Get a bicycle. You will not regret it if you live.

—Mark Twain
___________

He was gliding along, between the cars parked along the street and the traffic in the downtown metropolis of New Holland. Hunched over the handle bars of his speedster bike. Dressed in some sort of flashy striped outfit, aerodynamic helmet firmly strapped to his chin. Moving along at a good clip.

I was about the third vehicle back. The lead car had to swing just over the center line to pass him, and with the opposing traffic, it was a bit of a problem. At last the lead car inched by, then the next one. Then it was my turn. I poked along behind him, waiting for an opening. Then slid by him. At last. Now to move.

But no. Just ahead, the light turned red. The two cars ahead of me dutifully stopped. As did I. In the rear view mirror, I saw the Lance Armstrong wannabe sliding smoothly in the two-foot space between the stopped traffic and the sidewalk. Right past me he slid, and lined up with the lead car, waiting for the light to turn green. When it did, he bolted out like a startled jack rabbit, leaving all of us behind. For about two hundred feet. Then we all had to fight our way past him. Again.

The traffic light gods were aligned against us that evening. And there was nothing to be done about it. As we approached the next light, it turned red as well. The town council should hear of this. How uncoordinated the lights are in New Holland. Once again, the bicyclist snuck up silently and passed us, lining up with the lead car. Again, he bolted out ahead of the pack. His personal Tour de France. This was getting old.

For the third time, we all had to creep around, careful not to hit him. By now, I was silently fuming. If another red light stopped us, I would block his path with Big Blue, I decided. Fortunately, for the health of all drivers involved, we left the cyclist behind for good. Still hunched over, still pedaling furiously, oblivious to all the world but himself.

I don’t know who they are, where they come from, or where they are going. But with spring and warm weather, they appear suddenly, randomly and mysteriously, darting dangerously in and out of the heave maze of traffic along Rt. 23. Once in awhile, they assemble in great packs, clogging Lancaster’s back roads like so many gaudy peacocks. Multicolored. But the outfits greatly resemble some unknown (to me, at least) prototype. Underlooping handle bars. A tortuous looking little narrow sliver of a seat, actually mounted higher than the handle bars. Butts higher than hands. Wow. Somewhere, the ubiquitous water bottle strapped to the frame. And that’s just the bike.

The riders without fail are lean mean human machines. In spiffy tight suits and goggles and flashy helmets. Muscular, and fit beyond belief, pedaling furiously and grimly to get to who knows where.

The unfortunate motorist who gets stuck behind a pack of bicycles has limited options. He must stay alert, because individual bikes tend to dart and veer from the pack for no discernable reason. Lancaster’s back roads curve and meander up and down many hills. So all one can do is creep along behind and pray that the pack leader might arbitrarily decide to swerve off onto an even narrower side road. Which is exactly what happened one night last week after I followed a vast pack for more than a mile. Grumbling all the while, of course. Bike packs, I decided, are a greater irritant than even Lancaster County’s famous Putzers that consistently clog the roads in summer.

I’ve briefly considered nudging Big Blue into a pack, just to see what might happen. Would the pack scatter, collapse, or turn on us and beat Big Blue to a pulp? I’ve never found out, because something has always told me such an act, however tempting, would probably not be very wise.

It’s not that I have anything in particular against bicycles. Really. One of my fondest childhood daydreams revolved around the very simple concept of just owning a bike. In Aylmer, we couldn’t have them. Weren’t allowed to ride them, even.

Of course, we did have a pony. A fat, waddling utterly safe little nag, named Cricket. And while Cricket could move at a decent clip when he had a mind to, he couldn’t outrun a bike. In adulthood, I’ve discovered most children would rather have a pony than a bicycle. Which to me seems very odd. Guess we didn’t realize how good we had it back then.

Our English neighbor kids, the Lauer boys, sure had bikes. This was back in the early 1970s. Big balloon-tired heavy things. Banana seats. High rise handle bars. They tooled down the gravel road and hung out at our farm once in awhile. My brothers and I stood there and practically drooled. And when Dad wasn’t around, we learned how to ride them. Dreamed of a day when we might actually have one of our own.

Unfortunately, when that day finally arrived many years later, I didn’t want one any-more. Too busy keeping my flivver supplied with gas and oil, which it consumed in roughly equal quantities.

