I am headed out to the Solanco Fair tonight. I wanted to share with you an article I wrote for an obscure Journal for Christian men. It is my homage to the Fair and life in the County. It was written two years ago. (Warning to the unsuspecting reader, this is lengthy.) Enjoy:
Life in OFC
G.Tyler Fischer
Like my favorite poet, I live in exile. This exile of mine, however, bears little resemblance to the one that Dante faced. He was on the wrong side of a nasty political squabble (image if Republicans and Democrats where constantly involved in knife fights with each other and you will have an approximation of the Florentine politics that led to Dante’s absence). I just went to college, had the good fortune of meeting a young lady from this area and stumbled (almost literally) into a job near her family. Dante spent his days dreaming of going back to his beloved Florence.[1] I do spend a lot of time thinking about my home in Indiana, but perhaps even more than that I ponder the beauty of this place to which Providence has brought me. I see it perhaps with clearer, more amazed eyes than the natives less aware of the glories of the commonplace that they have never been without. And so the love affair began for me. I have fallen hard. Each day I am amazed by this place, by its ways and its people.
I wanted to open this first Journal by praising Lancaster County—or as I have begun to call it Our Fair County (OFC). My purposes are threefold. First, I wanted to point out some of the ways that I love Lancaster County in hopes of inspiring people to love this place more thoroughly. Second, I will attempt to describe the loving lessons that Lancaster County has taught me with hopes of seeing more people become her pupil. Finally, I will tentatively point toward some of the areas where we need to work together to make this wonderful place even better.
Loving Lancaster County
Lancaster County is an easy place to love. It overflows with natural beauty, historical delights and community life. Here are a few snapshots of my favorite facets of Our Fair County (OFC).
I love the entire Southern End of the County. There are particular places that I love in the Southern End, but I like it mainly for the absence of things rather than the presence of them. Some have said that the Southern End of Lancaster County bears some resemblance to The Shire in Tolkien’s Rings Trilogy. This is true, but only because it actually is The Shire. Every trip there vibrates with what is best about the seasons. There are trails to walk, stands to visit (“much less expensive than the stands in Manheim Township” I have been told) and fields—endless fields washing like some great green ocean over rolling hills. Too often I swerve as I drive down a country road because I am confronted by living postcards at every turn.
The crowning moment for my experience of The Shire every year is the Solanco Fair (Solanco—for Southern Lancaster County). My entire family delights in this truly agricultural fair. People often wonder why I am so excited about the fair asking, “what do they have there?” My typical response is “Nothing!” This, however, only tells half the story. The Solanco Fair exists without all of the gaudy and garish carnival offerings prevalent at some of the other fairs in the County.[2] The real truth, however, is that the Solanco Fair is full of life. Noah would marvel at the number of farm animals that take of residence at the fair. The best of every varietal of Holstein and swine stand or recline side by side with more exotic beasts—llamas and yaks. Productivity abounds. These animals are not like zoo beasts, however. At the appointed time, each pig and calf parade around the ring and the winners receive ribbons (some gigantic) in colors of white, red, blue and purple bearing phrases like “best of breed” or “grand champion.” The crowd celebrates and respects these animals, and after their parade “moment in the sun” the grand champions are purchased by one of the local butchers reminding us all that fame is fleeting.
Not only is animal life at its best on display at the fair, there is much to praise in humankind as well. Most of the booths selling funnel cakes, french-fries or darn good milk shakes is run by the local chapter of the Lions or by some local church. Each group prides itself on its wares and its volunteers. The lines move slowly as one friend hands a dollar or two along with a brief conversation to his friend as he gets his milk shake.
Some human activity at the fair, it must be admitted, is an acquired taste—some are downright odd, but after a few swallows it is even more endearing. One example is the tractor pull. Now maybe you are not a fan of the high octane, ear-splitting horsepower fests sometimes featured at odd hours on some offbeat offshoot of ESPN. That’s okay! This is a “vintage” tractor pull. Most of the wheels are made of metal. All of the tractors look like they were made for Wendell Berry’s Port William. Each pull takes more than a minute as the ancient iron workhorses churn down the soft dirt path with the (almost equally ancient looking) sled full of stones and other weights creeping up toward the tractor. One might ask—“What do you do during the minute or two as the tractors move slowly down the track?” This is the part that I adore most—you listen to the play by play. These announcements, however, are different than most. Here is a possible snippet of what they announcers might say over the loudspeakers:
“Well, Jim here goes Caleb Stoltzfus in his 1937 steel wheel.”
