Roman

I first met Roman Yoder in 1993 when I came from New Jersey to Ohio to visit with Lucy, his oldest daughter. She had sent me a get well card and letter over a year before. It was after a period of hospitalization and recovery that I just needed to stretch my wings and take a vacation before going back to work. Lucy invited me to visit with her. Elisabeth, a good friend, offered to take me. I had been in correspondence with Lucy for about a year and it was about time I met her in person.

Roman was in his leather shop patching leather harnesses and other leather goods, and making leather fly swatters for businesses that sell Amish-made goods. He was very cordial and showed me around the shop. He also showed me a bird cage sitting on one of the tables with a sign "Florida Red Bats" fastened on it. He told me to look in the cage. I was rather hesitant until I spotted the bats in the bottom of the cage—tiny red baseball bats. He was amused at my reaction. He said someone sent it from Florida some time ago. It's a good conversation piece.

It wasn't long before I was seeing Lucy on a regular basis, driving 475 miles from New Jersey to north central Ohio alone on a Friday after work, and heading back on Sunday, arriving home in time to get a good night's rest and going to work on Monday.

On Christmas weekend I met almost the entire family and that's when I took the opportunity to let Lucy's mother (step-mother) know who I was and what my background was. I was born and raised Mennonite and my parents spoke Pennsylvania German, and I was never married before. We lived in an area of Pennsylvania where most parents did not teach a second language to the next generation.

Over the course of a few months it was evident that we had a lasting interest in each other and we got engaged on February 27, my birthday. Of course, Lucy's Amish family heard about it but didn't seem to object, especially her parents. She was old enough to make her own decisions. One day when Roman and I were alone, he suggested we could get married in the Amish church. And there would be a lot of food to eat afterward . . . of course, if I become Amish. I politely declined. I didn't know the language that well. I was not a strong person and the Amish work pretty hard. And another reason I didn't voice; I could not give up my piano and accordion. The Amish can be musical but having a piano would be too much, especially for the more conservative Ashland, Ohio Amish. Beside vocal singing, harmonicas are about their limit in musical expression, mainly among the young people. But I didn't see that either.

It was also evident that Lucy would have to leave the Amish; she would be banned from returning unless she chose to rejoin the group. Roman was most likely trying to avoid the inevitable. Although I declined the invitation to join their ranks, it was evident that he liked me.

After we got married we still took liberties to visit with her parents, Roman and Emma. One day I took my accordion and played a few tunes for them. Another time we came in time for dinner (lunch) and they gave us each a plate of food. Lucy, respectfully adhering to the edict of not sitting at the same table with the church members when "you have departed from the faithful", sat on a chair away from the table. Roman obligingly invited her to sit at the table. There were no other Amish around to be critical of the arrangement. The gesture spoke of Roman's generosity and practicality.

Often when we visited, Roman was in his shop so I would take Lucy up to the house to visit with her mother, and then I'd visit with Roman. He'd often stop what he was doing and invite me to sit in the chair by his desk and we'd talk for an hour or more. The subjects? Current events, historical events, church history. I made it clear that Menno Simons (1496-1561) and Jacob Amman (1644-before 1730) were not contemporaries of each other. We discussed some Biblical events and I gave some of my more progressive views of my own experiences. He listened politely. Who's to say if he agreed with me. Some of what I said is written elsewhere in this blog.

One day I delivered a death notice of someone who had passed away. The Amish don't have ready access to a telephone so we have to deliver important messages in person. I talked about things afterward until another Amishman came into the shop. Roman immediately explained my presence; maybe to avoid criticism of associating with the "English" too much. Nonetheless, he ignored me and they talked their own language. It was a cue for me to leave and I went up to the house and visited with Lucy and Emma for awhile and then we soon went home.

