Growing Up Amish - Ira Wagler [34]
They were probably a little short, but I didn’t know any better. I thought they fit perfectly. Real blue jeans. I admired myself in the mirror. Then I walked out of the fitting room, picked up another pair the same size, bought them both, and walked proudly out the door and back to my motel. For the first time ever, I was not conscious that I was any different from anyone else around me, because I wasn’t—except for my haircut. But I would get that taken care of soon enough. I felt great. This was definitely something I could get used to.
I spent the evening watching TV in my motel room—a huge treat. I finally drifted off to sleep, trusting that I’d wake up in due time the next morning. I knew nothing of wake-up calls from the front desk. That night I slumbered, exhausted from lack of sleep and the tension of the previous night. And somehow I blocked it all out—everything I’d left behind at home. I managed not to think about my parents—especially my mother, who was undoubtedly worried, sick to death, not knowing where I was.
I was seventeen years old. A minor. And I had pulled it off. I had just left home. Run away in the middle of the night.
14
The next morning I boarded a bus and headed west into Nebraska. The rolling farmland flowed past outside, followed by the sand hills of the north central part of the state. By late afternoon, we pulled into Valentine. Clutching my duffel bag, I stepped off the bus and looked around hopefully. No one was waiting.
I had called Gary the week before and told him I was coming. Where was he? I waited nervously in the bus station for about fifteen minutes. Then a Suburban pulled in and parked. A short, burly man in a cowboy hat got out. He swaggered up to the door. It was Gary. I walked outside, and he grasped my hand.
“Welcome,” he said, smiling. We walked to where Gary’s wife and three young daughters sat waiting. “Are you hungry?” he asked. “How about the Pizza Hut?”
Of course I was hungry. A young Amish kid is always hungry, and Pizza Hut sounded just fine.
“I’d like that.”
After eating, we headed out to the ranch, thirty-five miles due south of Valentine.
Gary took me to the bunkhouse, a decrepit, old, two-story structure with a livable basement. A lanky cowboy lounged there. His name was Leonard Paris, and he was from New Mexico. I unpacked my bag and hung my few clothes on a wire stretched across a corner of the room. That night I slept in the bed that would be mine for the next five months.
The next day I called my sister Rachel back in Bloomfield. She taught at one of the two Amish schools there, and each schoolhouse had a community phone. I called her collect and told her where I was. We chatted. She spoke carefully, choosing her words. She said things weren’t good at home. The community was abuzz with shock, and my parents were taking it pretty hard.
Years later, she told me that Dad had refused to pay for my collect call. He said she had accepted it, so it was her responsibility. To me, that’s a strange and puzzling thing. I had called to let her know where I was and that I was okay. Surely it was worth the cost of the call to Dad, to know that. But he refused to pay, so she paid from her meager teacher’s salary. I still owe her for that.
The first few days and weeks at the ranch were a blur. The trauma of leaving so abruptly, so secretively, was washed away by the excitement of my new surroundings. I was rough, uncouth, and raw, fresh from the primitive Amish life that had been the only one I’d ever known. I was eager, but quite naive. A remote ranch in the sand hills of northern Nebraska was probably about as ideal a place as any for my first transition to English life.
In the next few weeks, I acclimated to my surroundings. Leonard Paris was an amiable fellow. He immediately took me under his wing and very patiently