Bill's Blog

An Amish teen and her beets–it was the ugliest Milli Vanilli moment of my adult life.  I’ve been lied to, sure.  But by a teen-age Amish girl selling beets?! That, friend, cuts deep.  Some wounds heal slowly, others . . . maybe not until the other side of the Pearly Gates.

As if that wasn’t traumatic enough–I then learn the ugly secret behind two of my VERY OWN Easter ducks!  They were like children to me!!!!  “Et tu, Brute?”

Here are two of the ugliest stories on the internet.  Please do not let your children read this blog . . . childhood is fleeting enough, and this is the kind of stuff that painfully disillusions children.  And adults.  I need, though,  to write this.  I need release.  I need catharsis.

I went to visit my Grandparents last year in Missouri.  About 40 miles from their home is a really cool Amish town.  I enjoy visiting, buying amazing, awe-inspiring Amish edibles.  Spices, cookies, dry goods, vegetables, pies, cakes . . . you name it, you can get it.  I strolled into the grocery store, illuminated by skylights and kerosene lanterns.  Among other things, I surveyed the Mason Jars of canned beets.  Reading the hand-scrawled label, you wondered:  “Are those beets floating in crimson syrup, or is that pride and love?” [Nonetheless--it's a can of beets!  Am I buying that crap?  No way.  In 1995 I actually ate sliced beets and a fried egg atop a cheeseburger in Australia, but that's another story.]  I purchased a pleasant sampling of delectables, and sauntered back to my car.  After loading the boxes of goods, I roamed next door to the bakery.

Disillusionment, thy name is “Mr. Bill.”

While the building was still open, the selling of baked goods was finished for the day.  I looked to the back of the silent store, where a young Amish girl repeated the ancient traditions of her culture.  Without even acknowledging my obvious presence, the lass intently canned her beets.  Then my bewildered, angry eyes honed in on her task:

She wasn’t canning beets . . . she was RE-CANNING beets!!! She stood there [with a seared conscience, I surmise] dipping canned beets from a recently-opened, industrial-sized beet can.  She then unceremoniously ladled the beets into Mason Jars with hand-scrawled labels.

Is that the famed Amish-quality of which I’d always heard?  Really?  If you can’t trust an Amish teen and her beets, who can you trust?  You think “re-gifting” is tacky?  Whatever.  “Re-canning” falls outside the realm of anything decent or holy.  Now I know the obvious response you’re thinking:

“Your faith can be restored,” you interject, “by the innocent sweetness of baby ducklings–Nature’s most perfect creature, completely without guile.”

I once believed the same, but no more.

If my Dad said it once, he said it one thousand times:  “Son–always trust a child’s intuition when he first meets a baby fowl during a photo session in Pine Bluff.” He’d said it so many times, it was white noise to my young ears.  “Crazy ramblings of an over-protective father,” I reasoned.  Maybe not.

don't trust the duck

I noticed Tripp’s reaction to the ducks when he first saw them, but I just didn’t pay attention.  After all, these ducks had lived in my home [garage, actually]!  I felt like they could be trusted.  Silly me.

Then Tripp’s brother, Reece, met the ducks.

eye the duck

Do you see how he also suspiciously observes the ducks?  Kids innately know the heart of a duck.  My Dad likewise knew, and he tried to warn me.

After the session, I decided to look into the “permanent record” of the ducks.  You remember the “permanent record,” right?  That record is the stuff of legend [urban legend]!  Let me help you recall:  If you were really bad in Jr. High and High School, you heard ALOT about it.  I looked into the past of these ducks, and it was a look into a nefarious world of ugliness and youth-gone-wrong.  Why did the boys not trust these foul fowl?  Tune in to the blog on Wednesday and you’ll know.

Thanks for tuning in,

-mr. bill

If you didn’t notice, let me point out that I employed the words “lass,” a quote from Julius, “strolled,” “sauntered,” “roamed,” a Milli Vanilli allusion, “nefarious,” and “likewise.”  I’m just sayin’.