Moving day
Elam quit shaving today.
Amos’ brother was married last autumn during the traditional wedding season in Lancaster. After spending much of the previous few months visiting relatives along with his new bride, today was finally the day to hang his hat under his own roof.
Moving into one’s own home around here means that you start growing a beard. So it would actually be more correct to say that Elam quit shaving all but a one-inch-thick strip stretching from one ear to the other.
Taking up residence in one’s own abode is a rite of passage which also means that Elam will begin entering church on Sundays with the men as well.
To help Elam and Mary get off on the right foot, he enlisted the help of family, as is customary.
AÂ moving truck and my pickup helped get the heavy stuff door-to-door, and then it was grunting and sweating to angle box mattresses and cupboards up stairs and around corners.
Showing an unjustified level of confidence in me, at one point Amos stuck a power drill in my hand, gave a few vague instructions, and soon I was hanging shelves and other such niceties in the upper bedrooms of the add-on that Elam and Mary have attached to their grandfather’s already-existing home.
Somehow we made it through that mostly intact, and I only created one additional job in the process (broken bedframe). So a relatively good scorecard, if I do say so myself.
Lunch included commemorative iced wedding cake, frozen after last November’s ceremony. Suprisingly fresh-tasting for being in a freezer so long.
All in all a nice event to help out with. Many hands make light work.
Congrats to Elam and Mary. Sounds like they have a good friend in you.
Please tell them OldKat send shis regards!
Are there any Amish bachelor farmers (to correspond to the Norwegian bachelor farmers of Garrison Keilor) or other never-married older Amish men? And if so, do they continue to shave into old age?
Amish bachelors
There are sometimes older never-married Amish men, though it’s not too common as you’d imagine. And I don’t expect many would farm, lacking the ‘manpower’ that comes with having a large family. I recall meeting bachelors with home businesses but never a farm. Offhand I can say that in some settlements there is an age when bachelor men grow beards. In Allen County, IN, this was at 40. If I’m not mistaken I believe it is about the same in Lancaster. Again this varies and even the time a married man begins a beard can vary between settlements/affiliations.
And thanks OldKat! They are good people.