Parke County Indiana

As was the case throughout, I would get restless and drive through the night. Save a few bucks on hotels is the general idea. So, last night at the Three Sisters in McConnellsville, OH, a great little town that actually got short shrift in this recounting. So, a couple more photographs. And stories, because there were a few.

The previous morning I had a fine breakfast at the Blue Bell Diner. In this charged state I was up at dawn and raring to go. I'd mind my own business, but if I overheard something interesting, I'd pipe up. An old timer who was just passing through on his way to Florida was bitching about "socialism". Catnip.

The long and short of this was that I had to trot out the usual rigamarole about Social Security, Medicare and the VA being "socialist" and that the Veterans Administration had the same structure as the Soviet healthcare system (or the NHS in Britain) in that every doctor is a government employee. I remember pounding my pointer finger onto the formica countertop for emphasis. It ended up with a handshake and affability.

He had a fucked up son that was ruining his life. He was trying to save him. I told him to enjoy his retirement and fuck that guy. His children were not your responsibility in the end. It wasn't really about socialism at all. The wait staff girls were nonplussed but tolerant of this light diatribe. Refining the technique, I guess?

My original intent was to drive to Hannibal, MO. But that was like over 500 miles away and my stamina was variable. So, I drove through the night, taking a break here and there for a catnap after contending with the constant construction on I70, which was utterly appalling once entering Indiana.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aepBpZ3kXek

Most of that road was 1 lane due to all the closures. Dawn turned up eventually. And the brochure said the town Greencastle had a university. And I had a vague sense about Parke County.

Got the two eggs breakfast without incident on the outskirts of Greencastle. Trundled about campus and the local public library. Picked up a few decent books at their ongoing sale. Working vacation! Fitter! Happier! More productive!

Onward and upward to Parke County and the many covered bridges there. After my niece pointed out that "they basically all look the same" when being shown said during a past trip to Lancaster County, the allure has ebbed somewhat. So say the Psalms: out of the mouths of babes...

My initial intention was to just get new shoes at an Amish-run store carrying Carhart and other quality Middle American brands. What I stumbled into was a hidden Empire. An enclosure where no one but Amish people lived, side by side, in large tracts. It seemed more remote and secret that comparable places in Lancaster County. Literally off the beaten path. If you stay on modest state route 36, you'd really never be the wiser.

First stop was Sunset View Groceries. Here I met Fanny, the first of half a dozen Amish folk I would encounter and chat with today. Alas, there is no photographic evidence of these convos as eschewal of vanity and adherence to modesty dictates the absence of evidence. I picked up some elderberry jam, lime-tinged pickles, a designer soda from Reading, PA that I'd never heard of, and local potato chips.

There were lots of signs dictating behavior. Why? Well, "the English" are swine who show up drunk after fishing the local lake and the Amish must contend with their degeneracy, or human frailty, if you prefer. Fanny got me going thinking about just tooling around by stopping at local businesses.

I was aware that I was a little off, a little too talkative, and so on, but we seemed to get on ok. She was forthcoming with suggestions anyway, among them a visit to the local 'variety store'. I foolishly asked what that even was. Just the local name for a General Store because they have a variety of products. Stupid American.

Here I met one of two Lydias. The friendlier one. We clowned around a little and I picked up a homemade sunflower apron for my mother and some maple syrup for my father. Hopes always spring eternal and lemons get turned into lemonade by force of will. Or mutually assured terror, as the case may be. I think this Lydia tipped me off about a local book barn, as she was a node of information as a local businesswoman.

The second Lydia was something else. I'd been given erronous directions from the first Lydia, who told me how to reach the book barn from her house, rather than her place of business. So, I drove up the dirt road to the second Lydia, whose husband was at work while she had her little Aryan sons in tow, having espied a vehicle turning around in her cul-de-sac.

They listened, these perhaps 5 and 7 year olds. They listened very, very intently. It was almost distracting, they're gestating focus.

I don't quite know how to relate this. Just let it flow. She came walking out of her house and I thought, let's see what happens. What ensued seemed to last for an hour, but it was likely done inside of 20 minutes, as she was very quick, and to the point. Smoking compulsively, all the while. The point was my salvation and my Satanic nature and the devilish essence of every being unconverted to Christ.

'Kinda anxious get get right down to it are ya?' I was not surprised by this so much as taken aback by the soft vehemence, the velvet glove on an iron fist. Sweet Amish-looking 30 something lady casting out demons in her spare time as an afterthought. Some people really do need to get out more. 'A man's attitude goes some ways...'