THE TRACTOR BEGINS PULLING
“Yeah, Larry he looks like he is out to win it today.”
THE TRACTOR CONTINUES PULLING
“Hey, Jim, have you have tasted Caleb’s wife’s Shoofly Pie”
THE TRACTOR CONTINUES PULLING
“Because I stopped by there last Sunday afternoon and man was it good!”
THE TRACTOR CONTINUES PULLING
“You know, Larry I haven’t.”
THE TRACTOR CONTINUES PULLING
“Man its good! You should stop by their house—maybe she’ll make one this Sunday.”
THE TRACTOR CONTINUES PULLING
“I think I will.”
THE TRACTOR CONTINUES PULLING AND COMES TO A STOP.
“It is the best in Drumore Township.”
THE TRACTOR SITS THERE.
“All Drumore Township? Have you ever tasted Emma Kreider’s Wet-Bottom Shoofly Pie? It can’t be better… Hey, Caleb’s done. I thought he’d make it all the way, but he was stopped just short.”
After about three tractors I was hooked. Where else can you watch old machines and hear where to get the best pie?
Another acquired taste from the Fair is the Duckling Slide—my kids call it the “ducks.” Swarms hover around it throughout the Fair. My girls race to it when we they know we are close. “The Ducks” consist of 10 ducklings racing around a moat full of a few inches of water. At one end of the oval moat they turn and in mass race up a steep ramp. At the top of the ramp, where the ducklings have to lean out from the cliff like top of the ramp to strain for a nibble of some feed. This works great for a few seconds, but invariably the rest of the crowd of ducklings arrive and the first to the trough is pushed off the ledge. He slides down the other side and arrives in the moat. Feeling cheated, he swims quickly around the moat and races up the ramp. The point of this demonstration is that the feed is good, but I do not even know what the feed is. The point that most people get is that watch ducks race is hilarious. I always stand there longer than I should. It is hard to pull the girls away.
The churches of the County are another treasure. When Holy Trinity Lutheran was built on Duke Street in the early 1700s, it was the second tallest building in North America. Patrick Henry spoke at First Presbyterian on Orange Street. (First Presbyterian denied membership to James Buchannan—Lancaster’s only President—while he was in office for “doctrinal inconsistencies.”) Down Orange Street not a full block away First Reformed Church tolls out its worship with bells paid for by George Mason. St. James Episcopal Church was founded in 1744 and its cemetery is the resting place of a number of Revolutionary heroes such a George Ross—who signed the Declaration of Independence.[3] Finally, the oldest Presbyterian Church in the county is Chestnut Level Presbyterian in Drumore Towship. This ancient building with a rounded stony end looks like it grew up out of the earth. It was one of the oldest Presbyterian churches in the country and had one of the first ministerial training programs. In ancient Presbyterian history the Synod decided that it could only support one ministerial training program instead of the two that it had, so after it debated the budding school at Chestnut Level was closed and its faculty moved to what would become Princeton Seminary.
Another of my favorite places in OFC is The Central Market. It is the oldest continuous farmers market in the country. In it all of the goods and produce of the land pour into the City—it is located at the corner of King and Queen Streets just across from the Robert Fulton Theater on Prince Street.[4] Food from all corners of the globe flows into Market and Lancastrians gobble it up. We got both freshly picked Strawberries and a Moroccan Tagine. For me, nothing beats an Achenbach’s Doughnut and a cup of coffee at Market on a Saturday morning.[5] My girls love Market. It is teeming with families, strollers, children and life.
These are but a few of the choice reasons to love OFC, but this is only the beginning. OFC is easy to love, but careful examination of OFC teaches us to love more than that.
Learning Love from Lancaster County
OFC teaches us to love. As it is carefully cultivated, it demonstrates that beauty and fruitfulness are the result of discipline and sacrifice.
Love in OFC is productive. Of course, this facet of love would be taken for granted by most people who have existed in the history of the world. Marriage produced children. Work created wealth. Careful attention to craft yielded excellence. When one recognizes the natural tie between love and productivity, one can only be shocked at how the two have been divorced in our day. Often today people play with the trappings of love for the sake of pleasure. Men and women might marry, but they would never sacrifice their pleasures for their children.[6] Around us, however, the soil and the water show us what real love looks like. Every spring—around St. George Day—we get to witness life flowing back into the OFC. It is power beyond containing. The farmer with care tends his fields, and here in Lancaster County they do not disappoint. In May it is the first Strawberries—every week we watch the sign at Levi Stoltzfus’ farm stand hoping for a glimmer of hope. This, however, is only the beginning. On will come black raspberries, tomatoes, sweet corn and cherries. Every year is marked by the farmer’s (and gardener’s) love for the soil and the crop. This hard work pays off. God’s blessed grace and love of growing things echoes throughout OFC. Every year blessing seems to overflow blessing and the pattern of joy leading to anticipation leading to more joy redoubles.
