Hospital stay

In November 1947 I was in Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia, and remember it like it was last week, or yesterday as I write this. I was three years old. I was in a crib on one side of the room and a nurse brought in a baby and placed him in a crib on the other side. Later, they brought in a gurney and placed him on it and wheeled him out. Later in the day, the gurney came back with the sleeping baby who had a pacifier in his mouth. Somehow it struck a familiar chord with me.

A day or so later the gurney came back. The orderly asked me if I wanted a ride. My antennas went up. There was something a little odd about his invitation and I didn’t want to go. I shook my head. The orderly persisted, “Don’t you want a ride? We’ll just go down the hall. You like rides, don’t you?” I resisted, but finally gave in after more promises of taking me for just a little ride. He sat me on top and soon we started moving, out the door, he turned right and proceeded down the hall. I felt like the King of the Mountain.

The feeling was woefully short-lived. I suddenly remembered what might happen. I had been in an operating room several times before sometime after the age of one. I became afraid of the tanks next to the operating table; tanks that were the cause of that awful odor which must have come from them. They gave me ether to put me to sleep and I developed a fear that persisted long afterward.

This time I knew what they were going to do. I started to cry. The orderly kept up the pace, even pushed the gurney a little faster. By the time I got to the end of the hall and turned left, I was in full cry and screaming, and by the time I was halfway down the next hall I was crying, “Don’t put anything over my nose! Don’t put anything over my nose!” The orderly hurriedly wheeled me into the Operating Room and they gently laid this terror-stricken kid on the operating table as he kept crying, “Don’t put anything over my nose…” A nurse at the other end of the room called out calmly, “No, we won’t put anything over your nose.” Just then a hand clapped gauze over my face from behind and sprinkled the dreaded ether. I saw circles and sparks and passed out in seconds.

I can only guess what they did afterwards, after breathing a collective sigh of relief. They probed, prodded, cut, snipped, rearranged, swabbed, sewed, and bandaged. I was oblivious of it all—I was in a blessed drugged sleep.

I woke up to find that I was bandaged tightly around the waist. They wheeled me back to my room. The nurses were immediately in attendance, declaring to me and everyone how brave I was. One nurse explained to me that I was to stay in my bed for awhile. “Do not get up until we tell you,” she warned.

My parents lived about 40 miles away and Dad showed up once in awhile. He told me later that I was listed as “The Darling of the Nurses.” They were the ones who saw to my health and welfare, saw that I was clothed and fed. Otherwise, it was rather lonely sometimes.

One evening a man came in, clothed in a suit and tie. I didn’t remember seeing him before, but as I sat in my crib, he walked over to me and asked if I would like some ice cream. Of course, little boys like ice cream—I said yes. He left the room and soon came back with two Dixie cups of vanilla ice cream and two wooden spoons. He opened one for me and then he sat down in a chair nearby. As I ate my ice cream I felt a feeling of importance that someone would spend a little time with me, just a kid. As I remember, he appeared to be in his 20s and he stayed there until he finished his ice cream, and then left. To this day, I don’t know if he was a man or an angel.

I remember being in another room, still recovering from the surgery, and this time I had a roommate about my age. One morning I looked out the window and watched the people walking on the sidewalks far below. Soon my roommate looked out the same window and exclaimed that he saw my Daddy. I remember thinking that he must not be able to recognize my Dad, I never recognized any of those people from the seventh floor. But I expected Dad to show up soon.

Noontime rolled around; no one showed up. A nurse brought our lunch—mashed potatoes, peas, and hamburger. I guess I was disappointed that Dad wasn’t here. I started getting rambunctious. I started throwing the mashed potatoes, peas, and hamburger and persuaded my roommate to join in which he did a bit half-heartedly I thought. The food landed on the floor, some on the wall, and bits of mashed potatoes clung to the ceiling. Soon a nurse came in to see what all the shrieks of laughter were about. She took one look, singled me out as the perpetrator and slapped my hands with a harried, “I ought to make you clean this up yourself!” She sentenced each of us to our individual cribs and firmly raised the bars.

The next shift of nurses saw two little boys meekly sitting in their cribs; haloes slightly askew. They had found out about our little caper but one nurse came and lowered the sides again, “They shouldn’t treat children this way,” she announced in our defense. Later my roommate’s Dad showed up. He had learned about the food fight in Room 721. I watched as he put his arm around his son and talked to him in gentle tones. I felt guilty as sin—and still no Daddy.

I survived the whole ordeal, and so did the nurses I suppose. I was there to acquire a new lease on life. The surgeon had adjusted the internal plumbing to bring about normalcy in a kid who was born with the need for it. But in the process I developed a phobia against ether and alcohol. Every time I got a whiff of rubbing alcohol I would go into a panic. When I was 21 years old I suddenly realized that it didn’t bother me so much, but in subsequent hospital visits I would have a memory of the early days whenever my nose picked up the odor of sterilized sheets.

I wrote the beginning of this story about five years ago and the emotion of that day renewed itself afresh and I was glad I was alone. It is not necessary to see a grown man cry.

Today hospitals are kinder and more considerate of the emotional needs of children. Parents and guardians are allowed to be with a child patient. Doctors, nurses and caretakers are more apt to dress informally to offset the scary severity of a hospital setting.

When I left the hospital I was given the choice of picking one of two toys given to me by the hospital: a toy truck full of toy animals, or alphabet blocks. Dad persuaded me to take the blocks. He knew I had plenty of toys when I got home. I would have preferred the truckload of animals.

