February 16, 2010 • 41 mins
In this episode of Stuff You Should Know, Josh and Chuckers discuss the origins and practices of the Amish.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always is
(00:20):
Charles Chuck Bryant. Yes right, yes, yeah, Hey Chuck. How's
it going? Man? Oh? Great? Yeah, things are great. You know,
I love podcasting on Monday mornings or afternoon's afternoon? What
time is It's one? It seems like I just got
here though. Yeah. I've been getting here late lately, and
I gotta tell you that extra half hour it feels
(00:42):
like it eats up four hours of productivities. We are
you driving a buggy to work? I am I, Chuck.
I We should say I and nay throughout this, Okay, yeah,
nay on the I nay um Chuck, Josh. Let me
take you back in time a little bit, say seventeen seven.
(01:02):
It's a long time. Imagine Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Okay. All
of a sudden, a new group of people show up
and they seem nice enough, you know, they seem hard
working or they like to, you know, use their draft
horses for locomotion. And and all sorts of normal eighteenth
century early eighteenth century stuff. But in very short order,
(01:24):
the welcome to the New world colonizing neighbor pies start
drying up as the surrounding people who will heretofore be
referred to as the English, realized that this new group
of people who are showing up don't really care to
socialize with them, or anyone else in the outside world
for that matter. Yeah, that that's the way they like it.
(01:46):
It is. Well, we're talking about Chuck. In case you
haven't guessed, is the Amish. I knew this because you
read the article. Yeah, good thing. These people are incredibly
interesting to me. Yeah. Me. To remember, we said on
some podcast ways back that, uh, the Amish will never
hear it. We can say whatever we want, and all
these people wrote in like jerks, what about rum spring
(02:09):
up yea, which we'll get to in a minute. But
they're absolutely correct. It's entirely possible there's an Amish kid
running around, although it should be noted that we did
not hear from any Amish kid on rum Springer, so
take that. They may have heard it, though they may
just not be real comfy with the typing comfortable with.
Maybe there's letters on crystal meth rum springing. Yeah, we'll
(02:31):
get to that in a minute. Okay, all right, So
again we're talking about the Amish who did first arrive
in the United States and seventy seven and actually when
they did get to Pennsylvania and at that time they
were still a fairly young Christian sect, right, yeah, sixte
is when they were actually formed because a Swiss Mennonite
(02:52):
named Jacob I'm on basically didn't like three things. I know.
The three things are so true. I want to split
off because I'm not. I want to keep watching people's feet,
which I can understand. It's pretty cool because if you
ever washed someone's feet, you grew up a Christian, right,
did you ever do that? Now? I did once I
was even Catholic. Wow, it's weird. Yeah, and it is humbling,
(03:14):
especially if you're like twelve. You did that as a
part of church. Wow, I've never heard of that. Yeah,
I mean, and you know, modern like modern churches, I guess, right,
But the point is it's it's meant to be a
humbling experience. You're washing the feet of another human being,
feet and dirty, and you know it's let me tell you, buddy,
you've had to wash your feet, it would be it
would be humbling. Humbling is when one word that comes
(03:34):
to mind. Yeah, you'd see new shades of greens. What else?
Did he not want to celebrate Josh Communion twice a year?
He wanted to celebrate it twice a year. Once said
once a year. So he said, screw that and the
foot washing and then um, the Mennonites basically wanted to
mingle with the English or I guess they weren't the
(03:55):
English at the time, but mingle with society. And he said,
I'm not down with that. So and that's going to
create a new deal called the Amish, right, and it did, um,
and it took off like a rocket. But I mean
that last one is probably the most definitive characteristic of
the Amish. You know that they didn't and still don't
socialize with outsiders as much as possible. Right, Yep, that'll
(04:18):
keep popping up throughout this podcast, I predict watch for it.
And they're still in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, as well as uh
Ohio and Indiana and Utah and Canada. Canada. Utah is
the newest place they're having to go further and further west.
For some reason, Utah makes sense. No, Mormonism has nothing
to do with it, but it just makes sense. It
definitely does, more so than like if they rooted down
(04:40):
in Vegas or something, which they never ever would. They
shy away from electricity, which is one reason they'd stay
away from Vegas, which probably would just scared the hell
out of the Amish going down the strip in Vegas. Um,
so let's talk about why they do this stuff. They
dressed plainly, right, yeah, very much. They wear The men
(05:03):
wear dark suits, usually a blue shirt with some suspenders,
a black brimmed hat, which is the shape of the
hat apparently tells you a lot about the man, like
if you're more old school, it'll have a different crown
and brim with which I don't understand how that fully works.
But the hat makes the man, Yeah, but not the clothes. Well, well,
(05:25):
the clothes obviously, but the clothes are all the same.
The hat is where you can vary it to say
something about yourself. I got to I did not know that.
So those are the dudes, and they and the ladies
they wear frock dresses, black capes, which I find kind
of dashing. Sure, um. And if they're baptized, they cover
their hair yea all the time and they don't cut
(05:46):
their hair the women, no, but men do wear their
short their hair short, cropped beards if they are married. Correct,
But no mustache. Why I thought I added something to
do with biker or something. Tom Selle, who just celebrated
his birthday by the way, let me know. So. Uh,
(06:07):
it's because they and this was a brand new factor
me because mustaches are associated with the military, at least
to the Amish, and they're not downe with the military now,
not at all. As a matter of fact. They they
reject any um combat uh what's it called, chuck. They
reject violence against another human and even in self defense,
(06:30):
which means you can't go to war because you're going
to be put in a situation like that. Um. They
they have been in the past conscripted, That's what I
was thinking of. They have been conscripted to um serving
non combat roles during the draft. Yeah. And I think
during World War Two there was a couple of Amish
(06:51):
guys who were conscientious objectors who were basically put in hell,
which was the statemental hospitals, and I believe New York
or New Jersey. Um, and they actually lead the charge
in exposing the horrible qualities of life at these places
and some real reform in statemental institution. Do we really
(07:14):
need Amish in the army though, I mean even during
the draft? No, But would you want an Amish guy
in the trenches next to you? Well, you'd never see
one there. Well yeah, exactly, you know, I imagine they
go to prisoner or whatever. But there, that does bring
up a point that kind of arose in my head
while I was reading this article, Chuck, and that is that, Um,
they live in the United States. So even though they
(07:36):
are this very peaceful, tranquil um, non violent society, they
still live in the United States. So yeah, I think
if there is a draft, this is that's a that's
a really important moment in history. So yeah, they gotta
gotta do something. Everybody's pitching in you. You can't live
entirely separately in my opinion. You know how I feel
about Buddhist monks who go up in the mountains for
(07:57):
their their whole lives. Draft them. I think the exact
get him in the trenches. So Chuck, Yes, Josh, like
we said, Um, the Amish women wear bonnets on their
hair after they're baptized. The Amish, being Anabaptists, don't believe
in infant baptism. Neither did I as just a regular
(08:20):
Baptist Southern Baptist. It makes sense like we don't baptized,
we don't at birth or anything like that. You have
to be old enough to make your own decision. Yeah,
which makes a lot of sense to me. I was
baptized as a baby and I have no recollection of
it whatsoever, And aside from the Catholic Gill has been
virtually meaningless to me. I was baptized at sixteen and
(08:40):
was led to the Lord with air quotes under my
gay youth director. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, he really is gay.
He he later on, I didn't think you would call
him gay. A few wives and we all know you
love you chuck. He later on came out and the
church said, I don't think I want you to be
director anymore. Does that no fire your baptism. I'm looking
(09:02):
and I'm looking into that. So were you baptized in
the river? No? No, no, just in the pool behind
the in the church. You know, modern Baptism not a
brother world though. Um, I I have to say, I
find that, um, just a really good idea that you
can't get baptized until you're fully aware of what you're doing.
(09:22):
And my hat, my my wide brim hat is off
to the Amish and to your sect for pursuing that. Yeah,
Stone Mountain First Baptist Church exactly that that sect. So, um,
you enter the church when you're sixteen. If you want
to write, yeah, you make the choice to what is.
But here we reach rum Springer, right, that is when
(09:44):
you are allowed to live among the English and do
crystal math and sell it to I understand there's a
pretty big druggring um of Amish kids that were selling drugs.
You can dance and play guitar and watch TV and
waste electricity, use electricity, yeah, and wasted. Yeah. Oh I
imagine if you're just coming into electricity at age sixteen,
(10:05):
you wasted like it's nobody's business. Yeah. But yeah, so
you you are allowed to go off for a period
of time. Uh, and you are in rum spring which
means run around. Yeah. Germans German, like all Amish stuff
is German, right, they speak a low German amongst themselves,
high German for mass. But they all know how to
speak English. So when they actually do have to associate
(10:28):
with outsiders, they do. But on rum Spring, you imagine
they're running around speaking English, probably doing drugs, and then
some of them. We're not saying they all do that,
of course no, but they can. They can and they do.
