My Amish Childhood

by Jerry S. Eicher

  Childhood must be a place where all children face their first nightmares. Is it not the world where the tales of Little Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs are read? My own nightmares came at night after I’d see shadows on the walls that sent me racing into Mom’s bedroom and calling for help. “There is someone in the house!” I reported. “He is very evil.” She’d take me back to bed, comfort me, and tell me everything was okay.

  Only years later, once I was grown, did Mom confess to seeing apparitions standing at the foot of her own bed. She even spoke to one once, but it vanished. That probably was the real reason we had the nightlight burning in the hallway every night. And why two Amish children faced the wolves during the day to escape the terrors during the night.

  Chapter 5

  We saw the red glow that evening after we’d finished supper. The distinct splash of crimson reached high into the southwestern sky. Red color where there should have been blue sky. We all gathered out in the yard and stared off into the distance. Clearly someone’s place was on fire. We watched as the air around us seemed to tingle with excitement.

  Out on the road, traffic had increased, lines of cars driving by. Englisha people who had seen the same thing we had. Dad ran out to the road and flagged down the car of someone he knew and left with him. We continued standing there watching the glow until Mom herded us inside for bed.

  Dad must have come home in the late hours of the morning, but none of us children heard him. We were told the news the next morning when we awoke. Grandfather Stoll’s big house had burned up. Aunt Mary had been cooking on their old wood kitchen stove, alone in the house while the others did the chores. An explosion had occurred—thankfully while Aunt Mary was out of the kitchen. By the time the phone call was made at an Englisha neighbor’s place and the fire department arrived from Aylmer, not much could be done. The wood and other burnable materials in the long, rambling brick building had been a tinderbox.

  Mom took us over in the buggy after breakfast. I climbed out to stare at the smoldering ruins. Bricks lay scattered everywhere, tall stacks of them where the walls had not completely collapsed. The yard was full of household items scattered all over the place. Several of the Stoll uncles walked around ashen-faced. They looked as if they’d been up all night.

  Losing one’s house or barn is not that uncommon among the Amish. And Grandfather Stoll suffered no loss of face, even with his well-known trait of tangling with Amish bishops over mission issues—which could have produced whispers of God’s judgment. If there were any such whispers, I never heard them.

  The rebuilding efforts on a new house across the lane were begun at once. I’ve often wondered what part the fire played in the events that followed. Was Grandfather Stoll spurred on for change? Perhaps reminded of the passing nature of life? Driven to move where he might not have gone otherwise? I have no evidence, but I do know his movement into mission work soon followed. The talk, first of a children’s home in northern Canada, which was followed by his focus shifting to the Central American country of Honduras. The Honduras possibility had come through an Englisha man Grandfather had met, a Dr. Youngberg, who had established a children’s home in that country.

  Dad, on the other hand, had different motives for his interest in all the talk about Honduras. His pesky younger brother, Uncle Joseph Eicher, for one, wouldn’t leave him alone to work in peace. Also motivating Dad was an upcoming ordnung change that would ban all Amish construction work in Aylmer.

  Uncle Joseph had always been a favorite at home apparently, and as a grown man he held Bishop Pete’s ear close. For whatever the reasons, Uncle Joseph and Dad had a vibrant sibling rivalry going on. It could have had something to do with the fact Dad was prospering in his business and well-liked, while that wasn’t always true of Uncle Joseph.

  As Dad’s business continued to grow, suspicions were being aroused that Dad was using methods against the ordnung to earn his money. I don’t know who the source of these rumors was, but more than likely it was Uncle Joseph. At the very least, he fed them.

  Once Dad showed me his building contracts from those years—$13,000 to $14,000 per home. It seems like a small amount now compared to the current $200,000 to $300,000 dollar contracts. But back then it was considered a large sum—or enough at least that some of the men in the Amish community of Aylmer were motivated to take action.