Nathan, a future teacher

I got into an interesting conversation with four-year-old Nathan. Lately he has been concerned about tornadoes. When the sky clouds up with large cumulonimbus clouds, he almost freaks out. He was with me here in my office and asked me if I could go with him upstairs. I asked if he was afraid. “Yes,” he replied. I told him there was nothing to be afraid of; tornadoes don’t come around here in Ohio very often at all.

He then launched into a description of the process. Tornadoes can go into volcanoes and fire and lava come out. He had his own explanation so I took him to the Internet and showed him volcanoes and the process in which they erupt. Then we went into the subject of planets. He said there was something around a planet. I showed him Saturn.

You can't silence the kid very long. He then told me some things that he remembered at the age of three. I asked if he remembered when he was one. He nodded.

“What do you remember?”

“I was zero,” he replied. I wonder if he answered the question.

“Do you remember anything at that time?” I asked. I wanted to see how vivid his imagination was, or how much his memory went farther back.

“I was in Mommy’s belly,” he replied.

“Do you remember anything about that?” He shook his head but then said, “There were lights.”

“Lights? Did you see anything?”

“No, it was dark.”

At his age, you wonder how much is imagination or memory, convoluted as it may be. Art Linkletter, move over.

____________

How do you keep a child occupied? I had that experience when I downloaded a program off the Internet which had a text-to-speech feature. You type words and the computer will sound them out in the sentences you construct. Nathan noticed it so I had a little fun with him. I typed out “Nathan, are you being a good boy?” and a female voice sounded it out very convincingly. He grinned and said, “How does she know my name?” Every time a new name came up he wondered how she knew. He realized that my typing had a lot to do with it and gave me sentences to type so he could hear her talk.

The next day Nathan came down and told me to get out of the program I was in [Microsoft Word] and he would tell me what to do. He’s a little like Lucy, he gives orders. I was typing a letter, but I wanted to see what he wanted.

When I clicked out of the Word program he said, “Click on this [Start]…, click on this [Control Panel]…, click on this [Speech]." I did the rest by clicking on the text to speech folder. He then told me what to type, something about Miriam (his mother’s cousin). I typed “Nathan, you are not being very quiet. Miriam is not here to make you behave. Blizzard [his toy cougar] needs a boy who behaves himself. Miriam will soon not be here because she is going to be with Ervin [her fiance].”

Nathan’s eyes grew big, “How did she know about Ervin?” Well, the kid’s only four. As of September 10 he is in pre-school. He might as well go into first grade.

____________

I was listening to Nathan while I was typing. He was sitting on the floor, talking to his toy parrot which repeats everything twice that Nathan says, in a two-second interval. He made all kinds of noises. He coughed and the parrot coughed; he made rude noises and the parrot repeated it. He sighed and the parrot sighed. He made pounding noises and the parrot repeated it—twice. He was having a lot of fun with it. The odd thing is that I didn’t mind it. It’s quite endearing. I should have recorded it.

But I finally chased him out. Later I heard him coming down the steps. I locked the door for peace and quiet. He tried the door but he didn’t say anything. Then I heard something being pushed under the door. It was an envelope, then another, and another. Lucy had gotten the mail and Nathan delivered it to my door. When he slid about six or seven pieces of mail through he apparently put his head to the floor at the door because I heard a loud “THE MAILMAN”. I thanked him, and he said, “YOUR WELCOME”, got up, and scampered back upstairs. You gotta give the kid credit for something…I don’t know what. He is acquiring more responsibility in assisting Lucy and me. I wish I had his energy!

Broken leg

On January 11, 2005 I was moving Lucy’s power wheelchair into position for her. When I stepped off I got my foot entangled in the footrest and twisted my leg as I went down to the floor in our bedroom. I heard a crunch as I went down and knew I had broken my leg. I broke out into a sweat and was breathing fast. I was apparently going into shock. I stayed conscious though and told Lucy I broke my leg. She suggested getting up and trying to stand. Just a small movement confirmed my suspicions and I stayed where I was. No way was I going to stand up. I had my cellphone in my pocket and called 911 and stayed on the floor, head halfway under the computer table. As long as I didn’t move I was comfortable.

The firehouse is only a half mile up the road and they were here in short order. One of the paramedics tried to step over part of me and accidentally hit me in the foot. Ow! He apologized profusely.

They bound my leg in a splint and lifted me onto their carrier and took me out to the hospital. In the ER they took an x-ray and found it to be a spiral fracture involving both bones (tibia and fibula) halfway between the knee and ankle. The ER physician explained that they may put in a rod or some pins to put the bones together. They bound my leg tightly in a temporary splint again. As I waited in the ER I called a few people and as I was on the phone with Lucy I suddenly felt a cramp coming on. Oh no! A cramp in a broken leg!? Yow! It felt like a vise and as it grew more intense I panicked. “Help…Help!” A nurse was just outside the door and wandered in slowly at my call. There was nothing she could do about it—and then I heard a loud crack, and the cramp slowly subsided. So, what happened? Later I told the surgeon, Dr. Viau, what happened.

A complicating factor was the rash on that same leg—cellulitis and/or dermatitis. They saw the need to take care of that first—surgery would have to wait. They gave me antibiotics for 3 days before taking me to surgery to set the leg.

In surgery they put me under anesthesia so I never knew what they did to me, until the doctor told me. I don’t remember going to sleep. All I knew when I woke up was that I was in a different room and my leg was in a cast almost from hip to ankle. Dr. Viau told me that when he x-rayed my leg again everything was back in place. He didn’t have to do any surgery, he only needed to put my leg in a cast.