Because that documentary The Double's Playground I saw that recently,
isn't any good? Well, yeah, and that's where the crystal
mething came from. Those a kid who got mixed up
in dealing it and um basically had to move, you know,
(10:52):
because some guy was trying to kill him, some rival
drug dealer was trying to kill him. Wow, so he
really experienced the English life. He is like, object to
this conscientiously coming for you. It's weird though, man, because
it'll show parties and a lot of them. Like this
kid was a boy and he, you know, dressed normally,
like what if you call a sixteen year old attire
(11:13):
these days normal? But the girls were still wearing their thing.
So they were at this party listening to the jay
Z with their frock and her bonnet han drinking a beer. Wow. Yeah,
I gotta check that movie. It's really good, awesome, it's
really it's very insightful. Okay, So I had a pretty dark,
shady past when I had my own little rum springer. Sure, no,
(11:36):
I'm not. As a matter of fact, I have ended mine.
I ended it a while back, but I fully ended it.
Yet it's nice. I'm growing up now, chuck. Um, what's
for me? Though? There was nothing that I was going
to test out. It was all all testing, right, but
there wasn't like I wasn't going to examine, like did
(11:56):
I do? I want to make a choice between good
and evil? Although old amately that's what it panned out
to be, right, which did you choose? Um? Can you
see the smile? I'm so bright and sunny today. Yeah? Um.
With these kids, once they reach a certain point, and
I didn't get in the article how long run spring?
At lasts? Maybe a year? I'm not positive either, but
(12:17):
let's say, well we'll go with a year, okay. And
and then they decide, Okay, do I want to go
back to the church or do I want to just
continue living with the English? Um. Since they haven't taken
an oath to the church yet, they could conceivably still
be um. They could have ties to their family, their
(12:38):
Amish family, even if they decided to leave the Amish community.
They're not shunned, which is what they call it, right,
So they haven't broken an oath to the church, so
they're not shunned. What is shunning, intel shunning is when
you have taken that up to the church. So you've
made that decision beyond the age of sixteen, and then
you leave and don't come back. Well, you're not wanted back.
You can't come back though. If you're sixteen and you leave,
(13:01):
they will let you back in if you say, boy,
I've made a big mistake. But if you leave forever,
they will shun you permanently, which means no ties, no family,
no Christmas at home, no Thanksgiving, no Easter, nothing like that.
They celebrate all those Yeah, well they're Christians. Yeah, alright,
So the kid and what's what's what's um? I find
it hartening that the vast majority of Amish kids who
(13:24):
go on rum Springer come back, you know, so they
they've made the choice. Now they're going to become indoctrinated
in the church their sixteen but they either towards the
end of the sixteenth year, right right, and they're saying
I'm gonna be Amish. What is Amish life like, Well,
they've already experienced a lot of it because you grow
up with the ordining being pounded into your head, which
(13:48):
is the German word for order. And that's there, they said.
It's mostly unwritten, just their sort of way of life.
How to be Amish Amish for dummies, right, is the
ord And and you actually don't have to be real
book smart actually, because the Amish don't believe in um
extraneous book learning. Why would they. They think you need
(14:10):
to learn a vocation or craft and probably and it
makes a certain amount of sense from a very religious standpoint.
Knowing too much is kind of unhealthy and frankly a
little vain. We're very vain, chuck, Well, and that's what
it's all about. You're talking about the dress and the
electricity and all that. All of that has to do
with the fact that they shun uh things of the world,
(14:32):
vanity and ego and pride, and you know, clothing obviously
leads to that when you're all wearing different clothes, you
want to dress nice and dress better than your neighbor,
save up money and spend money and decide spend time
deciding what to wear. None of that works with the Amish,
and like we said, neither does electricity. All of their
(14:53):
power comes from either they may have electricity, but it's
coming from a diesel generator um. Or they have gas.
They can burn gas in their house in oil obviously right. Um.
And so they don't have artificial light, which makes me
wonder something and you couldn't find the answer to this.
(15:14):
But um, before the advent of artificial light, apparently humans
had a totally different sleep pattern then we have. Now
we went to bed mater earlier, but about two three one,
sometime in the night we'd wake up for a good
thirty thirty minutes or an hour, smoke a pipe, read
a book, hang out that kind of thing, and then
(15:35):
go back to sleep. But with do you really smoke
a pipe read a book? Do you do you smoke
a pipe while you read a book? Yeah? Yeah, I
just go back to sleep. And Emily's always like, what
are you doing? You're like, I'm just being a plane.
Yeah yeah. Um. But I wonder if the Amish still
have that kind of sleep pattern, because apparently artificial light
eradicated that. Well. Yeah, and even if you're using oil
(15:58):
lamps and candles, you don't want to in those until midnight,
you know, so you you would probably go to bed earlier.
Otherwise you're wasting They're not big into waste, you'd be
wasting the oil just to stay up till midnight, because
what do you stand up for? Because all I gotta
do is get back up the next day and work
your butt off. So yeah, and they do because again
they're farmers. And one of the reasons that they've hung
(16:18):
on to farming, um is, as I guess it's kind
of symbolic, chuck, it's a way to separate themselves. Um.
The rest of the world has, you know, moved forward
and with its book learning and all that book learning. Yeah. Yeah,
I've got a crop list for you if you want
to know. Let's hear it in order of acreage. The
Amish grow corn the most. Makes sense, hey, wheat, tobacco,
(16:41):
which kind of surprised me. Uh, soybean, barley, and potatoes.
And that's just the farming tip. They also obviously they
quilt and they make uh they're big craftsmen, furniture builders. Yeah,
apparently they're they're big new thing now or utility sheds um.
And and as you mentioned, the quilt Amish quilts are
like among some of the ladies, amongst certain quarters of femininity.
(17:04):
Amish quilts are like as good as it gets. And
apparently you used to be able to get these things,
really detailed ornate quilts um for nothing. And then after
a while the Amish were like, oh, English, you really
like these things? How much do you pay for him?
And apparently they peaked at thousands of dollars in the
eighties and then finally settled down and now they're like
(17:27):
a grand still, which is really that's an expensive quilt.
After we took advantage of them. It sounds like for
many years. Yeah, by saying I'll take this handmade thing
for seven dollars off your hands. There you go, Amish.
But they they I'm surprised that they did allow it
to get as high as it did because they don't
(17:47):
really care much for cash. They don't use credit. Most
of their wealth or I guess net worth comes from
their real estate holdings. Yeah. That they own a lot
of Lancaster pennsylvani Lancaster County. Yeah, and everywhere they go
they buy a lot of land. Um that's sixteen year
old that just became in doctor nating in the church
One of the things that um he or she will
(18:10):
be getting into about now is the courtship of a
husband or wife. Right, so when you're about sixteen, Um,
you start to drink lemonade on the porch, fitz or sweetie,
Um you'll you'll drive her to in the buggy or
walk with her to the singing service. Yeah, and singing
is actually um their courtship ritual and wedding ceremonies are
(18:35):
really detailed. I didn't realize this. It's pretty cool. You
want to go over it. Well, yeah, well the singing
thing is not done anything to do with that. That's
just what young single Amish kids do for fun, right right,
But I mean it's kind of a range so that
this is part of the courtship process. So you can
spend some time with somebody else that you're you know,
looking to wed. That's what they say. Yeah, they do.
(18:56):
And they don't always sing um religious songs either, because
there's not anything else they can do. They can't dance,
can't play musical instruments. It's like John Lithgow lives there.
I don't even know what that means. Haven't you ever
seen Footloose? Oh? Sure, I thought you were talking about
Dexter or Third Rock from the Sun or something. He's
on Dexter. Yeah, he played a serial killer in the
(19:17):
last season. I haven't gotten there yet. Creepy. Yeah, he's
He's good a creepy You else is creeping out and
thinking of it. There's a little often topic, but Amish
dolls do not have faces. Why because it goes with
the whole vanity thing, and it was like a long
standing tradition that they just kind of held onto, like
they don't want their photograph taken. They don't want their
(19:37):
faces displayed as a graven image, so their baby dolls
have no faces. It's cool, it's creepy as hell, dude.
Have you seen the video of the little baby that
was born with no eyes on Good Morning America? Was
she Amish? No? No? This that was a total sidebar
then yeah, okay. And also you were saying about the
(19:58):
dolls being faceless. Apparently with the quilts, there was a
myth that grew up that every Amish quilt has a
purposeful flaw so that they don't create anything perfect. Yeah,
not true, but they said there are likely flaws because
anything handmade is going to have a cross or a
off stitch, but it's not like they do it on
(20:20):
purpose or anything that's silly. So a couple of Amish
teens are courting, Yeah, they're courting back to the court.
