Arizona
On the Way to Tahoe
For over a year I have been bemoaning the state of the yellowy-almond colored rug that covered the living area of our coach. It was nice on the toes, but it collected every bit of dust, mud, food spillage, dog tossup, and hair from at least one of the two humans and the canine that collectively live here. At least three times a week I’d have to vacuum, then clean the clogged vacuum, poking at the dog hair and detritus it had just inhaled. And it fit absolutely nowhere, so it was relegated to a corner in the bedroom where it sat, quietly turning us into asthmatics. At least twice a month, I’d be down on my hands and knees with the scrub brush and the bottle of rug shampoo. And for this I’d retired?
We came to a collective decision, although I can’t really speak for the dog, that the rug had to go. It was too dirty, too smelly, and way too much work. So we (I) set about finding the perfect flooring.
It didn’t take long to find my heart’s desire. At a recent convention of motor coaches, there among the many shining examples of coachly indulgence, sat a brand-new 2009 Beaver Coach with a BLACK GRANITE FLOOR! Oh did that shine. Oh did that look elegant! Oh this was the floor for me.
Never mind that the coach was a super suspension, designed to pull much more aggregate weight than my 2004 model. Never mind that granite is one of the heaviest of flooring materials. My sense of the rightness of that floor was set in stone. Unintentional pun.
At this self-same convention, I also walked the exhibit hall and met quite a few converters (RV renovators) who all had the same answer for me: impossible. Your tires will pop. Here, try this nice 1950’s style vinyl tile. It’s easy to keep clean.
I turned and fled that negativity. I was undeterred.
There were other naysayers. People with beige floors, people with rugs, people with envy for my decision. It’ll never be clean, they’d say. It’ll show every dog hair, they’d moan. You’ll be cleaning it constantly, they’d squawk. I’ll do the work, I promised myself, and besides, they don’t know how hard it was keeping that rug clean. Only one woman, forever after my new best friend, thought it was a cool idea. She hates her rug too.
Now here was the problem. I could get very light granite. It was made in Italy, split into thin sheets, cut into nice-size tiles and backed with a kind of foamcore. It needed special adhesive, a special underflooring and might scratch when the slides were rolled closed. And it would cost $24,000. For a floor the size of, oh ,say 240 sq ft. That works out to $100 a square foot, I believe. John, cranky old skinflint that he is, would not go along with this plan.
Would I have acceded to this madness if he hadn’t put his manly clodhopper down on my dainty little toes? I live in this thing, don’t I? Okay, I can’t lie. Of course I wouldn’t have.
So after ascertaining that my number two choice, porcelain, was just as damnably heavy, I unhappily took a look at the kitchen tile I so dearly had tried to avoid. Vinyl. Oh my goodness, they make beautiful vinyl tile these days. All I had to do was choose a nice, shiny black tile that looked like granite and I would be happy.
Not in style, the sales people all said. What you want is the tumbled marble look. In a nice white, or beige, with no shiny anywhere. No, I wanted black and shiny.
For months I looked and looked. I looked in Florida, New York, Texas, and Ohio. Everywhere I was told, “No luck, sister.” It was either the wrong color, the wrong weight, the wrong material, wrong, wrong, wrong.
I got very discouraged. Then one of the coach converters wrote me to say he’d found a company that makes elevator tile (A weight issue here too! Why hadn’t I thought of that?) and they had a granite-type tile that was actually a composite of granite chips, glass and vinyl. It was light, it was tough, and it was black. Not only that, it was $7.99 a tile. Forget that you can go to Home Depot and get industrial tile for 83 cents a square foot. This would be a $7000 floor and not a $30,000 floor – the Italian price had gone up in the months I was deciding.
I now have a beautiful black floor. It was shiny for about a week. I Swiffered it and it got dull. Nothing seems to make it shiny. Not only that, everything seems to make it dirty – walking on it, for instance. We have tried everything to clean it, from dishwashing liquid to shower cleaner to Fantastic to promising the dog a year of running free on no leash if he would only lick the floor with his magic tongue. Zilch. The little bit of shiny that’s under the driver’s floor mat is bleak reminder of all I had hoped for.
But I am not done yet. We bought a bottle of urethane-type finish that the sales clerk said Walmart uses on their floors, and Walmart floors are always shiny. We’ll put it on our floor and see what happens.
Truth is, no matter how it turns out, it’s still 100 times better than that smelly old rug, and six times easier to clean than the white bricks with grout that were in the kitchen area. I’m inordinately happy with how things look, as long as I don’t look too close.
