“Recession is when a neighbor loses his job.
Depression is when you lose yours.”

—Ronald Reagan
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It’s been a rather strange, surreal spring. I’ve weathered a number of unexpected financial bumps. First, my big oak tree in the front yard had to be taken down. That cost a bundle. Then my furnace went on the blink. Another $300.00 out the door. Then a windstorm damaged the gable end of my old garage. Had to get a crew to replace some siding. Another few hundred bucks.

Now, to top things off, my upstairs tenant has fallen hopelessly behind on the rent, making absolutely no effort to pay. Effectively destroying my monthly cash flow. I am not a bank. Why someone would just make a unilateral decision not to pay rent that’s due escapes me. I can’t do that with my mortgage.

I have been forced to file eviction proceedings. This was not well-received. Looks like it will be a long surly knock down, drag out fight. With a person who lives above me in my house. Fortunately, I have a signed iron-clad lease. I’ll post my (very detailed) thoughts on the situation after it gets resolved, hopefully sometime before the end of the month.

Being a landlord is not all it’s cracked up to be. I should just sell the house. But now the housing market’s down. And that’s the way it’s going.

“Come on, Lord,” I think wearily, “surprise me with some unexpected good things. I’m way overdue.”

But I can still pay my bills. For now. So that’s a blessing, I suppose. At least I can assure myself piously that it is.

Nationally, a latent fear simmers below the surface of things. Gloom and doom head-lines scream every day, proclaiming the terrible state of the economy. Construction has slowed drastically. Crews scrounge for work. We get desperate calls every few days at the office. Most get the song and dance of polite refusal. We try to keep our regulars busy, and are booked well into the summer.

Inflation is taking its toll. I have only myself to feed, and even I notice the increased food prices at the grocery store and the occasional restaurant meal. And gas prices, the highest ever, even adjusted for inflation. They are ridiculous. Worse than the Carter years, perish the thought. Around $3.60 per gallon locally. Probably hit $4 or $5 by summer.

I don’t blame the oil companies for high prices. They are in business for profit and deserve any profit they make. There is no such thing as “windfall profits,” a phrase beloved by both Obama and Hillary. High fuel prices are ALWAYS caused by govern-mental interference. Always.

Last week there were a bunch of earthquakes in Reno, Nevada. Not a place particularly known for such activity. Funny thing, the quakes keep getting worse as they hit. Usu-ally the big one hits first, with steadily weakening tremors. These are reversed.

Next, California will probably slide into the sea. Not that that would be such an awful thing. Most bad trends start in California and sweep their way east, engulfing us all. If the state just disappeared, that would take care of that.

The “end of the worlders” now emerge cautiously from their caves, stick their fingers in the wind, take stock and boldly proclaim the imminent end of history as we know it. Wackos.

Politicians run thither and yon in this election year, railing against the “rich” and outlining their programs to fix what’s wrong. Almost universally, their programs will only make things worse. Infinitely worse.

So what gives? Are we headed to untraveled territory? Depression? Who knows? I doubt it. But we will likely see things we would have thought impossible even a few short years ago.

Food shortages. Gas at $10 per gallon. Blood on the streets. Riots in the cities. Riots in Lancaster County. (Just kidding on that last one.)

Most of the current problems are self-inflicted, caused by government policies. Food prices are escalating because of high fuel prices. And because so much corn is being commandeered for bio-fuels. We are the only country in history that is burning our food supply, creating a world wide crisis, especially in third-world countries. Utterly senseless. An “Alice in Wonderland” reality.

It’s the result of our insane environmental policies, pushed for years by the wacko Greens. Oil is the fuel of the engine of the free world. And the unfree world, for that matter. Yes, oil. And the big oil companies. We have more than four billion barrels of oil in the ground right here in our own country. Because of loony environmentalists like AlGore, it will likely stay right where it is. So the caribou and the turtles and the gnats can play.

At least until there is a revolt. Until the people get fed up. But they won’t get fed up if they don’t know the truth.

Radical environmentalists and animal rights groups like PETA actually believe that humans are a cancer upon the earth. That the earth would be better off, more pure, more natural, if we were all dead. That a turtle or a songbird or a rat has a higher priority than humans. They are filled with a deep senseless hatred and loathing for themselves and for us.

Those who hate God love death.

