Free Courting Buggy: Nurse Hal Among The Amish by Fay Risner Page A

arm to steady her until she turned around and perched.
“Good job, Nora,” he praised.
    A mile from the Rogies farm, the Lapp family found
themselves in a line of buggies going to the same place they were.
The wind billowed the dust up into John's buggy.
    Tootie coughed. She pulled a hanky out of her green
dress pocket, put it over her nose and gave a haughty sniffle.
“Inhaling all this dust can't be healthy. I don't know how you
Amish do this all the time.”
    Emma patted her hand to soothe her feelings. “We are
just used to it is all.”
    John pulled into the Rogies's pasture parking lot.
Jim pulled in beside him. Daniel and Noah got out of the buggy .
They unhitched the two horses and turn them loose in a pen by the
barn. The horses trotted to the full hay manger and wedged in among
the other horses.
    Most of the congregation had already arrived. Men
gathered in one area of the yard. The teenage boys leaned against
the barn, and teenage girls stood near the front porch giggling
behind their hands about the boys. The smaller school age boys and
girls stayed in their groups. The three ministers were by
themselves, working out which one would speak first, second and
third and discussing what their sermons would be about.
    The Lapp women entered the house and walked down the
aisle between the benches to kitchen. The bench wagon was parked by
the barn. The men put their black felt hats on the now empty
shelves. They spent the idle time talking, each with an eye on the
ministers.
    Finally at eight-thirty, Bishop Bontrager led the
other two ministers to the house. They sat in the three chairs up
front that faced the congregation.
    The young girls sat on the women's side of the aisle.
The women and smaller children up to the age of nine sat down in
front of the girls before the men came in. The oldest men came
first, and the others entered the house according to age down to
the younger men. Cooner Jonah Rogies went outside to call in the
teenage boys. The boys comb their hair and dusted off their
trousers before they filed inside.
    “ Page two hundred and twenty,” announced the
song leader, Lawyer Jeffrey Peifer. So nicknamed because he had
some legal knowledge. There was a hushed stir as everyone picked up
a songbook and searched for the right page. Lawyer Jeffrey began
the song Salve Regina, and
everyone joined in.
    The morning sun slanted in the windows, casting its
warmth on Tootie. She enjoyed singing so she tried to hum along.
She hated it that she couldn't sing the words, but she didn't
understand German.
    Before the song ended, her mind flitted like a
butterfly in a marigold bed, darting from one thought to
another. The bench is hard. How am I ever going to stand sitting here for
three hours? Wonder what they fixed for lunch at a worship service?
Sure hope there's some food I can eat that will agree with my poor digestive system.
    Deacon Yutzy read scripture in High German as
Tootie stared at a black widow spider descending on a web attached
to the bench in front of her. Just watching the large spider made
her shudder in disgust. She hated creepy bugs. Amish women should be better housekeepers than this. Anna
Rogies should have done a better job cleaning, especially when she
knew she had a lot of people coming for the service.
    Tootie wiggled her shoe under the web. She
watched as the spider inched back up toward the broad backed woman
in front of her. Oh, that poor woman. The
spider might bite her.
    The spider crawled on top of the bench. Tootie leaned
forward and raised her hymn book. She came down with a hard swat,
missed the spider and clobbered the heavy set woman's behind,
making a loud splat that resounded throughout the room just as
Deacon Yutzy sat down and Minister Luke Yoder, Margaret Yoder's
son, stood up, ready to give the opening sermon.
    The whole congregation looked around, trying to see
what made the noise. Hal turned red. She was dumbfounded that her
Aunt Tootie, out of the blue, hit a Plain woman