Ira Wagler's Blog, page 8

The Aftermath: Brave New World…

I get around,

I kicked the habit (kicked the habit, kicked the habit),

Shed my skin (shed my skin).

This is the new stuff (this is the new stuff),

I go dancing in (we go dancing in)…

—Peter Gabriel, lyrics: Sledgehammer

______________________________

He walked in the other day at work to pick up a few things for a job he was finishing up. A small-time builder, a guy I’ve done business with for years. I got up and met him at the counter. I smiled and greeted him. And he smiled back, and spoke my name. “Ira. It’s good to see you,” he said. “I called in the other week, and they told me you were in the hospital. How are you doing?” And I filled him in a little, in the next few minutes. I’ve been back for a few weeks. Part days, at first. I’m back to almost full-time. I come in a little late in the mornings, and work til closing. I’m feeling pretty good. I figure I’ll be back to full-time before long.

He asked about what had happened, and I told him. My heart. A-Fib, turned into congestive failure. The fluids, and how I was filled with them. He listened, all sympathetic. I asked what he was after, kind of edged it in sideways, and wrote it up when he told me. And we kept talking about where I had been. It was close, I told him. It got a little tricky there, early on. I came very close to leaving it all behind, that first Saturday night. And I told him how it was. It was the strangest thing. I knew I was in bad shape, right there. I knew I might not make it. And he asked. “Did you see a white light, or anything?” The man never was particularly religious, at least not around me, so I was a little surprised at the question. I mean, we’ve always got along real well. But we have never, never discussed what we believed, when it comes to faith. And now, here he was, asking me what I had seen when death came stalking close.

Nope. There was no light, I told him. I was always conscious. But I can tell you one thing. I wasn’t afraid. I felt no fear at all. “Wow,” he said. “I wonder if I’ll be afraid when the time comes. I don’t know.” And we just stood there and talked about it, what it might look like to die, and what comes after. It’s amazing how easy it is to talk to just about anyone about the hard stuff, when you were as close to death as I was.

And that odd little scene right there is only one among many in the brave new world I’ve been walking through this past month, ever since I’ve been home from the hospital.

Home from the hospital. To anyone who’s ever been trapped in a place like that, those are beautiful, magical words. Home. Out of this crazy place, where bells and whistles and all kinds of beeping noises of every imaginable tone and volume go off at random at all hours of the day and night. Home, from this place where people come in and wake you up and stab you with needles to draw blood, and poke and prod you all over late at night. Home, from this place where rest is a mirage and sleep is impossible. Anyone who’s ever stayed at any hospital knows what that feeling’s like, to be told that they can go home, tomorrow or the day after. It’s like being told there is light after the deepest darkness, hope after despair, life after death.

And it’s all still pretty close for me, the whole experience. I remember so many things that happened, there at the hospital. Good stuff, and bad. A couple of defining incidents remain especially vivid in my mind.

Monday morning. I woke up in good time. Just coming out of that frightful weekend, when the death angel had come that close to taking me. Saturday night into Sunday morning. That was the lowest point. And then, on Sunday, I improved a bit. And now, it was Monday morning. And the doctor, the guy who had made the calls from afar, that doctor was standing in my room, looking all grave and glum. A small crowd had assembled around. A couple of nurses. The doctor. My brother, Steve. And my friend, Gloria, had stopped in for a few minutes on her way to the college classroom where she teaches art history.

The doctor stood there, in his white doctor’s gown. Like I said, he looked pretty grave. As he certainly had a right to do, I guess. I mean, the man had brought me back from the brink. He’s the one who had discovered my heart was actually failing, that I was filled to the brim, almost, with fluids. And here he was in person for the first time, at least the first time that I saw him. He stood there, close to the door. All eyes focused on him. All was silent. It reminded me for all the world of an Amish church service. The doctor surveyed the room, kind of like an Amish preacher does. I don’t remember that he cleared his throat, or anything, like an Amish preacher would. He looked around, looked at me, looked at the people assembled and standing around.

He never said my name, at least not that I remember. My head was a little foggy, I will admit, so I might be wrong. But he spoke. “The patient’s heart is very weak, working at only fifteen percent strength. (Fifty percent of capability is considered full strength, so if you multiply it out, I was actually at thirty percent of capability. But they never tell you that. They want that scare factor figured in.) The doctor went on, dramatically. “Had he not gotten treatment, he would have died sometime this week.” (That shocked me. Good Lord. That was a close thing.) The Amish sermon continued. “He had his last drink of alcohol before he came in. There will never be another drop of anything. No wine, no beer, no non-alcoholic beer. No nothing.” And I thought to myself. What does he think, that I’m asleep, that he keeps talking about me in third person like I’m not here? But I was too tired to be all that offended. Or to be shocked, much, at even that last astounding and horrifying statement about no alcohol. Right then, I just wanted to rest.

And I wanted this pesky doctor to go away and leave me alone. After a few more grave proclamations, one of which was the assertion that I would be in the hospital for at least two weeks, the man did leave. The small crowd dispersed with him. The nurses went out. Gloria left for her classroom. Only Steve stayed with me. He didn’t say a whole lot of anything. He was still too shocked by the doctor’s proclamations, probably. Which was all fine by me. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, anyway. I sank back and closed my eyes. That morning, I was a pretty sick man.

And that was Monday, and about all that’s worth remembering about that day. And time went on, there in the ICU. I wasn’t focused on much of anything except resting over the next few days. I had one major complaint, though. The food. It was just atrocious. Inedible. It didn’t matter what they told you they were serving you. You lifted the heavy lid off the plate, and whatever name the food had, it looked the same and smelled the same. Slop, is what it was. And no one ever bothered to tell me that it was salt-free slop. During the first few days, I had no clue that I was even on a low sodium diet. No clue at all. So it never occurred to me, that what I plotted next was strictly against the rules.

My nephews, John and David, had arrived that Tuesday from points in the Midwest. They hung out a lot during the day, just chatting about things. And they went out to Steve’s house a lot, too, to clean up and sleep and eat. And I think it was Thursday, when I couldn’t take it any more, when it came to the food. And I told my nephews. When you go out for lunch, bring me back something to eat. I’m hungry for cheese sticks. Their younger brother, Mervin, had arrived by this time. And the three of them allowed that it should be no problem. If Uncle Ira was hungry for cheese sticks, then cheese sticks he would have. I mean, look at the poor guy, all wasted away, there in the ICU. The boys disappeared, to go downtown to eat. They were gone for quite a while. A couple of hours, at least. They were hanging out, the brothers. John and David were heading for home late that afternoon. They planned to drive all night, to get back.

Somehow, while they were gone, the nurse found out they were planning on bringing me food. She scolded me. “You can’t do that. You’re on a strict diet.” No one told me that, I said. I’m hungry for some food from outside. She left it at that, or seemed to. And soon enough, the three of them came shuffling back into the room. One of them carried a folded paper bag. I took it eagerly. The cheese sticks. Oh, yum. And dip, too. Good stuff, right there. I quickly scarfed down two of the greasy sticks, while the nurse was gone. That’s about all I could handle. I had the boys hide the bag in the back room, where there was a couch and a chair, and some shelves. Keep those things out of sight. No sense getting everyone all riled up about nothing. That’s what I figured.

The nurse returned while the boys were sitting around, just chatting. John and David wanted to leave around four, or so. The nurse did not seem very happy. She grumped at my visitors. It’s two o’clock. Only one person was allowed to be in the room with me from two until four. We had known this was the rule, but so far, no one had paid any attention to it. And no one had enforced it. This nurse got all bossy. The boys pretty much ignored her, and she walked out soon. Stay for a little, yet, I told John and David. Don’t pay any attention to her. She’s just mad that you brought me food.

The boys left soon, then, heading out for home. Mervin stayed with me. He soon wandered off, as I took a nap. I stirred and looked out of the room. The grave doctor was strolling by right that moment. The bossy nurse had stopped him, and was talking to him in an animated manner. The doctor’s face turned grim as well as grave. When the nurse had finished, he turned and walked right into my room. A short, curt greeting. Then he asked, ominously. “Did you just eat a cheeseburger and French fries?” I did not, I said. I ate two cheese sticks. He understood me to say “cheese steaks,” I figured out later. “That’s even worse,” he said. How could two cheese sticks be worse than a burger and fries? I wondered. But I didn’t argue. And he told me. That food is full of salt. If I eat it, it will trigger more fluids in my body. I had no idea, but I didn’t bother arguing with the man. But I did bristle a bit. The food here is slop, I muttered. It’s not fit to eat.

The doctor continued to look grave, as well as grim. “Look,” he said. “We’ve got you back this far. Work with me, here, as a team.” OK, I said. I’ll do that. I don’t like your food here. But I won’t eat anything more from the outside. He was satisfied with my weak promise, and left me then. I was relieved. The man had saved my life, that much was true and remains true. But he was also God-like and intimidating, always. I can’t say I have or ever had any personal liking for him. I respect him tremendously. But I don’t like him.

And that’s how I found out about the brave new world that awaited me when I ever got home. From those two little incidents. And they loomed there, on the edge of things, two massive changes, cold and menacing. These medical people had me trapped. They had saved me from myself, from my own stupid choices. And now they were dictating the conditions of my life. And I could accept that. Still, I didn’t want to think about it.

Home looked pretty barren and desolate, all of a sudden. I was an invalid. Walking along, weak and wounded. My food would be pretty much tasteless. No hot dogs again, ever. Or sausage sandwiches. And there would be no alcohol in my world. Either one of these things would have been bad enough, all on its own. Combined, they lurked out there like monsters, dark and frightening. I averted my eyes and my thoughts from such a dismal world as that. And as the week’s end approached, and my health improved dramatically, I chafed to get out of that place, the hospital. But I shrank, too, at the thought of going home. Of going home and facing that hard stuff I didn’t want to face. Alone. It all seemed like such a harsh and bitter thing.

And Monday came again. Today, I would get out of this place. Not in two weeks, as the grave doctor had foretold. But in one week. Well, if he was that wrong about such a thing as that, maybe he’d be wrong about other things, too. That desperate thought flashed through my head a few times that day. And noon came, then, and my last plate of slop. I actually was eating the food by then. It was tasteless, most of it, being salt-free. But it was food. And around two, my nephew Andrew walked in. It was time to leave this place. We picked up my stuff and walked out.

I felt numb as we drove along the highway toward home, and I felt it pulsing down there, deep inside. Fear. Fear of a lot of things, but mostly fear of the unknown. I was in a new place, here, a place I had never even imagined before. And yet, I felt gratitude, too. I was grateful just to be alive, to be here, to be able to go home. Yeah, things would be different. Tough, and a lot different. But life is life, wherever you find yourself. And I figured I’d live through whatever was coming at me. I always had before.

But still. God, I thought. I don’t know about all this. I need your help, getting through. You know that. I’m gonna figure you’ll be there, just like you always promised you would be. I’ll try not to whine too much. But I feel like I’m in the middle of a desolate land, here, with no way out. I need you to guide me. Help me. We got home then, and Andrew helped me carry my stuff in. Then we headed out in Big Blue to the health food store. If you gotta be on low sodium, I figured, go talk to the people who can help you with the right foods. I walked out with a small paper bag filled with sixty bucks worth of low sodium foods, spices, and vegetables.

And the first evening at home was a little surreal and strange. Not so much from the food. But because of the alcohol, or lack thereof. I know the family had some doubts about it all, that I’d be able to quit for any measurable length of time. There had been a few subtle inquiries, sliding in from here and there. Are you going to be OK, not drinking? How about getting rid of all your bottles? Don’t you think you should? No, I said. If you think getting rid of all the alcohol in my house is going to do a lick of good, well, you don’t know what it is to face a thing like that. It’s a matter of the mind. It’s choices. You choose to drink. And you choose to not drink. And if I’m gonna sneak around and drink, a dry house won’t do much good. Heck, I’ll just run out to the bar. So no, I won’t get rid of the alcohol in my house, and I won’t keep people from drinking around me. I don’t want people to be all nervous, to feel like they have to tiptoe around me. I want people to be who they are.

That first evening, I snacked on some of the stuff from the health food store. Andrew took a nap on the couch for a while. And then it was dark outside. And soon Steve stopped by, to see how things were going. I was tired, I got tired very easily those days. And I told Andrew, when he asked. I don’t really have a place for you to sleep, except the couch. Go on over to Steve’s house. I’m fine. I’m going to bed very soon. I’ll stop over tomorrow morning, before you have to leave for the airport. And that’s what happened. Andrew followed Steve to his home. And that night, for the first time in ten days, I was all alone in my home.

It was strange and it was scary, those first few days. At least for the first week. The low-sodium diet scared me more than not drinking. For the alcohol, it was very simple. The grave doctor had pretty much told me. One drop, and you’re dead. Well, not dead, but I might as well be, the way he talked. I knew he was way overstating his case, but I was determined to listen to what he told me. No alcohol means no alcohol. Just don’t drink. But the food with no salt? Well, that was a minefield, right there.

I learned pretty quick. Almost all prepackaged food at the grocery store is loaded with sodium. I had never bothered to check the labels before. I mean, who does that? Why would you? But now, I had to. And that first week, I stuck pretty much with veggies and organic meat from the health food store. I cooked up a mixture of some sort in the crock pot. No salt at all. Just spices, pepper, and Mrs. Dash. The food all tasted quite bland, those first few weeks.

And I went back to work, at least part time, right from my first full day back home. You gotta stay busy, doing something. And it was a relief, to get back in the swing of things at work. My builders all welcomed me back when they called in or stopped by. Glad you are here and doing well. That was their sentiment, across the board. I’m happy to be here, and I’m glad to be back, I told them all.

And now it’s been almost exactly one month since I walked out of the hospital. I’ve had three or four follow-up checkups in that time. After the first full week, the grave doctor had me stop by. He checked me out. Everything seemed good. Blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen. The drugs, I said. They’re giving me vivid dreams. Every night. Not nightmares, necessarily. But strong dreams. He glanced at me, rather disdainfully. “No, those drugs do not give you dreams,” he said. And that was that. OK, then. I didn’t speak much more with him about anything after that. What good does it do to talk, if the person you’re talking to isn’t listening? I did ask one more question, though. How long will I be on medication? “The rest of your life,” he told me. Which was not a very nice thing to say. It threw me for a serious loop, into a real depressed state of mind.

A few days later, the A-Fib doctor disabused me of that notion. The drugs I’m on are toxic. They want to get me off all drugs, as soon as they can. Definitely within months. I rejoiced and thought dark thoughts about the grave doctor.

I’ve been getting comfortable with my new lifestyle. Don’t get me wrong. Of an evening, especially when I’m sitting at my computer, writing, I sure would like a drink. I would really like one. But it’s never been even close, so far. No alcohol means no alcohol. And right now, that’s the world I live in.

The sodium, too, doesn’t scare me as the monster it was a month ago. I’m learning to cook at home, now. I fry up a lot of potatoes, and cook up a lot of eggs. And now and then, I eat foods that I know are loaded with salt. Cheese. Sliced summer sausage. A bite here, a bite there. Just not much, at any single time. And every morning, I weigh myself. Just to keep track, to make sure the fluids are not building up. And over the holidays, the weight has fluctuated, sure. But it’s been because of all those goodies that people keep pushing on me. Coming right up, real soon here, it’s going to be time to get serious about a few things, like exercising at the gym. And I plan to.

Last Saturday, I was driving around in Big Blue, running a few errands here and there. Around late morning, I found myself close to the Waffle House along Rt. 30 in Lancaster. I’ve always loved the Waffle House breakfast of hash browns, smothered in onions, eggs over-medium, and buttered toast. I thought about it. Could they fix it without salt? Can’t hurt to try, I figured. So I went in and sat at the counter. The waitress, a cheerful hard-eyed woman in her fifties, took my order. I don’t want any salt on anything, I told her. Will that be a problem? She assured me it would not be.

She slung my plate down a short time later. The food looked as greasy and delicious as it always does. I settled in and just chowed. The eggs were fine. The toast was fine. The hash browns, well, those were pretty much laced with salt. I chewed and swallowed bravely, every last shred of food went down. And I could feel the taste in my mouth and throat. Salt. Lots of salt. I was careful the rest of the day, to eat only bland salt-free food. And the next morning, I was relieved that the scales showed I had actually lost a pound from the day before. My little foray to the Waffle House had come off OK, seemed like. I felt relieved.

And the next Monday, I had another checkup scheduled at the grave doctor’s office. But when I got there, he had handed me off to an assistant. A nurse practitioner. My vital signs all checked out at optimum levels. Blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen. All perfect. I feel real good, I told the doctor. I haven’t felt this good in over a year. I think my heart was running wild for months, I just didn’t know it. The doctor looked very pleased. And she asked me. “How’s the diet coming along?” Good, I said. But then I told her of that salty breakfast a few days before at the Waffle House. She seemed unconcerned. “We figure you’re going to splurge once in a while,” she said. “We just don’t want you to go out and eat a whole pizza, or anything like that.” I was pretty relieved. I’m sure the grave doctor would have been way less kind or understanding. I won’t do anything like that, I assured her.

And then she asked about what I knew she was going to ask. The alcohol. From my records on the charts, they all pretty much figured I was a drunk. There was no way I could have kept from drinking this long. And she looked at me, a little resigned. She knew what my answer would be. But she asked the question bravely. “How’s it going, with the alcohol?” And I told her. It’s a remarkable thing. I haven’t had a drop. But that don’t mean I don’t want to. I can’t tell you how bad I want a drink.

She didn’t scold me at all, or talk down to me in any way. She looked me in the eye and told me a little bit about how it was and why it was that way. And she got me talked out of having a drink, at least until the next check-up, right at two months out. And then, we’ll see. Two months. That was about all I could find in me to promise.

Two months. I guess we’ll see how it goes when I get there.

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

Well, the New Year has arrived. A few words, and a few reflections, about all that.

Last year was a dark and brutal time. The last two years were. I remember a year ago, writing about how I’m ready for whatever comes, even if it’s worse than the year that had just passed. And I guess I was ready. I could not have imagined at the time what 2015 would bring. It came, it brought a few days of light and many weeks of darkness. And now it’s gone. Passed on, like all things must pass.

It was a tough time for the family, the last twelve months. Two of us almost crossed over to the other side. My sister Maggie and me. We walked right up, both of us, to the banks of the River Styx. And yet, somehow, we did not board the boat for that final crossing over those dark waters. Somehow, the death angel stayed his hand. We drew back, into life. And we stayed.

And through all that, Dad is still rolling along like he always has. His children may be dropping like flies, but the old man chugs along. He just turned ninety-four, and he just traveled to Pine Craft, Florida, for his annual winter stay. He’ll be there until March, sometime, writing and holding court. The man just cranked out the third volume of his five-volume memoir. Our Stay in Canada. His memories and reflections of the twenty-three years he lived in Aylmer. To me, this was the most interesting volume, because I was born during that time. And the world he describes is the world I grew up in.

And the rest of the extended family rolls along, too. All going about their lives, busy and industrious. One generation ages and will soon pass, the next generation pushes up to replace the one before. People come and go about their lives. They now rise and live; in time, they will fade and fall. So it is, and so it has always been.

And looking forward to 2016, I suppose I should be anticipating all the great things that might come. But mostly, I feel ambivalence. After the last two years, I don’t have a whole lot of expectations about anything. About the only thing I can say with any confidence is this. Whatever the year brings, whatever the future holds, I will walk forward into life. And I will face whatever comes without fear.

Happy New Year to all my readers.

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Through the Valley of the Shadow…

I guess I’m paying for the things that I have done.

If I could go back, oh, Lord knows I’d run.

But I’m still losin’ this game of life I play,

Losing and dying with the choices I’ve made.

George Jones; Choices

____________________

Three weeks ago, I got real sick and almost died. I can’t remember writing such an abrupt and brutal thing, ever before. So I guess I’ll say it again. Three weeks ago, I got real sick and almost died. Or, as I said on Facebook back then, after the fog had lifted some and my vital signs had balanced back from critical to stable. That was a bit of a near thing. I came very close to wandering off the reservation for good, there.

And there’s a couple of things I want to say, right here up front. There is no promise of tomorrow. Not for anyone, not ever, not anywhere. And the thing that stood out the most to me. I don’t care who you are, or what your work is here on this earth. You are expendable. I mean, you really are. It doesn’t matter what you’ve got going here. It doesn’t matter if you’re leading ten thousand people in a mega-church, or if you’re some wild-eyed prophet proclaiming the gospel to the poorest of the poor in the most remote wilderness. It doesn’t matter, your family, your sons and daughters. None of it matters. The Lord doesn’t need you, to fulfill his work. Sure, he may use you, and probably will, if you want to be used. But he doesn’t need you. You are entirely expendable.

OK. That all being said, I step back a few weeks. I hadn’t been feeling all that well, for the weeks leading up to that time. I wasn’t feeling all that badly, either, in all fairness. I mean, I had my normal aches and pains. When you’re fifty-four, you’ll have a few of those.

I don’t remember exactly when it was that I noticed my feet and legs were swelling up. It was a gradual thing, I think. I remember that Janice noticed my ankles had swollen some, down at the beach, in September. “You should see a doctor, when you get back home,” she told me. Yeah, yeah, I said. I didn’t mean it, that I agreed with her. I don’t like doctors. And I remembered all too well, how it went, back in March of last year.

I remembered it all. The bloody eye. The flutter heart. The ablation. And the aftermath. The Coumadin, that awful blood thinner they put me on, that made me sick. This time, I swore, the doctors wouldn’t get a chance to sink their claws into me. And so I kept an eye on the swelling in my legs. It would all get better soon, all on its own, I figured. Just give it a little time.

Well, it didn’t all get better, real soon or otherwise. My legs kept swelling. And then my stomach, too. Suddenly, there were only two old pairs of jeans that fit, anymore. Two pairs, from way back, when I was real heavy. I never hurt much, anywhere. And gradually, I got it figured out, of a morning when I got up. And late last month, on a Thursday, I made the decision. I would stop in at my family doctor in Leola, just to get checked out. I had no idea that morning when I walked out of the house. No idea that I was about to enter a strange and desolate land, a land where the death angel hovered close a few times. And it was just as well I didn’t know. It’s best not to know such things when they’re standing, lurking at the door.

My local doctor in Leola saw me after about an hour. The nurse checked everything. Height, weight, blood pressure. All was good, except the weight. I was about thirty pounds heavier than I’ve ever been. And it hit me why, and I told her. It’s the fluid in my legs. Everything is swollen. She smiled and wrote lots of stuff down on a chart. Next, the doctor came bustling in. He didn’t like what he was seeing. A short test, and he told me. “Your heart is beating way too fast. Almost double what it should be. I’m getting you into the Heart Group clinic this afternoon.” I thanked him, and waited in the waiting room until a nurse came out and told me the time and place of my afternoon appointment.

That afternoon, I walked into the Heart Group clinic on the edge of Lancaster. One of the main doctors there saw me. He looked at the numbers on the chart. “You really should be admitted to the hospital, at least until we can get the swelling under control,” he said. I don’t want to go to the hospital, I said. Can’t we do this as an outpatient? And he thought about it. “Come in to the hospital tomorrow, first thing,” he said. We’ll figure on shocking your heart back into the proper rhythm.” I thanked him, and left. I was relieved. At least I could get everything done as an outpatient. I knew I hated hospitals, from my last stay.

I was scheduled to check in at 6:45 the next morning. And I wasn’t supposed to drive in myself. So that night, I called Steve, my brother. Was there anyone around who could take me in at that early hour? “Yeah, someone would,” Steve said. “I’m planning on going to work, but I think Wilma can take you.” And that’s what we planned.

That Thursday night, I attended an Amish wedding feast, evening services. The daughter of a good friend of mine got married that day. As usual, I begged off, from attending all day. I’ll come in the evening, I said. And I went. I remember feeling a little tired, and a little short of breath that night. I ate supper at the side table with all the other ex-Amish, then begged a few pounds of fresh Roasht from the goodwife. And by eight or so, I was heading home with my loot.

And the next morning right at six, Wilma pulled in. I was ready. I had packed a few extra clothes, just for anyhow. You never know, when you walk into a hospital, when you’ll get out of there. I remember thinking about all that, clearly. And just before walking out to where Wilma was waiting, I did what I always do when leaving on a trip, or when leaving for the doctor’s office. I crossed myself. And I spoke to the Lord. Lord, I said. Bring me safely back to my home, I pray. Bring me safely back to my house again.

