|
Jeremiah Garcia: Quintessential Amish
To their Amish neighbors, the Weltchers, a family of organic farmers in Lancaster who dressed, worked, and smelled primitive, were just new member of their religious community. Until they saw the family jump into a late-60's model Volkswagen van and ride off to town. The Weltchers were immediately shunned. But the Weltchers aren't actually Amish, they're hippies. "Oh, boy, am I glad ya told me that, English," said Jebediah Yotters, who owns a dairy and Labrador Retriever farm next to the Weltcher's farmette. "I saw them climb into a vehicle with those multi-colored shirts and I went to level five shun right there on the spot." Yotters wasn't the only Amish who opened up a can of whoop-shun. Lydia Schnordder, female Amish rap artist and head of the Mount Olive Women's Shunning committee, was prepared to take her group to the Weltcher's farm and then turn away, just as they answered the door. "I'm not gonna lie. It's some gangsta shunning we women folk had been cooking up, fa-shizzle," said Schnordder. "You don't come into our hood, living off the land, smellin' ripe and sanctimonious and not be wearing the black and tying suspenders to da slacks, you know what I'm sayin'?" After several attempts at the shunning, the hippie family seemed unaware of the suspicion they were causing in the community. The Weltchers had led a Bohemian life of more drugs, free love and unrestrained behavior to such an extent that they eventually turned their backs on the world to become Amish-ish. "There's very little to suggest we led this hippie life," said Benjamin Weltchers, patriarch of the hippie family. "Perhaps a CD collection for our small stereo system that is powered by our windmill." Members of the Amish community were relieved to hear the Weltcher's would no longer need shunning. "Well, just as it is said in the scriptures, 'different strokes for different folks,'" said Ezekial Castoff, potato salad farmer, "Boy, that would make a good television program for you English, would it not?"
|
