"Indiana Dispatch - June Fourth To June Fifteenth - A Final Roundup"

Over the past decade or so, we have had the good fortune of vacationing in London, Paris, New York City and Rome.  These I would categorize as my “go-go” vacations, where we are constantly on the move.  Which does not mean rushing around, making sure I touch all the touristical bases, for fear of returning home and being asked “Did you visit the “Flying Fish Estuary” and being compelled to say “No.”   

A “go-go” vacation is any trip where I do not spend the majority of my time sitting in a chair. 

That’s the other kind of vacation, the kind I take substantially more often.  Which could mean I enjoy them more, or that I am congenitally lazy.  What I think it means is that, temperamentally, I am naturally drawn to places – Michiana, Hawaii, that fitness spa that I go in Mexico – where I can escape the hubbub and quiet my mind.  And my ubiquitous anxieties. 

These oases of calmness are my idea of heaven on earth – tranquil, unthreatening, and undemanding.  Our course I may have a mistaken idea about heaven, and it turns that participation in various co-operative team sports there is mandatory.

I seriously covet these occasional respites from complication, where, well… while breakfasting one morning at “Michigan Thyme”, I requested the blueberry pancakes.  The waitress asked if I wanted whipped cream with my pancakes, I said “Yes”, and she emphatically replied, “Good!”

In Michiana, I am a hero just for ordering whipped cream on my pancakes.

During Dr. M’s “Convention Time” in Chicago, I was alone.  And driving.  (Since she is by far the superior driver, when Dr. M is around, I am strictly a passenger.  Dr. M prefers it that way.  And so – though they do not realize it – do all other drivers on the road.)

I decided to see a movie.  The Dunes Plaza Michigan City multiplex, a half an hour away, requires me to traverse three highways – Highway 12, Highway 212 and Highway 421.  At home, it is rare for me traverse one highway.  And here I am, traveling three of them to get to the movies. 

Do not think my heart was not pounding.  I had to turn up the radio not to hear it.

I had chosen to see A Million Ways To Die In The West.  My intrepid self-chauffering suggested a million and first way – getting into a car accident on the way to the movie.  After seeing it, I was less than certain it was worth the risk.  And I still had to drive home.

In contrast to movie theaters in Los Angeles – and, I imagine, many other places as well – adjacent to the Dunes Plaza Michigan City there is a natural duck pond, surrounded by tall bull rushes.  It looked like the kind of place baby Moses might have parked his basket when he was taken to the movies. 

Having arrived early, I ambled over to the pond to commune with the wildlife.

Disappointingly, there were no ducks to be seen.  What there were, however, were swarms of flying insects who, rather than buzzing or humming, projected a sound reminiscent of the collective thrumming of bowstrings.

“Thrmmmmm!  Thrmmmmm!”

is a reasonable reproduction of their noises on paper.

It occurred to me that these squadrons of archery-reminding insects may have earlier eaten all the ducks.  Concerned that they might display an equal appetite for people – FLYING INSECT:  “They taste a lot like duck.” – I beat a strategic retreat for the movie theater.

The “driving-to-the-movies” and the “bizarre insect” stories proving that just because places are quiet does not mean they are incapable of delivering thrill-packed adventures.

Things I noticed along the way…

Taking a post-breakfast stroll through the residential area of New Buffalo, I passed a woman pushing a lawn mover.  Immediately next door, I passed a man riding a lawn mower.

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How can you tell that a community runs at an easygoing pace?  I was informed that the morning newspaper of record, the Michigan City News Dispatch is dropped off at the news outlets somewhere between nine-thirty and twelve.  (“Later than that and it’s an afternoon newspaper!”  He chomps down on a cigar and wiggles his eyebrows.)

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Speaking of newspapers, the Michigan City News Dispatch’s “Obituary Page” is laid out such that the prominent italicized headlines indicate the appropriate birth and death dates of the deceased.  This allows the reader – well, some readers – to take a quick surveying glance at this information and go,

“Older than me.”  “Older than me.”  “Younger than me.”  “Oh my God!  We’re the same age!”

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Throughout the trip I wore a colorful insect-repelling wristband, whose manufacturer’s name etched conspicuously into its surface was “mosquitno.”

