GOODIES TO GO! ™
June 14, 1999 — Newsletter #32

Greetings, Weekend Silicon Warriors…

Did you hear that…

The first Web mogul has bought a sports team? AOL president
Ted Leonsis snatched up the Washington Capitals hockey team
for a cool $200 million. Do you think he’ll put up a fan
page devoted to the team?

Now on to this week’s topic…

I live in central Pennsylvania, at least until the end of
the month of July when I’ll be moving to Louisiana, but
that’s another Newsletter. It’s unbelievably beautiful here.
The Susquehanna River runs south and you can drive for miles
along its banks past what a lot of people believe holds the
answer to the Y2K problem… the Amish.

You might think I’m making this up. No way. The Amish are
doing big business lately. Everyone wants to be prepared for
the computer crash on January 1st, 2000, so they’re turning
to those who will be best prepared. Yes, the Amish.

I actually know a little about the Amish in that I live in
the same town as some of them. My local grocery store has
both handicapped and buggy parking. You can get a ticket in
my town for parking in a buggy space. The Amish and their
beliefs are harder to explain than a simple “They don’t use
electricity and they don’t have TVs.” Different sects and
different groups have different rules. I guess the most
interesting thing I can tell you is that the Amish have very
few rules against what food can be eaten or not eaten. It is
not at all uncommon to be standing in line at the grocery
store and see a young Amish couple going home with frozen
pizzas and two-liter bottles of Mountain Dew. Yes, some have
refrigerators. They run on gas.

Most Amish have a farm, but many also run businesses. My wife
and I stop at an Amish general store to buy all manner of
items baked and grown by the Amish. I’m especially fond of
their molasses cookies. You can also buy quilts, fantastic
hand-made furniture, and especially things that don’t need
electricity. This is where the Amish are cleaning up.

A friend of mine’s elderly mother has an Amish woman who
helps her with day-to-day chores and such. He tells me the
Amish woman has been waiting to purchase a new wood stove
for over six months because people from the cities have been
coming in and buying them all up. Really. The Amish stores
right around here have signs in the windows that they no
longer have stoves, gas lights, or water pumps. Good thing
about the stoves, too. Many people don’t realize that a
stove requires a place that is ventilated for the smoke and
the local government frowns upon people simply sticking a
stove on their back porch and blazing away.

I read an article that the United States’s largest sect of
Amish, those found in Kidron, Ohio, are making a killing. In
Kidron you’ll find Lehman’s Non-Electrical Hardware Store.
It’s actually on the Web:
http://www.lehmans.com.
They used to claim delivery of most items within 48 hours.
No more. Now you’ll wait 6 to 8 weeks. People are rolling on
cleaning them out.

Eli Miller is an Amish man who works at the store and has
told wonderful stories of panicked people from Florida buying
a stove for heat. In Florida?

A woman bought a grain mill, not actually thinking about
where she would get raw grain to mill. The mill cost $565.
For that, couldn’t she have gone to the store and bought
more processed flour than one could ever use in a lifetime?

A man bought canning supplies yet has no garden. I guess
he’ll buy fresh then can. Why not just buy canned?

Miller went on to say that many of the people who come into
the store are looking for a Y2K Kit. Of course, Lehman’s
doesn’t sell such a thing, but he’s more than pleased to show
customers around the store and watch them grab just about
anything he points at.

This is humorous on the surface, but what I missed while
reading was that while the whole world is showing up to buy
the Lehman’s out of house and home, those people who count
on the store are finding it harder and harder to get what
they need.

But not to worry. The Amish are a people who have gotten by
before and will certainly get by this time around. George
and Mary Kreps, who write about the Amish, say this is a test
to them and they take satisfaction in leading the simple life
without technological toys. They’ll get by and they’ll never
complain.

You would think that Amish would see this as a financial boon,
a chance to cash in, right? Nope. The Amish, contrary to what
I’ve just written, are actually pretty tough people to give
a job. They don’t want it. Bigger businesses have noticed
that the Amish way of life looks good to a lot of scared Y2K
folks and have tried to get them on the payroll to act as
consultants. Most decline to keep their calm,
nonmaterialistic life in tact. Plus, they don’t need the
money. Their farms have been in their families for
generations and are long since paid for.

…Who lives the better life? I wonder sometimes.

And so the New Year draws near. As the months increase, so
does the panic level of those who are sure Y2K will bring
down Western Civilization. I just can’t seem to get that
worked up as of yet. Maybe around November 30th, I’ll begin
to go bonkers. I’m just sad I won’t be around the Amish come
2000. I’d love to see an Amish buggy rolling past a guy
walking along the side of the street because his SUV wouldn’t
start. I have great mental pictures of the Amish man leaning
out of the buggy and yelling, “Get a horse!”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

And that’s that. By the time you get this, I should be back
in the States. Thanks for reading.

Joe Burns, Ph.D.

And Remember: Did you know that eating lemon with fish has
nothing to do with taste? It was once believed that the
lemon was a strong enough acid to dissolve any bones you
might swallow. It’s just become tradition now. Yum.