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CHAPTER 2

When I was four years old we moved to Tennessee. Dad had gone there to look at some land and bought a farm. We could hardly wait for his return, as we were full of questions. Finally, we received a letter in the mail saying he was coming home on the Greyhound Bus, and he would arrive in Apple Creek, Ohio the next day. My oldest brother, Pete, hitched the horse to the buggy so mom could go to Apple Creek and pick him up. Dad brought back some candy for us as a present. Then he told us a story about our new farm. We had to have a sale in order to move. We were to sell our cows, farm machinery, and such. We had raised a big garden that summer, and canned all our fruit and vegetables in quart jars. So dad had to make special wooden boxes to put these jars in for travel. We filled the boxes with oats to keep the jars from breaking.

In October we had our sale. We sold most of our farm machinery, our cows, calves, heifers and pigs. We sold all the livestock except the horses. In November 1960, we loaded a boxcar in Apple Creek. Friends and neighbors helped us with horses and wagons. We put all the wagons on one end of the boxcar, and put the rest of the farm machinery, which we did not sell, on the other end. The horses were in the middle. We took three, fifty-gallon, barrels of water with us for the horses, about four-hundred-pounds of oats, and twenty bales of hay. Once the boxcar left Ohio we figured it would take about three and a half days to get to Tennessee. We had to finish loading that day, because the boxcar was leaving that evening. Dad and Uncle Menno got on the boxcar that evening and left for Tennessee.

Two days later the rest of us left by bus. We reached Tennessee the next evening. Boy, I was glad to get off that bus! Aunt Mary met us with her buggy at the bus stop in Tennessee. We were to stay with her overnight.

The farm that Dad bought was on the way to Aunt Mary's house, so we stopped for a quick look at it. We could not believe our eyes when we saw that farm The barn was about ready to fall down, some of the roof was off, the doors were sagging on the barn, and there was an old hand dug water well in front of the house. The house was really small with only two bedrooms. Some of the windows were knocked out and it was badly overgrown.

Mom and us children didn't like what we were seeing. We were all depressed and wishing we were back in Ohio, where we had a nice big house and barn.

However, there was no turning back as everything had been sold. Aunt Mary said it wasn't that bad, and they would help us fix it up. She had a really nice place and supper was ready on our arrival.

The next day the boxcar arrived in Ethridge. As soon as it arrived, someone brought the message to our Aunt's place. They hitched up a horse to the buggy, then let everyone know that the boxcar had arrived and needed to be unloaded tonight. Dad did not take time to eat that evening. It was about eight o'clock that evening when we finished unloading. We stayed with our Aunt Mary again that night.

The next morning we went over to our new farm. The women all started cleaning the house and unpacking. The men worked on the barn and on the well. They hooked a pulley about two feet above the well, put a rope through the pulley, tied it to a bucket and let it down the well until it hit the water, then pulled it back up. This is the way we got our drinking water.

The house was basically a shack. My two older brothers, Pete, ten years old, and Joe, eight years old logged timber with a crosscut saw that winter. The next summer we were ready to build a new house and barn. We had to dig our basement by hand for the house. We built the house on the far end of the farm. We plowed a little spot with a team of horses, then we unhooked the horses from the plow and hooked them up to a slip pan. We scraped that fresh dirt out and then plowed some more. We got down about five or six feet, then had to dig most of the rest of it by hand and wheel it out with a wheelbarrow. We laid the basement that fall, and planed all the rough-cut lumber, which we used for finish work. The rest of the lumber was all installed rough. It was a big house with four bedrooms.

In 1962 the house was finally finished. We moved in our new house and also built a barn and tool shed that year. At six years old, I was old enough to help with the work. I had to carry drinking water for the carpenters and keep them in nails. I ran a lot of small errands for them. It was so nice to live in a nice home again, like the rest of the Amish children. The following year we tore down the set of buildings. We had to borrow money from the church to do all this, for which my Dad paid one percent interest on the borrowed five thousand dollars. Dad purchased five milk cows. The cows weren't making enough money to pay back what we owed. Therefore, the next spring we started looking for work. A lot of local farmers were doing cash cropping. They would raise a little bit of tobacco, peppers, cotton and sorghum cane. Dad was strictly a farmer, but he saw that he wasn't making any money. He decided to put out about eight acres of cotton ourselves that year. We planted the cotton with a one-row cotton planter. I led the horse all day long. In the Amish culture, by the time you were seven years old, you were old enough to have some responsibilities. One of our neighbors wanted to plant five acres of peppers that year. So, we planted the five acres of peppers for our neighbor.

In order to do all the farming and cash cropping we wanted to, we had to get up every morning at four thirty. We milked the cows in the morning, using kerosene lanterns for light. By the time we finished the milking and the other chores, Mom and the girls had breakfast ready. Breakfast usually consisted of fried eggs and grape nuts. After we ate breakfast, we left for the fields. By then it would be daylight. We would hoe five or ten acres of cotton by hand a day. We usually were paid a daily or hourly rate for our labor.

