Amish Shunning

My wife mentioned some movie on Amish and their practice of shunning, that she wanted to watch.  It made me remember back to when I was a kid and my parents rented a house on this farm property surrounded by other farm properties.

There was a couple of sisters that lived up at the top of the hill from us.  They had chosen to have electricity installed in their house, due to the fact that one of the sisters had a medical condition that required some sort of electric machinery in order to survive.  I had been told that the Amish community had shunned them.  From what I was told that meant that they weren’t supposed to talk to them or give them support of any kind.

I don't know if all the facts are accurate, but that is how I remember it from when I was very young.

I also remember being told about an Amish guy that would go borrow his neighbor's telephone. We were on a party line, which meant that everyone shared on line, even though we had different numbers. If someone was on the phone no one else could use the phone.

This Amish guy would pick up the phone and someone would be on it. He would bang the phone and make a bunch of noise until you got off.