And right on time, Wilma dropped me off outside Lancaster General, at the James Street entrance. I’ll call you when it’s done, I told her. And I’ll be waiting outside, when you get here. I walked in to the check-in desk. After signing in, I was taken back to a corner that was curtained off. There, a cheery nurse checked all my vitals. All seemed in order. They would shock my heart back to regular rhythm around 9 or so. I settled in to wait, blissfully unaware that all I knew and loved as a normal world was just about ready to spiral, spiral down, down, down into a dimension I had never seen before.

A nurse stopped by to prep me for the treatment. She asked routine questions. Had I taken the drugs the doctor had prescribed the night before? Yes, I took them last night. But not this morning, because no one told me to. And right there was the first glitch. She called around, and the operating doctor said he would not do the shock treatment on my heart, because I had not taken that pill. I could feel it, all semblance of order passing away. Look, I told the nurse. Whatever we have to do, to get the treatment today. And eventually the head doctor came in and negotiated with me. They would give me the drugs, but I would have to wait four hours before they did the treatment. OK, I shrugged. I want it done today, and I want to get out of here today. Whatever works. So the nurse brought me a few pills and water. I swallowed those, and settled back to wait.

And the spiral just continued. Right at 1:30, a nurse fetched me and took me downstairs to the operating room. Here is where they would shock my heart into a regular beat. Everyone seemed all cheerful. This wouldn’t take long. I’d be out of the room in half an hour. They knocked me out, right there on the table. And twenty minutes later, I woke back up. My first words: Did the shock work? And the nurse answered, all matter of fact. No. It did not work. My heart was still in an irregular beat. I instantly felt it settling in me, the depressed state of mind. Now what? They trundled me back up to the waiting room, where I had spent all morning.

A young nurse practitioner walked in to see me. He spoke carefully. They were very concerned about all that fluid in my legs and stomach. He wanted me to check in, and get some treatment over the weekend. Then, on Monday morning, first thing, they would try the shock treatment again. I groaned. I don’t want to stay here, I said. Can’t we do this as an outpatient? The guy was really good. “Yes, we could. But we are very concerned. We feel like you should check in.” Of course. Doctors always feel like you should check in.

Give me half an hour to think about it, I told the man. He agreed, and turned and left. I made a few phone calls, and talked it over with family and friends I trusted. The advice was all pretty much the same. Check in for the weekend, then see what it all looks like on Monday. There are worse things than spending a weekend at the hospital, although I couldn’t really think of any right that moment.

The nurse practitioner returned in half an hour. And I told him. OK. Check me in. I’d way rather do this as an outpatient, but I’m going to trust that you guys know what you’re telling me. He nodded, and looked satisfied. He had done his job. He had kept me there. A nurse came in soon, and trundled me off to my room over at the Heart floor, on level six. I settled in, feeling sorry for myself. Hospital and hospital food. Those were just about the last things my mind would accept, right at that moment. Oh, well. It was what it was. Hopefully, I’d be out of here sometime Monday, by mid day.

And right that moment, from a dimension far away, the death angel looked on at the scene before him. He lifted his hand to shade his eyes from the setting sun. Well, well. This was interesting. Very interesting, indeed. They were admitting a new patient at Lancaster General. The guy didn’t seem all that willing. But the death angel could see from where he was. The unwilling new patient was sick. Very sick.

“Ah,” the angel thought. “Why couldn’t they have waited a few more days? Then it would have been too late. Then the call would have come.” He marked the incident in his mind, though. This was worth keeping an eye on. Only the Lord knew. But when and if the call came, the death angel would be ready. He was always ready. He prided himself in always being ready.

And that first night went about like I had figured it would. I dozed off, fitfully. No beeping machines in the room. Just an interruption every few hours, as a nurse or an aide stopped by to check my blood pressure and take my temperature. And Saturday morning dawned.

Steve and Wilma and my friend Gloria had stopped by the night before, to see me. And I had told them all. I feel just like I did when I wasn’t in here. I expect to be out by Monday sometime. Saturday morning passed, slowly. Noon. College football was on. I watched, switching between games listlessly. And by mid afternoon, suddenly I felt ill. In my head. And in my stomach. I hated to bother the nurses, but I pushed the call button. And soon enough, my nurse appeared. I don’t feel good, I told her. I feel cold. And my stomach hurts. She took my blood pressure. It was low. Another nurse brought in a bag of some liquid or other, and I was hooked to the IV line.

And for the next few hours, they checked my blood pressure and took my vital signs again and again. Things did not improve. And by four or so, they called in the nurse practitioner who was in charge. No doctors were around over a weekend, on the regular floors. So a nurse practitioner filled in. She had my blood pressure checked regularly. It kept plunging. And by five or so, she made the call. I would be transferred to intermediate ICU. Intermediate intensive care. I remember feeling mildly alarmed about it all. Would this mean I couldn’t get out of here on Monday? But mostly, I remember being cold. Very cold.

And in the IICU, they poked and prodded and did all kinds of tests. A whole bunch of company showed up, too. That’s one thing that amazed me throughout, the people who showed up. Family. Friends. Church people. And people I was surprised to see. And by ten, everyone had cleared out. I was getting colder and colder. And they kept testing me, taking my blood pressure. Around 11:00, the nurse practitioner abruptly made the call. I would be taken downstairs, to an operating table. A team would be called in. And the team would install a catheter into my neck vein. So they could shoot a bunch of drugs into me at the same time.

I was always conscious, through all of what happened that night. I remember clearly most of the details. As the team was being called in, I called my brother Steve. And I told him. They’re doing a procedure, installing a stint thing in my neck. So they can administer more drugs. “I’ll be there in a few minutes,” Steve said. Let the family know, on the Facebook page, I told him. He promised he would.

Less than twenty minutes later, Steve walked in. He looked a little stunned. But he was upbeat. At that moment, I had a pretty good idea that I was in pretty bad shape. I asked for a moment alone with my brother. And we spoke there intensely, me and him, there in that room that night. I told him where my important papers were, in my house. My will. And when I finished, he held my hand and prayed a short prayer. For healing. For comfort and rest. And then the IICU people pushed me off, down the hall, and around to the elevator. Down a floor, to the operating room. It was after midnight.

An aside, here, a few words. I’ve wondered sometimes why people fight so hard to stay alive, to hang in there one more day, when death comes calling. Especially older people. Why? Why fight for more time on this painful vale of tears? What good will a few more moments do you? Or a few more days? Or a few more weeks, or months, or years? In the end, the end will always be the same. Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust. In the end, all of us will die. All of us, without exception.

For me, that night, well, my vital signs were plunging. The lowest blood pressure I heard was 50 over 35. That’s almost comatose. But I was awake, and totally alert. There were a whole lot of emotions that waved through me. But there was one emotion I never felt. And that was fear. I felt none. None at all. Maybe it was the drugs. Maybe I was just exhausted. But I remember thinking, quite clearly. Lord, you know who I am. If you take me home tonight, then so be it. Sure, I want to live. But I got no immediate family. No wife. No sons or daughters. No one, really, who will long remember. So it doesn’t really matter to me what happens. Some things are worse than death. Like a stroke, where you’re totally helpless. Or Alzheimer’s, like Mom had for all those years. Spare me from such a fate. If that means you take me tonight, then take me tonight.

The operating team had me in and out in about half an hour. The catheter was installed in a vein in my neck. And the next thing I knew, I was being wheeled up and up. The ICU, the real intensive care unit. That’s where they were taking me. They wheeled me in right at 2 AM. A male nurse (I think his name was Noah, but I was a little groggy.) and his assistant greeted me. And right there at that moment, as I was being wheeled in, I was as close to death as I have ever been. I was immediately hooked up to many bags of powerful drugs, to make my heart beat stronger. At that moment, my heart was functioning at 30% strength. I knew none of this until later. And for the next two hours, the nurse and his assistant worked feverishly, to get all the right drugs hooked up and flowing to all the right places. By 4 AM, they were done, and I settled back and actually drifted into slumber.

And late that night, the death angel hovered near, his dark sword drawn to strike. He lurked there like a giant specter, waiting for permission. All was silent. The word did not come. And still, the death angel waited. And still, no word. The angel stirred, then, and turned and spoke to his boss.

“Come on, Lord. Let me strike,” the angel said. “I mean, look at this guy. He’s lying there, all weak. No one will think twice, when they check out his true condition, later. Look at him. He’s no warrior. What has he ever done for you?”

And the Lord held up his hand. “I don’t care what he looks like, or how weak he is. This is my child. Sheathe your sword. Your time to strike him will come soon enough.” And the Lord paused, and spoke again, softly. “But not tonight.”

The death angel obeyed, and sheathed his sword. He knew better, but that night, he was stubborn. And he tried one more time, to argue. “Look at this guy. Look at all those lines stuck in him, with drugs just to keep him alive. He’s no warrior. He’s a weak man. What has he ever done for you? Or what do you think he’ll ever get done for you?” The angel paused, then placed his hand to the hilt of his sword. “You know the answer to that,” he said. “Nothing. He has done nothing. He will do nothing. Let me strike, I beg you.”

The Lord lifted his hand one more time, and the death angel knew he might as well shut up. It was no use. And the Lord spoke again, and this time it was final. “It’s not your job, to decide what my child has or hasn’t done for me. Your time to strike this man, that time will come when it’s time. But not tonight.”

The death angel was disappointed. But he shrugged, resigned. His time would come, soon enough. And then he turned, and left the room.

And that night, as I slept, the battle raged for my life in the desolate wilderness. My legs were filled with fluid. As was my stomach. And my lungs had started to fill up, too. Another week without treatment, the doctor told me later, and I would have been gone. That night, the drugs worked in overdrive to shore up a greatly weakened and damaged heart.

As I slumbered on, the valley bottomed out before me. And I started struggling, struggling weakly, up and out the other side. It was as close as I’ve ever come to letting it all go. All of life, and all that life is. And I was exhausted enough that none of it mattered much to me, one way or the other. Only the Lord knows how hard the battle raged. But I remember coming up, awaking from a deep sleep. I glanced at the clock on the far wall. 8:30. And then I heard a familiar voice outside my room. Steve. He had decided to skip church, and come in. I called out to him, and he approached, smiling almost shyly. He reached out and held my hand and asked how I felt. A lot better than I did last night, I told him.

They had brought me food. Breakfast of some sort. It was not appealing at all. Smelled like slop. I could think of only one thing I was hungry for. A fruit cup, with mixed fruit. Can you get me some fruit from the cafeteria? I asked Steve. And he immediately left and went downstairs to bring me the first of dozens of servings of fruit. That’s all I was hungry for, those first few days. And that’s all I ate. Fruit. Fresh, life-giving fruit.

And that was as low as the valley got, on that little journey. That first morning, the drugs had obviously taken hold, and I felt a lot better. For five long days, I stayed in ICU, in critical condition for at least the first two if not the first three. Five days, and I was so tired during most of that time that it never occurred to me to grumble about anything. Well, except for the food, maybe. That stuff was just flat out inedible. But otherwise, I settled back and rested. Each day brought more color to my face and more life to my body.

And the family closed in, in ways I simply could not believe. Janice took over, from her home in Phoenix. And she scheduled things. On Tuesday, my nephews, John and David Wagler (Joseph’s two oldest sons) arrived from their homes in the Midwest. They had left their families, and would stay a few days. Then their younger brother, Mervin, arrived on the train from his home and family in upstate New York. And they all came in to see me, kind of awkwardly. They weren’t used to seeing their uncle, laid out flat and helpless like I was.

Steve provided the base for all the visitors who needed a place to stay. On Wednesday, my younger brother Nathan showed up with our nephew, Ivan Gascho, one of Rosemary’s sons. Ivan had left his family to get there and to travel with Nathan. I was happy to see everyone as they came. And definitely a little awed and humbled, that family took so much time and made so much effort, just to come and see me.

Wrapping it all up, then. After five days in ICU, I was moved to a “regular” room on the sixth floor, where the heart patients go. The next morning, early, they took me downstairs and stuck a camera up through one of my veins to check out my heart cavities. I was told. There will likely be some clogged arteries. And the first bit of all-good news came at me, there. My heart was totally clear. Totally. No obstructions at all. I could see the doctor was surprised. But he tried not to let on.

And the days were winding down, then. Sometime late that week, my heart jumped back to normal sinus rhythm, all on its own. Well, with the help of lots of drugs, of course. A lot of drugs that I’ll be taking daily, for the foreseeable future. The heart-failure doctor gave me strict, strict orders. A low-sodium, no-salt diet. Drugs, every morning and every night. And no alcohol at all, not even a drop. That’s my world right now. And it will be my world for a while.

A quick word here, about all the people, all the friends who flocked in to see me. I mean, I look back at how many people I’ve visited in the hospital, and I think I can count them on one hand. It’s been that sparse for me. But people showed up at my room every day, and every evening. Friends. Church people. The last Saturday I was there, in late afternoon, a tall, familiar figure walked through the door. My friend and fellow author, Jerry Eicher, had driven 4-1/2 hours from his home in Farmville, VA, just to see me. Jerry was instrumental in connecting me to the publishing world through people he knew, years ago. I will always be indebted to him for that generosity. And here he was, in person. I was astounded. We visited about the publishing world in general, and the old days in Aylmer. And he told me it’s time to get serious about a sequel to my book. After less than an hour, he turned and took off for his home, 4-1/2 hours away. I was impressed and deeply touched to see him.

The doctor thought that I might get released the following Monday, if all went well. I was excited and eager to hear the news. Sometime on that last Sunday, I was unhooked from all IV tubes. I felt unbelievably free. I could get up and just walk around, whenever I felt like it. It was all pretty simple and it was all pretty amazing.

My nephew, Andrew Yutzy (Rachel’s oldest son) was scheduled to fly in from his home in Missouri to be with me for a few days early that week. It turned out that he would arrive at almost exactly the time I was being released. He texted me when he landed in Baltimore, and I texted back my location and room number. Just get here when you get here, I told him. And shortly after 2 PM, he strolled through my door, all decked out in Iowa Hawkeye gear. Those Midwesterners sure aren’t shy about which team they’re rooting for. We hugged. And then we picked up my bags and a few bouquets of flowers that had appeared from somewhere in the last few days. And we walked out of that hospital, ten days after I had entered it. I was almost exactly thirty pounds lighter than when I had walked in. That’s how much fluid was extracted from my legs, my stomach, and my lungs.

Half an hour later, Andrew pulled his car into my drive and parked. We carried my stuff into the house. And I told Andrew. When I left for the hospital that morning ten days ago, I stood right here in the kitchen and crossed myself. And I asked the Lord to bring me safely back home again.

“Well,” Andrew said. “He certainly heard your prayer. You are safely home, now.”

Yeah, he sure did that, I answered. And believe me, I’m thankful to be home. It just took a lot longer to get here than I figured it would when I left.

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

Aftermath: It’s been different, since I got back home. A whole lot of lifestyle changes kicked right in. I can’t eat any food that tastes halfway good. The main doctor, the one that saved my life, has been all grim about a lot of things. This past Monday morning, during a follow-up checkup, he told me I’ll be on drugs for the rest of my life, a statement that spiraled me into real depression. I just couldn’t believe him when he said my heart will always be weak.

And on Wednesday, my hunch was backed up by the A-Fib doctors. I sat down with a real nice lady, and we just talked for a solid hour. She told me many things. My heart has stayed in rhythm, and is at 60% strength, up from 30% when I checked in. The drugs I’m on are toxic and they want to get me off all prescriptions ASAP, probably within a few months. They are hoping the heart will get strong enough to go in and do an ablation. Sear some muscles. And she told me. There is no single definitive factor that caused my heart to go off-beat like it did. I’m an enigma.

And she chided me a bit. “Keep closer track of your heartbeat. If it goes A-Fib again, it’s not an emergency. But let us know within a day or so.” And she told me. “You went right up to the edge of the hole and looked down, into the pit. We don’t ever want you to do that again.” No, no, I said. I won’t ever do that again.

And that’s how our conversation went. Compared to all the gloom and doom the heart-failure doctor had dumped on me, I was just ecstatic at what the A-Fib doctor told me. Yes, I am on some strict restrictions. And yes, I will walk the line I need to walk. But I’m hoping pretty strongly that one day my heart will be normal, or close to normal, again.

As always, the Lord holds the future in his hands. So I can only wait and see what tomorrow will bring.

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A Time To Live…

We shall not come back again, we never shall

come back again. It was October, but we never

shall come back again…

—Thomas Wolfe

_____________________

It gets a little wearying, to tell the hard things, sometimes. And there’s been some hard stuff going on, lately, in certain branches of my family. I can only look on in shock and disbelief, seems like. And I guess there’s really nothing left to do, except just tell the story as I saw it happen.

It was a joyful day, that Friday a few weeks back. October 30th. A day long looked forward to, by my sister Rhoda and her family, out in Kansas. It was a special time, because Marvin and Rhoda’s oldest daughter, Sara, was getting married that afternoon. A wedding. With all the fixings and fuss and finery a wedding has. It’s a Beachy Amish church that Marvin and Rhoda attend, out there in Hutchinson. A car church. The service was scheduled for early afternoon, at 1:00 o’clock.

And of course, all the extended family was invited. I told Rhoda, though, a few months back. You can’t make it to every wedding. So I probably won’t be there. I have fifty-nine nieces and nephews. A lot of them are married, and a lot of them still aren’t. So it’s all a bit random for me. I make it when I can. And I don’t, when I can’t. And it’s never anything personal at anyone. I just can’t get to every wedding.

The extended family sure showed up, though. I chatted with my brother Steve a few days before. “Oh, yes,” he said, when I asked. “Wilma and I are flying out on Thursday. And we’re leaving for home on Saturday, the day after the wedding. We won’t be hanging around too long after it’s over. But we’re going. Don’t you think you should come, too?” And I told him what I keep saying to anyone who will listen. You can’t make it to every wedding. Or every funeral, either, when you think about it.

And they traveled from all over, and converged on Marvin and Rhoda’s home. The Waglers and the Yutzys, the brothers and sisters, the uncles and aunts. And a whole horde of cousins, too. This was a big deal. Sara, Marvin’s oldest daughter, was getting married. As had been the case with her mother years before, the hounds have bayed in hot pursuit of my niece for years and years. Undeterred, she fended them all off and traveled on her merry way. And I don’t know, it was around a year ago, I think, when she and Reuben Miller started dating. You could see it was different, this time, for Sara, when you saw the pictures on Facebook. You could tell by the excitement shining from her eyes and by the huge smile on her face. This time, it was going all the way. And so it was, that Friday, as family and friends gathered around from all over.

There’s usually some kind of gathering the night before the wedding, that’s how it’s been from the ones I’ve attended. Everyone just kind of gathers around and sits and visits. And vast tables of delicious food are laid out. It’s time to feast, it’s time to celebrate, it’s time to walk around and meet all kinds of people, and talk. It’s always a good time, a fulfilling time. And after a long evening, everyone kind of ambles off, real late, to their lodging places. Tomorrow would be the big day. The Freundschaft had gathered from many different places, to honor the happy couple. It’s a big thing, all of it is. It’s a wedding, and it’s a party.

There’s one place where the family didn’t come from, though, to help celebrate. And that place is Bloomfield, Iowa. My old home stomping grounds, from years ago. Bloomfield is a little different from a lot of Amish settlements. It’s a very progressive place, in some ways. If you leave the Amish and move away, and make no trouble for anyone, the Bloomfielders will not excommunicate you. They’ll leave you alone, to go your own way. There are a whole lot of people here in Lancaster County who could only dream of leaving from an enlightened place like that.

But Bloomfield is extremely regressive in some ways, too. Extremely hard-core. I’ve grumbled about this particular thing before. And here’s why.

If you leave the Bloomfield Amish, like Marvin and Rhoda did fourteen years ago, if you leave and join a car church, well, there are repercussions. And one of the cruelest is this. The people from Bloomfield are forbidden to attend any weddings of the children of the people who left. Or even visit much. It just is what it is. And it all seems so senseless. I mean, it’s a joyful day for someone in the family, and you are not allowed to go and participate. You’re not allowed to rejoice with those who are rejoicing. I’m not saying a lot of Bloomfielders wouldn’t go, if they could. They would, heaven knows. They’re simply not allowed to.

And, oh, yeah, they may attend all the funerals. Any person dies, anywhere, they may go. They’d be allowed to attend my funeral, even. But I’ve always said. What good does that do for anyone whose life has fled? What good does it do, to pay your last respects, when you didn’t respect that person enough while he was alive to visit him? None of any of that policy makes a whole lot of sense to me. But it doesn’t have to, I guess. Any church is free to make its own rules, and stick by them. And I am free, too, to criticize those rules. OK. I’ll bite my tongue, now.

And so it was that Friday morning, as the sun rose, and the wedding guests stirred to meet the day. No Amish from Bloomfield would be there. That included Titus and Ruth, and their boys. And Norman and Ida, Marvin’s parents. And a couple of other sisters and their families. But there were plenty of other people there, at the wedding, to make up for those who should have been there, but weren’t. And that morning, I felt a little tinge of guilt. Maybe I should have gone. Ah, well, too late now. I texted Rhoda. Blessings to all today. Sorry I couldn’t make it. And as busy as she had to be that morning, looking after everything, she texted back, right soon. “Thank you for your prayers….we will miss you.”

And here is where the telling of it all gets a little tricky. And I go back and relive that morning, from the side lines where I stood and watched in horror as events unfolded around the wedding people and their guests, and around the Bloomfield people, too. Events that will be seared forever in their minds.

Midmorning. Around 10:00 AM. A few hundred miles to the north and east of where the wedding guests had gathered, a few hundred mile away, in Bloomfield, Iowa, the sun was shining, too. A beautiful day. And a busy Friday for everyone. And Norman Yutzy, Marvin’s father, hitched his faithful horse to a two-wheeled cart. He was heading over to help out at the Produce Auction, about a mile north on Drakesville Road. He stopped in to chat a few minutes with Titus, at his truss shop across the road. And then he slapped the reins. The horse and cart lurched off. Down the gravel road, then left onto the pavement. A familiar road, a road that Norman Yutzy had traveled thousands and thousands of times before.

Back in Kansas, things were all astir. There was much bustling about. There was so much to get ready for. The service would be at 1:00 PM. And Rhoda and my other sisters and sisters-in-law were all busy with last minute preparations. Sara beamed and beamed, and disappeared with her bridesmaids to get ready. This was her day, her time. The day she and Reuben had looked forward to for so long. Now it was here, and now it was unfolding. Her wedding day.

Back in Bloomfield, Norman Yutzy may have been humming to himself on that beautiful, cloudless morning, as his horse and cart rolled along right merrily. And as he approached the left turn into the Produce Auction, a large tractor trailer approached from the south, from behind Norman. When the rig’s driver saw the cart in front of him, he slowed way down, below the speed limit. The cart was off to the right shoulder, so the driver began slowly edging his way around, to pass. And that’s when it happened.

No one knows why. No one knows if Norman never saw the approaching tractor trailer, and just turned his horse left, across the road, and onto the drive to the Auction place. All that anyone knows is that the horse did turn left, abruptly, and pulled the cart smack dab in front of the tractor trailer. As slow as the driver was going, there was nothing he could do. Nothing at all. There was a crash. And Norman Yutzy was killed instantly, at that spot, on that road, in that moment.

I heard the news around noon. And you think about that, you think about the tragedy of it all, and it just takes your breath away. Over on this side, you have the wedding, and all the expectant and excited guests. The deliriously happy bride and groom. And all of it laid out, and waiting to happen, in just a few hours. The wedding. The reception. The feasting and rejoicing. The blessing of a new family. The honeymoon.

And over on the other side, cold hard unfathomable death. The grandfather of the bride, the father of my best friend Marvin, instantly and violently killed. All on the same day, within a few hours of each other.

And I thought to myself. Sometimes life throws a curve at you that is almost impossible to take, almost impossible to absorb. This is such a thing, and this is such a day.

But then I thought. Yes. This is such a day and this is such a thing. But you walk forward through it, because there is no other choice. You can and you will and you do.

And what to do? What to do? That’s what the Bloomfield people asked themselves. Titus and the other children. They knew Sara’s wedding was scheduled to happen in a mere few hours. Should they try to keep the news from Marvins, at least until the wedding was over? And I can’t blame them for considering that option. They were all in shock, and it’s hard to keep a clear head sometimes. And I’m not sure quite how it all came down, but somehow they called my sister, Rachel, and told her. Her instant reaction. “We have to tell Marvin and Rhoda. They must know.”

And somehow, Rachel found the strength inside to go and tell my sister and her husband that Norman was gone. And after the initial shock, the thought came to all of them. Would it be possible to keep the news from Sara, at least until after the wedding was over? But they caught themselves. These were extraordinary circumstances. Sara had the right to know. And Marvin and Rhoda called all their children, all their family, off to a private room on the side. And there they spoke the news. Their grandfather, Marvin’s Dad, had been killed a few hours before. Everyone recoiled in shock. And so much of it was swept away like dust, the joy and eager anticipation of that day.