OFC, also bespeaks deep lessons about love embracing death in order to produce life. The seed falls into the earth. It dies. It lives again and multiplies. This love, of course, resonates with the story of our Lord who died and rose again. It is played out millions of time each year before our eyes in Lancaster County.
This story of sacrifice and love is not played out only in the botanical life of the County, but in the history of the community. I am often struck by the patterns of deep sacrifice and blessing that are woven into the fabric of OFC—the quilts and the canning; the frugality and the patience. Seeing these patterns has bolstered my respect for the Amish and Mennonite communities. As a post-millennial, covenantal, Calvinistic, Evangelical, Bible-believing Christian; I think a lot about passing my faith and culture along to my children. Some call this hope covenant succession. While I think about these things, some parts of the Anabaptist communities actually practice them. One generation succeeds the last, building on the progress of the past often lovingly caring for the same place as their parents and grandparents. Parts of my wife’s family have lived in the county for many generations. Bruce Gingrich, a board member at Veritas Academy, is the 12th consecutive generation in OFC. His daughters are the 13th. Most have dwelt in one particular township.
This kind of love protects dignity. I am awed sometimes by the lack of dignity in our culture. I am shocked by how quickly the latest trend from the culture creeps into the church. Again, the county itself is instructive. The land—simply by its topography—protects the dignity of individual hard work. OFC is an agricultural area. Many say its soil is the best in the world. The hills, however, make it very difficult to have large farms. Most of the fields are tiny by Midwestern standards. In the past—and this is giving way more in our day—one was more apt to see small farmers raising crops and milking their cows on small farms. This work imparts wisdom (if done thoughtfully) and dignity.
This dignity can also be seen in the Anabaptist communities. Perhaps this, more than anything else, is what draws all of the tourists. I guess I saw this most in the recent horrible shooting at Nickel Mines. The reaction of the Amish community was incredible. They reached out in love to the family of the man that killed their children. I do not know if I was ever more proud of being part of OFC than when they did that.
Finally, Lancaster County teaches us that love endures. Love craves permanence—and abhors transience. It does this knowing full well that in this life all human love is doomed to fail to achieve permanence. It does this knowing the price of love—of deeply embedded love—is pain and the deeper the love; the deeper the pain. This great truism has led many a philosopher to retreat into abstraction and loathe the material world. Lancaster County is not a place of abstractions. It is a place to get your hands dirty. It is a place to bask in the shade of large maples that shade my back yard. It is love—love incarnate. Love embracing life along with its pain.
So, OFC both stirs love in our hearts and points out the path of love to the wise. There is more to the story than that, however. OFC is also in need of our own love and our own willingness to preserve the work of our fathers and to cautiously and carefully build toward a deeper, fuller vision of OFC.
Making Lancaster County More Lovely
OFC is not without its problems; its shortcomings; its challenges. These challenges are our challenges. We must engage ourselves in finding answers, in building up trust, in laying down our lives for our neighbors here so that we can pass on to our sons and their sons an even more beautiful, more righteous, more fair county. What a shocking irony it would be if we Christians in the county (some who are even postmillennial like me) would believe in cultural engagement and fail to engage ourselves in the life of our own community.
First, let’s be open about some blind spots that we have generally in OFC. First, I think that OFC has lost a sense of celebration and excellence at some points. Frugality becomes an end in itself rather than an important means to an end. This results in a lack of appreciation for things like fine wine—mainly because it is an extravagance. It also leads to a flat culture that works well for families, but tends to be harder place for young adults, singles or immigrants. To correct these things we must be both celebratory and pious demonstrating balance, maturity and honesty. We must work to draw teens and outsiders into our communions and community. We must respect the ways of the past, honor the people that have made this county wonderful while charting a course forward. Also, we must not turn our eyes away from the problems of our cities. Many suffer near us. Some suffer as a result of their own sin; some suffer because of the sins of others; others suffer like the blind man that Christ healed—so that the works of God might be made known. In all these cases, we must have hearts full of love and mercy—the same love and mercy that God in Christ has shown to us. Our celebration is not complete until all of our brothers and sister are at the dance. Finally, we must guard the agricultural nature of OFC. This is a real challenge—one that will either cause our grandchildren to rise up and call us blessed or we will have to know that they will live diminished lives on account of our failure. While many are interested in this in OFC, I must admit that in America I know of no where that this sort of wisdom has come down to the earth except in places where the government has become deeply involved (which implies another sort of destruction). Last year, a farm in the northern part of OFC sold for $100, 000 an acre. At this rate the inducement for farmers to sell their land will be immense. Selling their land is their right. If they all sell their land, we will have traded in a commodity that would nurture us for a thousand years. In this transaction, our community would be the loser.
