Eye of the Beholder

On seeing through an Amish lens (couple hundred words)

In the modern, insanely clean Mennonite-Amish supermarket in Seneca Falls NY (i) that we frequent (ii) (iii) in the Finger Lakes region, the checkout women wear traditional costume (bonnet, cape dress) and I often catch myself rudely looking at them because the costume seems so, well, foreign and exotic in a large, modern supermarket. So not long ago I got into a line to buy my Amish pretzels and Good’s potato chips and Pennsylvania Dutch Birch Beer, with two shoppers ahead of me, I matched eyes with the maybe 20-year-old-at-most cashier and was surprised to see that she was already staring at me with a look of mild alarm mixed with weird fascination. I looked away for about 30 seconds, then back again: Same weird, wide-eyed gaze. Had I scared her somehow? Nope. It was that out here, in Central New York, 4 hours from New York City, south of Syracuse, where her customers wore suspenders or overalls, she’d obviously never seen an old man (in need of a haircut) dressed like a brother from another planet: black jeans, black jersey, black Skechers and tortoise-shell-patterned frames from Warby Parker: his usual costume, for both comfort and faux-hipness, plus it's comfortable. To the woman, I was a true curiosity, and’m sure she was thinking, “That’s such a weird costume.” Says a lot about how we observe others without observing ourselves.

(i) The inspiration for Bedford Falls in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” birthplace of the Women’s Rights movement, and site of first Women’s Rights Convention (1848), current home of the National Women’s Hall of Fame and the Women's Rights National Historical Park.

(ii) Because NY Rte. 20, which is largely without cars since they built the Thruway, is 100 miles of beautiful rolling farmland in all directions, 12 months a year. (see painting. The mountains are fake.)

(iii) Also there’s a cool old restored hotel.