My Amish Childhood

by Jerry S. Eicher

  Early that fall another evil came creeping into the community. We heard only whispers at first. Faint rumors that chilled our hearts as the men talked about it. And we knew it was true when the first of the animals became sick. The Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus—sleeping sickness, for short—was abroad in the land. A mosquito-spread disease that could even affect humans. I imagined the hungry mosquito coming in through our windows at night, settling on us children while we slept. Then soon would follow the shivering fever and the final falling asleep, never to awaken again. We trembled from fear and secured the screens the best we could.

  Our horses were all at risk, we were told. And all around us reports came in of ranchers who were losing their animals. A general rush was made by the Amish to vaccinate the animals—a practice the locals didn’t value very highly or couldn’t afford. Those vaccinations ended up saving all but a few of the animals on our two farms.

  We heard that Uncle Joe’s horse was sick and went down to see. We didn’t stay long, and when it became obvious after several days that nothing could be done, the horse was put down. An act to which I was not a witness. The telling of the tale was bad enough.

  Also about this time, we heard the first whispers of thieves lifting items after dark. We responded by organizing a few amateur posses to sleep in the outbuildings. Unarmed, of course, and sleeping with flashlights at the ready. The situation wasn’t something that couldn’t be solved or controlled, the men reasoned. It could surely be solved by more careful locking of doors and windows and by a few scares from lights shone in the thieves’ startled faces.

  If they’d only known the truth, they would not have been so confident.

  Chapter 9

  Uncle Stephen’s accident happened on one of those October afternoons we were all learning to enjoy so much. Eighty degrees, a slight breeze blowing, and no sight of rain from the puffy clouds overhead. Most of the community had gathered at the tall, two-story children’s home, which had been hastily constructed by then to unload several heavy crates that had arrived from stateside.

  Most of the families did this—shipped in their personal and business items in large packaged crates. These boxes sometimes wouldn’t arrive until months after the family was already here. The arrival of a crate was a huge affair, both in the shared rejoicing that it had come and in unloading it. The children’s home at the bottom of the hill was chosen as the unloading site because it was central to the community and this time at least one of the crates belonged to one of the single women who would be taking care of the children.

  Several stout trees grew in the backyard. Oaks, I think, or at least a Honduras version of oak. The local truck hired to haul the crates from Tegucigalpa ended up backed under one of them. Block and tackle were brought out, and the unloading began. A strong limb was chosen, and the chains thrown over them. The adults discussed angle, limb strength, tonnage, and probable weight-bearing points. They decided to go with what they had, and the box was cranked into the air. When nothing happened to the limb, Uncle Stephen and Uncle Abner jumped on the truck bed surrounded by its tall sideboards.

  The crack came without warning, like a shot from a large-caliber gun. It drew my instant attention from where I was standing near the children’s home. Looking toward the truck, I saw Uncle Stephen trying to leave his perch on the sideboard. His body at chest level was still on top when the branch hit. It seemed to be in slow motion as the branch came down, squashing Uncle Stephen between the limb and the top of the sideboard. The impact bounce lifted the limb back up in the air, and Uncle Stephen’s body flew out and onto the ground as the branch crashed down again on the sideboards without rising this time. Around us there was dead silence.

  I ran closer as the men near Uncle Stephen rushed to his side. Behind me women poured out of the children’s home. Through the forms of the men I saw Uncle Stephen’s body crumpled, lying on its side, his face hidden from my view. No one said much.

  A woman came rushing forward, Emil Helmuth’s wife, Edna, I think. Someone had told her that Emil was the one lying on the ground. She quickly discovered the error, and Uncle Stephen’s name was spoken. His wife, Katie, heard, unable to believe it. They helped her forward to kneel beside him. He was gasping for breath but still alive. When a sheet of plywood arrived—sent for by someone—they slid Uncle Stephen on it and carried him to the yard and surrounded his form with blankets.

