While the pictures filling Facebook’s every day of the Band and Orchestra’s Spring Break tour seemed to depict a wonderful journey of friendships, performance, and sight-seeing, one dramatic story was left out of the pictures. This story happened only a couple hundred miles away from Dordt, southeast of Sioux Center, near Iowa City.

The musical tour planned to commence its trip in Rapid City, South Dakota, with a quick trip to see the presidents, followed by an evening concert performance. Even the Facebook albums seem to confirm this with the hundreds of photoshoots tour buddies took together in front of the stone faces. However, the untold story of the tour’s first stop comes from Mr. Miedema, the tour guide and musical ensembles director.

Miedema continued on and explained about what he has named “The Attack of the Amish Mafia.” Instead of heading west towards Rapid City, the tour bus accidentally took a wrong exit near Omaha and began traveling southeast. Unbeknownst to any of the musicians and even Miedema himself, the group began drawing nearer and nearer to the treacherous central Iowa lands ruled by the Amish Mafia.

“Because Dordt made our Spring Break shorter and still didn’t give us Good Friday off to celebrate Christ’s resurrection with our families, we were unable to begin our journey until it was dark outside, so the majority of the bus was asleep when we began passing signs for Altoona, Des Moines, and Cedar Rapids,” shared one orchestra member. “No one realized how dire the situation was until it was too late.”

The quiet bus took an exit between Cedar Rapids and Iowa City for a restroom stop and crossed over into enemy lines. “When we got off the bus at the rest stop and saw all of the horses, buggies, and beards, I think we all began to think, ‘Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore,’” said Miedema on behalf of the group.

Some musical members slept-walked into the restrooms, and they failed to notice the obscure vehicles and angry, pitchfork-wielding people watching them. However, when the musicians exited the rest station, they quickly woke at the sight of so many men in knickers and blue surrounding their tour bus.

“They demanded we sing!” Miedema exclaimed. “We are instrumental musicians; we can’t sing!” Nonetheless, the angry mob didn’t relent. Finally, Miedema managed to assemble all of the bus riders into one big circle within the mob. They sang the Dordt College clock tower’s infamous tune, and the mafia quickly fell asleep to the sweet serenade.

Miedema loaded the bus and the group high-tailed it out of dangerous Central Iowa, heading northwest towards their original destination. The tour group unanimously agreed that if Dordt College had not shortened Spring Break and had also given them Good Friday off of classes, the incident clearly would not have happened because the group would have been able to drive during the day.

Jane Doe, Staff Writer