Growing Up Amish - Ira Wagler [59]
Chuck and Margaret Leonard ran the café and service garage. It was a ramshackle little place, but comfortable and welcoming. Margaret, or Mrs. C as we called her, assisted by her married daughter Linda, bustled about in the kitchen, cooking meals for all the hungry locals. A caring woman, Mrs. C always asked how Titus was doing and clucked in sympathy. Chuck, clad in old, grease-stained, dark green coveralls, fussed and swore in his little shop, words flowing from him in a disjointed stream as he labored at repairing tractors and trucks for the local farmers.
I was hungry for an outside connection, and this simple, solid, southern-Iowa family never blinked but, rather, accepted me as one of their own. I was welcomed into their home as well. I stopped by many times to watch a bit of Saturday afternoon football. Or after hours, just to chat and gossip. I even developed a friendship with Father Mark, their priest, who enjoyed hanging out at the café in his spare time, relaxing with the common folk.
Every chance I got, I rode up with Fry, our old riding horse, tied her to a telephone pole in the churchyard across the road on the corner, then sauntered into the café through the rickety, spring-loaded screen door that closed behind me with a flat, thwacking sound. I usually knew who would be there from the vehicles parked out front. I reveled in the boisterous greetings, the comfortable pleasantness of the place, the chatter, the ribald jokes, and the rowdy conversations. And we just hung out, drinking coffee and swapping tales of this and that—sometimes based in truth, sometimes not.
To me, the little café was a safe haven in a surreal and uneasy world. I deeply treasured every minute of my time there. Dad instinctively resisted the fact that I hung out at the café. He sternly and frequently admonished and warned me about the world that I could never quite let go. But I paid him no mind. And eventually, the fact that I hung out at Chuck’s became just a fact of life. Not accepted, necessarily. But something that was unique to me and could not be changed.
At that time, there was another fact of life we took for granted. A tradition that Dad had planted in our family. I don’t know if the same thing was done at his home when he was growing up. Maybe so. But after each of the boys in our family reached adulthood and joined the church, he was presented with a brand-new top buggy and a horse of his own to do with what he would. He could choose the buggy builder and pick his horse, and Dad paid for it all.
Not every youth in Bloomfield got a brand-new buggy from his father, although many did. It was something we took for granted, the Waglers of Bloomfield. Something we did not and could not appreciate for what it was. I can’t remember hearing even one of my brothers thanking Dad for that gift. I know I didn’t. It never even crossed my mind. He owed it to me, I thought, and I would take what was mine. Maybe it was just a sign of the lack of communication among us. It would have been the right thing to do, to thank him—the honorable thing. I’m sure we would have done it had we known that. But we didn’t.
At any rate, after joining the Bloomfield Amish church, it was time for me to order my new buggy. To his credit, Dad held off on that purchase until after I’d actually joined the church. And because of my numerous adventures, my numerous flights from home, I was much older when I got my buggy than any of my brothers were when they got theirs.
At the time, Bloomfield had one buggy builder, Menno Kuhns. He was originally from Nappanee, Indiana. (That fact always reminded me of the little fat boy I had so mistreated way back when, in Aylmer.) In Bloomfield, Menno farmed and worked part time in his buggy shop. He had built my brother Steve’s buggy and many others in the area. He was a craftsman, and his products were sturdy and well built. But I thought his buggies were too wide and looked a little odd. Besides, his production was sporadic at best. If you ordered a buggy from him, it