There is some strong, strong blood, buried back there somewhere in the lineage of both the Waglers and the Yutzys. And that blood flows strong today. It showed that day, from the way Marvin and Rhoda and all their family reacted. Marvin spoke gently to his daughter, there in that room. “Let’s focus on the wedding. You don’t have to decide now, about what you want to do later. If you want to go on your honeymoon, that’s completely alright. You don’t have to decide that now. Let’s be joyful, here on your wedding day.”

And Sara did not flinch, and she did not hesitate. She looked right at her father. And she told him. “We will be attending the funeral. The honeymoon can wait. We will be with our family.” And he nodded, relieved. At least the pressure of all that was gone, now. They walked out, then, to join all the guests, as a family. And right on time, the wedding service proceeded.

And I texted Steve, that afternoon. Call me when you can. He called later that evening, and I asked how everything had gone. “It went real well,” he said. “The preacher made a short announcement, right at the beginning, about what had happened. And then they went right on and had the wedding, just like normal.” I’m happy to hear that, I said. “Well, Marvin was going to have a part, a reading of some kind,” Steve told me. “He just got someone else to do it for him. And otherwise, you wouldn’t really have noticed that much was out of the ordinary. It was a wedding. And it was very nice.”

We chatted, then, about Norman. The funeral would be on Monday morning, Steve told me. And most of the Wagler and Yutzy guests changed their traveling plans to include the funeral. They were all heading on up to Bloomfield tomorrow, Steve said. Well, I want to hear all about it, when you get back, I told him. And we hung up.

And I thought a lot about a lot of things, just as I had since I had heard of Norman’s death earlier that day. Of who he was, and of how well I knew the man, years ago. That afternoon, I had quietly decided not to attend the funeral. There are reasons for that, reasons I won’t hash out here. But I did call Marvin on his cell, on the off chance that he might answer. He didn’t, so I left a short and heartfelt message of love and condolences.

My heart was heavy over the next few days, with my sister and her family. And Sara and Reuben. And Titus and Ruth, too. It all hung heavy on my mind, as I combed back through the decades, and sifted through my memories of who Norman Yutzy was.

I remember the first time I saw him. Back in 1976, when a bunch of us came to Bloomfield to build the dairy barn on the farm Dad had bought out north of West Grove. The Yutzy brothers and their sons had already laid the concrete blocks for the barn’s foundation, when we arrived. And they rattled over every day, in their buggies, to keep the building moving along. Those were the ten days or two weeks where I first got to know my future blood brothers, Marvin and Rudy. Right there, that summer, that August, is when and where we first connected.

The Yutzy men liked to holler and carry on a lot, as they were working. Might as well have a little fun while you’re at it, is how they saw it, I think. And of all his brothers, I remember Norman as the quietest. That doesn’t mean he didn’t make noise. He did. He just wasn’t as loud as his brothers. He had a handsome face, and that large Yutzy/Roman nose. And a straight-wired beard. I can’t remember that I ever was intimidated by the man.

Fast forward, then, a few years. To the time that Marvin and I took to running around together, and leaving home and all that. There were a few years, there, that Norman had plenty of reasons to tell me off, to not be kind to me. I mean, it’s always a classic thing, when parents blame someone else’s son for influencing their own son in a bad way. But in all the years that Marvin and I ran around together, in all the years that we got in trouble together, in all the years that we left home and traveled to distant lands, in all those years, I gotta say one thing.

Norman Yutzy never, never took it out on me. And he never blamed me publicly, for influencing his son. He never tried to straighten me out. I have always deeply respected him for that. When I came around, he was always, always kind. Sure, he may have had some personal thoughts about different matters, but he never let on. And right up to real recent times, when I met him at Titus’s truss shop, where he used to work part time, I can say the same thing. He would come up, shake my hand, and just visit a bit. There was no hint of any kind of resentment in his demeanor. None at all. Ever.

The funeral home people weren’t sure that the body could be viewed. But the family insisted. It’s pretty important, to the Amish, that there is a viewing. So they arranged the viewing, and by all accounts, he was recognizable, there in the coffin. It was all set up in my brother Titus’s big new truss plant. Plenty of room there, for the viewing and for the funeral.

And Bloomfield came together, like only an Amish community can. Everything gets taken care of. The bereaved family has no worries about anything. The grave is dug by hand, by others. Vast amounts of food are prepared and served by others. And that Sunday afternoon, hundreds and hundreds of people, both Amish and English, came to pay their respects to Norman Yutzy. He was seventy-seven years old.

And the next morning, on Monday, more than eleven hundred people showed up for the funeral. The big new truss plant was filled to overflowing, and a second service was set up in Titus’s little shop up by the house. The Yutzys came from all over. Every single one of Norman’s deceased brother David Yutzy’s children attended. And most of Ellen’s family attended, too. Norman was her father Adin’s younger brother. We communicated some. I sent her my sympathies. She was going, she texted back. And she knew I would be welcome, too. I thanked her and declined.

After the traditional Amish funeral preaching, the family gathered, one family at a time, around the coffin. And they wept bitter tears of grief and loss for their father, their grandfather, the patriarch of their clan. Then all eleven hundred people walked slowly past, single file. And then the lid was closed, and Norman’s coffin was trundled a few hundred yards down the road to the east, to the little graveyard just east of the schoolhouse that all sits on land that was once part of his farm. The grave had been dug, and the coffin was lowered respectfully. The pallbearers took up their shovels, and soon the earth was piled high on Norman’s new house.

And then it was back to the truss plant, where the Bloomfield Amish fed more than a thousand people. And almost immediately after that, the Freundschaft started drifting away, to distant airports for the long flights home. The clans had gathered one more time to lay one of their own to rest. None of it was planned. It all just happened as it happened.

And I think, too, of what the aftermath will be for Norman’s family. For Marvin and Rhoda, and for all Norman’s children and grandchildren. After the shock, then the rush and fuss of the funeral, after meeting and greeting kin from all over, after that one must go home. To where everything is eerily quiet, all of a sudden. And that right there is when and where it will all close in.

The aftermath, the grappling with the horror of it, the cold sweats, the nights when sleep will not come. The questions, as to why, and all the if-only’s. And the rage at God, that He could ever allow such a tragic thing, especially on the wedding day of a beautiful bride and her groom. None of any of it makes any sense, and it never will.

The thing is, it’s all OK, the grappling, the horror, the questions. And yes, the rage. The Lord is the Lord. And He can take all that we speak from an honest and hurting heart. He can and He will. Not only that, He can heal all the hurts and all the wounds, in time, of course. He can and He will.

This moment is all there is, here on this earth. It’s all anyone has, or ever had. And now is the time to live.

Before heading back to his home in Kansas, Marvin had one more thing he wanted to do. A couple of Amish men, neighbors, had been the first to arrive on the accident scene where Norman was killed. Marvin wanted to meet those men there, right on the spot. And he wanted them to tell him what they saw, he wanted to hear their stories first-hand.

And they met, the day after the funeral, in late afternoon, I think it was. Most of Norman’s children, and the two or three men who were the first on the scene. And the men shared what they had seen with the family. And as they stood there and spoke their stories, they all suddenly looked up into the sky to the north. And saw a strange and wonderful thing.

A giant bird, flying low, really low, just gliding along at about a hundred feet. An eagle, in all its majestic glory. And everyone looked in awe. A rare sight in these parts, indeed. The eagle swept right along the road until it reached the little group of people below. Then it turned abruptly to the right, to the west, and flew off with short thrusts of its powerful wings.

And all eyes below watched as the great bird gradually receded in the distance, then disappeared into the western skies.

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Tales From Old October…

October is the richest of the seasons: the fields are cut, the granaries are full,

the bins are loaded to the brim with fatness…the sun goes down in blood and

pollen across the bronzed and mown fields of old October.

—Thomas Wolfe

_______________

It always slides right in, that feeling in the fall. I’ve never written all that much about it. But when October comes, I always feel the shiver and chill of those frosty mornings again, back in my childhood. It was a time of harvest, then the plow. The shorn fields empty now, of their crops. And the darkness creeping in, earlier and earlier each night, as the sun sank low in the west. It was when we first did the evening chores by lantern light, in the comfortable odorous warmth of the barn. It always stirs the memories in me, old October does.

Here in Lancaster County, I am far from the fields of my childhood. Here, I watch the teams plugging along in the fields, from a distance. And the great old barns sag with the fruits of the harvest. Hay bales in the loft, the silo filled to the top. And in the outbuildings, great sheaves of tobacco hanging from the rafters. I was always taught that raising tobacco was evil. But I have grown to deeply respect what that crop means in the annals and traditions of Lancaster County.

And this October, I figured to write a blog about October. But when crunch time came last week, I sat and fidgeted. How do you write about a specific month, without getting all hifalutin’ and deliberately “literary?” Friday came, and I passed. No blog this week. And I sat down the other night, to try again. And I thought. Just tell the stories you remember, the stories that came down in October. So I wrote out the first thing that came, the thing closest to my mind, because it happened just a few days ago.

I saw the number on my cell phone when it rang, last Wednesday. I was busy at work, but I answered. It was Esther, the Amish lady I take a gallon of raw fresh Jersey milk to every two weeks. And she makes four quarts of pure natural unsweetened yogurt from that milk. She keeps two, and I take two. Somehow, the Saturday before, things got clogged up a bit. And now it was mid-week, and I still didn’t have my yogurt. Yes, Esther? I said. And she spoke, and I could hear something different in her voice. Something flat and serious and far and full of wonder and very calm.

“Well, your yogurt is ready,” she said. “I’m sorry it took so long, this week. You can stop by tonight and pick it up. I won’t be home, but you know where it is in the fridge.” There was a little pause, then. And she spoke again, about what she really wanted to tell me. I had no idea what that might be. “Yesterday, they had Big Church, over in our son Samuel’s district,” she said. Yeah, I said. I know it’s Big Church season, here in October. You gotta get that out of the way, before the weddings can start. “Yes,” she said. “And yesterday, over in Samuel’s district, they ordained a preacher.” And I knew instantly and instinctively what she was going to say next. And lo, she spoke the words.

“The lot hit Samuel,” she said.

And then I couldn’t help but groan, soft and long. Oh, my, I said. Oh, my. Oh, no. Oh, my. I know Esther and I know all her family. Her husband, David. I always stop by, every couple of weeks or so, just to catch up with whatever it is we have to talk about. And to pick up my yogurt, of course. I know their sons, too, and their daughter. I know them all. Samuel is the middle son. Around thirty years old, I’d guess. Quiet, lean of stature. Intense, intelligent. Well-read. When I see him, we always chat a bit about world affairs. And football. He knows I love football, so he always asks about how my Jets are doing.

And Esther told me a little bit about how it all came down, that Tuesday. If they need to ordain a preacher around here, they try to have the church service on a Monday or a Tuesday, or sometimes a Saturday. That’s so the other preachers from surrounding districts can come and witness and offer support. And that Tuesday morning, Esther told me, she went over to Samuel and Naomi’s house, to take care of the children, while they went off to Big Church. Nothing much was said about the upcoming ordination, I don’t think. You don’t talk much about such a thing beforehand. It’s just not done in the Amish world, any musings about maybe becoming a preacher. If the lot hits your son, there will be plenty of time to talk about it all later. And if it doesn’t, well, then there wasn’t much to talk about, anyway, one way or the other.

She stayed there with the children all day, Esther told me. And before Samuel and his wife came home, someone had stopped in to tell her. The lot had hit her son. And when they came home, Samuel and Naomi, she just broke down and wept. “He hugged me. Comforted me. I mean, he’s the one who was just ordained, and now he’s comforting his Mom,” she said. That’s exactly how it should be, I said. It’s a heavy thing, for any parent to absorb, that the lot for preacher hit their son.

And I realized I was hearing something rare and fine, right there in that moment. I was hearing the story of an Amish ordination from a mother’s perspective, something I had never really considered before. And Esther spoke bravely about her son. “He has a gentle spirit,” she told me. “And he wants to see the gospel preached. I think he will be alright.” And I encouraged her, as I could. Of course he will be alright.

But I couldn’t help but groan aloud again. Oh, my. Oh, my. This is such a life-changing thing. But I caught myself after a few groans. Samuel will rise up, and he will be fine, I told her. I know that. From her response, I knew she knew that, too. It’s a fine thing, and it’s a gentle thing, but it’s there, the heaviness and the subdued pride of it. I remember the feeling when my brother Joseph got ordained, back in 1978. We had a preacher in our family, now. And nothing could ever take that fact away. You have a preacher in the family now, I told Esther. That’s an honorable thing, and a somber thing. I had to get back to work, then. We said so long and hung up. But I held these things in my heart, and pondered them.

I’ve written about it a few times before, way back, in this blog. And it’s mentioned, too, in the book. It’s one of the most intense and draining things any Amish man will ever face, or ever endure. Or any Amish couple, or extended family. The making of a preacher. The selecting of God’s chosen one by lot. It strikes randomly, seems like, and it strikes like lightning. And it’s all so brutal and so intense.

There may be other groups out there that ordain a preacher just like the Amish do. Other plain groups, like the Beachys, ordain by lot. But it’s different. Those groups usually vote for who will be in the lot, say, at a Friday night church service. The names are called, of the chosen ones. But the actual ordination isn’t held until a few nights later, usually a Sunday night. And in the interim, the preachers talk in depth to all the men in the lot. One by one, personally. Does the brother feel he has a calling to preach? Will he accept the calling and the responsibility, if the lot hits him? And I’ve always thought. The Beachy guys have an out. All they have to do is say, no. There is no calling, inside, to preach. And just like that, they are excused from the lot. Home free. No book to pull. No terrifying little slip of paper to jump out at you.

Not so, the Amish. In an Amish ordination, it’s wham, bam. Your name gets called, and you struggle to your feet and slowly approach the table where the books are. You and four or five other intensely burdened men. Everyone looks on, all quiet, you can feel the oppressive pressure. And then you pull a book. Any book, it doesn’t have to be in any particular order. You sit there, frozen. And then the bishop comes along and takes your book. Unties the string. Opens it.

And if that little slip of paper is there, on page 770, you ain’t got no choice. You will be ordained. Right there, on the spot. It’s one of the most brutally intense experiences any Amish man (and his wife) will ever endure, to be in the lot. Whether or not the lot actually hits him.

And there have been tales and legends passed down, over the years. I remember a story from my childhood. There was an ordination, and the lot fell on a young man. He wasn’t all that bright, and he most certainly had no intention of allowing any bishop to ordain him. Before anyone could stop him, he bolted. Out the door, some say he jumped out a window. However he got out, he disappeared into the deepening shadows of late afternoon. “We will let him go,” the bishop intoned calmly. “He will come back.”

The young man hid out at home for a few weeks, if I remember right. And then, one Sunday, he showed up at church, a little sheepishly. All right, I’m here. Ordain me. The bishop did just that, and nothing more was ever told or heard, that the young man did not honorably fulfill his duties as a preacher.

And then I remember hearing this story preached, in Bloomfield. I even think it might have been told by my brother Joseph, in a sermon. Somewhere, a long time ago, there was an ordination in an Amish community far away. And the lot hit a young man. Maybe he was more like middle aged. I think he was ordained, there on the spot. But the man refused to preach. “I cannot preach,” he said. And over and over again. “I cannot preach.”

He remained obstinate, insisting he cannot preach. So the Lord took him at his word. And the time came that the man was struck dumb. He became mute. And he never could speak another word, and never did, all his life. That’s the story I heard told. And it all happened because he kept proclaiming he cannot preach.

And what if there is only one person in the lot? I had never heard of such a thing, but I guess it’s happened. Here in Lancaster County, back in the mid 1800s, there was an ordination where only one man got the allotted three votes needed to get stuck in the lot. The preachers and bishops conferred, and decided to go ahead and just ordain him. So they did that, and no ill ever came from any of it, that I heard told. And I don’t know if they just ordained him, or if they made him pull one book, so they could open it and find the little slip of paper on page 770. I wouldn’t be surprised at all, if it happened that way, with the book.

But my friend, Amos, the horse dentist, tells me of another time when there was only one man in the lot. He’d heard the story told, or maybe he’d read it in a book somewhere. It happened in the Honey Brook area, in the mid 1800s. It must have been a pretty small group, there in the district, to be ordaining a preacher. Because only one man got the three votes needed to get in. The preachers and bishops conferred, and this time, they decided to step off the reservation a bit, all on their own. They decided to include another man, a man who had garnered only two votes. You needed three to get in. And that day, the Amish bishop went against all that was ever taught or respected in the annals of that culture. He inserted himself over God. The two men were named, called up. The legitimate candidate, and the one who had only two votes.

And, of course, we all know what happened next. The lot hit the guy with only two votes. And all would have been fine, except somehow, one of the preachers talked, down the road. The preacher told of what had happened that day, and how the lot had hit a man who shouldn’t even have been in it. And of course, too. The poor guy who had been ordained heard the story. He did not take it well. He refused the calling of being a preacher, since he had been ordained illegitimately. Just flat out refused to preach, or walk with that preachers upstairs to the Obrote. He insisted on sitting with the regular folks, not up front with the preachers.

And in time, the pain festered so deep inside his tortured soul that it actually affected his health. He became quite bitter. Not that I blame him. Who wouldn’t? He certainly never was an effective preacher. Who could be, in a system such as that, when he knew his ordination was a fraud?

And it all got pretty contentious and heated, I guess, at least according to what Amos the horse dentist told me. The man was shunned for not being willing to “obey the will of the Lord.” What will? He asked. You stuck me in that lot when you had no business to. I’m not a preacher, and never was. And in time, he left the Amish. He never returned, either to preach or anything else.

And here, the telling of the story gets very strange. The stores the Amish tell, after a death. I’ve heard the whispers of such things, all my life, from stories of people who left the Amish and went off and lived a sinful and worldly life.

Here’s where it gets all Amish, the telling of it. When the man died, years later, they placed him in a coffin in his home. And the people came to see him, to pay their last respects, such as they were. And then darkness fell. And still people came to see the body. And strangely, throughout that evening and all through that night, the lights would not stay lit, anywhere in the house. No matter how many times they were re-lighted.

After ordinations, a much more joyful season comes rolling into Lancaster County. Weddings. They start right after Big Church, in mid October. Every Tuesday and Thursday, all through November and the first half of December. The buggies clog the early morning roads. A whole lot of people gathering at a whole lot of places for a whole lot of celebrations. And thus the next generation of Lancaster County Amish is assured.

And every fall, I kind of keep an eye out, for my builders at work. I ask them. How many weddings are you going to, this year? And yeah, it’s because I want to know, and I want to make conversation. But mostly, it’s because I’m hoping that somewhere, somehow, I can snag me some Roasht. I usually manage to beg some from someone, somewhere. This year, in mid November, the daughter of one of my best friends is getting married. I figure to attend the evening services. And I figure to raid the large tub of Roasht in the cooler. We’ll see how it goes.

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

A small bunny trail, right here at the end. Thomas Wolfe’s “October passage” is among the most famous of all seasonal descriptions in all of American literature. And it’s what triggered this blog. I make no secret of it. The man is my hero, when it comes to what real writing is. Just recently, though, I read a short, vitriolic screed where a real obscure critic just went off on a tirade. I mean, the man went ballistic. And he savagely excoriated Wolfe for even daring to have written one sentence. Wolfe was a drunk, and he couldn’t go home again, and he wrote the worst prose ever published, according to his primary biographer, a shiftless shyster who apparently won a Pulitzer Prize somewhere along the way for something he wrote.

That’s what the obscure critic huffed and raged. Well, now. I’ve never heard of the shyster biographer before. Never heard his name, and I’m sure not telling it here. I’ve sure heard Thomas Wolfe’s name, though. Bottom line is this. The books of the shiftless shyster never sold. Wolfe’s books did, and still do.

Show me any writer of Wolfe’s generation who didn’t drink, and I’ll show you a boatload of forgotten prose that no one buys or reads. Back to the obscure critic. His problem is, he has labored tirelessly for decades under the odd delusion that somehow his writings will be indispensable to all the world a hundred years down the road. Thing is, his books don’t sell now. They never have sold, other than a few hundred copies he managed to shake off on his “Remnant.” I don’t know why he would imagine that anyone will remember his name a hundred years from now, or why that seems so important to him. Because that’s a long time, for history to remember anyone’s name.

Wolfe is gonna make that cut, though. He died in 1938, at the painfully tragic young age of thirty-seven, eighteen days before his thirty-eighth birthday (who knows, what all the man could have produced, had he been given even ten more years?). People will still be reading his stuff in 2038. And beyond. It doesn’t matter how many small, savage critics go after him, when they’re really going after someone else.

Thomas Wolfe didn’t consider himself to be indispensable to any single thing. Or any cause. No real writer does, because you can’t speak to a reader’s heart from a heart filled with such hubris. His Magnum Opus was published posthumously, from his notes. You Can’t Go Home Again. I don’t think he cared that much whether or not he ever got published again. He just lived and wrote. And, yeah, he drank, I’m sure. I mean. Duh. How prissy are we going to get, here?

And if people read my book or any of my other stuff after I’m gone, well, I’d sure like that. I’d like that a lot. It won’t make much difference, though, in the end. Eventually, pretty much every word anyone writes will turn to dust and ashes. And it doesn’t matter how desperately we want to be remembered, for all that wisdom we spouted. The bottom line is this. All we ever were or ever wrote will be as forgotten as if we had never passed through this broken world. There will be no memory of who we were, or what we said.

All else is vanity, and idol worship.

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The Inquisitor…

He understood that men were forever strangers

to one another, that no ever comes to really

know another, that, imprisoned in the dark womb

of our mother, we come to life, without having

seen her face…

—Thomas Wolfe

___________________

The day was rolling right along, like any other day last week. And the phone rang again. Around midmorning, I think it was. Rosita answered, then beeped me. “An Amish guy asked for you.” Which is not unusual at all. I deal with lots of Amish builders, so an Amish guy asks for me a few times every day. I took the call. Hello, this is Ira. “Ira?” the man asked. A high, kind of squeaky voice. Definitely sounded Amish. Yes, I said. Yes, that’s me. “It’s good to speak with you,” he said in PA Dutch. “I’ve been wanting to chat with you for a while.” And he settled in to tell me how he knew who I was.

He was from down south, from the Peach Bottom area, he told me. Oh, my, I thought. A South-Ender. What in the world is he calling me for? I mean, those people are pretty much hard-core Amish. I don’t have a whole lot of connections down there, in the south end. I wasn’t sure about it all, but I thought to myself. This cannot possibly be a good thing. Still. I smiled as I spoke to the man, on the phone. What can I do for you?

And he told me. He had found my book at a yard sale a few months back. Oh, my, I thought again. My book at a yard sale? What’s the world coming to, that my book is at a yard sale? And local, yet? Good grief. He probably got it for a quarter. My book, speaking blood to blood, and heart to heart. It’s been four years. I guess it’s natural, that it shows up at local yard sales. It kind of freaks me out, though.

And the man rambled on, still in flawless blue-blood PA Dutch. He had read the book. Yes? I asked. And what did you think of it? Next thing you know, he’s gonna ask me if I’m in the ban, if I’m excommunicated. That’s always one of the first questions the South-Enders ask. They want to make sure I’m not a heathen. But surprisingly enough, he didn’t go there. He didn’t ask that. He hedged a little. “Well, I read it all the way through, that’s for sure,” he said. “And I have a few questions for you. Would you come around to see me some evening, so we can talk?”

And now it was my turn to hedge. He was from the south end. They’re real conservative, down there. More hard core. And way more strict. I mean, you’re talking about Lancaster County blue-bloods, the way all the blue-bloods used to be, way back. That’s what the south end is. I groaned a little bit inside, thinking of it. This is all I need, some Inquisitor from the south end, harassing me about my book. I’ve never made a habit of wandering into the lion’s den the south end can be. It’s just better, not to tempt things. Not to venture in to places where you know they’re waiting to trap you, places where the conversation can only spiral down.

I mean, I’ve fought all those battles before, over the years. Tried to defend, tried to explain, tried to excuse. It does no good, any such talk. It never did any good. It just made your interrogators feel all the more smug, seeing you squirm. And I remember, back in the 1990s, when I went back home to visit over Christmas. I was done, making excuses. Done defending my choices. And I told my brothers, Stephen and Titus. I’m not Plain anymore at all. I reject all forms of Plainness. Sure, if you want to live that way, I’m fine with it. I’m fine with how you live. That’s your choice. But I am completely English. And I lingered over those words, and savored them, as they came out. I am completely, completely English. And no one was ever gonna see me all squeamish about it. I don’t care if you judge me, or reject me, even. I am who I am.