To further complicate matters, I was also on kidney dialysis. They took care of that at the hospital but now that I would be going home, how am I going to handle it? It is costly using ambulance service for the trips to and from dialysis three times a week. The decision was made to send me to Oak Grove Convalescent Center. Insurance would pay for the trips to dialysis. I was there about a week and soon got tired of it. I just needed to go home and maybe have someone take me to dialysis.

Meanwhile, Lucy phoned the radio program Market Place on WMAN and broadcast the need for a driver for a dialysis patient three times a week. There were four responses. I picked one and signed myself out to go home. For about two or three weeks I used the services of a gentleman who picked me up at home, took me to dialysis, went to his home to wait for my call, and took me back home. It was a routine that helped me realize that I could drive myself to dialysis, now that everything felt like it was healing nicely. One day I told him I wouldn't need his service anymore. I was now on my own.

With a full cast, I needed to be careful putting myself in the driver's seat but with an automatic transmission there is no need to use the left foot so it worked out OK. The doctor changed the cast after about six weeks and I continued with a half-cast for several more weeks. I continued on crutches but was able to put more weight on my leg and finally the cast was taken off.

It was then that I found out that I couldn't walk very well because of the pain in my left hip, so ever since then I have resorted to continuing with one crutch. Perhaps I could use a cane but I have so much more control with a crutch. Among other things, I can probably blame it on the fall down the silo chute, which I wrote about yesterday.

Down the silo chute

I remember it well. It was 1952. It was a cloudy and damp day in November. I was eight years old and I was assigned the task of throwing corn silage down for 40 cows that my Dad milked every day. Dad cautioned, "Be careful, the rungs may be slippery." I climbed up the 50 foot silo rung by rung and noticed that it was over half full. I spent some time forking silage down the chute with a multi-tined large fork. I finally stopped and called down the chute to ask if there was enough. No answer.

I backed out of the small doorway and onto the first rung and climbed down and checked for myself. For all the time I spent the pile of silage was pitifully small. I climbed back up again and resumed the task of making sure there was enough silage for those 40 cows. And then I climbed down again to check. Again, there was not enough. I climbed back up and continued. This time I spent a longer time; surely there was enough by now.

I backed out and onto the first rung. Just as I went for the next rung, I slipped off. My hands let go and followed my feet. I was in free fall.

How long does it take to fall 30 feet? Time stood still. I thought of my predicament, my whole life, my brother and sisters and the occasional fights we had, my parents and their struggles to make a living and take care of five children. What is going to happen when I hit bottom? Will it hurt? Will I break my leg, or worse? Will I see Jesus now? Will I be in heaven? All these things entered my mind as I sailed past each rung, missing each one.

Then I landed with a soft thud on the huge pile of silage I had spent time on building. I felt a little twinge of pain in my hip but suddenly all was quiet. I sat there almost in shock. I got up and suddenly realized that I was alive and I started crying like there was no tomorrow. I wandered down the aisle to a couple steps leading out to the door and sat down.

Soon my Dad's boss came in. "What's the matter?"

"I fell down the steps," I replied between sobs.

Then Dad walked in the door. "What on earth is the matter with you?"

"He fell down the steps."

Two years later I was riding with Dad in the car and I suddenly said, "Dad (maybe I called him Pop in those days), I didn't fall down those steps...I fell down the silo chute."

"I thought that's what happened. I went back to the silo and that pile of silage was pretty flat." He never let on he knew; never reprimanded me for it.

That incident changed my life...to look at life with a heart for definite but as yet unknown goals.

Amish in the City

It was sometime in 2004 when things started happening around our place in an exciting way. A couple of TV producers came with a TV camera and interviewed some prospects for the upcoming series, "Amish in the City." Some of our ex-Amish friends came to our house and were interviewed for a planned series surrounding Amish people. There were rumors about it for awhile to the effect that the Amish objected to such an exploitation. Local senators found out about but were unable to halt the project. The Amish understandably do not want their lives paraded in front of the world. They leave everyone alone; they want to also be left alone.

Ruth was one of the five participants in the project and some TV footage was shot which resulted in part of our house and barn being on national television during the introduction to each episode. The rest of it was in Hollywood, CA and wherever the entourage traveled.

You could call it a social experiment, putting a small group of seemingly uncultured, naive young people with a group of street-wise city young people. When I heard about it I thought it was a good idea. People could be greatly surprised.

The drama began when the city kids saw the approach of these young people dressed in Amish clothes. It wasn't fun for everyone; there were quite a few insulting remarks aimed at the Amish young people. But over the course of time, it was evident that they upstaged these street-wise young people because Amish culture is replete with a great work ethic, a solid traditional culture, even if they don't learn about all that is to know about the world.

Ruth, Jonas, Mose, Miriam and Randy did their part in just being themselves. Although so much was new to them, they were able to bring about a great series which helped to put the Amish cuture in a refreshing light. That was evident when pitted against the narrow view of the city kids regarding honesty, fair play, and social understanding, for want of a better description.

I don't know if there will be another series. Ruth went back to the Amish, and maybe others did. I met Ruth in August. She is married and the mother of one child. Whatever memories she has of her experience, they will have to be put it largely aside for her dedication to her present lifestyle in raising a family and blending into the Amish culture. More power to her.

