Livin' in an Amish Paradox

When I was in Hawaii earlier this year, I wondered at the morality of buying into manufactured "Old Hawaii" experiences like luaus. In general, I think there are very few things people shouldn't be allowed to sell, but these primarily end up being ideas (freedom, virtue, etc.) and not commodities (I know a lot of people are against drugs/vaccines being something you have to purchase but the fact that their manufacturers can sell them is the only reason they exist at all).

So the question was, am I buying the idea of Old Hawaii and therefore exploiting out of it any authority or authenticity it might still have, or am I merely exchanging my cash for its capital, simultaneously enriching me and giving it the means to preserve itself? (The hula dance performed by scantily clad, attractive semi-Polynesian women being Old Hawaii's equivalent of the Sacagawea dollar?)

Or maybe I was just too cheap to pay the $100+ asking price of a luau ticket.

Either way, the same thoughts started rattling around in my skull as we cruised through Paradise, PA in Pennsylvania Dutch country, pointing out (inside the confines of our closed car) "Amish!" each time we passed a horse and buggy (though Thomas said it "Armish!" and Sethie, not knowing what we were doing, had to shout, "Garhlajg!" a few seconds too late). The idea of the Amish is for sale everywhere around here, on restaurant signs ("Jakey's Amish BBQ!") and country kitsch stores ("Authentic Amish quilts for sale!") and in amusement parks ("The Amish Village: Live like the Amish! Until You are Tired of It!") and for buggy rides. The weird thing about it is that it seems to be the Amish neighbors who are selling this idea. Imagine if an entire industry grew up in Salt Lake City of non-Mormons holding pretend Sacrament meetings and offering "missionary bike tours" where tourists can put on a white shirt and name tag then ride two by two down the streets.

So Lancaster county is a type of Williamsburg for Amish-style experiences. Here's where the comparison breaks down, though: Williamsburg offers authentic old world living to its modern day tourists and Lancaster purports to offer the same, except for the fact that the Amish aren't "old world". They're this world. Like I said, we motored past all numbers of them on the roads, our car shimmying around their clip-clopping horses with the "slow vehicle" triangle on their backs. One farm along the road would be ploughed by tractors. The next farm over, ploughed by horses.


So the truth is, you can't really live like the Amish. Oh, you can do their chores, and ride in their buggies, and try out their German dialect, but you can't ever experience what it is like to be Amish surrounded by tourists trying to do your chores and ride in your buggies and sound out your words. The colonists of Williamsburg can only haunt the giddy tourists who ogle with amusement the hard life they used to lead. The Amish are constantly surrounded by slack-jawed outsiders like us.

And then it really gets weird because in Lancaster both Amish and Mennonite people dress very similarly, but the Mennonites seem to be eager for the outsider interaction. They run furniture stores and restaurants, as well as drive cars and shop at grocery stores. I stood behind a fellow in very traditional Amish attire at a little roadside stop-n-shop who was buying, of all things, Klondike bars. Over time, we played the "Amish or Mennonite" game. The plainly dressed woman pulling up to a restaurant in a minivan? Mennonite, I'm guessing. The man standing at a bank's drive-through window while his wife and kids waited in their horse and buggy off to the side? Who knows?

So here I am complaining about the tourist industry set-up to ogle the Amish while simultaneously participating in it. Welcome to the Amish paradox...er paradise. The truth is, we didn't do much Amish-ogling after all. Not only did I feel a little weird about it, but we had a five and two year-old to entertain and doing chores in faux villages, Amish or not, is not their idea of a good time. Instead, we took them to the National Toy Train museum and the Choo Choo Barn in Strasburg and later we ended up at Cherry Crest Adventure farm, which is one of those tourist farms I wrote about last fall. The kids had a great time and only occasionally paused to ask for "snacky packs".

I later mentioned to Nate my Amish-ogling moral quandry and whether or not it was acceptable to pretend to live someone else's life just for the fun of it. He replied, "That is what tourists are. That is why tourists go places: to do and be things they can't at home. If it's a problem here, it's a problem with any tourist attraction, anywhere."

So I'm curious what people think: is being a tourist inherently exploitive, or should we be grateful that the natural curiosity of other human beings makes living a plain life possible, even profitable? Does it just depend on whether or not the Amish woman who made your souvenir quilt actually saw some of the cash you paid for it?

In the meantime, here are some pics of our adventures in Lancaster:

Sethie loved the cats at Rayba Acres, the farm where we stayed.

Thomas on the see-saw at Rayba Acres

Nate and Seth chill out under a tree at Rayba Acres

A sign hung in our room at Rayba Acres. Cute or weird for a B&B?

(Plaque reads: "For Maid Service, Ring Bell...if no answer, Do It Yourself")

For those who think Salt Lake City is too explicitly religious, check out these things from restaurants in Lancaster County, PA:

A place mat at our table

("The prayers of your faith are shown to assist you in saying 'Thank you'")

A wall-hanging across the dining room of the Shepherd's Psalm.