Somehow, this South-End guy stirred up all those latent memories in me, just from his short phone call. And I steeled myself against him. I just don’t need that baggage. And I’ll never travel with such baggage again, if I can help it. I will not do it. I will not defend the choices I made, way back, to any Amish man hunting me down. This guy was knocking on doors I had not opened in a long, long time. He was real tricky, I thought. He wanted me to come down to where he was, to talk about my book, and what I had written. I recoiled, ever so slightly, on the phone, as all these thoughts and memories flashed back through my mind. But I talked back at him, real polite like. And all in PA Dutch.

Ah, I don’t know, I told him. What kinds of questions do you have in mind? He seemed a little evasive. “Oh, just some questions, some thoughts and such,” he said, still talking PA Dutch. It had been a while since I’d held an extended conversation with any Amish person in PA Dutch. I didn’t struggle to keep up, though. Not much. I grappled a little, to grasp his words, what he was saying, sometimes. But mostly, I ran right along with him. And I told him. Nah, I don’t think I’ll make it down there. It’s pretty far. You know where I work. You are welcome to stop in sometime and ask me any questions you have a mind to.

He seemed a little disappointed, but he took it OK. “Ah, well,” he said. “I would have liked to visit with you in person. You are welcome to stop by anytime.” I hear that, I said. And you’re welcome to stop by here, too, whenever you’re in the area. We could do lunch, if you stopped by. A vague silence beamed back at me. And then we said so long and hung up.

And I mulled it over, some, the rest of the day. Thought about the guy. He had not sounded all that hostile, really. Maybe he wouldn’t have chewed me out. And I thought, too. If my book moved him enough to where he actually reached out to me like he did, maybe he was looking for a way out. I doubted that, but still. You never know. Seemed to me if that were actually the case, the man could have at least briefly mentioned as much. And I thought, nah. Follow your instincts on these things. You’ve been around plenty of Amish people who did not appreciate your book. And chances are this guy from the south end was one of those people. No sense, tempting things, by walkinging into places you shouldn’t.

I didn’t have to wonder long about it all, though. Because the very next day, the next afternoon, the phone rang again. And Rosita beeped me again. “It’s that same Amish guy, from down south,” she told me. Well, I thought. This is interesting. I’ll feel it out a little more thoroughly today, to see where the guy’s coming from. And I spoke. This is Ira.

It was the same guy, all right. Speaking in PA Dutch again. He’d been thinking, he told me. Since I wouldn’t come down to his place, he figured he’d just call me with a few questions. Sure, I said. Go right ahead. What do you want to ask me?

The thing is, I got no fight inside me, when it comes to religious confrontation. Not about things like this. I am where I am. I want to be left alone. I want to walk in peace. So it was a bit of a step out for me, to tell the guy to ask me what he wants. I’m here. I’m open. Give me your question.

And I could feel him squirming a little, over the phone. He hemmed and hawed and cleared his throat. This is a real production, I thought to myself. Then he asked the question that had pressed him to call me twice in two days. The question that burdened his heart.

“Do you still feel the same as you did at the end of the book, or are there some things that would change if you wrote it today?”

That was the question he asked. The question he wanted me to talk about, face to face, down there in the south end. And I felt the vibes. This man is not attacking you. He honestly wants to know. He’s called you twice, now. That takes more than a little nerve, to be that persistent. So at least treat him respectfully.

I chuckled. No, I said. I would not change any of the story, if I wrote it again today. “You wouldn’t?” he asked. No, I said again. It’s just my story. I don’t know why I would want to change anything. I mean, I wrote what happened. Why would my writing of it change, today? Oooh. He hadn’t quite thought of that, he admitted. We settled in, then, and just talked. Or visited, as my father would say. We just visited.

How old are you? I asked him. He told me and it’s just a few years younger than me. Children? I asked. Are any of them married? His oldest daughter is married, yes, he told me.

We talked then, about the Amish in general, and I didn’t feel hostility from him at all. Just curiosity, and general interest. He said “Unsere Leit” a lot. Our people. Our people are this and our people do that. It seemed like he included me in the phrase.

And then he asked. “Do you know what I found really sad in your book?” No, what? I asked. “The fact that you were in your mid-twenties before you ever felt you could talk to God,” he said. “It seems like we could do better, our people, so our young people don’t ever get as lost as that.” Yeah, I said. It was a pretty brutal road. But I don’t hold anything against anybody, from here, from where I am today. It’s just what happened. It’s just my story.

And we chatted, then, about other things. He told me a bit about himself. He’s been knocked around a good deal, in life. He told me a little bit about his children. And then he paused, all of a sudden. When he spoke, there was a catch in his voice. And he just kind of slid it in, sideways.

“Last year my youngest boy got killed in an accident. He was eight.” He spoke the words softly. I recoiled instantly, in empathy and sorrow.

Ah, man, I am so sorry, I said. How did it happen? And he told me. It happened out in the fields. (No actual details, for the man’s protection) I’m so sorry, I said again. No parents should ever have to bury their eight-year-old son. I don’t care what the circumstances are. I’m so sorry you lost your young son. It had to be hard. It still has to be hard.

“Yes,” he said. “It was. And it is.” And we kind of wound things down, then. I needed to get back to work, I told him gently. He invited me to stop by, again. Some evening, just to talk. I heard him way more clearly than I did the first time. But still. I hedged. You know where I work, I told him. Stop by sometime when you’re around and we’ll go for lunch. He allowed that such a thing might be possible. He told me. He had my office number. He wanted to give me his phone shack number. Down south, I think they still have phone shacks. He gave me the number. And I wrote it down.

“Call sometime,” he said, almost wistfully. You never know, I said. I might.

And that was about all there was to say.

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

It’s been a while. So a little update, here, on my sister Maggie. I wrote back in early June of how she was diagnosed with stage four cancer throughout her body. Well, in her colon, liver, and lungs, anyway. The family gathered around her, went down to her home in South Carolina to see her. Eventually, I think, we all got there to see our sister.

And things just kind of drifted along. Maggie was on some kind of natural regimen. And she seemed to be doing fairly well. Some pain, of course, from all those lumps, from all that cancer spread throughout her body. And the blood clots, too. There was an exceptionally large clot in her right thigh. She faithfully soaked it multiple times a day with some sort of treatment mixed in hot water. She stayed pretty weak and could not get her blood counts up to normal levels, or gain weight. But despite all that, she was still up and about and staying real busy.

And life just went on. Dorothy, her oldest daughter, stayed for about a month or so, to take care of her Mom. And then she took her children and returned home to Kalona, Iowa. And Maggie kept on taking her natural stuff, all while getting her blood checked weekly. And the test results were always steady. No one quite knew what all that meant. But it was good news, it was life, we figured, if she was holding steady. And the days drifted into weeks, then months.

Eventually, the family decided it would be good for Maggie to go back to a doctor for a second opinion, and take the follow up tests required, to see exactly where the cancer was. This happened a few months ago.

When the results for the MRI came back, the doctor said the cancer was pretty much isolated to the large tumor in her colon. They planned to remove the surrounding lymph nodes and her appendix. And yes, there were a lot of cysts that they needed to check out, as the first tests had revealed. But if the cancer was actually isolated, there was a real simple procedure to go in and get it. By incision. They wouldn’t even have to cut her open, or anything. We were all pretty shocked. And we all rejoiced.

The Lord still works in mysterious ways, I guess. Last week Maggie went in for her surgery. All went exactly as the doctor had told the family. He went in and removed the cancerous lump from Maggie’s colon, along with the lymph nodes, and the appendix. And then they checked out all those lymph nodes, and her liver. There was a decent chance some of them would be cancerous. And the results came back, a few days later. The lymph nodes were clear, and the liver is clear. All the blood tests were improving. The doctor felt like he had removed all the cancer. But he can’t pronounce her cancer-free until follow-up check-ups are completed. It truly was an astounding thing to see, to experience as an extended family.

Maggie was released from the hospital just a few days ago. And she returned to her home. She’s in a good bit of pain, still, but that’s to be expected, I guess. She rejoices that one of her heart’s greatest desires may now well be fulfilled. She so longed to see her grandchildren grow. To enjoy them in their childhoods, and to see them grow into adulthood.

So that’s how things stand today. I thank all of my readers who took a few minutes here and there over the last few months to pray for Maggie. Thank you. We rejoice in life and light, when we expected to be weeping in the darkness. That much is true, and Maggie’s journey is a miracle to us all.

As she walks into the future, I’m sure Maggie would appreciate any prayers any of y’all would care to present to the Lord on her behalf.

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Death, Life, and Shark Hunters…

Which of us has looked into his father’s heart?

Which of us has not remained forever prison-pent?

Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?

—Thomas Wolfe

_________________

I’m not really sure where to start with all this. I figured to be writing all about Beach Week, right here. And how my soul got all rested up, out there by the sea. I never know, of course, from one blog to the next, exactly what words will come. You think you got it all mapped out, and then life comes knocking around. I’ve said it before. You just write from where you are, wherever that is. Well, you do when you can, anyway. Sometimes you can’t. And when you can’t, you don’t.

And I was pretty much locked in, that Friday morning a few weeks back. September 11th, come to think of it. I mean, that’s a big day, what with all the talk going on about 9/11, and how we must never forget. I remembered where I was, that morning in 2001, and I always think of it. But on this 9/11, I was pretty busy at work. Tomorrow I was leaving, heading out for Beach Week. And this year, I gotta say, I was way more ambivalent at seeing it come than I’ve ever been before. Not that I wasn’t looking forward to it, all the way. I was. But I’ve seen this day, a bunch of times now. You know what’s coming. And you anticipate it. It’s more of a quiet thing, that you feel deep inside. And all that is OK. Quiet anticipation is a good thing.

All that to say, I was looking forward to Beach Week coming right up, that Friday morning. And every year, there’s always that thought way up there in the back of my head. Something’s gonna come along, and make Beach Week not happen. It’s the latent dread we all store, way down there in the caverns of our hearts, when any good thing approaches. Something’s gonna come along, something that’s gonna affect my time by the sea.

And the text came sliding in, right at mid morning. From my sister, Rachel. If anyone knows what’s going on, anywhere, she does. But I was a little perplexed at her message. “Are you going to the funeral?” Well. Are you speaking in riddles now? I thought. What do you mean, am I going to the funeral? And I scrolled up to see our past messages, just in case I had missed something. There was nothing, really, except some Yoder matriarch I never knew had passed away, back in Bloomfield. But that was days ago. So I texted back. What funeral?

Rachel texted right back. “Adin Yutzy died this morning.”

And I stared at her message. Adin Yutzy. I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned his name before, here on my blog. I’ve talked about who he was, as Ellen’s father, in a few real old blogs. The bottom line is, Adin Yutzy was the only father-in-law I’ve ever known. For seven short years he was that. And then he wasn’t, because our world blew up, Ellen’s and mine. But still, there was a window there, when I knew who he was, and I talked to him. There were hard things, looking back. The man could have been a twin to Dad, when it came to cutting off his “wayward” children, when it came to incessantly admonishing them about how sinful they were living. That much cannot be denied, when you look at what I saw when I was married to Ellen. But there were strong and beautiful things, too, in his life. Just like there are strong and beautiful things in Dad’s.

And my first thought was, I’ll call Ellen. We don’t communicate much these days at all, but things are amicable between us. I thought back to when Mom died last year, and how Ellen had messaged me her condolences. And she had told me. “I promised you I would attend your Mom’s funeral with you, if you need someone to go with you. Do you need me to come?” And I marveled at her message. She had remembered. When things were blowing up, I had told her. I got no one to go with me to Mom’s funeral. And she had promised. “I will come, if you want me to.” And now, she was offering. I was touched. But I felt her presence at Mom’s funeral would be about as disruptive as my presence would be at her Dad’s. So I told her. Thank you. I release you from that promise. I really appreciate that you remembered, though. I will be alright. Janice will be there, and she’ll be with me, if I need someone to walk with. So that’s how we left it, back then. And when I got home from the funeral, a beautiful card arrived with hand-written notes of sympathy from both Ellen and her husband, Tim.

I called her, and she answered. I spoke her name and she spoke mine. I offered my condolences. The words we shared will remain between us. For a moment, we cried a little bit together. I told her I’d be thinking of her and her family in the coming days, and we hung up. It all seemed a little surreal.

Later that day, I talked to my brother Steve, like I do every day at the office. He’s a builder, and I’m his supplier. So we chat, usually several times a day. And I called him. Did you hear Adin died? I asked. “Yes, I heard,” he said. And he asked the same question Rachel had asked. “Are you going to the funeral?”

Nah, I said. It’s been eight years, since Ellen and I divorced. I haven’t had any contact with her parents during that time at all. So, no. I just called Ellen, and we talked for a few minutes. And I’ll call Paul, too, her brother. I feel like that would be all that anyone would expect of me. It would stir things up too much, if I showed up for the funeral. Steve agreed, or at least grunted assent. Are you and Wilma going? I asked. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Adin is her uncle. We’ll definitely go.” Pass on my regards to the family, if you get a chance to do so, I said. And we left it at that.

And that evening after work, I went home and packed. Tomorrow morning, I’d pick up Wilm, and we’d be off. It was my turn to take Big Blue this year. I took him to the garage recently, had him all checked out. My truck is getting old, just like I am. Eight years, and 128,000 miles. I look at all that time and all those miles. And I figure I’ll run my truck until it won’t run anymore. It should be good for a few more Beach Weeks.

The next morning, I was loaded up by 6:30, and heading over to Wilm’s. I just have luggage. She has luggage, and lots of other things. A half dozen large floppy hats. Boxes of baked goods, and flat crates of ripe tomatoes. I piled and stacked it all carefully on the back seat and floor of my truck. Only one box was relegated to the open bed in the back. And by seven, we were off. Beach Week, 2015, here we come.

We travel well together, Wilm and me. We chat some. Mostly, she reads a book or something. And on the road, we have the same focus. Just get to where you’re going. Don’t lollygag around. Stop for gas and restroom breaks, and grab a snack. But just keep moving. And we talked that morning about Adin, Ellen’s Dad. Wilm and Ellen are close friends, have been for years. I’m not sure if Wilm ever met Ellen’s parents. But anyway, we talked about it, about his passing. And the funeral.

And I thought back, as our conversation lagged into silence. Back to those seven years, when I had a real father-in-law. Adin and my Dad had a lot in common. Dad came from a hard core Amish place. And Adin came from an even harder core Plain Mennonite/Beachy place. And I remember our wedding day, down in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, back in 2000. Some of my siblings came. Some of Ellen’s came, too. But none of our parents did. I’ve written it before, and this is not an excuse for how things went later. Our parents would not attend our wedding. And they would not bless our union. I’ve always felt that the lack of their presence, the absence of their blessings, actually amounted to a curse.

Adin was always cordial to me. And Fanny (Ellen’s Mom) was always beaming and so gracious. It never was her choice, to reject any child for any reason. She loved them all, and she grieved the loss any of relationship with any child. Just like my Mom always loved all her children, regardless, and always welcomed us home. They were very alike, Mom and Fanny, when it came to their husbands and their children.

I remember a trip we took, Ellen and me, a few years after our marriage. To Bloomfield first, then on down south to Grandin, Missouri. Ellen’s home stomping grounds. Her home farm, her home place. We stayed there with Adin and Fanny for a few days. And I have good memories about it. Adin smiled and was all cordial. A seasoned, old-time realtor, he drove me around the neighborhood, pointing out properties, telling me stories of this and that. I never felt a bit of tension during our stay in that home.

Big Blue pulsed along, on and on, ever further south. I grumbled to Wilm about my GPS. I don’t trust it. Every year, it tries to take me down different roads. And on and on we went. South through Delaware. Maryland. Virginia. Soon, the Bridge Tunnel was coming up. I pulled up and handed the man his thirteen bucks. I’d like a receipt for that, I told him. An older guy, he smiled pleasantly at me. “I’ll be happy to give you a receipt, if you give me two more dollars,” he said. “It’s the weekend rate, I guess.” I fished around for the money. Y’all are ripping me off, I grumbled at the guy. He just kept smiling, took my money, and handed me my precious receipt.

From the Bridge Tunnel, you close in pretty fast, to the Outer Banks. The Saturday traffic roiled and rolled about us. And by 2:30 or so, we were pulling in to Awful Arthur’s, our usual meeting place. Janice and Brian and Melanie were already there, waiting for us. We greeted each other with hugs and laughter. And we all got a table downstairs and just chilled out. This was the magical moment, the magical beginning of a new week. Beach Week. There is no feeling like arriving, knowing that there’s a full week ahead of you of doing nothing that you don’t want to do.

We set out then, for the house. After last year’s new lemon, Janice located another fine mansion twenty miles north, in Corolla. We plugged along in the two-lane traffic. Through Duck, then on. And finally Brian pulled into the development where it stood, the beach house. This one was big, really big, and kind of plain, set up like a square box. The one redeeming factor: the house had a wide deck on three sides, on three stories. We unloaded, then, and I found a real nice bedroom off in a corner of the second floor. And then it was upstairs, unpacking boxes of food and many bottles of wine and whiskey. The girls soon headed to the grocery store for basic supplies. I set up my laptop at the far end of the long table in the dining room. I figured to get a little writing done in the coming days. And I stepped out onto the porch, too, there on the third floor. Less than 300 feet away, the waves crashed and roiled. I breathed in the salt air, deep inside. This was it. This was the time.

And late that afternoon, all the others arrived. Steven and Evonda. Fred and Melissa. Sam Thomas. BJ and Ashley. And Brandon, who joined us last year. We all assembled in the kitchen and sat around and just caught up. There was lots of boisterous shouting. And a few toasts with shots of good quality bourbon. A few of us had not seen each other since last year’s Beach Week.

It always gets real relaxed, the first night at Beach Week. It’s the first night. No formal meal is served. Everyone just snacks on cold cuts and cheese and whatever else there is. Fred hung a string of ltittle box lights out on the porch. And after dark, we all assembled outside on the third floor porch, like we always do, there at Beach Week. Assembled and just talked. It was a loud and merry time. There’s not a whole lot that is off limits, when it comes to the conversations that go on there. We could solve the world’s problems, we figure, if people only had the sense to listen to us.

It got late. And at some point, I found myself seated by the kitchen bar, across from my nephew, Steven. Maggie’s only son. He and Evonda are getting married this very weekend, in a totally private family ceremony. They plan a more public reception next June, sometime. They’ve been together as a couple for many years, and I’m very happy for them. Anyway, Steven and I sat there and discussed a few things. We’d had a few, well, more than a few. And we got all somber, in our talk.

And we talked about the Wagler blood, the extended family, and the traits and tendencies of each branch. Rosemary, my oldest sister, married Joe Gascho. A unique mixture of blood, right there. Wagler and Gascho. Then Maggie, Steven’s Mom, married Ray Marner, one of the calmest and most laid-back personalities you’ll ever meet, anywhere. Joseph married Ive Mae Hochstetler. Again, she comes from very calm blood. The Hochstetler blood calmed the wild and unruly Wagler blood a great deal, I claim. Jesse married Lynda Stoll. Straight Daviess blood, both of them were. I think the Stoll blood runs a little wilder and a little stranger than even the Wagler’s, if that’s possible. And every single one of my other married siblings crossed into the Yutzy blood. Every single one. Naomi married Alvin. Rachel married Lester. Stephen married Wilma. Titus married Ruth. And Rhoda married Marvin.

We talked about it, the wildness and the strangeness of a clan like that. I have fifty-nine nieces and nephews. And mostly, they all get along. Sure, you wouldn’t want them all living in the same community, or anything like that. But they all get along tolerably well, and that’s more than most extended clans like that can claim.

Steven and I sat there in the kitchen. Outside, the others all were still talking and laughing loud. It was getting late. We talked about a few other things, too, things I don’t really feel like telling here. Except he told me solemnly, in response to a rant I kept repeating relentlessly, about how someone had wronged me, had hurt me bad, had yanked me around. I mean, I was in my cups in a real way. Steven spoke to me, in my cups. And he spoke truth.

“You Waglers hold onto hard, hurtful things for a long, long time. It’s one of those traits that you have.” He wasn’t scolding me, just telling me. Well, maybe he was scolding me a little bit. Yeah, I know, I said. I know I hold on to wounds a lot longer than I would ever need to. I’m not quite sure what to do about it.

I drooped then, and settled over onto the couch. Sat there and fell fast asleep. Outside, the party was still rolling right along. I have vague memories of someone shaking me, telling me it’s time to go to bed. Then that someone took me by the hand and gently led me to the door of my bedroom. It was very late. I fell onto the bed and instantly slid into a deep dreamless sleep.

Sunday morning. I got up late, after ten, and shuffled upstairs to find some coffee and some food. My head didn’t hurt too badly from the night before, surprisingly. I stumbled about, feeding my face. The girls were sitting around. I glanced out to the ocean. The guys were already out there, standing in the surf, fishing lines strung out. After coffee, I got into Big Blue and drove the five miles to the Tackle shop, where I bought my fishing license for the week. Then I returned and walked out to the beach to join the others. Today, they were just shore fishing, looked like.

They had not rigged up their shark lines, Steven and Brandon. But I saw their tackle, back at the house. Some serious, heavy stuff. Shark hunters, is what those two guys are. Since last year, they have refined their craft. They actually know what they are doing, I would see that soon enough. But today, on this Sunday, we all just fished for the small stuff, right off the shore. I pulled in a few tiny ones, too small to keep. And after an hour or so, I headed back in. This year, for some reason, the small fry fishing just didn’t tug that hard on me. So I didn’t do much of it.

And I thought of it a few times that day. They would all be together now, Adin’s children. Up there in Ohio, in the little community Adin and Fanny had moved to, oh, around five years ago, if I remember right. They had lived in Grandin, Missouri, for decades and decades. Raised their family there. I guess Adin kind of retired, so they moved out east to where their daughter Sue lived with her family, in Logan, Ohio. And that’s where the man would be buried.

They had come from all around, the children. They’re about as scattered as my family is. Paul and John and Irene and their families live just out west of me here, up in Lebanon. I have kept cordial relationships with all of them, especially Paul. He and I never had any issues, back in those terrible days when my world was blowing up. He always made a point to keep in touch, to invite me to his gatherings. Vernon lives out in Oklahoma somewhere, if I remember right. I only ever saw that man once, and that was at my wedding. He walked Ellen down the aisle, and when the preacher man asked who gives this woman to be married, Vernon spoke for all his siblings who were present. “Her family and I do.” And Glen is an auctioneer, out somewhere in Missouri. The only one of all of Adin’s sons that I never met. I don’t know how that happened. It sure wasn’t planned, on my part. I guess we just never were at the same place at the same time. And Andrew, Ellen’s younger brother, he was there, too. And Sue, and her husband, Tony.

They were all gathered as a family to bury the patriarch of their clan. I wondered how long it had been since they had all been together in one place. It couldn’t have been forty-plus years, like it had been for my family as we stood around our mother’s coffin. But I figured it had been some time. I don’t know that. I’m just surmising, here.

And I remember the good things Ellen always spoke about her father. And Paul, too. They spoke almost in awe of who their father was, at least at times they did. He worked hard, and he taught his children to work hard. I remember Ellen telling me of how her Dad took her deer hunting, when she was just a young teenage girl. And how proud he was, when she shot a real nice buck. And how proud she was, that he was proud of her. He was a worker, and he was a provider. That was all very clear, from all I’ve ever heard spoken of the man.

One of the man’s most enduring legacies came from the most unlikely of places. Adin Yutzy was one of the three defendants in the 1972 landmark legal case, Wisconsin v. Yoder. Where the supreme court ruled that the Amish have the right to have their own schools, and, more importantly, have the right to not send their children to high school. It was a huge deal then, and it still is. Practically all of the homeschooling movement emerged from the aftershocks of that case. I have always admired the man tremendously for having the backbone to simply stand up to the state. To tell the king. I will not bow down. I will not obey. It takes a strong and courageous man to speak truth to power, like Adin did.

And then there was another side, of course. There always is, seems like. The side that I saw, through Ellen. I don’t remember quite what year it was. Probably around 2004 or so. We had gone through a tough period, in our marriage. And for the first time ever, we both went to counseling. It was good stuff, what our counselor friend Sam told us, and taught us. And Ellen and I reconciled, after six months of separation, back in 2003. The thing the counseling did, it woke up a deep calling, a deep yearning inside both of us. We wanted to hear our fathers’ voices, spoken over us as a blessing. I wanted to hear that from Dad. And Ellen deeply, deeply yearned to hear words of affirmation, words of acceptance, from her father.