There are three explanations for why we were not bothered by moquitoes:  It was too early in the season.  The company’s product actually worked.  Or mosquitoes are unable to bite people when they are laughing hysterically.

“Mosquitnos!”

And finally…

A single sampling from the daily Michigan City Police Report:

“Police responded to Lighthouse Place {the outlet mall} for a report of unattended children left in a vehicle.  The children, ages 9, 5 and 10 months were left in the car while their mother shopped for a bathing suit.”

Dangerous behavior, the report is telling us.

And for a bathing suit.

There is for me a visceral pleasure visiting a simpler locale.  It is unlikely I could live there full-time.  But periodically, I long for a leisurely terrain, free from the Big City jungle and jangle.         

Our little log cabin may be geographically far away.

But it is embedded permanently….

Right in here.

(POINTING EMPHATICALLY TO HIS SURGICALLY REPAIRED HEART)

Indiana Dispatch - June Fourth To June Fifteenth - Part Four"

NOTE:  This post was mistakenly published on Friday, along with another post, creating too much to read for one day.  I have no idea what's happening.  I go away from ten days and I completely lose my mind.  Hopefully, it will come back shortly.  In the meantime, if you read this on Friday, read it again.  If you didn't, look!  A new post!

 It intrigued me that an Amish organization was putting on musicals.

Upfront Apology:  Not being a reporter and being too shy to act like one, I did not investigate the underlying situation.  Plus, for me, it is more fun to make things up than to actually find things out.

This part is true.  There is an Amish community living in and around Nappanee Indiana about an hour’s drive from our cabin, unless you get lost going there which we always do, in which case it’s longer.

“Amish Acres”, about a mile West of Nappanee, is a kind of Disneyland with beards and bonnets (although the only “ride” they provide is a horse-drawn carriage.) There you can experience a religious community shunning modernity, get a glimpse into the Amish lifestyle and purchase homegrown confections (such as Apple Butter and the “Bread of the Month”) as well as Amish-themed souvenirs, manufactured, most likely though I did not check to make certain, in Asia. 

There is also an expansive dining hall where you can partake of authentic, hyper-carb Amish cuisine (Dr. M’s chicken and noodles was served over a generous helping of mashed potatoes), which includes a gravy so thick, it will clog your arteries before dessert.

Speaking of dessert, “Amish Acres’” signature dessert is “Shoo-Fly Pie”, so named because it is so sweet, it attracts flies, and… that’s right – you have to shoo them away.  (This factoid came to me courtesy of my pilates teacher who though a Calvinist, she nonetheless seemed to know.)

I enjoy dining at “Amish Acres.”  Though I find it a Divine Irony that The Good Lord made food that can stop your heart dead in its tracks taste so incredibly delicious.

Also on the “Amish Acres” premises – incongruously to my uneducated understanding – is The Round Barn Theater, a transplanted 60-foot high former agricultural facility that is now the home of what the complimentary program touts as “the best of Broadway’s Golden Age of Musical Theater.”  A bold claim, one would think, considering how many “Golden Age of Musical Theater” revivals there are running on the actual Broadway.

Our local Michiana theater, the Dunes, which is only a quarter of a mile from our cabin, having fallen on hard financial times, has been reduced to mounting only a single production (rather than an entire season), playing later in the summer.  Looking to assuage my regional theater appetite, I was inevitably attracted to “Amish Acres’” Round Barn’s Theater production of Footloose – The Musical.

And here’s where the speculation begins.

“The Round Barn Theater” is a part of the “Amish Acres” presentation.  Blending in, both structurally and paint-color-wise, with the fellowship’s non-urban motif, it would appear to be an integral component of the overall operation.

Mid-Post Confession:  Virtually everything I know about the Amish comes from the Harrison Ford movie “The Witness” (1985.)  Being Amish, however, it is doubtful that all that much about them has changed over the past 29 years.  Or possibly ever.

Meaning no religious disparagement, merely responding to the (cinematically derived) evidence, the Amish appear to be an austere organization who reject current conveniences, and, I assume, current morality as well.

