Amish Confidential (6 page)

All this meant I’d have to find some steadier part-time jobs, helping out in construction, building things for the neighbors near our house. But again, my father wasn’t letting me run completely wild. A lot of other kids in my youth group who had jobs got to keep the money they earned. But from my part-time jobs, my father always expected me to give him the checks—the whole checks. He might give me back 10 percent, but that didn’t leave much in my pocket. I was supposed to keep turning the checks over until I was twenty-
one. At that rate, I knew I’d have to work an awful lot of part-time jobs or lots of full-time jobs just to make enough money to pay for all the new exciting things I was experiencing. So I found little ways to keep some of my money. When I got paid, I did give my father the checks. But every time I finished a job, I’d keep the last check for myself. Dad never thought to keep track of my start and end dates.

Whether I was at home in Lebanon or in Lancaster with my uncles, I still went with my family to church most of the time unless I’d been out really late on Saturday night. But just because it was church day didn’t mean Rumspringa came to a grinding halt. Sunday afternoons, we played volleyball and drank some more. We still had singing. Every group, no matter how plain or adventurous they were, had to sing Christian hymns on Sunday night. But the Souvenirs didn’t see that as a chore. My new friends actually seemed to like singing together. This whole crowd was much more to my liking, and I think they liked me, too. I wasn’t the only one who had a haircut anymore.

It probably wasn’t so different from the stuff normal teenagers anywhere in America were doing, including underage drinking. But we weren’t normal teenagers. We understood that. We were Amish. These experiences were different enough from the way we were raised, they seemed daring.

As different as these new experiences were to me, there is one other thing that stands out in my mind. The same way I felt close to my older brothers, I started to feel close with some of the guys in my group. A lot of the time, my new friends and I just hung out. Then we started talking. Tentatively at first, we expressed our feelings and frustrations about our lives. A lot of us agreed about how tough we had it growing up. We’d all had some of the same experiences. We
were at the same age and in the same place in life—finished school at eighth grade, trying to figure out what was coming next for us, often without any clue at all. We
got
each other. That’s all. I learned I wasn’t the only one who sometimes felt confused about exactly where I fit in this unusual world of ours and what it really meant to be Amish.

CHAPTER 5

OPEN ROAD

R
umspringa was never supposed to be what it eventually became, a big, rule-breaking blowout for the young and Amish.

There’s a common misconception that Amish parents encourage, even want, their children to go totally wild during Rumspringa and explore hidden alleys the church doesn’t approve of. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The original idea was that teenage boys and girls needed a time when they’d be allowed to ease up on chores so they could date, find a spouse and prepare for adulthood. But over many years, Amish kids did what kids always do. They were given an inch, and they took seventeen miles.

I bought my first car when I was eighteen. Without even realizing it, my father helped me pay for that car. A few years earlier, he had given me a little Angus bull calf he had in the barn. He told me I could keep the calf as a pet and then sell it when I was ready. That turned out to be a tactical error on my father’s part. I raised the calf, and then I sold it for $900. I took $500 of the money and bought a light-brown 1986 Pontiac Grand Prix. I found the car in the
Merchandiser
newspaper, which was filled with little classified ads—
Craigslist before there was Craigslist. The car was long and low and wide as a boat. No one would have called that car pretty, but growing up like I did, going everywhere by horse-and-buggy, I could hardly believe I had my own set of wheels—the rubber, inflatable kind.

I already had my license. I had convinced my brother Sam to take me to the driver’s license office. Many of my new Rumspringa friends already had driver’s licenses. I wanted one, too. The problem was that being a minor, I needed my parents to sign for me, and I wouldn’t dare ask them. Sam agreed to sign as my guardian. I walked out with a learner’s permit.

I’d been driving tractors since I was a little kid. I’d driven buggies for years. But I didn’t have much experience behind the wheel of an actual automobile. The first time I drove alone, I was craving ice cream. I borrowed my stepbrother Daniel’s VW Rabbit and drove to the neighbor’s house where we kept our freezer, one foot on the accelerator, one foot on the brake, choppy all the way.

By the time I bought the Grand Prix with the bull-calf money, I didn’t even have to hide the car from my father anymore. My older brothers had paved the way for me. The first time an Amish truck pulled into our driveway to pick up one of them, my dad grabbed a shotgun and marched out front. “I’m gonna blow your tires out if you don’t get that thing off this property!” he barked.

Eventually, my brothers just wore my father down. When my brothers got their own first cars, he didn’t like it. But he didn’t go nuts. They parked out in the field or behind one of the neighbors’ houses. There was a clearing back there, and it made a fine parking lot. My dad knew what they were doing, but as long as the neighbors didn’t think he was explicitly condoning it, he didn’t make a fuss. And eventually, even that distinction faded away. A few years
later when my stepbrothers got cars, my dad still didn’t like it, but he really never brought the issue up. When I showed up with a car, he’d either given up or he just didn’t care anymore. I parked the Grand Prix out behind the barn—on the property, just not where every passing bishop would see.