But I don’t have anything against a bicycle or a person riding a bicycle. The Old Order Mennonites (OOMs) traverse every road in Lancaster County on their bikes. Even the busiest highways. Sometimes their youth ride in great packs as well. The guys in their spitzy little hats, the girls in flowing checkered dresses.

But they ride for the most basic of reasons: to get somewhere. Not to show off the latest gadgets. Or for exercise. Or to develop muscles. They tend to ride plain but sturdy bikes, the ever present cardboard box strapped on the rack behind them, loaded with groceries or hardware. They pedal along sedately, sitting bolt upright. No butts higher than head or hands with these folks. Most importantly, they seem to realize that roads are primarily for cars and trucks, and stay out of the way. Show some respect. Warms the heart of any motorist, to share the road with such thoughtful cyclists.

The OOMs have even designed and manufactured little two wheeled tow carts, which are attached to the back of the bike. Cute little things, with a bubble plastic cover from which their small and infant children stare serenely as they glide by.

The OOMs do have a dangerous habit of biking on the road after dark. With no head-light and only a small blinking red rear light. A few weeks ago, as I was leaving a friend’s house one evening, I came within a hair’s breadth of creaming a young OOM as he swooshed by. Some instinct, or perhaps a prompting from above, made me stop at the end of the drive before pulling out onto the road. Had I not, someone would have landed up in the hospital. It freaked me out pretty badly.

It’s not the bike as such that I resent (as the Amish say, it’s not the car that’s evil, it’s what you do with it.). It’s how it’s used. And a light two wheeled contraption muscling for road space against vastly heavier motor vehicles is simply suicidal. That’s all there is to it.

So in the obstacle course that is good old Lancaster County, we have it all. Buggies. Putzers. Cyclists. And packs of cyclists. All running amok through the peaceful land.

***************************
Anyone whose head hasn’t been buried in the sand has heard the latest Great Freakout Panic. Swine flu. Oh, boy, it’s a wonder we aren’t all dead, by the breathless reporting. I’m not saying it’s not serious. And I’m not saying it couldn’t develop into a pandemic. But it seems to me the noise is a bit overloud. In my paranoid opinion, the politicians will hype this into a national emergency to implement universal health care, or some sort of other equally evil mischief.

And speaking of politicians, this week that weasel of a rat of a slime ball, PA Senator Arlen Specter, finally admitted his true colors and switched over to the vile Democrats. (And no, I’m not being disrespectful toward those in power over us, I’m calling a spade a spade.) No surprise, really, he’s always been a wacko liberal. Along with the equally vile Al Franken, he will give the Dems a veto-proof majority in the Senate. I can say with pride that I NEVER voted for the man. He is an abomination (or Obamanation), and I hope he gets his butt kicked in next year’s election. Raw power is all he craves, and it would be sweet to see him lose it.

All of a sudden, the heat wave hits, and it feels like summer. Not that I’m complaining. Temps were in the 90s for a few days this week. And I’ve got an urge to go on my first hike of the season. If the weather holds, I may head to my favorite Tucquan Glen trail this Sunday.

The Tucquan Trail

“And they called back to him forgotten memories: Old songs, old faces,
old memories, and all strange, wordless, and unspoken things men know
and live and feel, and never find a language for…”

—Thomas Wolfe
_____________

I didn’t think I’d go at first. When my Amish friends invited me to the youth singing at their home a few weeks ago. Scheduled for the following Sunday night. I wouldn’t know anyone. And everyone would stare. Deep down, I’m really a pretty shy guy. So I told them thanks, but I probably wouldn’t attend. I’d keep it in mind in case anything changed, I assured them. That’s what you always say, when trying to maneuver out of an invitation to somewhere you don’t particularly want to go.

Sunday night rolled around, and I had second thoughts. Got a hankering to go. Or a notion, as my Dad would say. The singing started at 7:30. I could slip in a little late. So I changed into “going away” clothes and headed out.

My friends live only a few miles from my house. As I approached, dusk was settling. Line after line of gray/black buggies sat parked neatly in a nearby field. Lancaster buggies. Rectangular boxes with distinct rounded tops. I inched into the drive, drove Big Blue into the field and parked beside a temporary volleyball court.

