the Amish connection

I was hanging out at the farmers market early one Saturday morning. Every so often I get an itch and try to act like I got a life and do something different. So I’m sitting there on a bench eating an apple and a couple of Amish women walk by. No big deal, I wave and they walk faster, nothing out of the norm, but it got me to thinking about the time I got pulled over by the Amish. By the way, am I the only person that when I eat an apple, I eat it core and all? Just curious.

Back during the Great Midwest Flood in the early nineties, the MAN had me pulling duty as a federal courier. On a typical day I would drive to Carrolton, Mo, St Joe, Moberly, Mo and a bunch of other small towns within a three to five hundred mile radius. I do believe that during this period I probably visited every small town in Missouri between St. Louis and the Kansas line.

The MAN had me driving this bigass four wheel drive Suburban, what a sweet ride. I had cell phones, CB’s, short wave radio, and all kinds of cool shit hooked up in that thing. In all the years I’ve worked for The MAN that was the coolest duty I’ve ever had to pull. I got to travel around the state, meet some damn nice people and drive a cool vehicle to boot. The best thing about it, I wasn’t stuck in the office. Such a deal.

During all this I had this route I ran between Carrolton and Moberly, Mo. I’d found this real nice two lane stretch of blacktop that was in the middle of nowhere. One day I was blowing up this road when about a half mile ahead I saw a bunch of buggies sitting on the road. As I slowed down and came to a stop I watched as a dozen men or so dressed in coveralls and wearing black hats surround my vehicle.

I got out and announced who I was and could I be of service. I was in serious G-Man mode, don’t ya know, anyway these guy’s proceeded to inform me that I was traveling on a privately owned stretch of highway and they were the owners. What they turned out to be were Amish farmers and I was smack in the middle of Amish farm country. They’d seen me driving up and down their road on a daily basis and just wanted to know who I was and all that.

I gotta tell ya, I was real polite to these people. From just watching these folks I got the impression that they walked pretty close to the hand of god if you know what I’m sayin. As a matter of fact, as I was leaving I asked if I could take a picture of them sitting in their buggies. They gave me a polite but firm no; it wasn’t allowed I was told. And even though I had a telephoto lens, the thought of going behind their backs never crossed my mind.

It was so odd, up until then I’d hardly ever seen one of these guys’s, now every time I stopped for gas or a piss they were coming out of the woodwork. Get this; I pulled into this gas station in the middle of nowhere. Sitting at the pump next to me was this nice van with this Amish cat pumping gas into it. First time I’d ever seen one driving a car. But the real trip happened when I walked into the store, there in front of me was this hot little Amish chick wearing a black leather biker jacket over her clothes. I found out later these guy’s worked the Farmers market here in town.

"and the monkey flipped the switch"