Better Off_ Flipping the Switch on Technology - Eric Brende [48]
The innocence of Minimite youth was no accident. It was partly the result of the care and deliberation of their parents, many of whom had relocated to this area to escape the influences that had come to predominate in other plain settlements, like Lancaster. Since children raised in Old Order Anabaptist groups do not become members, formally speaking, until and if they make the decision to join at an older age, they sometimes embark on a phase of youthful exploration called Rumspringa, roughly, “running around.” In Lancaster, it has been reported that Amish teenage social groups have detached themselves completely from the adult world. So-called Amish gangs, with names like “Ammies,” “Happy Jacks,” and “Shotguns,” range freely over the county.
Lancaster youth openly drive cars, wear “English” clothes, drink beer, play rock-and-roll on the radio, and join in large, raucous barn dances. John Hostetler relates one anecdote of a policeman who pulled a car over somewhere in the county. Inside were several Amish boys under the legal drinking age. After the officer checked the license of the driver, one of the passengers said to the others in Pennsylvania Dutch, “If he only knew what we had in the trunk!” The officer turned out to be of Amish upbringing himself and understood the remark. In back he found stashed several cases of beer.
Alcohol is only the mildest of the intoxicants starting to pour through some of the larger Amish districts. Several young Amish men made headlines recently after being arrested for distributing hard drugs around Lancaster.
Mr. Miller wasn’t exaggerating when he admitted he had moved for the sake of his children. No longer raised on a farm or laboring under the supervision of their parents, many Lancaster youth work in the building trades and have plenty of money in their pockets—and independence. Parents look the other way when nineteen-year-old girls receive magazines like True Confessions in the mail or disappear for long weekends in recreational vehicles. Not surprisingly, teenage pregnancy is beginning to occur, and seems to go hand-in-hand with the freedom and privacy provided by the automobile—just as it appeared to in the wider culture, the Lynds found, when Model Ts became widespread in the 1920s.
Here among the Minimites, the practices of dating and socializing were much more structured. To prevent unwanted, unsupervised contact, not even bicycles were allowed. When boys and girls swam together, girls covered themselves ankle to neck in hand-sewn suits. Needless to say, “bundling”—the practice, accepted in some Amish districts, of sleeping together fully clad in a bed before marriage—was strictly forbidden.
To court a young woman, her suitor had first to send a letter to her parents stating his intentions. If they and the daughter approved, he was allowed to come to the house on Sunday and have dinner with the whole family. If all went well, he would be invited back a second Sunday. If he passed the test again, on later visits he was permitted time “alone” with his chosen. He could sit on the porch swing with her, or take her rowing across a pond in sight of the parlor window, or walk her up and down the lane. In all likelihood, the two already knew each other well enough from their school and church contacts, and probably from laboring get-togethers as well; or if the fellow came from outside the area, his family might well be known to hers, given the tight network of Old Order connections. In any case, young women were not obliged to accept the