I heard the soaring voices as I approached the shop where they were singing. Walked up to a back door and slipped in unseen. Took a chair behind the men. The shop was long and low. Two bench-tables had been set up. Girls sat on one side of each table, boys on the other. Benches lined the remainder of the floor behind each table, benches filled with row after row of Amish youth. Girls on one side of the room, boys on the other.

They were singing German songs. Fast tunes, with some English choruses. The music swelled and rolled and echoed from the shop’s low ceiling. Perfect four part harmony. About 150 youth, singing their hearts out. Someone noticed me and handed me a song book. I found the page and sang along. Scanned the room around me.

Everyone was singing. The youth, the married men, the women. Even the children. Everyone was absorbed in the moment, or so it seemed. They were a part of this system. This group. This community. And suddenly I was struck by a deep brooding sense of loss and sadness.

They belonged.

I didn’t. I was an intruder.

The song ended. Another was promptly announced and someone started it. Off they soared again, the swelling rolls of harmony pealing through the building and outside into the night.

It was breathtakingly, hauntingly beautiful and it took me back. I sat there, silent, lost in the moment and in the mist of memories from the past.

**********************
Back twenty-seven years or so, to one of a thousand summer nights in Bloomfield, Iowa. A small Amish community at that time, consisting of two districts. The youth all gathered as one group for the Sunday evening suppers and singings.

They were a diverse group, assembled from a wide swath of Amish communities, big and small. Bloomfield was just a young pup of a settlement in those days. Families had moved in from fairly progressive places like Kokomo, Indiana and Arthur, Illinois. And from such regressive areas as Fortuna, Missouri and Buchanan County, Iowa. And every shade between.

It made for an interesting mix of young people. They developed into groups, loose factions, as those with similar interests gravitated to each other. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

A tall lithe young man walked among them. Dark complexion. Wild shocks of curly, coal black hair. Always a ready smile. Intelligent. Good natured. Quick to laugh. Outgoing, intensely loyal to his friends.

His brooding brown eyes absorbed all that went on around him. The things he saw and lived and felt, he considered in his heart and carefully stored in the recesses of his memory.

There was sadness too, in those eyes, and a hint of something restless and lost. He was a part of this group, these youth. These were his people. Yet, he sometimes felt detached, alone.

These were his people, but he knew there was so much more beyond this world, out-side its secure borders. And its ancient ways. Out there, waiting for him. He’d left once or twice, short spasmatic excursions into that other world, then returned. Tasted the forbidden fruit for a time, before nostalgia and homesickness drowned out reason and turned his face again to the place from whence he came.

But he found home wasn’t quite the same. It would never be again. Could never be again. And he could never truly return. Even as he participated in the community, its life and customs. He loved the camaraderie, the feeling of belonging. But, wherever he was at any given moment, the grass always seemed greener on the other side. When he was home, he heard the siren’s song of the outside world. When he followed that song into that outside world, the memories of home tugged at his heart and pulled him back.

Even so, he lived in a perpetual state of vague undefined optimism. He would live forever; he had no grasp, no concept of the rapidly accelerating flow of the river of time, and the years. The nebulous dreams, the joys, the pain, the turmoil of youth stirred in him. Always the thought, the dream, the knowledge, the great promise of a shining tomorrow. Where the intense passions and desires that burned in him would be soothed, requited.

Always he grasped, with tenuous grip the anticipation of something, something great and grand and fine. Something beyond. Always tomorrow, with its visions of splendor and a shining city. Always the dreams of adventures in strange and distant lands, to come home again after wandering the far country, tired, satiated, ready to settle down in peace and solitude in the quiet land. Always a brighter future of happiness and contentment, always just beyond the tip of his outstretched hand.

But that tomorrow never came. It would never come.

And so he mingled in, immersed himself in the vibrant details of life around him.

He enjoyed the singings, mostly. The buggies clattering as they gathered, around 6:30 or so, on a Sunday night. Rattling steel rimmed wheels on the gravel roads. The horses unhitched and tied up in the barn or at flatbed wagons strewn with chunks of hay. Small knots of youth drifting toward the house, where supper would be served. Hanging with his buddies as they all gathered in. The house father calling everyone to attention, all heads bowed for silent prayer.