Sam warned us. It’s always a risk, to reach out. Especially to our fathers. They are set in their ways. And no, that doesn’t make them evil. It just makes them hard of hearing. They don’t understand that language. Can’t comprehend it. It’s a huge risk, to tell your Dad you love him. It’s a huge risk, to ask your father for a blessing. And to me, it all sounded so strange. To me, it wasn’t about risk. It was about sheer impossibility. Why would I ever tell my father I loved him? And why, in my wildest dreams, would I ever remotely believe that he will ever bless me?

Ellen was all about risk, though. That’s how she lived. And this is one of the most poignant memories I have of our time together, the memory of how she tried to reach out to her father. She wrote to him, late that summer. I can’t recall the exact year. But I remember the seasons. She wrote to him honestly, her memories of who he was and how he had always protected her. The things he had taught her, and how she cherished all of those things. She wrote of how she loved him. And at the end, she asked. Can I come home this fall and go hunting deer with you? I would love to do that.

I wanted it to all work out. But coming from where I came from, I pretty much knew it wouldn’t. And it didn’t. It was a brutal, brutal thing to see. I held her as she wept and wept. She wrote to him a few more times. Pleading for acceptance, pleading for, well, pleading for the unconditional love only a father can give. All to no avail. And eventually, her pleading subsided. Her weeping subsided, too. Until she didn’t weep any more at all.

There are so many parallels, between who Adin was and who my father was. Except my father lived long enough, to where the fires of rejecting his “worldly” children burned out in him. He simply got too old, too weary, to fight the battles that defined so much of his life.

That night, we had our first formal meal, around the table. Tilapia (a fancy name for fish), rice, and mango salsa. And wine, of course. It’s such a mishmash of people, but we all gather, every night, for the meal. The first time is always special. As the aging patriarch, I get to pray the blessing before each meal. We all hold hands, around the table. And I always manage to stammer out a few words of gratitude. No words can ever express the real gratitude in my heart. But the Lord knows that. I think He hears what I really mean to say.

Monday. This would be a big day. (And I’ve got to wind this blog down.) The shark hunters set up early. Steven and Brandon. They had it figured out, this year. They had done the research, and they had fished the beaches closer to where they lived. And now, they were here, at Beach Week. They had all the equipment. The short, stiff trolling rods. The huge reels with 80-lb. line, with a large crank handle. They set it all up like they had last year. Except this year, they actually knew what they were doing.

They brought two kayaks, to the beach. Sea kayaks. They baited their hooks with real whole fish, bait bought from the Tackle shop. The rods stayed on shore, usually nursed along by Steven. Brandon boarded a kayak. Two baited hooks were stored behind him, in a little plastic basket. And he set out, with his little double oar. Rolled right along, into the waves. And he rowed and rowed. About 500 yards out, he stopped, and looked back. Steven stood there, with his hands raised. That’s far enough. And Brandon dropped one of those baited hooks. And then rowed off to the right, another hundred yards. Then dropped the second baited hook. And then he paddled hard, to get back to shore.

And Brandon pulled in a shark, early that Monday morning. Way before I ever got out there. I hollered at them, though. This is early in the week. Can’t we butcher a shark? I’d love me some shark steak. Both Brandon and Steven looked at me kind of strange. I couldn’t figure out why, right then. I would, though, soon enough.

And late that morning, Brandon snagged another shark. These guys were for real, this year. I stood by and snapped pics with my iPad, as he fought the fish in. You watch the line, and it comes closer and closer to shore. And then you see the shadow of a log, out there in the water. The shark. Brandon expertly beached the fish. He and Steven swooped down and subdued the beast. Measured the length. This one was right at 74 inches. Just a tad over seven feet long. That’s a big thing, to pull out of the sea.

Sam Thomas and I stood by, close. And we argued hard, for shark steaks. Steven and Brandon paid us no mind. And I got a little bit of a grasp why. A large crowd had gathered around, as if by magic. Oooooh. Aaaah. Look. A fish. What is that, a shark? What are you going to do with it, turn it loose? Steven always smiled, and told the people. “It’s a shark. Do you want to touch it? Come here, if you do.” Most people shrank back, but all of them smiled when they saw the shark being released back into the waters. If we ever get to butcher a shark at Beach Week, I guess we’ll have to go out and catch it at night, when no one’s around.

The Monday wasn’t over, quite. The rigs were reset, the baits taken out and dropped. And I’m thinking it was early afternoon, when Steven’s reel started screaming. There was something big on the other end of the line. And Steven took up his rod and reel, and started fighting the fish in. It took a while. Like I said, Steven and Brandon are true shark hunters. And I saw the shadow of the log again, emerging from the depths. And then Steven beached the beast.

They measured the shark. 93 inches. Just three inches shy of eight feet. The fish snaked around on the beach, as Steven and Brandon fought to remove the hook from its mouth. A crowd gathered, all agog. I made a few weak noises about shark steak. But I didn’t protest much, when Steven grabbed the fish by its tail and drug it back into the waters. And released it. When you release a shark, it wobbles around, all weak. That’s because it’s exhausted, from getting pulled up to the shore by a hook in its mouth.

And that day, as the boys were hunting large sharks from the sea, Adin Yutzy was mourned by all his sons and daughters. Then he was laid to rest, there in a plot close to the woods at the edge of the graveyard. I didn’t follow a lot of actual details that day, but I thought of it a few times, his burial. I suppose his sons or his grandsons carried him to his final resting place.

I had to think, too. The man saw a lot of pain in his life. There had to be a lot of pain, somewhere buried down there deep. Pain begets pain. I think that’s how it works, from what I’ve seen.

And I look at the choices they made, both my Dad and Adin. Choices they made, to reject the children they felt were not walking in the Word. They used the “sword of that Word” to, well, to reject their own flesh and blood. It’s a harsh place to come from. And it’s hard place to be. In the end, it was all such a terrible, terrible waste. A waste of time, and a waste of love. I’m not a parent. But family is family, and blood is blood. And you don’t ever, ever reject a child. Not for any reason.

But somehow, from where I am today, I can only wish peace upon any father who ever did.

And Beach Week rolled along, like all Beach Weeks do. Every night, there was a big old feast. And the shark hunters went out twice again. Three times, total, they set up. And they pulled in a total of six sharks. Steven’s 93-incher was the largest shark caught all week.

On Wednesday night, we had a hymn sing, like we always do. Fred strummed his guitar, and we all just sang our hearts out. I got some writing done. And every night, there was a big feast. There never were any shark steaks, though. Maybe next year.

The week wound down, and all too soon, it was time to head back north with Wilm and Big Blue. Time to settle back in, at home. And this year, the words of my nephew Steven stayed with me, way back there in the recesses of my mind. “You Waglers hold on to hard, hurtful things for a long, long time…”

Before the next Beach Week comes, I want to let go of at least some of those hard and hurtful things.

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The Hitch-Hiker’s Song

Have we not crossed the stormy seas alone,

and known strange lands, and come again to

walk the continent of night, and listen to the

silence of the earth?

—Thomas Wolfe

_________________

It really was all so random, the way things came down at me that morning. Like so many things in life are, I guess. Random, I mean. On a normal morning, I wouldn’t even have been driving west down the road that is Rt. 23. A main artery that slices through Lancaster County, a highway that runs right by my house. Normally, I slip through the back roads, to get to work. But that particular morning, I had a few boxes to pick up from a vendor in Leola. And that’s the only reason I was driving west on Rt. 23, from Sheetz, after picking up my coffee.

And almost right away, I saw him standing up ahead. A man, leaning into the traffic, holding out his thumb. A hitchhiker. You don’t see many of those around here. I can’t recall when I saw the last one, anywhere. And as I drove at him, I heard them in my head, all the words of caution ever told to me. Don’t pick up hitchhikers. It’s not safe. Any person you pick up along the road could be a total psycho. There’s no way of knowing, one way or the other. Just drive by. Don’t let on you see them.

I looked at the man as I passed him. Older guy, probably sixty. With a thin little gray mustache. And I had to decide, right that second. So I did. I swung off to the shoulder, and turned on my four-ways. The man trotted up, opened the door and got in. “I appreciate you stopping,” he said. He sure seemed harmless enough. No problem, I said. I’m turning off, a few miles up ahead, in Leola. Where are you heading? “Lancaster City,” he told me.

And I didn’t really feel like talking a lot, as we pulled out into the traffic. We chatted briefly. And after a few miles, I told him. I’m turning left up ahead. I’ll drop you off at the gas station on the corner, there. He nodded. And then he slid it in so smoothly, it almost seemed like a normal thing. “Any chance you could spare a couple of bucks, so I can catch the bus into the city?” He asked, looking right at me. He panhandled the same way he hitchhiked. Looking you right in the eye. And I mean. What’re you gonna say? No?

Sure, I should have a few ones, I said, as I pulled into the gas station and parked. I fished out my wallet and found three bucks. Here you go, I said. He thanked me profusely. Not a problem, I said. I’d been taken for $3 by a real smooth panhandler, I figured. Ah, well. I’ve been to hard places such as that, or close to it. It’s been a while, but I’ve been there. You don’t forget what it is when someone helps you out, with no expectation of any return. When someone helps you out, and you know you’ll never see that person again. It’s been rare, that I’ve seen such a place. But I have seen it. Felt it. And I know what it is, to be standing out beside the road, in the real world or figuratively, holding out my thumb, asking for a ride. I know what that is.

And that was the first little hitchhiker incident I’ve seen in a few years. I’ve thought about it more than a few times, that I need to write about hitchhiking, some day. But I needed a trigger. This guy, that morning, thumbing along Rt. 23, gave me all the trigger I need.

Hitchhiking has always been a part of the legends in the annals of Wagler family lore. I grew up hearing the stories told. My brother Joseph and our cousin, Alvin Graber, hitchhiked down around Texas way back, decades ago. The details of what all they got into remain a little murky. I’ve mentioned that trip in my writing before, and got scolded good all around for having a wild imagination. So I’m not exactly sure of the details, because no one will tell me. But I know that one night, late, they camped out beside an empty highway, in the ditch. I’m saying, this was in Texas, here. The next morning they woke up to a real busy road, with cars and truck whizzing past their heads, just a few feet away. I guess they got up pretty quick and hitchhiked on out of there. Or maybe they walked to a bus station. I simply don’t have many actual details of that story.

I don’t remember any specific hitchhiking tales from my brother, Jesse. But I remember him telling us, his younger brothers, coaching us. And he got all dramatic about it. “When you’re standing beside the road, don’t just halfheartedly hold out your thumb. You lean into the traffic, like this.” And he showed us. “You hold your thumb right out there, and you look at the drivers in the eye, like you’re expecting them to stop. That way, you’ll get a ride a lot faster.” I’ve often thought of Jesse’s advice over the years. And whether I was the hitchhiker or the driver, his advice has pretty much held true, right across the board.

And from Stephen, there was one hitchhiking tale. That time he left home, walking across the fields and woods, south to Highway 3. I’ve never asked him if he had planned to end up in the town of Welland, eighty miles or so east. But I know he thumbed his way there. It was winter. And it had to be cold. Some driver must have felt pity for a stripling Amish lad, shivering beside the road, with a meager bag of belongings.

Outside that dramatic world, most of the hitchhiking we did was local. Heading to town, half the time the people who picked you up knew you. Titus and I got all brave once, and hitchhiked over west to Centerville, about twenty miles from West Grove. This was soon after we had moved to Bloomfield. We walked the two miles on the gravel road to the highway. Then we walked west along the highway and held out our thumbs, like Jesse had taught us to. I mean, we leaned out, right into the traffic.

And soon enough, a guy in a car swooshed over onto the shoulder and stopped. I can still picture his face. He wore black glasses, and had that sloppy, long-haired 1970s haircut. We’re heading to Centerville, we told him excitedly. And he allowed that he could take us all the way there. And he pulled off onto the highway, at a high rate of speed. The man drove like a madman, way above the posted limit. Probably around seventy or so. And we came blasting around a curve, and there was a cop, coming right at us. The driver reacted dramatically, stomping on the brakes, tilting us all forward with the pressure. “Oh, (F-word), a Bear,” he exclaimed. He didn’t mutter. He spoke the swear word, right out loud, as he stomped on the brakes. Amazingly, the cop ignored us, and we slipped through unscathed. And that’s about all I remember about that little trip. Titus and I discussed it later, in hushed tones, that any man would just off and swear like that, just because of a cop. We agreed that we couldn’t see any reason to ever do such a thing.

And Dad never grumbled much, that we hitchhiked. Mom would have scolded good-naturedly, that we shouldn’t, when she heard we were stepping out. But she never made any big fuss. I guess they both caught rides along the road, somewhere, back in their memories. And I remember once, hitchhiking to Centerville with Dad. I think he had called Henry Egbert, the guy who hauled the Amish around in Bloomfield. And Egbert was busy right then, but he could come in later and pick us up. So Dad and I walked out, a bit west of West Grove. I don’t remember that he held out his thumb. I think he just held up a cardboard sign. He had scrawled on the word, with a black marker. Centerville. And soon enough, a farmer and his wife picked us up. They took us about halfway in. And we stood out beside the highway again. It didn’t take long for someone to stop. I’m thinking a bearded Amish man and his lanky teenage son can’t be all that threatening as hitchhikers.

Most of the hitchhiking I ever did was pretty local. So it was all safe. I mean, who’s going to kidnap or hurt an Amish youth? That’s how we saw it. I certainly never felt any danger. After I took to hanging around Chuck’s Cafe, I often thumbed my way to town. Half the time, seemed like, if I hung around the Café long enough, someone would offer to take me in. If not, I walked east, around the curve, leaning into the passing traffic. I need a ride. And it always worked out.

I remember once, hitchhiking my way home from town, a guy from Las Vegas picked me up. He was driving a Jaguar. I had never had a ride in a Jag before. I gaped at the gleaming wood paneling on the dash. The man chatted amiably. I don’t remember much of our conversation. I wondered fleetingly if he was with the mob, being from Vegas and all. Which means I must have seen The Godfather. Or maybe I had just read Mario Puzo. The man turned his Jag south on Highway 63, then, and I got out, and hitched my way on west to West Grove.

I was a little more cautious on the other side of the equation, over the years. More careful about picking people up along the road of life. During my years of wandering, I traveled the length and width of this land. And back in my Drifter truck days, I picked up a wanderer or two. In Montana, I picked up a hitchhiking woman in the rain. She was on her way to Great Falls, which is where I was heading anyway. She wasn’t all that communicative. We chatted a bit and she asked if I had any pot. Only she didn’t pronounce the word, pot. She said, Pawt. I allowed that I didn’t have any on me right then, and she asked to be let dropped off at the next gas station we passed. And so I left her in the rain, there.

On the way back east from the wheat harvest, I planned to stop in Omaha to see my good friend, Mark Hersch. A good many miles out, I came up on a young couple, thumbing their way right along the interstate. I looked them over as I passed, then made a snap decision. Pulled over, turning on my four-ways. I felt bad for the woman, out there along the road with her man. I had a big old suitcase up front with me. So I told the man as he stood outside the passenger’s door. She can ride up front. You sit in the back, in the bed. He agreed readily. I figured if they were planning on robbing me, he’d be the one to do it, and he certainly couldn’t do it from the back. The woman, a girl, really, sat up front with me. We chatted right along as we approached the city. I asked her for directions, and dropped them off right at their home, a little house in the suburbs. They both thanked me profusely.

And I picked up a few more total strangers along the road, here and there, throughout the years. In South Carolina, while attending Bob Jones, more than one road bum got a ride from me. Invariably, the bums hit you up for a few bucks. And I usually had a five or so to spare. Even as a student. And no, I never worry what any person will do with the money I give him. My duty ends the second the money changes hands. If he goes and spends every cent of demon rum, that’s his decision. At that point, it’s his money. Not mine. And what he does with his money is his business.

Like I said way back there at the beginning, you don’t see many people hitchhiking around these parts. You just don’t. And I figured that was my little experience, that other morning, that evoked a few old memories buried there in the back of my head. That’s what I thought. Until last Friday evening. I had stopped in at Vinola’s for Happy Hour. A few drinks, and some good cheap bar food. And a good time with my buddies. Around seven or so, I was heading out. Left onto Rt. 23, and over toward New Holland.

A quarter mile or so down the road, a man stood, leaning into the traffic. It wasn’t quite dusk yet, and I didn’t recognize him. But I thought, what the heck? I’m into picking up hitchhikers these days. So I swerved off into the next parking lot, a bit down the road. The man came puffing up. Wiry, in his sixties, with a thin little white mustache. Hey, you look familiar, I said. Didn’t I just pick you up the other morning, going the other way? He nodded as he got in. “Yes,” he said. “You did.”

And this time, I had a bunch of questions, as we pulled out into the traffic. What was he doing in Lancaster City? Working, he said. He had just got a job doing remodeling work with a friend. And his first paycheck wouldn’t come in until next week. What was his name? He told me, and from somewhere back there, the man has Amish blood. He never was Amish. His grandpa had left, decades ago. And we just talked. His fiancé had passed away unexpectedly a little over a year ago. “I went into depression,” he said, looking at me kind of sideways, to see my reaction. And I looked right back at him, and smiled. I know all about dark places, I told him. Believe me, I’ve been there, and not that long ago, either.

And we just talked. I’ll drop you off at Sheetz, I told him. And he told me a little bit how hard life had been lately. “But God is good,” he said. Yes, I said. Yes. God is always good. Don’t matter what you’re going through. Even in the dark places, He’s there. You can’t feel that, walking through. But you can always see it, looking back. “Yes,” he said.

We were getting close to Sheetz, where I would drop him off, just down the road from my house. And this time he wasn’t all that shy about it. Could I spare a few bucks, to help hold him over until his first paycheck came next week? And this time I wasn’t talking to a smooth-tongued panhandler. He was just a guy, down on his luck, walking down a tough road. Out there, whacking around, trying to do the best he could with what little he had. Trying to make it, hitchhiking his way to work and back.

Yeah, I said. What are you looking for?

It wasn’t much. “A five would get me some food and milk,” he said.

I dug into my wallet, there at the Sheetz parking lot. I got a five here with your name on it, I said, handing it to him.

We shook hands. “God bless you,” he said. “Thank you.”

You are welcome, I said. God bless you too, my brother. And then I left him.

_________________________________________

And it’s that time of year again. Beach Week. Tomorrow morning early we head out. As always, I am beyond ready for it. It just seems a little strange that the year has slipped by so fast, and now it’s time. I remember last year, how desperately I needed that week to refresh my weary heart. This year, I won’t say my heart is particularly weary. I’m just tired, overall. Bone tired. And I will turn again to the incessant and eternal roll and roar of the sea to calm my soul, and rest.

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Crowds, Hops, and Amish Bands…

Don’t you know that you are a shooting star,

Don’t you know, don’t you know?

Don’t you know that you are a shooting star?

And all the world will love you just as long,

As long as you are

A shooting star…

–Bad Company; lyrics

________________________

It always was a pretty controlled thing, what happened on a Sunday night in my Amish world. We had what were called singings. Where the youth gathered in the home where church was that day, and ate supper, and later sang. Both in Aylmer and in Bloomfield, that’s how it went. And that’s all I ever knew, when I was Amish. Even during the Gang of Six years. We always showed up. A little loud and tipsy sometimes, but we showed up. It was only later, during the brief months of the Old Green Dodge, and later yet, during the year of the wheat harvest and the Drifter truck, that I saw and grasped it. In the older and larger communities like Daviess, there was something a whole lot different going on.

They didn’t call it a singing, at least not back then. I make no claim to know what they call it today. Back then, in Daviess, it was called the Crowd. And I honestly don’t remember that much of how it was, when Eli and I rambled through Daviess in the Old Green Dodge. I was eighteen. I don’t remember much of anything that happened at the Crowd or that we had much to do with girls, there in Daviess. Well, except maybe one. But it was the second time I came around, way later, after I had fled Bloomfield and Sarah. And returned from the harvest out west, in my Drifter truck. I remember how it was, to go to the Crowd. It was a big deal, always the event of the weekend. And looking back, those are among the fondest memories I have in all the time I ever spent in Daviess, then or later. Which wasn’t that much, really. But I’m just saying.

I stayed in a little old trailer home where my friend Eli lived with his brother. I hung out with the Wagler family, some. Worked for them, building big long chicken houses on their farms. They didn’t go to the Crowd, the Wagler boys didn’t. It was way too frowned on, in the Mennonite church they went to. I never felt that they judged me much for going, though. They kind of looked bemused. Ira was just out there, exploring. He’d come to his senses someday, they figured.

The Wagler boys couldn’t take me to the Crowd of a Sunday night, because they weren’t connected to that world, and didn’t want to be. So I had to find someone else who was. And it wasn’t hard at all. One of their cousins, and a close friend, stepped right up. And he had no qualms at all about attending any Sunday night Crowd. He went regularly, ran around all night a lot. Ron Stoll. Ritter, he was called. Still is. And Ritter gladly took me under his wing, when it came to getting to the Crowds. This was way back in the eighties. There was no such thing as cell phones. And I remember stopping at the sawmill along Cannelburg Road with Ritter, late on a Sunday afternoon. There was an “Amish” phone there, in the shack. And Ritter called around, until he got hold of someone. And found out where the Crowd was going to be. And we headed over, in my Drifter truck.

I suppose a guy like me would have been welcome, however he showed up at the Crowd, there in Daviess. Because I come from that blood, and that’s all I would have had to say. But if you showed up with a guy like Ritter, well, you were instantly accepted. Instantly. No questions asked. The man knew everyone. And no, he never was Amish. He was Mennonite. But his parents had been Amish, and in Daviess, that blood ran close, didn’t matter who had left or stayed. And when we got to the Crowd, Ritter got me right in.

And I remember the exhilaration of it all, what it was to go to the Crowd in a late fall evening. I have some vague memories of what it was like, outside, in the summer. But my strongest memories come from when I got back to Daviess in my Drifter truck. It was November. And I stayed around Daviess, for a couple of months, before heading down to Pine Craft. We’re talking 1987 here. That’s a long time ago. But I remember getting to where the Crowd was, with Ritter, after dark on a Sunday night. People mingled a bit, outside in the cold. But the main party was downstairs, in the basement.

This was all happening at an Amish home. And we wandered down, Ritter and me. It was hot down there, that much I can tell you. Heat from the stove, and body heat. It was pretty packed out down there, too. The basement was filled with young people. Amish kids. Dressed Amish and English. All having a real good time, just mingling and socializing. The talk and laughter echoed through the crowded room. Almost everyone was sipping beer, girls and guys. It wasn’t loud, though, as in people hooting and hollering and getting all uncouth. I’ve never been to a Crowd, where things like that got out of hand too much. I’m sure it’s happened, often, especially way back before my time there. But I just can’t say I ever saw it.

Ritter and I had had a few, and I was feeling pretty good. I stood there in the hot basement in my heavy winter coat, chatting right along. And then I felt it, the waves of heat inside me. I tried to fight it off, but couldn’t. And I told Ritter. I need fresh air. A few of us walked single file toward the stairs. And I remember fading out, how it all went dark, all of a sudden. I didn’t crumple down. I simply fell straight back, right into the arms of the guy behind me. He hollered. “Ira’s passed out. I need help here.” The others turned and surrounded me. I came to, then, and mumbled vaguely. I’m here. I’m OK. And they bundled me up the stairs and outside into the biting cold night air. I remember it washing through, reviving me. We stood around in the cold outside for ten minutes or so, talking. Then we returned downstairs. I took off my winter coat. And I was fine, the rest of the night. I’ve always remembered that little incident, because had the guy behind me not been there, I most likely would have cracked my head wide open on the concrete basement floor. I could have been killed, I’ve always claimed.

Near as I can remember, Daviess only had one group of youth, and one Crowd. Maybe it’s not that way now. I hear some changes have come, in the past decade or so. But back when I was around, the Crowd was just where you went, on a Sunday night. It’s where boys and girls mingled, and coupled up. And Daviess used to have a very unsavory reputation, back then. I’m amazed, sometimes, that my Dad had enough sense to move out of that place. But in Daviess, back when I was a child, a real Amish wedding was a very rare thing. That’s because almost all the dating couples got married only after the girl got pregnant. And if you got pregnant before marriage, you couldn’t have a real wedding. You got married in a real short ceremony, on a regular Sunday, after the main church service was over. A shotgun wedding, I guess you’d call it. And that’s just the way it was. I’m not saying it’s that way now. I hear there’s been some real changes in Daviess, and I think a real, regular wedding is much more common there, now, than it used to be. But back then, it all was what it was. Daviess had a real bad reputation, among the other established Amish communities. And like Nazareth in the Bible, nothing good could ever come from there. It was a place of shame and dishonor.

