In modern culture, dress fads, designer labels, and seasonal fashions provide the means to conform to consumer styles. In this sense, both modern and Amish wardrobes are tools of social conformity. At first glance, the Amish appear preoccupied with dress. Their code of dress seems complicated and restrictive. Their garb does indeed restrict individuality, but it also frees them from the burden of choice. They do not have to sort through their wardrobe in a frenzy each morning looking for matching outfits, nor do they spend endless hours shopping to stay abreast of current fads. So, ironically, while the Amish appear to be engulfed by dress, they in fact spend much less time, money, and worry on clothing than Moderns do. Conformity to prescribed dress standards not only unites them and marks off their social turf, but it also frees them from incessant choice. Moreover, their symbolic codes are controlled by the church, not by fashion designers in faraway cities.
THE HOOFBEATS OF TRADITION
The horse and buggy are silhouetted on road signs, tourist brochures, and billboards as the archetypes of Amish identity. As society turned to cars in the early twentieth century, the horse became the prime symbol of Amish life by default. Although the Amish do not worship the horse with cultic rituals or fetish charms, it approximates a sacred symbol in some ways.
Lighter road horses pull buggies to town, but draft horses and mules tow farm equipment across the fields. The driving horses are often obtained from commercial race tracks. The heavier workhorses and mules are bought from jockeys, horse dealers, or at public auctions. Although farmers will occasionally ride horseback to and from fields, horseback riding is generally discouraged because it borders on a worldly form of sport.
The typical Amish farm family has one or two driving horses and six to eight draft horses or mules for fieldwork. Families who no longer live on a farm also have one or two horses for transportation. New Amish homes, built along rural roads or in villages, can be identified by their small horse barns. Although the Amish are not required to own a horse, it is the typical mode of travel because car ownership is forbidden. Single adult sisters living together in a village home, for example, stable their driving horse in a barn at the back of their property. Parents will often buy a horse for their son’s sixteenth birthday. A good driving horse will cost from $2,500 to $3,500.
A young man changes into a baseball uniform inside the back of his carriage.
As a symbol of Amish culture, the horse articulates the meaning of several key values: tradition, time, limits, nature, and sacrifice. As a sacred link with history, the horse provides hard evidence that the Amish have not completely succumbed to progress. It heralds the triumph of tradition and signals faithful continuity with the past. A counter-symbol to the worldliness embodied in cars, the horse is tangible proof that the Amish have not sold out to the glamour and glitter of a high-tech society. A striking symbol of nonconformity, the horse separates the Amish from the modern world and anchors them in the past. Over the years, the church has forbidden fancy harnesses and decorative tack in hopes of keeping the horse undefiled. To be content with horse-drawn travel is a sign of commitment to tradition, faith, and the church. In this way, the horse becomes a sacred symbol.
Horses not only symbolize the slower pace of Amish society but also actually retard its speed. It takes longer to plow with horses, and driving time on the road increases fivefold. A horse culture places other limits on social life as well. At best, on level roads, travel is limited to twenty-five miles a day. Hilly terrain imposes additional burdens. By restricting travel, the use of the horse curtails the size of the settlement and holds the community closely together. It intensifies face-to-face interaction in local church districts. In short, it builds social capital by keeping people together.
Horses impose other curbs as well. Amish farmers yield to nature’s clock because horses cannot be used in fields at night. Using horses and mules for fieldwork requires additional labor and slows the pace of farmwork. It restricts the number of acres that can be plowed and controls both the size and the number of farms that a family can cultivate. Modern farmers with large tractors can till several hundred acres, whereas the typical Amish farm has less than fifty acres. The horse limits the expansionist tendencies of modernity. In all these ways, horses temper the pace of Amish life.
The horse is important in other ways as well. The Amish have always been a people of the land. By living close to nature, they believe they are closer to God. The Amish feel that the rhythms of nature, the changing seasons, and the daily struggle with weather provide opportunities to experience divine presence. The horse preserves this link with nature in the midst of modernity. Horse care brings daily contact with nature—birth, death, illness, grazing, excrement, and unpredictable temperaments—a never-ending dialogue with the Creator. The horse has also held the Amish close to nature by keeping them out of cities.10 With the rise of Amish shops, the horse may preserve one of the few bonds with nature for those involved in business.
Dependence on the horse requires daily sacrifice, a cogent reminder that identity and tradition supersede convenience in Amish life. Horses must be fed morning and evening. It takes time to hitch and unhitch them. Stables must be cleaned and manure hauled to the fields. Horses must be shoed regularly, and they also kick and bite. In some towns, it is difficult to find hitching posts. Moreover, driving a horse on high-speed highways is dangerous.