An ABC TV crew was here at a birthday party on Saturday, June 30, 2007 and interviewed some young people for an upcoming documentary, maybe next year. Stay tuned.

Nathan

Nathan is a rather precocious four-year-old who lives on the other side of the house with his parents. Since his parents both work, my wife Lucy is in babysitting charge of Nathan and two-year-old Nolan part of the day, five or six days a week. You can imagine that they are a handful, especially since Lucy is on a wheelchair ever since her stroke in May 2004. Still, she bravely carries on the duties of seeing to their welfare. Since I'm on disability I am around quite often to help out.

One day Lucy told me that Nathan wouldn't listen to her and locked the door on his side of the house. I went to the outside of the house and knocked on the door. Nathan was sitting on the sofa chair watching television. He turned around, saw who it was and resumed watching television. "Nathan", I called. "If you don't open this door, I won't let you play games on the computer anymore." That did it. He meekly unlocked the door and I led him over to our side of the house, and Lucy put him on Time Out.

A few days later I was busy typing a letter. Nathan was trying to get onto my lap and I kept pushing him away. Finally he said, "Wes, if you don't let me play on the computer, I won't give you any candy."

"Do you have any candy?"

"Uh-huh."

"May I have some?"

"Oh, OK, I'll get some." He scampered off to the kitchen. From the kitchen I heard a muffled argument between Nathan and Lucy but I could guess what they were arguing about. Suddenly Nathan started crying. Needless to say, I didn't get any candy.

____________

Another time Lucy was busy quilting. She had a pair of her glasses on the quilt and Nathan brought a stool and stood by Lucy, and started playing with the glasses. Lucy intervened. "Nathan, leave those glasses alone."

"But I can't quilt without my glasses," he replied.

____________

Just recently, as I was writing in my little basement office, Nathan came in with a toy and covered it with a handkerchief. "Wes, guess what this is," and for the next several minutes I played a guessing game with each toy he brought in. Soon the floor was covered with them. When I later asked him to put them back, he refused, as he usually does. I took my foot and crutch and swept them just outside the door and to the side. Over the few days I occasionally picked up a toy to put it away but when his Dad came to talk to me, I told him about the game we played and Nathan's refusal to put the toys away. "I'll take care of it," he said.

A few minutes later I heard footsteps bouncing down the steps which sounded like Nathan. There was silence for awhile with an occasional rattling noise, and then my office door slowly opened. From my vantage point I couldn't see much and no one appeared, but the door was still moving a little. Then from around the corner out of sight came a plaintive voice, "Sorry." I looked and found that the toys were gone. I finally realized what happened. "That's OK," I said, "Thank you," as Nathan trudged back upstairs. Later I found that his Dad asked if he apologized, "Yes," he replied.

Sweet kid...sometimes.

Amish funeral

My wife Lucy’s Amish step-mother Emma passed away on Monday, August 13. This is a description of an Amish funeral which we attended on Thursday, August 16. You wouldn’t know the people I’m talking about beyond what I describe of them but here goes. It may have some cultural interest for you. The Ashland Amish which Lucy used to belong to are quite conservative. The ex-Amish who live here in our house are my wife Lucy, her niece Miriam, and her niece Minerva, who is married to Jason who is not Amish. (The picture above was taken after the funeral. Lucy can be seen approaching on her wheelchair on the far left.)

Thursday came and Miriam, Lucy and I left for the funeral. In the van, before we started, I prayed for God’s blessing of peace for the day. (We didn't know what to expect since Lucy is essentially banned from the Amish, unless she would return and rejoin them. Miriam was never a member of the Amish church). We arrived at the Yoder farm 16 miles away around 9:30 a.m. It was 8:30 Amish time. (The Amish don’t observe Daylight Saving Time.) It was a sunny day and there were scores of people congregating on the lawn in groups; women in white caps and black pleated dresses, and men in black trousers, black vests and long-sleeved white shirts. They started filing toward the barn, and up the barn hill to the second floor which was hay-strewn and supplied with wooden benches where the funeral service would be held.

There were rows of benches in the barn and the men filed in and I noticed they kept their hats on as they sat down. One Amish young man, Danny, motioned for me to follow him, and as we walked together he jokingly said he had a fly swatter in his pocket, he would make sure to keep me awake.

Jason and I sat in the row of all Amish with his son, four-year-old Nathan, between us. We waited as more and more people came. The middle portion of the audience was comprised of the women. Then one of the Amish men came and asked if I wouldn’t mind moving to another bench. “Me?” I asked. “Both of you,” he replied. He escorted us to the bench with other “English” (non-Amish). Joe and Esther were also sitting there, even though Esther is Emma’s daughter they chose to seat her in the audience since she was no longer Amish. Lucy sat in her wheelchair right at the coffin with her other Amish brothers and sisters, and no one told her to move, although later it was ascertained that a couple of Amish were tacitly critical of it.

You must understand that some Amish groups are quite quaint in their tradition and their social protocol is a bit stringent. I’m sure the Yoder family didn’t mind, but there were a lot of local Amish there who were more conscious of the social standing of the various people attending the funeral.

A young Amish woman brought in a jug of water and started pouring out glasses of water in front of us. I could see Nathan would like some water so I whispered to him to ask her for some. He was too shy so Jason asked her. The water was for anyone. It was not very hot yet and it was rather comfortable but the service would prove to last a couple of hours.

