in their shunning. Every time anybody invents something useful or notable, like television or rubber gloves, they argue about whether it is ungodly or not, and the ones who don't like it go off and form a new sect. First, they argued over whether they should have steel rims or rubber rims on their buggies, then whether they should have tractors, then electricity, then telephones and television. Now presumably they argue over whether they should have a frost-free refrigerator and whether their instant coffee should be powdered or freeze-dried.
The most splendid thing about the Amish is the names they give their towns. Everywhere else in America towns are named after either the first white person to get there or the last Indian to leave.
But the Amish obviously gave the matter of town names some thought and graced their communities with intriguing, not to say provocative, appellations: Blue Ball, Bird in Hand, and Intercourse, to name but three. Intercourse makes a good living by attracting passersby such as me who think it the height of hilarity to send their friends and colleagues postcards with an Intercourse postmark and some droll sentiment scribbled on the back.
Americans are so fascinated by the Amish way of life, by the idea of people living z00 years in the past, that they come quite literally by the millions to gawk. There were hundreds and hun dreds of tourists thronging Intercourse when we arrived, and cars and buses choking the roads into town.
Everyone hoped to see and photograph some genuine Amish. Up to five million people a year visit the county and non-Amish businessmen have erected vast souvenir palaces, replica farms, wax museums, cafeterias and gift shops to soak up the $350 million that the visitors are happy to spend each year. Now there is almost nothing left in these towns for the Amish themselves to buy, so they don't come in and the tourists have nothing to do but take pictures of each other.
Travel articles and movies like Witness generally gloss over this side of things, but the fact is that Lancaster County is now one of the most awful places in America, especially on week ends when traffic jams sometimes stretch for miles. Many of the Amish themselves have given up and moved to places like Iowa and upper Michigan where they are left alone. Out in the countryside, particularly on the back roads, you can still sometimes see the people in their funny dark clothes working in the fields or driving their distinctive black buggies down the highway, with a long line of tourist cars creeping along behind, pissed off because they can't get by and they really want to be in Bird in Hand so they can get some more funnel cakes and SnoCones and perhaps buy a wrought-iron wine rack or combination mailbox-weather vane to take back home to Fartville with them. I wouldn't be surprised if a decade from now there isn't a real Amish person left in the county. It is an unspeakable shame. They should be left in peace.
In the evening, along with everyone else in the whole of Pennsylvania, we went to one of the many barnlike family-style Pennsylvania Dutch restaurants that are scattered across the county. The parking lot was packed with buses and cars and there were people waiting everywhere, inside the building and out. We went in and were given a ticket with the number 621 on it and went with it to a tiny patch of floor space just vacated by another party. Every few minutes a man would step to the door and call out a series of numbers ridiculously lower than ours-220, 221, 222-and a dozen or so people would follow him into the dining room. We debated leaving, but a party of fat people beside us told us not to give up because it was worth the wait, even if we had to stay there until eleven o'clock. The food was that good, they said, and where food was concerned these people clearly had some experience. Well, they were right. Eventually our number was called and we were ushered into the dining room with nine strangers and all seated together at one big trestle table.
There must have been fifty other such tables in the room, all with a dozen or so people at them. The din and bustle were enormous. Waitresses rushed back and forth with outsized trays and everywhere you looked people were shoveling food into their mouths, elbows flapping, as if they hadn't eaten for a week. Our waitress made us introduce ourselves to each other, which everybody thought was kind of dopey, and then she started bringing food, great platters and bowls of it-thick slabs of ham, mountains of fried chicken, buckets of mashed potatoes and all kinds of vegetables, rolls, soups and salads. It was incredible. You helped yourself and with two hands heaved the platter on to the next person. You could have as much of anything as you wanted-indeed, when a bowl was empty the waitress brought back another and practically ordered you to clear it.
I've never seen so much food. I couldn't see over the top of my plate. It was all delicious and pretty soon everybody knew everybody else and was having a great time. I ate so much my armpits bulged.
But still the food kept coming. Just when I thought I would have to summon a wheelchair to get me to the car, the waitress took away all the platters and bowls, and started bringing desserts-apple pies, chocolate cakes, bowls of homemade ice cream, pastries, flans and God knows what else.
I kept eating. It was too delicious to pass up. Buttons popped off my shirt; my trousers burst open. I barely had the strength to lift my spoon, but I kept shoveling the stuff in. It was grotesque. Food began to leak from my ears. And still I ate. I ate more food that night than some African villagers eat in a lifetime. Eventually, mercifully, the waitress prised the spoons out of our hands and took the dessert stuff away, and we were able to stumble zombielike out into the night.
We got in the car, too full to speak, and headed towards the greenish glow of Three Mile Island. I felt as if I had eaten the contents of a cement mixer. I lay on the back seat of the car, my feet in the air, and moaned softly. I vowed that I would never eat again, and meant it. But two hours later, when we arrived back at my brother's house, the agony had abated and my brother and I were able to begin a new cycle of gross overconsumption, beginning with a twelve-pack of beer and bucket of pretzels from his kitchen and concluding, in the early hours of the morning, with a plate of onion rings and two-foot-long submarine sandwiches, full of goo and spices, at an all- night eatery out on Highway 11.
CHAPTER I4
IT WAS TEN MINUTES to seven in the morning and it was cold. Standing outside the Bloomsburg bus station, I could see my breath. The few cars out this early trailed clouds of vapor. I was hung over and in a few minutes I was going to climb onto a bus for a five-hour ride into New York. I would sooner have eaten cat food.
My brother had suggested that I take the bus because it would save having to find a place to park in Manhattan. I could leave the car with him and come back for it in a day or two. At two in the morning, after many beers, this had seemed a good plan. But now, standing in the early-morning chill, I realized I was making a serious mistake. You only go on a long-distance bus in the United States because either you cannot afford to fly or-and this is really licking the bottom of the barrel in America-you cannot afford a car. Being unable to afford a car in America is the last step before living out of a plastic sack. As a result, most of the people on long-distance buses are one of the following: mentally defective, actively schizoid, armed and dangerous, in a drugged stupor, just released from prison or nuns. Occasionally you will also see a pair of Norwegian students. You can tell they are Norwegian students because they are so pink faced and healthy-looking and they wear little pale blue ankle socks with their sandals.
By and large a ride on a long-distance bus in America combines most of the shortcomings of prison life with those of an ocean crossing in a troopship. So when the bus pulled up before me, heaving a pneumatic sigh, and its doors flapped open, 1 boarded it with some misgivings. The driver himself didn't look any too stable. He had the sort of hair you associate with people who have had accidents involving live wires. There were about half a dozen other passengers, though only two of them looked seriously dangerous and just one was talking to himself. I took a
