MIDDLEFIELD, Ohio - It's just after midnight when Deputy Jim Dhayer is dispatched to check on a buggy weaving down Tavern Road.

"Pull it over," Deputy Dhayer yells from his patrol car.

Inside are two bleary-eyed young Amish men. The buggy reeks of alcohol.

Deputies leave the passenger to hold the skittish horse and escort Paul Detweiler, Jr. to the side of the road.

Paul first says he is 18, then later changes it to 17.

"You can stop lying to me now," Deputy Dhayer says, shining a flashlight into the boy's bloodshot blue eyes.

"Do you think we're stupid? How much did you have to drink tonight?"

"Maybe a couple," mumbles Paul, who is dressed in tight-fitting jeans, a short-sleeved yellow shirt, and tennis shoes.

This is a typical weekend in Geauga County, about 30 miles east of Cleveland and home to more than 6,000 Amish families. Young Amish men and women are drinking, then getting into buggies to drive home. Sometimes, the teens pass out leaving their horses to find the way home.

Amish youth - those between the age of 16 and their early 20s - are not yet members of the church. That “loophole” frees them to pursue worldly activities that normally would be off-limits.

Sheriff's deputies attack hard in the spring, when most big drinking parties start. On one night last year, they took into custody an entire busload of Amish teenagers after breaking up a party.

On this night, deputies report “Buggy all over the road ... headed toward [State Rt.] 168 1 mph.” After stopping the black buggy pulled by a single horse, they find what they had suspected.

“Deputy Dhayer observed a 12 oz. Budweiser beer on the floor of the buggy. There was also a cooler in the rear of the buggy containing approx. 15 beers inside,” states the police report.

The deputy runs a pen in front of Paul's eyes. Next, the young man is told to walk a straight line. Paul studiously places one foot in front of the other, then pivots, and walks the other way.

A moment later deputies handcuff him.

“Where's the other guy?” Paul asks from the backseat of the police car.

“He's gonna walk the horse home. He's gonna get in trouble too, don't worry,” Deputy Dhayer says.

“You been in trouble before?”

“Yeah,” Paul mutters.

“Then why lie?”

“I ain't gonna admit it,” Paul says. “You got me now, but I ain't gotta tell I'm drunk. I did the field test OK.”

“You could walk but you couldn't keep your head up,” Deputy Dhayer says.

Later, at the sheriff's department, Paul reluctantly agrees to take a blood alcohol test and registers .137 on the breathalyzer test.

In Ohio, anything over .10 is considered legally intoxicated.

“So, how many beers have you had?” Deputy Dhayer asks.

“I have no idea,” Paul says.

The problem has become so prevalent in Geauga County that Amish church elders have turned to police for help. The Amish religion typically discourages its members from working with government agencies.

“We have the blessing from the bishops and the elders to crack down,” says Geauga County sheriff's Lt. Tom McCaffrey. “They're a religious community and they listen to the bishop.”

Deputy Dhayer remembers an incident last year when a drunken Amish man resisted arrest, fighting officers on a sheet of ice. “After that fight, we lost tolerance,” says Deputy Dhayer. “Now if they're drunk, they go to jail.”

Local courts are cracking down too, sentencing Amish youth to jail, community service, and alcohol-awareness classes.

“Amish youth are no different than Yankee youth,” says Chardon Municipal Court Judge Craig S. Albert. “They're experiencing life in the same manner our youth do. You see these kids, they get drunk, but when they join the church, it ends.”

And alcohol isn't the only fling some Amish youth have with the modern world. Some smoke, cut their hair, and wear English clothes. Some experiment with drugs. They attend sporting events, concerts, and movies, and visit amusement parks. And young men deck out their buggies with elaborate stereo systems, cranking up the volume as they “cruise” the countryside on Sunday afternoons.

These are the “wild years” for Amish young people, and the time when parents worry most.

“I worry about our young people with drugs,” said Atlee Kaufman, an Amish father in Mt. Hope, Ohio. “How are we going to keep our young people away from drugs and alcohol? Seemingly, it's so easy for anyone to get.”

