My Amish Childhood

by Jerry S. Eicher

  We were moving toward the basement stairs when two shots tore into the night air. A thrill ran through me. Fausto had heard! He was trying to help. We were not without a friend. We made our way into the basement again, hearing nothing more from either the men or Fausto. Sometime in the early hours I fell asleep.

  The next morning Uncle Joe arrived, very worried. “We heard shots fired near your place. Are you okay?”

  “Yah,” Mom said, telling him the rest of the story.

  Uncle Joe didn’t leave the matter there though. He headed down toward Uncle Stephen’s place for further questions. He came back to report that Uncle Stephen had opened their door after the men identified themselves as police officers. They were looking for somebody, they said. Some escaped criminal. As to why he would have been in the area, I have no idea.

  They were still at Stephen’s place when Fausto fired his shots, Uncle Joe said, and almost came back looking for the source, thinking it was the man they sought. Uncle Stephen persuaded them otherwise. And Fausto was spared from bearing the brunt of our mistake. Not a small matter when dealing with the police force of that country. They don’t exactly read Miranda rights before the questioning begins.

  But even with the foolishness we fell into, real thieving was taking place all over the community. Minister Vernon was hit again, as was the children’s home. Many of the community lost valuable items in their outbuildings. People came out in the morning to find most of their windowpanes gone.

  I guess the thieves figured there was more profit in taking the glass out than in breaking them. That way the owner wouldn’t be inspired to replace the windows with some new style less amenable to breaking in.

  But they had never dealt with Amish ingenuity before either. Several of the community men showed up at Dad’s shop to talk about what could be done. And they soon struck on a solution. Not that original, I suppose, but workable. Making bars to place over the windows and doors.

  A booming business quickly developed at the shop, though I doubt Dad charged much. I was lassoed in to help on my free time after school hours. I couldn’t weld yet, but I could run the metal cutting machine. A repetitive job, but one easily grasped by a youngster.

  The bar design was a simple affair made to fit the rectangular shape of the window, with a steel frame around the edges consisting of a quarter inch by one inch metal turned on edge. This rectangular outline was then filled with the same size metal, creating crossbars running horizontal and vertical through the frame. What was left were small spaces through which no one could crawl, and one could barely reach inside.

  Some of the people chose the squares evenly stacked. But most chose a random design. Dad even tried a version in which the spaces were larger with a tapered piece of metal sticking up in the middle. That design had too much of a prison look and didn’t catch on.

  After completing the frame in the design chosen, four side legs were attached on each corner with flares on them. Through this, carriage bolts were run. They extended completely through the exterior wall and into the inside where the nut was fastened.

  This practice of putting bars across the windows and, in many cases, across the doors of the houses, was unknown stateside. It would always remain a great vexation to the consciences of those who had to resort to such a measure.

  Our new house in Honduras. Notice the window protection.

  Not to be outdone by bars on the windows, the thieves now kicked in the doors. When those were replaced with solid wood frames, they bored around the locks in circular patterns until the piece fell out. Then they reached inside to open the lock or remove the bar if one was placed across the door.

  The Amish soon learned to place solid steel plates around the door lock. A plate wide enough and tall enough so that no hand could reach the knob or bar inside after drilling through the still-exposed wood. In this the locals manifested energy and ingenuity, but apparently drilling around a large steel plate in small hole increments was too much for even their enthusiasm.

  Before the steel plates were placed on the doors, some of boys took to sleeping out in the buildings where the worst break-ins were happening. Most of these were businesses. I’m sure the soft sound of a wood bit going around and around in the door above your sleeping bag was guaranteed to cause tense moments. After waking up and nudging each other, the boys conferred in whispers as to the proper response. All the brave and bold recourses planned the day before failed them—actions that had been schemed when the sun was shining and no pieces of wood shaving were falling on their heads.

  In the end, they settled for simply yelling. The yells were enough for the drill smith to cease his work. After the running footsteps faded away, the boys checked their watches with flashlights covered in cupped hands. Then they managed to get some sleep for the rest of the night. The next day their fathers put things on emergency status and had steel plates installed.

  Uncle Mark found great mirth in this story—but then he wasn’t one of those sleeping inside.

  Emil Helmuth had his own complaints about the thieving. He kept showing up at the shop to tell Dad about the racket out by his barn. Not that it happened every night, but often enough to keep Emil from getting sleep. He would check the next morning, but no one had succeeded in breaking in that Emil could tell.

  Emil worked full-time at the shop, and so he had full access to bars and steel. His place was well protected. But the racket was getting to be a nuisance. Emil’s dog would raise a fuss. And sounds would follow that would require Emil getting up and shining his flashlight about the barn area to quiet things down.

  Finally Emil had enough of this. The next night when the dog got going, he snuck out the back door with his revolver. A revolver that no one but his wife knew he possessed. Hoping that Bishop Monroe wouldn’t hear him, he fired it twice into the air. There was a pause in which everything was still. It was followed by a thrashing from the bushes behind the barn. The sound receded in the direction of Turk Road. Silence fell once again.

