vituperation

August 30, 2002

Yesterday, being the last Thursday of the month, was our day to visit Farmer Rich and family to pick up our supply of hand-raised pasture-fed no-hormones-or-antibiotics-given chickens -

On a side note here, Slaughterhouse is one seriously depressing book to read, because (so far) it’s written in a literary first person style by the author, and all the conversations are basically transcripts of conversations she had with slaughterhouse workers. Very, very sad stuff goes on in the big slaughterhouses, much worse than I thought I knew. In lieu of gruesome details, I’ll just tell you that there are apparently a large number of animals that are still alive when they go into the more horrific parts of the processing. Muckraking at its finest, and two thumbs up so far for the book. I do need to add, though, that she tends to get a little overdramatic at times in the chapters on germs in the food.

- which we do from April until October this year. Next year I’m going to see if Farmer Rich will let me buy 20 or 25 in April and another 20 or 25 in October because driving over there to get them is a big ass-pain. Plus it interferes with our butt-sitting, which we love to do.

Anyway, we got there a little after 4:30 and as I walked over to the area where all the cleaned chickens are being bagged, everyone stopped what they were doing and watched me. I wondered briefly if my fly was open. I walked, being stared at all the way across the farmyard, to the table where Farmette Rich stood with the cash register.

“We’re all trying to read your t-shirt,” she said, “you always have the BEST ones!”

And damn, all I was wearing was a Hog’s Breath shirt. I feel like I let them all down.

My general morning schedule (excepting Sundays) is something like this: get up between 3:30 and 4:30, work out (running or weightlifting), have a Met-Rx meal replacement (weight days) or big glass of water (running days), spend some time on the computer checking out the headlines (read: looking at porn), and then lay on the couch and maybe/maybe not snooze until about 6:20, whereupon I go get ready for work. Yesterday was no different, and after I ran and had some water, I parked my happy ass on our couch for some laying-down time. At 6:08 I looked briefly at the clock and closed my eyes again, knowing I had about fifteen more minutes.

I opened my eyes suddenly, blinking against the bright sunlight flooding the room, when the front door slammed shut.

“Fred?” the spud called out as I sat up. She was just getting home from school, judging by the light.

“What?” I replied.

“There are a bunch of weird Amish kids in the front yard, trying to look in the windows.”

I walked into the computer room and found that she was absolutely correct. A little boy, about six years old, was standing in our front flower bed right in front of the window and trying to look into our house. His face was pressed up to the glass, and he had his hands cupped around his eyes to help him to see better. He wore traditional Amish attire, all the way down to the little flat-topped hat. He grinned mischeviously at me and ran away from the window.

I walked out the front door and found that there were three Amish children in all, running this way and that, screaming. They were running rampant around our circle, turning water on at houses, opening car doors, and generally getting into things. All of my neighbors were outside watching the Amish children.

The little Amish boy ran over to the spigot on the front of my house and turned it.

“Hey buddy!” I said to him, speaking exactly like I’d speak to a dog, “Come here, buddy!” I walked toward him slowly, my hand extended toward him as though I had a treat to offer.

He ignored me and ran into my next door neighbor’s yard. My neighbor chased the little Amish boy while the rest of us watched. The other two Amish children - a younger boy and girl who I assumed were the original boy’s siblings - ran around in the yard of my other next door neighbor, shrieking and pulling flowers from the flowerbed.

All of my neighbors watched, grumbling and complaining amongst themselves.

After several minutes an Amish woman came out of a house a couple of doors away, walking with the neighbor-wife who lived there. They made their way across the neighbor’s yard to the buggy I hadn’t noticed that was parked in the circle in front of the house. The Amish woman cast fiery glances at my grumbling neighbors, then yelled for her children - Caleb, Rebekah, and Miriam - to join her in the buggy.

The children came willingly enough and got into the buggy with their mother. With a single crack of the reins, the horse took off at a slow trot and took the Amish people out of my circle. I went back inside, leaving my neighbors to grumble with one another, and lay back down on the couch.

When I opened my eyes, it was 6:24 and still dark out. I wondered briefly how I’d managed to drop so deeply into sleep and concoct such a vivid - yet perfectly beginning and ending on the couch - dream in such a short time, then went upstairs to take my shower.