Amish Phones and Airplanes?

In Holmes County, Ohio, the largest Amish population in the world can be found sprawled across the rolling hills and down in the narrow valleys that so much reminded the first Amish settlers here of their homelands in Germany.  It’s a diverse Amish population, and we have everything from the most conservative Schwartzentruber Amish to the rather more urbane and liberal sects who interact extensively with the non-Amish, or English, population.  Modern conveniences range, according to sect, from the very slight accommodations to modernity that the Schwartzentrubers practice (such as sometimes using Coleman gas lanterns, instead of the more traditional oil and wick lamps), to the use by other sects of sophisticated electronic devices such as phones and computers.  And the “discernments” that make one accommodation agreeable to the Amish - whereas another accommodation is not yet agreeable - can be puzzling to say the least. 

One of the nods toward modernity that most makes me chuckle is the neighborhood phone booth, often parked near the road where no one has to admit to owning the thing.  Here is a photograph of one such “neighborhood” Amish phone booth, and right away I suspect you’ll notice the most astonishing aspect of the thing.  Right, you got it.  That’s a solar panel mounted to the top of it.  Inside, there is a phone with an answering machine, and a fax machine, too.  Once you know what you’re looking at, you’ll begin to spot hundreds of these little phone booths peppered around the county.  Some are quite nice, and others are nothing more than little roofed enclosures attached to the back side of a barn.  I know one Amish fellow who has a phone mounted to a tree some hundred yards back into a stand of timber, so nobody can see it. 

So there is progress in Holmes County.  Slow progress to be sure, but measurable nonetheless.  Who knows?  Maybe one day we’ll see radio-controlled airplanes for the kids to play with.  No, wait - I’ve already seen that.  Go figure.