bend over to get in. Most of the cells were empty and crumpling, but a few were still furnished with a hard iron bed, a little tiny desk, and a stool. It was all so bleak and so hopeless. There was nothing redeeming about the place. Nothing at all. The vision that had conceived it failed spectacularly.

The air is heavy, the place is thick with the spirits of the people who were wrongfully imprisoned and tortured there. It really is. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere around that area after dark. And I wouldn’t live within a mile of that site. I told Janice. I wish they would just level this place. All of it. The thirty-foot high walls. I don’t care how old they are. They should be leveled. And she asked me. “If they would do that, how would we ever sense the wrongs that were done here?” Yeah, you got a point, I said.

In the Bible, prisoners and captives are almost universally described with sympathy and compassion. Set the captives free. Visit the poor and the sick in prison. Care for the unloved, the forgotten. All of which tells me that throughout the long march of recorded history, the vast, vast majority of incarcerations were arbitrary and brutally unjust. People were thrown into castle dungeons and dank holes in the open ground simply on the whim of the king or his corrupt bureaucrats. Or enslaved as the bounty of war. The Lord’s heart has always been open to the cries of the oppressed. Should ours be any less so? Why, then, are so many “Christians” today so garishly eager to “lock’em up and throw away the key” for even minor nonviolent infractions? I think it’s time a whole lot of us searched our own hearts for that answer.

Eastern State Penitentiary remains today, a bleak and desolate ten-acre monument to the evil that is the state. It always was evil, the state. It always will be. It doesn’t matter who’s running it. Whether it’s the Quakers. The Puritans. Or the gangs of murderous goons that infest the cesspool that is Washington, D.C., today. Goons from both parties. If you trust the state in any capacity, for any service, for any promise, you have no true concept of what it is to be free. The state is a monster. A crooning monster, sometimes, but a monster nonetheless. It will arbitrarily reduce you to subhuman status. As a person to be controlled, and if need be, caged, because it says so. Just like that, for no reason other than its own written “laws.” It will continue to destroy innocent lives because it can, at least until enough people rise to stand against the beast. And call it what it is. And that’s about all I got to say about the matter.

Under gloomy skies, we took our time for the two-plus hours of our tour, pretty much walking through every cell block. As we walked out and returned to the car, the rain came down in a steady drizzle, which seemed very fitting for the moment. We settled in and drove around to find a coffee shop that was open on Easter Day. And we found one. A Starbucks.

After drinking coffee and chatting about what we’d seen so far, we headed back to the Loews Hotel, where Janice was staying. A fine old place, right downtown. We hung out in the lounge, while Janice downloaded her day’s haul of photos. And then we went up to her room and relaxed for an hour. Shortly after six, Janice ran us back to the train station. The train was right on time, and Wilm and I boarded for Lancaster at seven o’clock.

The cars were packed, heading west. And right on time, we arrived in Lancaster. I dragged Wilm’s luggage out to the parking lot, then got into my truck and headed for New Holland. At exactly 8:45, I walked into my home. Exhausted, but exhilarated, somehow. It was a good day. An odd day, because I went to the city and back. For me, that’s saying something.

I’m thinking, though, that maybe I should get out a little more.

************************************************************

Well, last week I hit one more little milestone. The kind of thing you never pursue or expect, the kind of thing that just happens on its own or doesn’t. And if it doesn’t, you never know, because you never looked for it. I was featured on my first ever magazine cover. Kind of a wild feeling, I have to say. Here’s how it all came down.

When the book came out in 2011, I never notified any of the schools I’d graduated from. Not Vincennes University. Not Bob Jones. And not Dickinson Law. I just didn’t feel like saying, hey, look what I accomplished. Here’s my book, check it out. I mean, a million other authors are doing that every year, bugging people from their pasts. I figured if the book moved at all, someone from those schools would notice at some point. And if no one did, that would be OK, too.

Then, last fall, I attended the 15th reunion of the class of 1997, at what is now Penn State/Dickinson Law. Reconnected with a bunch of my old law school classmates. Some of them had heard of the book. And I just happened to have a case of copies in the trunk. I sold and signed them at a discount for my old friends. And somehow a copy made its way to the front office. A few weeks later, an email arrived from Crystal Stryker, Marketing and Communications Manager at the school. She’d read the book. Would I be interested in doing an interview? She wanted to publish an article in The Lexicon, the law school’s alumni magazine. Of course, I said. I’d like that a lot.

So a month or so later, she drove out to see me at work. I showed her around at Graber, what I did, the operation of the business. We got along great. A month or two later, she returned with a photographer. Wow, I thought. They really mean business. She’s going to publish a piece about me. And she did. It’s a first for me, to make the cover of any magazine. And I am genuinely honored.

I don’t generally get involved in discussions about writing, much. Write as and how you want. Whatever works for you is fine. Recently, though, a meme on Facebook caught my attention, a quote from a lady. I guess she was a writer. “The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say.” And I thought, hmm, why would anyone analyze it to that extent, what writing is? And it sounds a little complicated, anyway. If you think you’re saying what others are unable to say, you’re probably a little too focused on yourself. And that self-focus will affect your voice. It has to. There’s no way it can’t.

I’ve said it before, a few times. I guess I’ll say it again, then shut up for a while about writing. Everyone has an opinion, seems like. Here’s mine. The role of the writer is not to “say what we are unable to say.” It’s not to “make a difference,” either. The role of the writer is to live and speak from the heart. You write from where you are. Wherever that is. And you keep walking forward into life. It really is that simple.

Share

Mutterings of a Grumpy Landlord…

And then, gripping their greasy little wads of money, as if

in the knowledge that all reward below these fierce and

cruel skies must be wrenched painfully and minutely from

a stony earth, they went in to pay him.

—Thomas Wolfe: Of Time and the River

_________________________________

It always sounds so perfectly sensible when you read about it in the real estate ads. Two unit on such and such a street. Well maintained. Easy financing. Live in one and rent the other. That’s the killer line. That and, Let your tenant help pay your mortgage. It sounds so simple. And perfectly logical, on paper. But I’m here to tell you, the reality is nowhere even close to that bright little scenario.

I remember how it was back in early 2000, when I stumbled onto the house that has been my home ever since. Ellen and I were engaged. I was struggling along as a novice attorney (I never was more than that, a novice), not making a whole lot. Neither of us had much saved up. And we needed a house. August was coming. And the wedding date.

I happened to mention something to an Amish client one day. A guy who owned a very successful construction business. He’d branched off into investing in commercial real estate. And I did his legal work, writing up leases and such. And one day over lunch I asked him. Do you know of a house for sale that I could buy? I need to find something soon. We’re getting married in August. And he smiled. “You bet I know of a house for sale,” he said. “I have one I’d sell you, over in the New Holland area.” I was instantly interested. Would you finance? “Sure would,” he said agreeably.

So the following Saturday afternoon, Ellen and I picked up the Amish guy at his home, and we drove over to see the house. My brother Steve and his wife Wilma met us there. And we walked through. Nothing fancy. An old two-story brick house. Two units. The upstairs was a separate apartment. Downstairs, where we would live was a little bigger, with an attached porch. Ellen and I were impressed. Nothing fancy, like I said. But nice enough. We could make a home of this place.

And the Amish guy told us. “Bob lives upstairs. He works for me. Drives my crews. He’s good for the rent. Five hundred a month. That’ll help with your mortgage.” We met Bob. A wizened guy, in his fifties, probably. Friendly, not real bright. He lived upstairs with his cat.

We bought the house, and settled in after the wedding. It was nice enough, downstairs. Old wood trim, natural, never painted. The only problem I could see was that they must not have had electricity back when the house was built. Every wall on all four sides seemed to be nothing more than many large, and I mean large, windows. Old windows. Decrepit windows that leaked in the wind.

And it all seemed like it would work out real nice, this landlord thing. Bob went to work every day, and he generally paid the rent on time. Five hundred cool bucks every month. Our mortgage was around $1100.00, so it really helped. And that was our reality for a year or two. Bob was completely alone in the world. He had no one. So we tried to include him when we could. When we had friends over for a cookout. At Thanksgiving. And during the Christmas holidays. He was rough, unvarnished. But he had a kind heart. And he paid his rent on time. At least the first while.

It could not last, sadly. Bob had a fallout with the Amish guy, and quit. Went to work where his heart really was. At the local golf club, as a groundskeeper. Which is very nice, doing what you love. Problem was, the local groundskeeper job paid him about half of what he was making before. And things got real tight, real fast. He didn’t know how to manage his budget. And it seemed like the landlord was always the last guy on his list to pay. We had a few stern talks. Look, Bob. You’re behind two months on the rent. Come on, get me some money. He saw right through me, though, and knew I didn’t have it in me to kick him out into the streets.

And things just spiraled down. His old pickup gave out one day, over in Leola. I went and pulled him home with a tow strap. He somehow cobbled together a small loan from someone for an old clunker of a car. He clattered around in that until one Saturday afternoon when I got home from somewhere. The car was parked in the drive, hood up. Bob stood there, looking perplexed. He’d just hooked up a new battery. I walked up. Little slivers of smoke drifted from various parts of the engine, and wires here and there crackled and popped and pulsed as if alive. “The thing’s smoking,” Bob proclaimed. Well, yeah, I can see that, I answered, checking it out. You got the battery hooked up backward. Positive on negative and negative on positive. I yanked the cables off. But it was too late. All the wiring was fried. And that was it, for his wheels. He just couldn’t win, seemed like. I dug out an old bicycle I had in the garage and gave that to him. And the man got up at 3:30 each morning and biked 6 miles to his job on the golf course, to water the greens before the first golfers arrived.

The end approached. And Bob left us one day. Claimed he’d cleaned everything upstairs. He had not. He left us with a trashed apartment and about $1200.00 in unpaid back rent. He also left some belongings in the garage. Hunting equipment. Bows. Tools, hammers and such. An old tobacco press. And buckets and buckets of golf balls. I had a fire sale on the abandoned items, except the tobacco press. Got about half his back rent back. And paid about half of that to three Amish ladies who live close by, to come and clean the mess he had left. I muttered savagely under my breath. And I never saw Bob again.

After Bob left, we rented the apartment to a brother and sister who had drifted in from western PA to find work. They were from hard, poor stock, and it was always a little dicey, getting them to keep current with the rent. But when they left, the place was clean, and they didn’t owe me a dime. Then came a raggedy line of just flat out losers. The single lady and her teenage daughter. The only tenants I’ve ever had to evict. She burned me for over a grand. Then the friend of a friend, and her friend. Lots of adventures and drama, there. I’ve told it all before. No need to repeat. They left me about even, money wise, just hugely burned out from dealing with people living right above my head.

Like the ads say, live in one and rent the other. Let the tenant help pay the mortgage. Yeah. Sure. That really works.

The last tenant ever to live upstairs was a young guy in his low 20s. Moving out on his own for the first time. “Harvey” was quiet, never made much fuss. Before he moved in, he asked if he could paint up there. Paint what? I asked. “Oh, some of the walls,” he said vaguely. Sure, no problem, I said. Paint away, any color you like. And he did. The kitchen a pale red. One bedroom a hard, hard loud green. The living room, a deep dark brown, almost black. Except one wall. That was kind of yellowish orange, a color I’m sure has some modern name I’ve never heard of. I gaped a bit when I saw what he was doing. But hey, it was paint. What could it hurt?

Harvey was simply the best tenant I’ve ever had. The little real estate ads would be totally accurate, if all tenants were like him. He was quiet. Paid his rent on time. Made no trouble at all. When I’d leave for a few days over a weekend, I’d tell him. Have a party. I’m not around. Be as loud as you want. He had friends visiting from out of town sometimes, but he always told me. I was all set, for a long term tenant, with him up there. Sadly, though, after about a year and a half, Harvey gave his notice. His Mom wasn’t doing well. He had to move back home to take care of her. I grumbled at him. Come on, what am I going to do now? You’re my best tenant ever. Harvey laughed. And he moved out, leaving me with an impeccably clean apartment with wildly painted walls.

And I just didn’t have the energy, to go look for someone else to rent to. It was in early 2011, and I was immersed in the final edits of my book. Plus, I was in a weird state, mentally. My book was coming out in July. In my world at that time, the sun rose and set on the coming fulfillment of that wild strange dream that was coming true. Sure, I told people. If you know of anyone, send them over. I’ll pay a hundred bucks to any person that finds me a suitable tenant. And a prospect showed up, now and then. But nothing ever worked out. And it didn’t bother me one bit. I got to liking it a lot, just living alone in my house. No fuss, no hassles, no chasing after people for rent. I missed the money, of course. But I’d rather live alone than deal with the incessant, draining stress of a problem tenant.

An old house is a money trap. I live in an old house. And that’s what I thought about, when my first check arrived from Tyndale. The house. It needs new windows. I’ll do half of them at a time, I figured. The west and north sides first. That’s where the cold winds come from. Then, if the book does OK, the south and east sides next year. I called an Amish contractor. He came and gave me a quote. And that’s what I did. The twenty-five or so windows were all replaced, over the course of two summers. Now the heating bill would be less. A lot less. I could sure use a tenant upstairs, though, to help pay for all those windows.

And right at a year ago, it came to me. A real estate guy. Talk to one. They find renters, for a fee. So I called one, an acquaintance. A highly respected local agent, totally connected in the area. A guy who had a reputation for renting apartments and houses. Would you help me find a tenant? “Sure,” he said. “Let me come around and check out what you have. I’ll take some pictures and post it on my site.” Great, I said. I’ll leave the door unlocked. Go right on up and check it out. And that’s how we left it. He came. And I waited to hear from him. Nothing. Well, he’s surely got it linked to his site, I thought. I was busy, with a lot of book-related things. So I let it slide for a couple of months. Still no word from him. So I called one day and left a message. Haven’t heard from you, or from any prospective tenants. What’s going on?

He called back. “I thought I left you a message.” Well, you didn’t, I said. “I can’t take your apartment,” he said. “It needs work. A total overhaul. New carpet and painting. New cabinets, new appliances. The way it is, you’ll attract no one who has any credit.” Well, thanks a lot, I thought. For letting me know. I’ve been waiting for two months. And I asked him. How much do you think it’ll take to fix it up? “Oh, $6,000.00 to $10,000.00,” he said breezily. “That’ll get it nice. I’ll be able to rent it out then.”

I was pretty furious at the guy. Not at what he said. My apartment is a dump, was what he was telling me. And that was fair enough. But that he didn’t get back to me. I wasn’t worth the time for even a simple phone call. I won’t name him, but I will say this much. When you’re selling a service, I don’t care how unimportant your client seems, or how dumpy the apartment is that he’s trying to rent out, you better call him back. You just better.

Generally, nothing happens on its own. Not if you don’t shake things. So no tenant showed up. I walked upstairs now and then. Kept the place clean, kept the mouse poison out. I realized, though, that I needed to get someone in there. A place that’s not lived in falls apart on its own. And about a month ago, it all came together. The plan.

I was over at my friend Tricia’s little salon one evening after work, getting my hair cut. I’ve known Trish for more than twenty years. She’s pretty much the only person in the world who’s been allowed to cut my hair during that time, except for when I was out of the area. And no other hair stylist anywhere has ever met her standards. We’ve become good friends over the years. I saw her raise her children. Move around the area, here and there. I always followed her, wherever she went, to get my hair cut. Way early on, I told her where I’d come from. She saw me graduate from college, go to law school. And she was there through everything that’s happened since. Good and bad and good. Yeah, I’d say we know each other pretty well.

Back in 2004, she got her real estate license and went to work part time at Hostetter Realty, a very solid and respectable firm in the county. She told me about it, how it went, all the adventures involved. And that night, I told her that I’m actually looking for someone to rent my apartment. Is that something you could do for me? Find a good renter?

“Sure,” she said. “I’ll stop by next week and put up a sign. I’ll put it on our website. We’ll find you a renter.” It’s not a high class place, I told her. The other realtor basically told me it’s a dump. “I’ll get you a renter,” she replied.

