NORTH BLOOMFIELD, OH — The idyllic image many Americans harbor of Amish culture got a sharp edit last weekend in Turnbull County, Ohio, when police tried to question a couple of fellows about something common everywhere in rural America on a warm Saturday night.
It was actually Sunday morning, an hour past midnight. The report said Turnbull County sheriff’s deputies saw two Amish men drinking beer in the back of the buggy as the driverless horse trotted down the road.
On the roof of the buggy was a 12-pack of Michelob Ultra. When police searched the buggy, they found a fairly elaborate sound system had been wired in — ingenious, however contrary to Amish culture.
The two men jumped off and ran into the woods when police tried to pull over the buggy at Donley and Mahan Parker Roads, news station WKBN reported. It will require some explaining in a culture where alcohol is frowned upon to get the horse and buggy back.
Police confiscated both. The buggy was towed, and the horse was turned over to someone else for care until the owner steps forward to claim it, the report said.
Noteworthy because it’s unusual, the incident illustrates a predicament of the Amish culture. How, in a world driven by technological wizardry and a society built on mass consumerism, are they going to literally keep their youth down on the farm?
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When they’re 16, young Amish socialize with their friends on weekends in the tradition of “rumspringa” and take in modern culture before deciding if they want to be baptized. Amish elders hope rumspringa will end in a marriage, but it could extend into the mid- to late-20s for those who don’t marry.
Some rumspringa flings expose the schism between regimented and unembellished Amish culture and the wild abandon sometimes reflected in modern American culture.
In 2016, police busted a large Amish party in a field near Millsburg, Ohio, The Daily Record reported. About 75 people, both juveniles and adults, were arrested; two people were hospitalized with alcohol-related symptoms; and several were booked for resisting arrest, The Associated Press reported. Before police intervened, it had been expected to draw about 1,000 Amish youth, the report said.
In some ways, the problems Amish families work through aren’t that different from the issues other families struggle with, according to the Amish Studies academic website developed by the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Pennsylvania’s Elizabethtown College.
“Sometimes rebellious youth act out and abuse alcohol or use drugs,” a statement on the website says. “Some marriages turn sour. There are documented cases of incest and sexual abuse in some families.
“Although such problems do exist, there are no systematic studies to enable comparisons with other groups or mainstream society. In general, the Amish way of life provides many sources of satisfaction for most of its members.”