"The jailed Amish bishop accused of spearheading a beard- and hair-cutting campaign against religious foes today told a federal judge that he is willing to install electricity in his home to accommodate an electronic monitoring device if granted bond before trial."
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"While the Amish do not believe that ?electricity is per se evil,? according to Mullet?s motion, they stay off the public grid because they believe ?electricity allows for the introduction of modern appliances that can cause family and community members not to reply upon each other.?
It's pretty clear that they don't think cars are per se evil, because they don't object, I'm told by someone who should know, to their 16 to
18 year old children** having cars. Sometimes they park them right on their parents' property and walk to the farm house. They don't expect their children to join the religion until they are 18 or 20 or 21, I think it is, and that's when they agree not to have cars and electrical things. ISTM if they thought cars were intrinsically evil, they would tell their sons not to have them at all.
**Or at least the boys. I don't know if they draw a distinction.
Not around here! I have Amish neighbors. They dont have electricity from the grid. However a few of them that run the larger businesses (which employ the other ones), have generators and/or run things from coupling shafts to gas engines. One guy runs a sawmill, and has a large diesel semi truck engine that powers the whole mill using shafts. He does have a car alternator with a belt and can run some of those 12v auto bulbs.
None of them have computers or fax. None of the older kids drive cars, but some of them use farm tractors and skid steers (adults included). The sawmill has all the farm equipment and the others use what they need. They DO have cellphones though, but only those in business. They also have a landline phone outdoors in a small shed for each cluster of their homes in their community.
One guy has a dairy operation and powers his whole dairy from one 18hp Briggs engine. This includes the suction pumps for milking, the bulk tank for storage and cooling the milk, lighting in the barn (12v bulbs on a car alternator), and other devices. It's all coupled shafts, or
12v motors run from that engine. He built the whole thing himself. I was quite impressed by what he did. He starts the engine, pulls a wooden handle, which tightens some fan belts (thats the clutch), and everything starts working. Each shaft can be disabled with other levers. One time he ran it too fast and froze all the milk in his bulk tank. The only drawback is what he spends for gasoline each month. More than an electric bill..... That includes the well pump, which is run on compressed air. An engine fills a 500 gallon propane tank with air. The engine is shut off, but the air is what lifts the water out of the well, and works up to 500 ft deep wells. The pump is run about once every other day, depending on water use, and that feeds several of their homes.
The one thing I dont understand, is that they all have a horse and buggy, but really only use them to go to church on Sunday. The rest of the time they pay non-Amish to drive them to town to shop and stuff. I've driven them several times. Sometimes just to trade them to shoe one of my horses or something.
This is funny. I had my car stuck in my field. It was cold and snowing, and my car was stuck in drifts in the long driveway to my property. I was able to back it down the drive and into the field, which did not have drifted snow, and thought I could drive out thru the field. That did not work.... too slippery. I see the 15 or 16 year old amish boy riding by on his horse and hollar to him to come help me. We tied his horse to a tree and got my tractor and a chain. Hooked the chain to the car and tractor and I told him to steer the car while I pull with the tractor. NOPE!!!! He told me he cant drive a car..... I explain to him that he's not "driving it". The tractor is pulling it. All he has to do is steer it and follow the tractor. NOPE!!!! So we traded places. I sat in the warm car and steered while he sat on the open tractor in the cold freezing his tush off. That worked! He said they are allowed to drive a tractor, but not a car...... I just shook my head and said "whatever"!!!
OT When Mayor DiCarbo of my home town lost his drivers license for too many traffic tickets, he rented an Amish buggy for a month or more, until he got his license back. And he went to work by buggy. I assume he drove it himself.
I hate to run your story, but is there any chance he was doing this for the same reason a non-Amish boy would. There is some sort of legal dispensation for a 15 y.o. to drive a tractor, but they are not allowed to drive cars. Your valid distinction that he would just be steering, or the idea that it was sort of an emergency and he would be under the direction of an adult might have been beyond him at that age.
Well, a non-Amish boy would likely have said, Sure, not caring about a law if an adult was telling him to ignore it, but maybe a goody-two-shoes non-Amish boy wouldn't.
