Growing Up Amish - Ira Wagler [2]
I’d like to think my birth was an important event, and to some extent, of course, it was. But in Amish families, the arrival of a new baby isn’t treated the same as it is in English families, where everyone fusses rapturously. For the Amish, where it’s not at all uncommon for families to have upwards of ten children, a new baby just isn’t that big a deal.
By the time I came along, my parents already had eight children. Four boys and four girls. An even number of each. I broke the tie. Number nine.
I’d like to think, too, that the choosing of my name was the source of much somber thought and measured consideration. Serious weighing of various possibilities and combinations. Perhaps even reciting the finalists aloud a time or two, just to make sure the name would fit in the flow of all the others in the family.
I’d like to think it was an important ritual. But again, I know better.
Earlier that summer, Dad had hired a strapping young man to help with the farmwork for room and board and a couple of bucks a day. He was Dad’s nephew and my cousin, probably around twenty years old. He was a fine, upstanding fellow, by all accounts. Hardworking, too. His name was Ira Stoll.
And by the time Dad had fetched Mom and me from the Tillsonburg hospital the next day, someone—I suspect it was my two oldest sisters—had come up with the fateful suggestion: “Why don’t we name the new baby boy Ira?”
“After our cousin?” I can imagine Dad stroking his long black beard thoughtfully.
Mom, resting in bed, did not protest. In fact, I’m guessing she was even a little relieved. And so it was settled, in the most lackadaisical manner imaginable. With zero fanfare or fuss, I was saddled forever with the name Ira.
No middle name.
Just Ira.
Ira Wagler.
And thus began my life in the Old Order Amish community of Aylmer, Ontario.
2
The Old Order Amish are a pretty exclusive group. And there really aren’t that many around. By latest official count, right at a quarter million worldwide. It just seems as if there are a lot more, because, well, the Amish are so different.
So visible.
So quaint and old fashioned.
And so ideal. At least from the outside.
It’s not their fault that English society finds them endlessly fascinating. Mostly, they just prefer to be left alone.
A few defining factors must exist for one to be considered Old Order. First, and most critical, no cars. Horse and buggy only for local transportation. Second, no electricity. Not in the house or in the outbuildings. Third, no telephones in the house. Old Order Amish fiercely and jealously defend these boundaries.
Of course, there are a few other defining characteristics. All Old Order women wear long, flowing, home-sewn dresses and some sort of head covering with chin strings. The men wear homemade trousers with no belt loops and no zipper, just a large, four-buttoned, horizontal flap across the front. Barn-door pants, we called them. And all the men have beards. At least the married men do. A full beard is pretty much a universal requirement. But no mustache.
Which makes little sense, really. If it’s biblical to grow a beard, one would think it’s just as biblical to have a mustache. It’s all naturally growing facial hair. But somewhere along the line, back during the Civil War, supposedly, the Amish decided that mustaches looked too militaristic. And since that time, the mustache has been strictly verboten.
Not that this issue hasn’t been a cause of much dispute and dissension over the years. Always, it seems, some wild-eyed heretic somewhere is spouting Scripture and publishing bombastic little pamphlets arguing in favor of the mustache. Such arguments, however logical, have always been rejected by the powers that be, with the mighty hand of the church forcing the heretic to either repent or be expelled.
Other than the facial hair thing, there is wide variation and a lot of inordinate fussing within Amish circles. Some groups use only hooks and eyes on their clothes; others use buttons and snaps. Some pull motor-powered machinery with