And she stopped by one evening, as she’d promised. I took her upstairs and showed her the place. And I give her plenty of credit. She had to be shocked at the paint job. But she smiled bravely. “We’ll see what we can do,” she said. I took the large metal sign from her and punched it into my yard out by the road. Apartment for Rent. Call Hostetter Realty. If this didn’t work, I figured, I might as well give it all up. Either spend the money to remodel the place, or just live without a renter.

It didn’t take long for the first prospect to show up. A few days later, a text from Trish. I got a guy wanting to stop in tonight at seven. He’s good. I ran the credit check. OK, I texted back. And that evening, right at seven, a knock on my door. Heavy set guy with a naturally tonsured haircut. He introduced himself. “I’m from Jersey. I worked for 30 years as an engineer for a defense contractor. Got laid off, and now I’m working locally here. I’m around only during the week.”

That’s good, I thought. Laid off from a defense contractor. I wish a whole lot more people would get laid off from jobs like that. Merchants of blood, is what defense contractors are, feeding a perpetual stream of murder in the racket that is war. Looking at the guy, I knew he wouldn’t take the apartment. We walked up. He peered around a bit, asked a few questions. “It’s a little bigger than I need,” he mumbled. Yup, I said. That’s fine. He fled to his car and left. Strike one, I thought.

A week or so later, another text from Trish. A guy wants to stop in tomorrow night at seven. Great, I texted back. And the next night, a very fancy late model Toyota SUV pulled in. Seeing that, I knew it wasn’t going to work. A man and his wife got out. I met them in the front yard. They lived in Virginia, and their son attended college in the area. So he’d live here, and they would show up once in a while.

The man was nice and polite. His wife was not. We walked up, and she grimaced visibly at the loud paint on the walls. Wrinkled her nose a good bit. Asked a couple of curt questions. The man and I chatted, off to one side. She walked through, poking through the kitchen cabinets and staring grimly at the appliances. Then she returned to where we stood at the top of the stairs.

“I’ve seen enough,” she sniffed. That was viscous. It really was. Well, what do you expect, woman, for $525.00 a month in this area? I thought. If you weren’t so cheap, none of us would have wasted our time, including Trish. Go pay $800.00 a month for the place you figured you might find here. I bit my tongue, though. Her kind husband smiled a little plaintively at me. “We know where the realtor is, if we decide to take it,” he said. Yes, yes, I smiled back. They showed themselves out.

I stayed upstairs and peeped out the window as they walked to their SUV. The man stopped and picked up a tiny branch on the drive and carefully placed it on the grass, so it wouldn’t sully the shiny tires on his vehicle when they drove out. Lord, protect me from people like that, I thought. I’d rather have no one up here than to deal with that woman. And I texted Trish. It did not go well. Those people were snobs. Send me a redneck. We’ll find someone, she texted back. And I realized at that moment that the main reason she had ever agreed to try to rent my apartment was because she was my friend.

And last Saturday afternoon, she got me the person I was looking for. He showed up promptly at five, as scheduled. An older guy, probably ten years older than me. Lean and fit and talkative. He worked in Leola, had a good job for years. A nice house and a wife. And last year, he said, after 27 years of marriage, she had decided to divorce him. Ah, that’s gotta hurt, I said. Mine only lasted seven years. My ex decided to divorce me, too. So I know a bit about how it is, that pain. But not 27 years’ worth.

He seemed to like the place. Could he paint the walls? Absolutely, I said. Any color you want, as long as I don’t have to pay for it. I don’t care what you do, as long as you don’t structurally damage my house, you pay the rent on time, and you don’t disturb my peace. Heck, run a moonshine still up here, for all I care. He laughed. And we got along just fine. He took my phone number. And just as he was leaving, another prospect was waiting outside. Trish had craftily scheduled two, right after each other. This is a busy place today, I said, conversationally. Lots of tenants lining right up.

I showed the apartment to the second prospect, a nice lady. And just as she left, the first guy called back. He wanted it. Could he stop by tomorrow? He could, I said. And he did, the next afternoon. I had the lease ready. We went over it. The lease starts April 1st, but he has immediate access, to get his painting done and get the carpets cleaned. We both signed two copies, and he gave me a check. Here’s hoping that I will have no more tenant adventures to write about again. Ever.

The next day, I sent Trish her finder’s fee, one month’s rent. She put in a lot of work, for that measly amount. But she came through for me, as only a friend could. Had I been just some guy off the street, she would have called me back, though. Unlike that other well-known realtor. She would have, because that’s who she is. I highly recommend her, if you’re ever in the market for real estate here in Lancaster County. As a buyer or a seller. She will do what she tells you she will.

And that’s the story of how I got a tenant, after more than two years of living without one. Believe me, if I ever move to another house, there’s one thing it will not have. It will not have an apartment to rent to help pay the mortgage. And I will be one happy guy.

*********************************************

Well, spring is here. At least the date, if not the weather. March is moving right along at a good clip, seems like. Way faster than February did. And next weekend, baseball season opens. I’m liking that a lot. A sport I can actually “watch” every night. I can’t wait to have my writing noise back again, off to the side.

Next weekend is also Easter Sunday. A day to reflect on the most important historical event any Christian will ever celebrate. Jesus came for the captives. He came for us. Yeah, that means you. And yeah, that means me. It means anyone who believes and trusts in Him. And here I speak to those who do believe, wherever you are. Even if your faith is very small, like a mustard seed. Like mine is, way too often.

Because He rose again, we are free. Free in the joy of our salvation. And free to live and speak our hearts.

I wish a blessed Easter to all my readers.

Share

The Road to Ancient Lands…

Time passing as men pass who never will come back again…

And leaving us…with only this – Knowing that this earth,

this time, this life are stranger than a dream…

—Thomas Wolfe

_______________

The email popped in one day last summer, sometime in early July. From a reader. Which was not at all unusual, and still isn’t. I’ve heard from people from a lot of different places. Mostly from this country, of course. But also from far places like China, Japan, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Australia, Mexico, and several European countries. From people who downloaded my book on the internet, and wrote to tell me about it. This message was a little different, though. It was a bit longer than most. And, more startlingly, it was from a professor in Germany.

Her name was Dr. Sabrina Völz, and she taught at Leuphana Universität in Lüneburg, way up north. She had read the book and was touched by my story, she wrote. And she was intrigued by the literary aspect of it. She told me a bit about herself. She teaches English and North American Studies, teaching those who will teach English. And she went on. In her academic research, she focused on ethnic literature and culture in North America, and the American short story.

Wow, I thought. Now that’s a small world, right there. A professor in Germany read my book. A professor. And she wrote to tell me. How cool is that? She wasn’t done there, though. The email went on.

She’d like to interview me, she wrote, if I’d be willing. Either by email or in person. She was traveling to New York City in August with her husband and children. Would it be possible to meet to talk, if she came to Lancaster County? She didn’t want to infringe, but she really would like to use the interview to teach a seminar there at the University. And maybe write an article to be published, too. What did I think? Would it be possible to meet?

Well, yeah, I thought. Sure it’s possible. It’s remarkable, too. An email from a professor in Germany who had read my book. And she wanted to interview me. Of course I would. I get two or three interview requests a month, mostly from students writing research papers. From grade school to post-graduate level. Mostly the interviews are done by email, although once in a while I’ll give someone half an hour of my time of an evening on the phone. I have never turned anyone down. I’m not out there looking to get interviewed but if you have a legitimate reason to ask, I’m always honored. And I’m not just saying that. I really am. But Dr. Völz wasn’t quite done, yet. The email went on.

I read on your blog where you travel some to give book talks, she wrote. It would be great if you’d consider coming to Germany. I could easily get you booked at my University and a few others in the surrounding area. I don’t know if you’ll travel that far, though. And I thought to myself. Germany? Travel to Germany? Fat chance I’ll ever do that. It would be wild, though. But I’m sure the cost would be way out there prohibitive. Plus, I’d have to take time off work. And that’s what I told her in my response. Sure, I’ll talk to you when you’re traveling through. I’d be honored. I have some Amish friends I could introduce you to, if they’re home that day, that is. I’ll find out. But traveling over to talk at your University? That’s a little far-fetched. I’m pretty happy right here where I am.

We emailed back and forth a few more times. From the start, she insisted that I call her Sabrina, not Dr. Völz, as I had addressed the first message. OK, if you insist, I said. I’m always hesitant to do that, to not recognize a degree someone has worked hard for. And one Saturday afternoon in late August, we met at The Back Page, a nice little pub in Leola. I got there first and waited by my truck. And soon enough, a little mini van pulled in and parked. A tall man unwound himself from the driver’s side. Sabrina got out of the passenger’s side and walked up to me, smiling. We shook hands and she introduced me to her husband, Hans-Jürgen and their two school-aged children, Maximilian and Emily. After chatting a few minutes and posing for a pic, Sabrina and I walked into the pub while her husband and children left to cruise the area for an hour or so and see some sights.

With Dr. Sabrina Völz.

We got along quite well from the first moment. Just chatted along. She asked about the book, how it came to be. And I told her. My blog brought it to me. After a bit, she set up her little recorder on the table, and off we went, for the official interview. Which used to make me a little skittish, early on, having a recorder sitting there latching onto your every word. But it doesn’t anymore. You have to relax and be yourself. Speak what you know, what you believe, what’s in your heart. Sure, you might stumble and say something that doesn’t come out right. But if you do, you can correct yourself. That’ll be recorded too, I figure.

In about an hour, we were done. Sabrina handed me her hard copy of the book and I signed it. She had a real hard copy, not the electronic version. I was surprised and pleased, not that there’s anything wrong with any version. But still, a real book is a real book, I’ve always felt. Something that you can take and hold in your hands. I like that. And we chatted again for a few minutes.

“You know,” she said. “I wasn’t kidding when I asked if you would come to speak at the University. I think I could get the funding to bring you over. But you didn’t seem that interested. Would you consider it, if I can get you over there?”

And I laughed. Look, I said. I’m very content where I am. But if you get funding for the trip, of course I would come. I’d be stupid not to. I just would never expect such a thing. I mean, what chance is there of that happening? But I’ll come. Oh, yeah, I’ll come. I’ve never been to Europe. Never. If you get it done, get me over there to talk about my book at a few Universities, I could even boast that I’m an international lecturer. That’s a joke, that last thing I said, there.

She laughed, too. “You might be surprised,” she said. “I’ve done it before, brought an author over to speak. And your story is unique enough that I think it might work. I’m going to try when I get back home. I’ll start filling out the applications. I actually think there’s a pretty good chance. I’ll keep you updated.”

That’s great, I said. I really appreciate your confidence, and that you think my book is worth all that effort. But I won’t look for anything until I see it coming.

Her family had returned, and they all followed me the few miles to the home of my Amish friends. I had asked them, a few weeks before. Would you like to meet some folks from Germany? They’ll be here, and I know they’d sure love to meet some real Amish people. I’d love to bring them over. And my friends said what they usually say to my off-the-wall requests. Bring them on. We’ll make coffee.

We arrived, and were genuinely welcomed, as I knew we’d be. My friends invited us into their home, and we sat around the kitchen table, talking and drinking coffee and lemonade and eating pretzels and cheese and cookies. I had planned on staying only a few minutes, but we all got along so well that before we knew it, more than an hour had passed. Sabrina and her family told us what it was like, to live in northern Germany. The customs, how things went, the cost of a house. And my friends told them how it was to live as Amish in Lancaster County. You can’t get all that much said in a little over an hour. But we made the most of the time we had. And we all enjoyed the company of each other.

The Völz family at the table of my Amish friends.

Sabrina is signing the guest book.

They left then, heading out to their next stop. And I thought back to that day more than a few times, how cool it was, to have someone like Sabrina and her family show up to meet me and my friends. And sure enough, a week or three later, here comes another email.

Thanks for your hospitality, she wrote. We all enjoyed meeting your friends very much. And thanks for interviewing with me. Now, here’s the info I’ll need to fill out that application. Full name, address, and so forth. I sent her what she asked for. And life just went on, as it does. I stayed busy living it.

A week or two later, she emailed that she had submitted the application. Keep your fingers crossed. I’m hopeful, she wrote. Yes, yes, I wrote back. It would be hugely exciting, but don’t worry if it doesn’t work out. I expect nothing. And there’s where things rested for a while.

And then, right at two months ago in early January, here comes another email. A very happy one. She got the funding, Sabrina wrote. It came through. The trip was on. All expenses paid. A place to stay. And three book talks at three different places, plus a stipend for each talk, yet. I had half believed her earlier, when she told me she had a good shot at getting it through. But still, there’s nothing like seeing it right in front of you on your computer screen.

And I just sat there at my desk at work and stared at her message. She had really done it. I was going to Germany. I have never been to Europe. Never. Which probably makes me a hick to some people. But it was never that high on my bucket list. Sure, I always figured it would all work out someday, somehow, that I’d get there. But I’d never fretted much about it, exactly how it would happen. It was just one of those things you know. And now the book was taking me. It took a bit, to absorb the enormity of all that.

I never bother my friends in the publishing world much. Never have, never will. Those people live in a world so far removed from mine that sometimes I think it’s another planet (a good planet, just not the one I’m on). But that day, I wrote a little note and sent it to my agent and a couple of my good friends at Tyndale. Hey, I want to share this joy with you. Look what’s happening. The book’s taking me to Germany. I’m speaking at a University. In Germany. I’ve never even been to Europe. Now the book’s taking me. How wild is that? And they all wrote back. It’s quite wild indeed. Congratulations.

I had another thing on my mind, though, and wrote back to Sabrina. Thanks very much. This is unbelievable. Now, let me ask this. Would it be possible to get my return ticket a week later than my stay in Germany? I’d like to travel on over to Switzerland on my own, to check out the areas my Anabaptist ancestors came from. Sabrina answered immediately. No, that should not be a problem.

And we worked out the schedule. I’ll be leaving in early May, returning in mid May. The first week, I will be with Sabrina and her family and colleagues. I’ll be speaking at the University and a few other locations. I think I’m speaking in a couple of classes Sabrina teaches. And maybe at a high school. I’m not exactly sure of the schedule at this point. Whatever is lined up for me will be fine. And right now, I’m not nervous about any of it, because I haven’t thought about it much. I will, though, as the time gets closer. Things like, how do you address a group whose primary language is not English? I think most people at the University speak and understand English. Should I speak slower? And I wonder if anyone over there would understand my PA Dutch.

The next weekend, I’ll take the train to Switzerland. I haven’t really figured out where all I’ll be going, yet. Definitely I want to see some sites that are historically significant to the Amish and Mennonites, like where Felix Manz was drowned. And maybe some castles with dudgeons. I want to check it all out, so see the spots where all that terrifying stuff happened that I saw and read in the Martyr’s Mirror as a child. I want to walk where my forefathers walked, hundreds of years ago. And I want to see the ground on which they stood when the state condemned and murdered them.

I’ve been around long enough to know that nothing happens until it happens. Despite all the best laid plans, tomorrow is promised no one. I always try to keep in mind, as something big like this approaches, that something could go wrong. It just could. Mom could leave us the day I’m scheduled to fly over. It could be anything. But last week, Sabrina sent my eTicket, so we’re that far along. That’s when I figured it’s safe to write the story here on my blog. The story of how it all came down so far.

And yeah, I’m flying. Got no other option. The TSA goons are gonna get their paws on me. I’ll have to grit my teeth and take it. When it comes to flying, I’ve always had an exception for funerals, emergencies, or something really big. I figure this is something really big.

I still haven’t fully absorbed it all, that this trip is really happening. I won’t, until the day gets a lot closer. A week out, I’ll start freaking for real. This is uncharted terrain for me, a huge adventure. And yes, it is just flat out wild, the whole thing. Another wild strange stop on a wild and strange and beautiful road.

And I look at it all and wonder. What were the chances that a person in Germany would pick up my book and read it, a person like Dr. Sabrina Völz, who had the clout and the connections to do what she did to get me over there? I’d say they were extremely remote, if you look at random chance alone. Maybe it was more than that. I don’t know.

