Pennsylvania

2/12/2024 06:06:00 PM

Pennsylvania

School house with teacher's horse

Location: Lancaster County
When: Early January
Miles traveled: 617.4
Price of gas: 3.15
Interest: Amish
High point: Seeing an Amish school house in use.
Low point: I have no reason to buy an Amish quilt, nor do I have the space for it in my car.
One thing learned/reminded of over the holiday break: The feeling of family.

In Pennsylvania, the 36th state I've visited, I started with an afternoon of paintball with my brother's family! It was the first time playing paintball for most of us and we were the only customers who braved the snow to play that morning. We had fun trying to hit each other with orange paintballs and comparing injuries afterwards. Paintballs really hurt when fired at close range. They also hurt when they hit small appendages, like fingers. We all, somehow, had gotten our fingers hit.

Shuffleboard

Traveling farther East, I stopped in Lancaster County for a week to learn about the Amish. I stayed with a retired Old Order Amish couple, Ben and Emma, for two nights. I found their place on amishfarmstay.com. They rent two bedrooms as a bed and breakfast most of the year, and travel by train south to Florida for part of the winter. Amish can be snowbirds too. Ben showed me around their home and taught me how to play shuffleboard in their barn's upper room. Players take turns push-sliding their disks to the other side of the board, trying to get inside the scoring areas without touching a white line. Disks can also be used to knock opponents out of the scoring area.

In addition to a narrated drive around the Amish communities, I also read a book, "Simply Amish" by Donald Kraybill. It contains a nice summary of the major aspects of Amish life; their beliefs, technology customs, how they worship, politics, farming and business practices, school, and Rumshpringa. Some of the points I saved from the book: 1) Amish tame technology so it serves, rather than controls their community. 2) They consider the welfare of church community more important than individual freedom. Yielding selfish desires to the will of the church brings deep meaning and purpose to life. They view pride and individualism as destructive. 3) A respect for limits builds community, brings belonging, and shapes identity- three key things needed for satisfaction and happiness. 4) They emphasize the importance of small scale social relations. 'Bigness ruins everything', said one Amish carpenter. Schools are small. Face to face relationships add dignity and respect to human interaction.

Schools are one room, often without electricity and running water. The outhouse is a separate building, I'm not sure if it has running water. If the number of kids attending gets above 20-30, then another school house is built. They are built with the community in mind, so that students can walk or scooter to school. (The scooters have big wheels like a bike, but a flat bar to stand on like a scooter.) Teachers are chosen by the community and do not have special training. One teacher teaches all grades, from 1st to 8th grade. I drove past many schoolhouses on my driving tour, and saw: piles of scooters outside, kids playing during a break, and one kid running from the school to the outhouse. It was awesome to see these things.

LED light bulb powered by battery.

Something I found strange about the Amish in Lancaster was their seemingly inconsistent use of technology. Modern electricity and phones are not allowed in the home, but my host had electrical outlets in the barn and a phone shed (unsure if landline or cell phone). They had two solar panels on their roof that they used to charged batteries, though propane powered most of their utilities.

Many of the Amish tourism businesses were closed for the month and would not reopen till late February or later. So I was glad I learned a lot at Ben and Emma's. A Mennonite visitor center was open and I learned more there. Most of their information was about Mennonites, but they also included how Mennonites are different from Amish. Both are Anabaptists, but the Amish split off from the Mennonites when they felt Mennonites were too relaxed in their religious/life practices. More information can be found in the photo on the left.

Towards the end of my stay in Pennsylvania, I started getting ready for my visit to West Virginia. I was going to learn how to snowboard!