Non-Amish motorists sometimes grumble about buggies clogging the roadways of Lancaster County. One local citizen, responding to the complaints of a non-Amish motorist, noted that if the Amish sold their farms for development, each fifty-acre farm might bring 400 more cars to the county. So he concluded, “The next time you are behind a buggy, picture 400 cars ahead of you. That could very well be what each buggy is keeping off our roadways.”11
The use of workhorses has taken an ironic twist in recent years. In speed and power, they obviously lag behind tractors. However, a different picture emerges when viewing financial investments on small farms. Although a good pair of mules may cost $7,000, mules and horses may have gained on tractors as the cost of machinery has soared. If labor costs are subtracted, Amish farmers on small farms can compete with modern farmers who use $60,000 tractors and $200,000 harvesters to harvest crops. The Amish contend that on small farms the horse is superior. One Amish farmer argued that “the horse farmers can produce milk, hogs, and poultry cheaper than the large tractor farmers.”12 Because horses pack the ground less than tractors, Amish farmers can begin plowing earlier in the spring. And although horses plow slowly, modern farmers marvel at how the Amish always seem to get their planting and harvesting done on time, if not first.13
The horse creates another benefit in Amish society: a subculture filled with lore and labor. Horse stories abound. Articles on horses appear in Amish publications. Horse tales preserve and perpetuate this distinctive symbol of Amish identity. But more importantly, the horse culture creates work. Small industries that manufacture, sell, and repair horse equipment provide jobs for many Amish.
As a front-stage symbol, the horse projects a conservative public image that conveniently camouflages a multitude of differences in income, lifestyles, and hobbies on the backstage of Amish life. The Amish businessman who travels in a hired truck all week supervising a multimillion-dollar business bends to tradition by driving his horse to Sunday services. Progressive Amish who read Newsweek, limit the size of their families, and landscape their homes can nod with affinity to their more conservative neighbors as their horses pass each other on country roads. The horse offers compelling proof that the Amish are still Amish while permitting a host of changes in other areas of Amish life.
The horse slows things down, imposes limits, and symbolizes some of the deepest meanings of Amish life. Riding in a horse-drawn carriage is a visible symbol of ethnic identity, unmistakable to insiders and outsiders alike. As a good ethnic badge, the horse both integrates and separates; it leaves no doubt about the symbolic boundaries of Amish society. It would
be foolish to concede the horse to modernity or carelessly place it on the bargaining table. Although retaining the horse, the Amish have been willing to negotiate the use of the car and tractor—a story we will explore in Chapter 9.
THE CARRIAGE OF SIMPLICITY
The carriage also symbolizes Amish identity in several ways. At least seven different vehicles are used by the Lancaster Amish: the open buggy, the spring wagon, the market wagon, the cab wagon, the two-wheeled cart, the standard carriage, and a combination (open or closed) carriage. Each is pulled on the road with a single driving horse and rolls on wooden wheels wrapped in a steel band. Sleighs are also used in winter.14
The term buggy, often used for many of these vehicles, technically only designates the one-seat open vehicle. The open buggy, sometimes called the “courting buggy” by outsiders, is used by young and old alike, but its use has declined in recent years. The spring wagon, named for its extra spring suspension, is an open wagon used for hauling heavy supplies on the road. The market wagon, an enclosed carriage, is the Amish version of the station wagon, with a tailgate that swings upward, a removable back seat, and heavier suspension. Historically, it was used to haul produce to city markets. Its roof and enclosed sides protect both driver and produce from the weather. The cab wagon, the Amish edition of the pickup truck, has an enclosed cab for the driver and an open bed for hauling materials. The basic and most widely used vehicle is the standard carriage. Having undergone several changes in the twentieth century, the standard carriage today is a gray, enclosed, box-like, two-seated vehicle.15
The carriage functions as the family car for most Amish families. Its two seats may carry six or more passengers. Sliding doors with glass windows provide openings on both sides near the front of the carriage. The front is enclosed by a glass windshield. In contrast to the faddish designs of modern cars, the exterior form of the carriage has resisted change. Gray became the standard color in the early twentieth century, and apart from the enclosed front, the basic form and style jelled at that time. Today’s carriage is equipped with battery-operated front lights, turn signals, flashing rear lights, and a large triangle reflector. These modern accouterments are required by state law.
Older carriages were open in the front and had no dashboard, windshield, or sliding doors. Roll curtains covered the open doorways, and a canvas tarp was fastened across the front to shield the driver from flying mud. Sliding doors and permanent windshields, called storm fronts, began appearing on a few carriages in the late 1920s. An expanding settlement required longer trips in harsh weather, which prompted the use of enclosed carriages. Storm fronts and sliding doors came into use over three decades and were officially permitted in the 1960s. As enclosed carriages gained acceptance, those with open fronts became symbols of tradition. The conservative districts in the settlement’s southern region, always dragging their feet, were slower to accept the fully enclosed carriage. Ministers generally do not enclose the fronts of their carriages. In extremely cold weather some ministers may use an enclosed market wagon, but usually, in deference to tradition, they drive a carriage without a storm front.
A young mother drives a spring wagon to the bank. Many Amishwomen are adept at handling horses.
