The Amish Are Coming! The Amish Are Coming!

It has been eleven months since quitting a job that I had been employed for fourteen-years, taking on a job at a warehouse where I lasted only three months, becoming a full-time college student and taking a job at a "soon-to-be-defunct" freight moving company. My days have been tiring and void of excitement, lately. The pressure of work and school had spilled over into my home life for a time, until summer break from classes broke the monotony in a good way.

The problem is that, once monotony sets in, one tends to get used to it - for good or bad.

Recently, I had made myself a victim of my own monotony. I had no more classes to attend after work and, though it meant more time at home with the wife and kids, school had become an outlet of sorts to wind down from a physically demanding day at a physically demanding job. I began feeling that, if something different or even "off the wall" would happen, it would break that funk that I had driven myself into.

I knew what I needed.
I needed to laugh. Hard. Laughter that would bust open my tear-ducts and make my guts hurt like hell.
I tried to think back to the last time I had laughed like that and could find nothing.
I began to believe that laughter had left me for good.

"Leave it to the Amish..."

This past Tuesday - a damp, foggy Rocky Fork Lake morning - I had walked out to my third-hand, 1996 Ford Taurus to start my earliest workday of the week. I made my way through the gravel driveway, my car keys in hand. I had just put my free hand on the door handle of the car when I heard it...

"G' morning!"

The Amish man was standing in the foggy alley way, not fifteen feet from behind my car. I don't know if it was my one-track mind, set on work and another monotonous day, or if it was a "Mennonite Mind-Trick", or if the Amish just know how to hide themselves in the fog. All I know is that he just seemed to materialize before me, speaking in a voice, so deep, that it should have come from a man nearly seven feet tall and three hundred-twenty-five pounds.

In other words, the Mennonite Man scared the living hell out of me.

"Ah!", I said, jumping away from my car door. "You scared the living hell out of me!"

The Mennonite Man chuckled. "I'm sorry," he said, grinning the way only a "non-sorry" man would smile.

He stepped into my driveway, his boots crunching and grinding into the crush-and-run gravel that keeps my parking area free from being a muddy mess. He was nowhere near seven feet tall and slender in build, (I'd guess one hundred-fifty pounds), but that deep voice of his could wake up the dead.

I walked toward the Mennonite Man, returning each step with one of my own. He was holding a piece of paper in his left hand and offered his right hand for a quick, hard shake.

Before any formal, introductory words could be exchanged, he broke right into a conversation. "I was wondering if you had seen a dog running around here?"

Right away, I told him that I am always seeing dogs running around through here; usually I am chasing them out of my yard since my two boys cannot seem capable of closing the alley-way gate.

"Well, I am looking for a...", he looked at the piece of paper he was holding. "...white dog with brown markings on his backside and one side of his face. He answers to the name, Jack."

"Mister, if I see him, I'll..."

The Mennonite Man broke my speech. "If you see him, try to get him tied up. It says that he is gentle and a child's pet. They miss him and they will pay a reward of one hundred dollars. It would make the child very happy to have him returned safe. I have their phone number here," he pointed to the paper in his hand.

It touched me that this Amish stranger was concerned about a child's lost pet. Usually, folks in my neighborhood will either call animal control or, sadly, shoot the poor stray if it came into their yard.

"No problem," I said. "Just let me get a pen out of the car and I'll jot down the phone number..."

Again, my words were interrupted by the Mennonite Man. "Just tie him up. I live on Cave Road but I am up here in Rainsboro everyday. If I see that you have the dog, I'll call these people and let them know." It was at this time that the Amish stranger winked at me. "Then you and I can share the hundred dollars."

Twenty minutes later...nearly twenty miles from my home...almost twenty miles away from my new Mennonite business partner, I had found my laughter once again.

Those Amish folk...they're all heart!
(And wallet!)