We talked to Allen and Rachel Smith, and they gave us a seventy-nine Lincoln to drive, telling us if we wanted to keep it we could pay them at a later date. "What do you want to do for a living?" Allen asked me. "Become a truck driver," I said. "No problem, I was a truck driver all my life I'll teach you how to become a professional truck driver." Allen and I talked it over. Since Fran and I were no longer with the Amish, Allen and I thought it would be better if we moved away from where we were living, and put our place up for sale. We were living right next to my brother Pete, and since we were no longer Amish it was causing Pete a lot of problems. I didn't want to cause Pete any trouble, so Allen helped us find a place to live in Heuvelton, New York.
By February of 1992 we had our place sold to an English party out of Odgensburg. We took that money and paid Allen and Rachel for the Lincoln. We bought a tractor and trailer with the rest of it. Around the fifteenth of February my brother Pete came to our house in Heuvelton one evening. I invited Pete in and turned the television off. Pete pulled out his checkbook and wrote me a check for a thousand dollars. "What's this for?" I asked Pete. "The preachers ordered me to pay you back the money you paid me for the land. When you paid me you were still excommunicated, and as you know, I can't take money from an excommunicated Amish man." It didn't make any sense to me. I bought the land from Pete, put buildings on the land, and I sold the land. Now, Pete was out the land and the money, but he was ordered to make sure I got the thousand dollars back. To keep Pete from getting in trouble I took the check. However, it was up to me what I did with the thousand dollars. So, while Pete was sitting talking with me, I burned the check right in front of him. Pete just smiled.
A couple weeks later Pete sent me another check for a thousand dollars. I kept this one. They might be able to make Pete pay me back, but they couldn't make me cash the check. And I never have. Under what Bible scripture did the Bishop Jacob Miller come up with his excuse? He stated earlier it wasn't against the biblical scripture to accept money from an excommunicated man as long as the pay off isn't done directly by my brother Pete and I. He was the one who Okayed the pay off in the first place. Could it have been just because I was now, wearing a different set of clothes? He knew I still cared very much for my brother Pete, and this was just one more way to get at me.
Now we've put all this behind us, and I'm out hauling all different kinds of freight. Sometimes I would take a load of fertilizer to Holden, Maine and bring a load of potatoes back to New York State. I stayed busy doing this. However, I also learned what its' like to have a break down out in the middle of nowhere. But, I was managing and learning, and things were going okay. The winter was almost over, and I was looking forward to spring. Just when things started looking brighter for us, we received a phone call from brother Pete's neighbor telling us my mother had died that weekend. We were in shock. My mother had appeared very healthy for her age. At only sixty-five years old, she'd had a fatal stroke. I asked Pete's neighbor if he could please ask brother Pete if we were allowed to come and pay our respects to my mother. Pete's answer was, "I have to talk to the Preachers first".
Bishop Jacob was quick to reply that the answer was "no". The Bishop's reason was that they didn't allow vehicles in their funerals. However, this wasn't true at all. There were all kinds of English vehicles parked there the day of the funeral. All I wanted to do was to see my mother. We would gladly have parked our car by brother Pete's neighbor's home. But the Bishop said none of us was allowed to see Mom. Pete clearly stated that the Amish didn't want to see us at his home during this time. He said he would have no other choice but to lock the doors and not let us in, since we were no longer Amish. It hurt me very much to think that someone could hate me so much he would make my children suffer. Pete's neighbor couldn't believe what he was seeing or hearing. He invited us to stay at his house during that time so at least we'd be close by.
The day of the funeral we stood out by the road and watched Mom go by in her coffin. Our two daughters were crying. My Dad died thirty-three days later. Pete's neighbor called and gave us the message. Before the funeral we were back at Pete's neighbor's home. However, this Amish buggy stopped in at Pete's neighbor's home, and this time I got to talk to Amish man. I explained very frankly what I thought the situation. Then I said, "My children are innocent. They had nothing to do with this. Please let them see their Grandpa for the last time." The Amish man took this information back down to my brother Pete and Pete took it up with the Preachers. The answer was yes; we could come and see Dad but only for fifteen minutes. When I got the news I almost cried, at least our children got to pay their respects to their Grandpa. We weren't allowed to attend the funeral. But fifteen minutes was better than nothing.
The day of the funeral we stood by the road also and watch the coffin go by. After all this was over with I tried to stay busy and stay clear of the Amish. I kept my truck rolling all over the U.S.A. I parked my truck and decided to become a company driver, which has a lot fewer headaches. In 1994 Fran decided she wanted to learn how to become a truck driver. I paid for the truck driving school, and she proved that a little Amish lady could drive a big rig.
After Fran graduated from the driving school I took her on the road and taught her what it was all about. She loves every minute of it. And the money is good. In 1995, we were living in Jasper, Alabama. In the spring, we got a message about my sister Emma and her husband Andy. Andy was always very abusive. However, this fit was another explosion, this man was an animal with his wife and kids. My sister Emma was no angel, either. I had worked for Andy and sister Emma when I was fourteen or fifteen years old. It was only for a couple of weeks Andy was in a tight spot, and needed help to catch up with his farm work. We both had a team of horses and were out in the field getting the ground ready to sow the winter wheat. Around five o'clock that evening we unhitched our teams, and headed toward the barn. Andy was ahead of me by five minutes.
When he got to the barn his two oldest children Robert and Mary, four years old and three years old respectively, were upstairs in the barn playing in a fresh batch of cow feed. Andy got so furious that he didn't even take time to unhitch his team of horses. Instead, he took a strap off one of his horses' harnesses, and ran up to where the children were. The strap he had in his hand had a big, heavy buckle on it. He used this strap on his children, busting their skin wide open. I only saw the end of it. At the time I said to Andy, "What's going on?" He said, "Got to get them while they're young, break their spirit." I was terribly upset, and was relieved to go back home and work for the higher classed Amish.
Another time, I had just gone to bed when I heard an awful noise. It sounded like a wild voice coming from the bedroom downstairs. I decided to get up and see what was going on. When I reached the top of the stairs, I heard the door rattle downstairs. I slowly made it down stairs until I could see into the bedroom. There was Andy half bent over. He had a hold on each end of the baby bed and he was shaking it with every ounce of strength he had in his body. Sister Emma was sitting at the edge of the bed. I could tell by the look on her face that she was terrified. I didn't know what to say or do. But I had to do something, I was afraid he was going to kill his little boy, who wasn't even six months old. That poor baby was flying all over that little crib. I said, "Andy, what are you doing?" He quickly replied, "The Devil got a hold of my child. I have to break that spirit." Thankfully, my arrival was enough to stop Andy. I later learned the baby had a stomachache and had been crying.
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