My People, the Amish: The True Story of an Amish Father and Son

by Keim, Joe

  I understand it now. I was the oldest, and he’d never gone through this and probably felt he wasn’t doing a good job as a parent, but at that moment those harsh words impacted my life. They completely shut my spirit down, and from that day on I gave up.

  It saddens my heart to see so many Amish fathers raise their families on the harsh side, and this is even more profound in the ultra-conservative churches. They seem to have a harder time showing love and appreciation. Instead, rules are enforced and discipline is carried out more easily. When it becomes unbalanced like that, relationships can deteriorate very quickly.

  Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged. (Colossians 3:21)

  While my dad didn’t have much time with me, somehow, he always seemed to know what I was up to. One time, when I was about fifteen, cousins were visiting from another settlement. They stayed at my aunt and uncle’s house across the road from where we lived, so we went there to see them, and we were having a blast. When Dad said, “Time to go home,” we didn’t want to leave. But we did.

  Ervin and I went straight to bed – or I should say we went straight to our bedroom. Our room had a window about the size of a pillow, and right outside the window was a porch roof that came within a foot of the bottom edge of the window. A very large oak tree stood right next to the porch, with branches that reached the porch roof. We slowly and softly slid the window open, trying not to wake our parents, who slept directly underneath us. My heart pumped faster as we crawled out the window on our stomachs and inched our way across the porch roof. We grabbed the biggest branch we could find and crawled all the way to the ground.

  We bolted down our long driveway like lightning and across the street to my cousin Leander’s place, where everybody was still awake. While the adults were busy talking in the living room, Ervin and I tiptoed upstairs. When we got to the top of the stairs, our cousins were shocked to see us, but excited that we had returned for more fun. We laughed and played, until from the corner of my eye, I spotted Dad! I froze. He had figured out what we had done and came looking for us.

  The walk back to our house was a long one. Except for the noise of gravel under our feet, we walked in silence as we made our way back to our house. I knew we had done wrong. Our lane was a quarter mile long and it took a good ten minutes to walk from one end to the other. The walk down the lane gave me plenty of time to think about the spanking I’d get. We were headed to the barn, so I knew the spanking was a sure thing. Spankings often took place in the barn, a safe place, hidden from customers who came and went all times of the day and evening. As we walked toward the barn, Dad surprised me.

  “This time, I’m going to have you spank me,” he said.

  You may be scratching your head at this, but let me tell you, it was a brutal punishment for my brother and me. When we entered the barn, Dad asked us to stay put until he retrieved the leather strap from another area in the barn. Neither Ervin nor I said a word as we waited in silence. We stood in a small circle of buttery light as I held the flickering kerosene lamp. From the darkness beyond, the sound of the cows chewing their cud marked time.

  When Dad returned, he handed me the leather strap and said, “This time I want you boys to spank me.”

  He bent over the wooden, four-foot-tall feed box and waited. For several minutes, I stood there, unable to swing the leather strap. I didn’t want to hurt my dad. Deep down, I loved him and wished we could talk this out. Several times he had to coax me on, until, with tears running down my cheeks, I halfheartedly swung the strap. Every fiber of my being wanted to flee. How could I hit my dad? This was a huge punishment for me, but that’s what he wanted it to be. He wanted us to remember, and to this day I’ve never forgotten.

  Spankings were a common punishment in our house, and they weren’t just reserved for younger children.

  One morning while we were milking, my dad said, “I’m going to spank you and you’re not going to forget it.”

  I deserved this spanking like none other. I took off in a sprint. It took about three minutes to reach the house. I rushed through the door and dashed through the mudroom and into the kitchen by the time the screen door closed. I darted into the living room and up the stairs into my bedroom and then hastily slipped on multiple pairs of underwear.

  As I pulled up the seventh pair, I looked up at the sound of footsteps. Dad stood in the door, his chest heaving, his stern face set like stone.

  I screamed with all that was in me, “You can spank me, but if you do, I’m leaving and never coming back!”

  For a moment, he stood there as if trying to figure out if a father should surrender to his oldest son’s request. Just like that, my father turned around and left. I never got that spanking and the situation was never brought up again.

  Chapter 3

  School Days

  In the Amish community, we went to eight grades of school. Amish schools all looked pretty identical – one room with a basement. The basement was equipped with a big furnace and was used to store wood and coal. The area immediately inside the door of the schoolhouse was known as the washhouse. Hooks lined the wall for our bonnets, hats, and coats, and above the hooks we placed our dinner buckets on a shelf. But the reason it was called the washhouse is because we washed our hands here.