Yet despite the flings in the English world, the number of Amish teenagers who join the church has risen over the past 50 years, says Steven Nolt, professor of history at Indiana's Goshen College and an Amish scholar.

In 1940, only about 60 percent remained in the Amish faith. Today, that number hovers around 90 percent and is even higher in some areas.

Deputy Tony Vella is driving the winding hills of Geauga County when the dispatcher reports a call to check on loud music from buggies.

“They're just kids, they work hard all week,” Deputy Vella says, lowering his car window to listen for music as he slowly drives along the country road.

He comes upon two buggies and watches as a beer can is tossed to the ground.

“Well, well, what do we have here?” he asks, pulling over to the side of the road. He walks up to the buggies. “Where are you going?”

“Just going to a singing,” a young Amish boy replies.

“Got any beer?”

Two boys shake their heads no.

“I can smell it and I saw you with it in your hand,” Deputy Vella says.

The boys look to be in their early teens, although they say they are 21.

Their breath reeks of alcohol. In the back of the buggy is a red and white cooler with cans of beer inside.

“We're not behaving, sometimes we're pretty wild,” one youth admits with a grin as he dumps a can of beer onto the ground.

The buggy's interior is upholstered in royal blue velour. A triangular swatch of the same material is attached to the dash. Silver key chains with colorful emblems - Guns and Roses, Cleveland Browns, and a miniature baseball bat - hang from battery-operated light switches.

Five stereo speakers - including a 12-inch sub-woofer - line the inside of the covered buggy.

On the seat is a selection of old cassette tapes: “The Outfield,” “Vixen,” and “Hooters.”

“This thing will rock, I'm telling you,” one of the boys says. “We were pretty loud at one point. Was that what the call was for?”

Deputy Vella tells them to “dump the beer and be careful driving home.”

With devout promises to do better, the boys urge their horses forward.

Amish teens sometimes drink at huge parties, often held in barns or deep within the woods where hundreds gather. Other times, the parties are more innocent: a few teens gathering at someone's home to share a case of beer.

It's a problem that exists within many Amish communities.

“It's probably maybe a little rebellion,” says one 21-year-old Amish woman from Middlefield, Ohio. “It's hard; a lot of the older bishops look down on the teens, but I think it's better to let them go out and get it out of their systems. Most of the time, after a few years, they get tired of it and settle down.”

The indiscretions of Amish youth shouldn't reflect poorly on the entire Amish community, some English people say.

“They really are one of a number of smaller groups that are really in control of their lives,” says Dr. Wayne Weaver, a Holmes County physician who was raised Amish.

“Rings in the nose and eyebrows, the things that come along and change - dress, politics, fads - they're not really affected. They have the ability to sort of adjust, look at things, and continue on as if the storm wasn't really going on.”

Denise Reiling, a sociology professor at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, says there is no research to indicate that the drinking rate is any higher among the Amish than their English neighbors.

“There has always been alcohol use among Amish kids; it is very functional,” Ms. Reiling says. “It allows them to experience the larger world, regardless of how we, the English, want to view that. One of the things that experimenting with alcohol before you join the church does is it possibly screens out people who would have difficulty with it as an adult.”

While parents and church elders may not approve, they often look the other way in hopes that their young people will have their fling with the world, then return to their Amish ways.

Nathan Byler, a 17-year-old carpenter from Windsor, Ohio, is enjoying some freedom before he joins the Amish church.

He sometimes thinks about being “Yankee” and would love to own a souped-up, four-wheel drive truck. Yet Nathan plans on joining the church but admits that giving up his beer and tape player will be the hardest.

“I haven't given it up yet,” he says with a smile.

For police officers in Amish country, simply finding the underage drinkers is tough.

Officers can only enter a party on private property for a noise complaint or if there is good reason to believe minors are drinking. And police say it is more difficult to find a reason to stop a horse-drawn buggy than a motor vehicle.

“They have parties every weekend, I know they do,” says Geauga County sheriff's Lieutenant McCaffrey. “But they're really hard to find off the road. They've got four-wheel drive buggies.”

