Tonight's Moon & Today's Amish

"I see the moon

And the moon sees me

God bless the moon

And God bless me"

AND, GOD BLESS YOU, TOO!!

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Today's trip to the Amish community, with my friend and three of her little daughters was enjoyable, although I always come away from there with renewed thankfulness at not having been born Amish.

My camera stayed hidden in my purse, since I had not the heart to take any photos, knowing how Amish folks dislike being photographed. I wished so badly to capture several scenes.......one being an Amish man------dressed in the typical deep green shirt, black suspenders making an X on his back, and straw hat on his head------out in a farm field, riding on a tillage implement (a disk) being pulled by SIX big, beautiful workhorses harnessed together side by side!

The other intriguing scene was a crew of men and boys (green or blue shirts, black suspenders, straw hats) cleaning manure from a barnyard. With pitchforks they were filling several small, green, horse-drawn manure spreaders.

One of the bulk grocery stores we stopped at was near a farm place where a young woman was hanging laundry out to dry.........the clothesline ran on pulleys from the back of the house to the top of the barn. She stood in one spot, pinning the laundry on and pulling the line to advance it along. Cute sight, with the laundry flapping there in the breeze.

Every farm place we drove by had a huge garden, of course, which took up most of the yard around the house. It made me feel exhausted just thinking about it.......BUT, then I realized the Amish live by the adage, "Many hands make light work", and this would apply to their gardening, too, I presume. At each place, we saw many people going about their daily tasks----- men, women, and children of all ages, planting in the gardens, pushing manual, rotary grass-cutters, feeding livestock, hanging laundry, etc. The houses are large, with many rambling rooms added on for growing families and grandparents. Lots of togetherness going on........very different than most of our living arrangements in the regular, modern world.

Despite all that seemingly warm, fuzzy scenario, I still remain grateful to not be Amish. For one thing, I wonder if they ever go to dentists. Today, the girls and women that waited on us in the bulk stores appeared to have rotted off teeth. That's just really too bad, I think. In contrast, many of them do wear eyeglasses, so evidently they don't balk at going to the eye doctor.

One of the girls was maybe fifteen, soft-spoken and sweet.......probably finished by now with her eighth-grade education........working in the store for awhile before she marries, I imagine. Another one was maybe around eighteen, and an older woman brought a baby to her while we were there, so she must be married and nursing a baby. The Amish have very large families, of course. I've heard that at times the Amish communities shuffle their young people around so as to prevent intermarriage amongst relatives. I'm sure that's probably true, because this Old Order community is not that large, and if they didn't move some to other settlements once in a while, it would be impossible to avoid intermarriage.

Anyway, I observed everything today, thinking "What a life. I wouldn't want it!" And those Amish women we interacted with today were maybe thinking a similar thought about my friend and I!

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Several years ago, while at an Amish dry goods store, I witnessed this funny little scene between the older man and his wife who were the store's owners: They were working at a desk near the rear of the store, and I was browsing in the boot and hat aisle nearby. The couple seemed to be in a heated argument......they were speaking in their Amish language, some sort of German, I think. All of a sudden, the woman stopped and blurted out in English to the man, "Oh, stop being so crabby!" And then she resumed talking to him in the Amish language! It was cute. Almost as if she wanted any hearers to know that it was her husband who was being the difficult one of the two!

Most of us who have lived in this area forever refer to the Amish as the "Hookies", of course, because of their use of hook-and-eye clasps on clothing instead of buttons. That's what my parents always called them......."The Hookies" or the "Hooks". To the Amish, any unnecessary ornamentation is prideful......they have a word for it, "hochmoodt" is how it sounds (I'm not sure of the spelling.) Buttons would be "hochmoodt", you see.

The Amish do use cell phones for business purposes and they use gasoline engines to power certain farm equipment such as generators for milk cooling. I know there are Amish construction crews who build houses, etc., which makes me wonder if they own trucks for hauling equipment and supplies. I should ask around about that. About fifteen years ago or so, we had an Amish crew erect a cement-stave silo here on our farm.......it was a used silo which had been taken down from another farm. That Amish crew hired a regular person to drive them here in a van each day.

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P.S. - That moon poem has been in my mind for years........I googled it and found this website of moon poems . It is listed as "a nursery rhyme", without a named author.

Here's the second verse to it:

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"When I see the moon

And the stars so bright

I thank the Lord

For day and night"