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