  That he was dying was the unspoken thought. We huddled around, our faces sober. Someone suggested sending for a doctor, and volunteers immediately surfaced. Daniel Hochstetler and Paul Schmucker, both young boys from La Granja offered their services. They wanted to borrow my horse, which I had tied to the fencerow a short distance away. They only had access to one horse—and that was for Daniel to ride. Paul needed a horse—mine. I should have said yes, but I said no instead. I wanted in on the excitement myself. “I’ll come with you!” I told Daniel.

  Daniel didn’t look happy, but I suppose he knew this was not a moment for quibbling. So Paul remained behind, and Daniel and I mounted our horses and rode headlong into town, stopping only to spread the news to some Amish people we passed along the road. It was dark by the time we arrived and beat on the doctor’s door. He wasn’t home, we were told. So we rode over to another place Daniel knew of, where a nurse lived, I think, but with no greater success. Unbeknownst to us, another search party had left while Daniel was trying to secure my horse, caught a ride into town, and the doctor was already on the way back to the community.

  By the time we arrived back at the children’s home, the doctor had been there and left. A pickup truck and driver had also been found, and Uncle Stephen was on his way to the hospital in Tegucigalpa. Mom chewed me out for leaving the scene. She said I’d missed a very touching scene.

  As Uncle Stephen lay there, thinking he was dying, he had gathered his family around him and given them his last words. Uncle Stephen’s wife, Katie, and their children, had been in the inner circle, kneeling around the blanket. Others from the community had stood around them, many of them weeping. Mom said Stephen spoke tenderly to his family, telling them of his love and saying his goodbyes. He spoke of his concerns for the young church since he was the deacon. After he’d finished, Grandfather had led in prayer. And they had all sung Gott ist de liebe [“God is love”]. It was an old German song everyone knew by heart. They were fifty or so souls far from home, living in a strange land, and now facing a familiar foe—death. They sang as only those can to whom certain things are real. The German words came easily off their tongues as they’d sung the words many times before. But never quite like this.

  It took the pickup truck bearing Uncle Stephen five hours to reach the hospital in the capital. He was, thankfully, still alive. We heard the first medical reports the next day. The doctors said he would make it. He would live. That was followed quickly enough by bad news as more injuries were discovered. Later, on a Sunday night, another crisis point was reached. Many of the uncles and their wives were called in and gathered around his hospital bed. Again they thought Uncle Stephen would be lost to the other side. They sang that night—an English song this time that was written by Aldine S. Kieffer in 1904:

  There’s a city of light ’mid the stars, we are told,

  Where they know not a sorrow or care;

  And the gates are of pearl and the streets are of gold,

  And the buildings exceedingly fair.

  Let us pray for each other, not faint by the way,

  In this sad world of sorrow and care.

  For that home is so bright, and is almost in sight,

  And I trust in my heart you’ll go there.

  But Uncle Stephen rallied. He was home sometime later, recuperating from his wounds. Thinking he was dying in those first hours after the accident, he’d revealed much more than he intended, particularly about his fears for the church. Uncle Stephen was deeply concerned about the direction the fledgling Amish community was going. And as events would later prove, accurately
so. I was never told what words he whispered that night about the church, but they’re not difficult to guess.

  Already some Amish were compromising on their shared beliefs, slowly but surely and driven by necessity as much as anything. Things that were anathema to Amish churches stateside occurred here. There, change, for whatever reason, was considered worse than dying, but here it was more accepted by some.

  I would guess that Uncle Stephen saw the threat coming primarily from the two ministers from Nappanee, Indiana—Richard Hochstetler and Vernon Schmucker—who, along with him, served on the ministry team. The two came from Old Order communities and may not have been under suspicion at first. But opinion was changing. In little ways at first they failed in their dedication to upholding the ordnung rules. They saw no harm in moving the line, going beyond what Uncle Stephen was willing to tolerate.

