What Not to Do to a Buggy Driver

This story made it to the Miller Christmas gathering via my brother Ronald, who heard it from his friend in Plain City. The Plain City friend has a wife from Holmes County where this story allegedly happened. I don't know for sure, but I think Ronald must have told Bill when he and Dorcas and Maria stopped at Ron's house in Labette County on their way from North Carolina to Kansas. Ronald was not present at our Christmas gathering, but Bill was.

As I heard and remember the story, two brothers were taking turns "test driving" a buggy horse, possibly just being broke. When the first brother was out on the road, he encountered a vehicle with two people in it. While one of them drove, the other "mooned" the buggy driver.

Before the next brother took his turn on the road with the horse and buggy, the first one told him about what had happened. While the second brother was taking his turn he saw an identical situation developing--same vehicle, two people, passing him, then turning around and coming back. With the advantage of being forewarned, the buggy driver made a few preparations for what he was pretty sure would happen next.

Just as the vehicle came abreast and the unwelcome sight presented itself, he brought the business end of his buggy whip down smartly on the exposed portion of that person's anatomy. The two conveyances were traveling in opposite directions at the time, but he saw that the "mooney" vehicle turned around and prepared to come up behind him again. The buggy driver found it prudent at that moment to turn off the road into the driveway of his friends' home. The car followed the buggy part way into the driveway and sat there for a time, with its occupants probably fuming or smarting or both. Then it left.

Afterward, when the story circulated at Schrock's, where a lot of Amish men are employed, someone thought to ask a respected Amish preacher whether that was a nonresistant thing to do--with the buggy whip.

His answer was priceless: "Vell . . . von 's gadue wa in dee leevee." (Well . . . if it was done in love.)