The Way to Lanesboro

We left Austin without disappointment, for we knew that back in Minneapolis we could boast of our visit to the Museum. All Minnesotans are naturally curious about the Spam Museum, and most endeavor to some day venture out and actually see it.

We head east on the Laura Ingolls Byway, towards Lanesboro, one of Minnesota's most beautiful towns. Lanesboro sits among a series of limestone bluffs that rise hundreds of feet above seas of corn. A river meanders through all of this, and in a spectacular distance are dozens of wooden barns and steel silos.

Lanesboro marks the beginning of Minnesota's Amish country, which is centered around the small town of Harmony on the Iowa border. In downtown Lanesboro, we stop at a small Amish gift shop. I am fascinated by the many books on Amish life. I pick one up, which is a justification for their wearing plain-clothes.

I am shocked by the forwardness of the book, which states that Amish people feel that 'The English' dress like sluts, and 'just because it feels right, doesn't mean you do it.' And that bikinis are bad, and that suffering in warm weather is a part of their faith.

Americans love the Amish, who are rolling about these country roads in black wagons. That we are so fascinated by them is ironic; because we have been so quick in the past thirty years to shed our small town traditions for big WalMarts and convenience stores and block-like churches, which resemble WalMarts. Perhaps the Amish remind us of the America that Americans rejected.