  Even without electricity, the room was not dark. Natural light filled the schoolhouse from big windows on three sides. Daylight shined in from the back of the room and from both sides. I don’t ever remember getting there so early or staying so late that we needed a light.

  Until we started school at age six, we only knew and used our Pennsylvania Dutch dialect. McGuffey Readers introduced us to English, and even though they were very simple books, they still set a clear ethical tone such as, “She is kind to the old blind man.” In this way, as we learned to read English, the first readers helped mold our moral mindset. While we were introduced to English from the start of school, we weren’t required to speak English until second grade. By required, I mean, at that point, Pennsylvania Dutch was forbidden at school except for during the lunch period. If we were caught speaking our home dialect, we were punished. We would have to stand in the corner, put our head down on the desk, or stick our nose in a two-inch circle, which the teacher drew on the blackboard.

  The seats in our one-room schoolhouse weren’t all the same. First and second graders had smaller seats, and as we grew bigger, the size of the desks changed proportionately. The desks were all hooked together from the back of room to the front desk. They weren’t bolted to the floor, but to a two-by-four wooden runner, which kept all the desks in tidy rows and still made it possible to clean the wooden floor easily. School desks provided us with a flat writing area and a small shelf to keep a few workbooks, writing tablets, and pencils.

  Our teacher sat in the center up front, and the blackboards hung on the front wall on either side of her. Lower grades used one side of the room and the upper grades the other. Large alphabet cards bordered the wall above the blackboards at the front of the room. Charts hung on the wall and were used to keep track of our accomplishments. If we received 100 percent, we’d get a star or sticker. It was a handy way to compare ourselves with others and challenge us to do the best we could.

  Shelves along the side of the room held books, and we called it the little library. It contained reference books such as the dictionary, but it also provided a small selection of reading books. If we finished our work early, we could raise our hand and say, “I got my work done; can I get a book?”

  At this age, I didn’t get in trouble often because I knew if I got in trouble at school, I’d be disciplined at home too. The worst trouble I remember getting myself into was the time a handful of us made homemade cigars from corncobs. We drilled out the soft centers and filled it with corn silk. Then we hid behind the barn to smoke them, but got caught in the act. The teacher made me stay after scho
ol; everyone left but the teacher. The old clock kept time. Tick toc, tick toc. The teacher busied herself with paperwork. I sat – just sat. That was a long hour, and then I had to walk the mile and a half home by myself. For me, that was a killer – not having other kids to talk to on the trip home, but that was the worst discipline I ever received at school. To my surprise, I never got a spanking for this shenanigan.

  The best part about school was recess. I could hardly wait for the buzzer to go off so we could go out and play. When the weather was nice outside, we played ground hockey, dodge ball, Andy over, kick the can, and softball. The church rules did not allow us to wear baseball gloves or play against sides like the professional teams. We caught all the fly balls with bare hands, which wasn’t all that bad; however, about once or twice a year the softball would land on the tip of my middle finger instead of in the palm of my hands. And every time it happened, I’d scream out in agony and pain. The finger would swell up like a balloon and turn black and blue. For the next three or four days, it was nearly impossible to write with a pencil or milk cows.

  During the winter months, we rode our sleds, made igloos, and chased each other with snowballs. Only when it rained did we have to stay inside during recess and play board games and three blind mice.

  We didn’t always have to walk to school. Because we trained ponies and had a mile and a half to school, we were allowed to ride our ponies. One particular morning, I decided to take a pony that wasn’t ready to be ridden on the road. It was one of those times I knew better but did it anyway. I climbed on and the pony reared straight up, and I mean up – almost vertical. It lost its balance, came over backward, and fell on top of me. It knocked me out for a minute or so, and when I opened my eyes, I saw Dad towering over me.

  “Joe, you can’t go to school.”

  I started to cry and told him I could go. I got to my feet, grabbed my dinner bucket, and ran up the lane toward the school, still crying because I would be late for school. I never missed one single day of school in eight years, and I took a lot of pride in that fact. It was a commitment I made to myself early in my school years.

  Other than the times we were able to ride our ponies to school, we always had to walk. We trudged along that mile and a half no matter how hot or cold or in pouring rain. At times in the middle of our Ohio winters, I thought we’d freeze to death on the way home when the wind chill made it bitterly cold. We had one English neighbor who owned a pickup truck, and if he came along at the right time and found us walking, he’d pull over and lower the tailgate. As many as ten to twelve of us climbed into the bed of the truck, and he’d take us home and drop us off at the end of our driveways.

