“An invitation to a wedding invokes more
trouble than a summons to a police court.”
—William Feather
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November is here. On Tuesday and Thursday mornings on my way to work, dozens of buggies clog the roads. On the back roads, I have to be careful when cresting a hill, because chances are there will be a horse and buggy traipsing slowly down the other side. And another beyond that one. And another and another. It’s quite annoying, really. And dangerous, too. I mutter to myself. Buggies should be outlawed on the roads. But I don’t mean it. I just like to grumble.

It’s wedding season here in Lancaster County. In Aylmer, where I grew up, weddings were held at any time of year, whenever a young couple decided to tie the knot. But not in Lancaster. Here, almost all weddings are scheduled for a Tuesday or Thursday in November. Tradition, I guess. After the harvest and all that. It was no problem a generation or two ago, when there were fewer Amish here. But now, with well over a hundred districts, dozens and dozens of weddings are squashed into eight days. A logistical nightmare. And the aforementioned clogged roads. It’s gotten so bad that a few weddings even spill into December, perish the thought.

I have attended scores of Amish weddings. Most of my siblings were married Amish. I faintly remember my oldest sister Rosemary’s wedding. I was four or five years old. I recall much commotion about the house, nothing at all of the service itself, and boxes and boxes of hot dogs Dad had bought for the noon meal. Red boxes, with a picture of a chef waving a spatula. Hot dogs were a rare treat, fit for a wedding (in case you’re wondering).

Other than that, I don’t remember many weddings in Aylmer because there weren’t many. For some reason, the church fathers there dictated some very stringent rules on dating. This discouraged dating, I think, and ultimately marriage. At the time we moved from Canada in 1976, when a couple started dating, they could see each other once a month, or every four weeks. Then, when things got really serious (expressions of love, talk of marriage, etc.) and they were “going steady,” they could increase that schedule to one date every two weeks. Love made the days fly, I’m sure. And they had better not get caught sneaking around or even looking at each other between dates. Anyone caught in such verboten activity could expect a prompt visit from the Deacon, a gristled, imposing man. And he wouldn’t be there to chat about the weather, either. At least not for long. Unbelievable. I don’t know if the church fathers thought the end of the world was imminent, and procreation unnecessary, or what. But that’s the way it was. Talk about regressive conservatism. Or maybe just simple oppression would be a better word.

After we moved to Bloomfield, Iowa, we discovered that dating couples there could see each other every week. We felt very liberated. Or at least my siblings did. Within a span of about five or six years, five of them got married in that community.

I took part in many weddings. My favorite job was waiting on tables for the noon meal. As a table waiter, you got to putz around getting ready in the morning and you could leave the wedding service immediately after the vows to go and prepare to serve the meal. All told, a table waiter might have to sit for about half an hour/forty-five minutes as opposed to the full 3 or 4 hours the regular guests had to sit quietly on hard back-less benches.

Being a witness, or “Nava Hocca,” was the least favorite job. The wedding couple had two sets of such attendants with them all day. It was considered the higher honor, to be Nava Hocca, but I can tell you it was vastly more tiresome and boring. More than once, I fell sound asleep sitting straight up with no support to lean against. Try that sometime. It’s hard to do.

The wedding is an all-day affair. The morning service begins at 9 or 9:30. A good preacher can make the time pass relatively unnoticed, but chances are always that the preacher will be boring as chalk on a blackboard. And drone on and on. Few things in life are more irritating than a boring Amish preacher (or any preacher) who likes the sound of his own voice and doesn’t pay attention to the time. And there are plenty such out there. Sometimes the clock seems to sit still, or even go backwards. A dull speaker creates an endless day, and restless guests.

Another major irritant often occurs when the Deacon, whose only job is to read a bit of Scripture, for reasons known only to himself, forgets his calling and decides to deliver an impromptu sermon of his own. Some such have been known to ramble on for up to twenty minutes. Whatever good they might imagine results from their words disap-pears in the hostile gaze of seething listeners whose only wish is that the speaker read the assigned verses and sit down. And shut up.

