An Unusual Amish Community Phone (Before & After Photos)

A reader in central Minnesota shares some photos of an Amish community phone. In many Amish settlements, families share a common phone. So that aspect is not uncommon. But there’s one thing about this phone setup that I’ve never seen before.

But before we take a look, it’s worth mentioning that Amish use the telephone in many different ways. Here are three options (though these aren’t the only ways Amish have and use phones).

Option #1: No phones at all

On one extreme are the plainest Amish who don’t have their own phone access at all – neither personal phones nor community phones located somewhere off-property. These Amish will need to borrow a neighbor’s phone in an emergency.

Swartzentruber Amish hand-made business card. No phone available

If you want to do business with them, you’ll need to visit them personally, or write them. This is the common way with the Swartzentruber Amish, for instance.

Option #2: Smartphone

On the other end are Amish, often progressive business people (though not always) with smartphones. Some of them place rules upon their smartphones. That might mean only using them between certain business hours, and/or leaving them locked in the work truck after hours (ie, not bringing them into the home).

Amish girl using smartphone. Some adults use them as well. Photo:

But there are Amish adults who use not just basic cell phones, but internet-enables smartphones. You’ll find people like this in major business-driven Amish communities, like Lancaster County or northern Indiana.

Option #3: Shared Community Phone

A “middle way” of sorts is to have a shared community phone, as mentioned above. The phone is located at some central location, such as by the roadside or at the end of a farm lane, and may be shared by several or even a half-dozen Amish households.

Amish couple at a shared community phone shanty

They are often housed in small shack-like buildings which are sometimes mistaken by outside observers for outhouses in their shape and size.

Essentially, different Amish churches come to different conclusions on how much phone use is acceptable, and in what ways. Even then, there will be gray area and “line pushers”.

One Amish Community’s Phone Setup

So the phone our reader shares is, or at least originally was, not in a shanty. In fact, I have never seen a setup like this. He explains:

I helped him with his phone, it was all scratchy and cutting us off. It had a noisy line. I had to call phone company CenturyLink and explain the phone was not in a house, that there would be nobody home to let them in, that it’s under a blue barrel at the end of the long driveway, out by the gravel road. Just go there and Fix-It.

Fortunately the lady at the call center had a friend who was Amish, so she understood. 3 or 4 families use the phone. Can you imagine using the thing, standing out there in that ditch full of snow at -20F. below zero? Brrrr! See pictures attached of the phone…

So, you pick up the barrel, and underneath you find this…

The barrel is just a very basic form of protection from the weather. Here you can make out some papers with scribbled notes, and an “Amish taxi” business card.

He adds that this group quite closely resemble the Troyer Amish (one of the plainer Amish groups, though not as plain as Swartzentruber Amish).

I got a kick out of this…like I said, I’ve never seen such an arrangement. But as far as a simple solution, it does the trick. But after some time, things changed here…

Two Years Later…

Our reader sends some follow-up photos, taken two years later. Something has changed here!

The barrel is gone…replaced by a basic metal phone shanty.

Let’s have a look inside…

You see a chair and newspapers, what looks like a phonebook and a notebook or book for phone numbers, some pre-paid phone cards, assorted pens and other items.

What I don’t see is any sort of way to generate heat, or even much in the way of insulation, for that matter. But I suppose that just being inside when it’s 20 below makes difference enough – especially if you have a lot of messages to listen to and/or calls to make. Big comfort upgrade!

So we see that even in plainer communities, things change. Though, this is not exactly an earth-shattering change.

In fact, it may just be that this group didn’t have anything against have a shanty structure, but it may have just been simpler to use the barrel to start with. On that, our reader adds:

This replaced the blue barrel they had. I suppose it got too cold standing out there in the winter and too wet if a call had to be made in the summer if it was raining.

That sounds reasonable. Practicality wins out in the end.

For more, see:

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7 Comments

  1. Denise

    Phone Shanty Upgrade

    I loved this post! Photos tell the story. I like the eye level windows. The upgrade has lots of “conveniences”.

    1. Erik Wesner

      Glad you pointed those windows out. A simple & functional design!

  2. Kensi

    Phone

    I’d honestly love to toss my phone out the window. We English have gotten too attached to them. 🙂

    1. Central Virginian

      Same!

      As I was reading, I thought the exact same thing. Would be nice to have a break from the daily barrage of robo/scam calls.

      1. Erik Wesner

        Interesting idea to solve the robo-call problem. Maybe even a suburban version of this, one landline every block or two 🙂

  3. Leana

    Amish on smartphone

    That photo of a girl on a smartphone was a screamer!
    That is one place I would think was safe from the smartphone addiction thing…lol !
    I know she may have just been using it for a moment but just that visual…. because you see so many people now walking around glued to their smartphones like a short leash and they peck away and never look up for hours until they walk off a cliff or something like that!
    Just don’t let that happen to them, of all people. No one is safe then.
    This was a very interesting read.

    1. Central Virginian

      Shanty Phone

      That’s the advantage of the shared outdoor phones. Not convenient nor comfortable for long gossip sessions. Only worth the trouble for absolutely necessary calls.