Mountain Dew Changes Everything

When several Amish families hire a van to make a trip to the Walmart in town, the women will shop for groceries with the girls, and the men will wander around.  Boys seem to favor the electronics department and DVD racks, and men favor the hardware and power tools.  Recently an Amish grandfather with long, white chin whiskers came wheeling a cart down the aisle, loaded with two-liter bottles of Mountain Dew and Mug Root Beer.  And I mean, it was a fully loaded cart – enough drink to last one man a month.  I guess boys will have eyes for the modern things, and fathers for the practical.  But grandfathers?  This one had an eye for the palette. 

So, what surprises you the most here?  Hiring vans to go to Walmart?  Division of labor?  Amish boys eyeing the cover art of DVDs?  Amish men who are dreaming about electric tools?  Or grandfathers who have seen enough of life to know what is most important to them?  To tell you the truth, I’ve seen it before.  Amish folk in Holmes County, Ohio discovered the Walmart about fifteen years ago.  It’ll probably do more to change their old-world traditions than anything else around.  You don’t normally expect Amish people to get modern about life.  Fifteen years ago, I didn’t expect them to shop at Walmart, either.

At any rate, life in Holmes County is changing.  Amish culture and lifestyle are changing.  It might be a small thing, those bottles of pop, but that’s how change happens. 

Lately, I’ve seen a few Amish men buying battery-powered hand tools.  They’d never buy tools that plug into a socket, you see.  That kind of electricity isn’t approved.  But battery-powered tools are different.  You can charge those with a gasoline generator, as long as the tools are built for 12-volt DC power.  Then that kind of electricity is proper in some districts.  And now there is a hardware store in Charm that sells those types of tools.

So, change is coming.  In fact it is here.  It is slow, but it is relentless.  The gadgets of the modern world do press in on a culture.