As part of our trip, we stopped by an Amish farm. It was huge, we drove for a good 20 minutes down this long dirt road with fields on either side. There was something odd about the whole thing, but we just couldn’t tell. The radio was off, and the windows were open, letting in the sunlight, and the distant smell off animal manure.
Some fields were green with grass as they rolled up and down, and animals grazed. They took their time, as if they had all the time in the world. Most looked like statues with their heads down. Only when one or two would life up their head, or move slightly to the left to get a better tuft of grass, did you know they were alive.
Other fields had long furrows that rose up the side, and disappeared down the next bend in the earth. I never realized how much the earth bent and swayed. Like a long ribbon connected to the hands of a wind dancer. There were other houses, and big barns with other little buildings scattered around them. I wondered what the other buildings were for. Some places had a lot of them, others just a few.
“Telephone poles.” Mom said suddenly. It broke the silence that had descended upon us since we turned down this road with the sign advertising “Amish Acres.”
“There are no telephone poles!” She said, discovering what was off, “No air conditioning units beside houses, not satellite dishes, nothing. Her voice broke the trance and one by one we all affirmed and said a few words, grateful to have that strong silence broken. Soon enough though, our words ran out and that silence descended upon us yet again. Like a magic spell created by such a foreign place. A place of sunshine, of dirt roads, and long green fields, and bird song, foreign to our ears.
We pulled up the long driveway and into the dirt parking lot. We walked up to the main house, assuming that is where the tour starts. But we were greeted by a woodcut sign on the front door that said. “Private, please proceed to barn.”
We looked at each other, and the multitude of buildings placed behind and around the house. Which one exactly was the barn? Dad took the first step off the porch toward one of the buildings, we followed. Mom in back, making sure none of us wandered off.
There were more people than we expecting. There were people dressed up in plain dresses, pants and shirts with no color. Some were talking to groups small and large. Some were moving from here to there with a bucket of something, hauling pails of water, pulling a goat, and one was driving a team of horses out into the fields.
Some seemed too young, children growing into teens, with thin bony elbows, and tiny waistlines they traveled from here to there each on their own way. Others seemed older, 20’s or 30’s, men with facial hair, and broader, muscular shoulders beneath their suspenders and women with curves beneath the no nonsense straight lines of their dress with their practical shoes.
The older ones, the ones with white beards, and clear heads were the ones leading groups from one place to another talking and pointing, while tourists in designer jeans, and cameras in hand nodded and shuffled around looking for the perfect shot.
One woman in designer sunglasses walked away from her group and asked a young man driving a cow to stay right there, rising the camera before her, squinting one eye and one side of her mouth cocking up while she positioned the camera. The young man pulled the cow to a stop, and when the cow tossed its head, it sent the mans feet skidding back a few feet.
He waited the long twenty seconds it took for the lady to figure out and position her camera. Doing his best to keep control of the cow. When she finally got the shot, she lowered her camera and with the kind of east coast accent that grates the nerves she said overly loud “Thank you” as if he didn’t speak English. He simply nodded and continued on his way guiding the cow along. I was impressed he didn’t snap at the woman to take the picture faster, given how ornery the cow was.
Dad caught up with the back end of a group entering a long wooden building with the roof only angling up, not coming back down like a house roof. I wondered if the building was half built, but when we walked in and down the hallway. The age of the stalls and the level of dirt inside showed that the building had been there for quite some time.
We were so far at the back of the group, that we couldn’t hear what the guide was saying in the front, above the noise of the livestock and the people. We continued down looking into each stall. Cow, cow, cow, empty, person in it cleaning out stall. Some people took pictures of the person. The person kept cleaning as if the flashes from the cameras were something completely ordinary when you’re lifting shovels full of cow manure into a wheelbarrow.
Down near the middle the stalls stopped and there was an open concrete slab with hooks on the wall and wood slats coming out parallel. There was one cow hooked up to the wall, and a girl beside the cow, head down, hands forward underneath the cow.
Mom leaned down to us and in a quiet, knowledgeable voice said, “She’s a milkmaid.” We nodded looking on as if we were seeing a mannequin of an ancient country peasant, or a Neanderthal, or something else we didn’t really know. Then as one, we continued walking when the rest of the group pushed forward.
We walked though a wood door with a window on the top half, into a brightly lit room, with shelves, and clean wood hewn floors. There were electric lights overhead, but we didn’t notice. We were taken back by the transformation from a 17th century milking area, to a modern gift shop.