They have their church services at each other's homes, so the distance varies. In warm weather they even use their barns.
The distance to town varies, on where they live, the ones down the road from me are abput 4 - 1/2 miles to town. They are the closest ones. Not sure how long that would take, but since I ride horses, I'd guess it would be under an hour. There are places in town to hitch their buggies and it's legal.
That's funny!!!! But it works....
Since this was on private property in an open hay field, this is not illegal, or even dangerous. Non-Amish kids younger than their teens always drive around the farm trucks as well as tractors. Their fathers teach them young so the boys help with the farmwork. Just as long as they dont go on public roads, it's legal.
Not to mention that around here, the sheriffs really dont bother the farmers with traffic related stuff on the back roads, because there is a lot of farm equipment using the roads, and that stuff is not licensed, and dont require a drivers license. They only come to block roads when there is a problem. It's not unusual for a grain wagon to tip over on a gravel road, or a 1500lb round hay bale to fall off roll in a ditch, and stuff like that.
This past November I was nearly shocked. A farmer brought a Combine to a welding shop in town, because something broke and needed to be welded. If you're not familiar with combines, they are those giant farm machines that harvest corn and other crops. The driver compartment is like 10 feet above the road. I came to the welding shop and had a small repair. They just finished that combine, when the farmer told his son to drive it home. That boy looked about 8 to 10 years old. Down the road went that boy in that giant machine, thru traffic, in the dark since it was closing time at the shop. The father did not even act like this was anything unusual. He stayed around the shop, paid his bill, chatted with a few guys, and finally left a half hour later, jumped in his pickup truck and drove home. Personally, I'd feel safer seeing that boy drive the pickup truck, but that requires a license.
By the way, that Amish boy who helped with my car, left the Amish when he turned 18. Last summer someone drove down my driveway in a huge black pickup truck with great big tires, lift kit, loud stereo, lights under the truck that makes the road glow purple, and rodeo stickers all over the truck. Out pops this kid, who is now 20 or 21, wearing fancy cowboy clothing ans hat. I about shit my pants when I saw it was him. He joined a rodeo, bought the truck, and lives in a large city now. It was good to see him, but I had to crack a joke, when I said "your truck is the right color.... black like your old buggy". The next day he was visiting his mom, and I saw him riding his old horse down the road with that big truck parked by the barn. I can see he's sort of lost between both worlds. Now he emails me. That's cool! He's a good kid. I promised him that when he comes next time, I'll go out horseback riding with him, like I did several times when he was much younger.
I always had a feeling that he would leave the Amish when he was young. He always came over here to watch tv, wanted to play computer games, was always playing with the radio/CD in my barn, and would bring CDs to play in that radio, which the young boys always seemed to get (somehow). A few times he came here drunk on his ass too. Once he was so drunk he fell off his horse. so I had to tie up the horse and help him over to a bench where he puked. The young kids, particularly the boys somehow managed to get booze and would party in the woods after their church services. The older Amish guys are always telling stories about hunting down the kids and in the woods and whooping their butts for drinking, but they always say it with a laugh, because they probably did it too when they were kids.
In many ways, they are not all that much different, and I enjoy having them for neighbors. I always get along with them especially since I have horses, so we have that in common. That same boy even helped train one of horses, and really knows how to train them well. Some of them have a reputation of being very harsh with their horses, but not that kid, he did it the right way, with a gentle hand.
Apparently some do ride to town in some places. My Sister-in-law used to manage a branch office of a bank in a town near a large Amish community. When they would get a relief teller for a day from the main office, one of that teller's jobs would be to go out and shovel the horse shit out of the drive through lane.
One of these relief tellers shoveled up the manure, put it in a bag and put it in my the back seat of my Sister-in-law's car.
What Amish can and cannot do is entirely up to the bishop/elder of the community. A progressive elder will allow ownership and operation of modern vehicles and equipment. They still have to dress in the plain clothes, live in a plain house, etc., but they can have tractors and cars and electricity and cellphones and whatnot. Usually it is to conduct business, but as with any religion, the line between personal and business use can be blurred.