And it seems strange to me. I have no memories of anything real wild coming down at the Crowd. Either I just never saw it, or I slipped through, somehow. I probably attended a few dozen Crowds, total, so my experience might have been an aberration. Because way back, in the sixties and seventies, some real bad stuff happened there in the land of my father’s blood. Crazy, wild stuff. I think there were lots of drugs floating around Daviess during that time. The wild boys often went on rampages. Terrorized the Amish farmers, their own neighbors, just for sport.

One time, a group of young toughs stopped at the farm of a man named Swartzentruber. They made lots of noise and got generally destructive. Poor Mr. Swartzentruber came out from the house and confronted them as they were cutting up his fences along the field. The “wild” youth of Daviess hooted and mocked the man. And Mr. Swartzentruber got so worked up from the senselessness of it all that he collapsed on the spot from a heart attack and died. Right there, on that spot, jeered by the local young toughs from the Amish Crowd. I mean, that’s about as uncouth as any rowdy youth could get. I don’t know who those youth were. They know who they are, I suppose. The thing is, I will not judge what their hearts were back then, from where I am today.

Those were wild days, and wild times. Once, a group of youth got all mad at my Uncle Henry (Wagler) Mealy. They were car (Block Church) people, but I’m pretty sure they attended the Crowds. From what I’ve heard, which may not be all that accurate, these guys were taking instructions to be baptized in the Block Church. Uncle Henry didn’t feel they were quite ready, yet, and he opposed the baptism. He sensed darkness in their hearts. An I think he got it postponed, somehow. The boys got all livid at Uncle Henry. They felt they were totally ready to be baptized. This could not stand, this resistance from an obstinate man like that. And one quiet Sunday night, soon after that, someone snuck in and planted a large amount of dynamite at the base of Uncle Henry’s silo. That person lit the long fuse and got out of there. The dynamite erupted and the explosion swept through the community in waves.

The silo stood firm, though. Somehow, the perp had placed the dynamite so it only blew a small hole in the concrete. I’ve heard it told that had the explosives been placed properly, all of Uncle Henry’s buildings would have been leveled, and he and his family would have been killed, most likely. The FBI came snooping around in the next few months, but as far as I know, no one was ever arrested for that crime. And I gotta say. I don’t care how wild the youth may have been in other large communities, I’ve never heard any story as crazy as that. You get mad at someone because he doesn’t believe you’re ready to be baptized, you go try to blow up his silo. Daviess blood is strange blood.

And there’s another legend out that I’ve often heard, but never saw with my own eyes. Amish bands. In the sixties, seventies, and maybe the early eighties, there were such things, from all I’ve heard told. Teenage guys, playing guitars and drums, churning out the hits of their times. In the eighties, it was the old rocks hits from bands like AC/DC. It’s always been a thing of wonder to me, the concept of an Amish band. Because you know those kids didn’t pick up a guitar, or any musical instrument, until they were at least teenagers. They had to have the music in them naturally, because they taught themselves to play.

A funny little story I heard years ago, back in the early eighties, from an old friend in Daviess. Some years before that, an Amish band from Daviess went on down to Nashville for some sort of competition. The lead singer’s last name was (Wagler) Robin. And he and his boys whooped and sang real good. Total Amish hicks, they rocked the competition, there in Nashville. And they came home with the first prize, whatever that was.

And the story was told by the lead singer’s younger brother, who saw it all happen one day a few weeks later. A long black Cadillac pulled into the drive of their home farm. A man in a flashy suit and tie got out and approached the father. He was looking for the (whatever the name of the band was) band. They had come to Nashville a few weeks back, and he really wanted to talk to the boys in that band. The father listened, briefly. Got out his handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his face. He knew darn well what the flashy man was talking about. But he had work to do, and he didn’t believe in Amish bands.

So he told the flashy man. “Nope. I’ve never heard of that band. Never heard of them.” The flashy man looked all disappointed. “But they gave this address, when they signed up for the competition,” he protested. The father repeated. “Never heard of them.” And he turned away. The flashy man looked all disappointed. I mean, he had driven a few hundred miles to hunt down this phantom band. But there was nothing he could say, that would get him anywhere. So he got into his long shiny black Cadillac in defeat and headed back to Nashville. I have no idea if the story is true, or if some semblance of it actually happened. All I know is that this is pretty much how I heard it told, years ago.

And that’s a little bit of how it went in the Daviess of long ago. I’m thinking some of that wild blood has calmed down a good bit since then. There have been some big changes in Daviess over the past twenty years. They’re more mainstream. They have top buggies, now. I haven’t been to a Crowd since the days of the Drifter truck, back in 1987. And since those days, I have meandered a good bit, around the country. Eventually, against all I ever figured would ever happen, I settled right smack in the middle of one of the largest Amish communities in the world. Smack among the Blue Bloods of Lancaster County. I hung with the Beachy youth in those days, and didn’t pay much attention to what the Amish kids did of a Sunday night. I didn’t know if they had Crowds, or what.

And I’ve learned, since then. The Amish in Lancaster had three different things going on, or at least they did back then. (Who knows what’s all going on, right now?) Saturday night parties. Sunday night supper and singings. And after the singing, on the same farm, there was the hop. Where a real live band played. And their youth groups aren’t called youth groups. They’re called gangs. Not as in the Crips and Bloods. But in more of a benign way, like the Sugar Creek Gang in the books I read as a child.

And I’ve chatted with people over the years, here and there, people who used to attend Amish hops, way back. It’s something I never got done, though, get to a hop. I’ve never seen one. It makes me feel like I missed a valid and fascinating cultural experience, looking back.

And the other week, we got to chatting about things, there at Vinola’s on a Tuesday night after the Bible Study. My buddy, Amos Smucker, the horse dentist, and a few others. And I asked them. Do you guys remember when there were Amish bands around here? I mean, I think most large communities had them, at one point or another, but I’ve never seen one play at any gathering. Are they still around? And do you remember when there were more of them?

Well. Throw out a question like that to a small group like the one I was with, and get ready to hear some real history. And I can only try to speak what I heard in the broadest sense. I got few specific facts, here. Just a broad picture.

Lancaster County is pretty much unique, when it comes to what goes on, on a Sunday night. Or at least it used to be. Way, way back, there were just singings. Just like where I grew up. But then the community got a lot bigger, with each generation. And it was just a natural thing, that the youth divided themselves by temperament. Each time that happened, a name was born, for that group. Names like the Groffies (the first ever gang, back in the 1950s), Happy Jacks, Ahmies, Sailors, Souvenirs, Checkers, Crickets, Ranchers, Green Peas, Shotguns. And a host of others. And when a gang got too big, it divided, just like the Amish divide their church districts when they get too crowded. And so one group spawned another, and that’s why there are dozens and dozens of names out there for Amish gangs that once were.

And I asked. Who thought up the names? Amos looked at me. “No one thought them up. They were just born, no one knows quite how.”

Well. What can you say to that? I am fascinated, by the history of the Amish youth of Lancaster County. Absolutely fascinated, because a guy like Amos will come along and tell you things like that, right when you actually want to hear the real story told. Right when you’re wondering about it, anyway. It all seems a little uncanny, somehow.

One thing I can say, about both Daviess and Lancaster. They’re sure a lot more relaxed about musical instruments than any place I ever lived, growing up. In Aylmer and in Bloomfield, if you got caught with something like a guitar after you joined church, you were in pretty serious trouble. And if you persisted in your sin, you’d get kicked out, just like that. Excommunicated. Here, in Lancaster, I’ve been in Amish homes, just lounging around, and someone unlimbered a guitar. I was pretty startled, the first time I ever saw such a thing. This sure is a different place, I thought. The Blue Bloods are way more relaxed about a lot of things.

Anyway, back to hops and bands. I would guess the first organized bands came out in the sixties, sometime. The seventies were the heyday of Amish bands in Lancaster County. Every gang, except maybe the plainest ones, had several bands. There was one in the older group in a gang. And the youngsters pushed up, too, with their bands, to take the place of the older ones, after they went and got married. And so it went. And from the descriptions Amos told me, I would give a lot to be able to see what he saw, back in his youth.

After the singing, the hop started, The band would set up a stage on a farm wagon. Set up their guitars, keyboard, and drums. Somewhere way back, out of sight, a generator hummed. Electric instruments and speakers take juice. And the authentic thing about true Amish bands, back in the day, was that they stayed dressed in their Amish clothes. I mean, they were at the Amish singing, anyhow, dressed Amish. And so, up there on that wagon they stood and sat, in their colored shirts and vests and Amish hats. Some of them even wore their Mutza suits. I would pay good money to see and hear such a thing.

And the crowd surged around the wagon as the band fired up. And played and played and played. All bands have groupies. This has been true in modern history. And the Amish bands were no different. Amos told me. If a band member winked at a girl down in the audience, that girl would be waiting for him when the evening wound down. It had to be a giddy thing, to play on an Amish band back then. It just had to be.

The hops of that time were totally unsupervised. As in, the parents kept to themselves, and didn’t intrude at all into what all went on. And there was some real bad stuff going on. Lots of hard drinking, and hard drugs, too, in the seventies. And beyond that decade, too. I’m not judging that. Just telling it. An Amish youth in Rumspringa would leave on a Saturday night, and not get back home until late Sunday night, or early Monday morning, and his parents never pried as to where he had been, what he’d seen, or what he had done. Such a thing is simply unfathomable to a guy who comes from where I come from.

And so it went the way it went, back there in the seventies. And then, one fateful Sunday night in 1978 or ‘79, a real bad thing happened. Three Amish gangs got together for one mega-hop. The Antiques, the Happy Jacks, and the Ahmies. It was highly unusual for gangs to mix like that, and especially those three gangs. But that night, they did. They all got together on one farm, somewhere down south a ways. Upstairs, in the barn loft, the bands set up. And the place just got packed out with hundreds and hundreds of Amish youth. Boys and girls, all having a loud, large time. And then the whole barn groaned. And then one side of the loft floor just collapsed from the weight of all those people. I can’t even imagine the mayhem. And suddenly the place was filled with blaring sirens, fire trucks, and ambulances. By some miracle, no one was killed. There were lots of injuries. One young man was paralyzed, and never walked another step. The Great Barn Floor Collapse was an enormous and infamous event in the annals of Lancaster County history.

And after that, the parents didn’t sit back any longer. After that, there rose a determined and sustained resistance to Amish hops and bands. The hops didn’t just disappear. But slowly, they faded out. And soon, not every gang had a hop every Sunday night. Soon, it was maybe once a month, that a hop happened somewhere. And after the barn floor collapse, the hops were usually held separately on a Saturday night. The band members had no reason to dress in their Sunday best Amish clothes, as there was no singing to dress for on a Saturday night. And from then on, you didn’t see them up on the wagons, dressed in their Amish vests, barn door pants, and large hats. They were more apt to wear English clothes. And because a hop was a rare thing, much larger crowds showed up from all the gangs around. And the Saturday night hops just turned into one big wild party.

I’m not sure when the last authentic Amish hop band disappeared in Lancaster County. And I’m not saying there aren’t a few bands around. But you don’t have the authentic Amish look like the bands used to have. And mostly, from the few sources I’m connected to, Amish kids who are picking guitars these days just tend to hang out among themselves. Get together in someone’s hut with a few friends. And so you don’t have the real hops anymore. And you don’t have the real bands.

Sometime in the 1990s, a new movement came sweeping through Lancaster County. Amish gangs that were supervised, where the parents were very much involved. The first of the supervised gangs was the Eagles. I had some close friends who were members of the Eagles, and from what they told me, it sounded about the same as what I knew, growing up. They meet somewhere for supper, the youth do, and they play volleyball, and eat. And later, they sing. After the singing, there is no hop. Everyone just goes home.

And all of that is totally OK, I guess. But still. I would have loved to see the heyday of the real hop, where real Amish bands, dressed in real Amish clothes and hats, set up on a farm wagon and played and sang their hearts out.

I really would have loved to see that.

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Distant Roads: The Wanderer…

The old hunger for voyages fed at his heart….To

go alone…into strange cities; to meet strange

people and to pass again before they could know him;

to wander,… across the earth — it seemed to him

there could be no better thing than that.

—Thomas Wolfe

_____________________

They had told me before I ever got over there, Sabrina and Maryann. The conference is over on Saturday. And we got you scheduled to speak to a group of students on Monday afternoon. That means you have a full day to just do whatever you want. What do you want to do? And I told them. I’m on your home turf, in Germany. I mean, that’s about as astounded as I’m going to get. It doesn’t matter to me, what you plan for me on Sunday. You decide. I’ll be happy with whatever it is.

And they both had their suggestions. Sabrina mentioned the Fish Market in Hamburg, as something I might want to go see on a Sunday morning. Maryann claimed there was an old castle somewhere close that might be interesting. And it seemed to me that my friends were fretting a bit, about the small details. I’m laid back, when it comes to such things. I really am. It doesn’t really matter to me at all, what you choose for me to do on a Sunday, when I have free time. Whatever you figure out is fine. I know you’re busy. I don’t want to interfere too much, in your lives. That’s what I told them. And I meant it. And then I didn’t worry much about it.

And it came sliding in sideways, out of nowhere, the thing we actually did. One more option showed up, when I wasn’t looking for it. And that option, that offer came from Melanie Grundt, my student chauffeur, at the conference. When she told me she had been born and raised and still lived in what was formerly known as East Germany, I got all interested and focused. Asked all kinds of nosy questions. She answered them all cheerfully. And by the time the conference was over, she came up with the suggestion. Maryann backed her up. Why don’t we just head on over to East Germany on Sunday? Melanie will be glad to take us in her car. Show us around, guide us. I jumped at the offer. Yes. That’s what I wanted to do. Go see the small villages and the back country of East Germany with a native guide. There was no question in my mind that I’d get to see things most people don’t ever get to see, when you come from where I come from. I was pretty excited that night, looking forward to the next day.

And the ladies arrived at the hotel, right on time, the next morning at nine. And we headed out into the heat of the day. Beautiful clear skies, with a few puffy clouds floating aimlessly. Melanie’s car was a tiny little thing, almost new. And it had air conditioning. Something we badly needed, in the heat of this day. I settled up front, riding shotgun. Maryann sat in the back. And Melanie stick-shifted the little car around and right through town and out. And soon we were zipping along narrow highways through the German countryside.

There was a lookout tower on this side of the Elbe River. That would be our first stop. We parked and walked the steps up the hill to the tower. Then up the stairs, zigzagging back and forth and up and up. Up beyond the treetops, and there was a very nice viewing platform. And it was just breathtaking, the view. On this side of the river, the West, were all kinds of hills and little mountains. And farmland, too, and villages. On the other side, miles and miles of vast rich farmland. And it was mostly laid out flat. Melanie pointed out this village and that. And she pointed over to the area where she was born and grew up. After fifteen minutes or so, we headed back down. Into the car, then, and through the village over to the Elbe River, which we crossed in a small ferry boat.

We drove off the ferry onto the land that was formerly Communist East Germany. It always gives me a chill, to enter a land like that. To know, to grasp, that this land was a prison, where you were brutally murdered if you got caught trying to escape. I felt the ugliness, the brutality of all that, down deep inside.

And Melanie talked as we drove. Here, close to the river, no one was allowed. It was called the Totenzone. The Death Zone. If you were caught here, you were just shot. No questions asked. You were dead. The Russians strung up a high mesh fence, all along their side of the river. Miles and miles and miles of it. And watch towers, too, stabbed into the skies, every mile or two. The soldiers patrolled the fence, manned the watchtowers, and patrolled the river in gun boats. And she told me something interesting, too. The soldiers were all Russians, there along the river. There were German soldiers in the army in East Germany, but they weren’t posted along the river. Even the Communists had enough sense to realize that it wouldn’t work to command Germans to kill Germans, along the border.

And I looked and gaped and just asked questions. The narrow ribbon of a highway curved along. And Melanie pointed off, to our front left. That’s where her village was. Where she grew up. And she pointed out into the vast, rich fields. Somewhere in there was an invisible line. When she was little, she went playing in those fields, often. And once, she unknowingly crossed that invisible line. The soldiers didn’t shoot at her, just around her, to warn her back. And so she moved back, closer to the village and her home. I asked. Were you scared? And she shrugged. “Not really. They were just warning me back. They weren’t going to kill a playing child.” Wow, I said. You sound so lackadaisical about it all.

The villages in the former East Germany are a bit used and run down, now. I saw many deserted and empty store fronts. After reunification, the young people fled the barrenness of their world. And migrated to the towns and cities of West Germany, where the jobs and lights and the beautiful people were. And Melanie told me. You can buy land, you can buy a small farm in East Germany for 20,000 Euros. It’s just run down, and you’ll have to fix up the buildings. The German government has tried and tried to lure business and industry into the former East. It’s just hard, to get anyone to commit to building a factory over there.

And I asked a hundred questions of how it was, when she was a little girl. And I soon grasped. The people may have lived in some fear, but they sure weren’t paralyzed by it. She had many, many happy memories from her childhood. Life was just what it was, and sure, it was hard sometimes. Her family took the milk and eggs from their little farm, and turned it in at a government station, where they were given coupons for food in exchange for their produce. And once a year or so, she said, there were bananas, there in the grocery store. And everyone went and got bananas. And enjoyed them very much. But overall, from what I heard, she and her family did not starve, far from it. They existed under a tyrannical regime, but they survived quite well. And despite all the wrong imposed on them by the vile false god that is the state, they have some real good memories of it all.

We drove through Melanie’s little village, then, and stopped by her house. The place where she was raised by her grandparents. About twenty hectares in size, the farmette has the classic German farm building on it. One long structure. The house on one end, then the barn in the middle, then hay storage on the far end. It was an old structure, in half decent shape, needing a little bit of repair here and there, on the roof. Melanie lives there with her attorney husband, her two young daughters, and her aging grandma, who is fading into the twilight after a recent stroke.

Early afternoon, now. And Melanie had told me, way back up on that lookout tower. Somewhere along that highway over there, there used to be a village. And she told me the chilling story of what happened to that village. Back just after the Communists took over, and before the fence was built along the Elbe, this little village was quietly rebellious. Its people offered to guide refugees across the river, over to the West. And they did that. Somehow, of course, the authorities discovered what was going on. And one day, a host of soldiers descended on the village. They ordered all the people out of their houses. And then the bulldozed the village into rubble, and buried that rubble in the dyke over by the river. The village people were deported to a destitute land far away.

I had never, never heard of such a thing before. I mean, the story. It’s not something you’ll ever know, unless the locals tell you and show you. And just that close, the story was lost to all of history. By the time of reunification, the village and its name had all but been forgotten. Terrified locals from other villages denied ever knowing of such a place. But the Germans were cleaning the dyke, down by the river, back in the 1990s. And suddenly they unearthed great piles of manmade rubble, the remnants of houses and barns and tools and lives. All buried, and all but forgotten to all of history. Just that close, it was. But now the light of day shone on the horrendous deed that had been unleashed on all those innocent villagers, more than a generation ago.

And we set out, on the way out. The village was not that many kilometers from Melanie’s home village. And we approached, where she thought it was. A few old ramshackle houses stood, swaying. I guess they didn’t quite get them all bulldozed. And we crept on through, then, to the other side of what used to be the little village of Vockfey. And there it was. A little shrine in a three-sided hut. With photos of how it used to look, from where we stood. And there was a wall, with old hand tools mounted on it. Old shovels, rakes, hammers, hoes. Just the heads of the tools. But far more chilling, off to the side stood a little monument. A little pyramid, made from the rubble that had been unearthed out by the dyke. Bricks, mostly, from houses and barns. Chunks of this and that. And there, up front and in the open, a large black tombstone. I mean, when the Russians leveled the place, they leveled even the grave stones. They tried to make the village as if it had never been. And just that close, they got it done. But not quite. And now, here I stood, beside this pyramid, a silent witness to the absolute evil that is the state.

We cruised the back roads, then, just driving through the country side. The land was rich, and dark, like blood. And slightly rolling, like the farmland of Lancaster County, I thought. By midafternoon, we were heading back to the city. Back to my hotel room. One more night, that’s what I had there. And the rains came down hard that evening, and cooled the heated earth. And cooled my hotel room.

Monday. My last full day in Germany. I had told Maryann. I’m speaking to a group of students from 2:00 until 3:30. After that, I’d like to get on the train and head west and south. Toward Switzerland. She checked out all the schedules, and nothing really seemed to work out that late. And she told me. “Why don’t you sleep on my couch tonight? I’ll have a little cookout, and have some friends over. We can get you on a train to Zurich at 8:00 the next morning.” Well, if that’s what has to be, then that’s what has to be, I said. I kind of wanted to get moving on. But I couldn’t, not until my last speaking gig was over. And that afternoon Sabrina picked me up and took me over to the high school where I was scheduled to speak.

They don’t call it “high school” in Germany. They call it Gymnasium. I think there are several levels. Students test out to the level best suited to them. And the teacher met us with a smile. There would be around 150 students. She had about six different passages she wanted me to read. I notched them all out, in my book. And she and Sabrina asked. “Can you force yourself to talk a little slower? These are young students, and they may have a harder time keeping up, if you speak at your normal speed.” Sure, I said. I’ll try.

We sat up front at a little table. I was introduced. Sabrina had my iPad and she walked around the perimeter of things and snapped a lot of pics. The students looked to be around sixteen or seventeen years old. A real young audience, right there. I’m always a little more tense and nervous, talking to a younger audience like that. Who knows what their attention span is? And I was supposed to talk for a good hour. That seemed like an eternity, in my head. A whole hour, talking to teenagers? Oh, well, it’s too late now. You are here. Relax, and just dive right in. And I did, forcing myself to speak slowly. And read slowly. And the students seemed to be paying attention.

I talked and read and talked and read. And talked and read some more. And that little engagement right there turned out to be my longest speech, ever, that I can remember. I talked for right close to an hour. Then I stopped and placed the book on the table. OK, are there any questions? I asked. If you have some, I’ll be happy to answer them. If you don’t, well, we’re going to dismiss class real early today. Because I’m done, otherwise.

After some initial hesitation, a student raised his hand. He had a question. And then they came, as I had hoped they would. For the next twenty minutes or so, I just talked to that young audience, by answering their questions. When I was trying to describe how it was, leaving home for the first time, I asked. How many of you are seventeen? A few dozen hands went up. OK, I said. That’s how old I was, when I got up and left in the middle of the night. I think it sank in a little bit, what I was saying. More questions, then. And then it was over, my final talk on this trip. The students clapped politely for a minute or so, then got up and left. I felt drained and relieved at the same time. Well, I’m glad that’s over. I thought it went OK, I told Sabrina. She agreed.

Sabrina drove me over to Maryann’s apartment, not far from the college. Melanie was there, and Maria showed up, too. And we just sat outside in Maryann’s little back yard, like old friends. Sabrina, Maria, Melanie and Maryann and me. We sat around and drank beer and talked about the conference, and how it had all come down. Remembering. “It’s so much work,” they told me. “So much to schedule, to look after.” Well, if you ever have such a thing again, I’m always delighted to show up, I told them. I’d sure like there to be another time, whether it’s a conference or just me lecturing to students. Either way, I’m OK with it.

And soon Maryann served us the meal she had cooked up. Steaks. Salad. Bread. And it was all good. By early evening, the guests had left, and I stretched out on the couch in Maryann’s living room. Time now for some sleep. Tomorrow, I would leave this place. It was fitful sleep that came to me that night, but it was sleep.

The next morning just before eight, Sabrina showed up. My ride to the train station. And there was a bit of drama, right there at the end. My iPhone didn’t work over there, so I didn’t carry it with me. Packed it in my bags, or so I thought. That morning, as I was packing everything up to leave, I realized I had not seen my phone in a few days. So I checked out the pockets in my Messenger bag, where I could swear I stuck it. Nothing. I checked everywhere, in all my bags. No phone. I hollered to Maryann. I can’t find my phone. I wonder if it’s still at the hotel. And she got right on the phone, bless her heart. And I caught snatches of what she was asking, and what the hotel clerk was telling her. “Yes, from room number 315,” I heard her say. And then. “Someone will be stopping by very shortly to pick it up.” I gaped at her. Do they have it? “They do, at the front desk,” she told me. “I mean, I wonder when they were planning to make any calls to us about it.” It doesn’t matter, I said. We can stop by and pick it up on the way to the train station.