  In a culture where hard work is prized, Uncle Joseph seemed to have had plenty of idle time on his hands, which he used to look into Dad’s affairs. Uncle Joseph would often drive past Dad’s worksites in Aylmer to look for electric tools or any signs of their use. Electrical tools were strictly forbidden by the church ordnung, and they were on the list of reported offenses Dad was supposedly committing.

  Knowing Dad, I doubt he was innocent in the matter. There are many ways one can circumvent such laws, at least until a person is caught. Many Amish brains are kept limber not by higher studies but by inventing creative solutions to their restricted lifestyles, especially by the ones who plan to stay in the community. And Dad planned to stay—at least at the present time.

  The truth was that Dad’s crew kept a full complement of electric tools, which were run by a generator. All of them legally in someone else’s name. A Realtor at this particular time. A man cheerfully complicit in the Amish church games.

  I’m sure the crew had many a good belly laugh over the situation, all while keeping a wary eye out, watching for Uncle Joseph’s buggy to turn in from the main road. They probably kept their gas skill saws nearby, ready to be fired up. Ready for the wild scramble to hide the electric cords and shut down the generator before Uncle Joseph got close enough to get a good look or listen. They were always secure in the knowledge that none of them owned the equipment even though they had paid for it.

  Uncle Joseph was tireless in his pursuit, even though he never found any electric tools that I know of. He did finally hit pay dirt. It occurred to him one day to check the phone book for Dad’s name. How this thought came to him, I have no idea. Perhaps he thought Dad had a phone hidden in our barn. How else, after all, could Dad be making all those lucrative home-building connections? Whatever the reason, Uncle Joseph checked and found a phone listing under Dad’s name. He had found the loose chink in Dad’s armor. Uncle Joseph must have nearly lost his hat running to Bishop Pete. And much wool soon hit the fan. This was a violation that couldn’t be easily explained away.

  Dad was indeed keeping a phone, but not in the barn. It was in the little storage shed he kept behind his building sites. He had the phone so the Realtor could call and set up appointments and for ordering materials. Why Dad didn’t think to have the phone listed in the Realtor’s name, I don’t know. Perhaps this was one bridge too far for the longsuffering Realtor, even with the healthy income Dad was making for him in sales commissions.

  By the time the dust settled, a new ordnung rule was in effect. No more Amish construction work was allowed within the town limits of Aylmer, Ontario, Canada—a rule still in effect to this day. A rule that if questioned now would be considered liberal drift, a wandering into the world, a loss of holy things.

  The result was that Dad would soon be making threats to leave the Amish and join the Beachys, a fairly conservative Mennonite group, although I don’t think there were any Beachys in the area at the time. Mom was adamantly opposed to that idea. She would not leave the Amish under any circumstances.

  During all this, Mom had Grandfather’s ear, and I’m sure he heard about the threats. How much this played into his plans for a new Amish community on foreign soil, I don’t know. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they hastened them. Grandfather had yet to lose one of his children to a more liberal Anabaptist church, and I’m sure he didn’t want Mom to be the first casualty.

  So with the ordnung change, the Realtor had to be told the news, along with explanations as to why his best contractor could no longer work in town. To his credit, he must not have laid blame on Dad’s doorstep because the two remained ste
adfast friends.

  A move to a foreign country might seem a little radical in response to all this, but that’s how things shook down. I was a boy, so I couldn’t have cared less back then about these matters. Or perhaps I blocked out the trauma portion of that time. I really remember nothing of the move. It’s as if I awoke one morning and found myself in a valley outside of Guaimaca, Honduras.

  Chapter 6

  Nothing happens in Amish land without ministers, and Grandfather Stoll needed ministerial help for his mission venture to Honduras to succeed. And a new minister can’t be made without an existing bishop’s aid. So finding a bishop who would support the venture was the first order of business. And finding one would take a miracle. Bishop Pete, owner of the small store in our community, was having nothing to do with the wild plans floating around in Grandfather’s head. Though in a testament to Grandfather’s character, Bishop Pete didn’t forbid the venture, which would have doomed it.

