Henican Ellis - Amish confidential: looking for trouble on Heavens back roads

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Copyright 2015 by Levi Stoltzfus

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First Gallery Books hardcover edition March 2015

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Interior design by Jaime Putorti

Jacket Photograph by Scott McDermott

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Stoltzfus, Levi.

Amish Confidential / by Levi Stoltzfus and Ellis Henican. First Gallery Books hardcover edition.

pages cm

1. Stoltzfus, Levi. 2. Television personalitiesUnited StatesBiography. 3. Amish Mafia (Television program) I. Henican, Ellis. II. Title.

PN1992.4.S79165A3 2015

791.4302'8092dc23

[B]

2014047846

ISBN 978-1-5011-1030-6

ISBN 978-1-5011-1032-0 (ebook)

For my big brother Samuel Stoltzfus (19652013),
who was always there when we needed him most

CONTENTS

PART I: BEATING MY PATH

PART II: MAKING OUR STAND

14: Dont Clape Me, Bro!

PART III: BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME

INTRODUCTION:

PUBLIC ENEMY

W hat did I ever do to the governor? I had never even met the man. But the governor and his people had clearly been keeping a close eye on me. And now he had something important to reveal: Of all the thugs, criminals, miscreants and lowlifes in the state of Pennsylvania, I was Public Enemy Number One.

Me, a community-spirited businessman from a large Amish family! Me, a laid-back thirty-five-year-old who happened to appear in a popular television show! Apparently, the whole stateexcuse me, the whole country needed to be protected from me.

Okay, so maybe Im not the perfect role model. I know some scruffy people. I do like to run around. When I was younger, I picked up a couple of DUIs, which Im not proud of, okay? But other than those, the worst offense on my rap sheet is a measly dis-con, disorderly conduct, for mouthing off to a cop at the three-day Country Concert at Hickory Hill Lakes in Ohio. I wouldnt tell him where my tent was. I didnt want him watching me and my friends for the rest of our vacation. He found a nice holding cell for me instead. That might make me a bit of a hothead. It doesnt mean Im a twenty-first-century Al Capone.

But there was Pennsylvania governor Tom Corbett in August of 2014, coming out of his hole in Harrisburg. His approval ratings were lower than poison ivys. He was about as popular with the voters as deer ticks. And now he was aiming a fat load of phony outrage straight at me. What can I tell you? Politicians at election time will grasp at anything. Someone must have told the governor about Amish Mafia , the Discovery Channel series that follows my unlikely adventures as an unsanctioned guardian of the Amish. He must have taken me for the black-hatted John Gotti of south-central Pennsylvania. And now he was ready to pounce.

Bigoted, Governor Corbett thundered.

Negative, inaccurate and potentially damaging, he fumed.

An affront to all people of faith, he roared.

The blustering governor signed a petition saying all of that and more. And he was demanding action, too. He wanted the TV show canceled. He wanted the sponsors to all pull out. He wanted the entire production, then entering its fourth successful season, packed up, shut down and bum-rushed out of the state.

Can you believe this guy? How did he get elected in the first place? Was he the governor of Pennsylvania or a frustrated TV critic? Didnt he have any real issues to worry about? If we were half as bad as he said we were, why had it taken him three years to speak up?

In the governors hysterical view, our show was a stone-cold insult to the people of Lancaster County. It changes the image of the county from one of pastoral beauty, where people are devoted to faith, family and friends, he contended, to one of banal ugliness.

Banal ugliness. I wasnt even certain what that meant. But I was pretty sure it wasnt a compliment.

M y name is Levi Stoltzfus, though most people know me as Lebanon Levi. Born and raised in a devout Amish family, I got tired of seeing Amish people pushed around by forces inside and outside the Amish community. I decided to do something that people from my background rarely do. I started speaking out and standing up. And I did it in public. I think everyone was surprised, me included, when our little TV show shot to the top of the Nielsen ratings, becoming the most watched show on the entire Discovery Channel. Suddenly, I was standing in the middle of this media tornado, semifamous, hugely controversial, wondering what exactly I had done to send the governor of Pennsylvania and his little lackeys around the bend.

Ill tell you what I did. I dared to start telling the truth about the Amish. The whole truth. The good and the bad. And that put a lot of people very much on edge. I went into the outside world, and I didnt slavishly repeat the usual Amish propaganda from the Lancaster County Chamber of Commerce and Pennsylvania Dutch Convention & Visitors Bureau. You know the stuff I mean: the saintly country bumpkins driving their buggies, milking their cows and hiding their faces from photographs. That version is fine as far it goes. Some of it is even true. But its only a fraction of a much larger story, a small fraction. The rest of the story has been carefully hidden from most outsiders, and really its the most interesting part. I had the nerve to go on television and start telling the rest.

The Amish are wonderful people. Dont get me wrong. I love the Amish. My family has been Amish for centuries. The Amish have made me what I am today. But the Amish arent perfect. Nobody is. Not even me. The Amish are living, breathing human beings, not some tourist-brochure cartoons. The Amish have good and bad inside them and plenty in between. Im sorry, Governor Corbett, but its disrespectful and dishonest and just plain dumb to run around pretending otherwise.

Im not sure what the penalty is for truth-telling in Pennsylvania. But I dont believe its mandatory silence. So Im not planning on piping down any time soon.

A s you might imagine, I wasnt brought up knowing much about Nielsen ratings, political protests or reality TV. We were the plain and simple people. When I was a boy, we werent even allowed to have a radioand that was the 1980s. But slowly we learned. My older brothers found a beat-up Panasonic AM/FM and hooked it up to a twelve-volt car battery. You should have heard that sucker wail! They put it in the back of the family buggy and cruised Lancaster County on Saturday nights like they were the Amish reincarnation of the Beach Boys. My parents were from a different generation and a different mind-set. One night, my brother Henry got home late and forgot to haul the radio up to his room. My stepfather found the forbidden device as he was leaving for church the next morning. He didnt say anything to anyone. He just smashed the radio into many pieces in front of our house.