Growing Up Amish (6 page)

Family Life
was (and is) a very nice little magazine—if you like didactic stories in which the protagonist always repents after harboring heretical notions of leaving the Amish faith, or some such similar crisis. And the wayward son always returns in true humble repentance to court the plain but upstanding girl who is actually very beautiful inside, which, as we all know, is what really counts anyway. A glad light springs from her eyes as she modestly welcomes his return. Or maybe the glad light springs from his father's eyes. I can't remember. Whatever. The fiction was all pretty formulaic and predictable.

To be fair,
Family Life
also published a lot of useful, practical stuff—farm tips and such. Yet as unrealistic as a lot of the magazine's content was (and is), it was read with great gusto and satisfaction across a broad spectrum of Amishland.

Naturally, a pocket of hard-core, conservative Amish people resented and resisted my father's efforts. These people felt that one should read only the Bible. And maybe
The Budget
. Any other supplemental reading was deemed unnecessary and possibly sinful. Sad to say, those people still exist out there.

Regardless of the response, when I was growing up I could never admit my last name to any person even remotely connected to the Amish without being asked if I knew David Wagler. I always admitted reluctantly that, yes, I knew him. Not because I was ashamed or anything, but because it just got really old really fast.

The questions always continued: Are you related? Again, a grudging affirmative. More persistent and increasingly excited questions would invariably follow. Eventually the truth always emerged to rapturous exclamations of disbelief and accelerated heart palpitations. Seriously.

Once, in the mid-1980s, my brother Nathan and I were staying in Sarasota, Florida, for a few months over the winter, and an elderly Mennonite man from Arthur, Illinois, drilled us with the usual litany of questions until he finally got us to admit who we were. After our confession, he leaned on his tricycle in stunned silence for a few moments. He seemed drained.

I couldn't resist, so I said playfully, “Just think, now you can go back home and tell everyone you met David Wagler's sons.”

He stood mute for another moment, still leaning faintly on his tricycle. I thought he might not have heard my comment. Then he quavered, “They probably wouldn't believe me anyway.”

Today, my father is still well known in the Amish world, though his star is receding. The middle-aged to elderly speak of him, but the younger generations increasingly know him not.

Dad wrote steadily for many decades, producing many thousands of pages. Some of his stuff was good, some was okay, and some was, well, hard-core Amish polemics. Writing was his life's focus, and he neglected many other important things in pursuit of his passion—including, to a large extent, his wife and his children. That's not a judgment. It's just a fact.

He was a strong, driven man, and I deeply respect his accomplishments. But I wonder sometimes how far he could have gone had he not been hampered by Amish rules and restrictions. And whether he could have found a broader audience for his writings.

I have often tried to imagine what my father would have been like as a young man. Knowing him for the dreamer he is, I have wondered what he thought as he listened to his friends share local gossip and their meager dreams and humble goals.

Like me, I'm sure he was always painfully aware of how much more there was beyond the boundaries of his unsophisticated world.

Perhaps, lured by the modern conveniences of the surrounding society, he longed to drive one of the roaring roadsters that passed his plodding team and wagon in the heat, leaving him strangled and choking in swirling clouds of dust.

Perhaps, tempted by the throbbing dance music wafting from the pool hall in town, he allowed himself to briefly roam far and free from the mental chains that bound him.

Perhaps at times he questioned his roots and his background and the value of the traditions his elders clung to so tenaciously.

Perhaps he chafed at the narrow confines of the simple, unquestioning Amish theology that demanded his abject submission to an ageless tradition that taught any other path would lead to eternal damnation in the fires of hell.

Perhaps all these things and more occurred, calling to him, daring him to forsake forever the seemingly senseless traditions that confined him.

Perhaps.

But unlike me, in the end, he chose to stay.

8

On the outside, Amish communities seem stuck in time, immune to change. But in reality, even places like Aylmer are in a constant state of flux. Nothing stays the same.