And yet here they are, hosting a production of a musical (based on the movie of the same name) whose dramatic thrust involves a rebellion against a behavior code that proscribes – among other illicit activities – dancing.

Frankly, this contiguity of Amish and musical theater confuses me.  First of all, as a practical matter, if the Amish themselves are not allowed to dance, who exactly is dancing in their musicals?  Where, I wondered, did they find people who are going to hell to take on the dancing roles in their production? 

I imagined the conversation:

“Wouldst thou be interested in dancing in our musical?”

“Am I still going to hell?”

“Absolutely.  But since thou wouldst be going to hell in any case, thou wouldst be losing nothing by doing so, whilst at the same time helping us out with our production.”  (NOTE:  I don’t even know if they talk like that.  If they don’t, I apologize for misrepresenting their patios for comedic purposes.)

This reminded me of what my grandmother used to tell me about religious Jews hiring neighborhood Gentiles to turn on the electricity for them on the Sabbath, avoiding perdition by sparing them from having to engage in that unacceptable behavior themselves.  The situations seemed similar.  In one case, it was lighting the oven.  This time, it was surrogate dancing.

I double-checked this apparent conundrum with my daughter Anna, who immediately set me straight.

ANNA:  “The Amish can dance.”

ME:  “Who can’t dance?”

ANNA:  “Quakers.”

The two of us, in our ignorance, embroiled in a conversation akin to two monkeys discussing the Internet.

MONKEY ONE:  “Does it have anything to do with bananas?”

MONKEY TWO:  “I don’t think so.”

MONKEY ONE:  “Then I have absolutely no idea.”

The monkeys exhibiting a level of humility entirely absent from the conversation between myself and my daughter.

Unanswered questions abound.  Why are the Amish putting on musicals?  Why are they doing this specific musical, which is a direct contradiction to their fundamental(ist) beliefs?  And what about the costumes?  Will the minister’s rebellious teenaged daughter kick up her heels wearing a handmade dress that goes down to the floor?

For all I knew, this was some kind of “Amishized” adaptation of Footloose – The Musical, one in which the unbending minister persuades the outsider-newly- arrived-in-town to stop dancing.  Or perhaps they appended a cautionary coda to the production, possibly as simple as an actor in a “Devil” costume peering through the window at the climactic debauchery, rubbing his hands together and cackling maniacally.

I had no idea.  But I was curious.  BSo I persuaded Dr. M to go, a woman who dislikes virtually all musicals and was unlikely to be won over by a semi-professional rendering brought to life by the Amish.

Disappointing Resolution Pretty Much On All Counts

(So you know I know.) 

Footloose – The Musical was only marginally enjoyable.  (The performers, I later learned, were in fact not Amish at all, but were recruited via auditions conducted earlier in New York City.) 

For some reason, the ”Amish Acres” presentation houses (and shares financially, I would imagine) an enterprise that mounts musicals, some of them like the Amish-themed Plain and Fancy (1955) for which The Round Barn Theater is reputedly the “national home” as the show has been playing there regularly since 1986; others, musicals (like the current one) that are directly oppositional to traditional Amish doctrine.  (Which I repeat I know nothing about, but having witnessed the suggestive choreography in Footloose – The Musical, I cannot see how the Amish people would approve.)

I departed this experience harboring more questions than answers.  Dr. M, on the other hand, had only one question:

“Why did we drive two hours (because we got lost for an hour) for this?

Having instigated it, I accepted responsibility for this less than satisfying experience.  But deep down, I, at least to some extent, blamed our local playhouse, the Dunes. 

If they had not fallen into financial insolvency, we would not have had to resort to the Amish for our theatrical entertainment.

"Indiana Dispatch - June Fourth To June Fifteenth - Part Three"

I am delivering a large basket of items to our local Laundromat.

(NOTE: If you are ever in the vicinity and are of need of such services, the Laundromat is located on the north side of Highway 12, just across from a spectacular ice cream parlor and yogurt emporium called Oink’s.)

After my order has been recorded on a computer and I am handed my receipt, I ask the attendant if I am required to present that receipt when I came back, to which she replies,

“No.  If you remember your name, you can pick up your laundry.”

