How life was

Project with the elderly



( Opa and Oma is German for grandpa(Opa) and grandma(Oma))





Well let me start off by saying this project was one of the more entertanining projects i have done in my 16 years of living. It gave me much insight into the past's problems, advantages, and the effect it had and has on our preasent life. I hope you find it as entertaning and insightfull as i did while writing this.



First of all my grandparents were mostly Amish except my Oma which hails from Germany. Therefor some of you might be familiar with some of the practices they had. Enjoy!



Church was held every 2 weeks, between the sundays they would go and visit with family and friends or some times they would go to another distict to go to church. The services were often held in a families home with people sitting on unmercieful wooden benches with no backs (ouch!).The whole service was in german , this included the songs and scripture reading. The preacher would recite the scripturs from memory, and some times would preach till 1:00 pm. After being dissmissed they would eat luch togather, the lunch usally consisted of bread, swiss cheese, jam, peanut butter,coffe, butter, red beets, and pickels. For the remainder of the day they would have company over and/or play games. During the week they had singings that they could go to.



Family outings usally consisted of going to a lake, having picnics, or staying home in the back yard and playing games. Some of the games they enjoyed playing were hide and go seek, andy over, got you last, croquett, base ball, volly ball, and horse shoes.





For transportation they would usally walk, ride buggy, or bike. They rode the hoarse and buggy with their parents or older sibblings untill they got their own horse and buggy. When my grandpa was 25 he got got his first car, a 52 plymouth. The buggies where veary plain, my grandpa once had a buggy and had inset the lights to make it look more like a car but then the elders told him he had to change it because it was to worldly.





To earn money they usaly grew there own produce and would mabey take it into town or have a stand where they would sell it to people. some times they would work for their aunt, uncle or other family members . My grandpa would work for his uncle 10 or more hours a day and would get $35.00 per month. Girls raley worked out of the home, some times if a mother had a new born, girls would go over and help the mother untill she was able to do house work again.





16 was the "magic" age that they could start dating. The date usally was to take the girl to Sunday evening singing then take her home after word ( totaly romantic!). But as my opa said " The younger you started daiting the more problems you tend to expiriance."





Since they had no computers or dvd's they usally had to find there source of entertainment out side. Some times they had small loacal fairs in town that they would go to. The rocks that they would put on the road some times had little indean beeds in them that my opa and his brother would like to hunt for. Also they would like look for arrow heads. My grandpa had a home made scooter that he enjoyed riding on.





For schooling some attended public schools while others went to privet schools. The public school where not like the schools today, they were very organized and strict. The teacher was alloud to spank a chld if he or she thought fight, my opa described the spanking stike his teacher had, he said "It was about 24'' long and had holes in it , as to sting very much." But my grandma went to a one room privet school. In the middle of the room was a pot belly stove so they could keep warm during the winter times.