So, we're comin' home from Wal*Mart, right? As we drive along our dusty country roads, we're passing Plain People left and right, dressed in their Sunday best, the men in black suits, black hats and spotless white shirts, the women in blue dresses, white shaws and black bonnets.
"Why do they think their dress is plain? It looks pretty fancy to me," Bo says.
He's right. What I'm wearing today? A pair of khaki shorts, a black tank and a tan baseball cap? No makeup and my hair in a bun? That, to me, is as plain as plain can get, unless you count streakin'. I may be a granola gal, but I'm not ready for that.
To me, the Plain People look downright fancy, too. They stand out from the green grass and grey dirt as they walk from their every-other-Sunday church meeting, journeying from a neighbor's home or shop back to their own, filled up from eating lunchmeat sandwiches topped pickle relish and peanut butter spread, which is known to us English as Amish Wedding Spread, a coma-inducing concoction of corn syrup, peanut butter and marshmallow fluff. Yes, it is often served atop ham and cheese. I've tried it. It's not bad.
So, coming home from Wal*Mart, after passing several Amish families in their fancy-plain clothes, my husband Bo sees a white box laying on our dirt road.
"Is that a pizza?" He asks.
Indeed it was.
Around here, Amish families often gather in a shop to assemble dozens and dozens of pizzas and then sell them door to door or family to family to raise funds for a church member or Amish family in the community who is overwhelmed by medical or funeral expenses. The pizza boxes are plain (I do mean plain this time) white and the content is sealed in a plastic bag. These pizzas are very substantial and are sometimes frozen for later use. It's a real cottage industry, the profits used to help those in need.
This pizza was substantial, and it was also frozen, which was a good thing, because it had become...well, a street pizza, I guess you'd say. When I ducked out of the car to pick it up, I did some quick detective work. Still frozen. Amish-made pizza. Church Sunday. By golly, I'll bet one of our Amish neighbors dropped this just recently while coming home from church!
While we'd passed plenty of families on the main road, we hadn't passed any of our Amish neighbors on our own road, so we figured it was someone going our way. Driving ahead, we were met by one horse and buggy, but they were going the other direction.
"Should we ask them if they were planning on dropping a pizza?" Bo asked.
By the time we got to our lane, we still hadn't passed anyone who looked like they'd lost a pizza, and Bo was saying, "Hey. It's free food," but I'm not accustomed to eating things I scoop off the road, so I suggested we keep on driving until we met the main state route. Surely the owners hadn't lost their lunch that long before, since it was still frozen. Still using my brilliant powers of observation and deduction, see?
Sure enough, around the corner was Roman, a sweet Amishman who lives the next farm over. He was still in his Sunday-go-to-meetin' duds. He was walking AWAY from his farm. His face was filled with consternation. This was probably our guy.
Still, I felt a little silly asking, "Hey, did you lose a pizza?"
He looked at us for just a second and I thought, "He thinks we're nuts," then his mouth burst into a grin as he saw the plain white box on my lap.
"Well, yeah!" He said. "The horse did somethin' funny back 'round the corner, and when we got home, why, we noticed we only had two pizzas instead of three!"
"I'm kinda sorry we found ya," Bo said. "We were figuring we'd have it for lunch."
"Well, come on down!" Roman said. And he meant it.
Thanks but no thanks, we said. I knew our clan would finish off all three pizzas and ask for more, no matter how substantial those pies were.
So Roman thanked us sincerely, waved goodbye, and we turned ourselves around and headed for home. Strange happenings on a Sunday afternoon.
Sign me, The Street Pizza Delivery Gal who's going to figure out what to do for lunch.
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