I was glad when fall arrived because that was when school started. We walked about a mile to a one-room schoolhouse, where we had only one teacher. At least when I was in school, I didn't have to work. In the fall of the year, school was dismissed for a couple weeks so the children could help their parents pick corn and cotton. However, we picked and hoed cotton, planted peppers by hand, and raised tobacco. We had one of our neighbors take the tobacco to Nashville, Tennessee, because he had a truck.

By 1965, Dad had saved up enough money by cash cropping and dairy farming, to pay back the money we owed, plus about four-thousand-dollars. Now, with some money in his pocket, Dad was looking to buy another farm. By the fall of 1965, dad found his dream farm. It was about ten miles east of us, and was very hilly country. It was a nice big white house with a green roof and red shutters. There were three bedrooms downstairs, two bedrooms upstairs, a big living room and kitchen. The rest of the buildings were really no account. No matter how bad of shape they were in, Dad said, it had to do. The buildings were all sitting in a valley, and there was a good-sized creek that ran between the house and a hill behind it. There were a lot of big fish in that creek. This was a nice, peaceful home for Mom, Dad and all of the family but me.

I guess I was at that awkward age. It seemed that no matter what I did, before the sun went down I'd be bent over my Dad's knee and he'd warm up my backside. At first it confused me, but later I thought maybe this was what life was all about when you started growing up. This was also the farm where I got to experience the ultimate wild cotton stalk. I didn't work fast enough, and my sister picked more cotton than I did.

Dad thought I had to be taught a lesson, this is why I received the ultimate beating, the beating of the cotton stalk. This sure taught me how to move, and move fast. I remember bending over and watching my Dad strip the leaves off the many branches of a cotton stalk. I can still see my Dad as he reared back to take that first strike. The sound of that stalk seconds before it connected with my little body still makes me shiver.

Feeling the sharp pain from all these little branches, which felt like wire, I found it impossible to stand still. Dad commanded me to "stand still and take it like a man", but there was just too much force behind that stalk, and the pain was too sharp. I don't remember how long this went on, but it seemed like forever. I'd never seen my Dad like this before, but it taught me to move like a cat if I felt threatened. The beatings sometimes slacked off, but it seemed every time the church was seriously feuding, I had to walk on tiptoe around Dad. Sometimes that wasn't good enough. I guess he had to take his frustrations out on someone.

I still remember when we first moved to Tennessee and Dad was very loving, caring and playful with me. Even during the time we built our new set of buildings. There was peace in the church at that time. A couple of years prior to this, when I was just three or four years old, before I was old enough to go to school, especially in the winter and in the fall of the year, I spent most of my time in the house with my mother. I was always really excited when Dad and my two older brothers came in for supper. After supper, Dad always sat in the living room in his old hickory rocker while Mom and my sisters did the dishes. Dad would fire up his old smoke pipe and talk about what he did that day, and what he was
going to do the following day. I was a very energetic child. I would often get so excited that I just couldn't talk fast enough, and a lot of time I stuttered.

At first, Dad told me to slow down, take my time and not talk so fast. Eventually, it must have appeared to him that I just didn't listen, and he believed it was his duty to break me of that. One evening, I snuggled up tight against his rocking chair and tried to speak, but my words just wouldn't come out right. Dad told me to just shut up, that he had talked to a man and that man advised him that he had a son that used to stutter. The man said he had put his son's big toe underneath the runner of the rocker while he sat in the rocker and slowly rocked over his son's toe. The man said his son never stuttered again.

Dad said, "Son, I'm going to cure your stuttering if it's the last thing I ever do." He leaned back in his rocking chair and told me to put my big toe under the runner of the rocker. I was just sitting there staring at my foot, terrified. But I had no choice in the matter. Dad slowly started to lean forward, and as he rocked over my toe everything else went blank. I don't remember if I cried or screamed, but I do recall watching the blood squirt from underneath my toenail. My Dad was right about one thing. It was a sure cure for stuttering. But the memories remain.

By the fall of 1965 we were in our new home. Dad rented the other farm that we had. We just got the other place cleaned up, but Dad saw an opportunity to make a dollar. This farm needed a lot of attention. We all had to change schools now. At that time our closest Amish neighbors were five miles from us. If we took a short cut across country, it was three miles. We had to walk three and a half miles to go to school every morning and evening. My Dad and my oldest brother Pete cut a path through the woods, after getting permission from all the English farmers. It was a long walk for us children at first, but we got used to it. Every once in a while Dad would let us have a horse and buggy to drive to school, if it was raining too badly.

