off the heartwarming story of the Amish.
I know this much: Those tourists aren’t coming just for the Grand Slam breakfast at Denny’s on Columbia Avenue. They’re coming to see us. They could just as easily OD on cholesterol at home. If it weren’t for the powerful lure of the Amish, downtown Lancaster would be a ghost town. The busy Park City shopping mall would be about as empty as Boyd Cemetery on a moonless night, and all those tourists would be hanging around Branson or Orlando or, I don’t know, maybe the Jersey Shore. Where’s Snooki!
I t would be nice if a few more of those Amish-tourism dollars ended up in Amish hands. Some days it seems like the Amish are the only people who aren’t making money off the popularity of the Amish. The Amish are little more than extras in someone else’s movie—baling hay, picking tobacco, driving buggies and growing beards—while people they hardly know sell the tickets and keep the receipts. Put it like this: The Amish are less the beneficiaries of Amish tourism and more the bait.
The Amish don’t own Wendy’s franchises. They don’t even own most of the restaurants serving “Amish” food. They don’t run conference centers or family-style motels. They certainly aren’t administering the loofah scrubs in the high-priced new-age spas. They don’t drive tour buses or staff the chamber of commerce. They’re back on their farms, plowing their fields and ducking tourists with cell-phone cameras. They do operate a few farm stands.
Some of those tourist businesses are operated by Mennonites, whose rules about mixing with outsiders and benefiting financially are looser than those of the traditional Amish. And some of the “Amish” crafts sold in the “Amish” craft stores are made by actual Amish craftspeople. Those people get paid. Some Amish construction crews are hired to build new stores and houses that the tourist boom has created a demand for. That’s paying work. But the vast majority of these tourist-fueled businesses are owned and run by people whose main connection to the Amish is, well, that that’s the lucky business they’re in. They love the Amish the way a farmer loves his cow. He’d hate for someone to steal it, and he wants to keep the milk production high.
The tourism money goes mainly to non-Amish business owners and the Wall Street investors who control all those big nationalchains. Then some of that money trickles across the nearby communities in sales receipts and tax revenues, paying for fire protection the Amish seldom rely on, police departments the Amish rarely call and public schools the Amish don’t send their children to.
The tourists themselves don’t tune in to much of this. They are kept purposely in the dark. They have no easy way of telling if the quilt they just bought was sewn by Mrs. Hardcastle in Bird-in-Hand or by a sweatshop worker on the outskirts of Shanghai. And either is perfectly possible. (Here’s a hint: If the tag on the “Amish hand-stitched quilt” features a super-bargain price, chances are the item isn’t really Amish. A lot of time and work goes into the real ones.)
Even the giant tour companies that scoot guests around in minivans and walk them through the re-created Amish villages—hardly any of those businesses are Amish owned. Don’t be fooled by all those Amish-heavy names. Amish Acres. The Amish Experience at Plain & Fancy Farm, Amish Heartland Tours. The Amish don’t own those companies any more than Mickey owns Disneyland.
T ourism is a time-honored tradition in Amish Country. For almost as long as there have been Amish in America, there have been people coming to look at them. From the day they arrived, the Amish were different from most other people. They lived with their own unique customs. They worshipped in their own special ways. They weren’t super friendly when strangers came calling, but they were friendly enough. They were a far cry from Appalachian moonshiners—another band of
I know this much: Those tourists aren’t coming just for the Grand Slam breakfast at Denny’s on Columbia Avenue. They’re coming to see us. They could just as easily OD on cholesterol at home. If it weren’t for the powerful lure of the Amish, downtown Lancaster would be a ghost town. The busy Park City shopping mall would be about as empty as Boyd Cemetery on a moonless night, and all those tourists would be hanging around Branson or Orlando or, I don’t know, maybe the Jersey Shore. Where’s Snooki!
I t would be nice if a few more of those Amish-tourism dollars ended up in Amish hands. Some days it seems like the Amish are the only people who aren’t making money off the popularity of the Amish. The Amish are little more than extras in someone else’s movie—baling hay, picking tobacco, driving buggies and growing beards—while people they hardly know sell the tickets and keep the receipts. Put it like this: The Amish are less the beneficiaries of Amish tourism and more the bait.
The Amish don’t own Wendy’s franchises. They don’t even own most of the restaurants serving “Amish” food. They don’t run conference centers or family-style motels. They certainly aren’t administering the loofah scrubs in the high-priced new-age spas. They don’t drive tour buses or staff the chamber of commerce. They’re back on their farms, plowing their fields and ducking tourists with cell-phone cameras. They do operate a few farm stands.
Some of those tourist businesses are operated by Mennonites, whose rules about mixing with outsiders and benefiting financially are looser than those of the traditional Amish. And some of the “Amish” crafts sold in the “Amish” craft stores are made by actual Amish craftspeople. Those people get paid. Some Amish construction crews are hired to build new stores and houses that the tourist boom has created a demand for. That’s paying work. But the vast majority of these tourist-fueled businesses are owned and run by people whose main connection to the Amish is, well, that that’s the lucky business they’re in. They love the Amish the way a farmer loves his cow. He’d hate for someone to steal it, and he wants to keep the milk production high.
The tourism money goes mainly to non-Amish business owners and the Wall Street investors who control all those big nationalchains. Then some of that money trickles across the nearby communities in sales receipts and tax revenues, paying for fire protection the Amish seldom rely on, police departments the Amish rarely call and public schools the Amish don’t send their children to.
The tourists themselves don’t tune in to much of this. They are kept purposely in the dark. They have no easy way of telling if the quilt they just bought was sewn by Mrs. Hardcastle in Bird-in-Hand or by a sweatshop worker on the outskirts of Shanghai. And either is perfectly possible. (Here’s a hint: If the tag on the “Amish hand-stitched quilt” features a super-bargain price, chances are the item isn’t really Amish. A lot of time and work goes into the real ones.)
Even the giant tour companies that scoot guests around in minivans and walk them through the re-created Amish villages—hardly any of those businesses are Amish owned. Don’t be fooled by all those Amish-heavy names. Amish Acres. The Amish Experience at Plain & Fancy Farm, Amish Heartland Tours. The Amish don’t own those companies any more than Mickey owns Disneyland.
T ourism is a time-honored tradition in Amish Country. For almost as long as there have been Amish in America, there have been people coming to look at them. From the day they arrived, the Amish were different from most other people. They lived with their own unique customs. They worshipped in their own special ways. They weren’t super friendly when strangers came calling, but they were friendly enough. They were a far cry from Appalachian moonshiners—another band of
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