Love can forgive anything.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Thursday, October 1, 2009
My new g-string
Cuba, Missouri
Don't ask.
Darling
I just wanted to tell you again how much I love my new g-string.
You’ll be pleased to know it’s had the desired effect.
It fell out of my purse yesterday and my husband looked at me with a question in his eyes.
Oh this? I said. It’s nothing. Just a g-string.
What would you want something like that for? he asked.
Don’t be silly, I said.
When did you get it? he persisted.
Yesterday, I said. When I was in the city.
How much does something like that cost, he said suspiciously. You know we’re on a budget.
I turned his annoying question aside. It was a gift, I said.
Really, he said, mollified.
This man doesn’t have a jealous bone in his body.
I put my g-string back in my purse and vowed I’d find it a good spot among my lingerie so I wouldn’t forget where it was when the time came to put it to good use.
Later that night, he said, so when were you going to tell me about it?
Oh, I said nonchalantly, I wasn’t.
He turned over and went to sleep.
I can’t wait to get my guitar out of storage.
Love
Betty
Don't ask.
Darling
I just wanted to tell you again how much I love my new g-string.
You’ll be pleased to know it’s had the desired effect.
It fell out of my purse yesterday and my husband looked at me with a question in his eyes.
Oh this? I said. It’s nothing. Just a g-string.
What would you want something like that for? he asked.
Don’t be silly, I said.
When did you get it? he persisted.
Yesterday, I said. When I was in the city.
How much does something like that cost, he said suspiciously. You know we’re on a budget.
I turned his annoying question aside. It was a gift, I said.
Really, he said, mollified.
This man doesn’t have a jealous bone in his body.
I put my g-string back in my purse and vowed I’d find it a good spot among my lingerie so I wouldn’t forget where it was when the time came to put it to good use.
Later that night, he said, so when were you going to tell me about it?
Oh, I said nonchalantly, I wasn’t.
He turned over and went to sleep.
I can’t wait to get my guitar out of storage.
Love
Betty
Big Rigs
Effingham, IL
On the road to Albuquerque
This country, in case you weren’t aware of it, is truck-dependent. I’m so used to hopping over to the grocery store, or the mall, or the corner deli, I never even considered just how all those products got onto all those shelves. I mean, I’m not stupid. I just never thought about it much. But traveling as we have, back and forth, up and down, over and about, I have seen the light.
Trucking is huge.
If I had a light attached to every big truck I see, it would show a pattern of lines up and down, over and under, here and there, coast to coast. Actually, some people have already done that with traffic at night. It makes a pretty picture.
If you separate out the big rigs from the roadsters, coupes, SUVs, sports cars, family haulers, RV’s, pickups and other types of small vehicles, and if you tracked only them, you would have a pretty clear picture of how this country sends and receives its things we cannot do without. And that’s not counting the government trucks, army trucks and other non-commercial big boys. Not to mention air transport. But that’s a whole ‘nother industry.
The movers-of-stuff-that-keeps-us-going seem to fall into a few categories: container corporations like SeaLand who use independent cabs, shipping companies like Crete who have their own trucks, and the corporate trucks with names like Walmart and Sunkist. Sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which. All of these are driven by truck drivers, men mostly, but increasingly women, and they come in all shapes, ages and sizes, including the cliché big burly guy, but also the petite little blonde who jumped down from a huge semi at a truckstop, much to the pleasure of the other drivers. I wonder if she carries mace. I would, if I were pulling a million dollars worth of cargo in a truck worth almost as much on a lonely stretch of road. Hijacking is a very real threat. I know of someone whose entire household contents were stolen when their moving van was hijacked on a lonely road between New York and Florida. But that too is a whole “nother story.
There’s even an industry based on just the logistics of getting one product from here to there. These people don’t necessarily ship; they facilitate. Consider a widget made in China that must travel by rail to Shanghai, then by cargo ship to England, be transferred to another cargo ship on a particular day and time, then arrive in Toronto and be transferred with the same accuracy to a trans-Canadian truck and transported, say, by rail, to Seattle and then trucked to Terre Haute.
Miss a connection and you’ve just blown all the profit that widget could have made. It happens. That’s why there’s insurance for just such a thing. And why I know about logistics in the first place, because I used to write ads for that particular form of insurance.
Just for fun, here’s a list of some of the big rigs I’ve seen when I’ve looked up from writing this blog. We see these same names every day, over and over. This does not count an equal number of unidentified cargo trucks, or all the ones pulling things like logs, cement, tractors, industrial pipes the size of houses, and other huge cargo. I mean, trucking is big. Really big.