I am proud of the book, proud of the accomplishment of actually getting it written and having it published. I’m proud of all it has been and all the good things that have flowed from it. But still, I am who I am. A guy just walking along, trying to describe as best I can the world around me and the things I have seen and lived. And all I know is that I walk forward into this journey as I’ve tried to walk, these past few years. With joy and with thanksgiving, but mostly with a grateful heart. That’s the one thing that’s kept my head half straight, this last while. Simple gratitude to God for the host of astonishing blessings He has poured into my life. And continues to.

One of these days, this little ride that is the book will end. I’ll look around, a bit startled, probably. Where am I? What just happened? I might have to pinch myself to make sure it wasn’t all one long, beautiful dream. And then I’ll get off and go right back to being who I was before. Just with a little more world experience.

It’s been quite a ride. Maybe someday I’ll have to do it all over again.

**********************************************************

There’s a little issue I’ve been wanting to throw out there for a while, but just never got done. I mentioned a few blogs back that the half-millionth hit was coming right up. It came a little over a week later. A shining and proud moment. I snapped a pic of the screen with the number. 500,000 even. I never wrote for the numbers, but that was a very cool milestone for me.

Anyway, in the past couple of years, I have gotten a half dozen or so random emails from advertising companies. Hey, they say. We notice you’re getting some nice traffic on your blog. Would you consider running some ads? We’d love to sign you up. I always ignored those messages. It just didn’t seem important.

But lately, some of my geeky friends have told me the same thing. Why not run some banner ads, there on the left side of the screen? Or both sides? It’s completely empty space. People are used to seeing ads when they read online. You could make a few bucks. And I told them. I don’t know. It’s never been important to me. All I want is a place to write my stuff. I suppose it’s not a big deal, one way or the other. But I still couldn’t quite bring myself to give anyone the go-ahead.

It all boils down to this, money wise. I suppose I’d earn a few dollars a month. Enough, maybe, for food and beer and drinks for my garage party every summer. Those are very important things. But they won’t break the bank, either way. Nice money to have. Won’t miss it much if I don’t.

And I thought, I’ll just ask my readers. This is where I’m writing for now, and will be for a while. Would you mind if I ran ads along the left side of the blog? Or both sides? Yes? No? Why? Why not? Give me some feedback. I’m not saying I’ll keep a tally of votes and go with that, or anything. But I’ll sure take into consideration what you have to say.

Share

The Good Earth…

The sun flames red and bloody as it sets, there are old

red glintings on the battered pails, the great barn gets

the ancient light as the boy slops homeward with warm

foaming milk…

—Thomas Wolfe

_______________

It flashed through the Facebook world earlier this week. Another Amish study of some sort. Those things seem to pop up like magic, right along. And it might even have been an older study, because stuff like that gets recycled on Facebook all the time. I never bothered to check the date. And, yeah, I linked it and threw it out there to my world. The report was all breathless and excited. Concluding what should be common sense, really. Amish children are amazingly resistant to allergies, it proclaimed. A way lower percentage of them are afflicted than are children in mainstream society.

Oh my, I thought. What a surprise. Wonder what kind of genius came up with that. And how could it even be, such a thing? Those people are so primitive. Why would their children be healthier than mainstream children, at least when it comes to allergies? And why don’t their children get sick as much?

I knew the reason before I even read the story. The reason Amish children as a group are resistant to allergies and such is simple. One word. Dirt. They grow up in it. They play in it, they work in it. And some of it, no doubt, finds its way through the mouth into the digestive system, too, at times. It doesn’t seem to faze them one bit. There are exceptions, as always, of course. There are sickly Amish children. But I’m talking as a group. With all that exposure to whatever germs and other evils lurking about, those children develop a natural resistance. Tough, is what they are. And in an increasingly urban world, such a thing is now considered a wonder. An aberration, not the norm.

And nah, this is not an indictment of urbanization, or “sprawl,” as the statists love to call it (they won the language war with that one). Not a call to return to the land. Such things always sound nice and flowery, and logical almost, in theory. But mostly it’s just fluffy words, words that ignore the market and the division of labor. The simple fact is, people have to live somewhere, and not everyone can grow up on a farm. It’s not possible, or desirable, even. The best use for land, any land, is whatever the truly free market decides, be it houses or factories or shopping centers (yep, including WalMarts) or crop fields. People have to live somewhere and they have to work somewhere, and they can’t all be on the farm.

I looked at the stock photo accompanying the article. A line of young Amish kids standing there, from toddlers to probably twelve years old. Plainly Lancaster County children. And I thought to myself, they look awfully clean. Slicked up. Compared to the world I grew up in, they were.

And I think back to how it was. I don’t think very many children on this Continent today, Amish or otherwise, see and live the things I saw and lived. If they did, the Children-and-Youth folks would have a heart attack. And a field day, with many arrests and interventions and tearing families apart, the kinds of things they do. All soothed over with sanctimonious press releases about abused children being rescued from unacceptable conditions. Such conditions, of course, always defined by them.

I grew up on the farm and I grew up dirty. Gloriously grimy. I’m not talking Pigpen in the Peanuts comic strip filthy, walking around with clouds of dust hovering like a tiny sandstorm. It wasn’t anything like that. But we were grimy. Still, some basic rules of sanitation applied. We were taught to always wash our faces and hands before coming to the table to eat. And we always had to wash our feet at bedtime, after running around barefoot all day in summer. Although sometimes our sisters forgot to check and we managed to slip through without endurng that little ordeal.

By today’s standards, well, if we stood before the world now as we were back then, we’d probably shock a lot of English people. And maybe some Amish people, too. I’m thinking we couldn’t have smelled that great, either. But we didn’t know any better. We took a bath once a week. I detested having my hair washed, that was done probably every couple of weeks or so. My curls got so tangled up that when my sisters cornered me of a Sunday morning and tried to comb my hair for church, I cried and cried and begged them to stop.

It was a different time, obviously. Even a different age, maybe. I don’t know. We were who we were, in that time and place. In Aylmer, as Amish children. The community was the world we knew. The farm was our home within that world. And I have a host of fond memories of the journey through my childhood.

I remember how it felt, as the bitter cold of winter receded and spring approached. The seething stormy days of March, as the snow banks settled into the earth and the ice slowly melted in the pond. Great flocks of geese and ducks swept northward in gigantic Vs. Then April, and rain. The warmth crept in, slowly, pushing back the memories of winter. To us, there was always a looming magical day. Sometime in May, usually, when Mom checked the thermometer. If it read around 70 degrees outside, she issued a very important proclamation. The children may go outside barefoot. We savored the delicious joy of the rush of that first moment, of running barefoot through the grass for the first time in spring. I can still feel it. And, gloriously barefoot, we ran everywhere, through the fields, through mud and manure and over rocks and gravel. And within weeks, the bare soles of our feet were as tough as the shoe leather they had replaced.

I give the adults in that world a lot of credit. They pretty much allowed us to run free. Not that we weren’t told what was what. The dangers to stay away from. We were told. Sternly admonished about a lot of things. And spanked, if we got caught not obeying. My sister Maggie, the most protective soul in the family, always imagined the very worst scenario that could possibly happen. She kept tabs on us, as much as possible, and because of her, we probably got into a bit less trouble than we would have otherwise.

And we ran as I wish all children would be allowed to run, into a world of real adventure. The cow paths winding through the pasture fields were our highways. The gloomy shadows of the south woods were our magical realms. The pond was our great sea. And the dry creek behind the barn was our raging river after a hard rain. We snuck up on groundhogs in the fields. Shot at sparrows with homemade slingshots and BB guns, and after age 12, with rifles.

Stephen, Titus and I built many a raft from old fence posts, cobbled together with rusty nails. And we poled our way across the pond, again and again, right over the deepest places. With no such thing as a life jacket. We didn’t even know what a life jacket was. We fished the pond and the gravel pits a half mile east. We went swimming with our friends. We salvaged old lumber and constructed a dam across the dry creek. It held up well, and years later we could still see remnants of it along the banks on each side.

It wasn’t all play, though. Far from it. We learned to work, and work hard, while very young. And I look back and marvel sometimes. It’s a wonder, if not a miracle, that we didn’t get seriously hurt somewhere along the way, or even killed. Not because the Amish are particularly careless or anything, but because farming is one of the most dangerous occupations in the world. You always hear about firefighters and cops, the dangers they face. Not saying they don’t. But that hand’s way overplayed, in my opinion. Farming is more dangerous.

Farms have animals. Big animals. And Amish farms have big horses instead of tractors. By the time I was nine or ten years old, it wasn’t at all unusual for me to take a team to a field by myself, hitch the horses to a disc harrow, and till the earth. I thought nothing of it. Our horses were generally a pretty shabby lot, but the teams I drove at that age were calm and tame. I don’t remember that I particularly liked or disliked horses at the time. It was just all I knew. There were no other options. No other possibilities.

We helped Mom in her large garden just west of the yard west of the house. At planting time, she called us to come help plant the seeds. She cut up potato chunks that we dropped in long shallow trenches, then covered with a hoe. One of my very earliest memories was in that garden, about mid morning one day. I was out there with my Mom and sisters, too small to work, just running about underfoot. Dark clouds roiled in the west as a thunderstorm approached. I heard the rumbles and thought it sounded like a steel-wheeled horse drawn farm wagon, the kind we had on the farm, bumping down the road. I hear a wagon coming, I told Mom. “No, no,” she said, smiling. “That’s not a wagon. That’s thunder, coming from those clouds. It’s going to rain. We have to go inside soon.” And that was my introduction to what approaching thunder sounds like.

At milking time, we trudged to the far pastures and herded home the cows. Milked by hand, and strained the milk into aluminum cans sitting in the concrete water tank in the milk house. And yeah, we drank that raw milk, too. You bet we did. We knew nothing else. And it’s one of the greatest outrages of our time, a symptom of far deeper issues, what the state is doing to Amish farmers who insist on providing raw milk for the market. They are prosecuted worse than real hardened criminals. Because of absolutely arbitrary and senseless state decrees, backed by the state’s blatantly criminal actions. One of these days, I’m will go off and write a blog about all that. And some readers wonder why I so deeply detest the state as an entity of pure evil. Raw milk is only one of the myriad reasons why.

We harvested loose hay from the fields, an ancient contraption of a hayloader hooked behind the wagon. Not many people alive today have ever seen a hayloader work. I remember trucks and cars slowing and even stopping along the road, the drivers gaping at this odd sight from another age. Often, my job was to drive the team as one of my brothers stacked the loose hay that came pouring on. And once, I hung on helplessly as a wild young team kind of took control and plunged away from the windrowed hay. The horses could feel a child’s hand, and decided to step out a bit. My brother Joseph was working at the back of the wagon, guiding and stacking the loose hay. As the team lunged forward, the hayloader lunged along with it. Poor Joseph was almost buried as great waves of hay suddenly cascaded onto the wagon from above.

“What’s going on?” he shouted. I can’t hold the horses, I hollered back.

He stabbed his fork into the hay and dropped down over the front of the one man rack. Strode in about two steps to the front of the wagon, where I was hanging helplessly on to the reins, pulling straight back with all my might. Joseph grabbed the reins from my locked-in fingers. He seesawed the reins back and forth rather savagely, speaking firmly to the team. The horses, sensing and feeling a real adult’s hands, instantly became docile. Joseph guided them back onto the hay row and stopped the team. Handed me the reins again. Then he instructed me, and I never forgot.

“When the horses are pulling at the bit like that, you can’t just hang on and pull straight back,” he said. “They’re way bigger and stronger than you. You have to yank the reins sideways, back and forth, to let them know you’re in control.” Oh, OK, I said, timidly taking the reins from him. And back we went, trundling down the hay row. His advice seemed to work very well.

It’s a dangerous place, the farm. And I remember the story that was always told in hushed tones, a story of how I almost lost an older brother. Not that I would ever have known, because it happened when I was an infant.

It was winter, and Dad had cut blocks of ice from the pond on the deep end. Maybe the neighbors came and helped, as they did years later in my memory. But that day, at dusk, there were still blocks of ice in the water. My sister Maggie was seventeen. And my brother Joseph was fifteen. The two of them were out on the pond just as darkness came creeping in, loading one more sleigh with ice to take to the icehouse. I’m not sure what Dad was thinking, sending his children out there unsupervised like that. But there they were.

Joseph was just a skinny kid. He leaned over with the ice tongs to pull the blocks from the water. Maggie held onto him as he did it, so he wouldn’t fall in. And things rolled right along. Joseph stepped onto a row of blocks that has not broken loose. He leaned over and stabled the tongs into a loose block in the water. And the blocks he was standing on gave way. He plunged straight down into the icy darkness.

Maggie screamed for help. Joseph slipped below the surface and came back up. Clawed at the solid ice Maggie was standing on. And slipped back in and under again. Slipped sideways, almost under the frozen solid ice. And Maggie moved without thinking. She knelt and reached down and grabbed her brother by the collar with one hand. And with that one hand and arm, she literally yanked him to the surface and safety. There’s no way she could have had the natural strength to do that. Not by a long shot. No way. But she did it.

Joseph was soaked and freezing. The two of them ran into the house, and told the others what had happened. And just that close, I might have had an older brother I never knew, except for his name. And just that close, his own children were never born.

And, of course, the farm was dangerous in many lesser ways. Not a summer went by that most of us children didn’t step onto a nail at least once outside somewhere, protruding from junk lumber. One day, we were hauling trash to be burned on the fire pile. I was riding Molly, an old gray mare so tame you could have fallen asleep on her back and not fallen off. Pulling a “sled,” a wooden contraption on runners, with sides for hauling things like firewood and trash. I guided Molly up to the fire pile and stopped. Flipped my one leg over her back and jumped to the ground. My right foot landed smack on a 16 penny spike protruding from an old piece of wood.

The nail didn’t stab quite all the way through my foot, but it sure was stuck in there pretty deep. I recoiled in horror, sat flat on the ground on my butt, and howled in pain. Molly the horse stood there placidly, switching her tail. My brother Stephen was right there, along with Rhoda, I think. He grabbed the piece of wood and tugged. The nail slid back out, and I hobbled, screaming, to the house. Mom met me with soothing words and did what she always did when we stepped on a nail. Filled a basin with hot water and mixed in a handful of Epsom Salt. I sat there and soaked my foot, and the salt extracted whatever poisons might have been clinging to the nail. Then she applied her homemade Union salve and bandaged my foot. In about a week, I was good as new.

To this day, I swear by Epsom Salt and Mom’s homemade salve. The salve isn’t available anymore, sadly, at least not Mom’s. Her’s was the best healing salve there ever was, simply because she made it. But the Epsom Salt is available. It’s the best thing on the market that you can use for puncture wounds and sprained muscles and such. I always keep a supply in store. And I use it once or twice a year.

All of us had our share of accidents, of cuts and scrapes and bruises. From falling off wagons, struggling with runaway horses, dodging charging cows that had just calved, stepping on nails, falling into the pond, whatever. One summer evening, right at dusk, my brother Titus, barefoot as usual, stepped on the prong of a manure fork in the barn. The prong went into the bottom of his foot and came out in the back, above the heel. I was right there with him. He let out a startled yelp and sprinted to the house, leaving a spotted trail of blood behind him. I don’t remember if that incident required a visit to the doctor or not. I think it might have, to get some sort of shot of vaccine or penicillin. We figured Titus got the best of the deal, because he got to go to town.

Through it all, we strode forward into life, because it was the only life we knew. There is one thing I don’t recall. I don’t remember being sick a lot. Sure, we all got the chicken pox and the measles, as young children. And once in a blue moon, a fever swept through, a flu or a cold or some such thing. But those were rare. We just never got sick much. I still don’t, to this day. Knocking on wood, here. I’ve done some hard living since those days. Some real hard living. I still live pretty intensely, now and then.