At around 10 a.m. (9 a.m. Amish time) one of the men at the entrance of the barn floor took off his hat and the whole audience of men followed suit. Then a minister started speaking in rather soft tones from the other end of the audience, in German—rather, a dialect of German, Pennsylvania Dutch, or Amish, as some call it. About a dozen people heard every word he said, and sometimes he thundered into oratory that everyone heard for a few seconds at a time. Sometimes he covered his eyes in thought as he droned on and on—I hardly understood a word. It was all in the Amish tongue.

He spoke for about 40 minutes. But the audience didn’t seem to let on to real boredom. Someone started passing around a container of home-made cookies for the children. Once in awhile a squalling youngster would be taken out by his mother. The mother in front of us allowed other Amish grandmothers to hold her baby in turn until it cried and it was passed back again. A lone kitten came to a corner of the loft above and looked down on the congregants, probably wondering what this was all about. Four-year-old Nathan, sitting between Jason and me, noticed the kitten. Soon we heard loud mewing for awhile where the kitten may have had a temporary siege of trouble of some sort. The preacher droned on.

I wondered about Lucy. I saw her a few rows ahead of me to my left. She was at the entrance to the barn floor with the barn door propped at an angle to keep the sun from shining on the audience. Still, I saw that Lucy seemed to be sitting in the sun and with her black dress, shawl, and black head scarf, she could be sweltering. I was tempted to take her a glass of water, or have Nathan take it, but a couple of custodians finally repositioned the barn door to shield the ever-moving sun’s rays. I prayed for relief for Lucy. Lucy told me later there was a nice breeze going and she was comfortable.

The preacher started reading from the Bible (in High German) and I knew he would be about finished. He finally faded out to a final whisper and sat down.

Then another preacher got up and spoke. He droned on and on, in an even more quiet manner. I could only hear snatches of oratory throughout the room. The kitten appeared at the corner of the loft again. Somewhere below us a horse or two whinnied once in awhile. And there were flies to keep us from feeling entirely comfortable. But at least a couple people apparently dozed off.

Another preacher got up and spoke for another 40 minutes or so. Toward the end he too read from the Scriptures and then sat down. Then a young man, I believe around 30 years old, got up and started talking. (I found out later he is the bishop.) He spoke softer yet. You had to strain to hear, if you could even hear. I figured it would be the last speaker and I had my pad and pen ready to take down the statistics of the deceased which he was sure to read off at the end. I lost track of the kitten, but once in awhile a horse would whinny softly. Once a cow mooed.

Finally, he pulled out a piece of paper and started reading…geboren…sterben…ein bruder und eine schwester… I 'm not fluent in German so I didn't understand very much. I'm going to have to ask him for the paper. When he finished, the whole audience knelt to pray…except me (I wasn’t about to aggravate my hip problem), and Jason who was holding sleeping two-year-old Nolan. I noticed a couple of older women stayed sitting. The prayer, being read, droned on and on.

Then came the time for everyone to file past the coffin. There is a certain protocol there too. Usually the young people are first to file past. It was rather picturesque to see them file past the coffin, which was right at the entrance of the barn floor, and the boys and men putting on their hats one by one as they stepped outside the barn.

Men arriving from outside would take their hat off as they entered, file toward the back of the room, turn left, and file back up to the coffin, and put their hat on again as they left the barn floor. Miriam later told me that the protocol is: young people, young marrieds without children, young marrieds with children, and then older people. The undertaker or one in charge would point out the rows to go next and they would file down the same row, turn left and file back past the coffin.

When he pointed out our row I got up, got my crutch, and gingerly made my way toward the end, turned left, and walked back to the barn entrance and the coffin, making sure not to trip over all that alfalfa hay strewn over the entire floor. When I reached the outside I stood near the row of men standing there and told one I would stay near my wife. He nodded.

A couple of times, when there was a gap in the line, I went to Lucy and asked if she wanted water. She said she was fine, and finally when all filed past except the family, I stood behind her wheelchair and waited as the family gathered around the coffin for maybe 10 minutes, some weeping, a couple of them shooing a fly away now and then. It was then that a nearby chicken chose to raise a fuss with her din of raucous chuk-chuk-chukAHH. No one seemed to notice. I did. It went on for over a minute.

I was about first in line with Lucy where the line of people gathered around the coffin filed out and down the barn hill. Joe and Esther (they are ex-Amish) stood to my left, and others down the line. We stood still as the other brothers and sisters of Lucy and Esther filed past us. Lucy's oldest brother, Melvin, was first to come along, and he reached out and shook Lucy’s and my hand. The rest of the family of Amish brothers and sisters, and their children followed, shaking our hand as they went past. I thought it was a noble gesture on their part because of the group’s tradition to keep Lucy and Esther and Joe in the ban.

When they all passed, Lucy carefully drove her wheelchair down the barn hill. I stayed in back of her for assurance. We went down the lane to the van and we loaded up and drove off before the dozens of horses and buggies would wend their way to the cemetery three or four miles away.

It was warmer at the cemetery and we waited in the sun for the procession of horses and buggies and the funeral wagon. Lucy didn’t know if she could go into the grass of the meadow with her power wheelchair but she was able to accomplish driving it through it all since it was short enough at most places to not impede her progress. She didn’t want to get stuck.

Lucy had a chance to meet other friends and family that she knew and hadn’t seen for years. Some young ladies came around and shook her hand and talked up a storm. They were very cordial. There were very few non-Amish at the gravesite.

Finally everyone gathered around and the bishop started talking. He started reading something, and then someone started singing and the rest of the singers chimed in. Then the bishop read something and then another couple lines of singing. At last he read a poem which was evidently in High German.

