The Amish are a blunt people with an edgy sense of humor. He travels often and has visited almost every state in the union.īut he discovered that there were Amish qualities and personality traits he had that collided with the social conventions of his new world and that he had to tame. Swartzentruber still retains that wide-eyed wonder of the world. “I wanted to take a picture, because I didn’t know if I was going to see another one,” he said. Driving down an interstate, Swartzentruber saw his first overpass bridge. Soon after he left the Amish, Swartzentruber went on a cross-country furniture run to California. It was hard not to be dazzled by this new world after the cramped existence of Amish life. “It’s hard to ask questions, because every question that I have, I feel like it’s the stupidest question ever,” Swartzentruber said. But his Amish upbringing outfitted him with skills and an outlook that helped him succeed in the English world. He had only an eighth-grade education (He has since gotten his GED). When he fled the Amish, he had no driver’s license, no birth certificate, no social security number. Swartzentruber began his new life “among the English” basically from scratch. “My mom would always say, ‘The end of the world could come for you in the middle of the night,’” he said. ![]() And for the first five years after leaving the Amish, Swartzentruber had trouble going to sleep at night. But the Amish church exerts a powerful force through its teachings that hedge in community and conformity among congregants.Ĭhildren are taught from an early age that they will roast in the pit of hell when they die if they ever leave the community. Swartzentruber said he felt a desperate urge to explore the wider world. ![]() And they had a glass on the front, which I thought that’d be so awesome (to protect from the cold wind).” They also had a door to get in, in the winter time. Charles Amish were so cool, because they got a triangle in the back of their buggy.
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