That's about sixteen. Usually they're twenty or older when they
finally get married to the court for years. Well, there's
actually studies that I've read that um show that the
longer the courtship, the more lasting the marriage. Uh, just
(20:40):
in general, not just yeah, not just among Amish, but
with any humans. That makes sense. Sure, you see these
people get married after these celebrities get married after a
few months of being on set together, and then you
get on the next movie and they're like, oh, I
think I love my New Coast Now. Yeah, those people
are crazy. They're like the opposite of the Amish, complete
opposite of the Amish. So they're courting, Josh. They are
(21:01):
allowed to spend time together, they encouraged to spend private
time together, but it would be unseemly if they did
this um behind closed doors, so they keep it, like
you said, on the front porch. Uh. They do have
chaperone's right, Yeah, but a good chaperone like knows to
not pay too much attention they're just kind of there
to let everybody else know we're not letting these two
(21:23):
go back on run spring. It's so weird. It seems
they're so on one end, very rigid with the with
the ordinaning, but on the other end they're very permissive,
you know. They just the fact that they allow rum
springing to me is amazing. It's such a healthy, brave custom. Yeah,
because you're saying, like, go go figure out if you
really want to do, if you like it, come back,
(21:44):
and I mean you're it's poses such a huge risk
that like these people are gonna be like, hell, yes,
I like electricity and I really love crystal meth. Yeah.
You would think it these days that very few Amish
kids would come back. Yeah, but they do. And when
they do their courting courting again now they're getting married. Yes,
what do you say about about twenty And actually it
(22:05):
happens at the same time for everybody, right fall November, Yeah, November,
um is the favorite month. Winter hasn't begun yet, um,
but it's after the fall harvest, right yeah, and Lancaster County,
Pennsylvania is definitely cold. Um. So what happens is um,
the two weeks after the Fall Communion one of two. Remember, um,
(22:29):
so what happens, Chuck, is that about the time if
you want a jockey yourself to get married in the
fall or the winner, Um, you give your girl a present,
a practical gift, no jewelry, like a butter turn something
like that, or um, something for really good quilting or whatever. Um.
And you you give her this present and she takes
(22:50):
it to mean like, Okay, well you he wants to
marry me. He just gave me a butter churn. How
else can you read that? Um? And she goes back
and tells her family and they're like or nay, but
they're probably like I you know. Um. And but they
keep it a secret though they do among the family
until two weeks after the Fall Community one of two.
(23:11):
In the year, um, a list of all the kids
who are gonna get married, for all the girls. Actually
that which I thought was kind of cool. They do
it by girl, Yeah, the woman. That's very woman centric
in the marriage weddings or weddings, I should say, yes. Um.
So there's a list that's published, and by published we
mean that the deacon reads the names off and that's
(23:34):
all the kids who are gonna get married that year, right, Yeah,
none of them are there. Well, that would be the
dead giveaway to me, because everybody's at church. Yeah, which
is they don't have a church. Actually we left that
part out. Yeah. They do the church services in the homes.
Uh so, and it rotates from Sunday to Sunday. Yeah,
(23:55):
so every home it needs to be capable of hosting
church service. And in these church services there in pretting
the Bible. Literally we left that part out too. We
didn't leave any hanging out. We're just we're jumping around. Okay,
this is this is amage country. You can do whatever
you want because we know what electricity means. Right. Um.
So yes, they are published, they are announced. Um they
are not there because they're enjoying time with their family
(24:16):
at a private meal, private meal together and this is
where it all kicks off. This is where it all
gets sexy. Well, I don't know about that. So the
wedding actually takes place in the home to um bride's home,
which is where the honeymoon take I'm sorry the they
live in the bride's home afterward. Yeah for a good
uh I think six months a year. Yeah, and the
(24:37):
honeymoon takes place. They just go to visit other relatives. Yeah,
pretty pretty hot and heavy. I think, yeah, this is
this is crazy when when they actually do have the
wedding ceremony, and let me also just let me rephrase
that this is crazy. I don't think what the amage
too is crazy. It's interesting, yeah, very interesting. Um, the
the for the wedding ceremony, it lasts several hours, which
(24:58):
I would go absolutely craz easy. I can barely make
it through a full hour long Catholic Mass type wedding. Yeah,
they're they're uncomfortable. Can you imagine a few hours. Yeah,
my wedding ceremony would lasted about four and a half minutes.
Didn't was the preacher like bingo bango, you guys are
well the preacher was my father in law. So okay,
(25:19):
he'd put a scotch down and said, by the power
of the Internet, you were a man and wife. Nice.
Um yeah, okay, Well multiply that by several hours. Uh,
and then it's done and everybody starts feasting. Um. And
then the first night, yes, Chuck is spent at the
bride's parents house. So nothing else needs to be said
(25:41):
about that. No, but it's since we've been on rum springet.
That means that there's probably plenty of Amish kids, Amish
married couples who weren't virgins at marriage. Oh can they
do the sex when they are on rum I have
the impression that you can do anything you want on
rum Spring, including still meth well, and it doesn't necessarily
(26:02):
indicate that the Amish are anti intercourse or anything. No.
I mean I think if you're married and it's a
blessed union from God, then feel free, sure in a
one room house with your laws in the next pet Yeah,
feel free. Yeah. And then like you said, check the
honeymoon is on weekends because of course during the week
you're working like nothing happened, um, And but on weekends
(26:25):
you go around and visit family and stay with him
for the weekend. Yeah, which is pretty cool. Probably more
butter turns. And then you're you're set up. After six months,
you're living with the h the bride's parents. And then
after six months or a year, one of the two,
it's time to get your own place. And remember the Amish,
This Amish guy who's like twenty or twenty one hasn't
(26:48):
spent his whole life, you know, saving up for this. Yeah,
he didn't have a pot to uh too, which is interesting.
You say that we'll get to that and say we'll
get the um. No, but there is a community pot
which everyone's expected to throw into. And from this community
pot and from any familial help, um, the kids get
(27:09):
their own farm. They buy the farm. Yeah, we'll raise
We'll raise you a barn. Nice lovely young couple. Yeah.
Have you ever seen Witness? You know, it's on my
my tebow right now. I have never seen it though,
good movie, and it's been sitting there for weeks. When
Harrison Ford's out of Veneer finally cracks and he comes
to see the value of the Amish way of life.
How misunderstood. They are beautiful. Um. But there's a barn
(27:33):
raising in there, and it's you know, everybody gets together.
They build the walls and then push them up and
you know everybody's pitching. It's a very um communal affair. Well,
you have to. That's one of the tenants of being
Amish is you have to lend a hand. So definitely,
unless it's in a combat situation. Right, So, if your neighbor,
if you're Amish neighbor, if you see him coming over
with a hammer in in his hand. You don't like
(27:56):
pull the blind shut and lock the door like I would. Off, No, no, no,
you gotta go help the guy. Yeah, it's all about
the community. So the kids are all set up, they
have their house. Sure, they raise the barn. Let's look
around inside. We'll go out into the barn in a minute. Okay,
but we're inside right, and it looks pretty much like
the eighteenth century. Yeah, it's not fancy. There's not a
(28:16):
lot of obviously, there's no gadgets or anything like that.
Very plain handmade furniture. Um, you know what you might
find the josh, you might find a modern stove if
it burns would Yeah, there's are it seems like there's
a lot of contradictions here there and amously like why
would you have a modern appliance? The point is that
you'd have a modern appliance that burns would or can
(28:39):
run on gas because remember you can use gas as
long as you're not connected to the grid. They look um,
But it makes sense because it's cheaper. It's gonna use
less um less source energy. Yeah, it's gonna require less input.
I mean, and I mean, think about it. If you
get like an antique or like a reproduction old wood
(29:02):
burning stove. That thing's gonna cost you a mint, and
it's actually kind of vain that you would do. So, yeah,
you might find something that makes life easier that doesn't
radically undermine the community structure, and you're not being vain
about if if a technology makes it through those that
(29:23):
that that criteria, then it might be adopted. Yeah, and
then if it passes the ordining. And one of the
examples in the article I thought was good is, for instance,
the use of nylon rope instead of hemp rope. If
it can accomplish what you need to get done and
doesn't disrupt or bring attention to to itself, then they
may accept this new technology as long as you can
(29:44):
still have that community communion twice a year. Right and
watch the feed. Right, let's go out into the dairy barn. Chuck.
Our socks are about to be blown off, dude, right
you know why? Yeah, because dude, there is not the
little Amish man sitting on a stool with a pale
milking a cow. No, they may do that for their
own milk, but they have modern equipment, refrigerated tanks running
(30:07):
on electricity milking machines. Yeah. And the reason why is
because the Amish aren't dumb. They know that they are
living in twenty one century America. They also realized there
is such thing as the f d A and if
they're trying to sell their milk, then yeah, they have
to meet those those basic standards in in in century America.
These basic standards include you know, electricity powered cooling tanks
(30:30):
and milk pumping and stuff like that. I mean, you're
running an actual dairy farm and you have to kind
of meet those standards. So yeah, but there is this
place is crazy. It's humming. Yeah, move but of course
it's run by the generator still because they're still off
the grid. Um. I found it interesting that they I'm
sure it hasn't been a picnic or easy, but they
(30:50):
seem to have worked with the US government over the
years and kind of working some of these things out,
like school, Yeah, like compulsory education. They they let them
go do their own school to think till the eighth
grade is when they're required to go. And they kind
of just said, all right, you know, if you're going
to school your kids that way, that's fine. Do taxes
stay here? They do not have to pay Social Security tax. No,
(31:12):
and they don't borrow. No. Um, they do pay tax though, yeah,
they do, like they pay property taxes and stuff, just
not social Security tax because they don't draw Social Security
or Medicare or which is kind of because you and
I are never going to see a penny of Social
Security and we still pay it. Yeah, no kidding. Yeah,
maybe you should grow a beard with no mustache. Okay,
(31:34):
we should both do that. Yeah, it looks kind of goofy.