In our spare time in the winter we cleaned off five acres of woodland by hand. In the spring of 1966 we put out five acres of peppers, all planted by hand. We also planted three acres of cucumbers, five acres of soybeans, ten acres of corn, and about ten acres of oats. We helped our neighbor plant two acres of tobacco. Again we were working out just like we were on the other farm. Our barn was so small we couldn't put all our hay up loose, so Dad was looking around for an old hay bailer. He finally found one, but we had never seen one like it. It was a stationary and manually operated bailer. It had a big chute in the back, and in the back of the chute were long arms and a plunger. The whole bailer was about twelve feet long. In the rear, where the chute was, it was about four feet wide. The rest of the bailer wasn't over three feet wide. On the other end there was box, with a ten-foot pole connected to it. You hooked a horse to the end of that pole, and one of us kids had to ride the horse around in circles to operate the bailer. We had four wooden blocks with grooves in them that we had to throw in the back of the chute. Two of us had to be kneeling down beside it, shoving bailing wire through the wooden block and tying it by hand as the hay came through the bailer. We also did some custom bailing for other people.

Dad also bought an antique cultivator the same summer. We had a special seat built on the tongue of the cultivator so one of us children could sit on the tongue to drive. The cultivator had two handles on the back of it. The person who operated the cultivator had to walk behind it, with one handle in each hand. One handle was connected to the shanks of the cultivator. We also did some cultivating such as cotton fields and tobacco patches. We had a twelve-foot dump rake.

When Dad bought this second farm, he'd sold most of our new machinery and got some antique machinery to save money. He also sold our hay loader, which meant we had to put all our hay up by hand. We would cut down a couple of acres of hay, and rake it up with our old dump rake. When the hay was nice and dry, we hitched up our nice team of Belgium horses to the wagon. This was a big job, and most of the time three of the girls had to help three of us boys and Dad.
One time, we only had two more loads of hay to put up. That morning Dad told all seven of us children to go to the cotton field and hoe cotton, and that he and mom would put the two loads of hay up. Mom was stacking the hay on the wagon as Dad was pitching it on the wagon by hand.

Dad had a pitchfork full of hay above his head, and started walking toward the wagon when he heard a weird sound above his head. Just then a six-foot rattlesnake fell on the ground just in front of his feet. Dad took off running one way, and the snake took off in the other direction. Suddenly Dad stopped and turned around, ran after the rattlesnake and killed it. This was a new experience for my Dad, and one he always said he didn't care to repeat.

By the spring of 1967 there was another Amish man that bought a farm close to where we lived. My Dad and the other Amish man got together and bought a thrashing machine. A couple of English neighbors asked us if we would thrash their oats for them, because their combine had broken down, and they didn't have any money to buy another one, or get it fixed. Dad said we would take our grain binder over, cut their oats, and help shuck and thrash it. He said that if our neighbor helped us we would help them also. It was nice working with the English neighbors like that. A lot of evenings around seven or eight o'clock those neighbors came over to see how my father was doing. A couple of times a month during the summer, Dad let us kids take off in the evening and go fishing. We did get to play every once in a while. Soon we quit raising cotton all together, because it was too far to haul it to Lawrenceburg, which was about twelve miles.

In the fall of the year, we stripped tobacco for our neighbors. We only had one Amish neighbor the rest were all English. A lot of the time in the evening if we worked for one of the neighbors that day, they came and visited us in the evening, bringing a can of pop or some candy. This was something Mom and Dad would not spend their money on, so we kids loved these visits.

In Tennessee, we got used to the long walk to school. Our English neighbor James told us if we ever had any problems going to or coming from school to just scream at the tops of our voices and he'd come running. That made us kids feel good and a lot safer that somebody cared, and was watching out for us. One evening on the way home from school, we were about three quarters of a mile off the road, cutting cross country, when we noticed somebody was following us. We all got scared and took off running, but whoever it was kept on following us. We ran in the woods, down hill through a ravine and up another hill. Then, we came up on a ridge and stopped. We heard a tractor. Sure enough our neighbor was up there working in the field. Relieved, knowing our neighbor would protect us, we ran toward the farm tractor. James shut off the tractor, and said, "What's wrong?" We were still so scared that we all tried to speak at once. James said, "Please, calm down. You don't need to be scared. I'll take you home and no harm will come to you."

James asked us to walk to the other end of the field where his pickup truck was parked. Two of us got in the front cab and the rest of us got in the bed of the pickup. James’ field was clear in the back of his farm on the top of a big hill. James said, "sit down and hold on," to us kids in the back of his pickup, and slowly and carefully James started down this rough lane to his farmhouse. James parked his pickup in front of his house, and invited us into the house, where we met his lovely wife.

