Amish Country, Another World

I bought this book (look at the cover photo!) at 

The Quilt Shop at Miller's, which my friends and I visited today. 

It is stocked with quilts big and small

hand-stitched by a total of about 30 women in the local Amish community.

We drove around Lancaster County towns* with names like Bird-in-Hand, New Holland and Intercourse. (I got Dan a gray T-shirt with that last name on it--a popular souvenir, based on the number in stock. I knew he would laugh, and wear it.) 

We saw families in horse-drawn black buggies heading to and from Sunday services. Somber and unadorned but for the prance of the workhorses, tails swishing, and the smile of a young blonde boy in one who helped hold the reins. 

My friend, a close observer of everything from baby turtles on Cape Cod to tiny birds skittering on the ocean, pointed out a meeting house. Many buggies were lined up outside, the handsome, responsible horses waiting like protective parents. Boys in black garb joshing energetically outside. Down the road, more boys near a barn, jumping on a mountain of spare tires. Drive a little more, three boys playing baseball, one lifting a leather mitt for a catch. 

A young woman (late teen?) on a bicycle. Women in head covers, dresses, sensible shoes. Absence of Clairol hair color. Coarse, steely gray at the temples can age a woman quickly and make the husband in black walking next to her look many years her junior. But more likely that was a mother and son, not husband and wife, walking home from Sunday services.

I did not spy any groups of girls playing or jumping, letting out pent-up energy, bouncing.

Many of the shops were closed on Sunday. But we peeked on a store porch and saw things we loved. A metal bucket painted sky-blue. Old shutters. Enchanting birdhouses with copper roofing. A stone bird statue to stand in a garden.

We found a coffee shop (a chain) that was open for lunch and many Amish/maybe Mennonite teens and families were there. A boy with blonde bowl haircut, he and his cohorts drinking bottles of chocolate milk in farm country, not Starbucks-style iced coffee drinks. Teen girls with white head covers and long dresses, chatting with peers, maybe checking their cell phones, just like teens in Montclair madness. Two parents and a child holding hands and bowing their heads to pray before eating their grilled sandwiches.

I saw a lot of beauty and peace in their lifestyle, a lot of thanking God for your blessings. I sensed grace, friendliness and a certain brand of positivity, independence. That's cool, and soothing. But of course, the restricted gender roles, the exhausting physical work, the narrow views and no Netflix or NY Times word games. No pretty or shapely fashions, sweetheart necklines or cute tights, right? No-nonsense, modest shoes. Simple bonnets. No salon blowouts or makeup, but if you're lucky, natural rosebuds in your cheeks from eating right, drinking milk and living a fit lifestyle. Woven baskets and net shopping totes (we overlap on that last one). No women as scientists or writers--no men either? IDK how the beat goes on when the modern world as we know it has changed so much. It seems like a secret cult and I'm sorry if that is insulting.

At the shops by Miller's Smorgasboard (since 1929), we saw pickled veggies and jars of jam, sweet shoofly pies and big blocks of Amish farm butter. Raisin bread, potato rolls, whoopie pies and giant peanut butter cookies. The old-fashioned foods live on. At the quilt shop there, we had to don white cotton gloves if we wanted to touch the quilts, and turn them in when we left. I bought a cheerful quilted baby book about farm animals for a special baby girl (and TBH, just as much for her young mommy), a gift for Sis, a quilted potholder with a bird in the design for Figgy's new apartment, a blue and green Christmas potholder for our kitchen and something I could not resist--a small red and green themed "mug mat" in pretty holiday fabric. 

I have long loved the images of candy canes and Christmas trees. Ever since grade school, they have been my favorite things to draw/doodle when I should be concentrating on something else. Candy canes, Christmas trees, packages with big bows and what Figgy calls "the lady" that I have drawn since sixth grade art class at Saint Mary's. 

I also drew her with young Fig on Nantucket or Martha's Vineyard when we were waiting for a restaurant order with Dan. Draw the lady, she would say. My lady has a V-neck top, knee-length skirt, belt with stylish round buckle, necklace, heels, wide eyes with lashes and fishnet stockings (for fashion and because I like to fill blank spaces with orderly patterns, like the stripes on a candy cane or a ball-shaped ornament on the tip of each tree bough).  I started drawing her when I wore the same school uniform every day for eight years: navy plaid pleated skirt, white shirt, navy vest, navy knee socks--and navy snap neck tie, I think? (How old am I that I waver on this memory?) I know Sis has the neck tie on in a school photo, but she is seven years older.

I want to watch the 1985 movie "Witness" again, starring Kelly McGinnis (as an Amish woman) and Harrison Ford.

We are back home now. Monday morning coming up next. It was good to catch up with my girlfriends, including five+ hours of car time.

Good night.

*Per nytimes.com: There were about 341,900 Amish people living in 31 states and four Canadian provinces as of June 2019, according to statistics compiled by the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pa. About 63 percent live in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana, the center said. Lancaster County, Pa., has the largest Amish population in the United States, with about 39,255 people, it said.....In 2019, three Amish children died in Michigan after a car plowed into the back of their horse-drawn buggy, underscoring an all-too-common danger faced by the Amish, who reject automobiles and other modern technology.