Oh, the irony (of the Amish)

The irony of the following story was lost on me when it originally happened, but when I visited my parents' house for the holidays I finally caught on. And laughed.

When my family moved from Arizona to Pennsylvania, we downsized pretty significantly. Additionally, the theme of our home decoration style in AZ was very southwestern, which really wasn't appropriate in central PA.

So during the cross-country move we packed up many of our goods, but left behind furniture and most of our home decor.

When we arrived in PA, ready to redecorate, we were disappointed by the lack of shopping options. It was before the time of Ikea, but that was no matter - our options were Wal-Mart and... well, just Wal-Mart.

We were good sports about moving to the sticks, but we weren't about to furnish our new home in tacky roll-back home goods. Somehow we got a tip on a great source for an entertainment center for our living room - the Amish.

What do the Amish know about TV entertainment centers?? Well, we entrusted an older Amish gentleman (I don't remember his name so let's just call him "Weird Al") to construct a lovely wooden masterpiece to house our television, VCR (this was before the days of DVD players), stereo and tapes/cassettes/CDs/etc. And even though that was almost 18 years ago, the entertainment center is still going strong, proudly displayed in my parents' living room.

Weird Al was definitely very Amish, but I also think he was a cheater. I mean technically, he didn't have a telephone. But how were we supposed to get in touch with him, just show up at his house every time we had a question? No, Al used the phone belonging to his non-Amish neighbor. He did so on the regular; it was more or less Al's "home office."

Weird Al also had to, on several occasions, visit our house to take measurements. I really wanted him to arrive in his horse-drawn buggy, but no, Al went over to his neighbor's crib and called my Dad to come pick him up. In his car.

So let me get this straight, Weird Al - YOU can't drive a car, but you can get someone else to drive you around riding shotty? I am very certain that if this area of PA would have been urban enough to have cabs, Al would have had one on speed dial. On the neighbor's phone, of course.