Everyone is always greatly relieved when Bishop instructs the couple, if they still feel like they did that morning, to tread before him. I have never heard of a couple not feeling like they did that morning: namely, their desire to get married. They rise and walk carefully up to him and stand before him. At this moment, the Nava Hocca stand at attention. This is their official purpose, to “witness” the ceremony. After a prayer, the Bishop administers the vows and places their hands together. Pronounces them man and wife. They return to their seats as such. From that moment until death.

Once we turned sixteen, and joined the youth, or rumspringa, as it’s fashionably called by those who write about the Amish (and think they know something about it), we looked forward to weddings because we could ask a girl to the table for the evening meal and singing. This was not considered a date, and the girls almost never turned down an invitation from any guy. I remember escorting different girls to the table on wedding evenings. It always created a buzz, to see which guy would escort which girl. More than a few married couples today began their relationship at the evening wedding feast of someone else.

Many years ago I attended a friend’s wedding in a large community in another state. I had left the Amish and was in my first year of college. But I was Amish for one day, that day. For the evening meal, the adult single boys each accompanied a girl to the table. I didn’t know any girls present and was among the last to be seated. Only old maids remained, plain dull girls, unattached, unclaimed. I was randomly paired with one from the poor little bedraggled bunch standing there. She came with me and we walked in.

As we passed through the front room of the house, a group of young thuggish pre-sixteen teenage toughs lurked menacingly and made loud mocking comments about the older, obviously dateless girls. I don’t know where their parents were. The young thugs should have been spanked and sent to bed without supper. The old maids, their heads hanging, tried to slink through the gauntlet quietly, ignoring the jeers. One young tough came right up to my companion and got in her face, hooting and laughing loudly.

It was too much. I stepped over, grabbed his shirt collar and lifted him back and told him roughly to leave the girl alone. He was so shocked he whimpered like a scolded puppy. He slunk back to his fellow thugs, rubbing his neck.

The girl and I went in and were seated with the others at the long table. During the meal, I made small conversation with her, but she was very shy and uncomfortable. She spoke softly with downcast eyes. I felt terrible for her.

After the singing was over and it was time to take my leave, I thanked her for her company. I told her I was honored and had enjoyed it. For the first time all night, she looked me full in the eyes.

And she smiled. Naturally. Genuinely.

It was a startling and wondrous transformation. She straightened, her plain, homely face lit up and she glowed with a radiance from deep within. At that instant, for a brief moment, she was herself, the girl she really was. Beautiful, vibrant and alive. She stammered a few words, thanking me.

And then I left. I never saw her again.

I don’t even remember her name.
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After a week of rain, much needed but nonetheless dreary, the sun has returned. Along with some cooler fall weather. It finally feels like fall. The last two times I mowed the yard, I thought to myself this is the last time before winter. Now the rain has sprouted the grass again. So it might take one more mowing, unless the frost saves me the bother.

Don’t forget to turn your clocks back this weekend. Or I think it’s this weekend. It should have been last weekend. I am highly irritated at Congress for messing with and changing the daylight savings time schedule. It messes up everything. Just like those fat blowhards in Washington to twiddle with our time, yet. All in the name of saving the environment. Unbelievable hubris. The old system worked well like it was all these years. Leave it alone. While you’re at it, cut my taxes and stop spending my money on your pet pork projects. And start doing something that really matters, like drilling our own oil fields, for crying out loud. Idiots.

On a brighter note, Fred the Curmudgeon, responding to vehment protests and fiery emails from his loyal readers (including one from me), has decided to keep posting his weekly blog. Good things do happen occasionally.

