Amish Confidential
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Authors: Lebanon" Levi Stoltzfus
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For my big brother Samuel Stoltzfus (1965–2013),
who was always there when we needed him most
CONTENTS
PART I: BEATING MY PATH
PART II: MAKING OUR STAND
PART III: BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME
INTRODUCTION:
PUBLIC ENEMY
W
hat did I ever do to the governor? I had never even met the man. But the governor and his people had clearly been keeping a close eye on me. And now he had something important to reveal: Of all the thugs, criminals, miscreants and lowlifes in the state of Pennsylvania, I was Public Enemy Number One.
Me, a community-spirited businessman from a large Amish family! Me, a laid-back thirty-five-year-old who happened to appear in a popular television show! Apparently, the whole state—excuse me, the whole
country
—needed to be protected from me.
Okay, so maybe I’m not the perfect role model. I know some scruffy people. I do like to run around. When I was younger, I picked up a couple of DUIs, which I’m not proud of, okay? But other than those, the worst offense on my rap sheet is a measly dis-con, disorderly conduct, for mouthing off to a cop at the three-day Country Concert at Hickory Hill Lakes in Ohio. I wouldn’t tell him where my tent was. I didn’t want him watching me and my friends for the rest of our vacation. He found a nice holding cell for me instead. That might make me a bit of a hothead. It doesn’t mean I’m a twenty-first-century Al Capone.
But there was Pennsylvania governor Tom Corbett in August of 2014, coming out of his hole in Harrisburg. His approval ratings were lower than poison ivy’s. He was about as popular with the voters as deer ticks. And now he was aiming a fat load of phony outrage straight at me. What can I tell you? Politicians at election time will grasp at anything. Someone must have told the governor about
Amish Mafia
, the Discovery Channel series that follows my unlikely adventures as an unsanctioned guardian of the Amish. He must have taken me for the black-hatted John Gotti of south-central Pennsylvania. And now he was ready to pounce.
“Bigoted,” Governor Corbett thundered.
“Negative, inaccurate and potentially damaging,” he fumed.
“An affront to all people of faith,” he roared.
The blustering governor signed a petition saying all of that and more. And he was demanding action, too. He wanted the TV show canceled. He wanted the sponsors to all pull out. He wanted the entire production, then entering its fourth successful season, packed up, shut down and bum-rushed out of the state.
Can you believe this guy? How did he get elected in the first place? Was he the governor of Pennsylvania or a frustrated TV critic? Didn’t he have any real issues to worry about? If we were half as bad as he said we were, why had it taken him three years to speak up?
In the governor’s hysterical view, our show was a stone-cold insult to the people of Lancaster County. “It changes the image of the county from one of pastoral beauty, where people are devoted to faith, family and friends,” he contended, “to one of banal ugliness.”
Banal ugliness. I wasn’t even certain what that meant. But I was pretty sure it wasn’t a compliment.
M
y name is Levi Stoltzfus, though most people know me as Lebanon Levi. Born and raised in a devout Amish family, I got tired of seeing Amish people pushed around by forces inside and outside the Amish community. I decided to do something that people from my background rarely do. I started speaking out and standing up. And I did it in public. I think everyone was surprised, me included, when our little TV show shot to the top of the Nielsen ratings, becoming the most watched show on the entire Discovery Channel. Suddenly, I was standing in the middle of this media tornado, semifamous, hugely controversial, wondering what exactly I had done to send the governor of Pennsylvania and his little lackeys around the bend.
I’ll tell you what I did. I dared to start telling the truth about the Amish. The whole truth. The good
and
the bad. And that put a lot of people very much on edge. I went into the outside world, and I didn’t slavishly repeat the usual Amish propaganda from the Lancaster County Chamber of Commerce and Pennsylvania Dutch Convention & Visitors Bureau. You know the stuff I mean: the saintly country bumpkins driving their buggies, milking their cows and hiding their faces from photographs. That version is fine as far it goes. Some of it is even true. But it’s only a fraction of a much larger story, a small fraction. The rest of the story has been carefully hidden from most outsiders, and really it’s the most interesting part. I had the nerve to go on television and start telling the rest.
The Amish are wonderful people. Don’t get me wrong. I love the Amish. My family has been Amish for centuries. The Amish have
made me what I am today. But the Amish aren’t perfect. Nobody is. Not even me. The Amish are living, breathing human beings, not some tourist-brochure cartoons. The Amish have good and bad inside them and plenty in between. I’m sorry, Governor Corbett, but it’s disrespectful and dishonest and just plain dumb to run around pretending otherwise.
I’m not sure what the penalty is for truth-telling in Pennsylvania. But I don’t believe it’s mandatory silence. So I’m not planning on piping down any time soon.
A
s you might imagine, I wasn’t brought up knowing much about Nielsen ratings, political protests or reality TV. We were the plain and simple people. When I was a boy, we weren’t even allowed to have a radio—and that was the 1980s. But slowly we learned. My older brothers found a beat-up Panasonic AM/FM and hooked it up to a twelve-volt car battery. You should have heard that sucker wail! They put it in the back of the family buggy and cruised Lancaster County on Saturday nights like they were the Amish reincarnation of the Beach Boys. My parents were from a different generation and a different mind-set. One night, my brother Henry got home late and forgot to haul the radio up to his room. My stepfather found the forbidden device as he was leaving for church the next morning. He didn’t say anything to anyone. He just smashed the radio into many pieces in front of our house.
