The Amish community is very interesting. I would love to have a go living like that. It would not be too difficult for an oldie like me because I grew up in a house without TV, a telephone, a fridge or, when very young, a bathroom.
Really? That's incredible as I'm only a couple of years younger but we certainly had all those things plus central heating. I suppose I lived in the 'affluent south' but I can't remember anyone who didn't have a bathroom or a fridge. There is no way I could live like the Amish but getting children to work from 14 is not necessarily bad.
We lived in an old Victorian house that was built without a bathroom. When I was very young, my father converted one of the bedrooms above the kitchen into a bathroom.
We had a coal fire for heating in the main living room (which was actually the back dining room - the 'front room' was kept for best). The rest of the house remained cold unless we were ill, in which case a fire was lit in the bedroom. i did not have central heating in any home i lived in until I moved to Peterborough 18 years ago.
My parents did not like TV. they thought it was a bad influence (but they loved cinema!!). As my father was a milkman, he did not earn much money so a fridge and telephone were luxuries to us. Right at the end of his life he got a promotion to foreman and bought my mum a fridge. I was about 10 at the time and sadly, within a year, both of them had died so they never got much of a taste of luxury. They never saw the end of the 1960s and I don't think they would like this brave new world at all.