I think it looks cool. You really like see every coop? Yeah,
it's such a look though, you know it's you. It's
really specific. Look. It definitely is. Um, chuck. We said
that they don't borrow, but they do engage in trade. Um.
They somebody's got to buy that milk, right, Um. So
(31:54):
what they do is they deal with middlemen as often
as possible, and generally these are Mennonites, because the Mennonites
are very very similar to the Amish right, but the
Mennonites have no rules against socializing with the outside world.
So if you have the Amish, you stick to themselves,
socialize with as few people as possible. You get a
couple of good men and knights who have some stores
(32:16):
or whatever, um that that will sell your stuff, and
they turn around and sell it to everybody else. It
works out great, it definitely does. They They say, hey,
we have we need five utility sheds this month, um,
go build them. They build them. They didn't go and
pick them up from them, sell them to the people,
deliver them cash. They do use the lumber we should
point out. They obviously don't make their own paint and
(32:38):
shingles and things like that and mill their own wood,
although someone might mill would but they do order to
get orders from lumber yards and they'll bring the stuff
out to them, except payment on the spot, just to
make it easy cash or barter. Obviously, they still don't,
you know, throw the Amex black down. No, I mean,
if they don't have cashley just don't do it. Yeah.
But yeah, if they can barter, I think that's probab
(33:00):
be preferable. Right, And they go to other mom and
pop stores here and there. But you you probably won't
find any Walmart in Lancaster County with a lot of
buggies in the parking lot. No, it's a little too Gerish,
a little too Gerish. And actually they said that the
tourism that's surrounded around the Amish way of life UM
(33:21):
has people look for stores with buggies out front or whatever,
and then they come there like just to go see
the Amish. Right, But if they were, if they're encountering
a smart mom and pop store owner, they probably just
have a couple of buggies that are out front all
the time, and the Amish aren't anywhere around. But it
still draws the tourists and the Amish are really off
the beaten path on some back road. The store that
(33:43):
doesn't even have a sign that they just heard of
by word of mouth because this person opened just to
deal with the Amish. Well, they said, that's a good
way to get some pretty steady business. Open up a
mom and make your own sign. Don't get a neon
sign in the window they don't like. Just be smart.
And we're talking about the Ordon right ord, and how
(34:04):
that um that that serves as the keystone the foundation
of all Amish life, but it's also something can be
passed through it. It's a prism that that new technologies
passed through, right, and then they agree on whether it
harms them or not, and if it doesn't, they adopt it.
And one of the things that I found interesting was
(34:25):
that um out of the necessity for travel, you know,
with more and more Amish moving out to like Utah, um,
you can't just go through the horse and buggy. So
what they've determined is that if you don't own or
operate mechanical vehicle, you can still travel in it, which
means they can fly on an airplane because they don't
(34:45):
own it and they're not operating it. And I think
that's cool how it's still I think that's probably how
they've managed to survive. And actually, in the last fifty
years their number is tripled. They're about a hundred thousand
Amish living in the US, so they're yeah, and they're thriving,
I think because they figured out how to adapt and
evolve as little as possible, but they're still adapting and evolving.
(35:07):
I think that's pretty cool personally. It means they're not,
as the article says, stuck in time and completely closed
off to everything. They just only adopt something if it
really helps their way of life without causing a negative
impact on their life. It seems pretty open minded to me.
I gotta tell you, a lot of the Amish stuff though,
made me not want to run off and be Amish.
(35:29):
But they kind of have it going on. You know,
they've got the right idea about so many things you
don't have to be Amish to, you know, live a
simpler life stuff. And you know, you can join the Amish.
I read that you can. Um, it is possible to
be accepted even though you were not born and raised Amish.
But it really doesn't happen very often at all because, ay,
(35:49):
they're not looking to recruit, you know, they don't proselytize,
go door to door like you know some Christians do. UM,
So chances are you're not gonna just hear about it
and want to do it. Second of all, you need
to speak the language Low German low German. So if
you speak low German, you might have a good chance.
And thirdly, it's just not very often that someone would
want to grow up in the secular world and just
(36:11):
get rid of all that unless they joined some hippie
commune and or unless they're Harrison Ford, unless they're Did
he join? Is that what happened? Yeah? I think in
the end, if I remember correct, then he goes back
or something like that. I think that's it right, Chuck.
It's like Jerry's looking at It's like, yeah, it's been
like seventy minutes, has it? Has it been that long?
(36:33):
Because I had one other thing about the funeral. Well,
the funeral is much like you would think. It's a
plain wooden box. And um, they do utilize the services
of an embalmer, but there are no flowers. There's no singing.
Even at the funeral, they actually uh quote lines from
hymns they speak them only, and but they do not
(36:56):
they wear white at funerals usually, and they do not
raise the dead, just respect. So even in death, there's
not like adulation heaped on anyone. It's all very much
just like Daniel Proctor did a very fine thing in
his life, and now he is dead. He could butter
and he did. Now they'd be uh, they'd be too
(37:19):
much idolizing. Well, let me say this real quick to Chuck.
One of the coolest photos I've ever seen in my
entire life was taken at a funeral of a m
a person whose house was ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. And
this is like a couple of years after and as
Amish couple who I guess had made friends with the
person was attending the funeral among all the English and
(37:41):
everybody else is just dressed normally. And there's this a
very solemn, steadfast Amish couple of youngest Amish couple in
their thirties. I would say, just at this guy's funeral,
it was really awesome. It's cool. We should also point
out they don't shun medicine. They're not Christian scientists. They
lead that up to the individual, so like they well,
if someone has an act indent, they will actually get
into an ambulance and go to the hospital. And speaking
(38:03):
of accidents, to prevent those, they have come to accept
putting flashers and orange hazard triangles on their buggies because
it's just common sense and the Amish have that in aces. Yeah,
this is just a small bit though, Like this is
the Lancaster County Amish, or like ten percent of the Amish,
and this is really who we've been talking about. Yeah,
(38:24):
there are other sex or other it's all local. The
ordung Um ordnung Uh is decentralized. I mean that is
the central authority, but it's all interpreted on the local level.
So what one Amish group believes is not necessarily the
exact same as the other. So that was the twist
at the end that Chuck just gave. We were talking
about the Lancaster County Amish the whole time, right memento
(38:48):
or I thought you're gonna say in Night sham Lanxia
that stupid movie the Village. I thought that twist is
pretty cool, but I don't know if the whole movie
was worth working up to it. That was awful, So Chuck,
that's it, okay, all right? Oh yeah, if you want
to know more about the Amish, handy search bar, et cetera. Chuck,
it's time for listening. Man. We must be on on
(39:10):
the I'm tired of Jerry Starr and be like this.
It's making me nervous. I'm gonna call this email. My
father in law, Kurt Josh and Chuck conducted a primitive
tribe contact in the early eighties, so this is about
the unknown people. His stories are really wild. This is
an oblivion portion of Amazon rainforest anyway, that got attacked
by Yukwa Euqui natives who saw past the banana and
(39:35):
other offerings. So I guess they offered banana and they
were like, not so much. We've got tons of that, right,
his translator took a six ft arrow in the back
and I think that's called a spirit. Well that's what
I was gonna say, And you would think, so buddy
could listen to this. They had two man bows. One
guy would hold the bow and the other guy would
pull back the line. So it was, in fact the
six foot arrow. Kurt still has one of the other
(39:58):
arrows retreat from the site. In fact, they have all
kinds of pictures in the photo album, including pictures of
my wife who was four and five in the buff
because everyone was in the buff, the tribes people were.
They lived in a little hut. Wait, this guy married
a tribes person. No, no, no, he was just doing
work there. Um. They lived off in the land in
a little hut and worked to build an airstrip to
(40:20):
fly supplies for an outpost. Very unomish. My mother in
law can prepare a wild chicken, very Amishka and she
incurred have gone to special kind of preparatory boot camp.
And he is one of my heroes. And so that
is from Ryan and Lynchburg and his wife Crystal wrote
me shortly thereafter to set the record straight on some
of Ryan's facts. But I'm not gonna read Crystals because
(40:43):
Ryan's is much more interesting. So he made up the
two mambo. No, he She just said it sounds way
more Indiana Jones than it really was, and it was
really like this. But we'll just we'll just keep the
fanciful version alive. Thank you, Ryan and Crystal. Yeah, and
here's to your four year long courtship, which we can
only imagine. Right. Yeah, if you've had an extended courtship
(41:04):
and have a great relationship to speak of because of it,
we want to hear about it. Tell us your sweet
romantic stories in time for Valentine's Day. Uh, you can
send it in an email to stuff podcast how stuff
works dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Is it how stuff works dot Com. Want
(41:27):
more how stuff Works, check out our blogs on the house.