There were all different kinds of items on the shelves. From pottery bowls and pitchers, jars of food, and jam, piles of cloth, t-shirts, hand made soap, freezers of cheese and cream, books. There was even a metal rooster weather vane hanging from the ceiling in the corner, twisting slowly in the slight breeze.
Us kids split up, wandering around, marveling at the different items on the shelves. Mom made a beeline for the jars of jam. Dad went to go find someone to give him directions.
I wandered up to the counter, looking through the clear glass into the big jars of stick candy. Sticks of alternating color yellow to red to blue, spinning round and round. There was a short line of people with random items piled in their arms waiting to check out.
The young man who was pushing the cow earlier walked in, quickly, as if he knew where he was going, doing it a million times before. He sidestepped past slow moving tourists as if he was dancing, or they weren’t there.
He nodded to the cashier who said a few words to him. Then the young man turned toward the door, stopped and stepped back toward some taffy and other candy. He took two sticks of licorice colored green and blue. He looked back at the cashier who just nodded and smiled.
“He’s got a sweet tooth.” A mom said plainly to her little girls as the man made his way toward the door. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought a saw a passing look of annoyance on his face. He walked quickly back out the door, not saying a word to anyone.
I walked out behind him some distance, as the cashier directed my father where to go to start the guided tour.
He walked quickly toward the back door of the house. The one with “Private” on the front door. As he walked in, I heard him say. “I just can’t stand it, mother.” Then the door slammed shut, but I still heard through the open window the conversation.
“Why do they have to be here?”
“It was a family decision to open up the farm to tourists.”
“They do nothing but get in the way, gawk at you, and make dumb comments as if you can’t understand them. I’m sick of it. I just can’t stand them anymore”
“Jackson, you could never stand them. This is to teach you patience. And those gawkers are the reason that we had enough feed last winter to keep the livestock fed.”
At that point a matronly woman wearing an apron walked to the window and closed it. Not before looking at me straight in the eye. I felt my face flush red instantly.
I was caught.
I didn’t mean to listen in, I really didn’t, it just happened. I looked down instantly at the blue hydrangeas bordering the house, scarping my toe in the sun baked dirt.
Their voices were muffled and I could no longer understand what they were saying, although I heard the female matronly voice, and the younger masculine voice going back and forth.
Shortly after, my father found me and waved me over to the far left building, the big red barn, where the tour supposedly started. As we approached the barn we noticed more quaint wood burned signs saying “Main Barn” and below that “Tour Starts Here”.
Mom paid the girl sitting at a lock box behind a small wooden desk. Then we met a kindly old gentleman with a crocked back and a black hat introduce himself as Jebadiah. He gave us a few words of introduction, and started the tour.
While we were walking from the big barn, to the creamery. I saw Jackson in the upper window of the private house. His head was down, as if he was looking intently at something in his hands. Then he placed whatever it was softly and lovingly on the windowsill.
As he turned a wind must have blown up, and the piece of paper he set down, flew up and out the window, out into the dusty yard. I saw his eyes go wide, watching it floating, then I saw him rush from the room. It settled down just inside a small paddock with pigs in it. The pigs were all lying down on the other end of the paddock, and there was a large puddle of mud that almost encompassed the entire pen. The paper landed on the border of the fence line, perched precariously on the ridge of dry dirt over the mud below. I bent down and reached my hand toward the seemingly blank paper. It seemed to hum with a life of its own, my curiosity was so thick.
My fingers encircled the paper, and rising I flipped it over. There were spots of color on it, in no evident order, over a background of gray. Spots of red, and black lines that travel this was and that for no apparent reason. White lines that intersected the black traveling on their own whim.
Before I had much longer to look at it, the young man rushed quickly from the house, but with a composure as to not draw attention to himself. He looked swiftly left to right, not looking at people, but rather in corners, against walls, and in the tall tufts of grass. In that way he didn’t notice my approach.
“Here you go.” I said simply. Not mentioning that I was watching him earlier and saw it fly from his window. He looked at me in the face. He had almost a surprised looked, as if he brushed past so many tourists that he forgot they had individual faces.
“Thank you.” He said slowly and hesitantly, taking the paper once again into his own hands.
“Pollock” I said, as he turned his broad shoulders from me.
“What?” he asked turning back.
“It’s a Jackson Pollock.” I said, pointing toward the paper.
He looked down at the paper, then at me. Thinking.
“Yes it is.” He said.