Yes, you are correct. There's another community around here about 30 miles away and there they all use their buggies for everything except out of state (long distance) travel. They do not allow cellphones, etc. This one near me is a little more modern. The bishop of this community was recently "fired". I never knew they did that..... He moved on to another community, and they are deciding who will take over here. Do they have an election? I really dont know. I ask a lot of questions, but there are soem things they wont discuss.
Many will pay someone who owns a car to drive them places, but won't own a car themselves.
They have had for a long time an ice-cream parlor in Gettysberg, Pa. The place is overrunning with tourists in the summer, but they still don't open on Sunday. I don't know where they live, how far it is to go home, or if they go home every night or not.
There is a vegetable market in Scaggsville Md, just N or DC, just off US-29, owned by Amish. (I"m not saying the own the building, but I think they own the business.) It had not only electric lights, which I didnt' notice at the time, but a fancy electonic cash register. I wanted to ask the cashier how she was allowed to do that, but she looked about 17 and I didn't think it was fair to her to expect her to explain. Especially since I didn't really need to know the answer. I think they are closed on Sunday too. I don't know where they live either.
When I was little in Western Pa. and most people had their milk delivered, the Amish would deliver milk, eggs, butter, etc by buggy, but my mother bought from a dairy ini town. We had an insulated metal milk box by the side door, that I think the dairy provided.
The place we bought our furniture (NE Ohio) wasn't grid connected but they had electric lights, calculators, and even took credit cards (chalked up ~$15K with the 5% teaser cash-back - the reason I got the card). The attached furniture factory had power woodworking tools and out back three Cummins diesels powering their generators. Oh, and they have a web site, as well. ;-)
Sort of related. I was thinking of going back to Guatamala, where I spend 7 weeks 41 years ago, most of it after I broke my leg there.
Only 234 dollars round trip from Ft. Lauderdale. I think I would have paid 80 or 100 one-way 41 years ago. (Based on the fact that it was it was 150 from Panama to Miami to San Antonio.
Mostly I'm going to look at places I visited before.
I looked up the place where I broke my leg. It had been a T-instersection of two 2-lane highways. Now it had a cloverleaf! I thought, Well, I know I walked a bit, 100 feet, 200?. Mmaybe I was a few hundred feet down the side road, iin front of the rich guy's big house with the iron gate. I looked there, and it was full of streets and small houses So I guess when I get there, everything that was there will be gone.
I looked up the two hospitals I was in. The first one was Nuestra Senora del Pilar, which at the time had at most 6 patient rooms and 8 beds. Maybe less. I had to take a taxi to another place that had an X-ray machine.
Now they have 50 private rooms, 38 semi-private, a fancy building with plants and a double vaulted ceiling in the lobby, and they have their own webpage,
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The second hospital Herrera Llerandi was also listed in the list of Guatamala City hospitals, and seems to be at the same location in what had been a well-to-do residential n'hood. but only has an email address. I had to go there because the doctor at the first one wouldn't give me crutches or pain reliever and expected me to walk when the pain was enormous. So I called the US Embassy and asked what hospital I should go to. They gave me two places. The second was a profit making hospital where I got my choice of meals the night before, a newspaper delivered to my bed every day, and a complete sponge bath by a pretty nurse every day (except the 10th day when she wasn't pretty (different nurse) .
Both doctors were orthopedists, both had done residencies in the US, but the second one said the first had set my leg wrong. I'm glad I only waited 5 or 6 days from when I got out of the first hospital to go to the second.
This was 1971. The first hospital was non-profit and charged 5 dollars a day, the second was profit making and charged 10. The hotel I stayed at in the red-light district charged 1 dollar a day, and the Hilton charged 30. The Hilton in Chicago charged about 30 at the same time.
I couldn't find my hotel on google maps or google. I found the Supreme Court of Guatamala, which was one block away, but Guatamala city must have been the merger of several growning towns. The same streets appear several times, and can only be distinguished by zone. There are at least 12 zones. I have to figure out which zone I lived in. (I have notes and sourvenirs but they would be hard to find.) I'll rent a car and drive around until I find everything. I can still speak Spanish pretty well, from what I learned on that 4 month trip, but I can't understand unless they speak slowly.
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