June 6

Unfortunately, today was a day when we noticed we were getting pretty short on clean, suitable attire so we spent a good part of the morning doing the laundry. Maybe I should say Peg did most of the laundry and I periodically hindered her by helping to do the wash. I am an extremely poor laundry guy and am completely retarded when it comes to folding clothes such that they will look acceptable once you put them on. T-shirts seem to be particularly challenging for me. Many times I have put on T-shirts I have folded that look like I merely removed them from the dryer and promptly rolled them into a ball before they had a chance to cool. I am extremely fortunate to have my wife along on laundry days because otherwise I would look like even more of a slob.
After finishing this onerous task, we decided to take a drive east through what is entitled “Pennsylvania Dutch” country which actually means Amish and Mennonite communities because absolutely nobody speaks Dutch around here. However, they do speak a variety of Germanic dialects which we didn’t hear because we only spoke to a couple of people, both of them in produce stands.
The farming country where these folks live is absolutely the most tidy farming operations I have ever seen. The locals drive around on the highways with buggies drawn by gorgeous horses happily ignoring those of us affected by the Industrial Revolution. The Amish and Mennonites deliberately live in communities where they can sort of ignore the outside world and just do what they see as correct. They have big families, live in big houses because they have loads of kids, drive to town in buggies disdaining automobiles, mostly do their farming without engines, do not fight in wars because it is contrary to their beliefs and generally tell the rest of the world to F.O. although they probably say it in a nice German religious manner. The graveyards have stones indicating these folks have been doing things their way in their communities for about 150 years without bothering to recognize the outside world. I like the idea of large groups of people choosing exactly what they are going to do without letting modern influences irritate or even affect their lives. I think we will probably do another random tour through this part of the state just to giggle at these people who do not give even a fraction of a shit about what I or any other outsiders think. They also have great food in their one-of-a-kind restaurants and I want to pig out on more of it.

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