Stuff works dot Com home page. Brought to you by
the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
from House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always is
(00:20):
Charles Chuck Bryant. Yes right, yes, yeah, Hey Chuck. How's
it going? Man? Oh? Great? Yeah, things are great. You know,
I love podcasting on Monday mornings or afternoon's afternoon? What
time is It's one? It seems like I just got
here though. Yeah. I've been getting here late lately, and
I gotta tell you that extra half hour it feels
(00:42):
like it eats up four hours of productivities. We are
you driving a buggy to work? I am I, Chuck.
I We should say I and nay throughout this, Okay, yeah,
nay on the I nay um Chuck, Josh. Let me
take you back in time a little bit, say seventeen seven.
(01:02):
It's a long time. Imagine Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Okay. All
of a sudden, a new group of people show up
and they seem nice enough, you know, they seem hard
working or they like to, you know, use their draft
horses for locomotion. And and all sorts of normal eighteenth
century early eighteenth century stuff. But in very short order,
(01:24):
the welcome to the New world colonizing neighbor pies start
drying up as the surrounding people who will heretofore be
referred to as the English, realized that this new group
of people who are showing up don't really care to
socialize with them, or anyone else in the outside world
for that matter. Yeah, that that's the way they like it.
(01:46):
It is. Well, we're talking about Chuck. In case you
haven't guessed, is the Amish. I knew this because you
read the article. Yeah, good thing. These people are incredibly
interesting to me. Yeah. Me. To remember, we said on
some podcast ways back that, uh, the Amish will never
hear it. We can say whatever we want, and all
these people wrote in like jerks, what about rum spring
(02:09):
up yea, which we'll get to in a minute. But
they're absolutely correct. It's entirely possible there's an Amish kid
running around, although it should be noted that we did
not hear from any Amish kid on rum Springer, so
take that. They may have heard it, though they may
just not be real comfy with the typing comfortable with.
Maybe there's letters on crystal meth rum springing. Yeah, we'll
(02:31):
get to that in a minute. Okay, all right, So
again we're talking about the Amish who did first arrive
in the United States and seventy seven and actually when
they did get to Pennsylvania and at that time they
were still a fairly young Christian sect, right, yeah, sixte
is when they were actually formed because a Swiss Mennonite
(02:52):
named Jacob I'm on basically didn't like three things. I know.
The three things are so true. I want to split
off because I'm not. I want to keep watching people's feet,
which I can understand. It's pretty cool because if you
ever washed someone's feet, you grew up a Christian, right,
did you ever do that? Now? I did once I
was even Catholic. Wow, it's weird. Yeah, and it is humbling,
(03:14):
especially if you're like twelve. You did that as a
part of church. Wow, I've never heard of that. Yeah,
I mean, and you know, modern like modern churches, I guess, right,
But the point is it's it's meant to be a
humbling experience. You're washing the feet of another human being,
feet and dirty, and you know it's let me tell you, buddy,
you've had to wash your feet, it would be it
would be humbling. Humbling is when one word that comes
(03:34):
to mind. Yeah, you'd see new shades of greens. What else?
Did he not want to celebrate Josh Communion twice a year?
He wanted to celebrate it twice a year. Once said
once a year. So he said, screw that and the
foot washing and then um, the Mennonites basically wanted to
mingle with the English or I guess they weren't the
(03:55):
English at the time, but mingle with society. And he said,
I'm not down with that. So and that's going to
create a new deal called the Amish, right, and it did, um,
and it took off like a rocket. But I mean
that last one is probably the most definitive characteristic of
the Amish. You know that they didn't and still don't
socialize with outsiders as much as possible. Right, Yep, that'll
(04:18):
keep popping up throughout this podcast, I predict watch for it.
And they're still in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, as well as uh
Ohio and Indiana and Utah and Canada. Canada. Utah is
the newest place they're having to go further and further west.
For some reason, Utah makes sense. No, Mormonism has nothing
to do with it, but it just makes sense. It
definitely does, more so than like if they rooted down
(04:40):
in Vegas or something, which they never ever would. They
shy away from electricity, which is one reason they'd stay
away from Vegas, which probably would just scared the hell
out of the Amish going down the strip in Vegas. Um,
so let's talk about why they do this stuff. They
dressed plainly, right, yeah, very much. They wear The men
(05:03):
wear dark suits, usually a blue shirt with some suspenders,
a black brimmed hat, which is the shape of the
hat apparently tells you a lot about the man, like
if you're more old school, it'll have a different crown
and brim with which I don't understand how that fully works.
But the hat makes the man, Yeah, but not the clothes. Well, well,
(05:25):
the clothes obviously, but the clothes are all the same.
The hat is where you can vary it to say
something about yourself. I got to I did not know that.
So those are the dudes, and they and the ladies
they wear frock dresses, black capes, which I find kind
of dashing. Sure, um. And if they're baptized, they cover
their hair yea all the time and they don't cut
(05:46):
their hair the women, no, but men do wear their
short their hair short, cropped beards if they are married. Correct,
But no mustache. Why I thought I added something to
do with biker or something. Tom Selle, who just celebrated
his birthday by the way, let me know. So. Uh,
(06:07):
it's because they and this was a brand new factor
me because mustaches are associated with the military, at least
to the Amish, and they're not downe with the military now,
not at all. As a matter of fact. They they
reject any um combat uh what's it called, chuck. They
reject violence against another human and even in self defense,
(06:30):
which means you can't go to war because you're going
to be put in a situation like that. Um. They
they have been in the past conscripted, That's what I
was thinking of. They have been conscripted to um serving
non combat roles during the draft. Yeah. And I think
during World War Two there was a couple of Amish
(06:51):
guys who were conscientious objectors who were basically put in hell,
which was the statemental hospitals, and I believe New York
or New Jersey. Um, and they actually lead the charge
in exposing the horrible qualities of life at these places
and some real reform in statemental institution. Do we really
(07:14):
need Amish in the army though, I mean even during
the draft? No, But would you want an Amish guy
in the trenches next to you? Well, you'd never see
one there. Well yeah, exactly, you know, I imagine they
go to prisoner or whatever. But there, that does bring
up a point that kind of arose in my head
while I was reading this article, Chuck, and that is that, Um,
they live in the United States. So even though they
(07:36):
are this very peaceful, tranquil um, non violent society, they
still live in the United States. So yeah, I think
if there is a draft, this is that's a that's
a really important moment in history. So yeah, they gotta
gotta do something. Everybody's pitching in you. You can't live
entirely separately in my opinion. You know how I feel
about Buddhist monks who go up in the mountains for
(07:57):
their their whole lives. Draft them. I think the exact
get him in the trenches. So Chuck, Yes, Josh, like
we said, Um, the Amish women wear bonnets on their
hair after they're baptized. The Amish, being Anabaptists, don't believe
in infant baptism. Neither did I as just a regular
(08:20):
Baptist Southern Baptist. It makes sense like we don't baptized,
we don't at birth or anything like that. You have
to be old enough to make your own decision. Yeah,
which makes a lot of sense to me. I was
baptized as a baby and I have no recollection of
it whatsoever, And aside from the Catholic Gill has been
virtually meaningless to me. I was baptized at sixteen and
(08:40):
was led to the Lord with air quotes under my
gay youth director. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, he really is gay.
He he later on, I didn't think you would call
him gay. A few wives and we all know you
love you chuck. He later on came out and the
church said, I don't think I want you to be
director anymore. Does that no fire your baptism. I'm looking
(09:02):
and I'm looking into that. So were you baptized in
the river? No? No, no, just in the pool behind
the in the church. You know, modern Baptism not a
brother world though. Um, I I have to say, I
find that, um, just a really good idea that you
can't get baptized until you're fully aware of what you're doing.
(09:22):
And my hat, my my wide brim hat is off
to the Amish and to your sect for pursuing that. Yeah,
Stone Mountain First Baptist Church exactly that that sect. So, um,
you enter the church when you're sixteen. If you want
to write, yeah, you make the choice to what is.
But here we reach rum Springer, right, that is when
(09:44):
you are allowed to live among the English and do
crystal math and sell it to I understand there's a
pretty big druggring um of Amish kids that were selling drugs.
You can dance and play guitar and watch TV and
waste electricity, use electricity, yeah, and wasted. Yeah. Oh I
imagine if you're just coming into electricity at age sixteen,
(10:05):
you wasted like it's nobody's business. Yeah. But yeah, so
you you are allowed to go off for a period
of time. Uh, and you are in rum spring which
means run around. Yeah. Germans German, like all Amish stuff
is German, right, they speak a low German amongst themselves,
high German for mass. But they all know how to
speak English. So when they actually do have to associate
(10:28):
with outsiders, they do. But on rum Spring, you imagine
they're running around speaking English, probably doing drugs, and then
some of them. We're not saying they all do that,
of course no, but they can. They can and they do.
