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16 things you didn’t know about Amish people

By Bryce Emley On March 31,
2014 · 4
Comments

Photo: Jack
Mallon

My mom grew up Amish in
Pennsylvania before her dad decided to leave his community (more on that later),
getting shunned in the process. Given the depictions of my kinfolk in pop
culture (Amish Mafia?!), I realize most people probably don’t know much
of substance about them in reality.

Amish customs differ in different places, so not all of what I know is even
true irrefutably, but here’s to fighting off at least some cultural ignorance
with a few facts from a guy who grows a beard and builds shitty wooden spice
racks for fun.

Amish is not a race.

When people find out my mom was Amish, they often say, “So you’re Amish?” No.
It’s not a blood thing. It’s a cultural / religious lifestyle. Just like you can
get back into Korn and JNCOs and thus get shunned by the indie crowd you adopted
after middle school.

One size overall does not fit all.

People practice ‘Amishism’ differently in different parts of the country.
Where some extreme groups ban colors and belts from their wardrobe, others are
down with cell-phone hip clips and baseball caps.

They love volleyball.

Okay, maybe not all of them. But the Amish guys used to roll up their
overall cuffs and play lake-beach volleyball on Fridays, and all the English
chicks would come scope them out (i.e., my cousins and sisters).

They love playing horseshoes.

At a family reunion I saw the most competitive horseshoe game of my life,
during which I bore witness to a ~60-year-old Amish guy freaking out like Macho
Man Randy Savage after getting a ringer on his first-ever toss. It was equal
parts frightening and comforting, yet almost intrusive on my part, like
stumbling upon a majestic primate giving birth in a forest.

Don’t call them Mennonite.

Though they’re fundamentally similar, Mennonites and Amish aren’t the same
thing. Mennonites are usually less strict: They typically have cars and use
electricity. The men can even be hard to identify, but the women wear un-pleated
caps — like yarmulkes, but cuter (several of my cousins married
wo-Mennonites).

They have mandatory secular experimentation.

At the age of 16, all the angsty Amish teens pack up their straw hats and
bonnets and do Rumspringa, the wild time when they leave their community and go
crazy in ‘our’ world, testing the proverbial waters of secularism. What’s really
beautiful is that they almost always come back, preferring their simple,
tight-knit Amish communities, no more wondering what could be. (According to my
grandma, sometimes this happens at 15 “if they can get away with it.”)

They grow religious beards.

After Rumspringa they get baptized and join the Amish Church officially, and
the men start growing their beards. When they get married, they stop shaving
altogether — excepting the forbidden mustache, resulting in the Lincoln-esque
‘Amish neck-beard.’

They’re all dropouts.

The Amish stop schooling after the eighth grade so they can go into their
vocations, including knitting, housework, farming, masonry, and carpentry. Kind
of makes you wonder why we bother with another four years.

They linguistically profile us.

You know how people call anyone who speaks Spanish a “Spanish person?” If
you’ve ever been referred to as “English” by an Amish person, you know how that
feels. Unless they called you a Yankee, their other slang term for the
non-Amish.

Yes, they speak Amish.

Low German, Pennsylvania Dutch, or just plain Amish — the Amish language is a
dialect of German that’s still not quite German, perhaps similar to Portuguese
and Spanish.

They love discount damaged food.

One thing my mom carried on from the Amish is a love of ‘bent-n-dent’ stores
— those places where you can buy a dented can of beans or expired Lucky Charms
for a quarter. A friend told me he saw the same thing in Missouri, so apparently
this extends throughout all our country’s Amish.

Their clotheslines defy physics.

I’ve seen Amish clotheslines run from a barn door all the way to the top of
an oak tree a whole damn cornfield away. If you had 8 kids and no electricity, I
guess yours would, too.

Electricity? More like selec-tricity.

My grandpa once described his ex-community as not disallowing modernity but
staying perpetually 100 years behind it. They could borrow phones, cars, or
power tools, just not own them, which he thought was dumb. He eventually got
yelled at too many times for rigging up gas-powered appliances and finally just
said “Eff ya’ll, I’m out,” and left. Now he lives down the road from them.

They pimp their rides.

Who said a horse-and-buggy can’t be dope? I’ve seen some tricked out with
turn signals, headlights, and even boom boxes. Nelly never sounded so right.

They’ve got sweet-ass names.

My grandpa’s name is Cornelius, his neighbor’s name is Enoch, Jedidiah is
basically the Amish’s ‘John’ (although John is also their ‘John’), and a family
tree shows I’m distantly related to people named Pharabee, Dicey, Lemon, and
Spicy.

Weird Al did his research.

If you’re still hungry for more Amish insight, listen to Weird Al’s “Amish
Paradise.” That pretty much sums it up.

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About The Author

Bryce Emley

Bryce
has worked with several other publications, including BULL: Men's Fiction &
H_NGM_N. He writes and edits from New Mexico and blogs about advertising at advertventures.wordpress.com.

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Dara Denney

This was great! I grew up in Amish country in Ohio (near Holmes
County…you’ve probably heard. Your mum is from Lancaster, I assume?) Anyways,
great job.

Anon.

Lucky Charms? I love ‘em, but I would think that a strict denomination like
the Amish would view them as a bit Satanic.

Also, Portuguese has similarities to Spanish, but these languages are not
dialects of each other. Portuguese and Galician would be a better example,
except for the blank look you’ll get from most Americans.

http://www.candicedoestheworld.com/ Candice
Walsh

This kinda makes me wanna go Amish.

Samantha

A native of Lancaster, PA, I really enjoyed this list and am proud to say I
knew all 16! I’ll add that it’s not just the Amish that love dented, discount
food…if you are from Lancaster (pronounced LANcaster), a bargain means
bragging rights (and a thicker wallet!).

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