I still wore Amish clothes to leave the house, but I changed as soon as I got into the car. I pulled my plain black pants off and had jeans underneath. In the summer, it was shorts and a T-shirt. I think my parents knew I was doing this, but I was trying to show some respect to them. I guess they gave me the respect of not bugging me in return. I did that for a while, but even that charade finally ended. My parents seemed happy to look the other way, and I breathed another sigh of relief. I definitely had things easier than my brothers did.

That car was good for my social life. I was also growing more confident with this new environment called the outside world. Now I could stay out later, make longer trips, connect with more people and find better parties and bars. I’m not saying these were the most important things in the world, but they were an important part of experiencing life, which I hadn’t done a lot of. We had some great parties in those days. None were better than what we called band hops, which happened a couple of times a year. Those events were legendary, like Woodstock or Coachella for the Amish. People would talk about them for weeks. We’d set up in an open field or at someone’s house when their parents were away. We’d roll in a large, wooden wagon and use that as a stage for bands to play on. Amish kids don’t have to rent from the local party-supply center, we always knew how to build stuff. We built stages, bars, dance floors, everything. If we couldn’t find electric lines to connect to, we’d bring in generators.

There was alcohol, of course. And drugs, too. I can’t deny it. Cocaine and marijuana mostly. I’ve heard people mention even harder stuff, but I never saw any of that at our parties—maybe they had it at other peoples’ parties, I don’t know. I heard a girl my age overdosed in Ohio. That may or may not be true. Our parties were all about lots of young people who needed to have a great time. Big crowds turned out—two hundred, three hundred, five hundred people on a Saturday night. Male and female, people from near and far, every age of unmarried Amish from sixteen to about thirty years old.

Even though we were doing these things in plain sight, we didn’t really want the elders paying close attention. But the preachers occasionally caught word that a band hop was happening, and you knew they just wouldn’t turn a blind eye. If your preacher found out you’d gone to one of these parties, you had to go to church and confess and ask forgiveness. That’s how famous these parties became. There were actual guidelines that the preachers and bishops all seemed to follow.

No one wanted to get caught, but those who did dutifully put on their Amish clothes and confessed. Not because they were afraid of eternal damnation. If that were the case, no Amish kid would dare go near those band hops. They did it to make themselves look better in the eyes of the community. It would be embarrassing for their parents if they simply ignored the church elders. So they promised to do better, and the church members were pleased that “Ephram and Leah realized they were wrong.” Then, just as predictably, the freshly chastised partiers would start asking when the next band hop would be.

I know we didn’t invent any of this. Teenagers have been having large, unsupervised parties for generations, probably as long as
there have been teenagers. But the fact that we were Amish and we were doing it, too—that was mammoth. Amish and non-Amish both found it hard to believe, and I didn’t see any reason to stop.

W
hen I was twenty-one, I started playing in a rock band. No, it wasn’t officially allowed. But yes, some Amish people do play in bands. My uncles John and David both played guitar. I’d been seeing a lot of bands, but they were the ones who got me interested. They used to play some pretty big parties for their time. They had some great stories to tell. The story I loved hearing most was about a night they played in a very large barn. Everyone was dancing and having a wonderful time, but the crowd was so large that right in the middle of a fast song, the barn floor collapsed. Incredibly, perhaps miraculously, no one was hurt. The Amish are not quitters, and they were certainly enjoying themselves, so the dancers just stepped away from the hole in the floor and kept moving to the beat.

“They were too far gone to make them stop,” Uncle David would say.

I remember thinking: “Music, sweat, dancing, being in such a frenzy that I wouldn’t even notice if the floor caved in—that’s something I can see myself in the middle of.” But except for some barrels, pots and pans that could stand in for a drum set, I didn’t have a musical instrument to play.

It’s an Amish tradition that when a boy turns sixteen his father gets a horse-and-buggy for him. That way, he’ll be able to get around on the weekends. For a while I liked not having to ask my parents or older brothers for rides. But the truth was that I was never too
interested in horse-and-buggies, not even the fancier ones some kids fixed up. After I got my car, I completely quit using the horse my dad got for me. So I sold it for $1,200 and used the money to buy a Fender amplifier and a Gibson bass guitar.

The band we started was called the Nighthawks. There were five of us. We played mostly eighties rock—Bob Seger, Tom Petty, John Mellencamp, some Rolling Stones—and we played some country. None of us was a great musician. But we were loud. And there is nothing like the thrill of being onstage while everyone in the room is getting into the music. It didn’t take long for me to understand why my uncles loved recounting every minute of their stage experience. It wasn’t too Amish, but it was an awful lot of fun. I’d been fitting a lot of new things into my life in the years since I’d found my way to the right youth group. Playing in a band was just one more experience that opened my eyes.