The singing sounded almost like a slow yodel. The vorsinger (the lead singer who starts the song) would start a syllable of the first word, and the rest of the singers would continue finishing the word and go to the next words. Sometimes a word would have several notes to complete it. It is from the early centuries when music like that was quite common. It was sung in unison—no harmony, but rather beautiful since it sounded over the surrounding meadows and reverberated from the trees across the meadow.

Four or five men lowered the coffin into the ground and shoveled dirt, filling the six-foot-deep grave. It was a solemn moment for all as the singing continued. It was quite an idyllic country scene although quite warm. I wandered over to the wooden fence to lean on it. I asked Lucy if she wanted to see them filling the grave, I could ask a couple ladies in front of her to move, but she said she was able to see enough.

After the grave was filled everyone stayed around for awhile talking. I walked over to Lydia Ann and Katie, two of Lucy’s sisters, and told them that I really had appreciated their mother and I had told her that the last time I saw her. Emma had been very cordial to me from the first day I met her years before.

Other people were talking with Lucy, glad to see her and catching her up on their activities, or whatever Amish say to each other when they get together—and they have a lot to talk about.

Although there was a bit of a breeze going it was sunny and quite warm and Lucy was soon ready to leave. We found a way back among the horses and buggies and people standing around, and Miriam soon followed. We ended up going back home but Lucy wanted to go back to the farm again and meet more people.

We went home and Lucy was able to change a bit, get refreshed, and insisted she would like to go back to the farm. Another option was to meet at Joe and Esther’s place afterward for a bite to eat.

Lucy and I went back to the Yoder Farm and Lucy disappeared into the crowd on her wheelchair. The lawn was full of groups talking amongst each other. Lucy was in her element while I tried to find mine. I spotted an Amishman I knew, Ray, and talked with him for awhile. Ray had had left the Amish for awhile and seemed to be uncomfortable in that situation since he was the oldest in his family. I had suggested that he return to his family and the Amish, which he eventually did. He is happily married and the father of four children, and makes windows for a living.

Then I spotted the bishop. I told him who I was, which may not have meant anything to him, but I told him I would be interested in the obituary. “Could I borrow it for a minute to copy it?” He told me he would give it to Milo (Lucy's brother) but he let me borrow it. I copied the essential details, which were all in German but understandable enough to me. I then gave it back to him. “Danke,” I said. “You’re welcome,” he replied, and put it back in his pocket. He apparently is not a conversationalist, not with me anyway.

I conversed with a couple more people I knew, but I’m not the kind of person to talk conversationally to strangers very often so I was soon getting antsy to go home. I finally found Lucy at the other end of the lawn, deep in conversation with an assortment of her friends and relatives she hadn’t seen for a long time. I asked if she was ready to go and she immediately shook her head. I had to only sigh, resigned to a session of waiting around, hoping to talk to anyone I knew in this lawn full of Amish who were from Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio.

It was about 3:30 when I looked at the clock, about 5:30 when I started to wonder if I’d ever get out of there. I was getting hungry and people were starting to come out of the house and sit down behind me, in front of me, feasting on their plates of food.

I was alone on a bench when Lucy’s niece Amanda, came with her little boy (I subsequently learned that when she told me since I couldn’t tell—he had a dress on which is customary for tots that small) and a small dish of baby-food and asked if she could sit down beside me. She then proceeded to feed her baby and talk to me. When I asked about her little boy she said that when they were trying to find a name to name him, her husband Danny suggested Wesley but they settled on Leon for a reason I don’t recall.

I started getting a little worried and I didn’t feel well, didn’t know if I would ever get anything to eat, didn’t know how long Lucy was going to stay around talking and talking. I had only a little breakfast in the morning and that sustenance had run out some time ago. I was beginning to feel uncomfortable. But I was not about to just go into the house for food myself. I would rather be invited.

Then two shy little Amish girls, dressed in customary Amish attire, around the age of six or seven came over to me carefully carrying a glass of water, and handed it to me. “Danke,” I said. “Thank you very much.” They giggled and took off again. The water tasted good. I felt better. I noticed that Lucy was munching on a sandwich as she talked to her sister Lydiann.

Then Katie, Lucy’s sister, walked by and told me that someone would soon bring a tray of food for me. A few minutes later a smiling Amish teenage young lady came with a paper plate full of potato salad, baked beans and egg noodles. This was more than I had eaten at one time in over two weeks. The flies were in competition so I kept shooing them away, trying to keep the food for myself.

I wasn’t half finished when the same young lady came with another plate full of dessert: cantaloupe, fruit jello, watermelon, a sliver of chocolate pie, a sliver of custard pie, and a substantial wedge of cake with vanilla frosting. The flies dove for it and I alternated between mouthfuls of noodles and potato salad and keeping my hand fluttering protectively over the dessert. I ended up mixing the dessert with the entrée and feasting on it faster, alternating between the potato salad and the cantaloupe, the noodles and the watermelon, the baked beans and the cake with the vanilla frosting. I won the battle, and I did not suffer any consequences of eating more than I really wanted to. But I was still waiting for Lucy to get her fill of entertaining her friends, or they entertaining her. I would just have to be patient and keep waiting. I am a patient person...sometimes.

We finally left around 6:30 p.m. Lucy had talked to almost everyone she knew. She was treated cordially and I was glad she had the chance to catch up with her friends and relatives. The day had gone splendidly without any repercussions from cultural differences.