Arnold
Autobahn
Bridge Steel
Butler
Carman
Carter Express
Celedo
Challenger
CHRIS
Con-Way
Crete
D&D Sexton
Dart Advantage
Dick Lavy
England
FEDEX
Freymiller
Frito-Lay
GDS Express
Glen Moore
Great Lakes
Gully
JB Hunt
Kewpoint
Knudsen
Land Span
Manfredi Logistics
Marten
New Century
Ohio Pacific Express
Old Dominion
Oliver
One Freight
OnLine
PAM
Panther
Penske
Prime
REM
Rex
Roadway
Scotlynn
Sherwin-Williams
Southern Cal
Stallion Express
STI Canada
Sunflower
TSI
Tyson
UPS
Walmart
On the road to Albuquerque
This country, in case you weren’t aware of it, is truck-dependent. I’m so used to hopping over to the grocery store, or the mall, or the corner deli, I never even considered just how all those products got onto all those shelves. I mean, I’m not stupid. I just never thought about it much. But traveling as we have, back and forth, up and down, over and about, I have seen the light.
Trucking is huge.
If I had a light attached to every big truck I see, it would show a pattern of lines up and down, over and under, here and there, coast to coast. Actually, some people have already done that with traffic at night. It makes a pretty picture.
If you separate out the big rigs from the roadsters, coupes, SUVs, sports cars, family haulers, RV’s, pickups and other types of small vehicles, and if you tracked only them, you would have a pretty clear picture of how this country sends and receives its things we cannot do without. And that’s not counting the government trucks, army trucks and other non-commercial big boys. Not to mention air transport. But that’s a whole ‘nother industry.
The movers-of-stuff-that-keeps-us-going seem to fall into a few categories: container corporations like SeaLand who use independent cabs, shipping companies like Crete who have their own trucks, and the corporate trucks with names like Walmart and Sunkist. Sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which. All of these are driven by truck drivers, men mostly, but increasingly women, and they come in all shapes, ages and sizes, including the cliché big burly guy, but also the petite little blonde who jumped down from a huge semi at a truckstop, much to the pleasure of the other drivers. I wonder if she carries mace. I would, if I were pulling a million dollars worth of cargo in a truck worth almost as much on a lonely stretch of road. Hijacking is a very real threat. I know of someone whose entire household contents were stolen when their moving van was hijacked on a lonely road between New York and Florida. But that too is a whole “nother story.
There’s even an industry based on just the logistics of getting one product from here to there. These people don’t necessarily ship; they facilitate. Consider a widget made in China that must travel by rail to Shanghai, then by cargo ship to England, be transferred to another cargo ship on a particular day and time, then arrive in Toronto and be transferred with the same accuracy to a trans-Canadian truck and transported, say, by rail, to Seattle and then trucked to Terre Haute.
Miss a connection and you’ve just blown all the profit that widget could have made. It happens. That’s why there’s insurance for just such a thing. And why I know about logistics in the first place, because I used to write ads for that particular form of insurance.
Just for fun, here’s a list of some of the big rigs I’ve seen when I’ve looked up from writing this blog. We see these same names every day, over and over. This does not count an equal number of unidentified cargo trucks, or all the ones pulling things like logs, cement, tractors, industrial pipes the size of houses, and other huge cargo. I mean, trucking is big. Really big.
Arnold
Autobahn
Bridge Steel
Butler
Carman
Carter Express
Celedo
Challenger
CHRIS
Con-Way
Crete
D&D Sexton
Dart Advantage
Dick Lavy
England
FEDEX
Freymiller
Frito-Lay
GDS Express
Glen Moore
Great Lakes
Gully
JB Hunt
Kewpoint
Knudsen
Land Span
Manfredi Logistics
Marten
New Century
Ohio Pacific Express
Old Dominion
Oliver
One Freight
OnLine
PAM
Panther
Penske
Prime
REM
Rex
Roadway
Scotlynn
Sherwin-Williams
Southern Cal
Stallion Express
STI Canada
Sunflower
TSI
Tyson
UPS
Walmart
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
The Perfect Retirement Home
I just got an email from my good friend although I've never met him, Tim Gilmore,a real estate agent in the Hamptons, which is to say, the preferred vacation area for New Yorkers, New Jerseyites and other East Coasters.
I met Tim on line, when I was searching for a suitable retirement home, one that would allow me to park my bus, put my feet up, and watch the sun go down in cool climax to a lovely Hamptons afternoon.
Tim sent me an ad for a house in the Hamptons that said, “Excellent starter home.”
