Our last stop of the day in Holmes County, Ohio, was at the Lehman's hardware store in Kidron.
I love hardware stores anyway, but this place is extraordinary.
The Amish don't use electricity, of course, and the store sells wood-burning stoves of all varieties--both for cooking and for heating.
One of my fantasies--for when I can no longer afford to stay in my expensive Seattle house--is to build a little cabin near the beach on the southwest Washington coast, say in Long Beach, and to have a wood-burning stove in the kitchen for cooking. Plus a microwave for when I'm in a hurry.
So I really enjoyed checking out all the stoves. Of course, these are expensive--something like $6,000. If I buy one, I'll find an old one somewhere for a few hundred dollars.
The store also sells any and every tool you could ever think of needing, canning supplies, furniture, books, oil lamps ... and then replacement parts for EVERYTHING. And I mean everything. In the lamp department, you can get every piece that goes into every size and style of oil lamps that they sell. So no reason to junk a lamp because you break the glass chimney.
Questions about the Amish and their way of life were swirling through my head at this point, so I bought a book of photos of Amish children. The book answered some of my questions: the Amish have seven children, on average, and marry young. Some 80 percent of the children remain within the Amish community when they grow up. This has led to a shortage of farmland to pass on to the next generation, so "working out" is becoming more common.
Greater contact with the outside world has lead to problems. Some young Amish were apparently arrested for selling drugs about 10 years ago.
The book paints what is probably an overly rosy picture of Amish life, but still, I find myself admiring this community. However, I suspect that the patriarchal aspects would fry me if I were a member.
Back to the hardware store: If it hadn't been the end of the day (I was tired), and if I hadn't been worried about having too much luggage to carry on the trip, I probably would have bought more--some hand-forged fireplace tools caught my eye. Also all the fabulous metal latches and handles for doors and cupboards--I need some of those for my bathroom.
And I would have liked one of the cooking knives (we vegetarians do a lot of chopping), but worried about airport security on the way home. How to explain that I could never get a knife of this quality for this price in Seattle, and that's why I wanted to carry it on the plane?
But I settled for a new rubber spatula to replace the cracked one (far left in the photo) I've been using at home, and a new wooden spoon, which is actually bamboo, not wood, and made in Taiwan. I paid $3.10 for the spatula, which is real rubber, not plastic, which doesn't feel right, and $2.20 for the spoon.
I would love to live within driving distance of this store.
Oh, the store also sells hats (all Amish males wear hats, down to boys of just 2 or 3), and Younger Son started his search for a black fedora here. I think he would look fabulous in the flat-crowned black hats Amish men wear, but he didn't want to go that far.
With his German heritage (one of my grandfathers, Herman Appell, was German) he looks like he'd fit right in.
@ Jeanne Sather 2008.
