Sam’s Weekly Water Cooler Musings: On the Amish Way

I almost titled that “On the Simple Life,” but then I laughed out loud when I tried to type that. I see the Amish nearly every day, as I pass by their houses, by their barns, and by their wagons (with them inside) on my way to work and other pursuits. It’s one of the glories of living in a village that is half an hour away from civilization. But you know all about that. The other day I was passing by one of their houses, and what did I see but laundry hanging out on the clothes line, as the snow came down on it. I honestly can’t figure out how they do it, but what I’ve come up with is some kind of fireplace where they smoke the clothes dry once they bring them in off the line, or they wait for it to get really cold it freezes the clothes solid, and they thaw them out inside by a fire. I should ask them, but then I would sound dumb, even to myself. So, that was the topic of our water cooler discussions this week.

It turns out I wasn’t the only one with Amish interactions around the water cooler. One commonality was the friendship we have all noticed. Any time we pass one of their carriages, if it has at least one man in it, he will wave at us. What I didn’t know is that apparently the women will wave if there are only women in the vehicle that is passing them. That solved the issue of none of the all-female carriage occupants waving at me when I pass. What we’ve also noticed is that the young Amish folk seem to take pride in re-purposing modern objects for their own use. Many times they can be found with items that have obviously been passed on from the world the rest of us live in all the time.

Another thing that was interesting, we saw, was the independence of each household, so much so that they are hardly seen apart from their individual households. However, when one Amish family needs others to accomplish a task they cannot accomplish on their own, the other families will come from far and wide for assistance. Case in point, there was a family that wanted to erect a barn. They had all the resources like a plethora of wood, saws, and other implements, but they needed to make the barn quickly in time for the winter. One morning I was driving to town and all on the road were carriages, all converging on the one place. Wouldn’t you know it, they erected that barn in a matter of days, a task that would have taken paid workmen probably months to complete. It just goes to show that hustle and hard work for friends is more motivation than money.

So, then we got to talking about how they maintain the lifestyle when the youngsters among them are exposed to modern life through people coming to buy furniture from them, or to commission them to make furniture, or when they themselves are out shopping for goods. Not to mention cars that fly past with tunes blasting out the speakers. Do they just have another way of thinking that says they don’t need those things? It intrigues us to no end how they just keep going as they’ve always gone, with no changes, and still being happy. And it’s not the simple life. They probably work at least five times as hard as us in “regular” society to accomplish the tasks of everyday life, but they seem happy, happier than most people we know, anyway. If we could just take that energy and drive, and bottle it up, this world would be a much nicer place.

But we still want to know how they dry those clothes.

Sam

Sam’s Weekly Water Cooler Musings Archive