Sabrina smiled in disbelief, when she heard what we had to tell her. My phone was at the hotel, yet. It was no problem, to stop by and pick it up on the way. Sabrina looked at me, and she said, “Your Guardian Angel is sure looking out for you this morning.” Yes, I said. Absolutely, he is. I could just as well have left without my phone, and things would have been a whole lot more complicated. I hugged Maryann good-bye. Thanks for all your gracious hospitality. Thank you for putting me up on your couch. Thanks so much. And then we took off for the hotel, and the train station, Sabrina and me. And her teenage daughter, Emily, in the back seat. She was going on a field trip with her class that day, Emily told me.

I remember how it was the last time I was fixing to board a train on my own, all by myself, there in Germany. It seems so long ago. And this time was nothing like the first time. This time, I was very calm and laid back. Other than that big red suitcase I had to drag along, nothing got to me, much. I found my boarding platform, and waited in the gathering heat of the morning. Trains whooshed in and out of the station. I waited patiently until the right one came along, slid in and stopped. And I poured through the door with the crowds, dragging my luggage. It was all OK, though. No panic at all, inside me. I had been in this place before. I stashed the big old suitcase in the luggage rack at one end of the train car. And settled in, then, for the trip to my next connection. I was heading to Zurich, from there, to Fribourg. The French-speaking section of Switzerland, where my friends, the Ribauds, lived. And I kept an eye on the German landscape outside as it flashed by. I didn’t have to drink it in voraciously, not like last time. But still, I wanted to see the land I was passing through. And I did.

I had messaged my friend, Carline Raboud, a few weeks earlier. And she had messaged back. Come around on Wednesday. We have a room for you to sleep. This was Tuesday. I figured to get to Fribourg, and then get a room for the night. Then, tomorrow, Carline would come and fetch me. And we’d go from there. I felt a little bad, being a bother like that. But, hey, when you got connections to people in a farm family in Switzerland, you might as well make the most of them. They can only say no, if it doesn’t suit them to see you. The train sliced through the ancient landscape, right along. Around midday, I walked to the dining car, and ordered a large bowl of stew, a water, and a beer. Zurich was coming up, right soon. That evil city, that harbors a lot of bad memories for me.

The train was running late, though, as late afternoon approached. And I got a little nervous. I was supposed to have twenty minutes to change trains in Zurich. That time got whittled down, more and more. And by the time we pulled in, I had less than five minutes to drag my luggage downstairs, over to another platform, and up again. I simply grabbed the big old red suitcase. Forget about rolling it along. Carry it. Carry all your bags. I made it back upstairs, after stumbling on the concrete steps on the way back up, and skinning my knee. Score another one for evil Zurich. I made the train with about a minute to spare. And off we went, for the hour-plus ride to Fribourg.

One thing was definitely different this time around, from two years ago. I noticed it right away. That was wireless internet, or Wifi. Back in 2013, it was hard to find, anywhere. You were lucky if your hotel was wired. During my stay at Leuphana last time, I just checked in once a day, at the University. My hotel never had free wireless. Well. Since then, I guess Maryann and Sabrina told the hotel people. If you want us to board our guests here, you better get free Wifi. And it was right there, this time. But I was astounded to find it on the train, as well. The signs were there. Free Wifi. I had some issues, linking on for the first time. A nice German passenger across the aisle offered to help me, when he saw the trouble I was having. And I got linked on, as the train snaked on through the German countryside.

And I linked onto Booking.com. The site where you can reserve a hotel room, just about anywhere in Europe. And I checked out the hotel in Fribourg where I had stayed last time. Hotel du Faucon. Reserved a room, for one night. And after I got off the train there, I remembered where it was, about four blocks away. I trundled my luggage down over the cobblestones. Last time, that French taxi driver has ripped me off by pretending the hotel was far away, so he could charge to take me. No such thing this time, though. I walked into the lobby shortly after seven, and checked in. The nice lady even spoke a little English, and we got along better than I expected we would.

My room was in the second floor, facing the main street outside. The thing about European hotels is, you can open the windows. Crank them wide open. You can lean on the sill and just view the street life below. Americans would be horrified at such a thought. And at the liability, if some stupid guest leaned out too far and fell out. That night, I opened the window wide, and leaned out and looked. And then I went outside and walked about, and ate at an outdoor café. As darkness settled in, I returned to my room, and just enjoyed the bustle and flow of the street life below me in the window frame.

The next morning, I slept in. Carline would arrive around midmorning. I dragged all my stuff down, settled with the front desk lady, and sat on a chair in the tiny lobby, by the open door. And after a while, here she came. My good friend, and as lovely as ever. Carline. We chatted as we walked to where she had parked her car. And I mentioned. I haven’t had coffee, yet. “Oh, we have a Starbucks, here, now,” she informed me proudly. OK, Starbucks it is. We each ordered a medium coffee. Six and a half francs each. Wow, I said, handing over the money. That’s kind of wild. Carline laughed. “You’re in Switzerland, now,” she said.

And we caught up as we walked to her car. She’s still in college, although out now for the summer. She worked nights, at a local hospice. I apologized. I had no idea you’re working all night, every night. Now I’m going to keep you from getting your sleep, and you have to work tonight. She waved that off. “It’s not a problem. I’m dropping you off at Jean-Pierre’s house this afternoon. I’ll get some sleep then.” And she asked. “There’s a big castle, not far from where I live. I thought we could go there, and I can show you around, and we can eat lunch there. Would you like that?” Absolutely, I said. And off we went then, out of the city, and onto the narrow winding roads into the impossibly beautiful Swiss countryside.

I’ve mentioned it before. Everything in Europe is so old. As was the vast castle we visited that day. It was a huge complex, with a little village inside the walls. And all kinds of shops and restaurants. We walked all around the place, then settled in at a restaurant. And I remembered a dish from when I was around last time. Rosti. A Swiss dish of fried potatoes, covered with a slab of ham, topped off with an over-easy egg. I remembered how delicious it had been last time. Can I order it here? I asked. “Of course,” Carline pointed it out on the menu. A mere 23 francs. Oh, what the heck? We both ordered the dish, and it was every bit as delicious as I had remembered.

And after the meal, we meandered around, ending up at Jean-Pierre’s house. My old friend, the preacher man. We had met and hit it off last time I came through. And he had asked me to speak a few words, in his church. Which I did, through Carline, as the interpreter. That was all pretty wild, the first time around. I was all upbeat and excited just to be there. This time, I was way more calm and settled, as we drove over to where Jean-Pierre lived. We knocked on the door. He was upstairs in his study, so it took a few minutes for the man to open the door and greet us. He hugged us both. His crinkled smile was exactly as I remembered.

And he invited me to his back patio. Carline left, soon, to go home and take a nap. She had to work tonight. And I sat down outside in the back with my old friend. He brought me a beer and poured one for himself. And we just sat there, the two of us, and caught up like old friends do.

We talked about a lot of things. About how the whole world seems pretty unsettled right now, and what that might mean. It’s a pretty scary thing. And I told him. You look just like you did, back when we met, in 2013. Back when you took a day off, to take me to where I needed to go, to see the castle where my ancestors were tortured and killed.

You look good. I’m the one who looks older, now. I got mostly gray hair, in two short years. And I’m heavier. I didn’t pay much attention to anything at all, health-wise, last year. I was walking down some real dark roads, back then. And it all caught up with me, this past March. I was in the darkest place I’ve seen in a long time.

I felt young, the last time I was through here. Young and exuberant. I don’t feel young much anymore. Or exuberant, either. But still. I have kept walking. And now, I’m not where I was, back there in that dark place. But I sure remember how it was. Vividly.

He smiled his crinkled smile. There was no judgment in his face. We sipped our beers, and just talked about things. The turmoil out there, in the world, all around. And he spoke, then. “You have been to dark places. You see what’s happening in the world around you. You will be able to help others, to speak out, to show them the way, when the time and place is right.”

Well, what do you do with such a proclamation from such a preacher man as that? Over the years, I’ve met a few preachers like that, here and there, who made all kinds of predictions. You will do this, and you will proclaim that, and you will lead people to the Lord. And I gotta say. I’ve never felt the slightest hint of any such calling, ever. I got nothing much to say to anyone about anything, except what it is to walk free.

But when Jean-Pierre spoke, there was something different going on, right there. I don’t know, I told him. It will never be any conscious talk. If people read what I write, and it helps them, well, I’m OK with that. I will speak my voice, wherever I am, with no pretensions. The Lord can take that wherever He wants to, I guess. I’m sure not looking to be anyone special. I won’t speak to people from above. I’ll only speak to them face to face and eye to eye.

After three hours of good company and good conversation, I looked at the time. It was evening. And I told Jean-Pierre. I need to go. And he offered to take me over to the Raboud farm. We drove over the ribbons of roads, through the scenic countryside. Farmers were out and about, in their fields, baling hay, mostly. And on the roads with large wagons loaded with large hay bales. Carline and her Mom and sisters were waiting for us in the house. Jean-Pierre walked me up, and chatted for a bit. We shook hands, then, and hugged. And he told me what he told me last time we parted. “Give my greetings to your people.” I will, I promised.

We feasted that night on home-grown steaks, potatoes, and salad and wine. The Raboud family welcomed me to their home and their table. It was interesting, as always, at least when I’m there. French is the native language in the area. The children speak French and German. And Severine, one of the daughters, married Daniel, a guy from Mexico. So there’s some Spanish talk going on. Of course, I speak only English, and a smattering of rough German. So it was a great mishmash of languages and voices, all around the same table. I visited with the parents, Carline acting as translator. We feasted and laughed. A large time was had by all, I think. And I thought about it later. Sitting around the table in fellowship, eating the evening meal, is a universally joyful thing the world over, in every culture and every language.

The next morning, soon after eight, Carline dropped me off at the local train station. She’d checked out the schedule. I would go back to Zurich, and catch a train at noon. For Vienna, Austria. That’s where I had decided to fly back out of. I had never been there. It’s a real old city. So I booked my return flight from there. Carline checked with the clerks in the small train station. Then we walked down the ramp and up on the far platform. “Take this train to Fribourg, then switch there for Zurich, then switch there for Vienna,” she instructed me. I’ll be good, I said. We hugged. Thanks so much for taking care of me. I’m sorry to keep you up. You’ve been working all night. “It’s not a problem. I’m going home now to sleep,” she said, smiling. The poor girl looked exhausted. I thanked her again. And then she left me.

The train shuddered and took off. I arrived in Zurich with over an hour to kill. So I stood off to one side and people-watched. The Europeans are a little different than people in this country. Somehow, it seems they dress a little sharper. And they use public transportation, like trains, a whole lot more than we ever will or have over here. And soon enough, I wandered off to find my train. My Rail Pass was for first class, so I looked up front for the right car. First class in trains isn’t the equivalent of first class on planes. I mean, the seats are maybe a little softer, a little nicer, but you sure don’t get babied around like you do on a plane. I settled in, and the train took off. This was an eight-plus hour trip. I would arrive in Vienna at 8:30 PM. I had no problem with that, though. What better way to see the European landscape, than from the windows of a train? I couldn’t think of any.

And it was a pretty wild ride, all the way through. I saw the foothills, the baby Alps, leaving Switzerland. Huge mountains. But still, babies. And it was a little freaky, sliding right on over into Austria. The train sliced through very narrow valley, first off. And I gaped at the houses and villages hanging onto the sheer walls of the mountain cliffs. On and on we pulsed, and the valley gradually widened, closer to what I have seen before.

Darkness was settling as we pulled into the Vienna station. And the rain was settling in, too. From the train, I had booked a room at a nice hotel about a mile from the station. And what with the rain and all, I sure didn’t want to drag my luggage anywhere. So I approached a taxi in the long line of taxis waiting outside. I pulled up the address on my iPad and showed it to the driver. It’s not far, I said. “Yes, I can take you,” he replied. I don’t know what it is with taxis and me in Europe. Last time, I got ripped off in Fribourg, when my hotel was within easy walking distance on a sunny day. And now, the driver started his meter, and we edged out slowly into the traffic. Left at the next light, then down a few blocks. That’s where the hotel should be. But no. Road construction, all of a sudden. The road was closed, leading to the hotel. The driver mumbled and punched at his smartphone for an alternative route. I didn’t say it, but I thought it. You’re in this part of town every day. You should have known this road was closed. You probably knew, and now you’re just killing time and adding miles. We took wide detour, around several blocks. He pulled up right outside my hotel. Eight Euros, to ride four blocks. I mean, who can complain about that, especially in the rain? I paid the man and thanked him.

After checking into my room, I went out walking. The rain was gone. And I walked up three or four blocks, to the main drag. A wide, mall-like setting, lined with shops on both sides. All the way over to the old city. That night, I strolled only a few blocks, then stepped into a bar for some food and drink. Tomorrow, I would walk further down.

Vienna is an old, old city. And I asked the nice lady, at the desk at the hotel. And she told me where to walk and how far, to get to where things get real interesting. I thanked her and headed out. I have no idea of the actual directions. To me, it seemed south and west. But I got back on that main drag, and just walked and walked and walked.

And off to my left, then, there loomed some big, elaborate structures. I had walked past a real nice bar, and was kind of hungry to go back and see what it had. But I approached those structures, on my left. Absolutely magnificent architecture, in the massive, massive courtyard. And then I walked up to the doorway of one of the buildings. It was a museum. Kunst Museum. I’d never heard of it before. I was intrigued. So I walked through the front door. There was no line, getting in. Not at that time of day. I paid my 14 Euros, and took my ticket and walked in. I had no idea of what it all was that I was walking into.

The next five hours, the rest of the afternoon, I walked in awe through that amazing place. To do real justice, you’ll need three or four days. I ambled through an amazing display of Egyptian artifacts. Mummies. Caskets. Stone monuments. And then on, through a maze of Greek and Roman monuments. Busts of leaders. Citizens. Women. Children. All in chalk-white original stone. I reached out and touched a few of them, when there was no one around. I couldn’t help myself.

And then I stumbled into the rooms of art. And I’m talking room after room after room after room. Real original stuff. Including a couple of rooms that housed the originals of Peter Paul Rubens. The premier Baroque artist of his time. I simply stood and gaped at his massive, wall-sized paintings. This was a production, what was going on here. And it was real stuff. I had some sense of what I was seeing, the rarity of it. And I reveled in it all.

And by late afternoon, I was out of there. Heading back, to my hotel. And about halfway there, I stopped at a sign I had seen on my way out. Bar and Grill. In English. I was intrigued. And I walked upstairs to the bar. Sat there, on a stool. Can you make me a dirty martini? I asked in English. The young bartender’s face lit up. “Yes, yes,” he said. “I can.” And he mixed me one right up, with dark olives and dark olive juice. It was delicious. And I ordered food, of course. A hamburger. They don’t know what a hamburger bun is, anywhere in Europe that I’ve seen. They stick the burger patty into a sleeve of half-closed bread, soaked in all the condiments. I’m not complaining. It’s all delicious. The burger and the dirty martini were among the best I’ve ever tasted. Both of them were. Which just goes to show how uncouth I am here at home, I guess. But it was what it was.

I meandered back to my hotel, then. And that night, I went to bed early. Because in the morning, at 4:00 AM, I would be taking a taxi to the airport, way out there on the edge of the city. Booking.com had claimed this particular hotel had a shuttle to the airport. They laughed, the hotel people did, when I told them I needed their shuttle the next morning, early. “We don’t have a shuttle,” I was told. “We can get you a taxi for 40 Euros. It’s a long ride out there, to the airport.” And I was feeling pretty livid at Booking.com. A shuttle to the airport, indeed. You people are all messed up. But I smiled at the hotel person. OK, I said. If that’s what it is, then that’s what it is. Just have that taxi here, right at four. I need to catch my flight.

And it was all pretty surreal, when my alarm went off the next morning. At 3:30. I got up, showered, and packed all my stuff into my luggage. Including the three posters I had signed and dated, back there at the conference. Posters I had just taken, on my own. Maybe I’ll frame one of those sometime, for myself. And maybe I won’t. I sure don’t plan to give a single one out as a gift. It’s just not near as big a deal to me, as it was the first time around. I dragged my bags downstairs, and approached the man at the front desk. Another guy in a suit stood there, talking to him. I’m looking for my taxi, I said. And the desk man waved at the guy in the suit. Here he is.

There’s something about me and taxis, in Europe. They had told me, the hotel people. It’s forty Euros, the half-hour ride to the airport. And I kept a keen eye on the clock in the taxi. It kept rolling right up. This was early morning. There was no traffic, to speak of. And when we pulled up to the airport departure gate, the time clock told me I owed about 32 Euros. I was fine with forty, though. And I asked the driver. What do I owe you? And he told me. “Forty-five Euros.”

Well. Here I was, at the airport, Determined not to miss my flight out, like I did last time. And here was a taxi driver who had my bags in his trunk, trying to rip me off. But they told me it would be forty Euros, at the hotel, I said in broken German. The taxi guy got all animated, all of a sudden, and unleashed a great torrent of words in German. I caught snatches of his protest, as he talked. The bottom line was this, and we both knew it. He was charging me more than I’d been told, because he knew he would never see me again. He was ripping me off, because he knew he could.

I will not judge that man’s heart. I will not do it. He has to survive, however he can. He had a real nice SUV, and he was dressed in a suit and tie. And I tried to imagine, even as we were driving along to the airport. What kind of circumstances is this man in, that he shows up in suit and tie, at four in the morning, in a vehicle like this, to drive me to the airport? I sighed and handed him his money. He smiled and unloaded my bags and wished me a “Gute Reise.”

And from that point, everything unfolded almost perfectly. I had watched my emails carefully all week. My friend back home had applied for first class status for my return ticket. And all week, no news. Nothing. So I checked in as a common plebe that morning. Back to the way it was before. A short flight from Vienna over to Milan, Italy. The only time I ever set foot on Italian soil, right there inside that airport. Maybe another time I could stay longer. And the big old jumbo jet to Newark loaded right on time. Again, back to the sardine section it was for me. I jammed my carry-on into the luggage rack that was too small and too tight. And took my seat in the middle row, by an aisle. And everyone loaded quietly. I looked around in astonishment. Where was the flight orator? The baby, warming up? There was no sound of any. And no orator ever showed up.

The plane took off right on time, for the eight-plus hour trip. I slumped in my seat and conked right out. At 6:30 that evening, I pulled into my own drive, and walked into my own house. And it felt pretty good to be home.

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

A few housekeeping notes. Maryann emailed me the link last week. My keynote address at the conference was filmed. And now the actual speech was edited. Almost exactly thirty minutes long. The question and answer session will be just as long, I think. That half hasn’t been released, yet. It should be ready in the next month or so. So, anyway, here’s the blog with the You-Tube link, the link to my actual book talk. I guess what startled me the most was my accent. It’s pretty heavy, almost German. I had no idea I sounded a little bit like Arnold Schwarzenegger. But I do, in places. Oh well. It is what it is, I guess. Take a listen, if you want.

And it’s hard to believe it’s that time of year again. The Great Annual Ira Wagler Garage Party is just around the corner. Saturday night, next week. I’m looking for probably the biggest crowd, ever. The tenant is friends with the auto dealer across the street, so last year he got me parking privileges over there. If everyone who said they’ll be here actually shows up, I’ll need the space. And if not everyone who said they’ll be here shows up, well, there will be some paring of the guest list for next year. I got people waiting in line for an invite. Just a little warning. If you tell me you’re gonna be there, be there. Because if you don’t show up, you won’t get another chance to tell me that again.

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Distant Roads: Plain People Conference…

The haunting beauty of that magic land had been his soul’s

dark wonder. He had known the language of its tongue the

moment he had heard it spoken. He had framed the accents

of his speech from the first hour…He had been at home in it,

and it in him. It seemed that he had been born with this

knowledge.

—Thomas Wolfe

______________

It felt different this time, as the day approached. Don’t get me wrong. I was pretty excited to be heading back overseas. But it felt different this time. I had been there before. This was the second time around. And the second time around, some of the wonder just ain’t there, just ain’t as strong as it was the first time, when the journey’s coming up.

But still. It’s a big deal, anytime you get invited anywhere to talk about your book. You bet it is. And it’s an even bigger deal, when you get invited to a far country like Germany. I mean, we’re talking pretty much halfway across the world, here. It’s not like meeting some local group of students, or some local book club at some suburban house. No. The local stuff flows in and out, around me, right here in my home setting. And it’s all good. But when you get invited across the pond, all expenses paid, that’s a little higher up there on the scale. I mean, someone seriously wants you to be somewhere, to talk about your book. That’s how I’ve seen it, felt it, anyway.

And the day just slipped up on me. When a big deal, a trip like that is coming up, I don’t pay it much mind, when it’s still months out. I just kind of keep an eye on it, sideways. Make sure I got my tickets bought, that my passport is not lost, and is up to date. And such stuff. About a week out, I start getting a little excited. And then, as the day approaches, it all sinks in, all fresh and wild.

It’s time. The journey beckons at the door.

And that’s how it felt a few weeks back as the first of the month got here. It felt like I had things to get done, some shopping to do, but I didn’t stress it much. And as usual, I packed the night before. This time around, though, I stared glumly at the big red suitcase. What to pack, to fill that thing? Sabrina had written me. “It’s hot up here in northern Germany right now. The grass crackles when you walk over it.” And I wasn’t sure, just what all to pack, when it came to clothes. A few pairs of long pants, khakis. A few pairs of shorts. A half dozen shirts, a few nice ones. I was on for the keynote speech on Friday night. Can’t wear shorts for such a thing, I figured. So I packed some nice clothes. And soon enough, they were both filled to the brim, my big red suitcase on wheels, and the little burgundy carry-on that I always keep with me. (And now that I’m home, I will say this. Right here. The big red suitcase has taken its last trip overseas. If and when I get back there again, to Germany, I’m packing light, and I’m packing my carry-on only. There’s no sense lugging a ton of stuff with you that you’ll never use, not unless you’re driving to the beach for a week. Then, maybe.)

And the day dawned, and I knew it would be a good trip. Sure, I felt it, the slight tenseness in the pit of my stomach. I always feel that, when heading out on a long journey such as this. But I could feel this was a good trip, coming up. Because a few weeks before, the email had arrived. From United. My seat had been upgraded to first class, at least on the trip over. A good friend of mine had told me. He had a half dozen or so free upgrades, from all the flying he does. He’d see if he could get me upgraded. Sure, I told him. I’d like that a lot. But I didn’t sweat it. If it came, it came. If it wouldn’t, it wouldn’t. And a few weeks before, here’s the email. Upgrade. To business class. Which is first class, for United.

I’ve never flown first class, ever. Always heard wondrous tales of how great it is, though. And I looked forward to it. That day, July 1st, my friend picked me up at work. He would take me to Newark, NJ, to catch my flight. I loaded my bags in the trunk of his car, grumbling at the large red suitcase. Wonder if it’s too late to repack? Nah, drag the thing along. This time. And we chatted, as we cruised east on the interstate roads. And he told me. When you’re checked in, go look for the first-class lounge. All you have to do is show your ticket. They have a real nice lounge, with free food and drinks. I gaped and nodded and listened in awe.

He dropped me off outside the United zone. We shook hands, and I thanked him. And went lugging in with my ton of baggage. The place was fairly crowded, for mid afternoon. But then I saw it. The first class check in counter. Not crowded at all. For the first time in my life, I trundled up importantly to that counter with my luggage. Stay cool, here. Act like you’ve been here before. Two very polite gentlemen greeted me. I extracted my passport from my trusty old messenger bag, slung across my shoulder. The same bag that accompanied me to Europe last time. The gentlemen remained very polite as they checked in my large red suitcase and printed out my ticket. That was fast. They bowed, then, and pointed me on. Next up, the TSA line.

I don’t like airports. No. That’s an understatement. I absolutely detest airports because I despise the monsters that are the TSA goons. It’s a colossal waste of public funding, that whole apparatus. And I’ve said it before, right here on my blog. I’ll drive two days one way, before I’ll walk that TSA gauntlet. But now and then, you don’t have a choice. Like when you’re flying to Germany to talk about your book.

And that day, the lines moved fitfully. In good time, I was through. No one had pawed me, so that much was good. I grabbed my bag and trundled away. More than two hours to kill. Now, for that lounge. I had never paid any attention to the signs before. Now, I noticed. United Preferred Customer Lounge. I found the lounge closest to my gate, and walked in. A long hallway. I handed my ticket to one of the very polite ladies behind the counter. She smiled and welcomed me by name. Mr. Wagler. She waved me in. And I walked forward into the holy sanctuary.

It was a big place, with many rooms and many comfortable couches and chairs and tables strewn about. I located the snack food, fixed me up a plate, and took a seat at the end of the bar. And I looked around me. These were all beautiful people, no doubt about that. You could tell. Nicely coiffed, mostly fit, nicely dressed in good clothes. These were people who were used to the best, used to getting what they wanted. They had paid whatever upcharge was required to fly first class to where they were going to. And people who can do that are a little bit out of my league. That’s just all there is to it. Not that I have any problem with any of all that. I really don’t. Live as well as you can afford to. I got no issues with what you have, or how you travel. And I’m sure not envious at all. More power to you.