This story gives a little inkling of the Amish culture, and the non-Amish occasionally interacting with it. It is not to belittle anyone for quaint ways or seeming ignorance. The Amish have a keen sense of place within their tradition, and they have a genuine work ethic. I have said already that everyone should be Amish for the first 21 years of their life. Those who hear it disagree; it should be 17 years. That's when many Amish young people choose to explore the world before deciding to stay Amish and join the church and forget the world outside exists. But's that another interesting story.

Unplanned vacation

It was a long New Years weekend in 1972 and we had a long stretch of cold that year. I felt housebound and needed to get out. I lived in Pennsylvania at the time and worked in New Jersey. I was home for the weekend and felt rather depressed at the cold. It was 15 degrees and snow on the ground. I was thinking I needed to take a drive south until it warmed up.

I had a 1969 Datsun 510 so I left the house around 7 or p.m. without telling anyone. I filled up at the farm gas tank, kicked the tires, and took off, heading for Philadelphia. As I was driving on the Schuylkill Expressway, a car suddenly rear-ended the car in front of him and the following car bumped into the second car, but no one stopped. It felt like an omen and I was determined to be careful driving.

I found Interstate 95 and drove south to Delaware and that’s where I spotted a hitchhiker in a white sweater thumbing for a ride. I stopped and offered a ride. He was heading for Orlando, Florida. Suddenly I knew where I wanted to go. I told him, “I have relatives in Orlando.”
I questioned him enough to trust him. He took over the wheel when I got tired and I slept for a couple hours during the daylight hours. At a rest stop he paid for breakfast.

At Orlando I dropped him off and I was alone. I knew my mom’s aunt and uncle, John and Mary Forman, lived near Winter Garden but I didn’t know where that was. They were living as caretakers at Coomer's Orchards. I went into town to ask and finally found my way. The weather was delightfully balmy.

I remembered the address anyway. Coomer’s Orchards. I drove into the lane. By the light of the headlights I could see ripe oranges (Tangelos) hanging from the trees on both sides. It was heaven. I drove up to the house and checked my watch. 9 p.m. Lights were on so I knocked on the door. Mary answered the door and was quite surprised to see me.

We sat and talked for awhile. She said that the Coomer’s were away and didn’t really want visitors to stay in their house but she showed me the guest room for the night. I did not see much of the outside because of the darkness.

The next morning I woke up around six and looked out the window. Birds were singing, flowers were everywhere. I saw orange and grapefruit trees. It was like summer. Mrs. Coomer showed up and was quite pleased to meet Mary’s grandnephew. I stayed there all day while her husband John made orange juice and told about his younger years, lapsing into German every once in awhile. I’m not fluent in German so I kept steering him into English.

It was quite hot at 80 degrees. I reveled in the summer weather—a far cry from the winter weather I escaped from. But my conscience was bothering me. I didn’t tell anyone I was here. Around 5 p.m. I told them, “I have to leave, to go back home.” Surprised, they said, “So soon, but you just got here.” I insisted, so Mary got a box of oranges for me to take along. “Don’t tell Mrs. Coomer.” I stored them in the trunk. Then Mrs. Coomer found out I was leaving and offered a box of oranges, “You could put them in the trunk,” she said. “No, the trunk is full,” I said, so we put them in the back seat, and more in the front seat.

After a hasty goodbye, I took off. Now I was alone and it was going to be a long trip back. It grew dark and in Georgia I suddenly realized the headlights were getting dim. I turned on the interior lights and they too were dim. I stopped at a service station. The attendant was about ready to close up but he charged up the battery and told me there was an all-night service station. "They should be able to fix you up." The bolt had fallen out to anchor the generator.

It took another hour or so before I was all fixed up again. I hadn’t slept since around 6 that morning and I was too nerved up to take a nap. I took off like a bat to make up for lost time.
I passed through Glennville, GA, noticing speed restrictions but who is out that late. Just then I saw flashing lights behind me and I had to stop. Officer Cantrell strolled up to my car and said, “Ah dint know a Datsun could go that fast; follow me back to town.” I meekly complied and drove to the police station and he escorted me into the office. As he filled out forms I checked my wallet—$10, and I had to travel through the rest of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and New Jersey. I noticed a room with bars on the doorway to my left.
He finished his paperwork. “That’ll be $25. You were going almost 70 miles an hour but I put you down for 60—in a 35. I thought that was neighborly of him, but I said, “I don’t have $25.” He looked crestfallen. “You could stay in that room for the night until the Justice of the Peace comes at 9.”

“No, I have to get home. No one knows where I am.”

He thought for awhile, “Do you have Triple-A?”

“Yes.”

“Give me your card,” and he took the bail-bond certificate attached to it. “Triple-A will pay it, and you’ll reimburse them.” Then he said, “The speed limit through the entire state of Georgia is a law-abidin’ 50 miles per hour. If you get stopped, they’ll bring you back here, and I won’t be so lenient.”

So—that settled, he went to the filing cabinet to file his paperwork. I headed for the door and, on an impulse, I said, “I appreciate that you were nice to me, although I broke the law.” He straightened up, adjusted his officer’s cap and strode toward the door. “Come on, I’ll escort you to the road.” I got into my car, and he got into his and turned on the overheads, and escorted me all of 80 feet to the road.