  Chapter 4

  The Holy Language

  In our community, church was held every other Sunday. Communities were divided into districts with about twenty-five families per district, because that’s all that could fit in a house. Once a congregation reached more than twenty-five families, they split into two districts. An average-sized community had five to six districts. Half the districts would have church one Sunday and the other half the other Sunday. This provided a way for families to visit another district on their “off” Sunday. If we stayed home on our off Sunday, the church made it clear, “absolutely no work on Sunday, except the morning and evening chores.” Instead, Dad required us to read the German Bible, from after breakfast until noon.

  At the time, we hated it. German was a third language and difficult for us to understand. Now when I look back, I see Dad did something most households didn’t do. He gathered us into our sparsely furnished living room to read the Bible. Our couch looked more like a daybed because our community’s rules didn’t allow a back or side on our couch. Some communities allowed backs but no sides, and others allowed a whole sofa with back and sides, but our community only allowed the daybed style couch. Mom made multicolored coverings for the couch and rocking chairs.

  As we gathered in the living room, the ambient tick of the old cherry grandfather clock whispered in the background. This mammoth clock reached from floor to ceiling like a sentinel marking time. Dad walked to the hutch that was on top of our slant-top desk. This is where we kept our prayer book, German Bibles, the Martyrs’ Mirror, and other important books. He gathered us in a circle and helped us pronounce those German words, so we’d be able to read and understand the Bible. While he taught us how to read and understand the Bible in German, he often shared Old Testament stories. It was also during those family times that Dad warned us of the danger in the world outside of Amish communities. He taught us that the world would continually grow more and more wicked, just like Sodom and Gomorrah. In our young minds, we thought the Amish people were the only reason Jesus had not yet come back to end the world.

  I praise God that Dad cared about the Bible and wanted us to read and understand it. We looked at the German Bible as a holy book, and for that reason, marking or highlighting any part of the pages was forbidden. We weren’t even allowed to stack anything on top of it.

  Not only was the Bible in German, but all the Amish church services were held in German as much as possible, because it was considered the “holy language.” Some said German is the language spoken in heaven, and it was the language God used when He spoke to Adam. Some even say Jesus spoke German.

  In all, we Amish knew three languages. We mainly spoke Pennsylvania Dutch, a dialect of German. We read and wrote English, and spoke it starting in the second grade. For High German, we had Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible, our prayer book, Martyrs’ Mirror, and our hymns – all in the holy language. This was the language we understood the least of the three we knew. In school and around home, we sang our hymns in German and read from German prayer books. And it seemed the more German the preacher used in his preaching, the more holy the service was.

  The Martyrs’ Mirror was a big book about three inches thick, which contained hundreds of stories and articles that were written about our forefathers in Switzerland. The stories described the severe persecution that went on during the early Anabaptist movement. Over four thousand men and women gave their lives in various ways to stand for biblical truth and freedom. Some were burned at the stake; others were beheaded; and some were tied up with ropes and drowned in rivers. The Martyrs’ Mirror was very dear to us and in many ways was held to the same level as the Bible. Our German hymnbooks were just as valued. Many of the hymns were written by our Anabaptist forefathers while they were fleeing for their lives and hiding in caves. As you might imagine, the stories and hymns were a continual reminder of who we were and where we came from.

  Our hearts and minds resonated with Scripture passages like Hebrews 11:37-38, where it says: They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; (Of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.

  Amish ministers don’t preach with a Bible in hand, nor do they follow an outline. Instead, they memorize a list of familiar Scriptures and quote them throughout their forty minutes of preaching time. Many of these Scriptures are taken from the book of Psalms and various parts of the Old and New Testaments. Along with Matthew 5, some of the more popular New Testament scriptures were:

  Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Matthew 11:29-30)

  Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out
from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty. (2 Corinthians 6:14-18)

  There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. (Romans 8:1-2)

  Clearly, some of these verses warn about mixing with the world, which was a theme in much preaching. It wasn’t uncommon to hear stories of those who left the Amish and later tried to return but couldn’t. It was said they stayed away too long and finally God gave them over to Satan. No one knew for sure who these former Amish were or where they originated. Their stories were passed from one generation to the next and shared repeatedly at church and in family circles at home.

  An often-repeated story involved an Amish man who left the fold years ago. In time, he found himself on his deathbed. As he neared death, he started screaming out, “The flames of hell are all around my bed.” Then the man started crying out to God, promising that if God healed him, he would go back to the Amish. Suddenly, the flames of hell died down, and the man got his strength back. He crawled off his deathbed and walked out to the Amish community he’d left years before.