One Light Still Shines: My Life Beyond the Shadow of the Amish Schoolhouse Shooting by Marie Monville Read Free Book Online

alongside my dad for a full day on his route, as I would well into my teens, progressing from wide-eyed passenger to wage earner.
    My great-grandfather, Lloyd C. Welk, started the business of hauling milk from the farms to the dairy back in 1963. He’d drive his delivery truck along the winding dirt roads of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, stopping at farms, Amish and English alike, picking up milk in cans and taking them to the local bottling plantin Lancaster. His son, my grandfather Lloyd W. Welk, followed his dad into the business, as did my own father, Ken. By the time my father was a paid driver, my great-grandfather had enlarged the fleet to twenty-one trucks, some of them shiny eighteen-wheel tankers, others a shorter version called straight trucks. Over those same years, many of the farms had grown as well. Rather than delivering the milk to the bottling plant, our trucks now delivered it to large corporate dairies that supplied butter, milk, cream, ice cream, and even nondairy bottled drinks to stores well beyond the boundaries of Pennsylvania.
    Visiting a dairy was a highlight for me as a child. The dairy’s lunchroom refrigerator would always be stocked with a variety of flavors, and we were invited to help ourselves to choices like iced tea, chocolate milk, fruit punch, or orange juice. There was always one to drink and one to take for the ride home.
    I still remember the excitement of driving along as a little girl, just my dad and me, together on a haul. Dad’s invitations to join him made me feel special, grateful that he enjoyed me enough to want to share his big world with me. The gently rolling hills dotted with barns and silos and carpeted with fields of corn, tobacco, alfalfa, soybeans, and more, changed with the seasons. As Dad identified the crops for me and explained the cycles of farming, I was sure he must be the smartest man in the world. I loved bouncing in the front seat of the eighteen-wheeler, watching the precision with which Dad backed down long winding lanes and around barns and outbuildings without ever bumping into anything. He was so expert a driver that he could shift gears without using a clutch, simply judging by the sound of the engine.
    When we pulled into the perfectly manicured Amish farms, Dad would unload the hose from the back of the trailer and hookit up to the farmer’s milk tank. The milk in the farmer’s tank first needed to be measured (with a long measuring stick) and the reading converted into pounds. Then the milk was agitated and sampled to measure its fat content and ensure against bacteria before loading it onto the trailer.
    While the milk was loading, Dad and I would often venture out into the barn, looking for puppies or kittens or just to chat with the farmer. I loved the bright flower gardens, tended with such care, neatly planted along their farm lanes and around their homes and barns. After Dad loaded the milk, he disconnected and put away the hose, then rinsed the milk residue out of the farmer’s milk tank by hand with a garden hose. Then after a friendly wave between my dad and the farmer, off we went to the next farm.
    I was fascinated by the many differences between these Amish families and my own. They always worked and played together, children in the field next to their parents, planting tobacco, hoeing weeds, and harvesting crops. Older boys threw bales of hay onto the wagon or pulled rocks from the tilled ground before planting. The tireless work ethic of the Amish, shared and passed down by so many of the Swiss and German immigrants in the area, was always in evidence on the neat, tidy farms we visited. Hard work was understood at any age and respected. More than that, it seemed to be enjoyed.
    My parents had a large garden every summer — not as extensive as those of most of our Amish neighbors, of course, but sizable. My siblings and I were expected to help plant seeds, pull weeds, and harvest vegetables, but I confess we did not do it with