  And clearly—from the strict Amish perspective—the ordnung line needed holding. Some serious sandbagging was in order as the river of change was rising ever higher. Only a year into the experiment, and the floodwaters were breaking through. A person needed to look no further than Dad’s extensive shop powered by his humongous electric generator for an example.

  And then there was the choice of a bishop, the aforementioned Wallace Byler. He was from the New Order Amish. It was still Amish, but nevertheless was considered a compromise. The New Orders had formed their own conference following an outbreak of revival among the Amish in Holmes County, Ohio, in the mid-sixties or so. Tracts written by Billy Graham had fallen into the hands of several Amish ministers, who then invoked a renewed interest in teachings on the “new birth” and holding Sunday school classes on the in-between Sundays of church services. Neither of which the Old Orders thought necessary to emphasize and, in some places, stood in outright opposition.

  I heard that the first minister who discovered the Billy Graham tract told his fellow minister, “If what it says here is true, then we are lost souls.” Such input from evangelical sources was not appreciated by the established communities. No excommunication was threatened, but the two groups had parted ways. Preferably a bishop for our new community would have come from the Old Order, but the Old Orders were having nothing to do with Grandfather’s great experiment in Honduras.

  Up to this point, Bishop Pete in Aylmer had withheld condemnation but not his opinion. This foreign mission outreach would not work, he said. But he held his fire beyond that. Perhaps the Stolls attributed his attitude to the old animosity toward Grandfather, but it stopped any Old Order bishop from stepping forward. (Not that any expressed a willingness that I know of.) Even Northern Indiana hadn’t offered a bishop, which seems suspect now. After all, Ministers Richard and Vernon came from there. And it’s not like they had a shortage of bishops in that vast spread of Amish communities. Northern Indiana may have heard of Bishop Pete’s objections, but I think it more likely their hesitation had to do with the home church’s evaluation of Ministers Richard and Vernon. Something wasn’t sitting right, and it didn’t take a genius to figure it out. Certainly a Stoll could do so.

  So Grandfather had settled for a New Order bishop. That Grandfather was open to a New Order bishop doesn’t surprise me. That it caused heart palpitations in some of the others also isn’t surprising.

  The worst transgression though, was the church house—which was either already built on top of the hill at that time or in the planning stage. This was beyond the pale when it came to Amish beliefs. I can’t imagine how they dared do it. No stateside Amish man in his right mind would build a church house. The Amish home is the place around which all things revolve—birth, life, death, and church. Back in the States and Canada, the Amish held church in members’ homes, rotating through the community on a Sunday by Sunday or month by month basis.

  Perhaps the Amish adults didn’t dare challenge the obvious that stared them in the face. That it made no sense to keep meeting in temporary storage sheds or even at the children’s home, which also was intended for other purposes. Their homes were simply too small for church use. And to have built larger homes would have violated other principles, including not appearing as the rich of the land. They were already considered so simply by the color of their skin. How then could they adapt to this different environment as they wished to?

  So just up the hill from where Uncle Stephen lay on his blanket, the foundation for the combination church and schoolhouse had been laid. They would have the first church service there in December of 1970, and everything that happens when a church family has a building, happened: the emphasis on growth, the delight in converts, the moving of the cultural heart from within the community family into a building, and, above all, the sense of unwanted progress, of moving forward into a world yet unknown. Uncle Stephen was not seeing a mirage. He saw clearly what was coming.

  Chapter 10

  The two side-by-side ranches, La Granja and Sanson, were by now humming with industry and activity. Along the river bottoms new trenches had been dug. These were filled with running water ahead of the dry season in preparation for a second crop of produce. Grandfather Stoll’s orchard received its best treatment in years, with regular spraying for insects and vigorous pest control from Uncle Mark. The result was unblemished fruit hanging thick on every tree.

  Crops were planted in the black soil, American style, with fertilizer and plenty of manual labor. The crops thrived, and the locals had never seen anything like it. They came to gaze in wonder as we harvested. The ripened produce was peddled in nearby towns along regularly scheduled routes, including Uncle Abner’s twice-weekly run into Tegucigalpa.