On the early morning of June 30, 2007 I was sleeping on an armchair in the living room and, half asleep and half awake, I saw a group of black triangles appear up at the ceiling and group together into a larger triangle. Then the whole ceiling was decked in black squares like a checkerboard. Then on the wall there appeared a shape like a plaque and writing started to form. My thought at the time was that perhaps someone died or was in the process. I tried to read it, suspecting a name or something, but then the writing stopped, and reversed and then everything disappeared, and I fully woke up. What was it?

We had a party that day with quite a few ex-Amish young people. It was a birthday party for one of Lucy's nephews who had just left the Amish. A couple of ABC producers from New York were there with a TV camera to interview some of them for an upcoming documentary to be aired perhaps sometime during 2008. Lucy got a phone call to say that her father had a stroke or seizure of some kind. With what I had experienced that morning I ventured to tell her that he is OK. We visited with him a few days later and he didn't seem to be the worse for the experience, but there was something different about him.

As we were leaving he stood on the porch and watched us go. I waved and he waved back. It seems that he had the habit of seeing us off like that—a certain measure of respect for us. I'm sure he loved his daughter. He had spent a lot of time with her in her childhood, helping her recover from the effects of polio which overtook a lot of children in the 1950s. It was necessary to help her exercise to gain strength for her limbs after returning home from months in an Akron children's hospital.

In August 2007 Emma passed away. His first wife, Lizzie, Lucy's mother, had passed away in 1952 and now he was a widower again. He started to go downhill gradually, and in February 2008 he showed signs of deteriorating more. He became bedridden and his family came to his aid and made him as comfortable as possible, with advice from the family doctor. His son Melvin and wife, came from Wisconsin, and his other son Danny and wife, and his daughter Verba and husband came from southern Ohio to tend to him. Others of the family came to tend to him in turn. He evidently was not suffering but they kept him comfortable, putting him in a chair for awhile every day. A hospice nurse came to check on him now and then.

On Saturday, March 1, we visited with Roman and he had changed drastically; lost a lot of weight. They told us he wasn't eating anymore and they hardly could give him sips of water. They at least moistened his lips. We visited for a couple of hours and then Lucy approached him and told him we were leaving. It was evident that he understood but he never spoke; he just nodded his head. That was the last we saw of him alive.

The next day I was playing the piano at home with a beautiful tune, Light A Candle, Light the World, I had just learned. Lucy got the phone call from her brother-in-law Andy. Lucy's Dad had passed away Sunday around noon. The funeral would be on March 5.

On March 4 there was an ice storm but we went shopping, and Lucy had a doctor appointment. There was ice to scrape off at each stop but we got home before it rained even harder, and froze into sheets of ice. At 9:30 p.m. we lost our electricity and it stayed lost all night. In the morning we headed for the Roman Yoder farm to attend the funeral.

Lucy is on a power wheelchair but I was able to park right near the house and someone helped her into the house, which was full of Amish people, and a few ex-Amish and "English". I took a little longer to get out of the van and I walked with crutches, being careful not to slip on the ice. I had broken my leg in December and was still on the mend.

They led me to a room where other ex-Amish were placed. The Ashland Amish are quite conservative and they seem to take pains to keep the Amish separated from us English, although they are nice about it for the most part.

At 9 a.m. a preacher started talking but I didn't understand much of what he said. He was speaking Pennsylvania German, or Amish as some call it. He droned on for maybe 45 minutes. At one point he was speaking in a rather eloquent tone. I leaned over to my brother-in-law Joe and said, "I wish I knew what he just said." Joe whispered back, "If you knew that God was coming to your house, you would dress in your best clothes, gather your family around you, and wait." It was a good admonition for those who would be more spiritually minded but how many really believe such a sentiment.

We all had a chance to go by the coffin to pay last respects to the deceased. Then it was taken to the cemetery while others stayed behind and prepared for the noon meal. We didn't go to the cemetery due to the after-effects of the inclement experienced in the region the day before.