In football, there will be a clash of Titans this Sunday at 4:15 PM. New England at Indianapolis. Two unbeaten teams. I’m hoping Payton and the boys can pull it out, but I’m afraid the wicked Bellichek’s team will prevail. Brady has been on a real tear this year, with some real receivers for a change. He’s on pace to easily break the single-season touchdown record. Put this in your pipe and smoke it, put it in your drink and drink it, take it to the bank and deposit it: The team that wins this Sunday’s game will have home field advantage in the playoffs and WILL win the Super Bowl. Period.

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“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense.
Nothing would be what it is because everything would be what
it isn’t. And contrary-wise; what it is it wouldn’t be, and what it
wouldn’t be, it would. You see?”
—Alice in “Alice in Wonderland”
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These are strange days. The fractured splinters of existence plunge and roll along in two dimensions. In the normal one, life proceeds; I go to work, where we are in the middle of a very busy fall run. The blazing colors, the chilly nights of fall, my favorite of the seasons. I am immersed in football, the World Series, planning one more fall hike, all the daily things I look forward to and enjoy. Life is good.

The second dimension, a bleak landscape shimmering in the black haze of threatening skies. It never stops. Bizarre and extraordinary things unfold as a matter of course to the point where they are ordinary and expected. One waits for the next explosion, the next eruption, the next blow to the pit of the stomach. It always comes, and the shock of the last one recedes into the distance of yesterday or last week or last month. I wit-ness unhinged and irrational behavior, bordering on madness. With no visible regard for any consequences. It is a crumpled, confused world of opposites, a fragmented false reality: down is up, west is east, wrong is right, and night is day. Weak is strong. And death is life, in this life.

In the aftermath of the latest events that have unfolded, some have prayed to the Lord to open eyes that cannot see. I have not and will not. Those who have deliberately chosen not to see will walk into the destructive consequences of their choices. To them, darkness is light. And light darkness.

They who sow the wind will reap the whirlwind. God is not mocked. I believe that. I also believe the present whirlwind in my own life may well be the result of my own sowing the wind on the long trail of a checkered past. Who can say? Lord knows I have done plenty of that. Sowing the wind, I mean. In most separations, there are no adult innocents. And ours is no different than most.

A lot of crap has come rolling down the pike in the last few months. Some of it is known, and some unknown. Some has passed and some comes soon to fruition. And some, I’m sure, will emerge from the sulfuric darkness of the second dimension in the near future. All of it will be “proclaimed from the rooftop” into the light of day on this blog in due time.

These are trying times. But not unusual. Such things have been with us always. It’s just unusual in that it happened to happen to me and others close to me. And I don’t want to hear any blather about how we can all use this situation as an example of the falling away of the end times. We can’t. Pious end-time platitudes do not apply. (I consider end-time teachers to be false prophets anyway.) We can view these strange days as an example of the vile and fallen condition of the human heart. That is all.

These are uncharted waters. For those involved and the extended families. And there ain’t no instruction manual. Overall, I am doing remarkably well emotionally. My mental status remains amazingly stable and calm. The thought flits through my mind that I may be in shock and will at some point erupt into madness and rage. But I think not. So much has transpired over the last ten months that little jolts me anymore. The defenses are up, the flaming arrows pierce but do not penetrate an invisible shield. Below that shield, I stolidly proceed with the remains of the day. And the remains of my life.

In the current situation, I almost feel worse for my family than for myself. My siblings and their children view the unfolding events with horror, mostly from a distance. They almost cannot comprehend or process the brutal reality of what is happening. They think it cannot be. As do many others.

But it can be. And is. And will be, apparently.

They hurt for me. I feel it from those nearby. And from those afar. And I appreciate it. A lot. To them I say, “Thanks and I love you. I’ll be there when it rains on you.” In battles of this nature, the participants cannot pass off their burdens to others, regard-less of others’ willingness to take them on. The battle must be faced alone, by those involved. However brutal the terrain, however long the duration. Whatever the cost.

Battles have collateral damage. At the very center, in the eye of the hurricane, two families. Then four extended families. Then those around them, including members of a little church nestled at the top of the hill in Gap, PA. The church house is probably a hundred years old. What has all transpired inside those walls over the course of years has been lost in the fog of history. The church sat vacant for many years. Then a hopeful, optimistic little group began a new church. It was considered a bit out-there by the surrounding conservative communities. But it prospered and blossomed.

