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By Root 1343 0

are so fascinated by the Amish way of life, by the idea of people living 200 years in the past, that they come quite literally by the millions to gawk. There were hundreds and hundreds of tourists thronging Intercourse when we arrived, and cars and buses choking the roads into town. Everyone hoped to see and photograph some genuine Amish. Up to five million people a year visit the county and non-Amish businessmen have erected vast souvenir palaces, replica farms, wax museums, cafeterias and gift shops to soak up the $350 million that the visitors are happy to spend each year. Now there is almost nothing left in these towns for the Amish themselves to buy, so they don’t come in and the tourists have nothing to do but take pictures of each other.

Travel articles and movies like Witness generally gloss over this side of things, but the fact is that Lancaster County is now one of the most awful places in America, especially at weekends when traffic jams sometimes stretch for miles. Many of the Amish themselves have given up and moved to places like Iowa and upper Michigan where they are left alone. Out in the countryside, particularly on the back roads, you can still sometimes see the people in their dark clothes working in the fields or driving their distinctive black buggies down the highway, with a long line of tourist cars creeping along behind, pissed off because they can’t get by and they really want to be in Bird in Hand so they can get some more funnel cakes and Sno-cones and perhaps buy a wrought-iron wine rack or combination mailbox/weather-vane to take back home to Fartville with them. I wouldn’t be surprised if a decade from now there isn’t a real Amish person left in the county. It is an unspeakable shame. They should be left in peace.

In the evening, we went to one of the many barn-like family-style Pennsylvania Dutch restaurants that are scattered across the county. The parking lot was packed with buses and cars and there were people waiting everywhere, inside the building and out. We went in and were given a ticket with the number 621 on it and went with it to a tiny patch of floor-space just vacated by another party. Every few minutes a man would step to the door and call out a series of numbers ridiculously lower than ours – 220, 221, 222 – and a dozen or so people would follow him into the dining-room. We debated leaving, but a party of fat people beside us told us not to give up because it was worth the wait, even if we had to stay there until eleven o’clock. The food was that good, they said, and where food was concerned these people clearly had some experience. Well, they were right. Eventually our number was called and we were ushered into the dining-room with nine strangers and all seated together at one big trestle-table.

There must have been fifty other such tables in the room, all with a dozen or so people at them. The din and bustle were intense. Waitresses hurried back and forth with outsized trays and everywhere you looked people were shovelling food into their mouths, elbows flapping, as if they hadn’t eaten for a week. Our waitress made us introduce ourselves to each other, which everybody thought was kind of dopey, and then she started bringing food, great platters and bowls of it – thick slabs of ham, mountains of fried chicken, buckets of mashed potatoes and all kinds of vegetables, rolls, soups and salads. It was incredible. You helped yourself and with two hands heaved the platter on to the next person. You could have as much of anything as you wanted – and when a bowl was empty the waitress brought back another and practically ordered you to clear it.

I’ve never seen so much food. I couldn’t see over the top of my plate. It was all delicious and pretty soon everybody knew everybody else and was having a great time. I ate so much my armpits bulged. But still the food kept coming. Just when I thought I would have to summon a wheelchair to get me to the car, the waitress took away all the platters and bowls, and started bringing desserts – apple pies, chocolate cakes, bowls of homemade