The next few hours were a bedlam of conversation among friends and strangers alike. An Amish pastime is talking. Many come from adjoining States and it was a mixture of catching up on the local news of familiar friends and relatives, to making new friends, although most of the Amish know each other. Lucy was in her element, talking to many whom she hadn't seen for a long time. They were cordial to her and she was able to catch up on the whatever the Amish talking about. I, meanwhile, sat and waited for people to talk to me. I'm not much of a conversation starter.

One man, Dan Miller, a former bishop, engaged in a conversation about his collection of purple martin houses which were soon going to be filled with migrating martins who come every year to his property. They fly to South America later in the year and in the spring they come back and often occupy the same house they were born in.

I met another Amishman whose wife recently had a kidney transplant. He talked about it to me since Lucy had told him that I was eligible for a kidney transplant.

I was eventually ready to go home—admittedly before Lucy was ready—but we went back home and had another get-together of ex-Amish who went through the same process; talking about old times, new events, and eating pizza, among other things.

I asked Lucy what her father was like when growing up. She said he was one who didn't mind being alone, and he usually was the last to come to the table, but was rather perturbed if he had to be kept waiting for anything. She said she doesn't remember him ever disciplining the children. He left that up to Mom. His kind-heartedness left a great legacy of a generous and kind man who will be missed for awhile.

Roman Yoder is missed but it is the honorable way of life to leave this world after a period of time and join back to where we came from in the first place, ready to evaluate the life we had experienced and continue with life in spirit . . . until the next round, if we so choose.

Moosonee, Ontario

In the days when I was single, the first week of July 1990, I took a long drive to Moononee, Ontario, a small settlement along the Moose River near James Bay in the sub-arctic. Ninety percent of the inhabitants of the village were Cree .

I picked the first week in July because I would have only four days vacation taken off of my two-week allotment because of the Independence Day holiday on July 4. I picked Canada because it is my favorite vacation spot, and an excellent chance to escape the infernal New Jersey heat we had at the time. And I had a road-worthy 1983 Honda to galavant around in. Judging by the distance to my destination, I was destined for a l-o-o-n-g ride—or rather, rides. I would drive to Cochran and then take the train to Moosonee, via the Polar Bear Express.

Elisabeth, a friend of mine, needed to go to the Kennedy Airport in New York so I offered to take her on my way to Canada on June 30. She and her daughter Malia were going to Switzerland.

It was a 100-mile drive and the traffice on the Beltway in New York was horrendous. Her flight was scheduled to leave at 7 p.m. but we left extra early in case there was an earlier flight. I dropped them off and left the airport at 5 p.m. The 7 o'clock flight was cancelled so they had to take the next flight—at 1 a.m. I wasn't about to wait that long to see her off. If they were going to miss that flight too, some of our mutual friends would just have to pick her up if a worst-case scenario presented itself.

Meanwhile, I traveled back toward New York City via the jam-packed Beltway and eventually got out of its sweltering environs and headed north toward Albany. I didn't know how long the trip would take on this leg of the journey but my intentions were to arrive Lloyd's and Maryann's house that evening, about 15 miles from the Canadian border. Maryann is my first cousin—a double cousin, our fathers were brothers, our mothers were sisters. I had called her up before I left home, told her I would stop in and she invited me to stay a day or two with her family.

Before I left New Jersey, I had bought three nice-looking watermelons at Produce Junction, figuring a family of 10 kids could make short work of one in a hurry. I was conscious of the heat with the watermelons in back of the car, but they grew up in hot weather, so what's the risk?

I traveled west toward Syracuse via Interstate 90, a toll road. Hours passed and at midnight I decided to stop at a motel. I had warned Maryann that I might show up pretty late, perhaps even at two in the morning and she said she didn't mind, she was used to it. But I was too tired to travel for another 2-1/2 hours so I stopped at Utica, NY, and stayed at a motel.

I called her up in the morning and apologized. Being Sunday, she invited me to church if I could get there before the service was over. I would have to leave right away in that case, so I gathered everything together and reached in my pocket for the car keys. No keys anywhere. I'm not one to habitually lock my keys in the car but I meekly sneaked out to look and spotted them in the back, behind the back seat where I had opened the trunk the evening before. And the doors were locked.

