Daily Archives: September 15, 2011
Happy Birthday!
To our Wonderful Daughter Brandi.
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Or Amish and Avanti’s . . .
On a first note, I guess I’m officially ‘old’ now. This morning when I got up and checked my email, I had . . . my first email for a Hoveround Power Chair. Oh, the horror!
Just thinking, I wonder when the time comes though, can I tow it 4 down?
So, after an otherwise quiet morning, about 1:30 we headed out with Nick and Terry for an afternoon drive thru the Amish country around Shipshewana.
And it wasn’t long until we came over a hill and ran into an Amish traffic jam.
We spent several hours just driving up and down the country roads, admiring the neat and tidy farms.
Coming into Shipshewana, we saw a group of Amish women and children having a picnic in the city park with their buggies parked nearby.
Coming back into Shipshewana we decided to stop off at E & S Sales. It’s kinda like an Amish Sam’s Club, but without the clothes.
Want that 50 lb. bag of grits. They’ve got it.
Need a 25 lb. round of cheese, or a 10 lb. block of butter. You’ve come to the right place.
They also have a large selection of bagged goods, like wheat, rice, cake mix, and many others.
Although there was a lot of ‘English’ (that’s what the Amish call us non-Amish) in the store, the majority of the customers seemed to be Amish, or maybe Mennonite, which is kind of like, Amish-Lite.
I was interested to see what the Amish families were buying, and it seemed to be pretty much what you would see in any grocery store, i.e. potato chips, snack crackers, cookies, etc.
One cart I looked at had the child seat area completely filled with many bags of Chips Ahoy Chocolate Chip Cookies. I thought they must have a lot of kids, but looking around I just saw the husband and wife, both kind of young.
Someone has a secret addiction left over from their rumspringa.
Leaving E & S, we headed back to Middlebury, and our dinner at Das Dutchman Essenhaus.
This is a large Amish-style restaurant that serves really good food three different ways. You can get it family style, where they just keep bringing food to your table until you either surrender or explode, or buffet style, where you get up and get your own food until you’re too fat to walk to the buffet table again, . . . or you explode.
Or you can just wimp out and order from the menu, but what’s the fun in that?
As we were coming into the parking lot for the restaurant we noticed that a car club was having a old car show, so after dinner, Nick and I had to check it out.
They did have some cars you don’t see too often. This is a 1964 Amphicar, a car/boat, or a boat/car, take you pick.
About 4000 were made between 1961 and 1965, and is considered one of the most “successful amphibious civilian autos of all time”, although Time’s Dan Neil called it "a vehicle that promised to revolutionize drowning", explaining, "Its flotation was entirely dependent on whether the bilge pump could keep up with the leakage."
An owner said "It’s not a good car and it’s not a good boat, but it does just fine" largely because of modest performance in and out of water. "We like to think of it as the fastest car on the water and fastest boat on the road."
Next up was a BMW Isetta 300. This design originated in Italy and was licensed to several other countries, including France, Spain, Belgium, Brazil, The United Kingdom, and of course, BMW in Germany. And the BMW version was very successful, selling over 160,000 units.
The BMW had a one cylinder 13hp engine and a top speed of 53 mph. You enter the car by opening the entire front, just like a refrigerator. Which makes sense, I guess, because the Italian company that designed it, made refrigerators before it got into the car business.
We saw a number of really neat cars, like this 1960 Corvette,
This 1926 Model T,
And this Model T with an all chrome engine. “Just look at ‘dem’ pipes.”
This is a beautiful 1934 Dodge Delivery Sedan. Made for salesman making deliveries, it had no back seat, but the enormous trunk extended into that area, making it kind of an early station wagon, I guess.
These last two are a 1971 and a 1974 Avanti. Originally made by Studebaker from 1962 to 1964, the Avanti Corporation bought the tooling after Studebaker folded. They have been in production almost continuously since then, and you can still buy one today.
Besides the GTO, I really lusted after one of these as a kid.
Then I discovered girls.
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Thought for the Day:
Whenever I fill out an application, in the part that says “If an emergency, notify:” I put “DOCTOR”. What the hell’s my mother going to do?
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