DUTCH TREAT

May 24, 2006

We woke to a beautiful, sunny, blue day, so we decided to go for a bike ride.  Just 30 miles to the west of West Chester we parked our car and set up our bikes and rode out into the Pennsylvania Dutch farmlands, enjoying the green fields and sunny weather.  The terrain is pretty flat, a few very small rollers.  All of the homes have expansive, mown yards.  In California we would build 8 houses on a typical Pennsylvania front lawn.  Maintaining a Pennsylvania lawn is like maintaining the Golden Gate Bridge.  It takes all week to mow it and then you have to start all over again.

Before long we began to see signs of the local Amish culture.  Laundry hung out to dry in the sun—lines of black pants and shirts, plain dresses in somber colors, and black tights—dark outlines against the blue sky.  Enclosed buggies drawn by horses trotting down the highway.  Farm equipment pulled by mules. 

We rode past one field where the father was cutting hay with a horse-drawn mower and the kids in their straw hats, black pants with suspenders and dark shirts were running barefoot along behind in the new mown hay.  Often we would see a square, enclosed gray buggy trotting along the roadway.  If we watched carefully we could see inside the buggy: a stern father, gray-bearded, black suited and straw hated.  Next to him sat his plain, demure wife in her little white cap and black cape, and in back sat all their children carefully looking away from us, a symbol of the material world.  We passed a farmyard at noon and found a whole family of 8 primly dressed women and girls sitting around a big round picnic table under a blossoming apple tree, having lunch with the man of the family.  In one yard two little girls, the older, about 8, and the other, about 5, mowing the lawn.  The older girl was pushing the mower and her little sister was running in front, pulling a rope attached to the frame of the hand mower.  Another sight was a large cemetery, the final resting place of over 200 descendants of one 18^th century Amish couple.

The Amish beliefs and culture are foreign to us.  They believe in isolation from the modern world.  They don’t use electricity, preferring to be “off the grid” and not dependant on the government.  They have metal wheels on their buggies to avoid becoming too comfortable.  Several times we saw Amish housewives out tending their gardens on this sunny day.  They were dressed traditionally in an unadorned white cap, simple dress of forest green, navy blue, or deep maroon covered by a back pinafore, back tights and sturdy leather shoes.  Their plain farmwife faces had no makeup and their hair was rolled into a chignon and hidden in their cap.  And yet, what chore were they performing?  They were using a weed whacker to trim the edge of the lawn!  They do not use electricity, yet we saw many farmers with gas operated hay balers, although the hay-baler was horse-drawn.  There seem to be many anomalies in the culture.

The few people, adults, we met were quite friendly and spoke to us openly and unreservedly.  The children were polite, but went about their business and didn’t dally to chat with us.

Don was impressed with the numerous and prosperous farms throughout the area.  He worked hard and managed to restrain himself from giving me my annual silage lesson.  We saw many cottage industries--hand sewn quilts, eggs, honey and beeswax, woodcrafts, homemade chicken pies, bunnies for sale.  We saw a huge dark mule munching in field full of bright yellow buttercups.  There were two little sisters, barefooted in their dark dresses, riding scooters with big bicycle wheels.  Covered bridges, hay bales, Amish wagons, fields of wheat, a palomino mare, blond mane blowing in the breeze, standing with her curious colt.  All, beautiful, quaint, scenic sights.  We enjoyed them all.

With all of this overwhelming purity our itinerary took us through towns with interesting names.  We rode from Bareville, Pennsylvania, through Bird in Hand, and on to Blue Ball.  We stopped for a respite in Intercourse, Pennsylvania, and then we ended up in Paradise.  As we rode our bikes through Paradise we were assured that this is truly Paradise by none other than Santa Claus who was fastwalking down the road toward us, dressed in his summer reds and checking his pulse rate from time to time.  We stopped and had quite a chat with him.  He says “HI” to Isabella, Bryce, Ryan, Brendan, Chayton and Aidan and reminds them to be good this year.  He gave us a picture of himself with Mrs. Claus as a souvenir.

We returned to our electric car with soft, comfortable tires and went on our sinful way, back home to our big house in the woods.