I hunched down a bit on my bar stool, trying to exude confidence. I belonged here, with these people. Yes, I did. Well, today I did, anyway. The barmaid greeted me with a smile. What kind of scotch are you serving? I asked. And she knew what I meant. What kind of scotch are you serving that’s free? “Grant’s,” she said, and my opinion of the United special lounge took a pretty steep dive. But you do have Glenlivet? I asked. “Yes, but you have to pay for it,” she answered. “Eleven dollars.” Get me one, on the rocks, I said. I can’t drink Grant’s. I just can’t do it. So that’s what she did. I sat there and sipped my drink and ate my free food and surfed on my iPad and kept checking out the place and the people in it. They all seemed so relaxed and fit and comfortable. There really is another dimension out there, in life, at least when it comes to traveling in airports. That much I can tell you.

More than an hour later, I left the lounge, and headed to my gate. We’d be loading soon. And when the announcement came, I got up. Joined the very short line to first class. The mob of plebes milled about behind me as I boarded the plane. Today, I was a beautiful person, or at least pretending to be one. Today, I would fly in style. I found my seat, close to the back, by the aisle. A man in jeans and suit coat fidgeted there. I smiled at him. He greeted me. German accent. Then he abruptly got up and walked to the very front row of seats. Spoke briefly with a woman sitting there. Then he came back and approached me. Spoke in good English. “My wife and I are separated, because we bought late tickets. I’m back here and she’s all the way up front. Would you consider changing seats with her?” Well, what are you gonna say to that? No, I don’t want to? I couldn’t, so I smiled. Of course, I’ll gladly do that. I walked up to where the woman was getting out of her seat. She smiled and smiled and beamed. “You are such a kind, polite man,” she gushed. I just smiled. It’s OK, I said. But I was thinking. Aw, shucks, lady, tain’t nothing. Trust me, I’m just grateful to be up here in first class.

I settled into large soft luscious seat, and a very nice flight attendant stepped out of the front room and smiled at me. “Are you Mr. (I forget the name, but it sure wasn’t mine.)?” she asked. No, I’m not, I said. I’m actually listed in the back row, but I just changed seats with that lady. She wanted to sit beside her husband. And I told her my name. She smiled again, and handed me something that looked like a menu. “Can I get you something to drink, before we take off?” she asked. Sure, I’d like that. Do you have any single malt scotch, like maybe Glenlivet? I asked. “We only have Dewars,” she told me, and right there was my first little disappointment in first class. Come on. Dewars? Blended scotch? That’s not cool at all. Oh, well, I guess I’ll take it. With a little ice, please. At least Dewar’s was a step up from Grant’s, the rotgut they had tried to serve me in the lounge. Apparently the people who make decisions at United don’t have much appreciation for good scotch.

And no, I’m not a scotch snob. I just like good Highland Single Malt, that’s all. I settled back then, and just relaxed, and sipped my awful Dewars. Back in the sardine, uh, I mean the coach section, the plebes were loading. I could feel it, because that’s where I’ve always loaded before. People jamming bags in the luggage racks, bags too big to fit. And people lined up, waiting patiently, to get to their seats, and their own jammed luggage racks. And somewhere back there, about now, an orator was warming up. A baby, set to roar and scream all night, all the way over. I’ve been there, I’ve seen it all and felt it all. But not tonight. Tonight, I was up front with the beautiful people, traveling first class. And you can bet I reveled in every moment of all that.

Without going on too long, let me just say this. It was fantastic, the whole experience. I was seated way up front, by the window. And the seat to my right remained empty, right up until about five minutes before takeoff. Then a pudgy, stubbled man came rushing in, and seated himself beside me. A German, looked like. And I spoke to him in perfect German. “Sind sie von Hamburg?” His tired face lit up, and he rattled off a great torrent of German in response. “Ya, ya, Ich bin von Hamburg…” And a whole lot more. I waved in surrender. Ich binn nicht Deutsch. I konn ein kleine bissel sprechen.” And he slowed way down, and spoke in English. From bad connections all day, he almost missed this flight, this final leg to his home town. He had flown over to take care of some business for his company a scant two days before. And it was all one harrowing, hectic thing, to get back here to catch his flight home. Just that close, he had missed it. The man was quite the chatterbox. I settled in with my traveling companion for the next seven hours. He flew first class all the time, I could tell by watching him. And I just kind of did what he did, when he wasn’t noticing. At least I fancied that he didn’t notice.

It’s such a different world, in first class. They bring you a menu, and they bring you all the drinks you want, leading up to the meal. No single malt, of course, but just about anything else you can think of. Wine. Beer. Bourbon. (I settled for Jack Daniels.) And the server comes around. You get a five-course meal. A real five-course meal, too. Not served up prepackaged. Nah. This stuff is served up hot, on a real plate. I chose the fillet. I forget the side dishes. But they brought me a salad, first. Then another dish, then the main dish. I mean, this was all going on while the plane was flying at 38,000 feet. And, oh, I almost forgot. Before they serve you anything, they bring you a hot white towel. Wipe down your hands, wipe your face. Ahhh. That hot white towel just felt so delicious.

I chatted off and on, with the pudgy German to my right. I told him why I was flying to Hamburg. An academic conference. I pulled out a copy of my book and showed it to him. He looked all befuddled. “I can’t understand why anyone would fly you to Germany just to talk about your book,” he said, quite frankly. I chuckled. Can’t say I can, either, sometimes. But I’m darn sure going, if they invite me, and pay my way. He nodded and chuckled. “I can’t blame you for that,” he said. A hard-core German businessman, right there.

It’s a seven and a half hour flight, from Newark, NJ, to Hamburg, Germany. You leave the US in the evening, fly seven hours, and it’s morning in Germany. I was so enraptured by my first class surroundings that I had a hard time settling down for the night. You can lay those first class seats right down, flat, like a bed. And I did that, soon after dinner was served, and I had sipped my last whiskey. I huddled sideways, covered by a blanket. And that’s the luxury I traveled in, that night, on my way over to Leuphana University, where I was scheduled to do a keynote speech about my book on Friday evening. I’d get there Thursday morning, all strung out, from the time change. And by the next day, I had better be all settled, in my heart, to speak my heart.

I slept that night, off and on, and it was fitful sleep. Now and again, I glanced at the screen up front that showed the flight’s progress. And soon we were over halfway there. Soon, it would be morning, and soon I would disembark from the only first class flight I will probably ever see in my life. Now get some sleep. Of course, the harder I tried to sleep, the more I tossed and turned. And soon the plane began its descent. You can feel when that happens, from the pressure in the cabin. I sat up and opened the window shade. It was dawn out there, and I could see land far below. Germany. We had arrived. Lower and lower, and I could make out little clusters of buildings. And they stuck up like gashes in the sky, great forests of those ugly white windmills. The “green” movement is still gospel in Germany. I could tell, from all those forests of gaping, ugly windmills.

We landed, then, and I got to unload first, right along with all the other beautiful people. First class, you load first. And you unload first. I followed my peers through the labyrinth of rooms to the customs stations. There, a few bored border guys sat and stamped our passports. On then, to baggage claim, and then on out the door into the heat of the morning. And it was hot. I saw the young man standing, waiting. Benedict, a student assistant. He had been dispatched to meet me. I approached, and greeted him. He smiled and welcomed me. And soon we were on a regional train to Hamburg, then on to Leuphana. And it felt all different, this time. Besides being just tired, I mean. The lay of the land was familiar, because I had been to this place before.

From the train station, we took the bus to Leuphana University. Benedict helped me trundle my luggage a few blocks to the same hotel where I stayed last time. We stood in the courtyard in the stifling heat, while he called Maryann. I heard him tell her. “We are here, at the hotel.” A few minutes later, she arrived on her bike. Maryann Henck, one of the original gang of professors that brought me over the first time. She smiled and greeted me, and we hugged. We pulled my luggage into the lobby, and she helped me check in. We chatted right along, then, as I filled out paperwork to get reimbursed for my travel expenses. And then we took my stuff up to my room. All the shades and curtains were shut tight, but still, the room was overly warm. It was like a hundred degrees outside. And they don’t have air conditioning in their buildings, in northern Germany. It’s just not something they do, because it rarely gets hot enough that you need it. I need to rest for a few hours, then we can head downtown to the conference grounds, I told Maryann. She went downstairs and returned a few minutes later with a small fan. At least I’d have some air and some noise. I thanked her, and she promised to give me a wakeup call in a few hours.

I napped fitfully in the heat, on my half-sized bed. (Hotel rooms in Germany are very small, from what I’ve seen.) My body was six hours behind, and I was tired. That’s always the hassle of international travel. Your internal clock gets all screwed up. Around 4:30, my phone rang. Maryann. She’d be over in twenty minutes or so. I showered, then dressed in shirt, shorts, and sandals. Seemed like the natural thing to wear, in this heat. Maryann came knocking then, and as we were leaving, we met Dr. Donald Kraybill, and his daughter, Joy Kraybill. And a few other scholars heading out. Maryann guided us to the closest bus stop, and soon we were heading downtown, to the place where the conference would be held the next day.

It’s called the Glockenhaus, and it is one amazing old building. The old timber frame beams still stand, as they have stood since the place was built. I’m not sure exactly what all it was used for over the years, but it was built in 1480. Yes. 1480. Twelve years before Columbus set sail for new worlds. And I was reminded so many times, on this trip. Everything in Europe is so old. In America, around Lancaster County, if I see an old barn or stone house that was built any time in the 1700s, well, that’s pretty old, for here. In Germany, in Europe all over, a building from the late 1700s is still considered a baby of a building, pretty much, or at least a young child. A few more centuries, and you might delicately mention that the building is now an adult. The Germans don’t blink an eye about any of this. It’s the Americans who are astounded. And it’s all just astounding to me.

On the one end of the Glockenhaus, a small podium stood, and maybe forty chairs spread out wide in four or five rows. The conference, that’s where it would come down. And I thought about it, again. I couldn’t recall ever attending any academic conference, anywhere, any time, in all my years. I wasn’t sure what I really thought of such a thing. Probably like a writer’s conference, I figured. Where people get together to read their papers and slap each others’ backs and maybe make a few new connections. I just didn’t know. But whatever an academic conference was, I was walking right into one.

And we gathered to meet each other, that first night, all of us who came for the conference. Whether to just attend or whether we were speakers. It all seemed pretty surreal, maybe because of my jet lag. But I was actually here, in Germany, walking into an entirely new experience. A conference. And there, on that floor, I met Dr. Sabrina Voeltz for the first time on this trip. She was so busy with the scheduling of everything that was going on that I had not seen her before. She saw me from across the room and walked up to me. We hugged. I can’t tell you how happy I am to be here, I told her. You did it again. You actually brought me back to Germany. And she smiled and beamed. And claimed they were delighted to have me. I’m always grateful to come, I told her.

It’s a lot of stress, to get a conference like that together. She didn’t say that, but I could see. And she had told me, but she reminded me again. “Tomorrow, I’m reading my paper in the conference. And it’s all about your book. I know your book inside out, from doing my research for the paper. Soon I’ll know it better than you do.” I laughed and told her. Look. I’m just happy to be here. If you present a paper about what my book is or isn’t, that’s just a bonus. And I’m really looking forward to it. After more small talk, she excused herself, to go look after the snacks and drinks that were being served. I helped myself to a bottle of good German beer and a plate of snacks. Small clusters of people milled about. I mingled here and there.

The heat was just oppressive, during every day I was in Germany. Over a hundred degrees, most days. But thankfully, it cooled down a good bit at night. A couple of evenings, the thunder showers moved in. And that night, when I got back to my room, it had cooled down outside. All I had to do was open the door to the outside patio, and let the cool air flow in. That chilled the room down, pretty fast. And that first night, in Germany, I slept pretty good. Yeah, tomorrow it was coming, the conference. And tomorrow night it was coming, the time for me to speak in front of a crowd. And I felt it, the tremor of nervousness. Oh, well, I told myself. You’ve done this before. You know the ropes. Tomorrow will take care of itself. Tonight, I would sleep. And thankfully, what I told myself was true. That night, I slept soundly.

Friday morning. The big day had come. I dressed in shorts and shirt and sandals again, and headed down for some breakfast. I’m not a big fan of breakfasts, back home. But I am, in the hotels of Europe. They take that meal seriously, over there. A huge buffet spread, with all kinds of cold cut meats, boiled and scrambled eggs, exotic breads, two kinds of granola, and three flavors of yogurt. And all kinds of jams and spreads that you can apply to the bread or toast. And juice and water and steaming hot coffee.

After chowing down on all the good food, even though I was not really that hungry, I walked outside to meet my driver, Melanie, a student assistant who would take me downtown to the conference. She pulled in right on time. I thanked her for coming to pick me up, and we chatted during the ten-minute drive. She was a student in the American Studies department, an assistant to Sabrina. A nontraditional student, I guess you’d call her. She made the decision to go back to college, after talking to the professors there. And somehow, she caught the vision that she wanted to teach English there in Germany, in their schools. And somehow, it came out, in that short drive. She was born in Communist East Germany. That was the life she knew as a young girl. I was fascinated. Shot all kinds of questions at her. And then we were there, at our destination, and she walked me to the Glockenhaus. I thanked her. We would connect again, before I left the area.

And things were all abuzz, there at the Glockenhaus. The Plain People Conference was open. I’ve never been to any academic conference before. Never. What do these people do, anyway? Get up and read their papers, from all I’ve ever heard. I guess you have to keep doing that, if you’re in academia. Go to conferences and read your papers. Keep your name out there, keep a record of where all you’ve been. It all seemed mildly senseless, I must say, as it all came down around me that first morning. I mingled, drinking coffee and water. And took my seat, then, in the very back row.

After an opening introduction by the moderator, the first presentation began. Presented by a professor and his doctoral student. He spoke first. Then she spoke. There were slides and quotes. The subject: From Plains People to Plain People: Mennonites on the Canadian Prairies. And it turned out that they talked mostly about Mennonite writers among the Plains People. Talk about a pretty obscure subject. I settled in, expecting to be bored out of my skull.

And right there is where I dropped any preconceived notions I ever had about what an academic conference is. In that first hour. Both presenters spoke so excitedly about their subject matter that you just couldn’t help but listen. I figured to take a few good naps, that day at the Plain People Conference. And I won’t swear that I never nodded off, for a few seconds. But I never slept soundly, because that was impossible. Time and again, throughout numerous presentations, I listened intently to the reading. And after it was done, I participated in the questions, too. It was all just astounding to me, that a dry place like an academic conference could be so alive with interesting talk. It really was.

After the first presentation was over, it was Sabrina’s turn. Her title of her presentation: Towards ‘New Memoir’: Ira Wagler’s ex-Amish Life Narrative Growing Up Amish. And you can bet I was all up and alert for what was coming in that little reading. The gist of her paper was this. There’s a new literary definition floating around out there, so new that it’s barely a blip on the radar. Some academic defined it last year, in 2014. And Sabrina spoke it, how it used to be, and what it all is now. In autobiography, the “I” character is pretty much flawless, always making the right decisions, always speaking from a distant mountain. I did this and I accomplished that. Which works, I guess, if you’re famous enough to speak from a mountain, and people will still buy your book.

The “New Memoir” concept turns all that arrogance on its head. The writer is humble. He doesn’t remember specific details, often. And admits that. He accepts responsibility and blame for his shortcomings in the past. And there is not a lot of dialogue in his story. A little. Not a lot. How is it credible, to have pages of dialogue twenty years after things happened? It’s not. And Sabrina had all kinds of charts and figures, up there on the screen. Wagler writes “I don’t remember” X amount of times. He writes “I’m not sure,” or “I can’t recall” X amount of times. And she pointed out how Wagler took responsibility for his actions or inactions, by quoting from the Nicholas Herrfort scenes. How I wrote about how very wrong it all was, that we stood around and did nothing to stop the brutal bullying of that tortured child.

It was all pretty astounding, to sit there and see and hear an academic person dissect my book. And I thought about it later. Writers write, to tell their stories. As honestly as they can. And it’s only much later, that the academic people come along. And sort and dissect and analyze and critique. That’s how it’s always been, I think. During the questions, after Sabrina was done, Dr. Kraybill turned to me and asked. “That is really interesting,” he said. “Ira, did you have all that in mind, when you wrote your book?” And I laughed.

Nope, I said. I had none of that in mind. All I wanted to do was tell my story. And it’s funny. There’s at least one one-star review on Amazon, where the reader rips me pretty bad. ”Every time something interesting is going on, Wagler writes that he can’t remember.” We all laughed. The questions and comments continued for ten minutes or so, and then Sabrina was done. I settled in my seat in awe. How many writers have ever seen and heard what I’ve seen and heard about my book? I mean, there was a presentation about it at an academic conference. A conference paper that will be published. Life is just pretty wild, sometimes, I gotta say.

Dr. Kraybill was up next, with his keynote address. He had the power point set up, on the screen. I had heard and seen the man before, and I knew he would be good. He was. It was a real treat for all of us, to hear his presentation. North American Amish and Mennonites in the Quandary of Modernity. The man is so knowledgeable, so polished, and so humorous. It was an honor to hear him, and the conference planners were fortunate indeed, to rope him in as a keynote speaker.

Lunch then. We split up, the men and the women, and wandered off downtown to find food. The men ended up at an outdoor café. I ordered a wrap and a beer. And it was all good, the setting, the food, the company, the conversation, and the beer. And after lunch we headed back. More papers, more presentations. I caught myself nodding off a time or two, after that food and beer. But amazingly, the presentations were delivered with such enthusiasm that you just could not fall asleep. And by mid afternoon, there was a break. There would be a round table discussion of some sort. You could choose to take a tour or the town of historic Leuphana, or you could join the round table. I chose to ask to be taken back to my hotel room. I needed some rest. And I needed to get ready, mentally, for my Keynote address that evening at seven. I told Maryann, and, as always, she took care of things for me. She arranged the ride back. And promised she would give me a wake-up call at 5:30.

And I thought about it, as I tried to relax back in my humid hotel room. (It’s tough, to live without air conditioning, sometimes. It reminded me of growing up. We never had it then, either.) I had my rough notes with me, for my speech that evening. But I thought about it. This is the reason you were invited, right here. Tonight. You know your stuff. One thought kept jumping out at me. Stay calm. Don’t get all fretful or nervous. If you can do that, you will be fine.

Maryann called me, right when she promised. I’m good, I told her. And a few minutes after six, my chauffeur, Melanie, appeared again. She had a class that night, but she could run me downtown before that. I had cleaned up a bit, and dressed in Khakis and a clean shirt. And shoes. You’re speaking to conference people, here. Dress for it.

Melanie dropped me off at the Glockenhaus, then headed back for her class. I strolled in. I still had half an hour, or so. I walked through the doors, and just gaped. The setting of the room had changed completely. Before, there was a little podium up front, with a few rows of chairs. Well. Now they had switched it completely. There was a small platform set up, off the opposite way, with about a hundred chairs facing it. There was a table on the platform, with a chair. And a mic system. And a camera, in the back of the room. They were filming this session. Sabrina saw me, and came over to greet me. What in the world is going on, here? I asked. I mean, this is a totally different setup, from what it was today. And she smiled at me, all brightly.

“There was a writeup in the paper, and we invited the public,” she said. “But somehow, the reporter forgot to mention the time and place of your reading. So I’m not sure how many people will be showing up.” The clock was ticking down pretty fast, by now. Seven o’clock was coming right up. I sat in the chair at the table, and checked the sound system. And laid out a few things. My reading glasses. A glass of water. A copy of my book. Some tissues. You gotta be prepared, when you go speak to any group like that.

And the people drifted in. There were probably a hundred chairs set up. Maybe sixty or so got filled. Maybe less. I can’t exactly be trusted about numbers on a night like that. I’ll always estimate high. (I gave Maryann my iPad, with the instruction. Take lots of pictures, from every angle. And did she ever.) And right at seven, Sabrina sat at the table and addressed the crowd. She spoke a bit, of how she had first contacted me. “When I first asked Ira if he would come over, he was hesitant. But he came, and talked to our students for a few days. They enjoyed him very much. And tonight, he is back, to talk and read from his book. Please welcome Ira Wagler.” The crowd clapped politely.

I stepped onto the platform and we shook hands. Then I sat on the chair behind the table. This was it. The moment I had long looked at with a little tinge of dread. I mean, I got invited to a conference, to speak about my book. They had valued me enough, to invite me and pay my way. My friends had done that. Sabrina, Maryann, and Maria. They had faith in me, that I would tell a good story. They had invited me to their conference, and placed me in a spot of great honor. And now it was time to speak.

It’s always a little bit of a blur in your memory, when you start speaking to a crowd like I spoke to that night. But amazingly, my admonitions to myself were right up front, in my head. Stay calm. Be yourself. You’ve been here before. These are just people. Talk to them. And I told them, right up front. This is an academic conference. We’ve heard a lot of very interesting papers, all day. And we’ll hear more tomorrow. But tonight, I’m not coming from any academic place. I’m the guy who’s here to tell you. I come from these people, and they are still my people.

And I took and kind of turned it in my hands and talked about it, my story. Where I come from. The Aylmer Amish world. That was all I knew. And it just depends on where you start, what all bunny trails you walk down, in a presentation like that. I settled in. And ten minutes in, or so, I read the first reading. About being sixteen, and how that suddenly makes you more than you were the day before. And how me and my buddies fretted and flailed, at that age. And then back to my regular litany of how it was, how it could be that a child of seventeen gets up in the middle of the night and leaves his world. The wonder and fascination of it. And the horror of it, too. The pain I caused my Mom, and how it still haunts me sometimes to this day. That scene, where a mother wakes up one morning, and her seventeen-year-old son is gone. And she has no idea of where he is, or whether he is safe. There is no human penance for that. There never will be.

And the people I was talking to seemed locked in and focused. Moving along then, I read aloud the scene I always read, my first date with Sarah. And I ran overlong. I usually talk for 25 or 30 minutes, then open for questions. I think I talked for close to 40 minutes that night. I apologized. Then asked for questions. And they came, rat-a-tat. Right along. The conversation meandered to a lot of different places, and I even got a chance to speak of what I believe today, as a Christian. Just because you reject your culture doesn’t mean you have to reject your faith. I’m a Reformed Presbyterian. And the question came, minutes later. What does that mean? It’s me, looking to and responding to God, for the undeserved gift of salvation. Responding, instead of trying to be all holy on my own, trying to walk the line by inflicting impossibly hard rules on myself. God is not about law or rules. He never was. And He never divorces His children. You don’t get to talk about stuff like that a whole lot, to any mixed European audience. And I wasn’t even looking for the opportunity. It just came, as a direct result of a direct question.

After half an hour or so of questions, I wound it down. Thank you. The crowd clapped politely for a few moments. People lined up, then, to get their books signed. I signed and smiled and thanked each one. And after the crowd had departed, Maryann and Melanie and I headed a few blocks over for an outdoor café and a large beer. I sure could use one of those about now. And that was my keynote speech at the Plain People Conference in northern Germany.

And I really need to wind this down, this blog. The next morning, Saturday, we met at a classroom at Leuphana University. The oppressive heat settled in. The room was halfway cool, though. And we heard a few more very interesting presentations. At some point along here, I realized that all the speakers at the conference either had their PhDs, or were working toward earning one. Except me. We heard that morning from William and Susan Trollinger (University of Dayton), from Joy Kraybill, and from Cory Anderson. And then I was part of a panel discussion. Me and Dr. Kraybill and Susan Trollinger discussed The Future of the Plain People. It got pretty lively. I pulled out my iPhone at one point and waved it around and made the point I’ve preached for some time, now. This little dude is gonna affect the Amish culture in ways that most people cannot imagine today. It was a lot of fun, being on that panel, and we actually went overlong, because the questions wouldn’t stop coming. And then, it, too, was over.

And it was over, too, the first academic conference I ever attended or took part in. Except for one last thing. There was a Barbeque, over on the school yard. We all walked over through the heat. It was a very nice catered affair, all set up under tent canopies. A nearby trailer kept the drinks cool. I sat and ate the food and sipped several beers. And just chatted with all the others.

After an hour or so, I asked Maryann for directions to get back to my hotel. I walked over and just settled in my room, to rest a while. The first stage of my journey was over. And I reflected a bit, on all that I had seen and heard so far. And all of it was good.

Tomorrow, there would be new adventures in new lands.

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