Triple-A came within 20 minutes and had the door open in 25 seconds. But I decided to take my good old time to head north so I stopped at McDonald's for a leisurely breakfast. It wouldn't do any good to starve for the next couple of hours. At 11:45 I arrived at my destination and decided not to go over to the church. It was probably over anyway. Anyway, I could use a nap after all that driving. I went into the house and I napped for over a half hour on the couch until they arrived—Maryann, Lloyd and their 10 children: Keturah, Loyal, Hannah, Victor, James, Justus, Nathan, Micah, Joshua, and little Lloyd, Jr.

I spent the next two days there. I had my camera and would have just loved to take all their pictures, but I made do with just a few shots of the family and a double rainbow which was displayed after a rainstorm. Almost everyone went outside to see the rainbow; even the little children in their bare feet. One of the children had picked flowers for his mother some time before and I noticed them on the table. Three-year-old Lloyd decided to pick flowers for his mother also. He proudly walked into the house with one of his Mom's prize marigolds clutched in his hand, with the roots dangling and dirt littering the floor. Maryann almost screamed, but just couldn't scold the generous boy. It was such an endearing gesture so she took the flower and suggested to him that they plant it outside. "But aren't you going to put it in a jar?" he replied.

At the dinner table I told them a joke: "There are three kinds of people in the world—those who can count, and those who can't." The children laughed uproarously. Maryann looked puzzled, "But that's two," which was even funnier to the kids. For dessert we had watermelon, the ripest and most luscious watermelon I saw yet! I was glad I brought them.

Fortified with Maryann's excellent cooking and everyone's hospitality, I left on Tuesday morning to travel to Ottawa, the Canadian federal capital, to visit the Science and Technology Museum. I just wanted to spend a couple of hours there before going to Cochran. I did some hasty calculations and studied the map for the route to Cochran where I would meet the train.

Route 17 follows the border between Ontario and Quebec provinces so some of the road signs are in French: Garde la droite sauf pour dèpasser—Keep to the right except to pass. Near large towns, which were very few and far between, I listened to an occasional radio station. But for the most part, the airwaves were ominously quiet. I was mostly driving through wilderness devoid of inhabitants.

You never realize how big the earth is until you travel over a good portion of it. Ontario is huge at 70% the size of Alaska and 150% the size of Texas. Over half of it is wild wilderness only accessible by airplane or canoe. Ordinary tour maps don't bother to show the whole province. There are many provincial parks and fish and game abound, although I didn't see so much as a moose during the entire trip.

I traveled for the rest of the day. I had left Ottawa at round 2 p.m. Tuesday and I began to realize how far Cochran was as the day wore on. It was nice and warm and the humidity was low; ideal travel weather. I drove with my lights on like I saw many other drivers do. The cars are easier to see at long distances and easier to gauge if you want to pass some slow-poke in front of you. No one traveled at 55 mph. Sixty-five seemed to be the standard speed and I was often passed even then—even by tractor trailers.

I turned due north at North Bay following Route 11 which would take me into Cochran. At 10 p.m. it was still light enough to see without lights but then it grew dark and started to rain. And I mean rain! The lightning flashed all around but I don't remember hearing any thunder. Strange! I kept up to speed though—65 mph. With a tractor-trailer behind you, you don't want to let him pass if you can help it. It gets awful nasty following one in the rain.

I was getting pretty close to my destination when I noticed my fuel gauge approaching empty. I can travel over 400 miles on a tank of gas but I had done almost twice that today. At Iroquois Falls I was about ready to pull into a Texaco station when another rainstorm sent blinding sheets of rain. A car ahead of me was traveling at high speed and for some reason I decided to keep following, forgetting the concern about fuel. It was easier to see the road farther ahead when there were tail lights to follow. Cochran was only about 50 miles or less and I took the chance to get there by 11 a.m. if I kept moving. So, rain or not, I continued on. The tail lights disappeared occasionally and a flash of lightning would reveal the road ahead. It was rather dangerous I admit, but I was a daring kind of guy.