That was what was in my budgetary framework. An excellent starter home. Tim, I want an excellent ENDER home. Not a beginner. One that represents all that I have worked so hard for all these years. A home with a nice kitchen, a sweet pool, a place to entertain, a couple of bedrooms for the kids and their offspring, and as little upkeep as possible.
Starter home sounds like work, doesn’t it?
It sounds like somebody else lived there first and didn’t do a damn thing to make it prettier, cozier, warmer, or better electrified.
It sounds like the pool has green mold, bugs and leaves around the edges, the electricity is dicey at best, and the frame of the house has some evil inhabitants who have worked very hard to no be evicted.
It sounds like a starter, not an ender. Oh yes, that’s what you said it is.
But,Tim darling.
I don’t plan to put on my overalls and get to work. I don’t plan to evict mudhuts of yellow jackets, warrens of squirrels and nests of raccoons in the attic. I don’t plan to completely rewire this simple little ranch, this unpretentious nest of a darling hideaway.
I just want to kick back, sip my Bloody Mary and grill my steak in peace.
I want to go to a good movie, visit a decent library, and ride my bike from time to time so that I feel like I am truly taking care of my body, although I know in my heart that my body is beyond repair.
And forgive me for this peculiarity, but I don’t want to live in a retirement community because I have some silly idea that a neighborhood with children and teenagers and young marrieds is more my style. I envision myself sipping my cocktail of a Halloween evening, answering the door, acting terrified of the tiny marauders, and handing over my stash of candy. This would make me very very happy. I don’t want big events in my life. I’ve had enough big events, thank you very much. I just want small pleasures. Little children. Sweet evenings. Friendly dogs. Is that too much to ask?
I don’t want to replace the gutters and leaders. I don’t want to repave the driveway. I would love to redecorate somebody’s badly decorated house. I do think I have talent in that area, so that would please me at lot. And if I got stuck I could think of a few friends who have far more talent than I, who would be more than happy to give me suggestions and shopping help.
Once I had a pretty, pretty place, I’d invite my friends over, put out the hors d’oeuvres, turn the stereo to the jazz station, and give one of my very special parties. I was known for them, back in the day.
So Tim, what have you got for me? Have you got that perfect place, that inexpensive, small, but incredibly adorable place that I can call my ender and not my beginner? I’m not interested in starting. I only want to go out with a bang, a thump, a cannon’s roar.
Call me, Tim.
Betty
I met Tim on line, when I was searching for a suitable retirement home, one that would allow me to park my bus, put my feet up, and watch the sun go down in cool climax to a lovely Hamptons afternoon.
Tim sent me an ad for a house in the Hamptons that said, “Excellent starter home.”
That was what was in my budgetary framework. An excellent starter home. Tim, I want an excellent ENDER home. Not a beginner. One that represents all that I have worked so hard for all these years. A home with a nice kitchen, a sweet pool, a place to entertain, a couple of bedrooms for the kids and their offspring, and as little upkeep as possible.
Starter home sounds like work, doesn’t it?
It sounds like somebody else lived there first and didn’t do a damn thing to make it prettier, cozier, warmer, or better electrified.
It sounds like the pool has green mold, bugs and leaves around the edges, the electricity is dicey at best, and the frame of the house has some evil inhabitants who have worked very hard to no be evicted.
It sounds like a starter, not an ender. Oh yes, that’s what you said it is.
But,Tim darling.
I don’t plan to put on my overalls and get to work. I don’t plan to evict mudhuts of yellow jackets, warrens of squirrels and nests of raccoons in the attic. I don’t plan to completely rewire this simple little ranch, this unpretentious nest of a darling hideaway.
I just want to kick back, sip my Bloody Mary and grill my steak in peace.
I want to go to a good movie, visit a decent library, and ride my bike from time to time so that I feel like I am truly taking care of my body, although I know in my heart that my body is beyond repair.
And forgive me for this peculiarity, but I don’t want to live in a retirement community because I have some silly idea that a neighborhood with children and teenagers and young marrieds is more my style. I envision myself sipping my cocktail of a Halloween evening, answering the door, acting terrified of the tiny marauders, and handing over my stash of candy. This would make me very very happy. I don’t want big events in my life. I’ve had enough big events, thank you very much. I just want small pleasures. Little children. Sweet evenings. Friendly dogs. Is that too much to ask?
I don’t want to replace the gutters and leaders. I don’t want to repave the driveway. I would love to redecorate somebody’s badly decorated house. I do think I have talent in that area, so that would please me at lot. And if I got stuck I could think of a few friends who have far more talent than I, who would be more than happy to give me suggestions and shopping help.