Life is risk. So is freedom. And it doesn’t work, to attempt to remove every conceivable risk from your children, by decree or by legislation. Sure, there will be accidents. Sure, sometimes there will be tragedies. And sometimes, there will be loss. But it’s far better to live in a world with risks, and really live, than it is to trudge along in the bleak dreariness of smothering protection from every imaginable ill that might befall us.

And that’s why Amish children are more resilient and resistant to allergies. Because of how they are raised, close to the earth. Because they play in the dirt and drink raw milk and work the soil that sustains them. In a world where they are taught to work when very young, a world of risks that are simply accepted as a factor of daily life. As are the consequences of those risks.

That’s how I see it, anyway. But what do I know? I have no children. I remember what it was to be one, though. And I do know this much. From what I’ve seen of the English world around me, I am grateful that my childhood world was just exactly what it was.

My memories of that world greatly impact the way I choose to live in this one.

***********************************************************

To me, March has always been the endless month. The month of transition from one season to the next. I’ve even called it the cruelest month in the past. But this year, I think, the title of “endless month” must be awarded to February. Of course, March hasn’t arrived yet, and may prove worse. If it does, I figure I’ll call it something like “the eternal month.”

Anyway, this month has been blah. February. Blech. I don’t know why. It just seems to drag on and on, and it’s even the shortest month in actual days, yet. One thing, it’s the month of sports drought for me. I’m used to writing with some sort of game going on off to one side, on TV. Now I don’t have my normal noise to work with. (If this blog was sub par, blame it on that.) Football passed on after the Super Bowl. I don’t consider basketball a sport, and I refuse to watch it. Hockey kicks in now and then, sporadically. But it’s not worth watching until the playoffs start. Baseball won’t be here until April. Only good old Nascar is coming to the rescue, with the Daytona 500 this weekend. But that’s only one day a week. It’s enough to drive me to distraction.

Oh, well. Whatever March turns out to be, one thing will happen. Spring and baseball will come soon after. And this year, I am way beyond ready for that.

Share

Tobacco Road…

Some things will never change, some things will always be the same.

Lean down your ear upon the earth, and listen…

—Thomas Wolfe

_____________

I get those calls, oh, maybe half a dozen times a year or so. For some Amish guy, usually a farmer. Hey, I need some advice on a project. Maybe you can help me out. Any way you could stop by sometime? And usually I say, sure. We figure out a time that works, Saturday afternoons, most often. And I’ll drive right on out to the farm to see him.

Which is what came down, a few weeks ago on a Saturday afternoon, when I headed out to a farm in the Leola area. A little snow squall had swept through the night before, and the roads were a slick and treacherous. But navigable. I nursed Big Blue along, off the main highway and up the hills and around the curves of the narrow ribbon of a side road. More like a path, really. Someone told me years ago that some of the roads around here were born as cow paths. Never found any reason to doubt that tale. I slowly crept up a long hill, keeping a sharp eye out for a little country school house. And there it came. I passed it, then turned onto the long drive that led to an old farmstead tucked away almost out of sight. Lancaster has quite a few of those. Old farms set so far off the road that it’s like another world in there.

The lane was unplowed, but something had tracked in, probably the milk truck. I drove in, parked my truck, and got out. Not a soul around. It had to be the right place. I walked up to the house. Knocked. A teenage girl appeared, broom in hand. Cleaning time on a Saturday afternoon, I figured. She opened the door and smiled at me. Are your parents home? I asked. I’m supposed to be here around one. The girl smiled some more and invited me in. I stepped inside. She disappeared into another room, and her mother emerged a moment later.

The woman was very pleasant. And quite apologetic. “I’m sorry you drove all the way over here on those snowy roads,” she said. Not a problem, I said. I have a truck, and it’s not that bad. “My husband’s working out in the barn. I can take you out there,” she continued. Sure, I said. I waited as she bundled up, and we walked out across the drive and yard toward the massive old barn.

It was an old place, this homestead. The original stone house had been expanded and extended with a new wing here and there over the years. Daudy house, no question, part of it. The outbuildings, too, were big and old. This land had been farmed by Lancaster County Amish for a hundred years, probably more. And it showed. Everything was maintained, kept up, cleaned up, spic and span. We approached the barn, and she tugged open the large hinged door. We walked in.

The interior was a classic stanchion cow barn. Two long rows of Holstein cows stood there, facing each other. The feeding aisle connected them. The cows were clean, the barn was clean. These people milked, and they took care of their livestock. My mind flashed back to those Bloomfield days, back when I was trapped and hapless on the farm. Milking cows by hand. My memories in no way connected with what I saw before me now, though. This place was just spotless. The cows were groomed and gleaming and, well, clean is the only word I can use to describe them. Clean and content. Munching their feed and hay. The odor of animals permeated, sure, but it wasn’t that strong. Not overwhelming, like I remembered from my farming days.

And I wondered fleetingly. Would I have liked farming, or at least tolerated it, had we been raised with a setup like this? Maybe it wouldn’t have been all that bad. But nah, I thought. I still would have hated it. Especially milking. I always hated milking. You’re stuck. No freedom. You have to be there twice a day. No exceptions. And we walked through the connecting aisle, toward the back of the barn.

The goodwife led me to a door on the far wall. Opened it, and disappeared inside. I stood there with the cows. Still marveling. The Lancaster Amish milk with mechanical milkers, not by hand. I have never milked a cow, other than by hand. How much easier it would have been, I thought, if we could have used milkers. A moment later, the Amishman emerged with his wife. He looked a trifle stern and grim, but he was really quite friendly. He walked up to me, shook my hand and smiled. We exchanged greetings and a few pleasantries. Then I peered back into the room he’d been working in. What are you doing back there? “Come on in and see,” he said. I followed him into the room. And walked into a scene that has remained unchanged for over two hundred years.

The barn was old. And this room was old, too. A wing, kind of fit into one corner and flung out. The only light came from rows of large windows on two walls. A table lined those two walls by the windows. In the center of the room were four large cardboard bins. A little crackling wood stove sat over close to the opposite wall. The room was comfortably warm, warm enough to work in shirt sleeves. Four or five children, ranging from teenagers to a five-year-old, stood there by the tables, working. Well, except the little guy, the five-year-old. He flitted around, half working, half playing. And I just stood and stared. This was a scene I’d heard told, but had never seen before. And what I was seeing could have come right out of the early 1800s. The way the room was laid out, the way the people were dressed. Even the air smelled the same, a rank but not unpleasant odor. An Amish father and his children were working in that room, doing what fathers and their sons and daughters have been doing for many generations in these parts. They were stripping tobacco.

I stood there and just drank it all in. I was seeing a slice of Amish life that was totally foreign to me, growing up. Sure, I knew the Lancaster Amish raised tobacco. And I had seen many stages of how tobacco is raised and harvested. I had seen the farmers planting in the fields, in spring. Seen them out there hoeing and trimming in summer. I had seen them in the fields in the stifling August heat, cutting the plants by hand for harvest. And I had seen the bundles of tobacco hanging from barn rafters, drying in the natural air. All that I had seen in the past, just driving by. But I had never seen this process, the final process. The stripping of the dried tobacco leaves.

The thing is, seeing it all from the road, driving by, is a lot different than actually being there. A lot different. Here, in this room, I could not only see it, I could sense it, feel it, smell it. What it was, this ancient tradition, and what it meant.

And I told the man. Wow. That is just fascinating. I’ve never seen this before. How do you do it? Why are there four bins, here? How long has the tobacco dried? How much does an acre produce? Doesn’t it deplete the land, raising tobacco? That’s what I’ve always heard. And he beamed and smiled, very pleased at my interest. I was in his world. And he was eager to tell me the things he knew and lived.

“Every tobacco stalk has four different grades of leaf. So we have four bins,” he said. And he showed me the different grades, from rough to fine. The children all looked at me with large eyes, but kept right on working. Stripping leaves and throwing them in the proper bins. Soon, though, they paused and gathered around this funny English man who could talk PA Dutch. Smiled at me and my questions. They could not imagine how I could be so dense and ignorant of the things they had seen and known from the day they could walk and speak.

And the Amishman chatted right along. “It’s a lot of work, from seeding to harvest to stripping,” he said. “It keeps the children busy. They’re getting a little tired of it right now, but we have to have this shipment ready by next Tuesday. They’re doing pretty well.” And he told me of how they bale the loose tobacco into great 600 pound blocks. “The baler is set up over there in the other room,” he said. “No one wants to use the old tobacco presses any more. Too much work, cranking the press by hand, and tying the bales by hand. The baler does it a lot faster, in bigger bales. They come out with their trucks and load the bales.” To my next obvious question: “It all gets shipped down south somewhere. We contract in the spring, to produce a certain amount.”

“And no,” he said. “The things people say are wrong. Tobacco doesn’t deplete the land. Alfalfa takes more from the soil than tobacco does. Of course, we rotate the crops every year. This year, we raised six acres of tobacco.” Wow, again, I thought. Six acres. Six acres of heavy labor-intensive work. Six acres of planting by hand, harvesting by hand. Six acres of tobacco leaves, to hang in the rafters to dry. Six acres of tobacco to strip. Yeah, he keeps his children busy, all right.

And time was winding down, in that room. I could feel it. I pulled out my iPhone. I want to take a picture of the tobacco bins, I said. If the children need to move out of the way, that’s fine. And all the children kind of edged off to the side. Except one. The little guy. He stayed there, unmoving. Didn’t budge. I quickly lifted the phone and snapped the pic. The little boy looked right at me. And his father did not scold him.

And I thought a good bit about it later, absorbed it, turned the thing over in my mind, why that simple scene spoke to me so deeply. The father and his children, out there on a Saturday afternoon, laboring at a job the Amish have done ever since they settled here in the 1700s. Providing a cash crop for the market. Thinking nothing of it, really. Perplexed by my fascination.

Coming from where I came from, the experience put a human face on an activity that was always taught to me as evil. Tobacco. The devil’s weed. Everything we hear in our time screams condemnation of anything associated with the word. I grew up hearing that condemnation. Grew up reading it, from my father’s writings. I heard it preached from countless sermons in church. It’s bad stuff. It’s evil. No Christian could ever raise or sell it. No Christian could ever use it. There can be no understanding of it. And there can be no defense.

And yet, here are people from the same culture that birthed me, raising and selling tobacco. Just as they always have. A different sliver of that culture, sure. These are the offspring of the blue bloods, the first wave of Amish to come over from the old world. The second wave came later, around a hundred years later, and that wave included my ancestors. People who pushed on out west, restless people who tended not to stay too long in one place. Not so the Lancaster Amish. Most of them were content where they had settled, and they’ve always raised tobacco. The mortgage lifter, they called it. Because they considered that money as extra, as a bonus, that could go to pay off the farm.

They’ve always raised tobacco, and they’ve always withstood criticism from within from people like my father. And they’ve stood strong against criticism from the outside world, too. In recent decades, the winds of public opinion never bothered them one bit. The market has, though. A decade or so ago, the bottom dropped out of tobacco prices. For a few years, it wasn’t worth raising. Their crops sat unsold in their barns for years, or they sold it at a huge loss. And a good many Amish farmers in Lancaster County quit tobacco and went to raising “truck” crops, vegetables and such. But when the market prices rose again, quite a few of them returned.

And there are some farmers, too, who have quit raising tobacco because of moral reasons. Because they decided it’s wrong. Maybe they read my father’s writings way back, some of them. And got convinced. Maybe there were other influences. Whatever the case, some local farmers decided it’s wrong and don’t do it anymore. But those are a minority, I think. And either way, it’s fine. To each his own conscience, to each his own choices.

I have no moral qualms about tobacco use of any kind. None. It’s a choice, that’s all it is, and what you do with that choice is none of my business. I’m not saying, go start smoking cigarettes. But I am saying it’s not the evil it has been portrayed to be, an evil that will cost your salvation if you are a Christian. And any church that claims otherwise is preaching a message based on fear and not the true freedom the gospel brings us.

I’m not saying anyone should raise or use any form of tobacco, or approve of it in any way. I am saying, stop judging those who do. And please spare me that tired old “Your body is a temple” song and dance. Let me ask this. Are you overweight at all? 10 pounds? 20? 50? 100? Do you eat the poisonous junk they serve at fast food joints? Do you use refined sugar, or any of a host of artificial additives in your food and drink? If so, why? Your body is a temple. Stop judging others. Judge yourself instead. Honestly, I mean. And learn what it is to live.

I enjoy the occasional pipe or cigar, mostly in the summer months when I can sit outside and relax and puff at leisure. I smoked cigarettes pretty heavily off and on for ten years, a long time ago. That was a choice, too. A choice I made back then. I might still die from lung cancer because of that choice. If I do, I do. I wouldn’t dream of blaming anyone but myself.

Certainly I wouldn’t blame God for being unfair or blame the big tobacco companies for producing a product I enjoyed. The tobacco companies have been blatantly robbed of billions of dollars by sniveling plaintiffs in frivolous lawsuits, egged on by greedy shyster lawyers, the massive verdicts handed down by idiotic, brain-dead juries. The shame of that stain, how the courts collaborated in flat out “legal” theft, will one day be told for what it is in the story of what was once passed off as law in this morally bankrupt society.

I resent and detest the nanny state that demonizes smoking to hysterical heights and relegates smokers to leper status, all while grabbing more and more of their rights and freedoms. All the while inflicting increasingly onerous taxes on tobacco products. All the while inflicting ever heavier burdens on the poor, many of whom tend to smoke and can least afford the ridiculous, state-mandated cost of a single pack of cigarettes.

I deeply resent the anti-smoking Nazis who have created a world where the tobacco companies make around 30 cents a pack in profit, while the state, which produces nothing but force and fear, imposes a tax of several dollars per pack. That’s just outright theft. It’s all “for the children,” of course. And for public health. It never was about health, and it never was for the children. It was always about money and control. Follow the money, and follow the threads of control, any time the state prates about the good it will do for anyone or anything.

I am proud that one segment of the Old Order Amish has kept it right, when it comes to tobacco. By holding on to what they have always done long before the fickle winds of state-orchestrated public opinion derided and demonized this particular tradition. They keep this tradition as they have always kept it, as a family unit on the family farm. These people have not been moved, they have not been swayed. Instead, they quietly and stubbornly insist on being who they are. Which can be a bit frustrating, sometimes, depending on the situation. Maddening, even, when you’re inside trying to break out. Believe me, I know all about how that can be.

But now and then, their quiet stubbornness shines like a beacon in the darkness because they are standing for something bigger than themselves. And that is always a beautiful thing.

************************************************************

And how about that Super Bowl? Wild, wild game. And, ahem, if you go back and check my last blog post, you’ll see how I called it. Ravens by a field goal. Which, by some miracle, is exactly how it all came down. I’m no prophet, and will not claim to be one. But still, it feels good, to have called the game right on.

Someone in New Orleans should get fired. Period. Of course, the NFL is way too PC to acknowledge that. But there was and is no excuse for the power to go off during the most watched sporting event in the world. For more than half an hour. That delay almost cost the Ravens their hard-fought win. But the football gods stood tall, and justice was meted out. In one of the best Super Bowl games in history. Congrats to the Ravens and Ray Lewis.

All that said, I loathe the Ravens just a shade less than I loathe the Patriots or the Steelers, or a handful of other teams. All are evil. And I’m happy to go back to my normal settings. Go, Jets, next season. Ah, what the heck. Who am I kidding?

And finally, a note about the blog. I am getting dangerously close to my 500,000th hit. I figure it might come before the next post. That’s not a huge number for the big boys. But for a guy just walking around out there, sometimes living intensely, sometimes not, a guy who throws out a story and some thoughts every couple of weeks, it’s not bad. I’m getting between 3500 and 5000 hits between posts. And to me, it’s pretty wild, that the half-millionth hit is coming right up.

As always, I’m grateful for every reader. I know full well there are thousands and thousands of other sites you could be checking instead of mine. I take nothing for granted. So, thank you. Without you, the numbers would not be what they are. Thanks for reading my stuff.

Share

Stan Musial and Me…

Come to us in our youth, when our hearts were sick with

hopelessness…and our heads bowed down with nameless shame.