Because that documentary The Double's Playground I saw that recently,
isn't any good? Well, yeah, and that's where the crystal
mething came from. Those a kid who got mixed up
in dealing it and um basically had to move, you know,
(10:52):
because some guy was trying to kill him, some rival
drug dealer was trying to kill him. Wow, so he
really experienced the English life. He is like, object to
this conscientiously coming for you. It's weird though, man, because
it'll show parties and a lot of them. Like this
kid was a boy and he, you know, dressed normally,
like what if you call a sixteen year old attire
(11:13):
these days normal? But the girls were still wearing their thing.
So they were at this party listening to the jay
Z with their frock and her bonnet han drinking a beer. Wow. Yeah,
I gotta check that movie. It's really good, awesome, it's
really it's very insightful. Okay, So I had a pretty dark,
shady past when I had my own little rum springer. Sure, no,
(11:36):
I'm not. As a matter of fact, I have ended mine.
I ended it a while back, but I fully ended it.
Yet it's nice. I'm growing up now, chuck. Um, what's
for me? Though? There was nothing that I was going
to test out. It was all all testing, right, but
there wasn't like I wasn't going to examine, like did
(11:56):
I do? I want to make a choice between good
and evil? Although old amately that's what it panned out
to be, right, which did you choose? Um? Can you
see the smile? I'm so bright and sunny today. Yeah? Um.
With these kids, once they reach a certain point, and
I didn't get in the article how long run spring?
At lasts? Maybe a year? I'm not positive either, but
(12:17):
let's say, well we'll go with a year, okay. And
and then they decide, Okay, do I want to go
back to the church or do I want to just
continue living with the English? Um. Since they haven't taken
an oath to the church yet, they could conceivably still
be um. They could have ties to their family, their
(12:38):
Amish family, even if they decided to leave the Amish community.
They're not shunned, which is what they call it, right,
So they haven't broken an oath to the church, so
they're not shunned. What is shunning, intel shunning is when
you have taken that up to the church. So you've
made that decision beyond the age of sixteen, and then
you leave and don't come back. Well, you're not wanted back.
You can't come back though. If you're sixteen and you leave,
(13:01):
they will let you back in if you say, boy,
I've made a big mistake. But if you leave forever,
they will shun you permanently, which means no ties, no family,
no Christmas at home, no Thanksgiving, no Easter, nothing like that.
They celebrate all those Yeah, well they're Christians. Yeah, alright,
So the kid and what's what's what's um? I find
it hartening that the vast majority of Amish kids who
(13:24):
go on rum Springer come back, you know, so they
they've made the choice. Now they're going to become indoctrinated
in the church their sixteen but they either towards the
end of the sixteenth year, right right, and they're saying
I'm gonna be Amish. What is Amish life like, Well,
they've already experienced a lot of it because you grow
up with the ordining being pounded into your head, which
(13:48):
is the German word for order. And that's there, they said.
It's mostly unwritten, just their sort of way of life.
How to be Amish Amish for dummies, right, is the
ord And and you actually don't have to be real
book smart actually, because the Amish don't believe in um
extraneous book learning. Why would they. They think you need
(14:10):
to learn a vocation or craft and probably and it
makes a certain amount of sense from a very religious standpoint.
Knowing too much is kind of unhealthy and frankly a
little vain. We're very vain, chuck, Well, and that's what
it's all about. You're talking about the dress and the
electricity and all that. All of that has to do
with the fact that they shun uh things of the world,
(14:32):
vanity and ego and pride, and you know, clothing obviously
leads to that when you're all wearing different clothes, you
want to dress nice and dress better than your neighbor,
save up money and spend money and decide spend time
deciding what to wear. None of that works with the Amish,
and like we said, neither does electricity. All of their
(14:53):
power comes from either they may have electricity, but it's
coming from a diesel generator um. Or they have gas.
They can burn gas in their house in oil obviously right. Um.
And so they don't have artificial light, which makes me
wonder something and you couldn't find the answer to this.
(15:14):
But um, before the advent of artificial light, apparently humans
had a totally different sleep pattern then we have. Now
we went to bed mater earlier, but about two three one,
sometime in the night we'd wake up for a good
thirty thirty minutes or an hour, smoke a pipe, read
a book, hang out that kind of thing, and then
(15:35):
go back to sleep. But with do you really smoke
a pipe read a book? Do you do you smoke
a pipe while you read a book? Yeah? Yeah, I
just go back to sleep. And Emily's always like, what
are you doing? You're like, I'm just being a plane.
Yeah yeah. Um. But I wonder if the Amish still
have that kind of sleep pattern, because apparently artificial light
eradicated that. Well. Yeah, and even if you're using oil
(15:58):
lamps and candles, you don't want to in those until midnight,
you know, so you you would probably go to bed earlier.
Otherwise you're wasting They're not big into waste, you'd be
wasting the oil just to stay up till midnight, because
what do you stand up for? Because all I gotta
do is get back up the next day and work
your butt off. So yeah, and they do because again
they're farmers. And one of the reasons that they've hung
(16:18):
on to farming, um is, as I guess it's kind
of symbolic, chuck, it's a way to separate themselves. Um.
The rest of the world has, you know, moved forward
and with its book learning and all that book learning. Yeah. Yeah,
I've got a crop list for you if you want
to know. Let's hear it in order of acreage. The
Amish grow corn the most. Makes sense, hey, wheat, tobacco,
(16:41):
which kind of surprised me. Uh, soybean, barley, and potatoes.
And that's just the farming tip. They also obviously they
quilt and they make uh they're big craftsmen, furniture builders. Yeah,
apparently they're they're big new thing now or utility sheds um.
And and as you mentioned, the quilt Amish quilts are
like among some of the ladies, amongst certain quarters of femininity.
(17:04):
Amish quilts are like as good as it gets. And
apparently you used to be able to get these things,
really detailed ornate quilts um for nothing. And then after
a while the Amish were like, oh, English, you really
like these things? How much do you pay for him?
And apparently they peaked at thousands of dollars in the
eighties and then finally settled down and now they're like
(17:27):
a grand still, which is really that's an expensive quilt.
After we took advantage of them. It sounds like for
many years. Yeah, by saying I'll take this handmade thing
for seven dollars off your hands. There you go, Amish.
But they they I'm surprised that they did allow it
to get as high as it did because they don't
(17:47):
really care much for cash. They don't use credit. Most
of their wealth or I guess net worth comes from
their real estate holdings. Yeah. That they own a lot
of Lancaster pennsylvani Lancaster County. Yeah, and everywhere they go
they buy a lot of land. Um that's sixteen year
old that just became in doctor nating in the church
One of the things that um he or she will
(18:10):
be getting into about now is the courtship of a
husband or wife. Right, so when you're about sixteen, Um,
you start to drink lemonade on the porch, fitz or sweetie,
Um you'll you'll drive her to in the buggy or
walk with her to the singing service. Yeah, and singing
is actually um their courtship ritual and wedding ceremonies are
(18:35):
really detailed. I didn't realize this. It's pretty cool. You
want to go over it. Well, yeah, well the singing
thing is not done anything to do with that. That's
just what young single Amish kids do for fun, right right,
But I mean it's kind of a range so that
this is part of the courtship process. So you can
spend some time with somebody else that you're you know,
looking to wed. That's what they say. Yeah, they do.
(18:56):
And they don't always sing um religious songs either, because
there's not anything else they can do. They can't dance,
can't play musical instruments. It's like John Lithgow lives there.
I don't even know what that means. Haven't you ever
seen Footloose? Oh? Sure, I thought you were talking about
Dexter or Third Rock from the Sun or something. He's
on Dexter. Yeah, he played a serial killer in the
(19:17):
last season. I haven't gotten there yet. Creepy. Yeah, he's
He's good a creepy You else is creeping out and
thinking of it. There's a little often topic, but Amish
dolls do not have faces. Why because it goes with
the whole vanity thing, and it was like a long
standing tradition that they just kind of held onto, like
they don't want their photograph taken. They don't want their
(19:37):
faces displayed as a graven image, so their baby dolls
have no faces. It's cool, it's creepy as hell, dude.
Have you seen the video of the little baby that
was born with no eyes on Good Morning America? Was
she Amish? No? No? This that was a total sidebar
then yeah, okay. And also you were saying about the
(19:58):
dolls being faceless. Apparently with the quilts, there was a
myth that grew up that every Amish quilt has a
purposeful flaw so that they don't create anything perfect. Yeah,
not true, but they said there are likely flaws because
anything handmade is going to have a cross or a
off stitch, but it's not like they do it on
(20:20):
purpose or anything that's silly. So a couple of Amish
teens are courting, Yeah, they're courting back to the court.
