Lebanon Levi Stoltzfus - Amish Confidential

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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.

Message delivered. Message received.

But the lesson my older brothers learned from that wasnt the one my stepdad intended. Henry, Sam and Christian quit wasting time on battery-powered radios. They went looking for a small TV.

What can I say? Teenagers are teenagers everywhere, whether theyre wearing black hats and suspenders or backward baseball caps and board shorts. Those Stoltzfus boys sure had spirit, you had to admit that.

Governor Corbett was half-right. The Amish are hardworking, God fearing, plain living, self-effacing, community oriented, suspicious of modern conveniences and all of that. But thats not all they are. Theres a whole lot more to the Amish than that. There are Amish who go to the movies (Ive loved action-adventure films since I was a teenager), drink alcohol (Im a Captain MorganandSprite man), play in loud rock bands (bass guitar for me), follow the NFL (E-A-G-L-E-S, Eagles!), squabble with the neighbors, complain about the relatives, talk on cell phones, trade half-true gossip, judge one another harshly and flirt with the opposite sexjust like regular people do. Well, not just like regular people. In Amish Country, folks have their own unique ways of doing almost everything. Often, technicalities are cited. (I only use the phone for business. Im spying on my neighbors to protect my kids.) Frequently, secrecy is involved. (Why do you think God made tinted windows? So Amish drivers can relax at the red light!) Sometimes, the rules make no sense at all. (Snaps are forbidden, pins are fine. Electricity is the devils juice, diesels okay.) And it isnt just the laws of man the Amish have to worry about. Eternal damnation is an even bigger threat. From what Ive heard, theres no time off for good behavior down there.