My Amish Bona Fides

Not lately, but every once in a while, someone questions whether I ever really was Amish. In looking through some family photos this weekend, I found this photograph which proves my credentials. In general, it is forbidden for Amish people to have their pictures taken, so there exist very few photographs of my time as an Amish boy. This one was taken by my Aunt Emma, who worked for us as a maid when I was probably six or seven years old. Aunt Emma by then wasn't Amish anymore. She developed the wanderlust as a late teenager, going to Oklahoma to pick cotton two summers in a row. As soon as she turned 21 (the age of emancipation then,) she took off with her friend Josephine for Florida. Although she, like all Amish children, had left school after completing eighth grade, she got her G.E.D. certificate, attended college, became a registered nurse and worked in New York City as a nurse for many years before finally getting married late in life to a jerk. I'm the one in the middle with the twisted suspender; my sister, Jo Ann, is the little girl on the left; my brother, Wilmer, is on the right and my late brother, Gene, is the baby. Notice the "crockhead" haircuts of Wilmer and me. (And if anyone says, "Ahh, you were so cute," there will be serious violence.)