—Thomas Wolfe

_______________

Stan Musial died last Saturday. Which in and of itself is hardly the stuff I usually note on my blog. Some of you might well think, what’s that got to do with anything? And some of you might go, yep, he died last Saturday. A legend in baseball lore, almost a god to Cardinals fans.

He meant nothing to me, growing up. A name I vaguely associated with baseball, from my random reading of the World Book Encyclopedia. In school, I always rushed through my work, and then spent hours gulping great chunks of knowledge from the World Book. Much to my teachers’ chagrin. They scolded me, now and then. With a little effort, you could easily work that B up to an A. Their scolding did little good, because I didn’t listen. Bs were fine. I wanted to read. And that’s where I first heard of Stan Musial, not that it gave me any real concept of who he was. When you’re a little Amish kid, reading a biographical sketch from the pages of an encyclopedia, there’s no way you will grasp who the person really was. You’ll know he was, but not who he was.

When I saw he had died, my first inclination back then would have been, what’s that got to do with anything? But today, from where I am, and knowing what I know, it was a big deal. History. Passing on. In this country. Passing on, from what America once was to what it is and will be. Stan Musial is a connection, from way back in my father’s youth. Daviess people are among the country’s most rabid Cardinals fans. So Dad would have known of him when Stan the Man was playing, had he ever bothered with such things. Which he might or might not have. I wouldn’t know, either way. Because he never would have told me.

To me, the name evokes a small flood of memories. I hadn’t thought of him in years. But when I saw he had died, on Drudge, something stirred inside me. Something that happened one day, way back when.

It was so long ago. And I went back in my head and recalled the surroundings. And in those surroundings, a man standing there. A young man, sure. But still, a man. And that man was dressed in Amish barn door denim pants, a plain shirt and galluses, and a raggedy but clean homemade coat. No hat, though. It was winter. The man wore a stocking cap instead.

Near as I can recall, it was back somewhere close to the mid 1980s, after I’d joined the church and was dating Sarah. My spirit was stirring from restlessness to growing hopelessness, I can say that. Because that’s how it was back in those days, in those times. I was traveling on the Greyhound, returning home from some trip to somewhere. I don’t remember which particular journey. Maybe it was from Texas. I had a friend down there, and traveled by bus to see him. I don’t know where I was coming from. Could have been from Daviess, too. It was early evening, probably around 7 o’clock. The bus pulled into the station in St. Louis. It was dark outside. I had a layover, a couple of hours to kill. And I was hungry. So I decided to venture out and find something to eat that was better than the prepackaged junk they sold at the bus station.

I stuffed my bags into a locker, paid the quarter and pocketed the key. Then wandered out into the city streets, a babe in the woods, really. Surely there must be a restaurant somewhere close. I remember nothing of the scenery or the streets. Just that after a while, I saw the large neon sign ahead. Stan Musial’s. The baseball guy, I remember thinking. He must have opened a restaurant. It looked like a fine place. A little glitzy, maybe. I’d check it out, I figured. So I boldly walked up to the heavy front door, pulled it open, and walked right in.

I didn’t know anything about such places. Fancy restaurants. From the sign outside, they had food. And I was hungry. So why not? That’s all I had in mind. To eat.

There was a little foyer, and a stately if somewhat buxom matron stood guard there. The Maitre de, although I wouldn’t have known that title back then. An elderly lady, impeccably dressed. She looked at me, plainly startled. And as I walked up to her, her startled expression turned to one of pure disdain. I saw it happen. How her face changed. Her right hand went up and shifted her glasses. Refocusing, she was. And regrouping, in her head. Her chin lifted. She peered down her nose at me. And then she spoke.

“What may I do for you?” She asked icily.

Completely oblivious, I stood there, smiling shyly at her. I’d like to get a meal, buy some food, I said. I just walked over from the bus station. I’m hungry.

She lifted her nose another inch. Readjusted her glasses again. Up and down, she slowly scanned me. Looking back now, I don’t know why she didn’t just tell me I needed a reservation. But she didn’t. Maybe she felt sorry for me. If she did, I sure didn’t sense it in her at the moment. She stood there, solid and unmoving, pretty much glaring at me. And I stood there, smiling back at her. Also unmoving. I didn’t know it, but she was trying to glare me right back out the door.

We stood there for a moment, facing off. I wasn’t going anywhere. She blinked first. And turned into the dining room. “Follow me,” she said curtly. So I did, all the while gazing about in wonder. This is one fancy place, I thought to myself.

And we walked into the dining room. It was a week night, but the place was pretty well packed out. Little tables. All kinds of worldly people sitting there. Painted, glittering ladies in fancy dresses. Men in suits and ties. Sitting at their tables, all comfortable, drinking wine from goblets. I had never seen that before, in any restaurant. People sipping wine like that with their meals. And we walked right among them, past them. I can’t recall that they stared at me, as we walked through the room. Some of them, I’m sure, cast curious glances. I looked around for an empty table. Yep, there were a few small ones. Maybe the matron would seat me at a table by the wall. I like tables by the wall. You can lean back into the wall and relax.

But no. The buxom matron strode purposefully right through the crowd of high-rolling diners. Approached the back wall, and tugged open a large door to another room. What’s this? More diners back there? Man, this place was hopping. She opened the large door and walked through. I followed her.

It was a big room. A very nice glittering room. With a lot and lots of dining tables, perfectly set and ready for diners. But otherwise, it was entirely empty. Not a soul in it, except the matron and me. She set the menu on a table by the wall just inside the door. A wall table. At least she got that much right. “You may be seated,” she sniffed. “A server will be right with you.” And then she turned and walked out and shut the door behind her. I was all alone in a large beautiful room with lots of empty tables. Alone, separated from the “real” people out there.

Coming from the Amish, I guess you get used to being stared at. Get used to being treated a little differently. That’s all I can come up with. Except you never do, quite, which is why I remember the scene so vividly. But still, I was just too naïve to get offended. I was here to eat, not worry about a bunch of stodgy stiffs who thought they were better than me. I settled into my chair and quickly scanned the menu. And sure enough, minutes later, a young waiter edged his way through the large heavy door. Walked up to my table. Stood there, smiling. If he was disdainful, he sure hid it a lot better than did the buxom matron.

I don’t remember what I ordered. I probably just pointed to the cheapest item on the menu. The waiter popped back out. And returned a short time later with my plate of food. I settled in, completely alone in the back room of Stan Musial’s restaurant, and dug in. The food was delicious. I relished every bite. The young waiter, bless his heart, stopped by to check a time or two. Politely asked how everything was. It’s good, I told him. I finished the food. And soon it was time to return to the bus station.

I’d been around a bit in my life, and was very proud of the fact that I knew enough to tip the waiter. (Amish are notorious non-tippers.) I rummaged around in my pockets and extracted a handful of change. I carefully made two little stacks of ten dimes each. Two bucks. The guy probably figured he wasn’t getting a tip at all. Well, I’d show him.

I paid the waiter for my meal, or I think that’s how it went. Many of the specific details of that night are pretty sketchy in my memory. Except those few of how I was treated and where I was seated. As I approached her on the way out, the matron busied herself doing something, anything, so she wouldn’t have to speak to me. I walked out the door and into the night, back to the bus station.

I don’t know that I ever told anyone what happened. I probably did. The story was just too good to keep to myself. But it was not until years later that I thought back to that incident and actually absorbed the heavy rush of the embarrassment and shame of it all. When I really grasped what had happened that night. How I’d been sliced and diced and dissed and never really knew any better. I mean, what a country bumpkin.

Looking back now, I have a hard time feeling miffed at the buxom matron. She was just doing her job. Giving her customers a pleasant uninterrupted dining experience. Never in her wildest imaginings, I’m sure, could she have envisioned a young Amish guy strolling through the door and asking for a table. A guy not in suit and tie, but in rough homemade denim clothes. I actually credit her for not quietly turning me away. She could have, I’m sure. Somehow. She could have claimed I needed a reservation. Or demanded that I wear a tie. No one would ever have known. But she didn’t.

It was the market. Or maybe that night it was her heart. Maybe she broke the rules, to let me in. Maybe that’s why she seated me where she did. Whatever the case, she decided to admit me. Feed me and take my money. On certain terms, of course. I accepted those terms. And I got fed. In a back room, all by myself, sure. But I got fed. Which was really what I’d come for.

Today I look back, and it’s all just a hilarious little tale I can write. And it’s a tiny little connection to the great Stan Musial himself. I’m proud I ate at his restaurant as a young Amish man. I’m proud to have been in his establishment on that long-ago night. The chances are pretty remote, but maybe he was there, too.

I like to think he might have been.

*************************************

People have asked me here and there. Is it hard for you to attend a wedding? I’ve always thought that a strange question. Why would it be? Well, you know, they say. Because of what happened with you and Ellen.

And I tell them. Nope. What happened back then is back there. Has nothing to do with me having issues with attending a wedding. Not saying I won’t grump a bit, if the preacher drones on too long. But I was that way before.

Last Saturday, I attended a very special wedding. My friend Paul Zook married his lovely fiancé, Rhoda Snader. Many of you who’ve read my older blogs know of Paul’s journey. How Anne Marie, his first wife, passed away in 2011 after a four-year battle with cancerous brain tumors. How they quietly stood by me, Paul and Anne Marie, way back in those heavy days when I desperately needed support. And how I hung in there with them, all through that long hopeless fight they faced together.

I remember last year, around spring time, I think it was, when Paul told me he’s thinking of asking Rhoda out. He knew her well, because as I had been Paul’s close friend through the years, Rhoda had been Anne Marie’s. She was right there beside her, all the way through Anne Marie’s brutal journey. The two of them had even lived together in the same house with another girl, years back. So Rhoda knew the family. Knew them well. Cody and Adrianna grew up with her around. I thought, wow, that would be too cool, if this could work out. But no one knew whether or not it would until the man made his move.

He told me about it next time I saw him. How he’d called her. She was plenty startled, he said. Would she go out with him? Sure, but just as friends, Rhoda answered, after collecting herself. At that point, I give Paul a lot of credit. Had I been in his place, I definitely would have recoiled a bit. Friends? What do you mean, friends? See you later, woman. But he agreed cheerfully. So he picked her up one night, and out they went. As friends. I was extremely curious the next I stopped by. How did it go? What happened?

Paul beamed. “We had a great time. We’re texting each other,” he told me. Oh, yes. Texting. And right then, I figured it was a go. It was.

Sure, there were things to work out. Of course there were. Rhoda was a single professional lady who a few years ago had her dream house built. She was happy and content with her life. And yet, here was Paul, asking her into his life with his children. Cody and Adrianna. Both of whom she knew from the day they were born.

I remember that first time Rhoda showed up on a Sunday night when I stopped by to hang out at Paul’s house. She was part of the group now. Of course, I knew her well, too, because of her friendship with Anne Marie. She welcomed me. And I gave her a big hug. And that night, for the first time in more than four years, I saw my friend Paul smile and smile and smile. From deep inside, from his heart. A real smile of real joy.

After a long brutal slog through some rough terrain, now came the dawn of a new day.

We, all their friends, stood by and cheered for them as the relationship moved along from one stage to the next. I kept griping at them, early on. Come on. Let me post the news on Facebook. They held me off for a few weeks. But after a while, Rhoda relented, and I posted. Things moved right along, and a few months ago, Paul popped the question. Rhoda said yes. And we all cheered some more.

And I tried to stay out of the way a bit, to let the new “family” get to know itself. Look, I told Paul. You don’t have to invite me over every week, every Sunday. There was a time when you needed that. You don’t, anymore. Don’t feel obligated. Sure, I’ll come, when it works out. But I don’t want to intrude. Paul smiled kindly, but didn’t budge. If they were home for Sunday lunch or dinner, I got a text that morning. Come on over. And I went.

The wedding was last Saturday, in a beautiful old church in Ephrata. A large crowd was invited, 260 people. They all attended. Anne Marie’s parents and many of her brothers came as well, from their homes out west. Paul asked his childhood friend Benji Smoker and me to be his groomsmen. Benji was the best man. I was very content to be second best. Both of us were groomsmen in his first wedding. At the rehearsal, we kidded Paul. This is the second time. It had better be the last.

The ceremony was beautiful, short and sweet. It would have been beautiful, had it lasted far longer. But the preacher was a good man, and moved things right along. Paul stood there up front, flanked on his left by Benji and me. Cody and Adrianna stood there with him. A beaming and beautiful Rhoda walked down the aisle in her wedding gown, accompanied by her older brother, Ray, who gave her away for the family. They exchanged vows. And then Rhoda sat on a little chair and read a letter to Cody and Adrianna. Thanking them for accepting her. Honoring and acknowledging their mother, Anne Marie. Benji and I were forewarned from the rehearsal, so we stood there, hands folded, stoically witnessing this moving scene. A great many of the guests broke down in tears, bittersweet tears of sorrow and great joy.

After the reception and a sumptuous meal in a banquet room at Shady Maple, the newlyweds took off on their honeymoon. After they return, they will settle in the new place Paul bought a few miles from his old home. A new home, for a new family. I couldn’t be happier for all of them. May the Lord shower them with blessings more abundant than they could possibly imagine.

And how about that Super Bowl coming right up? It’s pretty wild, that the Harbaugh brothers made it. And now one of them will come out on top. I wonder how their next family gathering will be, after that. Probably a little strained, I would think.

It should be a great game. I have no dog in this hunt, and actually like the 49ers a little better. But I’m cheering for the Ravens for a couple of reasons. The biggest one is that they knocked out the vile Belichick and his evil Patriots. It was a beautiful thing to see. Brady sitting on the field, knocked around, intercepted, beaten down into the dirt. The Patriots have been too arrogant for too long, and it was sweet to see them get whacked right out of the playoffs on their vaunted home field.

The second reason I’m cheering for the Ravens is because of one man. Ray Lewis. Whatever you think of the guy, he’s been a true warrior at the highest level for seventeen years. I’d love to see him go out in a final blaze of glory. Yeah, yeah, I know. I used to call him a thug, too. Back in the day. He pled guilty to obstruction of justice in a murder case. Whatever. But as I’ve said before, my heart is always with the accused, when it comes to the law. Because all you ever hear is the prosecution’s side of the story. The accused never has a voice.

And just exactly what does that mean anyway, obstruction of justice? Sounds like a charge that can easily be trumped up against just about anyone in any situation. And most prosecutors (especially at the federal level, but at the state level, too) don’t give a hoot about actual guilt or innocence. All they care about is convicting as many people as possible to further their own political careers. Or worse, just to flex their power arbitrarily. Doesn’t matter a lick to them how many innocent lives get uprooted and smashed in the process. And Ray Lewis would have been one big fine feather in their caps. He beat them on the more serious charges, though. And I like that a lot.

You might want to go off on me about the “facts” you know about the case. Just remember where those “facts” came from. The media, fed by the prosecution. Be indignant all you want. Just spare me the sermon.

Back to the Harbaughs. Those guys are real coaches. I’ve come to realize more and more how critical it is for a team to have a real coach. A lesson the Jets still need to learn. The NFL has only a handful of those. Guys whose players would go jump off a bridge for them. The guys who get so intense on the sidelines they look half crazy. Shawn Peyton has that insane look in his eyes. And a few others, like the Harbaugh brothers. Guys like John Fox of Denver and Mike Smith of Atlanta don’t. That’s why they’ll be sitting at home, watching the game like the rest of us.

Anyway, it should be a great game. Hard hitting. Great passing. And maybe some great runs and stops. The old guys against the young guys. With two intense brothers on opposite sidelines, screaming at the refs throughout.

I figure it will be close. And I can’t wait. Ravens by a field goal.

Share

Amish Mafia; A Depiction of Lost Youth

For them the past was dead: they poured into our hands

a handful of dry dust and ashes.

