Amish Confidential by Lebanon" Levi Stoltzfus Page B

anyone would have predicted that this early brochure would help kick off a multibillion-dollar tourist industry. But word did get around, and from that time forward, the numbers mostly kept going up. The only real dip came in the disastrous tourist year of 1979. Some of the problem came from Mother Nature. There were record-breaking rains that year. There were also fuel shortages and gas rationing. Traveling anywhere just seemed like a hassle. Then the real blow came. The nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island suffered a partial meltdown, the worst nuclear accident in American history. The plant was only twenty miles from Lancaster. The lieutenant governor, William Scranton III, suggested that residents stay indoors and farmers keep their animals under cover.
    And if that weren’t enough, national headlines also announced that year: “Polio Epidemic Strikes Amish Community.” That was true. Though the church had no explicit policy against immunization, many large Amish families had decided to skip the polio vaccines because of the expense. Though polio was all but gone from America, eleven cases of the deadly virus were reported among the Amish by the end of that year.
    There were three million fewer visitors in 1979 than in 1978.
    Ever since, it’s been up-up-up for Amish tourism, some of the biggest jumps coming after Amish Mafia and its spinoffs hit the air. Really, how could tourists not want to visit the land of beards, bonnets and yours truly?

CHAPTER 9
    SHUN THIS!
    M y brother Christian got shunned, and it was partly on account of me. Okay, mainly on account of me. I felt terrible when it happened, and I swore I’d get him out of it—even if I had to play outside the traditional Amish rules.
    Christian is five years older than I am. He’s a hard worker, an excellent brother and a very good guy. Unlike me, he was baptized in the Old Order Amish Church. He and I had a business together building decks on peoples’ houses and doing roofing jobs. Farming and construction—those are the two main choices for Amish people, the ones who aren’t churning butter at an “Amish” tourist village or selling hand-stitched quilts and shoofly pies. When no one’s educated past eighth grade, what do you expect us to grow up to be? Computer programmers? NASA engineers? Chris and I had C & L Siding and Treated Decks. You learn a thing or two about good construction when you raise a few barns. We made some really nice decks. Every morning, I would leave the house to pick up Chris. Then, I’d drive us to the job site in our beat-up Chevy work truck.
    Now, everybody knows the Amish frown on motor vehicles. If you need to go someplace that’s too far to walk, take the horse-and-buggy. But if it’s too far for the horse-and-buggy, don’t go. If it’s somewhere you really want to go or really need to go, you’re supposed to hire an English taxi driver. Let him risk eternal damnation for hauling you around. But here’s a dirty little secret about the Amish, something outsiders aren’t supposed to know. Even after Rumspringa, lots of Amish people own and drive cars. That’s right. There are Amish who’ve been baptized who have both a family buggy and a family car. They leave the car at a neighbor’s house or hide it in a field somewhere. They won’t drive to church on Sunday or throw their forbidden driving into the bishop’s face. But they still drive.
    Driving, even if everyone knows you’ve been doing it for months or years, even if a lot of other people are doing it, can ruffle some feathers. And that’s exactly what happened. Chris and I had gone to work in the truck as usual, but suddenly there was trouble.
    One of Chris’s Amish neighbors, a brushy who had a farm across the road, spied us driving to work. Brushies are what the Amish call married men, who start growing a beard right after their wedding day. Amish men aren’t even supposed to trim or shape their beards once they take a wife. So, ladies, if he’s