She further calmed us down with cookies and a glass of milk. Then, James called his neighbor, who soon arrived with a shotgun. They both took their guns and went up on the hill. They could not find anyone, so they came back and took us home. When we got to our house, James said, "Mr. Yoder the reason I'm bringing your kids home is that, they had a scare." James told my Dad the whole story, and also told Dad he'd better let us take the horse and buggy for a while until we find out what's going. For the next couple of months, we drove back and forth to school.

It was now the fall of 1967, and our settlement was no longer small. Amish people were moving in from Ohio and Canada. There was beginning to be a lot of trouble in the church. They were having a difference in opinion regarding religion. Mom and Dad were members of the church, but none of the children were members yet. My oldest sister Emma was old enough to date, and I remember her first date. One Saturday evening at about ten o'clock a horse and buggy came down the road. Her date came right up to the hitching rack, tied his horse up, came in the house and asked my Emma for a date. Emma got up and lit the kerosene lamp in the living room, where Emma and her date shared a rocking chair. They sat like that until two o'clock in the morning, when it was time for him to go home.

Dating was one of the things that were causing a difference of opinion among the Amish. The Tennessee Amish didn't believe in bed courtship. They felt the temptation was too huge to have a boy and a girl go to bed together for dating purposes. A lot of Amish people were moving from Ohio to Tennessee. In the fall, of 1967, Dad went to Ohio to look for a place to live. He found a farm for forty-thousand-dollars. If we sold both our places we still couldn't have come up with more than thirty-two thousand dollars. Dad told our English neighbor James we were thinking about moving to Ohio. James replied, "I truly hate to see you move, Mr. Yoder, I've come to know you and your family very well. I feel very close to your children." James asked, "If they'd done anything to make us move." Dad said, "No, but I wish the Amish would treat me as well as you all do."

At first, none of us children liked the idea of moving to Ohio. A few of Mom and Dad's relatives came from Ohio to visit us, and to talk Mom and Dad into moving. They said they did not have the kind of trouble in Ohio that we were having in Tennessee. This was all Mom and Dad needed to hear.

By spring of 1968, Dad took another trip to Medina County, Ohio. He put a down payment on a farm. Dad came home and gave us the news. We were all stunned. We put a for sale sign on the farm we first bought when we moved to Tennessee. Our Aunt bought that farm from us for nineteen thousand and five hundred dollars.

We worked very hard that last summer, and tried to save as much money as we could. We sold our hillbilly farm to an Englishman for twelve thousand dollars. Then we had enough money to pay cash for our new farm, but we didn't have enough to buy a dairy herd and farm machinery, which was extra. That meant Mom and Dad had to go back in debt again, and a lot more hard work was ahead of us.

In a way, we kids were starting to like the idea. Still, it meant we had to pack everything up, load it on a boxcar again, and make all new friends all over again. But it also meant no more picking cotton, peppers, stripping tobacco and cash cropping. The feuding in the Amish community was becoming so intense that it was almost unbearable for my parents. We didn't look forward to going to church anymore. Church started at nine o'clock in the morning, and sometimes lasted until five or six o'clock in the evening.

The preachers would stand off to the side and argue while church was in session. Some Sundays the members started services because the preachers were off to the side and we got tired of waiting for them. The Amish appeared to be very peaceful from the outside, but inside at least twenty-five percent of the time it was anything but peaceful. If it wasn't the Bishop or the Preachers struggling for power, it was the members looking what they could find on each other.

Once that got old they'd start picking on innocent children, talking about how they walked and talked or sat in church, or how they wore their clothes. I got punished for standing up too straight, holding my head too high. They even said my walk was too worldly.

The thing the Bishops, Preachers and members feuded about at this time was a simple issue. The new families that settled in Tennessee from Ohio and Canada wanted their young folks who were dating to use two chairs, instead of a boy and girl sharing a rocking chair. They wanted two lanterns on their buggies, instead of one. Soon going to church was like entering a war zone. Families turned against one another. If you got up at five thirty in the morning, by six thirty you had your breakfast, went to church and had to sit on hard benches all day sometimes from six to nine hours, because the adults were having a power struggle. You might have to do without food for eight to ten hours.

I remember being hungry many times at church while these power struggles were going on. The sad part about all this was that it was always the innocent children who were affected. My parents got frustrated with the situation, and this was the main reason we moved again. My parents both were happy-go-lucky individuals, if the Bishop and the Preachers would only have left them alone.
We moved to Ohio before there was a split in the church. Why couldn't we all just get along, I always wondered. Wasn't God a loving God? At least if we moved we would be away from the feuding and bickering, and this was a major plus for all of us. It also meant not sitting in church so long and being hungry. Anytime there's a split in the Amish culture there's so much chaos that it is almost unbearable. Preachers turn against members, members against Preachers, brothers against sisters, parents against children and children against parents. This was more pressure that either of my parents could stand. I remember my Dad once saying no child should have to suffer through a split.