Events unfold. Below the surface, things are always happening. Disputes arise. Tensions flare. People come and go. By the time I was ten years old, some minor tremors had shaken the little community that was my world.

In 1968, my uncle Peter Stoll, a great jovial bear of a man and one of Aylmer's founding patriarchs, abruptly decided to leave and move to Honduras.

Honduras.

Halfway across the world.

His goal was to start a new Amish settlement there, help the natives live better lives by teaching them Amish farming methods, and gain converts. This was a strange and startling thing, coming from an Amish man. The Amish traditionally live their beliefs quietly and don't go around proselytizing a whole lot.

But Peter Stoll was different: softhearted and driven by a fervent desire to help the less fortunate. And once gripped by his vision, he didn't waste a lot of time tolerating second-guessers. In short order, he sold his farm, held a public auction to dispose of excess goods, and set off for Honduras, thousands of miles away.

A few other Aylmer families got caught up in Peter's vision and moved with him. Their departure really shook me up, especially because several of my classmates and good friends left with them.

Just like that.

Gone.

Out of the community, and out of my life.

There must have been something in the air around that time, because no sooner had the Honduras settlers left than our austere, barefoot preacher decided to scratch the itch that had been bothering him as well.

Long considered somewhat of a fringe element in Aylmer, Nicky Stoltzfus and his wife, Lucille, sold their farm and moved to a small, isolated community somewhere in the Midwest—someplace where they could live in extreme simplicity, where Nicky could allow the bristle of his mustache to sprout into the real thing, and where he could preach his long, bone-dry sermons in peace.

Even Bishop Peter Yoder got caught up in the moving frenzy. Shortly after Nicky and Lucille pulled up stakes, Peter and his wife, Martha, decided to leave Aylmer as well and join a new settlement that was starting up in Marshfield, Missouri. And once again, several other Aylmer families followed.

Why they went and what they were searching for was beyond the comprehension of my young mind. They just moved, and that was that.

Amish people do that once in a while, for reasons not readily apparent to little children.

But not our family.

We stayed put. My father's feet were firmly planted in Aylmer. He had no intention of moving anywhere, and that was fine by me. Aylmer was the only home I had ever known. I couldn't imagine living anywhere else.

Some of my older brothers and sisters, however, could.

* * *

My sister Maggie was the first to leave. Fed up with Aylmer's harsh rules and stifling discipline, she moved to Conneautville, a small town in northwestern Pennsylvania, where she took a job working in a nursing home. For a while, she attended services at the New Order Amish church in the area, but after a few years, she decided to leave the Amish altogether and joined a local Mennonite church.

When she informed my parents of her decision, they made a hasty trip to Pennsylvania to try to convince her to change her mind. Mom didn't say a whole lot. But Dad did. He blustered and cajoled and begged and threatened, but it was all in vain. Maggie remained firm.

Frustrated, Dad could do nothing, and they returned home defeated.

Those were tense and turbulent times. It was a huge blow to my father's ego to have a daughter up and leave the Amish like that. My father was among the leading intellectuals of his people. A writer of many great stories, all laced with moral lessons and conclusions. Not to mention a strident defender of the Amish faith and lifestyle. What would his readers think?

Of course, even as Maggie embraced her new life of freedom, she still felt a connection to her roots, and returned home now and again to visit for a few days—truly a brave thing for her to do.

Dad always accosted her from the instant she walked in the door, berating and admonishing her incessantly during her entire visit. Frankly, I'm amazed she ever came back at all. But she did. And the other children were always delighted to see her.

Then it was Jesse's turn. At eighteen, Jesse was a strong, silent, burly young man—an intelligent loner who didn't say much but thought a lot. And somewhere, deep inside, he instinctively knew there was something more, a better life, somewhere out there.

Quietly, secretively, he made his plans. And then one night, without warning, he just slipped out through an upstairs window and disappeared.