Among other things, I was the first atheist she met who was nice. Who wasn't an angry rebel against God. Honey, I'm not an atheist per se. I just know my knowledge is so paltry as to be incapable of sustaining the existence of God, making the entire question fundmentally irrelevant and while not exactly boring, not exactly that interesting either.

There was a time that such interactions would have awakened my ire. But I just listened. She was a smart cookie to be sure, but her Weltanschuung was based on revelation and hallucination, which she thought was Special, because it was special to her and her friends.

I called her a philosopher. She wasn't impressed. She had an agenda and a heathen's praise was nothing to her. People see Christ in the clouds – or a piece of toast – all day every day. That she hadn't counted on.

She declared she knew I was The Devil anyway – friendly or not – because "I have seen". She kept repeating how she had seen Christ in the clouds and so had her friends. She said it with a trembling. Was she losing it or was I?

I didn't have the heart to tell her about Fatima, Medjugorie and a thousand other instances of group religious hysteria, or revelation, if you prefer. I think she probably was frustrated with her husband and took it out on me.

I one upped her, of course, because why not? I told her she was cruel for calling me and my father the literal incarnation of the devil. I told her it was impolite. She did not bat an eye.

I told her she was 99.99% the atheist I am. Why? She had rejected the 10,000 Gods humans have conjured up over the millennia and just stuck with MomnDad's bullshit. I used a euphemism.

She said it was time for her to go in. They always say something like this, when push turns to shove. And by they I don't mean Amish women. I'd say a few things about female energy. She had it. I guess most of them do. It's a sort of bravado, which is mostly enjoyable. I marvel at it sometimes. I detest it when it's tinged with anger, to say nothing of unresolved malice.

I manage it now and avoid it selectively, as it is a very powerful thing and a very volatile thing occasionally. But it can be short-circuited, if necessary. It can also be deterred, or smashed if you like, even among very, very formidable women. They never see it coming, for all their perceptiveness.

They indulge in it, they see it working, or they think they do. It is a form of arrogance, when misused. It's like a trance. I don't think they know what they're saying or doing sometimes.

And I seem to invite this, or elicit it, anyway. Why? Because I listen and respond provocatively, as few people still do. Or I jump ahead a couple steps and they can only up the ante. As with so much else, it is also a little bit boring, once you see through to the bottom of it.

Next up was Jacob. Another wrong turn. I had no idea where I was going. I was put off and bemused by the second Lydia. I need post-botched conversion cigarettes. I told him the broad outlines of the convo, and he was alarmed.

He may have intimated that there was trouble in paradise (her yard was beautiful with flowers and fruit trees set among rolling pasture with a venerable old home). Jacob gave me more precise directions, as was his wont, and I headed on left-right-left past the one room schoolhouse and down another dirt path, third house on the right past the cemetery. Ok, I got this.

Finally found the right house after doubling back. The son reported to me that his father was resting from a trip to – wait for it – Lancaster County, the Hofburg of the Amish. He also told me his father had pulped a truckload of old books because they were "of the world".

I straight up told him that this was next to a sin, because "the world" out there needs knowledge. In fact, it is starved of it. He did not contradict this. No book barn for me. Boo hoo. Jacob thought this guy was smart to be sure, but hid behind jokes all the time. He recommened a wiser man, but I was out of time.

Picked up my Merrill walking shoes at a store that doesn't show up on Google Maps outside of Mansfield by the Strange Branch of Big Raccoon Creek. Sometimes I think some of this was a dream, but it really happened. A lot of this trip was like that.

Later on I made it to the county seat of Rockville. I could only book a $60 dump for the night and headed off to the bar at Montezuma, which wasn't all that eventful. Guys vying to get with the formidable blonde bartendress with scant success. It was hotter than hell that day and each subsequent day. I cancelled my reservation and headed to Terre Haute to visit the Eugene V. Debs house, which was closed by this hour.

Terre Haute struck me as another town wrecked by urban renewal. Lots of parking lots and mid-20th Century brutalist hideousness. A superficial impression, to be sure, but I didn't want to stay there either. I'd intended to make it to West Baden south of Bloomington, but took a wrong turn and shelved that idea. The goal was Cairo, IL not Hanibal anymore. Highway 69 down towards Evansville. Again the middle of the night, when calm and music soothe the discontented soul.

You fly into St. Louis to do that. You don't drive to it. Mark Twain will have to wait. Hey, man, slow down. Idiot. Slow down. Slow down.

It's such an enormous relief to be post-sexual.