In Mallard Roost
Turns out they make great scones. Terrible drivers though.
These guys were extremely warm and welcoming to me. They fed me and let me shower and sent me off with a care package, and were really interested to hear about my trip. But the coolest thing of all was that they let me spend the night in their RV! It put my tent to shame.
Boring! So far nothing compares to PA's handwritten notes.
There are physical limits to what can reasonably be considered a shoe.
Maybe it's supposed to be a birdhouse? There was no nest in there though.
After a long, hard day on the road, there's nothing like kicking back and cracking open a fresh sack of sorghum.
Merrie spotted me at a crosswalk on the outskirts of Nappanee, IN. She grabbed her camera and ran over to do a quick interview for the local paper. As I was heading through town a little while later she popped out of a building with the mayor, Larry Thompson, and snapped a photo of the two of us. He looks right at home behind the wheel, doesn't he? If things go downhill politically, Larry, you're welcome to come join me on the road!
As I was walking through the work zone you see here, a car drove by and the guy in the passenger seat yelled something at me. All I could make out was "... job, dipshit!" My first guess was "Get a job, dipshit!" But after thinking it over a while I decided that didn't make sense. The car came up from behind me, so he would have had to have formed the comment before seeing anything other than my back. Then I realized he must have seen my reflective vest and assumed I was a construction worker, responsible for the slower speed he had to travel through the work zone on his way to do important video game and potato chip activities. "Good job, dipshit!" is what he must have yelled. Think of all the time he could have saved me just by speaking a little more clearly.
I pulled over last night at the home of James and Jean, an Amish couple. James got one of his sons to go get me a cup of fresh goat milk while we were talking, and Jean cooked me some steak and eggs from their farm. I spent the night with James's parents, Lee and Mary Kathryn, in a little outbuilding on their property. Lee showed me some of his woodworking projects and talked with me on into the night. This morning Mary Kathryn made a big breakfast, and the three of us sat and chatted for a while, and I had the chance to ask a lot of questions about Amish culture.
This lovely woman (Judy?) bought me a soda at the BP station in Bremen where I was using the bathroom, and she gave me some beef jerky too.
Diedra (center) had seen me walking a couple times, and when she saw my cart parked outside the BP mentioned in the previous post, she came in to investigate. She invited me over to the Dairy Queen next door and gave me some french fries (she offered more, but I was still full from my big Amish breakfast). Also pictured are Betty (left), who once biked across the US, and Rhonda.
"He's just taller than his hair."
So reads a sign in the bathroom of Shirley and Arnie. Arnie saw me when he was checking the mail, and invited me in for a delicious lunch prepared by Shirley (alternately referred to by Arnie as "the greatest gal in the world" and "toots").
All you ever get these days is junk rail.
(In case you can't tell, that post is a piece of railroad rail, a pretty common post material out here.)
I mentioned in my previous post that I had the chance to ask Lee and Mary Kathryn questions about Amish culture. Here are some things that I learned from them, as well as some observations I made:
Different orders and communities of Amish differ in their uses of modern technology. The Swartzentruber Amish are the most conservative and restrictive order, and won't even use electric lights on their buggies, driving at night with no turn signals and just a lantern to make themselves visible and light the way. Lee and Mary Kathryn belong to a different order (Old Order Amish, I believe) that allows limited use of electricity. In the picture above, you can see electric lights on the buggy (you can also see windshield wipers, but they are hand-operated). The lights run on a battery that is charged with a solar panel. There were a few other battery-operated things in Lee and Mary Kathryn's house that I noticed: LED night lights in the bathroom, an LED lantern, and electric clocks. They also had gas lights and gas heat (and probably a gas stove, although I don't know that for sure).
The specific regulations are determined by each community within the order, with representatives from each constituent church (there aren't physical churches, just groups that meet and worship at each other's houses on a rotating schedule) in the community meeting once a year to hammer out any changes to the rules. In Lee and Mary Kathryn's community, telephones used to be strictly prohibited. At some point they were deemed necessary for making doctor's appointments and other similar arrangements, so the community allowed one phone to be shared by the members of each church. Now each house is allowed to have a phone, but they have to be located outside the house. Lee and Mary Kathryn don't have their own phone, so they use a shared phone when they need to make a call. Businesses are allowed to have phones because they would not be able to stay competitive without them.