An advertisement outside the door that reads "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and Thou Shalt Be Saved"

The kids enjoy Strasburg's train-centric attractions

Thomas loves the LEGO display at the National Toy Train Museum in Strasburg

The "Choo Choo Barn" in Strasburg pays tribute to Old Glory as part of its 1700 sq. ft. tabletop train display. Sethie danced here to the playing of patriotic music.

A motorized circus display at the Choo Choo Barn

Sethie spends almost all his time at Cherry Crest Adventure Farm in the "wheat barn".

What can I say, he's a cautious kid.

Next up: The Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial

Revenge of the Snacky Pack

So Nate has been off work for the last week and we've been trying to actually get off our duffs and go places. On Sunday, we headed to the beach for the first time all summer and Monday through Wednesday we spent in Pennsylvania Dutch country: Lancaster county, PA (don't do like Mara and say "LAN-CAS-TER" or you'll give yourself away as a rube. It's "LANK-ca-shire"). On our last day in PA, we jumped over to Gettysburg to tour the battlefield and bone up on our civil war history.

It's always interesting to get the adult reversal of one's long time kid-only perspective on certain family outings. Car trips, for instance. Is there anything more frustrating to a kid than long hours strapped in a car seat next to a sibling competing for toys and entertainment while the adults make dismissive remarks such as, "Well, just look out the window and enjoy the scenery", or "Why don't you see how many different license plates you can count?" I think wardens have also suggested the same thing to prisoners whose single-windowed cells overlook a highway. Even prisoners get some exercise time and TV access.

And yet, as an adult, the concerns of kids seem petty. You think, "Ah, cruising through the farms of Pennsylvania: everyone should love this!" and when they don't you say dismissively, "Well, just look out the window and enjoy the scenery," or "Why don't you see how many different license plates you can count?" If Nate suggested I count different state license plates under any kind of circumstance, you'd bet I'd clobber him.

The other problem: food access. The adults have it. Before we left, I bought up some little packets of crackers and cookies for the kids to eat during the long hours in the car. I made the mistake of calling them, "snacky packs" to Thomas. Now Thomas has two particular interests at this stage of his young life: food and entertainment. He is always in pursuit of one or the other or, most often, both. I am his mother. I am the food and entertainment gatekeeper. Most of our conversations during the day go like this:

Thomas: "Mommy, can I (eat X/play Y)?"
Me: "Not right now it's (time for school/time for bed/right after you just ate/the middle of the night/etc.)"

At least during the day Thomas can run off between food requests and do something else. In the car, Thomas was strapped in directly behind me. We could not escape from each other. Round trip through PA Dutch country and Gettysburg was about eight hours in the car total. At least seven of those hours were taken up by Thomas asking, "Mommy, can I have a snacky pack?" Sometimes he would ask if he could have one while he was still eating the last one. So he would say, "Muffle mumble scarf snacky pack?"

Even worse, the more often he asked for them and the less often he got them, the more the term "snacky pack" began to take on a certain nasally whine, the kind of which makes dogs howl and parents go blind.

Thomas on the use and pronunciation of the term "snacky pack"

Nate as designated Dad driver--you know the kind: doesn't turn around and doesn't stop for anything less than imminent bladder expulsions--began to truly loathe the snacky pack. He hated when Thomas whined for one and he hated me even more for having introduced the term. As the trip progressed, his right eye started to twitch. His muscles began to tighten. About an hour outside Philadelphia right after we had actually stopped to feed the children real food (well, service station food which counts as real only so much as it is being compared to snacky pack nutrition), Thomas made the mistake of asking for a "snacky pack" one too many times.

Nate roared, "If I hear the term snacky pack one more $#&@*! time, I will throw every single one of them out this window!"

I started to cry--cry with laughter, that is. I was rolling around the seat absolutely hysterical. Nate started half-smiling/half-grimacing and pinched my arm repeatedly in revenge. Thomas was looking between us, semi-hopeful that 1) perhaps he wasn't in trouble and 2) he might actually get a snacky pack.

In the end, the snacky packs did not meet hot pavement and Thomas learned how to ask, "May I have a snack, please?" in a far less whiny manner. I ended up with only a little arm bruise.

And we have, hopefully, learned our lesson: no more cute food monikers during car trips.

Next up: Live Like the Amish....Until You Get Tired of it

Holy Vocabulary, Batman!

Geez. I've been posting lately about as often as Nate sleeps. Anyway, here is Sethie nearing the two-year mark. He's actually got a vocabulary of over 50 words at this point (I know, I know, that in itself is pretty average for his age, but considering his preemie status, I'm constantly grateful that he is happily average), but I've asked him to repeat just a few of those.

When Thomas was a baby, Nate was always insisting I cut his hair--he didn't like the fluffy baby look on him--but he's changed his mind with Sethie. Maybe we've finally realize just how quickly they are both growing up and so we are happy to keep Sethie looking like a baby for just a little bit longer...