—Thomas Wolfe

______________

It makes me more than half grumpy, it really does. But still, the thing won’t go away on its own. So I might as well address the buzz, because I’m going to have to, anyway, sooner or later. Because I hear the questions from pretty much everywhere around me. At work, customers ask. And on Facebook. You answer, knowing full well you’ll have to repeat yourself to the next person. And the next. Again. And again. So I figured, write a blog about it, and you can just tell people to go there and read it, instead of talking until you’re blue in the face.

Such is the madness surrounding the latest hit TV show, Amish Mafia.

I’m not going to fuss incessantly about how wrong it all is. That cudgel has been taken up so often, by so many, that it’s becoming a little tiresome. After a while it just gets old, all those strident cries of dismay and outrage. There comes a point when you get saturated, and the emotion plays itself out. I’ve been at that point for a while.

And yeah, I did watch a couple of episodes. The very first night the show came on, I watched those two hours. To see for myself, because I figured that down the road, I’d need to know a little bit about it from actually watching. And the critics are right on, the entire show is just ludicrous. If you don’t know or understand that, you might as well go somewhere else and read some other blog. There’s nothing on this post that’s going to be of much value to you. The whole concept is just silly. Amish Mafia. It’s like saying slavery is freedom. Or some such thing. The two words don’t mix. There’s no connection.

I’m not saying don’t watch it. Do what you want. If you enjoy the “Mafia’s” obviously contrived escapades, go ahead. Just don’t fool yourself that what you’re seeing is anything even remotely approaching reality. And don’t come asking me all sorts of inane questions like, don’t you think there’s something to it? I’m telling you here there’s not. Otherwise, knock yourself out, watching. Someone at the office told me yesterday that the run is almost over. But I’m sure the reruns are just starting.

From here, at this stage, I have a hard time getting too riled up about the whole thing. It’s obviously farce. Way most of the scenes have been “recreated.” Which means they were just flat out made up by some script writer. Every “mafia” scene is contrived. Every one. It’s surreal, to see tough-guy Amish thugs swaggering about, pretending to protect a people whose only wish is to be left alone in peace. Swaggering about, shooting into the windshield of an old car, slashing tires with a butterfly knife, shaking down a shop owner for “protection” money. If there were a real underground Amish Mafia, you can bet they wouldn’t be showing their stuff on a national TV program. It’s surreal and silly, the whole thing. Almost as surreal and silly as the fact that so many people actually believe this stuff. What can you do, but throw your head back and laugh?

I don’t know who dreamed up the show, but I strongly suspect the idea was born from the mad actions of those “Amish” beard cutters out there in Ohio. For the first time in recent and maybe in all of history, it was conceivable to connect the Amish with violence. Well, as a cultural group, I mean. Wild Amish youth have certainly been violent and destructive to some degree in some communities over the years. But the beard cutters spread the concept over the culture as a whole, for the first time ever. And I can see some producer coming up with the idea and pitching it to Discovery. Look at Sam Mullet and his boys. They forcibly entered the homes of their Amish “foes.” Threw them down, and cut off their beards. All that was so strange, so far beyond anything seen before. But it was real. And I can see it. Pitch a new “reality” show. Amish Mafia. Guys who enforce the unwritten code of justice within the communities. That’s where the whole concept came from, I’d bet a five bucks to a donut.

The thing is, if the show were presented as just straight entertainment, it would actually be pretty funny. I won’t say it would be worth watching, but it would be fairly harmless. And that’s one of a very few real problems I have with Amish Mafia. That some shysters at Discovery Channel dreamed up the theme and decided to present it as reality. That’s pretty low. And from some of the inside scuttlebutt I’ve heard, they were way less than honest about what they were doing to some of the bit characters on the show. I won’t say what I’ve heard. But I believe what was told to me. And the producers of Amish Mafia are just flat out low-lifes. As are the suits higher up. All of them. Nothing matters to them, except the numbers and a hit show. Nothing matters, especially the truth. The Discovery people, at least the ones associated with this show, are a dishonorable bunch.

You can’t trust the mainstream media. Period. You can’t trust what you see and hear. Not in the news. Not on Discovery. Not from any mainstream source. It’s all mind-numbing soma for the masses.

The way I see it, the show’s existence and success boils down to this. The market will always provide what the culture craves. And no, I’m not going off on some bunny trail tirade about cultural depravity. We are where we are. And the English culture is what it is. The market will provide what the culture craves. It’s just a simple rule. I believe it. And the Amish have been hot stuff for a decade or so, now. Almost anything written or produced about them sells. Doesn’t matter whether or not it’s based on truth. Dress the guy in a black hat and plain suit, throw a head covering on the girl, and that’s all you need. Someone will buy it. Someone will believe it. A lot of someones, usually. And money talks. It always has, always will. It was inevitable, I suppose, that the market would come out with something as blatantly fraudulent as the Amish Mafia. It was probably just as inevitable that a hefty percentage of mainstream America would lap it up.

And no, there shouldn’t “oughta be a law” against any person claiming anything they want about pretty much anything or anyone, including the Amish. Sure, Amish Mafia is a travesty when it comes to truth. One of the few things worse than that would be some sort of FCC board of mindless bureaucrats sitting there and deciding what is or isn’t truth. And deciding whether or not Discovery will be allowed to air this show. The state already meddles way too much as it is in just about every conceivable area. That beast should be stripped of the powers it has usurped, not granted more.

And that brings me to Lebanon Levi and his cohorts. I can’t remember their names, and won’t bother to Google them. The right-hand man. The enforcer. The wanna be. And, of course, the girl. All of them are from real Amish blood except the enforcer. He’s some sort of plain “Joe Wenger” Mennonite. All of them speak the real Pennsylvania Dutch. (It was kind of wild, to hear the language spoken so clearly on TV.) And all of them are playing a role they know is a lie.

They all chose to do what they did on the show. But still, I’ve wondered. Who are they, really? They seem so lost. Where did they come from? What did they see, growing up? What did life throw at them? What did they experience? What did they endure? What roads have they seen and traveled? Where were their fathers? How deeply were they wounded? Go back down the trails of their pasts, and I’ll bet you’ll find it littered with emotional trauma.

I don’t know that. I’m just seeing the signs. Somehow, somewhere, they stumbled and lost their way. And my heart goes out to them. If I ever had a chance, I would sit down with any one of them and listen to their stories without judgment.

It’s a strange and maddening thing, the lure of fame. Especially when a little money is mixed into the equation. The combination of fame and money, it’s the low hanging fruit on the tree of temptation. Not many of us have ever had the chance to accept or reject that fruit. We judge like we have. But we’ve never felt or heard that whispering caress. Come on. In this moment. Take it. I can hear the serpent’s tongue of the Discovery people. Smooth. Big city types. Soothing and conniving, all the while despising the people they were manipulating. Simpletons. From the county. Way better yet, from the Amish. They speak the real language. Pennsylvania Dutch. They will be credible. Use them. Harvest what you can from them. That’s the way of the world that many jaded ex-Amish youth will never fully grasp or understand.

And so this “Mafia” cast was assembled. I doubt that they all knew each other before. I’d bet on it. The enforcer, especially, would have had no reason to be in the world of Levi and his friends. He’s such a wild card. Amish and Joe Wenger Mennonites don’t mingle much, I can tell you that. Not beyond basic socializing in passing. Not from what I’ve seen. Yet, here they are, pretending to be close friends in the shadows of an underworld that has never been seen before. Only from an insider perspective can you really grasp how contrived the whole thing is.

And I have to think, too. What price were they paid, to betray their people? It probably wasn’t that much, not when you consider the gold mine this show has turned out to be for Discovery. And it’s really none of my business. But I’m thinking. Whatever money these guys got paid, it wasn’t anywhere near enough. It could never be enough, for what they did.

Somehow, something tells me this group of “Mafia” characters had no idea of what they were doing, of what they were getting into, when they agreed to play their roles. I really don’t think they did. There’s no way they could have known how the show would explode into the mainstream. How wildly it would spin out of control.

And I wonder about the future of Lebanon Levi and his “Mafia.” Will their people be there for them, when they see and understand what they have done? Or will they be scorned and rejected? Ostracized? I don’t know. I hope someone will be there. Because I believe that day is coming for all of them, a day when they will see more clearly. It might already be here for a few of them.

It will be a harsh and bitter thing, whenever the true realization sinks in. How casually and dishonorably they betrayed their history and their people. You just don’t do that. Lie about your people, lie about where you came from and where you are. You just don’t.

The second real problem is, the market has now seen that real ex-Amish kids can be bought. Paid to claim anything. Which probably always was the case, to some degree. I don’t know if there was ever a stage in my life when I would have done such a thing. Maybe I would have. I’d like to think I wouldn’t. But I never had a chance to face that test, because the market demand wasn’t there, back then. It is now, for ex-Amish kids. And when those kids are bought to speak, their voices mix and meld into all the legitimate voices out there. It’s a jumble of noise, to those who don’t know which voices are real and which voices are speaking pure falsehoods.

But that’s just how it is, in any market. You don’t believe every voice you hear. Figure it out for yourself, which ones are speaking truth. And reap the consequences of your choices. We live in the world we’re in. No amount of wishful thinking will change that. No amount of laws will, either.

The third real problem I see in the show is a long-term one. Maybe a century or two down the road. (Yep, as a post-millenialist, I believe there will be many, many more centuries down the road.) Anyhow, way down the road, there will be persistent historical myths that there was an Amish Mafia. And that far out, they won’t know today’s truth. This show will be part of the “proof” there was actually such a thing. Think Templar Knights, Masons, secretive groups like that. And the shows you see now and then on the History Channel. Some of the “facts” on those shows have to be wildly off. They have to be, because no one who is alive today was there. And the historical record is so sparse. There is so much we think we know but don’t know about the past. Of those groups, of any group. Of those times, of any time.

And that’s how it will be with the Amish record, two hundred years from now. History will show there might actually have been such a thing as an Amish Mafia.

The people in that day and time will have to deal with and absorb that misconception then. Sift through the evidence as best they can. Figure out which voices from the past to listen to.

All you can do is speak the truth where you are, as you see it. And that’s about all I have to say about the contrived myth that is the Amish Mafia.

Share

A Year of Strange Roads…

For have you not retrieved from exile the desperate

lives of men who never found their home?

—Thomas Wolfe

_______________

Well, it’s that time again. Seems like not that long ago, when I last posted that last blog of the year. When one looks back and takes stock a bit. I guess that’s what one is expected to do. It’s what I’ve done, mostly, in the past. Look back, recount and reflect. And tab it out, all the stuff that happened. Good, bad, ugly. And I was figuring to do just that. But when I sat down to pound it out, there was one thing that kept surfacing in my head. One new realization, one new thing of wonder, that stood out above all the rest.

But first, sure it was a wild year, 2012. A year of wild, strange roads. It was the best of times, in many ways I could never have imagined. And it was something less than that, in a few ways I could have imagined. A whiplash of a year. So many things came down, so many things plunged this way and that. And it was a little weird, to keep navigating forward through the maze. All while trying to keep my head straight.

The year sure didn’t start out like I figured. In that sense, it seems so long ago, to look back to what I was thinking then. I was pretty confident. I could walk through any door I chose, I figured. Because I had just walked through one that seemed just flat out impossible. Bring it on, I wrote. Show me a new door. Push me through it. I have to be pushed.

A year ago, there were some noises about a sequel. Not from me, from the market. And I kind of eyed it up, the situation. Yeah, I’ll walk forward, see what happens. I did it once. I can do it again. And I wrote up some stuff, went under. I told you about that when it happened.

Amd 2012 was the year I found out I can’t just breeze my way along. Not by arbitrarily willing it so. You can’t force things. It’s a really strange place to be, because it is a place I least expected. And that’s always a thing of half-terror/half-wonder, like feeling your way out of a cave, maybe. Not that I ever did that. Just making a connection there, somehow.

So I told them, the Tyndale people and my agent. I’m pulling back. It’s not coming. I’m going off to live my life and write my blog for a while. I had no idea how long. Still don’t. It was just an instinctive thing. Go back to where it all started, and stay there until you step out again. It was pretty intense, for me to reach that conclusion. But it was the only thing I knew to do.

And right after I recoiled from that little effort, a strange thing came down. The book was listed on Amazon’s 100 discounted eBook list in March. It went haywire from the first day, and all through that month. When the dust had settled, Carol sent me the numbers. 44,000 eBooks sold in March. In thirty days. It was surreal, the whole thing. And it freaked me out a lot.

And that was all good, that March run, but it wasn’t the strangest thing I saw this year.

April brought its own beautiful little oddity. The honorary Doctorate from Vincennes University. And I wrote all that as it all came down, too. It was an extraordinary experience, the whole way through, from inception to presentation. Funny thing is, after it was over, I just went back to being who I was before. Sure, I have a real cool hood hanging in my living room. A pacemaker paddle, and a lot of memories and pictures. The honorary Doctorate was an honor, indeed, and I will always treasure it.

And that was all good, what happened in April. But it wasn’t the strangest thing I saw this year.

Through the summer, and right up til now, the book just kind of trundled along, held its own. Never waved into the ether again, after that March spike. But it’s held steady, right along. And right now, on Amazon, Growing Up Amish has an astounding 260 reviews. One star to five stars. (Nope, I’m not linking it. Find it yourself if you don’t believe me.) That’s big stuff, any way you look at it. It is, when you come from where I came from. All it needs is some little trigger, some famous person mentioning it, to make it take off and soar again. All that might yet come. And it might not. I want it to, of course, and will do what I can to shove it along. But I’m cool with whatever happens, either way. Ride the ride until it’s over. Then it’s done. Not before. You can’t make this stuff up, I figure.

And all that is good, all very wild and exciting, how the book’s hanging right in there. I’m astounded and grateful. But it wasn’t the strangest thing I saw this year.

It snuck up on me kind of slow in a dawning realization, the most startling thing I saw this year. I wasn’t looking for it. It wasn’t on my radar screen anywhere. But in the process of figuring out what was going on inside me, why I was making the choices I was making, of analyzing what makes me tick, it came to me. Took a while for it to sink in. But it did, over time. Over the last few months.

It’s a strange road that takes you back to the place you started from. Or a place you never knew you were before. The most startling thing I’ve realized this year was how much I am like my father. In many ways, but particularly when it comes to writing. That whole persona, of how you present your stuff, how you produce. I am him, because I do it like he did. Not in the obvious ways, as in how I live and what I write. We couldn’t be much more different there if we tried. But in the subconscious choices I make and have made, I am my Dad.

He wrote because he wanted to, not because he had to. Not to earn his living. I’m a little more sporadic than he was in his prime. He sat up late most nights, pounding away at his typewriter. I sit up late some nights, working at my computer. So I never produced anything remotely approaching his volume, but in this equation, that’s not that big a factor. He had plenty of things in life that kept him occupied, dozens of little businesses he launched and ran more or less haphazardly. I haven’t done that. His most successful business ever: Wagler Metals, where he sold metal roofing and siding. Today I work at a business that sells exactly the same stuff. He was well known in the Amish world. I have reached a broader audience outside the culture.

Dad didn’t care much what others thought. He just wrote. He wrote, and threw his stuff out there in his world. He never called himself a writer. And he didn’t write, to make his living. He just wrote. And he said it as he saw it. Well, within the confined boundaries of his culture, he did. Which was from a flawed perspective, of course. But whose perspectives aren’t flawed, now and then? Mine are. Because I’m human, as he was.

There are so many similarities that it’s freaky, when I think of it. And for me, it is also a strange and wonderful thing. I don’t care who you are. It’s pretty much a universal longing. You want the essence of the good things your father was to live inside you. Even if you couldn’t see those good things so much, way back.

There are, of course, certain aspects of his personality and his nature that I have chosen not to claim. And there’s nothing wrong with that, either. I can still honor and respect him for what he was and who he was. It takes a lot of time, sometimes, for that clarity to reach your heart and head. Well, that’s how it was for me. I won’t speak for anyone else out there. But it does take time, because when you break away from all you have known, it’s pretty ingrained deep inside. You will never be like that, like the people who held you back. Especially your father. You won’t be like him. You won’t be that distant, that obstinate, that harsh and cold. And it’s OK to feel like that, too. It’s OK to grapple with some of those negatives.

