There’s a
country lane I know south of Fredericksburg, Ohio, just over the Wayne County
border into Holmes County, where in the stretch of a few short miles, there are
a dozen different types of Amish and Mennonite families living on adjacent
farms, in a wide pastoral valley where there are few electric lines or TV
antennas to mare the horizon. The gravel
of the road there is perpetually laced with the thin, wispy lines made by buggy
wheels, and the pace of life is as slow as a team of horses pulling a plow. I was there one year, on a cold and raw day,
when the sky was white with overcast, and the families were all tucked inside
with fires burning in their wood stoves.
I was just out for a drive, looking for the kind of stories I use in my Amish-Country
Mysteries, and I thought that perhaps I’d see something interesting. I wasn’t disappointed.
In the
farmyard of a Schwartzentruber family, nosed up against the red bank barn,
there was a postal service truck, stuck in the mud about twenty yards down a steep
slope from the road. I could see the
tracks of the truck in the mud, tracing down into the barnyard and spinning
this way and that, showing the evidence of all the maneuvers the postal lady
had tried in order to run her truck back up the drive. But there the truck sat, sunk into the mud,
obviously going nowhere. I decided to
watch. It was exactly the sort of thing
I watch for in Holmes
County – the type of intriguing
stories I like to gather for the mysteries I write. I’ve been doing this sort of thing for thirty-five
years.
I stood up
on the road and watched for a while. The
driver tried several times to get the truck headed the right way up the hill,
but she always found herself nosed up to the rough red boards of the barn. I called down to her once to offer
encouragement, and she said, “I think they’ll come out to help.” She meant the Schwartzentrubers inside. Those are the most conservative of all the
Amish sects, living as close to the earth as they can figure out how to
do. They rarely go to town, and they
don’t have much use for us English. I’ve
spoken to the father there once or twice, and the mother and grandmother of the
family have sold me produce from time to time.
The children are taught not to speak to people like me, and although
they smile a lot when I say hello, not one of them has ever said a word in
reply. So, I thought the mail lady was
overly optimistic about their helping her up the hill. In all, I stood there about fifteen minutes,
waiting to see what would happen. That’s
usually the best way to travel in Holmes
County, standing in one
spot for a while. Tourists don’t know
that, and they miss a lot by hurrying from one shop to another. I have leaned to wait.
Eventually,
the Schwartzentrubers sent out a lad of about twelve years. He was dressed in plain Amish denim. He wore his black winter hat and a tall pair
of rubber muck boots. Without speaking,
he walked into the barn, hitched a team of horses to a block with a hook and
chain, and drove the team out into the winter day with a whip. He hooked his rig to the rear bumper of the
truck, snapped his whip, and coaxed the horses to pull the truck around to face
up the drive. That’s when I got my
camera out.
Next, he
unhitched and came around to the front bumper with his team and hooked on
again. He never said a word. He just snapped his whip, marched that team
up the drive, and pulled the truck out onto the gravel lane, with the postal
service lady sitting behind the wheel.
He kicked his hook off the bumper, put his team away, and went
inside. They had sent a boy to handle a
man’s job, and he apparently had thought nothing of it. That’s just how it is on an Amish farm. The children work, too.
I don’t
know, yet, how I’ll use that story in one of my mysteries. I tell about it when I give talks to literary
and library groups, and I like the reaction that the story always gets – the
lad who reversed the Postal Service Slide.
And it wasn’t particularly unusual.
Rather, it is perfectly common in Holmes County.
The Schwartzentrubers live a hard life
intentionally, and a boy of twelve is expected to know how to handle a team of
draft horses.
But I will
always enjoy the exasperation on that lady’s face as the horses pulled her
truck out of the mud. I will always
remember how that young fellow did the job without saying a word – like you’d
expect from a Schwartzentruber. They’ll
tell you, if you can get one to talk, that God expects us all to live on
peasant farms.
Labels: Amish, Amish Culture, Amish-Country Mysteries, Holmes County, P. L. Gaus