  Emil smiled to himself and went back to bed. He told the story next morning to Dad with far more pleasure than any Amish man should show in such a situation. They regaled each other with their imaginations of the frightened fellow running through the bushes and tearing himself up in his haste. Though it could well have been a four-legged prowler for all any of us knew.

  Dad always managed to stay ahead of the thieving curve. Other than the night of the Great Robbery, we never suffered much loss. This was in part because of Dad’s generator, which he used to run his lights. When the dogs barked, one of us pushed the button by Dad’s bed, the generator in the shop fired up, and the yard was flooded with light. The roar of the diesel could be heard almost to Grandfather’s place and halfway into La Granja. In defense of Dad, I suppose his method had merit. Didn’t the Scriptures say that evil deeds were done in the darkness? What better way of thwarting them than by throwing light on the subject.

  To top things off, Dad mounted a siren above the rafters in the engine room of the shop. This maneuver required the placement of a third switch in the bedroom. But the wail of that siren on a quiet Honduran night was one of the sweetest sounds I heard in my growing-up years. It was like a voice lifted in agony toward the very heavens, and I felt certain it was heard by God Himself.

  With his lights, the roar of his diesel, and the wail of his siren, Dad kept his shop from being broken into. His efforts also had the effect of throwing a cordon of safety for a quarter of a mile on each side of us. Outside of that, you were on your own. Dad believed in praying for protection, but he also believed that a person should turn on the lights when it lay in his power to do so—a lesson I have not forgotten.

  In the midst of all this, Dad’s business was increasing. The sawmill managers had learned the value of his services—that Dad could do keyways in metal, lathe work that baffled the mind, and most any work associated with metal.

  We counted our blessings by day and were thankful to wake again as each morning dawned
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  Chapter 25

  Sometime during the school year of 1972, while we still lived in the old cottage, my clumsy attempts at practical jokes made their first appearance. The whole affair was quite innocent, even amusing, at least from my point of view. But others had a different opinion.

  It all began at the schoolhouse where Glen Hochstetler was teaching the upper grades and Dora Miller the lower grades. I think Glen was only there that year for a month or two. But it was long enough for several of us boys to get into our heads that a romance must surely be going on between the two teachers.

  We whispered and laughed amongst ourselves. The two did act sweet enough when they were together, although I suspect now that it was professional courtesy. They never dated each other in later life or expressed romantic interest in each other that I know of. But shorn of this future knowledge, we boys were not deterred in our surmising.

  There was love in the air. We were certain of it.

  I don’t recall why Joseph and his younger brother, Daniel, were along that day or even what the reason was we were all at the schoolhouse. But my brother John and I found ourselves there after hours along with the two brothers.

  The conversation quickly turned to the perceived romance between Glen and Dora. We shared our recent observations of a quick look or smile between the two. All of us agreed the two teachers were growing closer to each other.

  The other three would have left things there, but not me. I had to take action.

  “Let’s leave a note,” I suggested.

  The others looked at me, puzzled. Chuckling about the matter was one thing, but leaving an announcement of our presence was quite another thing.

  “Glen loves Dora,” I said, mulling the matter over in my mind. I could see the look on Dora’s face when she saw the words. Then she could express her love openly.

  “Where would you put it?” one of them asked, warming to the idea.

  “We’d put ‘Dora loves Glen,’ in his desk, and ‘Glen loves Dora,’ in her desk!” I announced.

  Their faces glowed with excitement. It was the perfect plan. No one would ever know who had left the notes. If things went well, the romance would be greatly enhanced. Each might think the other was sending a secret message.

  I seized pen and paper and wrote out the words. I should have noticed no one was helping. They all stood there with wide smiles on their faces, enjoying the fun, but not touching anything. I opened the drawers of the desks sitting in front of each room and dropped in the notes.

  No one said anything more as we left. I heard nothing the next day at school. Both Dora and Glen acted like they always did. Apparently no romance had been enhanced, and the plan had failed. I soon forgot about the matter. That is, until I was roused from a deep sleep late one night. I was sleeping on one of the upper bunks in the room I shared with my brothers, when Mom nearly hauled me down to the floor. I was told to slip on my pants and shirt. I followed her out to the living room.

  Dad was standing there waiting, but Mom clearly had the floor. They had been at a school board meeting that evening, I vaguely remembered. Apparently something had happened.

  “A terrible thing has been discovered at school,” Mom said. “There were love notes found in each of the teachers’ desks.”

  She didn’t repeat what the notes contained, preferring to leave the horrible matter hanging in the air. It’s an amazing thing how different a subject looks when viewed during the nighttime. Especially when you’ve just been awakened from sleep, and your parents are staring at you with horrified looks on their faces.

  “Did you have anything to do with this?” Mom asked.

  I could have lied, I suppose. I often did. But I chose not to that night. Perhaps some scrap of dignity exerted itself, and I didn’t wish to join this jury in its unanimous condemnation of my prank.

  “I did,” I said.