Once I had a pretty, pretty place, I’d invite my friends over, put out the hors d’oeuvres, turn the stereo to the jazz station, and give one of my very special parties. I was known for them, back in the day.
So Tim, what have you got for me? Have you got that perfect place, that inexpensive, small, but incredibly adorable place that I can call my ender and not my beginner? I’m not interested in starting. I only want to go out with a bang, a thump, a cannon’s roar.
Call me, Tim.
Betty
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Errata Redux
On Route 80
From Ohio to Pennsylvania
to Syracuse to Tarrytown
1. If you leave the bathroom window open in a motor coach, a brand new roll of toilet paper will unroll itself down to its cardboard core and you will have to decide if it is worth your time to a) reroll it completely b) reroll it until you are sick of rerolling and throw the rest away or c) toss it and feel incredibly guilty for wasting paper and cluttering the environment. I chose b.
2. Somewhere along Route 80 in Ohio, there is a tollbooth operator who hands out doggy treats. This is undoubtedly a dog lover, and the sweet gift is undoubtedly coming out of her own pocket. Makes you want to pay it forward.
3. There is actually a Rutherford B. Hayes Library in Ohio, but William McKinley has a monument but no library. Is it possible he couldn’t read or write? Even the hat salesman, Harry Truman, has a library. What gives?
4. Hudson, Ohio, looks exactly like Westport, CT. That’s probably because at one time, Ohio was a part of Connecticut. How amazing is that. It was called the Western Reserve and was settled by, of course, folks from Connecticut. That name also explains Case Western Reserve University, which isn’t in Hudson anymore, but the prep school is.
5. If you want a black floor in a motor coach, don’t try to buy granite. It will cause your tires to explode. But don’t accept that your floor has to look like a kitchen instead of a grand marble entryway. Look up the people who make tile for elevators. Aha! Elevators have a weight issue too. And if you do install this wonderful faux granite tile that they use in elevators, be sure to invest in a Swiffer. You’ll be using it every couple of hours or so. Especially if you have a white dog. But you will be inordinately happy with your beautiful floor, nonetheless.
6. Once someone has pulled your motor coach apart for a major installation, do not expect everything to work as before. You can expect that when you are 200 miles down the road, the electric pump that powers your slides and your levelers will give up the ghost and you will not see much of your beautiful floor until you can get your pump fixed after the weekend. Motor coaches, like people, tend to get sicker on weekends. I don’t know why that is.
7. I didn’t write this, but I wish I had: More often than not, when someone is telling me a story all I can think about is that I can't wait for them to finish so that I can tell my own story that's not only better, but also more directly involves me.
From Ohio to Pennsylvania
to Syracuse to Tarrytown
1. If you leave the bathroom window open in a motor coach, a brand new roll of toilet paper will unroll itself down to its cardboard core and you will have to decide if it is worth your time to a) reroll it completely b) reroll it until you are sick of rerolling and throw the rest away or c) toss it and feel incredibly guilty for wasting paper and cluttering the environment. I chose b.
2. Somewhere along Route 80 in Ohio, there is a tollbooth operator who hands out doggy treats. This is undoubtedly a dog lover, and the sweet gift is undoubtedly coming out of her own pocket. Makes you want to pay it forward.
3. There is actually a Rutherford B. Hayes Library in Ohio, but William McKinley has a monument but no library. Is it possible he couldn’t read or write? Even the hat salesman, Harry Truman, has a library. What gives?
4. Hudson, Ohio, looks exactly like Westport, CT. That’s probably because at one time, Ohio was a part of Connecticut. How amazing is that. It was called the Western Reserve and was settled by, of course, folks from Connecticut. That name also explains Case Western Reserve University, which isn’t in Hudson anymore, but the prep school is.
5. If you want a black floor in a motor coach, don’t try to buy granite. It will cause your tires to explode. But don’t accept that your floor has to look like a kitchen instead of a grand marble entryway. Look up the people who make tile for elevators. Aha! Elevators have a weight issue too. And if you do install this wonderful faux granite tile that they use in elevators, be sure to invest in a Swiffer. You’ll be using it every couple of hours or so. Especially if you have a white dog. But you will be inordinately happy with your beautiful floor, nonetheless.
6. Once someone has pulled your motor coach apart for a major installation, do not expect everything to work as before. You can expect that when you are 200 miles down the road, the electric pump that powers your slides and your levelers will give up the ghost and you will not see much of your beautiful floor until you can get your pump fixed after the weekend. Motor coaches, like people, tend to get sicker on weekends. I don’t know why that is.