He turned up a few days later in Cleveland, Ohio, where he was soon visited by Dad and a small but strident contingency of Aylmer preachers.

Jesse sat there silently as they cajoled, pleaded, and admonished.

Would he not just come home and try it again?

Surely it couldn't have been so bad.

It was all a misunderstanding.

Things would be better if he just came home.

Finally, against his better judgment, and after months of unrelenting pressure, Jesse allowed himself to be persuaded, and he returned home.

He tried to settle back into the flow of things, but it was no use. Dad's shimmering promises drifted off in the wind like the fluff they were. Things had not changed and would not change. Less than a year later, Jesse packed his stuff and walked out. This time his face was set. He would not return.

He lived for a few months in St. Thomas, about ten miles west of Aylmer. Eventually, he moved to Daviess County, Indiana, the area my parents had left decades before. There he connected with his Yoder relatives for the first time. They received him—a total stranger bound to them by blood—with great joy and open arms. He settled in, joined a Mennonite church, and built a stable, happy life. Eventually he married Lynda Stoll and moved to her home community in South Carolina.

Unlike Maggie, however, Jesse rarely returned to Aylmer and pretty much became a stranger to his younger brothers.

Naturally, my parents were shocked and stunned both times Jesse left. We all were. Mom broke down and wept as if her heart would break. It was a brutal thing, the thought of her child out there all alone in the cold, dark world.

Jesse was the first of her sons to pack a bag and simply walk away into the night.

He would not be the last.

* * *

The departure of Peter Yoder and Nicky Stoltzfus marked the end of an era in Aylmer. The old guard was gone. It was time for a new dawn.

And so two ordinations were held in Aylmer about a year apart. The first was that of Elmo Stoll. The second, Simon Wagler. They were both very young—in their upper twenties, maybe thirty—and were greatly burdened with their callings.

Of the two, Elmo Stoll rapidly rose to a position of prominence. Soon after his ordination, he finagled his way to a pinnacle of influence and unquestioned power such as Aylmer had never seen before and has not seen since.

Elmo had a grand vision of how things should be. He was a natural leader, a gifted man. A spellbinding speaker and preacher, he moved aggressively to solidify his power. He quickly overwhelmed and swept aside the kindly elder preacher, Jake, and began to deliberately dismantle the structural safeguards that Peter and Nicky had left behind.

A hard-core Amish firebrand, Elmo set out to please a furious, frowning God, a God who just might be placated if enough sacrifices were made for his favors.

Suddenly, stricter rules were in place, and things that had always been allowed in Aylmer were proclaimed sinful and forbidden.

Wire-rimmed glasses only, no more plastic frames.

Longer dresses.

Bigger head coverings for the women.

Buggy interiors painted black.

And the builders, the few that remained, were forbidden to accept jobs that required any transportation other than a horse and buggy, which greatly restricted their range and their livelihoods.

It was never enough, though. Elmo was restless and driven. He never stopped tweaking the church rules and was always dreaming up more stringent requirements.

At first, most people grumbled and complained a good bit. But Elmo was a very persuasive speaker, and as he preached in mellow, lilting tones, smoothly conveying his vision of how things should be, members of the community began to see things as he did—albeit begrudgingly and sometimes despite themselves. And that's the way it went.

But under the surface, a lot of the common folk seethed and simmered quietly. Especially the youth, who watched helplessly as their few remaining rights and privileges slipped away, replaced with ever more-demanding rules and restrictions.

I was a gangly, knock-kneed kid then, just entering my adolescent years. And even though I wasn't directly involved, I heard the murmurings of dissent, the stories swirling around me: The preachers did this, and they said that. How awful and unfair was that?

Did you hear? Now Elmo wants to outlaw volleyball. He doesn't think boys and girls should play together because it might lead them to have lustful thoughts. Or some similar lunacy. It never stopped. And before I even had a chance to form my own opinions, any natural respect for the preachers and their edicts that I might have had was duly crushed.