Then the serious business of eating the evening meal with his friends. A long bench-table set up in the kitchen, laden with large pots of starchy foods. Mashed potatoes, noodles, some form of hamburger-helper laced meat, baked beans, potato salad and bread. And they filed slowly past and dipped great globs of sustenance onto plastic picnic trays. Walked outside to sit under shade trees or benches in the yard, and wolf their food.

Then dessert and coffee and hanging out, the swaggering boisterous talk, the local gossip, who was dating who, swapping tall tales, or adventures about hunting and fishing and trapping, or work about the farm.

Sometimes they played volleyball after supper, over makeshift nets, with rubber hoses as boundary lines, or baler twine. Shouting, leaping, hair flying as they played. Not a whole lot of strategy involved; everyone just merrily whacking the ball over the net.

As eight o’clock approached, a quick trip to the barn for “business,” then everyone standing about combing and patting down unruly heads of hair. He and his friends often filed in early, so as to grab the treasured back bench against the wall. Two reasons: they’d have a wall to lean against, and they could get away with more monkeyshines, unnoticed in the back. Bloomfield didn’t use tables at the singings, just row after row of benches. A row of boys, a row of girls, a row of boys, a row of girls.

At eight sharp, the first song was announced. And they sang. He didn’t consider himself much of a singer (he wasn’t), but he enjoyed it. Some nights, it was fun and inspiring. Other times, it was something less. All depended on how the evening started. And on the room’s acoustics. A small room with low ceilings, the singing swelled and echoed. A large room or heaven forbid, singing outside, and it just did not go so well. The first forty-five minutes they sang German songs, then English songs for the final half. In four part harmony, a practice Aylmer had never allowed, and one that was almost banned in Bloomfield.

And the minutes crept by, and they sang and sang. The old classic hymns. And the more edgy stuff. “No, no it’s not an easy road.” “You gotta walk this lonesome valley.” And it seemed to him sometimes, as the harmony swelled around him and his spirit soared and he consciously reveled in the mellow waves of song, that he could never leave, never forsake this ancient heritage, this priceless legacy. That no sacrifice would be too great to draw these things inside and keep them in his heart.

And the evening passed, and 9:30 approached. Someone announced and led the parting song. After its last notes faded, the young men got up from the benches and walked out single file. The singing was over for one more week.

They milled about outside. Socialized and chatted for awhile. Those who were dating were the first to scurry away, the young men to hitch up their horses. Each one pulled up to the walkway, where his date would hurry out, wrapped in a black shawl, head covered in a bonnet, and step up into the buggy. And off they clattered. In Bloomfield, courting couples tended to leave post haste for the girl’s house, because the date was decreed over at midnight.

And one by one, he and his friends hitched up their horses and left. Out onto the graveled or blacktopped roads, a long convoy of buggies with blinking orange lights.

When there was no opposing traffic, they sometimes raced their horses. Turned the highway into a drag strip. The challenger pulled up close behind, then lurched out to pass. And the challenged gradually released his reins, the horses opened up into full stride. Side by side, at breakneck speed, the buggies rocking dangerously, the horses straining with every possible ounce of muscle and sweat. Until one or the other pulled ahead and the loser conceded. Sometimes a car approached in the distance; the challenger was expected to pull back in line.

Then onto the gravel road, and up and down the hills surrounding his home. And eventually up the half mile long lane to the house. He and his brothers, laughing and discussing the day’s events. Scoffing at this thing, chortling at that. One of them led the steaming horse to barn or pasture, and they all gathered around the kitchen table for a few minutes, snacking on whatever goodies they could scavenge, before retiring for the night.

This was who he was. In time, he would conclude this was all there was.

And it was not enough.

*********************
I sang along again that night with the Lancaster youth. The first time in more than a decade that I’d attended a Sunday evening singing. Around nine, the parting hymn, and it was over. The young people sat around and visited, the few I knew came and shook my hand in welcome. Soon the buggies trickled out and headed down the road.

And I sat there for a spell and visited with my hosts. Thanked them for their gracious hospitality. Someone asked if the singing that night had stirred in me old memories of my youth. I nodded.

“It was so long ago,” I said.