7. I didn’t write this, but I wish I had: More often than not, when someone is telling me a story all I can think about is that I can't wait for them to finish so that I can tell my own story that's not only better, but also more directly involves me.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Do you Wanna Shipshewana?
Shipshewana Indiana is known for its Amish and Mennonite heritage. It’s a tourist town, of course, and boasts lots of curio shops, restaurants and lots of homemade delights including noodles, jellies, jams, pies and other equally fattening and delectable goodies. There’s the requisite Christmas shop, of course, and a huge antique mall, but the places that most intrigued me were the ones that sold handmade signs, birdhouses, gewgaws, religious plaques, pictures and simple but exquisitely made furniture.
The trouble with living in a motor home is that you can’t just impulse shop. Everything you like takes up space, and that means I had to forswear the wonderfully painted tin stars (no outside to decorate) the gorgeous quilts (only one bed to cover) all those wise and wonderful semi-religious plaques (no walls to put nails in) the whimsical tin flowers (no garden) the bird houses (ditto) wagon wheels, handmade porch swings, various buckets, firkins (look it up) dolls, and most interestingly, the traditional white caps, sitting so starchily pretty in a closed glass cabinet so they wouldn’t gather dust.
I bought a potholder filled with spices that gives off a lovely aroma when you put your hot pot on top of it. And that was it. Nothing else would fit in the bus.
I did, however, spend a good deal of time touching beautifully rubbed cherry, maple and beech tables, admiring the shine, craftsmanship and aesthetics of each one. There was a young Mennonite salesperson on her cell phone. (I knew she wasn’t Amish because she was using a modern gadget) She wore the starched white cap, a long dress and no makeup. I was the only customer in the store, and couldn’t help hearing her side of the conversation. I expected a lot of thee’s and thou’s and shyly sweet remarks. Instead, as she hung up, I heard her say, “Cool! Catch you later. Cool! Will do. Buh-bye.” I know the strict Amish don’t use electricity, but I guess the Mennonites have TV. That was definitely a SNL conversation.
In another place, I put out my American Express card, and the Amish woman replied, “Oh we don’t take Amex, just MasterCard and Visa.” I had to smile. “I guess you’ve got to feel pretty much ‘in the world’ if you’re saying that.” “Oh yes,” she smiled ruefully, and we both laughed.
The Amish buggies are very much in evidence in Shipshewana, as are beards, flat black hats on the men and towheaded little girls in long plain dresses and little boys in ankle-length pants with old fashioned lace up shoes.
The other interesting item of haberdashery was one young girl’s lace mantilla. I decided she was either washing her white cap or a Jackie Kennedy wannabe, since that was the last time I’ve seen anybody in a mantilla. Unless she was Jewish and this was a yarmulke. Which would mean she was a boy and I was blind drunk. I leave you to decide on that one.
They ask you not to request the “plain people” to pose for pictures with you. I guess I wouldn’t like to be a curiosity in my hometown either. I did surreptitiously get a few of the buggies, which I found charming and sweet.
After the visit to Shipshewana, I went on line to have a few questions answered. I learned that in fact that both Amish and Mennonite derive from an earlier religious group called Anabaptists in Switzerland and Germany. Anabaptist means “born again.” Hmmm. Where have I heard that before? In the 1600’s, Simon Menno broke with the Anabaptists first and thus the Mennonites were formed, and the Amish split happened when a bunch of the Mennonites decided things were getting too worldly and went back to the earlier, stricter teachings, notably shunning, which is what they still do if a professed member of the community breaks the rules egregiously. They don’t baptize until between the ages of 16 and 25, and turn a blind eye towards the young folk who are expected to act up and misbehave for a while. To get it all out of their systems, I imagine, because once you are baptized, you’d better not mess up or you’ll be shunned, cut off from every friend and family member you’ve ever known. Oooh. That’s cold.
The Amish are amazing people. They live with no electricity and no education beyond the eighth grade, at which time they take up the farming that keeps the community supplied with both food and income. They all wear the same haircut: women with center parts and long straight hair, and men with what looks to me like a bowl cut, longish with bangs. But all this is just surface. I’d like to know how they live in the silence of their homes, how they are able to read by gas lamp, and most importantly, how they don’t all weigh 250 pounds from the food. Must be the hard work.
