Free Growing Up Amish by Ira Wagler Page B

about a year after we arrived. They were tough, cynical, talkative, friendly, and extremely knowledgeable in the ways of the world.
    Mervin Gingerich’s family had been one of the first to move to Bloomfield. Mervin was my age—a muscular hunk of a kid with a ready smile and a round, perpetually red face. His father was Bishop George Gingerich, so his family had excellent standing in the community.
    Me? Well, I’m not quite sure where I fit in. I was the one who brooded and mulled things over. Or perhaps overmulled is more accurate, if that’s a word. I was the one who spoke the occasional comment that made absolutely no sense to the others. Tall, skinny, a beanpole of a kid with a ready smile, I was intensely loyal to my friends.
    The six of us met in Bloomfield, and somehow we were drawn to one another. We were intelligent and hungry for knowledge. We read voraciously, mostly trashy bestsellers—picked up at yard sales and used-book stores—that we kept carefully stashed under our mattresses or in little nooks about the house.
    We were an exclusive group, a tight nucleus, huddled together and protecting one another from the storms that occasionally engulfed us.
    Looking back, I can’t remember any time in my life when I felt closer to a group of friends than I did to those five guys.
    Things were pretty calm at first. We were, for the most part, decent kids. Bloomfield had no wild youth.
    Sad to say, this placid state would not survive for long. It couldn’t. Because we harbored in our hearts the seeds of rebellion. Or maybe it was the seeds of life, of adventure, of freedom. Perhaps it was a little of both.
    We wanted to experience the things we saw around us, things outside our sheltered world. Things we’d read about and heard of, things we’d seen others do, things that happened in other communities.
    We were young and full of spirit.
    We were sixteen.
    * * *
    Sixteen.
    The gateway to manhood in Amish culture.
    And sixteen is a hard, bright line. One day you’re fifteen and a child. The next morning you’re sixteen and a man. Well, maybe not a man, but something more than a child, something more than you were the day before.
    And the six of us? Well, we were simply spirited youth. That doesn’t excuse a lot of the stuff we pulled off, but who can instruct a pack of youth who band together in revolt? At that age? No one.
    And no one did.
    We knew instinctively that there was so much more beyond our closed and structured world, so much just waiting for us to grasp and feel and taste and absorb.
    But it wasn’t only that the outside world drew us. We were also repelled by what we saw and heard around us every day. Most of the adults—those securely anchored in the faith—didn’t seem any too happy in their daily lives. In fact, they were mostly downright grumpy. There was little in our own world that attracted us, made us stop and think, That’s what I want. To live like that .
    We were stuck in a stifling, hostile culture consisting of myriad complex rules and restrictions. More things were forbidden than were allowed. And that’s not to mention the drama, the dictatorial decrees, the strife among so-called brothers, and the seemingly endless emotional turmoil that resulted. We had seen and lived it all.
    And even though it would have been difficult, if not impossible, for us to articulate, there burned inside each of us a spark of deep desire and longing not to be different from the outside world. From English society. Not to wear galluses and those awful homemade, barn-door pants. Not to have haircuts that looked as if someone had snipped around the edges of a bowl upended on our heads.
    We longed to drive a car or truck, not a horse and buggy. We hungered for freedom, real freedom, unrestricted by a host of arcane laws based on tradition.
    And we knew that when our fathers were young, they had done the very things they were now denying us. Not