P. L. Gaus’s Ohio Amish Journal

If you’re like me, you are worried. Times being what they are, we are worried about the economy, we are worried about the election, and we are worried about global conflict. It’s an almost irresistible sense of worry that draws us to the news reports each day to learn what the latest crisis has been. Or to learn what has become of our retirement accounts. Or to listen to the presidential debates to try to decided who should be our next president. I think it is an affliction—this modern, electronic, hyper-sense of doom. And I often wish I were immune to it. Like the Amish are.

For the most part, the Amish people of Holmes County, Ohio, where I have set my Ohio Amish Mysteries, don’t have retirement accounts. They mostly don’t even have any money in the banks. They aren’t paying interest on a credit card, and they don’t ever worry about the Stock Market. They are immune.

The Amish people of Holmes County don’t vote for President, so they are not caught up in the frenzy of national politics. In fact, they don’t vote for any office that has control over life and death, because they do not believe in killing of any kind. So since the president has the authority to make war, they don’t vote for president. They don’t vote for sheriff, either, or for anyone who might carry a gun. They are pacifists of the first order, and they will not participate in any aspect of killing, not even to vote. So they are immune, you see, from the political frenzy that grips so many of us English.

Amish people also do not worry about global conflict. They are fatalists for the most part, much like the dwarf Enos Erb, a character in my sixth Ohio Amish Mystery, Separate from the World, where I examined the near-Zen nature of their devotion to God’s will in their lives. Global conflict? Why worry? It is in God’s hands.

So, the Amish have immunity. They live separate from the world, and they are immune to troubles like finances, politics, and war. That sounds pretty good, I think. You’d almost think that living Amish might be better. But the conversion is nearly impossible. Few of the English who have tried to live Amish have ever succeeded.

And that’s the story line in the new story I am crafting now, the seventh Ohio Amish Mystery. I don’t have a title, yet, and my editors have always proved better at giving a new story it’s title, anyway. I’ll just call it OAM-7 until they tell me what title I should use. In the meantime, I am wondering and writing about a thoroughly English fellow who has decided to give it a try—to become Amish—to try to find the immunity that these days seems so alluring.

What if you lived in a world in which you would never program a DVR, take a call on a cell phone, use a computer, send a FAX, drive a car, watch TV, or heat a frozen dinner in a microwave oven? Can you imagine it? Can you imagine it even a little? I can’t. It’s unthinkable. But the thousands of Amish people who live in Holmes County, Ohio, live in this type of world all their lives, and so far as I know, there isn’t one of them who regrets it.

It’s not that they don’t know about our modern “gadgets” as they call them, and it’s not that they can’t afford such conveniences. Rather, they have rejected them knowingly. They have considered the English lifestyle, and except in cases where one of them has left their Amish sect, they have all decided that they would rather live without the modern conveniences that we all take for granted. They reject the appliances that we English all consider essential.

So, rather than using electric ovens and microwaves, the Amish cook on elaborate wood stoves, available even today at stores like Lehman’s Hardware in Kidron, Ohio. Rather than drive cars, the Amish use horse and buggy transportation. Rather than buying life insurance or long-term care insurance, the Amish take care of their older relatives right on the farm where they grew up.

Quite a few Amish folk have explained to me that all we “English” really have is our gadgets. They advise that if we would examine our lives, we will surely discover that the only advantages we have over the Amish are the modern gadgets that we use.

So the father and three sons in this picture know that they will never own a car, rely on a computer, carry a credit card, or program a DVR. They know that they will never struggle through the security checkpoints in an airport, backup all their documents on a remote location, pay someone else to safeguard their identity, or spend their first hour at work checking emails. Starting to get the picture? Right. Maybe they do have it all figured out.

The three sons on this wagon were headed with their father that day to a small grocery store at Becks Mills, in the Doughty Valley of Holmes County, Ohio. That’s a little place few English even know about. It’s worth the drive, but stop at the County Engineer’s office (across from the courthouse in Millersburg) to get a map of Holmes County. You’d need that to find Becks Mills. You might even need the map to find your way back out of the Doughty Valley, once you find it. But I promise you, once you’ve been there, you’ll wonder if you really do need all those gadgets in your life. You do, surely, and I do too, but you’ll wonder. You’ll wonder what life would be like if your days were no more complicated than a wagon ride with father, to the grocery store down the lane.