At long last, Cochran hove into view. I stopped at a garage by a darkened motel and asked if there were any other motels in town. Yes they were, but they were probably all booked up. I went to a lighted motel and enquired. I asked if there were any available motels in the vicinity of Cochran. She called a number. Yes, there was a vacancy about a half hour back down Route 11 at Iroquois Falls. I wasn't about to spend the night in the car when there was a chance to get a motel, so I hightailed it back to Iroquois Falls, keeping a weather eye on the fuel gauge. It was getting precariously low but I was heading back for the Texaco station and could fill up there...if it didn't close by the time I got there.

I had a few scary moments though, because I didn't see any lighted station where I thought the gas station should be. I even turned around to double check its whereabouts but it was too dark to see clearly. Yikes! If I run out of gas, I'd kick myself.

As it happened, I still had another 10 miles to go. And with a sigh of relief I belly-landed by the gas pumps at the Texaco station, filled it up with $29 worth of gas (Canadian dollars were 15% above American) and sped off into Iroquois Falls to the Glendale Motel.

Yech, the room smelled of stale cigarette smoke. In spite of the nice cool weather, I turned on the air conditioner fan to air out the place. I wasn't about to lose sleep over a few odd odors; I wanted to leave at 7 a.m. to travel back to Cochran to catch the 8:30 train to Moosonee. I hadn't bought a ticket yet. Last week I had reserved a room at the Polar Bear Lodge in Moosonee and the lady had told me there would be plenty of room on the train without reservations.

The next morning dawned bright and early. In fact, the day dawned some time well before 5 a.m. It was refreshingly cool outside as I traveled the next 40 miles to Cochran, flying low all the way.

People were staring to gather at the train station to take the Polar Bear Express. Tourists, railroad personnel, Cree Indians, and me. I bought a ticket and waited.

At about 8:45 we were off for the 4-1/2 hour trip to the end of the lnie on Ontario Northland Rail, 186 miles to the north at Moosonee.

There wasn't much scenic variety to see on the trip. There were pine trees all the way that gradually diminished to scrub pines and muskeg. Thousands of miles around was wild wilderness which was inhabited only by hardy people such as the Cree Indians, seasoned trappers and hunters, and farther to the north, the Inuits, or Eskimos.

I had often read of the Arctic and this was the closest I had come to it so far. It is a harsh and lonely land, but it is quite tolerable in the summer, especially here in the southern edge of the sub-arctic. The mosquitoes were practically gone so there wasn't much need for mosquito repellent this time of year.

We finally stepped off the train into the cool, sunny climate of northeastern Ontario. Even in early July, I was glad I had my sweater on. It was nice and warm in the sun when the breeze wasn't blowing, but the air had an arctic chill to it. I loved it.

A bus from the Polar Bear Lodge transported us to the motel and I checked in. It was quite cool in my room but I didn't see any switch on the heating unit along the wall. But at least it wasn't too cold. I came here to escape the heat. Outside, the streets were dusty and some streets were watered down to keep the dust down. It looked like a little shanty down with a school, grocery store, post office, churches, and other business places.

New Jersey was quite hot when I left it, but this was a cold 50ish kind of weather. I was afraid the cold would create problems for me so I had a nice soak in the bathtub, took a nap, and then went out to invade the town. The Wilderness Tour would wait until the next day. In the confusion of things, I missed the notice that a boat would leave for Fossil Island at 5 p.m. There are fossils along the Moose River and tourists are free to pick up whatever they find. The fossils are of sea life indigenous to tropical waters which gives one pause as to what really happened to earth for millions of years.

In the evening I was sitting on a bench, looking out over the Moose River as another tourist stood there, filming it with his video camera. The wind chill factor was intensifying as the sun was setting and the coat I was wearing was a little too light, but it felt good. The tourist ambled over and I commented, "This doesn't feel like July, does it?"