That's about sixteen. Usually they're twenty or older when they
finally get married to the court for years. Well, there's
actually studies that I've read that um show that the
longer the courtship, the more lasting the marriage. Uh, just
(20:40):
in general, not just yeah, not just among Amish, but
with any humans. That makes sense. Sure, you see these
people get married after these celebrities get married after a
few months of being on set together, and then you
get on the next movie and they're like, oh, I
think I love my New Coast Now. Yeah, those people
are crazy. They're like the opposite of the Amish, complete
opposite of the Amish. So they're courting, Josh. They are
(21:01):
allowed to spend time together, they encouraged to spend private
time together, but it would be unseemly if they did
this um behind closed doors, so they keep it, like
you said, on the front porch. Uh. They do have
chaperone's right, Yeah, but a good chaperone like knows to
not pay too much attention they're just kind of there
to let everybody else know we're not letting these two
(21:23):
go back on run spring. It's so weird. It seems
they're so on one end, very rigid with the with
the ordinaning, but on the other end they're very permissive,
you know. They just the fact that they allow rum
springing to me is amazing. It's such a healthy, brave custom. Yeah,
because you're saying, like, go go figure out if you
really want to do, if you like it, come back,
(21:44):
and I mean you're it's poses such a huge risk
that like these people are gonna be like, hell, yes,
I like electricity and I really love crystal meth. Yeah.
You would think it these days that very few Amish
kids would come back. Yeah, but they do. And when
they do their courting courting again now they're getting married. Yes,
what do you say about about twenty And actually it
(22:05):
happens at the same time for everybody, right fall November, Yeah, November,
um is the favorite month. Winter hasn't begun yet, um,
but it's after the fall harvest, right yeah, and Lancaster County,
Pennsylvania is definitely cold. Um. So what happens is um,
the two weeks after the Fall Communion one of two. Remember, um,
(22:29):
so what happens, Chuck, is that about the time if
you want a jockey yourself to get married in the
fall or the winner, Um, you give your girl a present,
a practical gift, no jewelry, like a butter turn something
like that, or um, something for really good quilting or whatever. Um.
And you you give her this present and she takes
(22:50):
it to mean like, Okay, well you he wants to
marry me. He just gave me a butter churn. How
else can you read that? Um? And she goes back
and tells her family and they're like or nay, but
they're probably like I you know. Um. And but they
keep it a secret though they do among the family
until two weeks after the Fall Community one of two.
(23:11):
In the year, um, a list of all the kids
who are gonna get married, for all the girls. Actually
that which I thought was kind of cool. They do
it by girl, Yeah, the woman. That's very woman centric
in the marriage weddings or weddings, I should say, yes. Um.
So there's a list that's published, and by published we
mean that the deacon reads the names off and that's
(23:34):
all the kids who are gonna get married that year, right, Yeah,
none of them are there. Well, that would be the
dead giveaway to me, because everybody's at church. Yeah, which
is they don't have a church. Actually we left that
part out. Yeah. They do the church services in the homes.
Uh so, and it rotates from Sunday to Sunday. Yeah,
(23:55):
so every home it needs to be capable of hosting
church service. And in these church services there in pretting
the Bible. Literally we left that part out too. We
didn't leave any hanging out. We're just we're jumping around. Okay,
this is this is amage country. You can do whatever
you want because we know what electricity means. Right. Um.
So yes, they are published, they are announced. Um they
are not there because they're enjoying time with their family
(24:16):
at a private meal, private meal together and this is
where it all kicks off. This is where it all
gets sexy. Well, I don't know about that. So the
wedding actually takes place in the home to um bride's home,
which is where the honeymoon take I'm sorry the they
live in the bride's home afterward. Yeah for a good
uh I think six months a year. Yeah, and the
(24:37):
honeymoon takes place. They just go to visit other relatives. Yeah,
pretty pretty hot and heavy. I think, yeah, this is
this is crazy when when they actually do have the
wedding ceremony, and let me also just let me rephrase
that this is crazy. I don't think what the amage
too is crazy. It's interesting, yeah, very interesting. Um, the
the for the wedding ceremony, it lasts several hours, which
(24:58):
I would go absolutely craz easy. I can barely make
it through a full hour long Catholic Mass type wedding. Yeah,
they're they're uncomfortable. Can you imagine a few hours. Yeah,
my wedding ceremony would lasted about four and a half minutes.
Didn't was the preacher like bingo bango, you guys are
well the preacher was my father in law. So okay,
(25:19):
he'd put a scotch down and said, by the power
of the Internet, you were a man and wife. Nice.
Um yeah, okay, Well multiply that by several hours. Uh,
and then it's done and everybody starts feasting. Um. And
then the first night, yes, Chuck is spent at the
bride's parents house. So nothing else needs to be said
(25:41):
about that. No, but it's since we've been on rum springet.
That means that there's probably plenty of Amish kids, Amish
married couples who weren't virgins at marriage. Oh can they
do the sex when they are on rum I have
the impression that you can do anything you want on
rum Spring, including still meth well, and it doesn't necessarily
(26:02):
indicate that the Amish are anti intercourse or anything. No.
I mean I think if you're married and it's a
blessed union from God, then feel free, sure in a
one room house with your laws in the next pet Yeah,
feel free. Yeah. And then like you said, check the
honeymoon is on weekends because of course during the week
you're working like nothing happened, um, And but on weekends
(26:25):
you go around and visit family and stay with him
for the weekend. Yeah, which is pretty cool. Probably more
butter turns. And then you're you're set up. After six months,
you're living with the h the bride's parents. And then
after six months or a year, one of the two,
it's time to get your own place. And remember the Amish,
This Amish guy who's like twenty or twenty one hasn't
(26:48):
spent his whole life, you know, saving up for this. Yeah,
he didn't have a pot to uh too, which is interesting.
You say that we'll get to that and say we'll
get the um. No, but there is a community pot
which everyone's expected to throw into. And from this community
pot and from any familial help, um, the kids get
(27:09):
their own farm. They buy the farm. Yeah, we'll raise
We'll raise you a barn. Nice lovely young couple. Yeah.
Have you ever seen Witness? You know, it's on my
my tebow right now. I have never seen it though,
good movie, and it's been sitting there for weeks. When
Harrison Ford's out of Veneer finally cracks and he comes
to see the value of the Amish way of life.
How misunderstood. They are beautiful. Um. But there's a barn
(27:33):
raising in there, and it's you know, everybody gets together.
They build the walls and then push them up and
you know everybody's pitching. It's a very um communal affair. Well,
you have to. That's one of the tenants of being
Amish is you have to lend a hand. So definitely,
unless it's in a combat situation. Right, So, if your neighbor,
if you're Amish neighbor, if you see him coming over
with a hammer in in his hand. You don't like
(27:56):
pull the blind shut and lock the door like I would. Off, No, no, no,
you gotta go help the guy. Yeah, it's all about
the community. So the kids are all set up, they
have their house. Sure, they raise the barn. Let's look
around inside. We'll go out into the barn in a minute. Okay,
but we're inside right, and it looks pretty much like
the eighteenth century. Yeah, it's not fancy. There's not a
(28:16):
lot of obviously, there's no gadgets or anything like that.
Very plain handmade furniture. Um, you know what you might
find the josh, you might find a modern stove if
it burns would Yeah, there's are it seems like there's
a lot of contradictions here there and amously like why
would you have a modern appliance? The point is that
you'd have a modern appliance that burns would or can
(28:39):
run on gas because remember you can use gas as
long as you're not connected to the grid. They look um,
But it makes sense because it's cheaper. It's gonna use
less um less source energy. Yeah, it's gonna require less input.
I mean, and I mean, think about it. If you
get like an antique or like a reproduction old wood
(29:02):
burning stove. That thing's gonna cost you a mint, and
it's actually kind of vain that you would do. So, yeah,
you might find something that makes life easier that doesn't
radically undermine the community structure, and you're not being vain
about if if a technology makes it through those that
(29:23):
that that criteria, then it might be adopted. Yeah, and
then if it passes the ordining. And one of the
examples in the article I thought was good is, for instance,
the use of nylon rope instead of hemp rope. If
it can accomplish what you need to get done and
doesn't disrupt or bring attention to to itself, then they
may accept this new technology as long as you can
(29:44):
still have that community communion twice a year. Right and
watch the feed. Right, let's go out into the dairy barn. Chuck.
Our socks are about to be blown off, dude, right
you know why? Yeah, because dude, there is not the
little Amish man sitting on a stool with a pale
milking a cow. No, they may do that for their
own milk, but they have modern equipment, refrigerated tanks running
(30:07):
on electricity milking machines. Yeah. And the reason why is
because the Amish aren't dumb. They know that they are
living in twenty one century America. They also realized there
is such thing as the f d A and if
they're trying to sell their milk, then yeah, they have
to meet those those basic standards in in in century America.
These basic standards include you know, electricity powered cooling tanks
(30:30):
and milk pumping and stuff like that. I mean, you're
running an actual dairy farm and you have to kind
of meet those standards. So yeah, but there is this
place is crazy. It's humming. Yeah, move but of course
it's run by the generator still because they're still off
the grid. Um. I found it interesting that they I'm
sure it hasn't been a picnic or easy, but they
(30:50):
seem to have worked with the US government over the
years and kind of working some of these things out,
like school, Yeah, like compulsory education. They they let them
go do their own school to think till the eighth
grade is when they're required to go. And they kind
of just said, all right, you know, if you're going
to school your kids that way, that's fine. Do taxes
stay here? They do not have to pay Social Security tax. No,
(31:12):
and they don't borrow. No. Um, they do pay tax though, yeah,
they do, like they pay property taxes and stuff, just
not social Security tax because they don't draw Social Security
or Medicare or which is kind of because you and
I are never going to see a penny of Social
Security and we still pay it. Yeah, no kidding. Yeah,
maybe you should grow a beard with no mustache. Okay,
(31:34):
we should both do that. Yeah, it looks kind of goofy.