And how they can remain untouched by the world? Then again, maybe they can’t. Maybe it’s inevitable that they will soak up at least some of their surroundings, given the number of people who visit their little town, and the seduction of modern inventions. Maybe that little salesgirl with the cell phone and “Cools” and “Buh-byes” is not the only one who’s joining the modern world little by little.
And maybe, just maybe, someone is sitting by his fire, bemoaning these changes and planning a revolution of his own, back to the old ways. Maybe, this minute, the Amish are about to be born again. It wouldn’t be the first time.
The trouble with living in a motor home is that you can’t just impulse shop. Everything you like takes up space, and that means I had to forswear the wonderfully painted tin stars (no outside to decorate) the gorgeous quilts (only one bed to cover) all those wise and wonderful semi-religious plaques (no walls to put nails in) the whimsical tin flowers (no garden) the bird houses (ditto) wagon wheels, handmade porch swings, various buckets, firkins (look it up) dolls, and most interestingly, the traditional white caps, sitting so starchily pretty in a closed glass cabinet so they wouldn’t gather dust.
I bought a potholder filled with spices that gives off a lovely aroma when you put your hot pot on top of it. And that was it. Nothing else would fit in the bus.
I did, however, spend a good deal of time touching beautifully rubbed cherry, maple and beech tables, admiring the shine, craftsmanship and aesthetics of each one. There was a young Mennonite salesperson on her cell phone. (I knew she wasn’t Amish because she was using a modern gadget) She wore the starched white cap, a long dress and no makeup. I was the only customer in the store, and couldn’t help hearing her side of the conversation. I expected a lot of thee’s and thou’s and shyly sweet remarks. Instead, as she hung up, I heard her say, “Cool! Catch you later. Cool! Will do. Buh-bye.” I know the strict Amish don’t use electricity, but I guess the Mennonites have TV. That was definitely a SNL conversation.
In another place, I put out my American Express card, and the Amish woman replied, “Oh we don’t take Amex, just MasterCard and Visa.” I had to smile. “I guess you’ve got to feel pretty much ‘in the world’ if you’re saying that.” “Oh yes,” she smiled ruefully, and we both laughed.
The Amish buggies are very much in evidence in Shipshewana, as are beards, flat black hats on the men and towheaded little girls in long plain dresses and little boys in ankle-length pants with old fashioned lace up shoes.
The other interesting item of haberdashery was one young girl’s lace mantilla. I decided she was either washing her white cap or a Jackie Kennedy wannabe, since that was the last time I’ve seen anybody in a mantilla. Unless she was Jewish and this was a yarmulke. Which would mean she was a boy and I was blind drunk. I leave you to decide on that one.
They ask you not to request the “plain people” to pose for pictures with you. I guess I wouldn’t like to be a curiosity in my hometown either. I did surreptitiously get a few of the buggies, which I found charming and sweet.
After the visit to Shipshewana, I went on line to have a few questions answered. I learned that in fact that both Amish and Mennonite derive from an earlier religious group called Anabaptists in Switzerland and Germany. Anabaptist means “born again.” Hmmm. Where have I heard that before? In the 1600’s, Simon Menno broke with the Anabaptists first and thus the Mennonites were formed, and the Amish split happened when a bunch of the Mennonites decided things were getting too worldly and went back to the earlier, stricter teachings, notably shunning, which is what they still do if a professed member of the community breaks the rules egregiously. They don’t baptize until between the ages of 16 and 25, and turn a blind eye towards the young folk who are expected to act up and misbehave for a while. To get it all out of their systems, I imagine, because once you are baptized, you’d better not mess up or you’ll be shunned, cut off from every friend and family member you’ve ever known. Oooh. That’s cold.
The Amish are amazing people. They live with no electricity and no education beyond the eighth grade, at which time they take up the farming that keeps the community supplied with both food and income. They all wear the same haircut: women with center parts and long straight hair, and men with what looks to me like a bowl cut, longish with bangs. But all this is just surface. I’d like to know how they live in the silence of their homes, how they are able to read by gas lamp, and most importantly, how they don’t all weigh 250 pounds from the food. Must be the hard work.
And how they can remain untouched by the world? Then again, maybe they can’t. Maybe it’s inevitable that they will soak up at least some of their surroundings, given the number of people who visit their little town, and the seduction of modern inventions. Maybe that little salesgirl with the cell phone and “Cools” and “Buh-byes” is not the only one who’s joining the modern world little by little.
And maybe, just maybe, someone is sitting by his fire, bemoaning these changes and planning a revolution of his own, back to the old ways. Maybe, this minute, the Amish are about to be born again. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Friday, September 11, 2009
City Girl in the Country
Angola, Indiana
Three Weeks at Crooked Lake
While the Bus is Being Renovated
I’m a city gal myself. Believe me, if Tarrytown, where I have spent the majority of my life, were anywhere else in this country outside of New York or California, it’d be a city.