THE SYMBOLIC BUGGY
The Amish buggy serves a variety of social functions. Its gray color and box-like form are public symbols of Amish identity. Gray symbolizes Gelassenheit, for it quietly blends into its surroundings; it is the unpretentious color of modesty. However, there is nothing quite as obtrusive on a modern highway as a horse-drawn vehicle. When some buggy makers began producing darker buggies in the 1930s, Amish leaders insisted on keeping the traditional gray. There was another reason as well for staying with gray: Old Order Mennonites drove black buggies. Thus, over the years, gray became the signature of Amish identity in the Lancaster settlement.16
Like garb, the buggy is a visible ethnic badge that shapes social interaction. Stepping out of a buggy is a public announcement of one’s religious identity. On the road, the carriage provides a mobile stage for enacting the drama of separation. The rolling stage separates the Amish from the larger world. With few windows, the ethnic travelers are insulated from the outside world even while in transit. Indeed, on the front stage of public roadways, passengers inside the carriage can remain backstage.
Whereas the car in modern society accentuates social status and inequality, the Amish carriage is a symbolic equalizer. It signals the egalitarian ideals of Amish society. Although there are minor variations, carriages are quite uniform. The church has staunchly prohibited ornamentation and ostentatious display on buggies. People of all sorts—farmers, homemakers, laborers, and millionaires alike—drop the trappings of status and prestige as they step into similar buggies. And for the moment at least, the carriage levels them symbolically. Unlike the car, the carriage imposes a community standard that transcends individual choice, preference, and status.
Although the carriage suppresses individuality, it is not unusual to find carriages owned by teenagers decorated with creative stickers and plastic reflectors. Some have shrill air horns, boom boxes, and CD players run by batteries. An adult described some buggies owned by Amish youth: “Some have wall-to-wall carpeting, insulated woolly stuff all around the top, a big dashboard, glove compartment, speedometer, clock, CD player, buttons galore, and lights and reflectors all over the place. There’s one that even has little lights all the way around the bottom. They even have perfumed things hanging up front, and at Christmas time, some have tinsel and little bells. If they have the money, that’s what they do and that’s pride.”
On the outside, at least, the carriage summarizes a host of Amish values: separation, simplicity, frugality, tradition, equality, and humility. The carriage protests the high-tech fads of modern transportation. Clashing with the sleek style of modern cars, its stark rectangular form symbolizes the stalwart nature of Amish society. Its shape and accessories are governed by local tradition rather than by market research driven by consumer desire. Like the horse, the carriage has spawned an infrastructure of related industries. Amish shops manufacture, repair, and service carriages. Locally produced, the carriage ignores the flux of oil prices, imports, and strikes. It is, in short, a summary statement of Amish values and identity.
THE CHANGING BUGGY
On the outside the carriage appears resilient to change, but modernity has intruded beneath its shell. These changes, in many ways, are a metaphor of social change in Amish society at large. While external images hold firm, change percolates beneath the surface. The buggy has been a bargaining table of sorts, where the forces of tradition and technology have waged a quiet debate. In the early twentieth century, Amish carriages were rarely driven at night. When they were, a kerosene lantern provided light. After World War I, enterprising Amish youth began hooking up electric lights, powered by small batteries. Church leaders were adamantly opposed to the use of electric lights, believing they would speed the use of lights elsewhere.
Moreover, the lights made the buggies look too worldly—too much like cars. Upon baptism, many youth had to scrap the lights on their buggies.
In the 1920s, to the church’s consternation, state laws required electric lights on vehicles at night. The use of lights became a contentious issue because the church forbade them. However, the church gradually acquiesced, and in the 1930s, most carriages traveling at night had battery-powered lights. In the 1950s and 1970s, flashing red lights and large reflective triangles, respectively, were required by law.17 For a people who detested publicity, these requirements were most unwelcome. Flashing lights and bright triangles mocked the modest spirit of Gelassenheit. But acknowledging the need for safety, the Amish agreed to use them.18
Although safety concerns prevailed, the Amish carried some weight because they were fast becoming a prime tourist attraction. Thus, over the years an informal bargain emerged. The Amish could drive on public roads without paying gas taxes or license fees, but their buggies would carry the tr
appings of modernity—electric lights, turn signals, flashers, and fluorescent triangles. Buggies would not be inspected or licensed, and drivers would not need a license. Horseshoes could continue to chop up public roads at the taxpayers’ expense. Tourists would pay gas taxes and bring enough money into the local economy to offset the cost of Amish “freeloading.” Representatives on both sides of the bargaining table knew that they had struck a good deal.
Although the buggy’s exterior has stabilized over the years, its interior has undergone many changes. Hidden to the outsider, these discreet changes make today’s buggy a rather up-to-date vehicle. In addition to the safety features stipulated by law, other enhancements have slipped in as well. Beginning in the mid-1970s, fiberglass replaced wood in the bottom shell of the frame as well as in the shafts that connect to the harness. Vinyl tops—in gray, of course—cover the carriage. The wheels spin on ball bearings, and hydraulic brakes slow them down. Some carriages even have battery-operated windshield wipers. Thermopane windows, to deter fogging in cold weather, are also an option.
The Riddle of Amish Culture Page 9