  Mom didn’t look surprised, the poor woman. But she’d obviously not told anyone of her fears at the school board meeting. Looking back, I suspect the community had already guessed correctly, perhaps giving her and Dad sideways glances while the matter was discussed in hushed tones. Why else would she have hauled me out of bed with such certainty?

  “You will go and apologize to the teachers,” Mom decreed, obviously thinking she was letting me off easy.

  Or perhaps she knew the truth. That this public humiliation would be worse than a thrashing. I dreaded having to initiate a conversation where each word came out only with great effort and was accompanied by wild static in my head.

  I returned to bed with the ax hanging over my head. This was on a Friday night, so there would be no school in the morning, which was a good thing. On a school day there would have been students around as witnesses to my humiliation. This way I had the weekend to settle the affair in private.

  I can’t remember where I sought Dora out. Their family lived in the upper reaches of La Granja. I can’t imagine traveling over on a Saturday to speak with her. But Dora wasn’t the problem. She was a sweet woman with a kind face and heart. She would have been most understanding and the task easy enough. No, Glen was the problem. And my solution was to approach him after the services that Sunday, seizing my chance when he was alone somewhere between the church house door and the men’s john down the hillside.

  “I need to speak with you,” I whispered, walking aside for a distance.

  He followed, his face frozen. I was a worm, I knew, crawling into his world with my awful deed. I offered no explanation, accepting fully the wickedness of my act. Clearly my value system was misaligned with the world I lived in, and I needed to adjust. How? I didn’t have a clue. But for now the words of apology needed saying.

  I kept the words short—to a bare minimum.

  Stuttering is a physical defect that shatters the ego. It leaves you a pariah, a misfit for which there is no remedy. Men have sympathy for illness, even for disfigurement. But they are at a loss around the sound of a stammerer’s words.

  Communication is one of the essentials of human survival, and speaking our primary means. With it we transmit a thousand signals we’re not even aware of. And stammering-speak has lost all of that. The subtleness. The inflection of tone. The movement of the eyes. The gestures of the face and hands. It’s all swamped by the horrible sounds that come out of the mouth.

  “I was the one who left the notes,” I finally managed. “I’m sorry.”

  He nodded, saying nothing.

  We left it at that and parted company. Nothing more was ever said about the matter.

  But lest you think ill of the man for being so cold, let me hasten to add a postscript. One which shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. Glen taught full-time in my eighth year of school—the grade in which I first tried my hand at writing fiction. Our class had been given a research assignment on the care of an orchard. We were to write a short introduction on the subject, followed by a lengthy outline. The next assignment was on stars. Both of my works were graded “B.” Most of the errors circled were for spelling. (I don’t find that surprising. It was a subject I didn’t appreciate in school and so ignored it as much as possible.)

  The new assignment was on hog farming. I did my normal research, reading up on the subject from our encyclopedias that sat on the book rack in the back of the schoolroom. I then visited two of my uncles, Abner and Alva Stoll. Both of them were hog farmers.

  For the introduction piece, an idea occurred to me. Why not write it in story form? I consulted no one for advice, simply plunged forward, driven more by boredom with research papers than anything else. I had no idea back then what a risk I was taking, or how unconventional this was. Glen could easily have disallowed the whole effort, forcing me to rewrite the piece. Instead he read my assignment with a big smile spreading across his face. He loved it, he said. This was good.

  I glowed on the inside.

  Glen then went a step further, not just mentioning the matter in our eighth-grade class of three girls and two boys. He
got up in front of the entire school and praised the piece. I can’t remember if he read it out loud, but it’s possible. That would have been in character with him.

  He marked my paper with an “A,” adding a “Very Good!”

  None of this was necessary on his part. I wasn’t popular in school, so he had nothing to gain by calling attention to me. Yet he did what he did. Here’s my report, written when I was around thirteen.

  Hog Farming

  Willie the pig had only been born yesterday. He lay in his pen with his four brothers and sisters. He was still young and did not know that his owner, whose name was Dick, was going to sell him to a butcher.

  Dick always gave him a lot of separated milk which was very important to him, and made him grow like a weed. Every morning Dick checked carefully to see if Willie had any sicknesses. Willie’s mother needed a lot of water. Water was more important to her than feed.

  Days went by and Willie grew. Dick sold him to a man who was fattening hogs to butcher. His name was Fred. Fred gave Willie a clean place to sleep and play, along with nine other pigs. He chased them all into one pen. He always gave Willie and his companions a lot of separated milk, which helped make them fat. Milk is high in protein and very good for pigs.

  It is easier to buy small pigs and fatten them because for fattening pigs you can put them all into one pen. While for raising little pigs you have to have a separate pen for every mother pig.

  One day Fred’s boy, Bob, came out in the middle of the day and let the pigs out. The sun was shining very brightly. Bob didn’t think he was harming the pigs. They were out in the sun for two hours before Fred noticed it.

  Fred then hurried to chase them back in, but Willie was not too willing to go back in. He decided to run away. It was another half an hour before Fred got them back in. The next morning both Willie and his nine companions were very sick. Fred quickly went to town to buy medicine. It was two weeks before Willie had recovered. He had lost thirty pounds, but as time went on Willie regained his strength.