  Grandfather didn’t get his miracle immediately, but he got second best—two ministers who were willing to move with him. How he found even one, let alone two, I don’t know. But he did—Richard Hochstetler and Vernon Schmucker. Both were ordained Amish ministers from the sprawling Old Order Amish communities of Northern Indiana.

  And how Grandfather located and chose the valley outside of Guaimaca, I don’t know. Perhaps Dr. Youngberg took him on a tour of the country. However it was done, Grandfather purchased the 550-acre farm called Finca Sanson and moved there in 1968, along with his wife, Anna, my Aunts Mary and Sarah, Uncles Abner and Mark, and Grandfather’s foster child, David Fehr.

  After arriving in Honduras and settling in, Grandfather wrote letters home singing the praises of the land and begging others to follow him. They could divide the property or purchase more, he said. There was plenty of land and opportunity. The mango and orange plantations were close by. All we needed to do was make the 3000-mile trip. Oh, and learn to speak Spanish. But that would all be fun, he said.

  The men back in Aylmer talked, and weighed the options, and looked at maps. Dad was not involved in these deliberations. He’d made up his mind by other methods and for other reasons. The upshot of it was that by January of 1969, three of the men took the bait and set out on an exploratory trip. “To spy out the lay of the land,” they said. The three men were my Uncle Joe Stoll, Monroe Hochstetler, and my dad.

  On that first bouncy, curvy, dusty, four-hour bus trip between the Honduras capital city of Tegucigalpa and Guaimaca, Dad vowed he would never move to Honduras. But when he arrived at Grandfather’s farm, he quickly changed his mind. The place had that kind of charm—an almost otherworldly feel.

  Soon after they arrived, Grandfather gave them a tour of the farm. The elevation rose to just below 3000 feet and lay at the foot of a mountain called Mt. Misoco, that rose to approximately 3500 feet. Indigenous pines that whispered in the wind grew plentifully on the knolls surrounding Guaimaca. From everywhere the beautiful, broad sweep of the mountain range to the north could be seen. In the weeks before the dry season ended, the locals burned the pastures, turning the hillsides into creeping fires that at night seemed to encircle one with what looked like a thousand lights twinkling like evil stars fallen to the earth. A sight, I suspect, the three visitors were spared in January.

  Being an honest man, Grandfather told the men about the ongoing war between Honduras and San Salvador. A small affair really, and Grandfather assured everyone there was no cause for concern. The border dispute had arisen from a long-simmering conflict over land lying between the two countries. The current action consisted of a few Salvadorian soldiers rushing into Honduras and then rushing back while being pursued by Hondurans. Shots were fired at each other without injury, and a stalemate developed.

  Before the Amish scouts from Canada arrived, a little incident had occurred. Emboldened one dark night to acts of valor, the Salvadorian Air Force rose into the air flying cast-off planes donated by the US military. They set out to see what could be bombed. In such a land, blackouts weren’t even dreamed of. Wood fires in barrels don’t produce much light anyway. Besides, who believed the enemy would come this far inland? Even with the home fires burning in Guaimaca, the Salvadorians missed the place by three kilometers; instead the bomb threw up sawdust at a local sawmill. They had no greater success at Talanga, a town an hour closer to the capital. They missed by a kilometer and bombed an empty field.

  Sawmill in Guaimaca.

  As Grandfather Stoll told them the story, there were nervous chuckles, but no one changed any plans. There clearly wasn’t enough oomph in this place to blow up much of anything.

  Eventually the talk turned to farming, particularly how it was done differently here than either in the States or Canada. Since the locals used no modern machinery and the horses were all scrawny and unusable for farming, they plowed with oxen. That is, what plowing was done. The plow consisted of little more than a blade—often wooden—that scratched the ground. It was pulled by oxen strapped together by a yoke and driven by tapping them with a stick and loudly hollering at them. A simple enough affair, but it horrified the visitors’ Amish souls.