But this is Indiana, as middle America as it gets, and that means farm country. Northern Michigan, where I recently spent three weeks, is cherry country. George Washington would have had a ball with his little hatchet. Here in Angola, the crop they boast the most is corn. It’s everywhere. Even in little neighborhoods, every one of which has at least one mobile home among its ranks, people plant corn.
In Michigan you can’t go 6 blocks without a cherry stand: Clean! Sweet! Fresh Cherries! In Angola you don’t make two blocks without seeing those homemade signs, each inevitably claiming Sweet Corn! $3 per dz! Best Corn for Miles! And sporting varietal names like Obsession.
To me that’s a perfume. To the Hoosiers, that’s prime corn.
And by the way, here’s an instance of Mother Nature’s brilliance. Corn grows in the middle of the stalk, sort of hanging out there for you to see it and pick it. Good thing, because if it were at the top, the stalk would break from its weight and you wouldn’t have “Sweet Corn!” You’d have “Dead Corn!” So if corn is the seed of the corn flower – not to be confused with cornflower, which is something else entirely – then what are those wispy things at the top of the cornstalk? I’ll have to Google that one.
And here, I’ve twice seen cows in the corn. Is that a bad thing? Should Little Boy Blue come blow his horn?
I stopped at a Sweet Corn sign yesterday and as luck would have it, this was an equal opportunity home gardener. I picked up eight of the most beautiful vine-ripened tomatoes I’ve ever seen or eaten. We used to grow tomatoes in our garden when I was growing up, and remember my mother walking outside with the salt, picking a tomato off the vine, salting it and eating it like a fruit. Yum, she’d say, the luscious juice dripping down her chin. This, in spite of the fact that she was allergic to tomatoes, and by tomorrow would have little bumps all over her forehead. Some treats just cannot be forsworn, even if they have troubling aftereffects. Tomatoes, as you might guess, have both a gastronomic and emotional appeal for me. And these babies really delivered. I made a salad of one red and one yellow, dotted it with slices of avocado, and that was my dinner.
As Mom would say, “Yum.”
Three Weeks at Crooked Lake
While the Bus is Being Renovated
I’m a city gal myself. Believe me, if Tarrytown, where I have spent the majority of my life, were anywhere else in this country outside of New York or California, it’d be a city.
But this is Indiana, as middle America as it gets, and that means farm country. Northern Michigan, where I recently spent three weeks, is cherry country. George Washington would have had a ball with his little hatchet. Here in Angola, the crop they boast the most is corn. It’s everywhere. Even in little neighborhoods, every one of which has at least one mobile home among its ranks, people plant corn.
In Michigan you can’t go 6 blocks without a cherry stand: Clean! Sweet! Fresh Cherries! In Angola you don’t make two blocks without seeing those homemade signs, each inevitably claiming Sweet Corn! $3 per dz! Best Corn for Miles! And sporting varietal names like Obsession.
To me that’s a perfume. To the Hoosiers, that’s prime corn.
And by the way, here’s an instance of Mother Nature’s brilliance. Corn grows in the middle of the stalk, sort of hanging out there for you to see it and pick it. Good thing, because if it were at the top, the stalk would break from its weight and you wouldn’t have “Sweet Corn!” You’d have “Dead Corn!” So if corn is the seed of the corn flower – not to be confused with cornflower, which is something else entirely – then what are those wispy things at the top of the cornstalk? I’ll have to Google that one.
And here, I’ve twice seen cows in the corn. Is that a bad thing? Should Little Boy Blue come blow his horn?
I stopped at a Sweet Corn sign yesterday and as luck would have it, this was an equal opportunity home gardener. I picked up eight of the most beautiful vine-ripened tomatoes I’ve ever seen or eaten. We used to grow tomatoes in our garden when I was growing up, and remember my mother walking outside with the salt, picking a tomato off the vine, salting it and eating it like a fruit. Yum, she’d say, the luscious juice dripping down her chin. This, in spite of the fact that she was allergic to tomatoes, and by tomorrow would have little bumps all over her forehead. Some treats just cannot be forsworn, even if they have troubling aftereffects. Tomatoes, as you might guess, have both a gastronomic and emotional appeal for me. And these babies really delivered. I made a salad of one red and one yellow, dotted it with slices of avocado, and that was my dinner.
As Mom would say, “Yum.”
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