I think it looks cool. You really like see every coop? Yeah,
it's such a look though, you know it's you. It's
really specific. Look. It definitely is. Um, chuck. We said
that they don't borrow, but they do engage in trade. Um.
They somebody's got to buy that milk, right, Um. So
(31:54):
what they do is they deal with middlemen as often
as possible, and generally these are Mennonites, because the Mennonites
are very very similar to the Amish right, but the
Mennonites have no rules against socializing with the outside world.
So if you have the Amish, you stick to themselves,
socialize with as few people as possible. You get a
couple of good men and knights who have some stores
(32:16):
or whatever, um that that will sell your stuff, and
they turn around and sell it to everybody else. It
works out great, it definitely does. They They say, hey,
we have we need five utility sheds this month, um,
go build them. They build them. They didn't go and
pick them up from them, sell them to the people,
deliver them cash. They do use the lumber we should
point out. They obviously don't make their own paint and
(32:38):
shingles and things like that and mill their own wood,
although someone might mill would but they do order to
get orders from lumber yards and they'll bring the stuff
out to them, except payment on the spot, just to
make it easy cash or barter. Obviously, they still don't,
you know, throw the Amex black down. No, I mean,
if they don't have cashley just don't do it. Yeah.
But yeah, if they can barter, I think that's probab
(33:00):
be preferable. Right, And they go to other mom and
pop stores here and there. But you you probably won't
find any Walmart in Lancaster County with a lot of
buggies in the parking lot. No, it's a little too Gerish,
a little too Gerish. And actually they said that the
tourism that's surrounded around the Amish way of life UM
(33:21):
has people look for stores with buggies out front or whatever,
and then they come there like just to go see
the Amish. Right, But if they were, if they're encountering
a smart mom and pop store owner, they probably just
have a couple of buggies that are out front all
the time, and the Amish aren't anywhere around. But it
still draws the tourists and the Amish are really off
the beaten path on some back road. The store that
(33:43):
doesn't even have a sign that they just heard of
by word of mouth because this person opened just to
deal with the Amish. Well, they said, that's a good
way to get some pretty steady business. Open up a
mom and make your own sign. Don't get a neon
sign in the window they don't like. Just be smart.
And we're talking about the Ordon right ord, and how
(34:04):
that um that that serves as the keystone the foundation
of all Amish life, but it's also something can be
passed through it. It's a prism that that new technologies
passed through, right, and then they agree on whether it
harms them or not, and if it doesn't, they adopt it.
And one of the things that I found interesting was
(34:25):
that um out of the necessity for travel, you know,
with more and more Amish moving out to like Utah, um,
you can't just go through the horse and buggy. So
what they've determined is that if you don't own or
operate mechanical vehicle, you can still travel in it, which
means they can fly on an airplane because they don't
(34:45):
own it and they're not operating it. And I think
that's cool how it's still I think that's probably how
they've managed to survive. And actually, in the last fifty
years their number is tripled. They're about a hundred thousand
Amish living in the US, so they're yeah, and they're thriving,
I think because they figured out how to adapt and
evolve as little as possible, but they're still adapting and evolving.
(35:07):
I think that's pretty cool personally. It means they're not,
as the article says, stuck in time and completely closed
off to everything. They just only adopt something if it
really helps their way of life without causing a negative
impact on their life. It seems pretty open minded to me.
I gotta tell you, a lot of the Amish stuff though,
made me not want to run off and be Amish.
(35:29):
But they kind of have it going on. You know,
they've got the right idea about so many things you
don't have to be Amish to, you know, live a
simpler life stuff. And you know, you can join the Amish.
I read that you can. Um, it is possible to
be accepted even though you were not born and raised Amish.
But it really doesn't happen very often at all because, ay,
(35:49):
they're not looking to recruit, you know, they don't proselytize,
go door to door like you know some Christians do. UM,
So chances are you're not gonna just hear about it
and want to do it. Second of all, you need
to speak the language Low German low German. So if
you speak low German, you might have a good chance.
And thirdly, it's just not very often that someone would
want to grow up in the secular world and just
(36:11):
get rid of all that unless they joined some hippie
commune and or unless they're Harrison Ford, unless they're Did
he join? Is that what happened? Yeah? I think in
the end, if I remember correct, then he goes back
or something like that. I think that's it right, Chuck.
It's like Jerry's looking at It's like, yeah, it's been
like seventy minutes, has it? Has it been that long?
(36:33):
Because I had one other thing about the funeral. Well,
the funeral is much like you would think. It's a
plain wooden box. And um, they do utilize the services
of an embalmer, but there are no flowers. There's no singing.
Even at the funeral, they actually uh quote lines from
hymns they speak them only, and but they do not
(36:56):
they wear white at funerals usually, and they do not
raise the dead, just respect. So even in death, there's
not like adulation heaped on anyone. It's all very much
just like Daniel Proctor did a very fine thing in
his life, and now he is dead. He could butter
and he did. Now they'd be uh, they'd be too
(37:19):
much idolizing. Well, let me say this real quick to Chuck.
One of the coolest photos I've ever seen in my
entire life was taken at a funeral of a m
a person whose house was ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. And
this is like a couple of years after and as
Amish couple who I guess had made friends with the
person was attending the funeral among all the English and
(37:41):
everybody else is just dressed normally. And there's this a
very solemn, steadfast Amish couple of youngest Amish couple in
their thirties. I would say, just at this guy's funeral,
it was really awesome. It's cool. We should also point
out they don't shun medicine. They're not Christian scientists. They
lead that up to the individual, so like they well,
if someone has an act indent, they will actually get
into an ambulance and go to the hospital. And speaking
(38:03):
of accidents, to prevent those, they have come to accept
putting flashers and orange hazard triangles on their buggies because
it's just common sense and the Amish have that in aces. Yeah,
this is just a small bit though, Like this is
the Lancaster County Amish, or like ten percent of the Amish,
and this is really who we've been talking about. Yeah,
(38:24):
there are other sex or other it's all local. The
ordung Um ordnung Uh is decentralized. I mean that is
the central authority, but it's all interpreted on the local level.
So what one Amish group believes is not necessarily the
exact same as the other. So that was the twist
at the end that Chuck just gave. We were talking
about the Lancaster County Amish the whole time, right memento
(38:48):
or I thought you're gonna say in Night sham Lanxia
that stupid movie the Village. I thought that twist is
pretty cool, but I don't know if the whole movie
was worth working up to it. That was awful, So Chuck,
that's it, okay, all right? Oh yeah, if you want
to know more about the Amish, handy search bar, et cetera. Chuck,
it's time for listening. Man. We must be on on
(39:10):
the I'm tired of Jerry Starr and be like this.
It's making me nervous. I'm gonna call this email. My
father in law, Kurt Josh and Chuck conducted a primitive
tribe contact in the early eighties, so this is about
the unknown people. His stories are really wild. This is
an oblivion portion of Amazon rainforest anyway, that got attacked
by Yukwa Euqui natives who saw past the banana and
(39:35):
other offerings. So I guess they offered banana and they
were like, not so much. We've got tons of that, right,
his translator took a six ft arrow in the back
and I think that's called a spirit. Well that's what
I was gonna say, And you would think, so buddy
could listen to this. They had two man bows. One
guy would hold the bow and the other guy would
pull back the line. So it was, in fact the
six foot arrow. Kurt still has one of the other
(39:58):
arrows retreat from the site. In fact, they have all
kinds of pictures in the photo album, including pictures of
my wife who was four and five in the buff
because everyone was in the buff, the tribes people were.
They lived in a little hut. Wait, this guy married
a tribes person. No, no, no, he was just doing
work there. Um. They lived off in the land in
a little hut and worked to build an airstrip to
(40:20):
fly supplies for an outpost. Very unomish. My mother in
law can prepare a wild chicken, very Amishka and she
incurred have gone to special kind of preparatory boot camp.
And he is one of my heroes. And so that
is from Ryan and Lynchburg and his wife Crystal wrote
me shortly thereafter to set the record straight on some
of Ryan's facts. But I'm not gonna read Crystals because
(40:43):
Ryan's is much more interesting. So he made up the
two mambo. No, he She just said it sounds way
more Indiana Jones than it really was, and it was
really like this. But we'll just we'll just keep the
fanciful version alive. Thank you, Ryan and Crystal. Yeah, and
here's to your four year long courtship, which we can
only imagine. Right. Yeah, if you've had an extended courtship
(41:04):
and have a great relationship to speak of because of it,
we want to hear about it. Tell us your sweet
romantic stories in time for Valentine's Day. Uh, you can
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