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Will the real Amish, please ride your buggies up?

By Cheryl Ng Collett

Lancaster County is about 90 miles from Philadelphia and is home to 16000-18000 Amish. Two of the small Amish towns have quaint names like Bird in Hand and Intercourse. Now the Amish are an interesting bunch. They're stuck in 1700s, in the way they dress and the way they 'try' to live their lives.

The Amish stress humility, family and community, and separation from the world. Basically they want to have a simple life and not have modern 'distractions' such as cars and electricity. To them, these things drive a wedge into family life. They travel around in a horse and cart or buggies so that they cannot go too far away from their family.

All this sounded just wonderful and we were very excited to see them. First up, we decided to get on a buggy ride. When in Amish land, travel as the Amish do? But as we were driving up the road, every buggy we saw, belonged to a tourist company. We felt a little nervous. We knew we were heading toward a tourist trap but our need to see the Amish, made us plod on.

When we finally got to Aaron and Jessica's Buggy Rides we knew we were going to be ripped off. The place had a large car park – one side for cars and another for tourist buses (gulp – we should have turned back at this stage). If you check their website, they also provide a virtual tour. How they set this up without electricity is beyond me.

Aaron and Jessica's is located next to the Amish Experience which has a FX theatre showing the 'critically acclaimed, Jacob's choice'. The website mentioned that this is a "dramatic tale of an Amish family's effort to preserve a lifestyle and a culture is unforgettably told through a high-tech, multi-media production conceived in the finest tradition of Hollywood or Orlando themed attractions." Remember the Amish supposedly do not like to be photographed but they have this big high tech theatre and feature film and for $31 you get to go on a tour package as well.

Back to Aaron and Jessica's buggy rides. Our Amish driver Dan didn't really know much history. I was expecting him to tell us more about what they do, how they live etc but he didn't really know the history. He was only able to tell us what his family did. I guess he was being honest.

He took us on this 30 minute ride where we were supposed to see a 'real Amish farm', a real 'Amish school house'. According to their website, they stated that we will go on private road with no cars. This was not true. We saw heaps of cars on the road and we also saw an Amish man riding in a truck (he wasn't driving).

We rode up to the first Amish farm and an Amish woman comes up with these ridiculous towel angels made of tea towels and fashioned into angels and some boiled lollies made into cars. She was selling the tray of them for $5!! Since no one wanted to buy any, off we went again in our cart... eerrr... I thought we were supposed to see the farm and tour it. We were promised that we would see real Amish life! I didn't think we were just going to have a glimpse and move on.

Our next stop was a school house. The Amish go to school till about year 8 and then start working on the farms. They have a one room school house (just like Little House On The Prairie). This time a little Amish boy tried to sell us his tray of cookies. The funny thing was that there were a bunch of other kids with him playing Game Boy in the shed. So the Amish aren't allowed to have electricity but the Game Boy is 'battery operated'.

We asked Dan about the use of washing machines, refrigerators, air conditioning etc. And Dano tell us that they use hydraulics and diesel engines to operate those things. They're not supposed to have a telephone at home so some people have them at the edge of their property and at work.

Dan told us that he went to Miami for his honeymoon – someone else drove them of course. But the most interesting thing he told us was that once you turn 16, you can run wild for up to 3 years before deciding if you want to join the Amish order. He said that most of the youth play volleyball and try and find a spouse but a small percentage will go out and get a drivers license, do some drinking and experience the 'real world'. He said he was one of them. But most people return back to Amish order which is interesting to note.

Anyway the rest of the ride was pretty much the same. We stop, someone tries to sell us something and we move on. It was very disappointing. Perhaps they're just very private people and this is all they're willing to show us. Or maybe they are just deceptively clever and have turned their simple lives into a booming tourist commodity (just like Paris Hilton!). After all, these special hydraulic machinery must be quite expensive right?

Whatever it is, I'll always remember driving behind a buggy and seeing the little Amish boy make a turn with his signal flashing – I'm sure it was battery operated of course.

I'd like to say that I am not writing this about an entire Amish community. This is just what I saw on a short trip out to Lancaster County where there's a large Amish population. There's so many contradictions to what I saw that I'm not sure if I experienced anything 'real'. It just seems to me that  they're happy to take advantage of their loopholes and 'technically' still feel that they're living within the bounds of Amish traditions. What do you think?

Cute little man collecting his mail

A little girl pulling her brother in a cart i love this picture Here's the buggy with the turning signal

Cheryl Collett
July 2006