mangles, big families, fat girls...

Whilst looking through a scrapbook made by my late great aunt, I found a list from 1934 titled “Will they disappear? – Things some people think are going out of date”. The imprecise phrase “some people” kills me.

I asked an Amish women here what kind of things she thinks might go out of date soon. She laughed and said that she couldn’t possibly know and so couldn’t answer. I said I thought that it wasn’t so much the knowing that was interesting but just the kind of guesses that people might make. She agreed but said that she didn’t know and so couldn’t answer. She suggested that I ask their elder – Mr. Hershberger. I went to see him but he was out. I spoke to his neighbour Elva and her ten children for a while. Her son had just caught a pigeon in an upside down bicycle basket in the goat shed. I asked her the same question and she gave me the exact same answer.

The Amish people do not use many modern technologies for example; cars, power-line electricity, the telephone, farm machinery, etc. These labour saving devices are thought to distance people from their communities and so to be a threat to family life. I asked Elva how she remembered particular events where non-Amish people might use photography. She looked at me as though I was crazy and said “we just remember them”.

My memory is terrible – perhaps I take too many photographs? Maybe I could recreate events from my meetings with the Amish, instead of photographs, which would not be allowed and would be disrespectful to do surreptitiously. I would like to make that pigeon captured by an Amish boy. I will call the taxidermist.