Message delivered. Message received.
But the lesson my older brothers learned from that wasn’t the one my stepdad intended. Henry, Sam and Christian quit wasting time on battery-powered radios. They went looking for a small TV.
What can I say? Teenagers are teenagers everywhere, whether they’re wearing black hats and suspenders or backward baseball caps and board shorts. Those Stoltzfus boys sure had spirit, you had to admit that.
Governor Corbett was half-right. The Amish are hardworking, God fearing, plain living, self-effacing, community oriented, suspicious of modern conveniences and all of that. But that’s not all they are. There’s a whole lot more to the Amish than that. There are Amish who go to the movies (I’ve loved action-adventure films since I was a teenager), drink alcohol (I’m a Captain Morgan–and–Sprite man), play in loud rock bands (bass guitar for me), follow the NFL (E-A-G-L-E-S, Eagles!), squabble with the neighbors, complain about the relatives, talk on cell phones, trade half-true gossip, judge one another harshly and flirt with the opposite sex—just like regular people do. Well, not
just
like regular people. In Amish Country, folks have their own unique ways of doing almost everything. Often, technicalities are cited. (“I only use the phone for business.” “I’m spying on my neighbors to protect my kids.”) Frequently, secrecy is involved. (“Why do you think God made tinted windows? So Amish drivers can relax at the red light!”) Sometimes, the rules make no sense at all. (“Snaps are forbidden, pins are fine.” “Electricity is the devil’s juice, diesel’s okay.”) And it isn’t just the laws of man the Amish have to worry about. Eternal damnation is an even bigger threat. From what I’ve heard, there’s no time off for good behavior down there.
And yet these very same people are every good thing you’ve heard they are and more. The Amish are capable of extraordinary acts of kindness, forgiveness and decency. They’ll rebuild a neighbor’s barn after a fire. They’ll give food and shelter to a struggling local family without expecting any payback. They’ll go so far as to
forgive a non-Amish milk-truck driver who commits mass murder inside a defenseless Amish school.
That, right there, in the space between the two extremes of Amish living, is where many real Amish people are today, the younger generation especially. Pulled between the ancient and modern, a foot in either world, new opportunities colliding with centuries-old guilt. Generations are changing. Time is marching on. The farms are worth millions. The children are harder to control. And Old Order Amish families are still riding around in horse-and-buggies—at least some of the time.
What the heck is going on here? People deserve answers. Real answers. That’s why I decided to write this book.
We’ve addressed some of this on the TV show, far more than anyone ever expected us to. But there is so much more to tell. About the way the Amish treat one another when no one else is looking. About the bullying, the deceit, the conniving and the gossip. About the kindness and the generosity, too. About the face the Amish show to outsiders and the face they show to one another. Some days, it’s a wonder those two faces even recognize each other.
The bishops won’t discuss it. The visitors bureau won’t, either. The professors and the pseudo-experts certainly won’t, if they even know it, which many of them do not. Do you hear me, Professor Kraybill, with your rose-colored pronouncements about the Amish? Do you hear me, Mary Haverstick, with your petitions to yank my show? Do you hear me, Governor Corbett, with your cheesy Amish pandering at election time?
When you get right down to it, the Amish are a whole lot different from the fairy tale the world’s been fed over the years. But read on. The rest of the truth is ahead.
You may be wondering how I can speak so freely about a society so closed. I will explain. My family connections and the power of the TV show give me some protection. But I draw even more from a technicality in the Ordnung, the code of conduct that all Amish people are expected to live by. Despite my solid Amish upbringing and my strong Amish roots, I had an eye-opening Rumspringa, the period when Amish teens get their first taste of real-world freedom. And I ultimately chose not to get baptized in the Old Order Amish church. I’m New Order Amish now, which is still pretty Amish. But there’s enough wiggle room between the two to drive a black Cadillac through. Believe me, my current car has a much smoother ride than my old horse-and-buggy.
My traditional upbringing and my loving family taught me almost everything there is to know about being Amish. And for better or worse, this edgy TV show has turned me into the most famous Amish tough guy ever born. It’s handed me a powerful platform, and I intend to keep using it. I have decided to take that special role of mine somewhere no Amish insider has ever gone before. Wish me luck. I’m going to need it.
I’m taking my marching orders from a higher authority, which is exactly what the Amish are taught to do. John 8:32: “And you will know the truth, and that truth will set you free.” Not the tourist version. Not a bunch of misty-eyed Amish clichés. Not the random imaginings of some dimwitted politicians or clueless outsider or pseudo-experts. The truth.
This is my real-deal, up-close-and-personal account of what it means to be Amish today. The inspirations and the contradictions. The soaring theory and the gritty practice. The many, many Amish realities that outsiders aren’t supposed to see. This is what goes on behind the buggies, the bonnets and the beards.
So here’s my tell-all tour of real Amish life, the way I have lived it and witnessed it over the past thirty-five years. It’s an important story and a surprising one. I can promise you this much: Keep on reading, and you will never see the Amish the same way again. Hold on tight, now. The ride might be bumpy. But the fun has only begun. There is nothing plain and simple about the “plain and simple life.”
