Chapter one of No Pictures, Please!
Some ten years ago, while visiting my dad in a rural community, he wanted to take me on a trip in the country. Along with my mother, he took me out toward the old homestead where I lived as my dad made our living on a farm. We passed one farm after another where a large house had been erected and usually, an even larger barn. On the road and in front of many of the houses were horse and buggies. Our neighbor hood had become a place for a community of Amish farmers.
One day, sitting on the front porch with my dad, a buggy pulled into his front yard.
“Would you like to sell that sixty?”
My father replied that he wouldn’t and besides it was in a government set aside program.
As the years passed, my father many times took me on a ride to see the new houses and barns springing up as more Amish moved into the area. Later, I would find that they called their neighbors a “community”. I would also learn that each community had a Bishop who helped determine the rules for that community.
Near the end of my father’s life, he mentioned to me that he sometimes wished he could live like the Amish. I guess that it brought back memories of his youth. Many of the Amish had tools that my father didn’t have when he was farming with horses. As you follow the rest of this blog, you will see how I came to understand the meanings behind his words.
My mother passed when she was 88 after 65 years of marriage. While visiting my father a few months later, he said,
“I worked hard all my life. Why can’t I just fly away?”
I had no answer.
My father passed on a few months after my mother.
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