But, unknown to anyone, part of the foundation was infirm and rotting from the start. Earlier this year, the optimistic little group took a direct and devastating hit. The con-gregation exploded. Many left. A shaken core hangs on. The remaining leadership has endured a lot of heat. Fairly or unfairly. Although decisions were made that I did not understand, I did not criticize. Monday morning quarterbacking, so easy in retrospect, benefits no one. Then or now. I believe the leaders did the best they knew with what they knew, at the time they knew it. Including some pretty heavy decisions this past week. But twisted piles of wreckage mar the landscape. Collateral damage. From demonic warfare. Now wicked realms rejoice.

As I walk the fields of my memories as a child, there was one who was present from my earliest recollections. One who was always there, somewhere, in every facet of my development from childhood to young adulthood to the present years. One I trusted, one who I had not the slightest doubt would be there always, until death. It was not to be. Now those fields are shorn and vacant, swept by desolate winds, the memories shattered and defiled. I know him not at all and wonder if I ever did. And that jolts the core of who I am.

One day, soon, I will curse him. Before God. Right here, on this site.

These are strange days. An evil pulse throbs and resonates below the surface. I con-sider and absorb many things. I am not afraid, but there are crevices in my mind I have refused to enter or examine. It hurts too much. It’s a bitter harvest, reaping the whirlwind. It’s a heart blown to smithereens in the vast and barren infinity of the second dimension.

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This site was down several times this week. I apologize. Occasionally, the site just disappears for no discernable reason. My webmaster says it’s for maintenance. Of course, when it goes down, it’s always in the evening, right when site traffic reaches its very peak. I would think the maintenance could be done at 3AM instead of prime time.

Well, the Red Sox made it. For any who care to check (9/21 blog), I predicted they would reach and win the World Series. Of course, the other team I picked, the Mets, promptly choked and crashed. I felt bad for Cleveland and actually was hoping they would get to the Series, but the Sox pitching just overwhelmed them when it counted, especially Josh Beckett in Game 5. And now, in the Series, the scrappy Rockies are suddenly down 0-2. I kind of feel bad for them; they made a great run to get there. But it’s not over until it’s over.

In college football this weekend, I will grit my teeth and cheer for Ohio State against Penn State. Both fan bases are pretty obnoxious, almost equally so. But I so despise Penn State that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. But just this one night. After that, I will go back to booing Jim Tressel and his team as usual. Just like I did in last year’s championship game against Florida State, in which the Buckeyes were badly kicked about and soundly beaten. It was a sweet and joyful night.

I have not hiked for more than two months. Now with the fall colors, I plan to take one more loop around the Tucquan Glen trail, maybe as early as this Sunday. If the rain stops. This late in the year, I won’t have to worry about Lyme’s disease, and if I hike on a Sunday, the hunters either. In PA, it’s illegal to hunt on Sunday.

Jason requested a definition of “regressively conservative.” While I have not been around the little church I defined as such for many years, I remember that when I left in the early 1990s, a lot of families were joining from Amish or other plainer settings. These people tended to drag with them certain severe practices, ie galluses, long beards, etc. Even some little black hats. Unfortunately (in my opinion), they influenced the church in a plainer direction, which I resented. I recall grim somber faces (but few names), little humor, and much talk about the virtues of serving soup instead of fancy meals to Sunday dinner guests. As if that will make one holier. (Not that there’s any-thing wrong with soup. I eat as much as the next guy.) Once I was admonished that the red shirt I was wearing was too loud, and therefore sinful. If that isn’t regressively conservative, I don’t know what it is. All that said, I don’t know if that condition remains in that church today. I have no beefs with anyone there and wish them well.

Special thanks to Ray and Maggie (my sister) Marner for the box of healthy goodies.

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