Growing Up Amish - Ira Wagler [19]
Then it was Jesse’s turn. At eighteen, Jesse was a strong, silent, burly young man—an intelligent loner who didn’t say much but thought a lot. And somewhere, deep inside, he instinctively knew there was something more, a better life, somewhere out there.
Quietly, secretively, he made his plans. And then one night, without warning, he just slipped out through an upstairs window and disappeared.
He turned up a few days later in Cleveland, Ohio, where he was soon visited by Dad and a small but strident contingency of Aylmer preachers.
Jesse sat there silently as they cajoled, pleaded, and admonished.
Would he not just come home and try it again?
Surely it couldn’t have been so bad.
It was all a misunderstanding.
Things would be better if he just came home.
Finally, against his better judgment, and after months of unrelenting pressure, Jesse allowed himself to be persuaded, and he returned home.
He tried to settle back into the flow of things, but it was no use. Dad’s shimmering promises drifted off in the wind like the fluff they were. Things had not changed and would not change. Less than a year later, Jesse packed his stuff and walked out. This time his face was set. He would not return.
He lived for a few months in St. Thomas, about ten miles west of Aylmer. Eventually, he moved to Daviess County, Indiana, the area my parents had left decades before. There he connected with his Yoder relatives for the first time. They received him—a total stranger bound to them by blood—with great joy and open arms. He settled in, joined a Mennonite church, and built a stable, happy life. Eventually he married Lynda Stoll and moved to her home community in South Carolina.
Unlike Maggie, however, Jesse rarely returned to Aylmer and pretty much became a stranger to his younger brothers.
Naturally, my parents were shocked and stunned both times Jesse left. We all were. Mom broke down and wept as if her heart would break. It was a brutal thing, the thought of her child out there all alone in the cold, dark world.
Jesse was the first of her sons to pack a bag and simply walk away into the night.
He would not be the last.
* * *
The departure of Peter Yoder and Nicky Stoltzfus marked the end of an era in Aylmer. The old guard was gone. It was time for a new dawn.
And so two ordinations were held in Aylmer about a year apart. The first was that of Elmo Stoll. The second, Simon Wagler. They were both very young—in their upper twenties, maybe thirty—and were greatly burdened with their callings.
Of the two, Elmo Stoll rapidly rose to a position of prominence. Soon after his ordination, he finagled his way to a pinnacle of influence and unquestioned power such as Aylmer had never seen before and has not seen since.
Elmo had a grand vision of how things should be. He was a natural leader, a gifted man. A spellbinding speaker and preacher, he moved aggressively to solidify his power. He quickly overwhelmed and swept aside the kindly elder preacher, Jake, and began to deliberately dismantle the structural safeguards that Peter and Nicky had left behind.
A hard-core Amish firebrand, Elmo set out to please a furious, frowning God, a God who just might be placated if enough sacrifices were made for his favors.
Suddenly, stricter rules were in place, and things that had always been allowed in Aylmer were proclaimed sinful and forbidden.
Wire-rimmed glasses only, no more plastic frames.
Longer dresses.
Bigger head coverings for the women.
Buggy interiors painted black.
And the builders, the few that remained, were forbidden to accept jobs that required any transportation other than a horse and buggy, which greatly restricted their range and their livelihoods.
It was never enough, though. Elmo was restless and driven. He never stopped tweaking the church rules and was always dreaming up more stringent requirements.
At first, most people grumbled and complained a good bit. But Elmo was a very persuasive speaker, and as he preached in mellow,