But how can we accomplish something like this? I think that the key is at the roots of our being. We need to inspire growth and direction in OFC. We, like a married couple, need to fall in love, get married and be fruitful. This productivity is tied to lovemaking. Lovemaking, however, is an art more than a science. It is more mystery than equation. To multiply in the way that we need to in order to make real change, we must be a holy and righteous people celebrating fully and righteously living out the lessons that we have learned from OFC. We must then woo the culture around us winning them more by lives of faithful service and love recognizing the face of Christ in the countenance of our brothers outside of our churches.
Lovemaking also results in commitment. It binds. It creates new realities and makes one flesh out of two. Thus, in OFC, we must bind ourselves to this place as God proposers us and to each other as God sustains us. This commitment must happen not only within our churches but between our churches.
Finally, this kind of commitment should mean a willingness fighting to maintain the glories of the county. Perhaps this is my deepest critique of my Amish and Mennonite friends. I am not here criticizing their pacifism.[7] I am criticizing what seems like a willingness to avoid conflict (even verbal and philosophical conflict) when it is desperately needed. If we love our place, we will oppose unrighteousness in it. We will not do this by any means necessary—for some methods of opposition corrupt those who practice them. We will, however, oppose evil by all righteous means at our disposal. We must engage; engage locally; and be ready for a long, hard fight. A fight—not with guns or fist for these weapons are not powerful enough for this battle—that will be fought with persuasive words, winsome kindness and the power of the gospel winnowing us before the world refining our gold and revealing our dross. We must fight this fight holding our enemies not at arms length, but embracing them in love for the sake of Christ without losing our salty distinctiveness. We must be willing like our forefathers to lay down our lives for the future of our families and community.
In this fight, we are not assured of success (in fact, in some ways we have great odds against us), but still we must fight. We fight aiming at success—at leaving our place better for our presence—but knowing that we do not fight in order to be successful. We fight for OFC because we (for this small sliver of history) have been placed here to husband her. We fight like a husband whose home is invaded not because he knows he can fend off the intruder, but because he loves what is threatened and he is duty bound to protect it. If we fight this fight of faithfulness righteously, we are assured then of fulfilling our commitments of doing our duty.
In pursing this end, we must be aware that this implies many others. By fighting for our place and our community, we battle for our families, for our churches and for Christ. All these we know we must do. My point is that we must do them here, in OFC, in the land of the Red Rose. This war takes place not just in minds and books. It is before our eyes and at our doorstep. We musts fight in the real world, our world, our Shire. We must begin here not in Washington or even in Harrisburg. Those places are quite frankly presently beyond our reach. They are mainly a distraction from the work that we can and must do.
This recognition also leads to great mysteries. For the marriage of people to place is in some ways analogous to the union of husband and wife. We are called upon to defend our wives because of our sacred covenantal commitment to them. We made promises that we have to fulfill and having the courage to fulfill these promises leads to great blessing. Failing, for the sake of cowardice or distraction, to fulfill these commitments leads to disaster.
I am particularly blest as I contemplate these mysteries because my wife grew up in the soil of OFC. She in many ways represents and personifies for me all of what is excellent in what OFC is and could be. By gazing at the soil and by watching the crops grow I learn about her. By seeing the way that she glories in the good of OFC my joy is redoubled. By seeing how she alters the traditions I am instructed in miniature in paths that should be taken to correct the ways of OFC. For instance, the modern world and the OFC, do not pay much attention to the Christian Calendar. This homogenization is a sad fruit of industrialism.[8] Emily grew up (like me) with little concern for this, but I have watched her progressively think through, glory in and enjoy this aspect of life. My family is much richer for it. Our community needs to mine further this treasure filled vein.
While I am particularly blest, all husbands can profit in this manner. OFC is like a righteous woman. She instructs; she forgives; she blesses faithfulness with fruitfulness. All of us can take a lesson from this and glorify our wives by learning to love our place. For, as Wendell Berry notes in his stunningly excellent essay “The Work of Local Culture” saying that if cultural renewal is to happen it must begin with “the ancient rule of neighborliness, the love of precious things, and the desire to be at home.”[9]
