Growing Up Amish - Ira Wagler [60]
So I chose another builder, one with a stellar reputation. Mullet’s Buggy Shop in Milton, twenty miles or so to the south. The Milton Amish church at that time was much larger than the Bloomfield church. They’d been there longer and the community boasted more established businesses. But Milton was separated from us. More conservative. Much more hard-core Amish. They wouldn’t even fellowship with the Bloomfielders. We were way too modern. Way too worldly. So they would not drink the wine or eat the bread of Communion with us. But they sure would do business with us. Money talks, I guess, in ways the bread and wine cannot.
We despised the Miltonites. Scorned them as a group. Especially their youth. Milton Jacks, we called them. They were novices, hicks, many of them, who desperately cultivated a “wild” reputation. We looked at them with tired eyes, my buddies and me. If you have to prove you are wild, then by definition you really aren’t. That’s how we saw it. Let your deeds, not your words, do your talking, and your boasting. No Milton Jack had ever accomplished the feats we had pulled off.
We considered them caricatures, our Milton peers. Phonies. Fakes. Kids obsessed with image, utterly devoid of substance. Their actions more often than not sank into idiotic farce. We heard the stories of how they acted. Drink a few sips of beer, then start smashing things. Mouthing off, threatening people. Because in their weird world, that’s how wild Amish kids were supposed to act. So that’s what they did. They were destructive and uncouth. We never had much to do with them. Even so, we were always deliberately polite when we met up with them. But we never bragged. And to the Milton youth, we were legends.
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Dad and I headed over to Mullet’s Buggy Shop one day with an English driver. Mr. Mullet, the proprietor, greeted us with a shopworn air. Friendly but curt. He was a slightly rotund man with a mere wisp of a beard, and a worn leather apron tied around his waist. I figured he probably couldn’t grow a bigger beard or he would have, being from Milton and all. I told him what I wanted—the buggy style and interior finish—and he warmed up a bit. As he should have. I was ordering a brand-new buggy. I forget the exact cost, but it was at least several thousand dollars. Quite a sale for Mr. Mullet, and quite an investment for my dad.
Amish and buggies go hand in hand, like cookies and milk. Buggies are Amish. Distinctive, certainly, from community to community. At least, to the discerning eye. Yet regardless of style, buggies are globally recognizable as pertaining to one particular group. The Amish.
But that symbol is not the same vehicle it was way back when nearly everyone still used them a hundred years ago. Not when you strip it down to its structural essence. The Amish have greatly improved and engineered the simple carriage over the last few decades. Solid framing, more safety features, better lights. It’s really quite amazing. Such a simple vehicle on the surface, hiding so much technology.
Amish youth usually drive a single seater. One seat, plus a shelf at shoulder height behind you, and that’s it. The buggy is wired for lights and has a small dash for the light switches. Most are lined with faux velvet of various bright hues.
Mr. Mullet took our order. A standard youth top buggy, in the style common in Bloomfield. Wired for lights. My brother Stephen would install those, after I got the buggy home. For the interior, I chose black velvet fastened with silver tacks. Still clinging to a vestige of my outlaw past, I instinctively went with black. Like Johnny Cash. The Man in Black, whom I deeply admired.
The buggy, Mr. Mullet allowed, would be ready in about six weeks. Dad wrote the check for the down payment and handed it to him. He thanked us, and we left. I was excited.
In the meantime, I was using