Ohio's largest Amish area sprawls from Navarre in the north to Loudonville in the west and southward down to Fresno and is sort of expanding southeast into the more sparsely populated Buckeye counties like Carrollton County. Holmes County is the hub of the Amish community, but by no means the only one that has a huge Amish presence: Wayne County, Stark County, and the mouthful to pronounce county of Tuscarawas have big settlements. I was in the mouthful of Tuscarawas yesterday visiting an Amish friend of mine (named Harley, actually that is a relatively common name among Amish men) who is a champion checker player. Yes, you heard right. He's a checker champ, playing in the American Checker Federation tournaments and frequently winning. He was once the second place checker winner in all of Ohio.
Many Amish enjoy the quiet competitiveness of checkers. Harley and I were visiting some other Amish friends of mine in the morning.On the way, we both noticed a couple of horses loose in the road, a definite hazard on the hilly, curvy roads which are slowly filling up as we head into autumn tourist season. He left his hat on my dashboard and bounded out after the horses, acting far younger than the 71-years that he is. After quickly corralling them, we were back on our way.
When we were done visiting with those friends I suggested we go back to his place and play a couple of games of Checkers.
"But I'm warning you, you'll clobber me," I said.
"Oh, I don't know about that,": he said modestly.
Three moves into the first game:
"Oh, that was a mistake, you shouldn't have done that..." he said.
"Wha...." I started to exclaim, as he proceeded to capture my first Checker.
Two games later, he had hung me out to dry. Below is our checkerboard, I was the white (and eventual loser). I'll admit that I haven't played checkers much since I was a kid, but it really is a neat game because it's simple enough for anyone to understand, BUT (as I learned yesterday), there is a lot of skill and analytic foresight that goes into the game. You really have to learn to anticipate - and head off - your opponents moves, something I failed miserably with at the hands of Harley.
Harley spends a portion of each winter in the Mennonite-Amish enclave of Pinecraft, Florida and he reports that impromptu games of Checkers can always be found in progress in the local park (along with shuffleboard).
Stay tuned for more posts and pictures from my journey into Ohio's Amish country.
Kentuckylady717
Cute story, used to play checkers when I was going up EONS ago LOL.....
but haven't played in yrs......didn't really care for checkers....I'd rather play jacks or skip rope.....or climb trees 🙂 yep, used to do that too.....
Miss no recipe today 🙂 I am wanting to make Shoo-fly pie and I have a recipe, but really wish someone could tell me what it taste like....I asked if it was similiar to Pecan pie which I love....no one answered....wonder if you could put pecans in it and maybe cut down on the sweetness....all I've heard is that it is very sweet......I'm sure a lot of people have had this pie, so could I please get an answer as to just what it taste like besides just sweet 🙂 ?
Linda Martin
To me shoofly pie tastes like syrup-- solidified syrup. It's really SWEET and very rich.
lorraine stoddard
I didn't know that there was a green and white board til now. Nice. I like it better than the black and red.
Cindy Harrison
My dh plays checkers, chess & Chinese checkers with the grandkids a lot. I also have never seen a green & white checker board. But the thing that surprised me the most is that the hat looks like it is silver colored!
brenda
my mother was a wizard at checkers and chinese checkers. It was so much fun to think this would be the time to use one of her clever moves on her and finally win !!!FAT CHANCE. I am concerned that this later generation is missing something with everything electronics all the time.
JoAnn Kelley
My father, who passed away in 1987 and whom I still miss was a champion checker player. He taught my older sister his methods and I can honestly say no one would ever play either one of them - he was very very good at it.