"No, it certainly doesn't, but it's a dry cold."

"Where are you from?" I asked.

He hesitated. "Bermuda."

"That's a switch. Everyone likes to go there for vacation."

"Well," he replied, "when you live in a tourist spot, you don't necessarily tour it. In Bermuda, the humidity is so high there it's downright uncomfortable. The temperature may go up to 86 during the day, and drop to 84 at night. During the winter it's cold if it goes down to 60."

It was certainly below 60 as we spoke, maybe even in the 40s and after awhile I went back to the motel. I wanted to wait up to see if the aurora borealis displayed itself in the night sky, but I figured I'd have to wait pretty long for that. The sun was still above the horizon at 9:30, but I went to bed anyway. I heard later that it didn't get dark until almost 11 o'clock.

There was a radio in my room and I listened to the Moosonee station for awhile and heard the weather forecast. The temperature is measured in Celsius and it was supposed to go down to 2 to 5 degrees, which translates to 35 to 41 degrees F. I opened the window slightly anyway. I wanted to take advantage of all the fresh air I could get while I was here. However, during the night the room got quite cold and the heater kicked in. I shut the window.

Checkout time was 10 o'clock but I wanted to take the Wilderness Tour at 9 a.m. so I gathered up all my belongings and took the suitcase to the front desk. They stowed it in their office until I would leave at 5 p.m. Then I purchased a ticket for the boat ride to James Bay and a tour of Moose Factory Island.

The overnight weather was true to the forecast. I took my sweater, light jacket, and medium jacket to ensure that I wasn't going to be a victim of hypothermia. The boat ride was uneventful but interesting, if you like history. The Hudson Bay Company did a lot of business with the Indians in this part of the world during the 17th to 20th centuries. Fur trading was lively, but so were occasional territorial disputes. The British traded with the hunters and trappers, and the French tried to get a foothold in the region. Battles ensued, but the worst killer of all was the weather. Extreme temperatures played havoc on new settlers, and they were no match for prolonged sub-zero weather and icy winds. But the Hudson Bay Company thrived, thanks to the rich and fertile region of beaver, caribou, lynx, fox, marten, moose, bear, seal, walrus, and whale. They traded furs to the European market in return for supplies.

The Moose River also told tales. The banks of the river were gouged and scarred with trees toppled at some points. The river freezes up in the winter and the spring breakup of ice does its fair share of trying to widen the river by the sheer quantity of ice which can be as thick as four feet. Toward the mouth of the river the boat captain pointed out some ice along the banks in the distance which still hadn't melted.

We turned around when we came to James Bay. The next part of the trip was a tour of Moose Factory Island in the middle of the Moose River. It was the site of the Hudson Bay Company for years and now there were museums and craft shops where tourists could buy handmade trinkets, furs, bead necklaces, artist's drawings and knickknacks. I managed to take a picture of a group of Cree children selling trinkets, spontaneously posing for me when I asked (picture at beginning of article).

All in all, the trip was a very interesting experience for me. The train left around 5 p.m. and we tourists arrived back in Cochran at almost 10 o'clock. It was almost light outside and I drove another three hours before calling it quits. I stayed at a nice motel in the middle of nowhere and the next morning I started out again at 8 a.m. I arrived in Kitchen, Ontario at around 3:30.

I usually visit the Haldemann goat farm when in the area and they were glad to see me. They told me to stay as long as I wanted to. I stayed overnight an went to the Ontario Farmers Market in Waterloo before going home. I found what I wanted and got back to the farm laden down with fruit drink powder—flavor crystals—which I wanted to take back to the States. Mrs. Haldemann asked when I was leaving. "Right away," I said. But first she wanted to give me "supper." It was more like lunch, being only 1 o'clock, and I sat down for a generous helping of meat, potatoes, and salad. Goat meat, that is. Delicious!

I then took off and traveled south for about 10 hours, and got home after midnight. The trusty Honda did itself proud. And my horizons were broadened by the experience.