At a produce stand in a small town in the Blue Ridge Mountains I bought an armful of sweet potatoes and some blueberry jam simply because the seller, sitting on a small stool, was a stunning blond haired beauty who happened to be Amish. She wore a long cotton dress buttoned high at the neck, a gray bonnet covered her head and her horse and buggy stood in the background. She seemed so wrong for this role. Her face belonged on a college campus or a soft drink commercial smiling into a camera with a tropical beach in the background. So rather than stare --- I thought there could be a story here—I decided to buy something and strike up a conversation. And like so many of my great ideas that didn’t happen.
Years ago I questioned the Amish beliefs that denied their children many wonderful things in the world but now I pity the kids of affluent people. They spoil their children leaving a wake of emotionally stunted lives with dysfunctional Charlie Sheen behavior believing they have “the blood of a tiger” but couldn’t bear a day without cell phone service.
The Amish adhere to a doctrine that teaches “to be in the world but not of the world” a belief built on few verbs but nevertheless sets them apart which they turn to their advantage as a thriving enterprise in the form of a tourist attraction. And so this young girl sits quietly while paunch bellied, credit card carrying golly-gee-that’s-a-horse Protestant tourists give her a brisk business in sweet potatoes and blueberry jam at $5.00 a jar. You don’t want to know what I paid for the Amish organic sweet potatoes.
As I studied her horse and buggy it dawned on me that while we believe the Amish live in the past they may well be the future. Our children and grandchildren will be faced with what we have been able to ignore--- life with rationed gasoline and expensive electricity and subsist on three acres with a plow and a good strong team of mules named Gus and Brownie. Maybe someone will invent a car that runs on common air or maybe we’ll transport ourselves on microwaves but the cynical realist in me has grave doubts.
It’s been an extremely short winter in a long session of short winters with record breaking high temperatures and sporadic rainfall. Even the stout capitalist in me who believes trees were made to build yard decks senses a line has been crossed. Somewhere Mother Nature is putting down her apron, breaking off a hickory switch and is about to address us wasteful fuel consuming creatures.
I walk about the small town and it is picturesque with shaded streets and tidy yards. I pass by a huge pile of a house--- an old Victorian home with a screened porch and green ferns hanging from corner eaves. It has seen the influenza epidemic of 1918, the Great Depression and the passion of World War II and people sat on its porch and believed in God and prayed for people other than themselves. It speaks of a time when everyday honesty and hard work anchored a nation and our lives. There was no pizza delivery.
There are zealots, politicians and tyrants out there working the main highways but back here in the little towns and farms they still survive on honesty and work. I made a blueberry tart and cut the amount of sugar in half to bring out the berry taste. I was pleased. The simple life of the past may well be the way forward.