One popular party site in Geauga County is hidden deep within the woods, the dirt path barely visible from the road. Nearly half a mile into the woods, an abandoned campfire site is littered with beer boxes and cans. Deputies once came upon 200 buggies when they broke up a party there.

When Lieutenant McCaffrey does find a drinking party, he knows how to handle it.

A few years ago, he was called to an outdoor party of about 300 Amish revelers.

“I got on the radio and said, `Find me a bishop, any bishop,'” Lieutenant McCaffrey recalls.

With a bishop by his side, Lieutenant McCaffrey approached the bonfire party.

The crowd got very quiet, turned off the music, and started speaking in German.

SIBLING REVELRY

Judge Craig S. Albert is not happy. On his docket are two underage drinking cases: an Amish brother and sister.

“OK, Mervin, drinking underage, was it a party?” Judge Albert asks the 19-year-old standing in front of his bench.

“Well, we was on the road; we were drinking at a party,” says Mervin Kuhn, who is wearing glasses, a dark jacket, and a matter-of-fact attitude.

“Do you ever stop drinking?” Judge Albert asks.

“Nope,” Mervin says with a smile.

Judge Albert orders Mervin to pay a $100 fine, serve 90 days in jail - 88 suspended - and a two-year probation.

“No alcohol, no drugs, no bars, or you go to jail for another three months,” Judge Albert says. “I'm getting sick and tired of the Amish parties. When you get killed on the buggy you're gonna be up in arms.”

“Do I have to put you in jail too?” Judge Albert asks the 18-year-old woman wearing a shin-length dress, black coat, dark stockings and shoes, and a white bonnet.

She shrugs: “I don't know.”

“How many [beers] did you drink?”

“I dunno. I wasn't keeping track,” Maryann says.

“Did it taste good?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, you know something, Mr. Kuhns,” Judge Albert says to her father. “If it tasted good, she's been drinking for a long time.”

“OK, you're going to jail too,” the judge tells the young woman, handing her a $100 fine and 90 days in jail, with all but two suspended.

Later, Judge Albert explains his seemingly harsh attitude. “Their elders want me to treat them like that,” he says.

An Amish teenager with a mop of curly dark hair stares out the window of the police car with large, frightened eyes. Rain is falling in torrents and the car's flashing lights beat an eerie, staccato pattern across his abandoned buggy.

Two sheriff's deputies are searching the nearby fields, flashing their spotlights into the dark night. They are looking for an Amish man who tossed out a beer bottle and ran when the buggy was stopped.

“Who buys the beer?” Deputy Dhayer asks the boy's 16-year-old Amish girlfriend, who was in the buggy with him.

“I don't know,” she replies stubbornly from the backseat of the patrol car.

“Well, it doesn't just appear.”

“I know,” she says, and then tells deputies she and her boyfriend were drinking at a friend's house.

Deputy Dhayer heads to the Amish home, the site of the party.

Six buggies sit in the driveway and the young man who hosted the party walks out of a shed. His father joins him and several more young men filter out of the shed. They stand in a circle and begin gesturing wildly, pointing at the deputy.

The voices become heated as the young men deny drinking. “I'm not lying to you,” one of them repeatedly tells the officer. “Take me to jail. Leave everyone else alone.”

Nearly 20 minutes later one of the boys walks to the back of a buggy. He pauses to light a cigarette, then opens the rear flap of the buggy.

Slowly the young man lifts out a case of beer. One by one, he opens each bottle and in between puffs on his cigarette, pours the contents onto the ground.

Deputy Dhayer returns to the patrol car.

“Your parents know you've been drinking?” he asks the young girl.

“Yeah, probably,” she mumbles.

“You want to go talk to your parents?”

“Yeah.”

She is the youngest of 14 children and has never been in trouble with authorities before.

The police car pulls into the driveway of her home. Deputy Dhayer opens the door and she steps out into the pouring rain. Together they walk toward the darkened house to wake her parents. It is 1:42 a.m.

COMING TOMORROW: Traffic is hazardous for buggies.

First Published May 7, 2001, 11:49 a.m.