I had the pleasure this last spring on one of its most beautiful days to follow a winding path from one hardware store to the next looking for a specialized and hard to get part for a piece of antique gardening equipment. This quest took me deeper and deeper into the countryside until I found a quaint hardware supply from a long-past era that contained a strange and wonderful assortment of eclectic land care products from a bygone age.
>From the commanding heights of the store’s hill top parking lot, the view of the surrounding farms rolled on far into the hazy distance of the springtime air. This view was beautiful as it seemed to roll on forever like a painting from a master of the landscape. The farms were immaculately maintained with not one fencepost out of place, with every row of corn planted straight and true and the lovingly cared for houses and barns were all freshly painted in a wonderful rustic palette of complimentary artistic colors. When I left that old-time store and hit the road with my rare replacement part, the reason for such beauty in the land became clear. The buggies and bicycles of the Amish were all on the road as that community all were in a long practiced precession to a community meeting. Using a technology that was 300 years old, they had transformed their small corner of this world into a paradise without the aid of electricity or oil and gas, just their beloved horses and an abundance of hard work. This ant like community worked for the common good with all members cooperating to take care of each other in the harmony of a loving community. This vivid memory of that beautiful springtime day makes my peasant roots long for a simpler life and wonder if we might have left the tracks somewhere along the line of a more fulfilling and satisfying lifestyle.
