I'm sorry, I have to get this out of my system before I continue:

My father: What sounds like this? "Clippity-clop, bang. Clippity-clop, bang. Clippity-clop, bang..."
[A] An Amish Drive-By Shooting.

Mother and I plotted all week to hit the Amish bakery yesterday. I love reading the small white labels they adhere to the cooled, packaged cookies. It's so thrilling to see exotic ingredients like, flour, brown sugar, or molasses! How they manage to make them without ammonium phosphate or thiamin mononitrate is nothing short of miraculous!

We got to the bakery with relative ease, and quit the vehicle.

The Pleasant View Bakery isn't spacious, nor is it outfitted with the ornamentation and plush fabrics normally befitting the Amish people...yet, it is always busy. Well, that is, when it is open for business...which is only Fridays and Saturdays. Mom and I weaved around the surreal mingling of buggies and vehicles. We came to the sidewalk that led to the back of the baker's house, and noticed weird, bald-butted chickens.

The bald-butted chickens have nothing to do with the story...I just thought you would all be intrigued with their bald-buttedness. We certainly were. Oh, and speaking of bald butts chickens, I always find it interesting that the local animals seem to forgo all modern conveniences as well.

So, the bakery is the size of a master bathroom...or the bedroom of your least-favorite child. There were, if I had to hazard a guess, seven-point-three other people there as we entered, leaving a sparse point-seven opening in the maximum capacity guideline after we entered. We wiggled and wriggled. We sucked in our bellies and pretended to ignore the purple dots in front of our eyes as our lungs strained or oxygen and our bodies forged on through the crowd. must. get. to. the. cookies.

Finally, we made it to the tantalizing display. I don't know...there's something about dusty cement floors, rickety wire racks, and house flies that makes me a little cookie-crazy...even though common sense tells me that this is mere Amish propaganda for the betterment of bakery sales, my mouth salivates on.

Two new patrons entered through the screen door, overflowing the capacity, increasing the carbon dioxide level uncomfortably. Mom and I looked at each other, at the cookie rack, as the old hinge whimpered and the door rattled shut. Peevishly, our toes dug holes through our shoes and clung to the concrete floor below. "Oh, no you don't," thought we, and not a little unkindly. "We'll leave the cookies when we're darn good and ready...and not a moment before!"

I fawned over a stack of the molasses, my mother courted the oatmeal raisin. We selected also a fine loaf of apple cinnamon bread, and one of oatmeal-zucchini-raisin too, before inching our way toward the counter.

Here's a spot of information for those of you unfamiliar with Amish ways: single Amish men must be clean-shaven, while married men must allow their beards to grow long and shaggy. (which makes it bit more obvious than those silly metal finger-bands some cultures use) Anyway, there was an older, married man working at the counter, and I forced my humor down as I looked at him.

Now, I don't want you to think that I am disrespecting the Amish, because nothing could be further from the truth. I have frequented their produce stands, their greenhouse, their general store, and their bakery many times in my life. I have a profound respect for a people who live according to their own set principles, to their own definitions of morality. No, my disrespect, as ever, is only lent to idiocy. Idiocy knows no race, nor no religion.

So, there he was, the (obviously) married man, wearing an apron, shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows, and he was jumping between the busy counter and the kitchen-area in plain view just beyond. Upon his frizzy, slightly balding head of hair, he wore a net. This makes loads of sense of course. Most people in food-service industries wear hairnets. My humor existed largely at the expense of his scraggly beard, which grew thick and unrestrained toward his belly button. I can imagine the Monday morning staff meetings. "Dey keep finding der hair in der pies, Zebadiah. Are you sure that you wear der hairnet at all times?"

We stashed our treasured purchases in the car and headed toward home as mom found the twist-tie for the oatmeal raisin cookies. She polished off a few of them before looking upon me in abject disgust. I had not touched my cookies. I was nursing a pepperminty slice of heaven that I like to call "gum" at the time, as I recall. She resealed her bag and placed them between the seat-belt clasp and my hip, saying, "Don't worry. That's where they'll be heading on me, too."