I believe that if our government came out tomorrow and announced it was placing first priority on the job of extracting oil from our own soil, that henceforth we will build oil refineries and nuclear power plants as fast as possible, the price of gasoline would drop by thirty to fifty percent overnight. I believe it would. And it’s simply a crime that it’s not being done. We all suffer. We all spend a good portion of our budget on fuel. Gasoline and heating oil. I shudder to think what next winter will bring.

But that’s just me. Couldn’t be that simple, could it? Yes, it could. And if I were King, I’d make it so. Too bad I was born a commoner.

CONGRATULATIONS TO JASON AND JULIE YUTZY.

Veronica Elizabeth, their first child, was born on April 24 at 6:22 AM. She weighed 7 lbs, 2 oz. and measured 21 inches.

Next week: The Wedding Adventures

“Sing again, with your dear voice revealing
A tone of some world far from ours…..”

—Percy Bysshe Shelley
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I hear them sometimes still, in my dreams. The beautiful haunting lilt of their soprano voices, echoing through the old farmhouse in the slanting deep-orange rays of the setting summer sun.

The lyrics are clear in my mind. “Come home, come home, it’s suppertime.” “Hold fast to the right.” “I’ll wade right in, to the River of Jordan….” And many, many others.

My sisters singing. They sang always. They sang openly, joyfully. For any reason or none. While cooking meals, doing dishes or doing the laundry. While milking in the barn or raking the yard or working in the garden.

They sang from the heart. To lift their spirits, I suppose. And ours.

In Aylmer, singing in four-part harmony was strictly verboten. Melody only. Because people might become proud and puffed up at how beautiful their voices sounded. That would be a sin. Couldn’t chance it. Wait to get to heaven to hear perfect singing. Meanwhile, bear the cross below without complaint. And stifle your natural voice to conform to the “no harmony singing” rule.

All singing was a cappella. No instruments. So it had always been. The forefathers had rejected musical instruments. What they proclaimed and decreed was gospel, about equal with the real one. Seemed to me that whatever the current leaders didn’t like and wanted to forbid was always conveniently blamed on the poor forefathers, who of course were never present or able to defend themselves. If all I ever heard about them is true, they must have been a dour humorless lot.

But I digress. Back to the musical instruments. Anyone caught with even so much as a harmonica was in serious trouble. No musical protégés have ever emerged from the Aylmer community (with the possible exception of some of the Marner boys, and they moved away at a fairly young age).

Even so, songs and singing were an important part of life. Early on, when very young, we were taught short simple German hymns. We belted them out in our childish voices with gusto:

“Ich bin klein.
Mein Hertz macht rein.
Sol niemand drin vohnin
Als Jesus allein.”

My father, too, sang in his rich mellow baritone. Of an evening, when the smaller chil-dren were tired and drooping, he swept them onto his lap, and rocked them to sleep on the old hickory rocker on the living room floor. His deep, quivering controlled voice boomed the tender crooning verses of “Sweet and Low” as the children drifted off.

He told me once that he had lulled all his children to sleep when they were young, singing “Sweet and Low.” Not a single child ever stayed awake on his lap through the final stanza.

But the most memorable songs, as anyone raised Amish will attest, are the songs sung in church. Mournful, slow, pondering, mellow, beautiful, melancholy, swelling and eter-nally long. And stiflingly boring to the youth.

Kind of like Gregorian chants, but unique in flavor and tone. It takes real skill to lead one.

Most Amish churches use the “Ausbund,” a collection of German hymns in continuous use now for longer than any in the world.

The tradition of long, slow chanting songs began centuries ago, before the Amish church even existed. We listened wide-eyed to the tales. From the time when our Anabaptist forefathers were burned at the stake by the evil Catholics. Guess they had reason to be dour.

They sang hymns as they were led to the public square and later as the fire crackled at their feet. As they sang, the story goes, the wicked worldly bystanders danced to the faster upbeat hymns. Stopping only after the flames and heat extinguished the song. To combat such blasphemy, our plucky forefathers developed the much slower tunes. So slow that dancing would be impossible.

I have never been able to verify that such dancing actually occurred. But it made for fascinating legends. I believed them for years.

Leading a song in church is an honor. All men are asked to lead at some time or other. The gifted lead perhaps a bit more frequently. If a man lacks ability, he is excused.

One Sunday many years ago, when I was very small, a young married man had some serious problems while leading a song. He kept getting stuck, his chant drifting up when it should have dropped down, and stopping abruptly in mid-syllable. The other men all pitched in to help him out. It sounded like the great roaring of bulls. Around the second verse, the young man simply gave it up. His voice faded hesitantly into silence. The house was deathly quiet. He coughed and cleared his throat.

