Billy Connolly's Route 66_ The Big Yin on the Ultimate American Road Trip - Billy Connolly [39]
‘As we were driving here I noticed that many Amish were waving at us from their buggies. Is that normal?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Mervin. ‘We think that if you don’t wave, you’re stuck up.’
‘Really?’
Mervin laughed. ‘That’s the way a lot of people feel. It’s like: try to be friendly to everybody.’
‘That’s wonderful.’
Mervin then attached the horse to a black buggy, which, like Mervin’s furniture, was a beautiful example of skilled craftsmanship. It had two sliding panels on each side, so the passengers could travel either entirely enclosed and protected or with the sides open.
‘She’s a little worked up today,’ Mervin warned as he adjusted the horse’s reins.
‘Why’s that?’ I asked, even though the horse seemed perfectly calm to me.
‘A few strangers about. She’s not so used to them.’
As he fixed the horse, he told me that most Amish families owned a buggy or two, all of them made by local craftsmen. A larger model typically costs around seven thousand dollars. We set off and Mervin explained that he learned how to control a buggy as a kid. Then he showed me the ropes.
‘It’s not hard at all,’ he said, as I took the reins.
‘Not with you here, it isn’t,’ I replied.
We pootled along for a little while, chatting idly.
‘You know what I find very impressive, Mervin? You keep talking about the rules for this, the rules for that, and the rules for the other. You seem very comfortable with it.’
‘It’s something you get used to, you know.’
‘From the outside, people think it’s kind of fanatical. But up close you seem very happy with what you’re doing.’
‘It’s nice to keep your family together and just kind of do your own thing.’ We plodded on a bit further in silence, then he said: ‘I guess, as far as the rules and stuff go, it’s … ’
‘Do you find comfort in it?’
‘Oh yeah, oh yeah.’
‘You certainly seem to,’ I said. ‘You seem to be a very happy man.’
‘Yes.’
‘Another thing. On the way here we stopped at an Amish restaurant, and when we were among Amish people there, I thought they would keep themselves separate, but they made a point of saying “hello” and “good morning”.’
‘Oh yeah.’ Mervin nodded, then turned to me. ‘So, you got any children, Billy?’
‘Four girls and a boy.’
‘How old are they?’
‘The youngest one’s twenty-two and the oldest is forty-one.’
‘All still living with you?’
‘Well, two of them still live with me.’
‘I see.’
‘The rest are out working in different places.’
Mervin interrupted our conversation to explain that if I wanted the horse to go a little faster, I should give her a gentle tap and click my tongue. ‘There you go,’ he said, showing me how.
‘How many children have you got?’ I asked.
‘Five. We had six but the youngest one passed on,’ said Mervin. He hesitated before continuing. ‘We had an accident when he was fourteen months old.’
‘Oh, fourteen months. That must have broken your heart.’
‘It was kind of a sad situation. I was out in the barn and I was using the skip-loader to move a hay-bale and I backed over him.’
‘Oh no.’
‘Yeah, and … so it was kind of sad.’
I looked at Mervin. He was telling me about this tragedy in such a quiet, calm, matter-of-fact way that it broke my heart. He’d simply accepted that it had been God’s way. Whether I agreed with that was a different story, but he accepted it and that was the whole cheese.
‘It’s been twenty … The second of April. It was twenty years ago, so it was kinda … ’
The anniversary had just passed, a couple of weeks before. ‘Oh, my goodness me,’ I said.
‘You know, it’s still tough.’
I nodded. ‘That must have taken a bit of getting over.’
‘Yeah. We still think about it a lot.’
‘I bet you do.’
‘But, you know, life goes on and … you’ve just got to make the best of it sometimes.’
‘Of course you