Lee and Mary Kathryn have one son who lives in Phoenix and is not Amish. They sometimes take the train out to visit him, and will ride in his car with him. There is a taxi service in Nappanee that the Amish sometimes use (if they're too old to get around on their own, if the weather makes other forms of travel dangerous, etc). I believe the idea is not that modern technology is inherently bad, but that it can be divisive to the community, so it is generally ownership of something modern, rather than use of it, that is forbidden. I don't think it's uncommon for an Amish person to work at a job that requires use of electricity.
In addition to the horse and buggy, many Amish in Nappanee use bicycles to get around. I probably saw more bikes there than in the rest of my trip combined.
They seemed to speak Dutch (Pennsylvania German) to each other, and English is taught in the schools. Their bibles are mostly in German.
I had heard that Amish kids had one year where they were allowed to live in the outside world and experience modern life, including drug use and pre-marital sex, before deciding whether they wanted to remain Amish. There is a nugget of truth to this. The Amish are Anabaptists, meaning they're not baptized into the church until they're adults. So there is often a period of time after children are old enough to live on their own but before they are baptized when neither their parents nor the church have much influence over them. For instance, James (Lee and Mary Kathryn's son) shared an apartment in Nappanee with a roommate for a few years before joining the church and returning to the traditional lifestyle. Lee and Mary Kathryn lived out west and owned a car for a while after getting married before rejoining the Amish community. The part of the rumor about drugs and sex is true for some, but not all. People raised Amish vary in their inclinations toward those activities, just like everyone else.
Lee and Mary Kathryn told me that many Amish children have cell phones, and sometimes even text each other during church services. I should have asked more questions about this. I guess this is not strictly prohibited because the children aren't members of the church yet, but I'm surprised their parents allow cell phones in the house. And how do they charge their phones? Do their families have solar panels or gas generators they use?
Lee and Mary Kathryn didn't want me to take a picture of them, because of the second commandment forbidding graven images, but they had no problem with me taking pictures of their house or their belongings.
Whew. I think that's most everything interesting I learned. If you have any questions, just ask them in the comments, and hopefully I will be able to answer.
I feel like this would make more sense if it were a hen, and facing the other way.
There was no sign, but I crossed into Central Time somewhere back in this picture when I went from St. Joseph County into LaPorte County. I asked a guy at a nearby house if I had crossed into Central Time, and he said that technically I had, but that they effectively live on Eastern Time because the nearest town is Walkerton, which is in St. Joseph County.
Indiana is rather confusing when it comes to time zones.
That little tube says "PESTICIDE INFORMATION INSIDE". I thought maybe it was supposed to be public information, but I was unable to open the tube. Does anyone know what this is all about?
For all your covering-buildings-with-crappy-looking-old-plywood needs.
They let me pitch my tent in a beautiful little pine grove on their property. We were having tea last night when I mentioned that I hadn't played a guitar since I left New York. Charlie brought over a never-been-used guitar he had sitting around, and I sung them the few songs I know, including Pancho and Lefty, which happens to be one of Charlie's favorite songs (he recorded me playing it on a little dictaphone). This morning Margaret cooked us breakfast, featuring some eggs from her very own "happy chickens" (although one of her hens has started trying to crow).
He belongs to Curt, the nephew of the folks I stayed with last night. (Curt once rode his bike across the US, with a buddy half of the way and solo the rest.)
Brought to you by the LaPorte County Pioneer Cemetery Commission
To my wonderful mother and all the others out there, including all my new moms on this trip.
From left to right: Chris, Anne, Janelle, and Chris (there are many more family members who weren't in the kitchen at the time: Chris and Chris have six kids and a bunch of grandchildren). One of Chris's sons had seen me back down the road a ways and told Chris I was heading his way, so he came out as I was passing by and invited me in to have Mother's Day lunch with them. He also chased me down after I left to give me a package of home-grown beef sticks. And today's New York connection: Mom-Chris, whose maiden name is Wyckoff, is, in all likelihood, descended from a fellow Brooklynite.
Christina and Troy called the neighbors over when I showed up, and we all hung out until bedtime.
Top row (left to right): Winston (the cat), Cassadie, Emily, Derek
Bottom row: Lisa, Carey, Cailynn, Christina, Troy
Troy had to head out to work before the crack of dawn, but I got to spend some quality time with the ladies of the house this morning while Christina was cooking breakfast (and packing me lunch), and also during Cassadie and Cailynn's post-breakfast pogo stick session.