  No, that would not do for these seasoned Amish farmers. They would need Belgian or Percheron horses. Large ones. So the men made plans to ship in Belgians, the Amish dream horse. The idea seemed right enough at the time. They would fly them in, and the problem would be solved. The locals might even learn a thing or two. And with good breeding stock on the ground, there would be plenty of horses for years to come. And that’s what happened. The flying in part, at least. And the breeding plan worked reasonably well. But the result wasn’t what they expected. For reasons not known at the time, the Belgians couldn’t take the climate. The horses overheated, and not many years passed until there were few left. Eventually the Amish abandoned the plan, chalking it up to a lesson learned the hard way.

  Fertilizer was unknown to the locals. The soil along the river bottom was black and rich though, and hopes among the three visitors soared. Weather-wise, there was the rainy season that lasted six months or so. This period bled gradually into the dry season, leaving only four months of rainless skies. Eventually the Amish would learn to grow two crops a year, trenching their land to irrigate the crops during the dry season.

  The one drawback to the place was the aforementioned road, which the visitors had already experienced. That and the distance from Canada. But the road was the real abomination. Stories would long be told of its atrocities. Everyone had a nightmare of being scrunched in the seat of the local bus next to some smelly mountain man or of bouncing around like a jack-in-the-box on the hard vinyl seats while the bus driver dodged potholes. And all usually with a local resident’s squealing pig strapped on top.

  And there was the speed of the buses—or rather the lack thereof. Usually anything from fifteen miles per hour steadily with occasional thirty-miles-per-hour spurts. Visitors counted the curves and argued with the local Amish boys over the number. I don’t remember the count, but it came in somewhere around a thousand. I would learn to know them as a sickening twist in my stomach. Dad used to take us into Tegucigalpa, the capital city, to McDonald’s for hamburgers. For years afterward, even when we’d moved back stateside, I couldn’t eat a McDonald’s hamburger without feeling my stomach shift.

  The three scouts took everything under consideration. Next up was a tour of the nearby town of Guaimaca, which consisted of colorful adobe huts. Not a paved road or street was in sight. Stores with wooden shutters faced the streets. The merchandise of local baked sweets and packaged products hung over the side of the windows. Familiar soft drinks were close at hand, including Pepsi, and served in glass bottles. Naked children stood in the doorways, staring at them. Pigs in the yards lifted their snouts to witness their passing, looking as if they were wondering why white faces had suddenly taken shape within their vision.

  Seeing the immense physical and spiritual needs of the country stirred the Amish men’s souls. I suppose they saw the potent
ial of what needed to be done and what could be done. The realization had yet to grip them that here in poverty-stricken Honduras, they would be the rich in the land, no longer pitied as backward as they were up north.

  The Hondurans in this little village existed on so little—basically beans and flour tortillas, a little rice, and produce perhaps. Three times a day with little variation that’s what they ate. The scouts figured it shouldn’t take much to improve such a life. Just a little work with a little energy applied.

  So the three scouts returned home sober-faced but eager for the task. Why should their religion be locked away in Canada? they reasoned. Why should they have such limited influence on their culture when so much could be done on foreign soil? They looked the questions in the face and answered the “Why?” with a “Why not?” They would go. They would work with what they had. And in going, they would make the world a better place.

  I don’t imagine Dad was quite thinking those thoughts. He probably dreamed no higher than using an electric skill saw without his pesky brother driving up the street to try to catch him in a transgression.

  Chapter 7

  We were one of the first families to leave Canada for Honduras, arriving in August of 1969. I remember nothing of the trip down. My first recollections are darkness and driving onto a long gravel lane that ended up at a boxy two-story house. It wasn’t until the morning that I saw the colorfulness of the white house with its line of tall coconut trees in the front yard and the immense orchard of oranges and mangos surrounding the backyard. We had arrived in another world. Strange and different yet populated by faces I knew. We moved in with Grandfather Stoll for three weeks while our living quarters back toward the main road were being prepared. I don’t know how Grandfather managed with all of us crammed into only two upstairs bedrooms in that boxy house, but somehow we survived by sleeping in the basement and in corners here and there.