I took off and as soon as I was out of sight of town went up to speed—my speed. But it was late, and I was tired. I opened the windows to cooler air to keep awake. Sometimes I dozed off for a second. I watched the North Star rise out of the north. I stuck my head out of the window at times for fresh air. In North Carolina I thought it best to call home. It was around 5 a.m. I found a phone booth and dialed the number. In my sleepiness I heard "75 cents". I put in 75 cents and the operator repeated it, “2.75.” “I don’t have it,” I said. But enough time had elapsed for my Dad to answer and overhear it. “Reverse the charges, operator,” he said. He asked where I was and I looked on the phone and told him. Later I found that he and my boss were perusing maps to find the town. I didn’t tell him what state.

It was around 1 o'clock in the afternoon when I approached the Baltimore Tunnel in Maryland. It was over 30 hours without sleep and I started to slow down from the traffic ahead. Just then there was a screech of brakes in the tunnel. The car in front of me hit the car in front of him and I was a bit too close, and I collided. The oranges in the front seat hit the floor; back seat oranges were shaken up. What did the trunk oranges look like? The accelerator pin was dislodged and I could only coast along in idle which was too slow. A tow truck towed me out.

At the other end of the tunnel, we three drivers involved had to fill out accident reports, and I called my insurance company. A mechanic fixed the accelerator pin and I was able to drive, with a sizeable dent in the front. I tried to take a nap before I drove home but it didn’t last long. I drove to New Jersey, pulled into the company parking lot and walked into the office, and waited for lightning to strike. Insurance gave an estimate on repairs; I had a $100 deductible and I found someone to repair it for $100 less than the Insurance estimate.

That’s not the end of the story. A few weeks later I got a letter from a lawyer in Baltimore saying that the plaintiff (the driver of the first car) was suing both drivers for $100,000 each and the Mrs. was suing $25,000 for loss of consortium. The printing company had just completed a printing contract with GPO in Washington and I drove the order down to Washington and stopped in Baltimore at the lawyer's office on the way back.

The lawyer asked me, “Did you cause the accident?”

“No, I had been on the road for a long time and I was slowing down as I entered the tunnel but the car in front of me hit the plaintiff’s car first.”

“What was the attitude of the plaintiff at the scene of the accident?”

“He was the happiest guy there. It was a company car, and he was filling out the papers with a flourish. The second car was an elderly couple and the missus was complaining of whiplash. I was rather shy about it and didn’t really say anything.”

A few weeks later I got a notice that the case was closed. My insurance did not increase. He must have lost the case.

I do not regret this adventure. It certainly expanded my horizons, but it would have been better to let people know my intentions. They thought I had run away. I found out that there is warm weather somewhere in the dead of winter. I also was able to visit with people I knew and appreciated. It was the last time I ever saw them.

Tragedy 1989

Recently I found a letter I wrote to a penfriend in North Carolina to whom I had been writing between 1986 and 1993. I wrote about my trip to England at the time. It was about the experience I had in England when two soccer teams started playing against each other before the audience was fully settled in the arena.

The back of the crowd outside the gates pushed forward at the sound of the starting bell and the front of the crowd had nowhere to go, due to "safety barriers". As a result, over 90 people perished, which made it the worst soccer disaster in British history. This happened on April 15, 1989 and I was just about 100 miles away from it at the time.

I was at a wedding reception in Northampton, England, and while sitting at a table, I suddenly felt ill. I went outside and I had a depressing feeling which got worse as I looked toward the horizon. I had a feeling of suffocation in my chest which was strong enough for me to say to myself, “There must be something going on somewhere.” I looked at my watch. It was 3:20 p.m.

When I finally went to the train station to take the trip back to the Driscoll House Hotel in Southwark, London, a fellow passenger engaged me in conversation, “It’s a dreadful shame what happened at the soccer match today.”

I asked him, “What happened?”

“About 90 people perished at Hillsborough.”

The next day I bought a few newspapers, all which had published the disturbing details, pictures and all, as a protest against the British government which was allegedly not paying attention to the safety issues at soccer matches. The pictures  showed people being pushed against fences and in the throes of suffocating. I went to find a seat alone, started reading, and cried.

It was a memorable trip for me in different ways but that incident made the trip a personal memoriam to over 90 people I never knew, who died in a needless tragedy, and I literally felt a part of it.

Answered prayer

Some experiences come at a time when you least expect them. My wife, Lucy, was having a Ladies Night Out, along with her sister and two nieces. I was not invited. She's in a wheelchair and they used my 1994 Ford Econoline E-150 van with the wheelchair lift. I settled down to watch a movie on television while they were gone.

Suddenly I felt uneasy; uneasy enough that I thought of the ladies and I prayed a prayer of protection for them. When they came home my niece gave me the keys and said that the brakes on the van were almost to the floor and there was a fluid leak. That presented a new problem. It was Friday night and I would have to have it towed for repair. That night I didn't sleep well, wondering what to do about it. Lucy suggested I drive it to the service station, which was eight miles away. But without brakes?

At 2 a.m. I had the answer: drive it to the service station. I would leave early in the morning, I visualized all the problems of going on the route without brakes, every hill, stop light and turn. Every time I woke up I planned the trip. Part of me just wanted to sleep and figure it out in the morning. The other part of me dared to take the challenge. At 5 a.m. I woke up, dressed, and told Lucy I was going to take care of the van. It was still dark outside. I started the van, found that it had some brake ability, and carefully drove the eight miles to Monro, the service station that would open at 7:30 a.m. They fixed it by 10:30 a.m., changing a leaking brake hose and saying there are a couple of other hoses that should be replaced soon. I felt so much better having followed my intuition, and listening to my wife.