Franklin County, Nebraska

For Another Day

This week’s article continues with an interview with the Amish couple, David and Ada Yoder.

David knew of his heritage and told me his grandfather came from Haven, KS. (Located by Hutchinson) and that he had visited there two years ago. He told me his grandparents’ old home place was an old air base and that a cousin of his had shown him the concrete foundations of the old farmstead, and he remembered there were three church districts in this group at Haven.

I asked, “Do you get together and visit? Do you have friends?” “Yes, sometimes on weekdays in the evening we have company.” I asked, “what do you talk about and what do you eat?” (He smiled, as to think, “Does this lady think we are this backward?”) He answered me anyway saying, “Our favorite thing to eat with friends is homemade ice-cream and cake.” David said they talk about the farm economy, just like we do, when we get together with friends.

We were talking freely by this time and I felt right at home. I asked if Ada made home made bread? “Yes,” she said, as she sat and listened. Ada didn’t talk much , but sometimes she smiled and added a thought or two. When I told her I also made bread by the six loaves she wanted to know how I did it. So, I told her about this German family at Macon who taught me to make bread and how this recipe had been sent from coast to coast.

About this time, I saw a black buggy go out of the yard and said bluntly, “Who is that, and where is he going?” “It’s my son and he is going to see his girlfriend down the road.” “Oh, I want to go for a buggy ride,” I said. David was amused at my thinking a buggy ride would be fun. It’s just a way of life to them. He said, “We Amish People wish to keep life as simple as possible.” The children carry this thought down the line to the next generation.

Out in David and Ada’s driveway was my green convertible car. I wanted to know if his teenage children might look and want this English way of life. I said, “do the children ever leave and go to the outside world?” “Yes, sometimes they do.” I asked, “Do you let them come back?” “Yes’” “We want them to come back and we do not criticize them. We welcome them back.” David was confident and quick to answer me about my manner of life. No, this would not influence his children.

David said one reason he was talking to me is that some of the books out about the Amish people don’t tell the truth about them. The Amish pay taxes; they help support public schools and still take care of their own school. The country school of this district is just to the east of their house a mile or so. They have one teacher per school, with the young women of the area usually as the teacher. The children go to school for eight years. The children learn lessons in English Monday through Thursday. On Friday, the lessons are taught in German. These children only go to school for eight years and learn three languages. The Amish build their own schools and have their own school boards, which meet once a month. The instructor teaches by the standards set by the state of Minnesota. “Is it true the Amish have no electricity and no insurance, and no phone?” I asked. It was yes on the first two, and he said they have two phones per district. Both phones are not in the house and are in a little building on a farm up the road. It is by the honor system they are run. “We keep track of our own calls made,” David said. As to insurance, they go to the doctor and hospital and if the bill is too big for the family to pay, they ask for help from other Amish families, and usually get it.

It was about this time I heard the sound of popcorn popping in the kitchen. When I asked how it was being popped, since I didn’t see her using the black cook stove, Ada showed me a gas powered one burner cooker that they use when they don’t want to use the stove. I was served homegrown popcorn along with the most delicious home-canned grape juice. We all ate popcorn around a big table and I felt so warm and at home with these new friends. We talked of the homegrown popcorn and how it is hung in a feed sack in the barn for at least eight months to dry. David told me the popcorn can get too dry and if we would just add a few drops of water in the popper right on top of the corn that it sometimes pops much better. Later I tried it and every kernel pops. The Yoders have popcorn every Sunday and throughout the week. I wondered why it tasted so good, then I realized why; there was just a hint of sugar added to the corn. I had two bowls and felt comfortable asking for the second bowl. You should have tasted the grape juice. I think it was the best I’ve ever had.

It was a good time to talk about question of diet. “Yes,” David said, “We watch what we eat. My dad died of a heart attack at 60-years-old, when I was 17, so I took over the farm in Iowa until my mother remarried her brother-in-law, who had lost his wife. The children take vitamins and they get their childhood shots against diseases.”

I caught a glimpse of Ada taking eggs out of a bucket. She left us to gather the eggs and I didn’t know she was gone. The work is distributed each morning to each child, depending on what needs to be done. The boys take turns milking the cow and getting the wood. The little girls start setting the table and doing the dishes at a very early age.

I noted Ada putting wood in the cook stove they ordered in 1986. This stove, with a pretty gray metal trim, was clean and polished. Sitting on this warm stove was a coffeepot. I those them I had one just like it. Ada uses a Kerosene cook stove in the inside entryway to cook on if the days are too hot to use the wood burning one.

The house contains three treadle sewing machines to make clothing. Ada says sometimes her daughters come home to sew. All Amish clothing is homemade, except underwear, and Dad told me the rules of colors. The clothing much be solid colors of dark, except the men wear light colored shirts because of the heat. There are no colors of pink, yellow, orange or purple. The women have no buttons on their dresses; rather they are pinned with straight pins. I saw additional pins attached to Ada’s dress that I assumed were to repin the children’s dress if they lose theirs. Amish women wear no jewelry. I saw the youngest daughter, Betty, climb lovingly on her mother’s lap holding a handmade doll wrapped in a hand knitted blanket, with no face: “No graven images before me,” says the Bible. Simple is best. Shoes are purchased. I also saw a rack at another back door near the kitchen that held all the male black coats and their straw work hats. The dress hat is black felt. David says men never shave their beard after they are married, except around the mouth, and the men’s hair much be cut at mid ear length. The women never cut their hair from birth, but it can be thinned if it gets too heavy.

As I sat there and watched this family going about their daily Sunday life, they were so busy and happy. The afternoon was like stepping back in time. I couldn’t help but think that these people are experiencing and living a unique and admirable way of life. As a historian, it was fascinating to watch them live a simple way that almost all Americans can only read about.

Have you had a kindness show? Pass it on. Henry Burton.

Rena Donovan, For Another Day.

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