  The church house on the hilltop began to have its intended effect, pulling in local converts. They came at first for the meals served after the church service, I suspect. Our great spreads set out on picnic tables quickly gained a “don’t miss it” reputation. The locals’ eyes seemed to almost bug out because the people were used to eating flour tortillas and beans. One local reported his total satisfaction with his first Amish Sunday dinner. Especially when—much to his own surprise—he suffered no ill effects the next day from such bounty. “Mama, mia!” he exclaimed. “That was really something. Our women…they are nothing. All they know how to make is a little tortillas and beans. Around and around they go with the corn, and then they spread some rice on it and think they have made food. Now these are women. They have some weight to them. And you can tell just by looking they have eaten well all of their lives. And they make food. Hah…such food! Food that makes a man’s stomach see a different day of the week every time he opens his mouth.”

  And word soon got around. So the locals let out their belt buckles another notch and came in droves.

  Along the main road, Grandfather Stoll continued to tend his store. He had a bout with heart trouble that December. He stayed in bed a few days, visited the doctor in the capital city, and continued on. Nothing much could be done, the doctor said, even though some heart damage was suspected.

  Every morning the wooden flaps at his store were opened for another day of brisk trade. The place quickly became the bus stop for the community. The early buses into Tegucigalpa ran at three o’clock in the morning or so, bringing passengers into the capital in time to catch the stores soon after they opened. A later bus ran at four-thirty, and then the last around six o’clock.

  For the industrious Amish, the three o’clock bus was the right one to take. Arriving in town at ten o’clock was not acceptable. Better to lose the sleep up front and get a running start at things. Besides, the first bus left Tegucigalpa for the trip back to Guaimaca at twelve, the late bus at two, putting a person back at the community just before dusk, tired and exhausted. A day trip into town was about all anyone wished to tackle. And staying overnight in the capital was done reluctantly.

  Going into the capital was a ritual I grew to dislike intensely. Up at three, stumbling out to the main road in the dark, standing underneath Grandfather’s store overhang while waiting for the bouncing lights of the bus to appear. D
ad would run out to the road, hollering back for us to come if the right bus screeched to a halt.

  The smell of the bus, with dust still rolling out from under the wheels in the brisk early morning air, hit you first. That mixture of body odor and smoke, which had been deposited from cooking over a thousand open fires in their kitchens, was tempered only by the undertones of roasted corn and fried beans. These odors were emanating from bodily externals or from the lunches few locals ventured forth without. The food was wrapped up in cloth and tucked amongst the clothing somewhere.

  Riding the bus made for a full, miserable day. My insides were jerked around as I slid and bounced on the hard bus seats. Exhaust smoke and dust filled my nostrils. And the slow crawl of the bus, the motor roaring in my ears, going nowhere but toward the next spine-jarring pothole seemed never ending. The best drivers went slow to keep their bosses happy. The ones we liked went faster, which ended the agony sooner, but also often resulted in a broken bus axle and a fired bus driver. So all of them would go slow for awhile again.

  The highlight of the day was stopping at the halfway point for breakfast at some little hut doubling as a restaurant, a colorful sign hanging out front and tables set up in the living room. We knew by then not to drink the water or eat the raw vegetables. The rest of the food we devoured with relish. Tortillas flavored by open fires on barrel tins. The beans, mostly boiled, but sometimes fried and laced with lard. Rice with fried vegetables. All quite delicious and wrapped in wood smoke until it arrived at your table.

  By seven or so we arrived in town and rushed around all morning, going from store to store buying supplies. Sometimes, especially for us children, there was a stop at the dentist’s office, an amenity we didn’t have in Guaimaca. We hopped on and off the city buses as their bus boys hollered out the destination in a singsong chant. Newspaper boys were everywhere, waving about the morning’s paper. Their cries of “La Prenza…Tiempo…La Prenza!” still ring in my ears.