“Maybe someone else can take it on,” he quavered, hanging his head in shame.

Someone else did. It was the only time in my memory that such a thing happened.

For years after that, when my siblings Rhoda and Nathan and I played “church,” the song leader among us would stop suddenly, wavering, and coughing and whooping dramatically.

“Maybe someone else can take it on,” he would gasp, clearing his throat and looking stricken.

One of the two remaining members of our little “congregation” always chimed in, taking the lead. And on we’d go, singing gibberish in loud tuneless voices. Children playing what they had seen and heard.

Of all the old slow church songs, the Lob (pronounced Lobe, which means praise) Song is the unquestioned king. It is always the second song sung at every Amish church service everywhere, in all communities. A good honest rendering of the Lob Song will take up to twenty minutes. In some of the more conservative communities, probably longer. For four verses of seven lines each.

“O, Gott Vater, vir loben Dich.”
“Oh, Lord, Father, we praise thy Name..”

The first syllable, “OOOoooOOOooo,” is stretched into a long wailing fluctuating chant by the leader. The congregation joins in after the first syllable of each line.

We always looked with keen interest when a stranger attended church, because he would be asked to lead the Lob Song. It was established protocol. We judged the man, as we judged company at home on ability to lead in prayer, on his ability to stretch out the first syllables of the Lob Song. And on the tone and quality of his voice.

Years ago, before my time, in Aylmer, a stranger attended church one Sunday. At Nicky Stoltzfus, the preacher’s place. The stranger was from a very conservative, backwards community (probably had a mustache, even). No name was ever attached to the tale, so he remains anonymous. As was customary, he was asked to lead the Lob Song. He agreed, quite humbly, I’m sure, and promptly launched into a long, slow drawn-out “OOooOOoo.”

One of the youth suddenly had to “go” out to the barn. He got up, walked out, did his business and returned to his seat on the backless bench where his peers sat, gaping. The stranger was just finishing the first syllable of the first line. He’d stretched it out for the several minutes the youth was outside.

The stranger’s name was not legend, but the story was. I wasn’t there, or was too young to remember, so I can’t testify to the actual truth of the tale. The details may have been exaggerated just a bit. But I’d guess the Lob Song took about forty minutes to sing that morning.

I’ve led it. In church. At least a dozen times. I remember the first time. The elder, David Yutzy, announced the page number, 770. He swiveled on his bench to peer sharply at all the youth seated on the back benches. I knew my time was coming at some point soon. I scrunched over and looked at the floor. David scanned and scan-ned. He knew who he was looking for. His gaze settled on me.

“Ira,” he said in a low voice, but loud enough for all the room to hear.

The time had come. I could refuse. No one would say anything. Or think badly of me. But I could do it, I knew. I’d sung the Lob Song hundreds of times while doing chores in the barn or working in the fields when no one was listening.

I chose to do what most did the first time they were asked to lead.

“Start it,” I mouthed in a whisper.

Not much of a singer himself, David got someone else, either my father or Old Gideon, his dad, to start it. I sweated. If it was too high, I wouldn’t be able to stay on track. I’d “get stuck.”

Whoever started the song got it right. The right tone, the right pitch. Not too high, not too low. Everyone roared lustily through the first line. We reached the end. A split second of silence. My throat was dry, my hands clammy. And then I heard my own voice, strange and a bit shaky, rise and fall and soar again, leading the next line. Stretched out long, but not too long. I’d gotten it right. I didn’t get stuck. I could do it.

And so I did. All four verses. For the next fifteen minutes.

By the second verse, my tremors subsided. By the third, my shaky voice firmed, booming out boldly and confidently. By the fourth, I was an old, experienced hand, adding the occasional ornamental twist and flourish. Could’a done it all day long.

The old church tunes are integral to Amish heritage, history and identity. I don’t miss them, or much of anything else from that lifestyle. But I think of them sometimes. And even hum a line or two.

It’s all part of who I was. But not who I am.

If plans hold, I will once again hear the old church songs this coming Friday, May 2nd, at the wedding of my niece, Luann Yutzy and Larry Yoder. It will be good to hear the old wedding tunes. And the Lob Song.

It will be good to sing along. To enjoy the melody and the ornamentation. I may even get to hear my father lead.