That’s how it was for me. My guard was up, big time. I won’t be like he was. I won’t write to defend a lifestyle that’s indefensible. I won’t. It was hard, to break loose. It really was. It’s still so raw, sometimes, looking back.

And now I see how much like him I am.

Some of this stuff became clear to me as I was talking about it. Recently, on a radio interview, the host asked how I could write the book so respectfully. “You didn’t rip into those people back there in your life, the Amish,” he said. “How come not?”

And I thought about that. Ten years ago, I said, I probably couldn’t have written it like I did. Ten years ago, you would have read some bitterness, either openly or between the lines. Some claim you can read bitterness there, now. But I wrote it from a heart that wasn’t. And sure, there were places where my head may not have wanted to write sympathetically about the Amish. But overall, my heart did. And overall, the heart won. Because when your heart is calm and you write your heart, you don’t have to worry much about how it will all come out. It will come out right.

And now, I can see why it all came out as it did. I am my father, when it comes to defending what and who the Amish are. Not in apologetics, as he often wrote. And not the polemical stuff he cranked out right along. But in a broader sense, as an accurate portrayal to the world, I think our work is comparable. His view from inside. Mine from outside, having been there. The similarities are startling to me. All the way down to how I produce. All the way down to what I do for a living.

I am my father’s son. And, really, what’s not to celebrate about that?

A few weeks ago, I was telling my friend Shawn Smucker about all this over lunch one day. He listened and seemed a little amazed, as I was talking. But then he asked a simple question. Something I had not even considered. “Will you tell him? Will you tell your Dad these things?” And his question startled me.

I don’t know. Yeah, I guess I will, when I see him, I answered. He’s 91 years old. I don’t know if he’d grasp what I’m trying to say. But I’ll probably write it. He’ll read it. He likes to read my blogs, when he can. But yeah, you’re right. He does need to be told. I will in person, next time I see him.

In the meantime, though, I’m telling him here.

And that was 2012, a year of strange and wonderful roads. Roads I could not have imagined, roads that led through valleys and over mountains to places I could not have remotely conceived in my mind. All of which makes me one of the most optimistic people out there, when it comes to what 2013 might bring.

I don’t have to tell you that the world is in turmoil such as has not been seen in our lifetimes. It seethes and bubbles out there, the blackest evil in the darkest human hearts. We are sliding headlong into perdition, that’s pretty clear to those who are not deliberately blind. The forces close in tighter every day. You can see it, sense it, feel it.

I pay no attention to most of the noise. Like the annual dog and pony show of the “fiscal cliff” charade. The wealthy in this country had better prepare to get devoured. Because it’s coming, the ravenous insatiable beast of public envy, whipped to a mindless frenzy by Obama and his minions.

In areas that really matter, I do pay attention, though. The evil that is the state tightens the noose every day a little bit more. Encroaches, encroaches on our freedoms, all in the name of security. It lashes out in increasingly savage and destructive wars, murdering hundreds of thousands of innocents who have never done a thing to harm anyone. The boondoggle of ObamaCare is coming, soon to be followed by a real scarcity of quality medical care. And always the people cry “something must be done,” as one more unspeakable tragedy unleashes havoc in the land. The craven media march in lockstep, demonizing the common people for insisting on the right to self defense.

In Newtown, CT, those little innocent murdered children have been sacrificed over and over again on altars not made of stone, altars to the false god that is the state. Only in Orwellian doublespeak could a serious pitch be made for parents to disarm themselves to protect their children. The very concept goes against all we have learned in the long brutal slog through all of recorded history. Except we obviously haven’t learned, not as a society. Not these generations. We will, though, if this siren’s song is heard and heeded. One of the most cherished goals of any state is to disarm its citizens.

There are so many examples in history of the moment we’re in. I feel like some guy back in the mid 1930s, anywhere, who saw what was coming and said something to someone around him. And how nothing the guy could say had anything approaching a smidgen of hope to deflect onto a better path the march of history to wherever it will go. But with barely a smidgen of desperate faith that his words would make any difference to even a few persons, he still said it as he saw it, in his world. Because he had to.

I feel like that guy.

Through it all, though, I’m excited about the coming year. And no, I’m not making any resolutions. Most of those are futile, anyway. I might as well resolve for “world peace,” or some similarly vacuous slogan that is always safe to spout in polite company.

If one wish could be granted, though, my prayer would be that the Lord in His mercy would call my Mother home in 2013. She still remains in Aylmer, at my sister Rosemary’s home, still receding ever deeper into the confines of a dark cruel world that will not let her go. She curls up now in repose, they tell me, pulls her knees up to her chin. An instinctive returning to the womb, I think. We so yearn for her to be called home. Maybe this will be the year. I pray it will be.

And other than that, I’m excited about all that 2013 might hold. Eager and excited about all those strange and beautiful roads that will beckon. From just living, and from the book, and maybe from my writing. We’ll see what roads open up. I will walk them with gratitude and with joy. And, yeah, there will be a little grumbling, too, now and then, on those roads. That’s just how it is. But I will always walk with a heart that is free.

And that is my standing, year-round wish for everyone and anyone out there. That all would come to know what it is to be truly free.

Happy New Year to all my readers.

Share

Maid of the Manor…

Some men have a den in their home, while

others just growl all over the house.

—Author Unknown

_________________

It kept pushing in on my mind back about a year ago. As I’d done for the previous, oh, four years or so, I tried to push it back. Ignore the thought. But it kept lurking there, on the fringes. And I finally just gave in and accepted the fact. OK, something would have to be done. I had no idea where to turn, but somehow, something or someone had better show up. It was time to get my house cleaned.

I live in an old house. Two story, brick. The upstairs is a separate apartment that has sat empty now for going on almost two years. I’ve had such vile luck with tenants that when the last guy left (he was the best of the lot, quiet, and always paid the rent on time), I decided not to actively solicit another one. I’d be silent and let the Lord bring somebody to me. Well, the Lord’s been pretty silent, too, about the matter. So the upstairs remains empty. In the meantime, I’ve gotten used to not having someone clumping about right above my head. It’s peaceful, that’s what it is. But that rent money sure would be nice. You can’t have it both ways, is what I’ve decided. And I’ll keep it this way until a better way shows up.

So I live downstairs, and I like my house. Sure, it’s old. Built sometime during the first Great Depression, near as I can tell from the deed. When all that crap hit the fan back in 2007, people told me. “Why don’t you get out of that house? It’s got tons of bad vibes. Bad memories. Just bad stuff overall. Sell it, and start over in a new place.” And I said no. I won’t be pushed out of my home. I won’t. I like it here. Maybe I was just exhausted. I don’t know. Anyway, I stayed. And, in one of the most amicable, attorney-free separations in history when it came to the actual divorce proceedings, I had the place appraised in 2009. Refinanced it, and bought out Ellen’s half. And now it’s my home, in my name. I like it here.

I’m probably about like 95% of guys out there who live alone, when it comes to keeping my living space clean. I don’t worry about it much. I mean, how many guys get down on their hands and knees and scrub the floor? None that I know of. And it’s not like it’s filthy dirty or anything, anyway. I vacuum, sweep the floors, chase down and capture all visible dust bunnies. Keep the sink halfway presentable, and so forth. Even scrub the bathroom, now and then. The place isn’t dirty, it’s just cluttered.

And it’s not like the rooms are a wreck, either. I pile stuff up right where it lands, mostly. And by stuff, I mean odds and ends of just about anything. Hiking gear. Shoes and boots. Jackets and hoodies. Ropes, backpacks, a decent assortment of knives, ammo, shooting gear, flashlights, camo duct tape, boxes of supplies, guy stuff. And the living room, where I write, it’s pretty much a man cave. Sheathed fantasy swords hang from two pillars. It’s comfortable, with loose stacks of books strewn haphazardly about. On the couch and on the floor and on my desk. Books of every type and flavor, plus a case or two of the one I wrote. And a couple of copies of every edition.

But I know where everything is when I need it. That’s the big thing, the important thing. It’s pretty much a lackadaisical system, but it works for me. I’ve always figured, it’s my house. When it comes right down to it, who else’s business is it, anyway? Yeah. No one’s.

But, because of the clutter, I’ve been shy almost to the point of paranoia about letting just anyone walk into my home. Only a few trusted people have unlimited access. My brother Steve pops in sometimes when he’s passing by anyway, to watch whatever game’s on. My close friend Paul Zook, too, wanders in randomly. As does my ex-brother-in-law, Paul Yutzy, when he’s passing through. None of them have ever so much as blinked an eye at the way the place looked. Which is why they’re always welcome. For most others, it’s simply not worth the energy of trying to make up excuses. So I don’t, by not letting them in.

And it’s not like the offers haven’t been made, to clean my house. Mostly from my Amish friends. “Oh, come now,” the women said soothingly. “It can’t be that bad. Let us come over and clean it for you. We’ll be happy to do that.” It’s a trick, I told them. You just want to come in and snoop. And go talk about what you saw. I’m on to your plot. Nope. Thanks, but nope. I’m good. I’ll get someone in to clean eventually. Some person that doesn’t know me, and won’t care how the house looks. Don’t you all fret about it. And no, I’m not paranoid or anything. And they looked very crestfallen, each time. In time, though, they gave up and quit nagging me.

Sadly, a cleaning lady will not just show up on her own. And the years passed, and my house had not been deep-cleaned since Ellen left, back in 2007. Then, late last year, I grumbled about it all at work. To no one in particular. Just talking. Surely there has to be someone out there, some nice Amish or Plain Mennonite girl, that I could hire to clean my house. And my coworker, Dave Hurst, heard me grumbling and spoke up. His wife, Ruth, had hired a Plain Mennonite girl to help around the house. Katie was her name, Dave said. She just got married. She works really hard for ten bucks an hour.

That sounded too good to be real. I nibbled at the bait. Ask your wife to ask Katie, I told Dave. I’ll pay her whatever she asks. See if it could work out. And a few days later, Dave told me, beaming. Katie had agreed. She would come and clean. Three hours at a stretch. And since she was a horse and buggy Mennonite and had no transportation, Ruth would drop her off and pick her up on Tuesday. And I was excited. This was what I was talking about. Some nice girl who didn’t know me from Adam. Who would just come in, do her job, and go on about her way.

And so it was that a few days later, I drove home over lunch to meet Ruth and Katie at my house. She was a beautiful young lady with a lovely smile, in patterned flowery dress and plain white head covering. “Yes,” she said. “I’ll scrub the kitchen floor by hand. Clean the counters and the sink and the bathroom. What all else did you have in mind?” And I showed her about my small house. This and this. Dust these things, if you get time. And I told her sternly. Whatever you see here stays with you. Don’t go talking about it. She smiled demurely. Of course she wouldn’t. I asked her then. How much do you want? How much an hour, to clean?

And she almost couldn’t face me. Dave had told me she worked for $10 an hour, which is nothing. Still, she piped up bravely. “Would $15 an hour be too much?” It was probably more than she’d ever asked for, from anyone else. I laughed. Of course it’s not too much, I said. I’ll gladly pay that. She smiled, relieved. I showed her where everything was, my cleaning supplies and such. And then I headed back to work.

That night, after the gym, I eagerly headed home. What would it be like, a clean house? I unlocked the door and stepped in. Lemon scent overwhelmed the place. The scent of clean. I walked through the kitchen, gaping. Everything was spotless. The floor, mainly. Scrubbed thoroughly by hand. But the sink, too, the counter and the kitchen cabinets. All of it glistened with clean. Clean, clean, clean. It was a beautiful, beautiful thing. I just stood there and drank it all in. Heck, with a place like this, I could invite company if I were of a mind to. With head held high.

That first day we met at the house was the only time I ever saw Katie. We talked, now and then, when she called me with a question as she was cleaning. She came every three or four weeks, right along, always on a Tuesday. I left her check on the kitchen table, for three hours’ worth of work. Once, my cell phone rang when she was cleaning. How much would I charge her for a copy of my book? One of those copies just strewn about the house? Take it, I told her. You can have it. “Oh, are you sure?” she asked. “I’ll pay you for it.” Nope, I said. Take it. Gotta keep the maid happy. She laughed and thanked me.

And it was a beautiful thing, over the winter, right into spring. Leave a check on the kitchen table on a Tuesday morning once a month, and the house is magically clean that night. I loved walking in after she’d been there, knowing I’d smell that clean lemon scent. It was just a beautiful thing.

And it was all too beautiful to last, of course. Sometime early last summer, Katie quit coming. She and her husband were expecting their first child. She just didn’t have the time or energy to clean my house anymore. I understood, of course. But still, it was a sad day for me, when I heard that. It was the perfect setup. And now, poof, it was just gone.

And I settled back in to the way it was, before Katie ever showed up. All through the summer. Sure, I swept and vacuumed, and kept the place half decent. But the clutter, which Katie had pushed back, encroached again. All through the house. Stuff just stacked and piled haphazardly here and there. I was comfortable with it, as before. Still shy, though, of letting just anyone in. And I kept thinking, this time I can’t wait four years, to find another cleaner. I’ve got to get someone in, sometime soon. But nothing will happen until you make it happen.

The summer passed. And the fall. The kitchen floor was getting, well, in need of a good scrubbing. I grumbled at work. This time, my coworker Dave had no suggestions. A while back, he beamed and told me Katie had her baby. A little girl. Born healthy. She and her husband are doing well, moving right along. Still, she won’t clean anymore, for extra money. She can’t, now that the baby’s here. I was glad for her, for them. Still, that doesn’t do anything for my kitchen floor.

And it all seemed destined for another long stretch of frustration. This time, though, I didn’t sit around and wait as long. This time, I asked my Amish neighbors, the ones just down the road. Do they know of anyone who cleans houses? I had in mind they might guide me to some Amish spinster who does this sort of thing for a living. But no. They smiled. Yes, they knew of someone. A lady, just down the road from my house. An English lady, well, a Mennonite. But an English Mennonite. She cleans. Go see her. And I drove straight from my Amish friends’ house to the English Mennonite lady’s home. A farm. How in the world does a woman who lives on a farm have time to clean houses? I wondered.

The English Mennonite lady, Anne, met me at the door. Looked at me suspiciously. Uh, I was told you clean houses, I stammered. “Who told you that?” She asked. The Millers, just around the corner there, I said, trying to look as lost and helpless as possible. Their kids mow my lawn. I had a Plain Mennonite lady cleaning my house earlier this year, but she quit because she just had her first baby. I’m your neighbor, half a mile away. And Anne seemed open to the idea. “I don’t have time for any new jobs,” she said. “But you are so close, I just might have to take it. I’ll probably cost more than your last cleaner did, though.” Yes, yes, I know that, I said. That’s fine. Here’s my cell number. Call me and stop by to check it out. I’m totally flexible. She smiled and promised she would.

She didn’t call. Not that first week. Or the second. The third week, after I’d given up, my cell phone rang one day. Unknown number. I answered. It was Anne. She wanted to stop by one evening and check out my house. It’s great to hear from you, I said. I’d almost given up. We settled on a date and time.

And she came, the other Saturday evening. I showed her about the house. It’s important to me that you keep my privacy, I said. What you see here stays here. She smiled and politely told me that’s her policy for all her cleaning jobs. “I can de-clutter your house,” she said helpfully as we were winding down. Declutter. Is that even a word? Do it all you want, decluttering in the kitchen, I answered. Don’t worry about the storage room, there. And don’t worry about the living room. That’s where I write. I don’t mind clutter. I just want the place to be clean, clutter or no clutter. “OK,” she said. “I’ll text you when I can make it over. It’ll be before Christmas.”

A little more than a week later, on a Monday morning, I left my front door unlocked. Anne would come that morning, so I figured it was safe. On the kitchen table, I left a check. And a house key, for her to keep. And a signed copy of my book. Might as well get that out of the way, before she sees all those copies strewn about and thinks to ask how much I want for one. Gotta keep the maid happy. Preemptively, I figured.