I looked deeply into her face, searching for a conspiratorial twinkle in her eye or an ironic curl of her upper lip.  There was nothing to be seen.  The attendant was deadly serious. 

If you remembered your name…

You could pick up your laundry.

That was all there was to it.

Taking this in, it occurred to me, although hardly for the first time…

Indiana people are different.

Let me emphatically acknowledge that it would be a screaming stereotype to assert that Indianans do not have a sense of humor.  David Letterman, anyone?  And a brilliant low-key comedian from the fifties named Herb Shriner?  To name just two great comedic practitioners, and I am certain my Indiana readers will overwhelm me with others.

What I am saying is that, judging from a random and admittedly far from statistically significant sampling, my most recent excursion to the Hoosier State indicates that, among the list of regionally associated personal attributes, “Number One” being the ability to look at a field and know immediately that what is growing there is corn – the possession of a sharply-honed sense of humor appears to rank somewhere…not that close to the top. 

(Again, Indiana readers, feel free to set me straight on the matter.)

Examples:

Arriving somewhat in advance for a one-thirty show-time – two-thirty “Michigan Time” – I become startlingly aware, looking around, that with the exception of myself, there was nobody else in the theater.  Wandering back into the lobby, I facetiously remark,

“I am the only one in the theater.  Do you think you could start early?”

To which, the no-nonsense teenager behind the cash register replies,

“I’m sorry, sir.  We can’t do that.”

She was right, of course.  They couldn’t.  But, you know, would a little smile have killed her?

Later, patronizing the aforementioned Oink’s, the young man behind the counter asks me what size serving I wanted.  Concerned with the excessive calories, I reply,

“I want something that would be appropriate for a two year-old.”

Nothing. 

Not a chuckle.  Not a ‘Ha.’  A dutiful nod.  And a single-scoop serving of coconut-almond-fudge. 

Some days afterwards at a local convenience store, I alerted the proprietor than somebody had lifted the front section of The New York Times.

“How much for the rest of it?” I inquired.

Their response was entirely quizzical.

This gets me thinking.

What is going on with this state!

Hadn’t they heard about it?  I’m a funny guy!  I mean, I did the warm-ups for Taxi, for heaven sakes!

All right, this one was “pushing it” – I could feel it when it came out.  But I couldn’t help myself.  I was striking out all over town.  A Mid-western municipality was engendering “flop sweat.” 

We were lunching at the “Shoreline Tavern”, whose signature offering had recently been awarded First Prize for being “The Best Hamburger In Northern Indiana.”  (I myself ordered the quinoa burger, which, because no other restaurant in Northern Indiana prepared quinoa burgers, was summarily excluded from the competition.) 

Five minutes after delivering our menus, which we were still perusing, the youthful waitress sidles up to our table and asks,

“Would you like some more time?”

To which, I immediately shoot back,

“Come back on the last day of my life and ask me that.  ‘Would you like some more time?’  ‘Yes, please.’”  (I know.  It’s lame.  And a truly0 pathetic “stretch.”)

Let me tell you.  There is only one thing worse than saying something you think is funny and receiving a stony stare in response.  It’s getting a laugh whose tone and timbre clearly indicate that it is entirely insincere. 

This fake laugh was a loud one, making things substantially worse, as it announced that insincerity throughout the restaurant, trumpeting to every patron on the premises that, “This fool thinks he is funny but he most definitely is not!”

The only exception to this blanket rejection of my award-winning humorosity came from a skillful and companionable massage therapist named Alex (a woman) who laughed at virtually everything I said.  (In truth, it was no an actual laugh.  When I said something funny she responded by expelling air forcefully out of her nose.  Hardly a belly laugh, but at that point, I was ready to take anything.)

It is possible, however, that Alex was not actually laughing at my witty comments and observations but at my spectacularly muscle-free physiognomy – which at that point was on open and examinable display – timing her responses to make it sound like she was laughing at my jokes when she was actually convulsed by my body.

I choose to believe it was the jokes. 

Though you would have to ask Alex.

Lesson Of The Day:

A sensible mentality is the Kryptonite of comedy.  The insistently levelheaded perceive comedic inspiration as mere puerile silliness. 

There is nothing I can do about that. 

Except try not to be funny in Indiana.