As I got older, the more I kept seeking new experiences. More and more, my friends and I were hanging out in bars.

For one thing, most of us were finally legal, although the drinking laws weren’t enforced nearly as strictly as they are today. For another, nearly everyone I knew was getting a car, and it was far easier to get around. Those horse-and-buggies kind of stick out in a tavern parking lot, not to mention they look very uncool.

Usually, we wore English clothes. I really didn’t like going into a bar dressed Amish. I thought it was disrespectful. At least I would take off my suspenders, my hat and my coat. I knew how the English talked when they saw an Amish person come into a bar. You could hear the whispers immediately.

“What’s he doing in here?”

“Is he supposed to be in here?”

“I’m gonna call his bishop.”

“Hey, Yam!” That’s an old slur for Amish. “Wanna dance?”

I just shrugged and smiled. Sometimes, I sent over a round of drinks. I liked being in new environments, but I wasn’t looking for trouble unless trouble was looking for me.

Soon enough, my friends and I found some places that became our own. We liked Shooter’s Crossing in New Holland and YP, which stood for Your Place and was right off Route 30. But Doughboy’s became our favorite. It was easy for our friends to find, a rustic wooden building with a high-pitched red roof and a green door off Route 23 in Leola. We knew the bartenders and a lot of the people in there, and the place was always hopping. It filled up on weekends with a combination of regulars and new faces. They served drinks and pizza and had a pool table in the back. I was pretty good at eight ball. There was always sports on the TVs. We’d watch baseball or basketball, but when fall rolled around, football was really our game. Most of my friends were Eagles fans. Some liked the Steelers, but Lancaster County was basically Eagles country. Maybe once a year, a bunch of us would even drive to Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. That was huge for us. Around that time, the Eagles’ fans completely hated the Dallas Cowboys. We yelled ourselves hoarse trash-talking “America’s Team.” I would not have wanted to be a Cowboys fan who wandered into Doughboy’s.

A lot of guys had a sidekick, a best friend who’d tag along for the night. Quacky was mine. Or maybe he’d say I was his. Wherever one of us was, the other one wasn’t far away. His real name was David, but he got the nickname before I ever met him, when he was fifteen or sixteen. He was quacking like a duck or some
thing, I don’t know. Whatever it was, he’d outgrown it. Quacky lived about fifteen minutes from my house so we took turns driving. He’s married now, but back then he was a lot like I was. He was a little crazy and knew how to have fun anywhere. He didn’t care where we went or what we did. And did I mention his father was a preacher?

They always say in the Amish community, “The clergy’s kids are the worst.” I saw that a lot. The stricter your parents were, the crazier you turned out to be. Quacky and I had that in common, his father being a preacher, mine being a deacon. We definitely had similar personalities, not caring too much what other people thought.

We were often inseparable, but if we were lucky some girls would also come out with us. A lot of times that changed our regular plans and calmed us down. Sometimes, if the girls would come along, we’d go bowling or play miniature golf or some other stupid stuff like that, just to be able to hang out with them. Amish girls weren’t as wild as the boys. They would drink some, though not as much as we or the English girls did—or the English boys for that matter. Most of the time, the girls wouldn’t even sit up at the bar. They would come inside and get a table and order a slice. They’d have water. Some of the girls would get looser on weekends and drink on Saturday nights, but not very many. And I wouldn’t call it dating, what we did, not the way English teenagers did. Not even close. Mostly, it was Quacky and me and maybe a couple of other guy friends and, if we were lucky, a couple of girls. We’d all hang out together. Then we’d all head home.

Sex? Yes, of course—
in my dreams
! Our parents might have thought we were flying out of control, but we were easing into the outside world very, very slowly. We were still Amish. Our female
friends were always Amish. The farthest I ever got with any of them was the most fleeting fooling around.

Looking back on those days, there are a few things I do regret. Probably the biggest one: We did a lot of driving way too drunk to do it safely. It really is a miracle we didn’t kill someone. Some higher power must have been listening to my mother’s prayers.

Some nights, I would drive between Lancaster and Lebanon and not even know how I’d gotten home. I’m not proud of that at all. I never hurt anyone or myself, but I didn’t completely get away with it, either.

One night we were at Doughboy’s, and a guy wanted a ride home to Lancaster. I didn’t know him. But he asked, and I said, “Sure.” I gave him the ride. I don’t even remember how far it was or how long it took. Then I went back to the bar to catch up with my friends. But when I got inside, the bartender told me that they’d already moved on to a diner on Route 23. I went back out to the parking lot and got into my car. Just as I pulled out of Doughboy’s, a cop threw his lights and siren on. I didn’t come close to passing the sobriety test.