That night, when I got home and walked into the house, the blasting smell of clean greeted me. Fresh. Scented. Lemony. All was as it should be. Everything was spotless and shining. The floor was scrubbed. The kitchen sink sparkled. The bathroom gleamed. And the kitchen was about half decluttered. More of that will come, I think. Decluttering. And I’m totally cool with that. I think we’re good, here.

***************************************

And it’s almost Christmas again. I’m usually a Bah Humbug kind of guy, but this year I actually feel some strange odd little prickings inside. Must be the Christmas spirit. I never get carried away much, with gift giving and all. Expect none and give few, that’s my motto. And I’m pretty content with that.

Every season, though, I think back fleetingly to those days in Bloomfield, the first few years we lived there. How it was, after I turned 16, and started running with the small youth group. Bloomfield was just a baby of a settlement back then, with around two dozen families, give or take a few either way. All that would change in the next few years as the community grew, but those first few years were special, well, just because they are.

I remember the biting cold on a moonlit December evening after the chores were done, how sometimes we struggled through deep snow up the steep hill off to the west side of the lane between our home and Joseph’s house, dragging our sleds. And how we rode them down the hill at high speed, how we howled and whooped and hollered. And got up to do it all over again. And again. I remember how still and bright and cold the land was. Silent, except for our voices. And how we walked, exhausted and exhilarated, toward the glowing windows of the warm house, where Mom was bustling in the kitchen over the hot stove, fixing supper.

Those first winters in Bloomfield were bitterly, bitterly cold. And the youth, with all the exuberance that only youth can know, went caroling every Christmas around the community. The steel-rimmed buggy wheels squealing through the packed snow, we’d clatter from one house to the next. Stand outside the front door in a tight little huddled group, and sing. Christmas carols. All about the community we trundled, stopping at most Amish places and even some English ones. And I remember that close feeling of belonging, the sheer joy of just being out and about with good friends. We sang and sang, our breaths steaming in the frigid air, and sang some more. Always wrapping up with We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

And sometimes we were invited into the homes for steaming hot chocolate and fresh baked cookies. We ate and drank and chattered and laughed and then walked back out into the cold and headed to the next place. Until we reached the last house, and sang there. Then took off through the cold white winter night to our warm homes and beds.

It’s been a long time since I’ve done anything like that. And I wonder if I could sing like that again, standing outside in the bitter cold of a December night. If such a thing, such innocent joy, would even be possible. I don’t know. It’s tough to recapture the essence of such things, once you let them go. That’s just how it is. In the meantime, though, I can let the memories speak my heart.

Merry Christmas to all my readers.

***********************************

Postnote: A few words about the unspeakably senseless tragedy in Newtown, CT, today. I’m not a parent, and in such moments as these, I’m glad sometimes I’m not. It’s simply incomprehensible to see and absorb the aftermath of such evil. There will be intense mourning for a long, long time, for those families that lost a little child. We can only mourn with them from a distance.

From my perspective, from my world view, a host of observations come to mind about cause and effect, about the desperate wickedness that lurks inside the human heart. But right now, I think, it’s probably wise not to say a whole lot more. Soon enough there will be a time to speak. At this moment, I want to respect in silence those who grieve a loss I cannot fathom.

Share

The Other Cheek…

What things are these, what shells and curios of outworn

custom, what relics here of old, forgotten time?

—Thomas Wolfe

_______________

It was such a small thing when it happened that I didn’t think about it much at the time. No reason to, really. But later, I analyzed the incident a bit. And one thing led to another, in my head. And when that happens, you never know where you’ll end up.

I get those messages now and then. Through Facebook, or my email address, which is posted on this blog. Hey. What would it take, to get a signed copy of your book? Would you consider that, sending me one if I paid for it? And I always respond. Of course. I always have copies on hand. Send twenty bucks to my work address, and I’ll get you a signed copy. Made out to you, or to anyone you say.

And so it is that once in a while, every couple of weeks or so, I slip by the local post office in Christiana, and walk in with a few signed books to mail. I always take one of those nice little padded envelopes from the rack there, that they offer for sale. I slip the book in, and seal the little adhesive flap. Slap on the mailing sticker I prepared back at the office. And walla, it’s ready. With book-rate postage, the whole thing costs four bucks and change.

A few weeks back, I walked in one day with a couple of books to mail. The postmaster lady is used to seeing me. She always smiles in welcome. She got so curious about seeing me mail so many books that she asked about it a few months ago. Then she bought a copy for herself and read it. Claimed she really enjoyed it. So we have a nice little friendship. That day, though, she wasn’t around. Some young guy, a part timer, waited on me. I did the usual. Grabbed two padded envelopes from the wall, stuck in my books, sealed them, and passed them over the counter to him. Book rate, I said. He jabbed at his computer screen, and printed out my postage stickers. Then gave me the total. Four bucks and change. For both books. Something was wrong.

That’s not enough, I said. He looked at me strangely. “It’s the price of the postage,” he answered. I almost turned and left. But then it hit me. The envelopes, I said. You forgot to charge me for those. “Oh, you got those here?” he asked. Well, yes. I always do. He quickly scanned the envelopes, and I handed him the money. He thanked me for telling him. Not a problem, I said.

And it wasn’t a big deal at all, in my mind. That’s just what you do, when a mistake like that comes at you. You make it right, that’s what I was always taught. There is no agonizing, there are no questions about whether or not it’s the right thing to do. It always is the right thing.

But that wasn’t what struck me, when I thought about it later. What struck me was, what if it’s you on the other side of that equation? What if someone actually tries to rip you off? Comes at you with that intent from the get-go? What then? How do you handle that?

And I thought back to years ago, of how it was when my father was running his metal sales business back home in Bloomfield.

The summer before we moved there, Dad built a brand new dairy barn. Laid it out with all kinds of newfangled but untested ideas, almost all of which eventually proved entirely worthless. But that’s a bunny trail. He had to order the metal roofing and siding for the barn from the only local supplier. Bloomfield Lumber. And they delivered a quality product. Sure, it took some time, because they had to order everything in. And their prices were right up there.

After we moved and were settling in, Dad had other building projects. He wasn’t particularly satisfied with the product, mostly the prices, of Bloomfield Lumber’s offerings. He still bought from them, those first few years. But something stirred, in his mind.

Why not find metal roofing and siding at a better price? And he made some calls, found a dealer in Missouri. A guy who would ship it in for a lot cheaper. And Dad put the word out, in the community. I got good metal prices. Order from me. I’ll save you money. I don’t think he mentioned the grade or quality of the metal. Metal roofing was metal roofing.

It was never planned, this business. And that’s the beauty of it. It just sprouted on its own, because Dad saw a need and provided for it. During those first few years, in the late 1970s, he got a load together every month or two. It was seconds metal, if I remember right. You couldn’t order a specific color, necessarily, even. It was mostly white or off-white. But the price was so low, compared to Bloomfield Lumber’s, that it didn’t matter. It was metal, it would cover your buildings, and it was cheap. During those first few years, the loads were delivered from somewhere in southern Missouri on a battered old single axle white International flatbed truck. Russell Krause, the one-armed driver, usually arrived during the night and slept slumped in his truck. And he usually ate breakfast with us. The boys, my brothers and me, went out after breakfast and unloaded the metal sheets by hand. The whole load, stacks and stacks. Hundreds and hundreds of sheets.

Russell Krause was a pure southern Missouri hillbilly, probably in his mid-50s or so, wizened and stooped and one-armed. He was the only person who was ever allowed to smoke inside our home, near as I can recall. And that’s because he didn’t ask, he just lit up. Filterless Camels. Mom always just smiled and gave him a Mason jar lid for an ashtray. He sat at the breakfast table, devouring Mom’s delicious food, and told large tales of the things he had seen and done. And it always got a little uncomfortable for him after we finished eating. Because that’s when Dad would take up his Bible and read a passage or two. And then we would all kneel for the morning prayer. Except Russell. He never knelt. Just leaned over, on his chair, like he was kneeling. It was a natural reaction for him, I guess, in an unfamiliar setting. Just bending over. But we saw it, that he didn’t kneel. And we judged him for it. We figured he was probably not a Christian. Maybe even a wicked man, seeing that he smoked and all.

It was all a bit of a ramshackle affair, but Dad’s metal business grew steadily over the next few years. Actually, it was just plain primitive. The whole setup. We piled the metal in stacks on the south side of our new machinery shed. Outside, in the weather, which is a huge no-no. And during the summers, great weeds sprouted among the stacks, sometimes almost overwhelming them. We built a rack inside the shed, to hold a small selection of trim.

When a customer arrived, we boys took care of him, most often. He would tell us what he wanted, and we’d find the closest thing we had to that. We’d hand load the metal, then write out a bill of sale on a little white and yellow pad. White to the customer. Yellow for the record. Those were heady days, when wads of cash flowed in and out of our pockets. Some small bits of it stayed there, now and then, as Dad’s bookkeeping was also very primitive. He wouldn’t miss a $20 bill now and then, we figured. We were right. He was so disorganized that he rarely caught on. But he sold a lot of product, because his prices were low, way lower than those at surrounding English lumber yards. And you couldn’t beat his hours. Any time during daylight hours, six days a week. No Sunday sales. That was just assumed. And they came, locals from all around, and many non-locals from out of state, to buy at discount prices from Wagler Metals.

Dad advertised, and his metal business grew and grew. By the time I left for good in the late 1980s, it was his main source of income. Long before that, he had switched suppliers. Russell Krause no longer came up from southern Missouri in his old rattletrap International. Instead, Graber Post Buildings from Daviess County now delivered Dad’s inventory by the tractor-trailer load. And about then, my brother Joseph bought a share of the business and took over the day to day operations. I’m not sure of the exact timeline of some of these events, but it’s not important. They built a brand new but somewhat ramshackle building halfway out the drive to keep their metal in. And people flocked in from miles around and bought. Wagler Metals was a flourishing business in Bloomfield.

And 99.9% of those people who came and bought were honest customers who paid with honest money. Dad took cash and checks. The checks were almost always good. Once in a while, though, some hoodlum would pass off a bad check that bounced. Sometimes, that was not done on purpose. And when that happened, the customer made good. But from a few, those bad checks were planned. Those few refused to make good. They figured Dad was Amish, and he wouldn’t do anything about it. For such a trivial thing, they sold out their good name. Which they had probably done long before, so it wasn’t that big a deal to them anymore, I think.

Dad’s position on such matters was pretty much what the official Amish position has always been. You don’t get the law involved. You don’t sue, or hire a collection agency to go after your unpaid bills. In most places, I think that’s still their position. And as far a I know, Dad never once got the law involved in any way, to fight for his rights. He didn’t believe in calling the cops for any reason. And he never did.

But in today’s fast paced business world, I know that’s really tough to do sometimes. Especially when a large sum is involved. It’s tough, to just stand by and let a wrong go, when it might take down your business.

But they never did go after the bad guys, neither Dad nor Joseph. And once, when I was home visiting for Christmas, Joseph told me the classic tale of how it all comes down, when one sets out to rip off an Amish business.

It all happened one fine afternoon when a dilapidated old pickup rattled into the long drive of the old home farm out north of West Grove. A redneck coming to buy some metal roofing. Joseph told me his name, which I don’t remember and wouldn’t write here if I did. But the guy came from up north of Drakesville somewhere.

He was loud and jolly, Joseph told me. And he needed a couple of different lengths of metal. For the sake of this tale, we’ll say ten footers and twelve footers. So Joseph showed him what he had and the redneck bought a stack of each length. Twenty or thirty sheets of each. They loaded the metal on his now-sagging pickup, and the guy pulled out his checkbook. “You’ll take a check, won’t you?” he asked. Joseph said he would.

The guy paid and left. Disappeared over the steep hill to the north, heading back to Drakesville. Joseph returned to what he was doing. But then, about twenty minutes later, he looked out toward the road. And behold, the dilapidated old sagging pickup was staggering back into the drive. The redneck pulled up to the yard and braked. Stepped out, smiling sheepishly.

“You know what, Joe?” He said loudly. “I just got to thinking. I’m going to hold back on that one part of the roof, for now. I really don’t need all these ten foot sheets I bought. Would it be too much trouble to unload them and put them back in stock?”

Joseph probably sensed something was wrong. But he couldn’t put his finger on it. Sure, he’d take the metal back. “Sure, we’ll unload it,” he said. “I’ll give your check back. You can just write me another.”

The man was a fine actor. Or maybe Joseph was just easily fooled. I don’t know. We all want to believe in the best in people. And the Amish are especially susceptible to frauds, seems like. Because they trust people easily, in everyday life. It’s just how they were taught. The redneck made a great exaggerated expression of dismay.

“Ah, man, Joe,” he exclaimed regretfully. “That was my last check, the one I gave you. Any way you could just write a check back to me, for the difference?” And so the trap was set. And Joseph, bless his heart, walked right on in. Completely unassuming. Sure. Sure, he’d do that. And that’s what happened. They unloaded the ten footers, all twenty or thirty of them. And Joseph handed the redneck a check for them.

You don’t have to think too hard to figure out what happened next. The redneck from up north of Drakesville, that man’s check was bad. Worthless. Not only did he get all his twelve foot metal for free, he also got a good chunk of cash from Wagler Metals when he cashed Joseph’s check. Which was exactly what he set out to do when he came for the twelve footers he actually needed. Which is exactly the kind of scheme he and generations of his thieving blood had pulled off countless times before, I’m pretty sure.

I gaped at Joseph as he finished his tale. Told with all the relish and detail and vocal inflections any respectable Wagler would come up with. What? Are you insane? I hollered. (We talk to each other like that, it’s all good.) You still have the guy’s check in your hand, and you won’t go after him? All you have to do is give it to the cops. It’s a crime, what he did. Here. Give it to me. I’ll take it in to them right now. Come on. You can’t just let him get away with outright theft like that.

“Nope, nope,” Joseph grinned nervously, as he tends to do. “No. That’s not what we do. Yeah, a man stopped by the other day. He runs a collection business. He wanted all my bad checks. He’d go collect the debts, take his percentage, and give me the rest. But I told him no.”

And I could only sputter in frustration at my brother. There it was, an easy solution. Give someone else the right to collect your debts, and you’re not directly involved. But still, he wouldn’t even do that. I would, I told him. That redneck needs to be stopped. He’s just going to keep on doing it, until someone does stop him. It’s justice. Do it. And my brother had a comeback even for that.

“No, he’s known now, in the community,” he said. “People know his name is bad, they know now who he is. That his word can’t be trusted. Sure, it’s hard. Of course it is. I want that money I’m owed. But I won’t go after it. A higher power will deal with that man. I don’t need to concern myself about it, however much I want to.”

I stood there, still shaking my head in disbelief. And I still told him in no uncertain terms what I thought he should do. You bet I did. Go after the guy. Make him pay. It’s the only sensible thing to do. Surely you can see that. But I’ve thought about it now and then, in the years that have passed. Thought about my brother’s obstinance. It didn’t make a lot of sense to me. Still doesn’t, not from where I am. But it doesn’t have to. He knew where he stood. And that’s all that matters, in the end. It was his business. Not mine.

But still, I figure it is my business, to think about it. And I keep thinking, who made the best choices? The redneck from up north of Drakesville, a guy with a thieving heart, a guy who started out his day plotting to steal, in a way that would be known? And did just that, to get what he wanted. Because that’s how he lived. Or a guy like my brother Joseph, who somehow found the internal fortitude, the strength to actually follow through with what he claimed to believe? To let it go, even when someone did something bad like that to him. To turn the other cheek, even when it was hard to do. Even when it was especially hard to do, because of the way he’d been taken across.

And I’m thinking, who would you choose to be, if you had only those two choices? Sure, to outsiders looking in, there are plenty of other options. But that’s beside the point. Because in this little tale, the details can’t be changed. They are what they are. Two flawed people made conscious decisions to do what they did, all the way through the story. Who made the best choices?

And I’m thinking, it’s pretty strange, looking back. How some of that stuff you walked away from makes a little more sense now than it used to.

Share