Butt Bumping Buxom Mennonite Matrons

One of an ever increasing number of things that bother me include the guy on the airplane wearing a day pack. It isn't the wearing of the day pack. It's when he turns in the aisle to try and cram a bag--that clearly exceeds not only the size but weight requirement--into the overhead compartment, his day pack, that he isn't aware he's wearing like a hump, smacks into my head. And then as he turns to seek help from a flight attendant he smacks everyone in the closest four seats.
Point?
I was contemplating which of the rapidly ripening bananas I wanted to buy, at a really small grocery store, to replace the ones I lost (or that were stolen by big foot) yesterday, when I backed into the back side of elderly Mennonite woman who was contemplating some other outdated item. I was chagrined! Who was totally clueless about his surroundings this time? !
There are several Mennonite settlements along highway 200. Something about the draft horses (even though they use tractors) grazing in fields reminded of the draft horses my grandfather had on the ranch. As a child I remember a Mennonite colony (?) very close to my grandfather's ranch in SW Colorado. He traded them bulls, rams, and an occasional saddle horse (that he stole from the NPS as yearlings and then gentled) for produce, honey, fence posts, hay. . . .   They have been gone from that small mountain valley for years. As I rode past a couple of the colonies today I wondered if any of them living here had ever lived in the Four-Corners.

Marquis de Sade and the Humpback Machiavelli Bastard posing in front of a Mennonite store

I stopped in Belknap hoping for a cup of tea at the Belknap store. No tea. But this tiny store is crammed full of the most incredible selection of fresh produce, farm raised staples: wholewheat flour, beans, honey, etc. And they had a bakery. I've been good about not buying donuts and such, but. . . . I had to try a raspberry tart (fresh raspberries and home made cream cheese). WoW! As the song goes (I think): "I'm in heaven, simply heaven and I'm so in love that I can hardly speak. . ." I sat on the bench outside and thought seriously about licking  the wax-paper napkin. If I lived in this area I would weigh close to a ton; all you can eat fresh farm raised stuff and fresh tarts. None of their farm-raised stuff was organic, instead as it was explained to me (my words translating from proper Mennonite language into my version of proper English) "we don't use anything foreign. We use lots of fresh dairy barn cow slops on all of our crops." So I bought a tomato to cap off my experience with the tart. I must have looked like a vampire with red gore leaking from the sides of my mouth. The Mennonite woman who came out to talk to me was a bit taken aback by a grown man from the "outside" sitting by her (their) store dripping red gore all over the front of his windbreaker.

Again it reminded me of my grandfather who took me with him to bring a truckload of fresh tomatoes back from the truck farms around Delta Colorado. He did anything to make a living. He bought and sold fresh fruit and produce, contracted laborers in the truck farms, raised cattle and sheep, stole horses and made whiskey both of which he sold to the Mormons over in Bluff and Blanding Utah. I sat in the back of his truck eating tomatoes, throwing the smaller ones at road signs, and finally throwing up all over my jean jacket. I still love a home-grown tomato raised in natural cow slop.

I was rained out today. I made it as far as Thompson Falls before I had to bail. What an incredibly beautiful place. I don't know if there is a waterfall or not but the Clark Fork river runs through town; Osprey perch on pines and other trees growing in yards watching the water below for fish; and there are just enough red necks here to make me feel like I'm home. I've started to believe that this social group may actually be a cousin species. Who's to say? Maybe we, the educated and cultured elite, are the side branch that is doomed to die out. Maybe the next dominant hominid species will be red necks. If so I'm in. I grew up as a red neck.