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The
Pennsylvanian Dutch landscape is, well, pretty in the main, it's
not unlike the lush green rolling hills of the English shires, though
its familiarity is blurred by the presence of strange-looking people
driving horse buggies. But the tourist industry creates it's own
stink around the sacred nucelus, and the strip around Lancaster
is there to cater for all the rubbernecking goons who pour money
into the place.
Fuddruckers burgers on the US-30 at Lancaster was not the best place to eat on a Saturday night. It's better than one of those expensive, hellish, dinner theatre places out near Intercourse, otherwise known as the ground zero of the Amish tourist empire, but it's still no good. After a day inspecting black bonnets, jam-making operations, overly pot-pourried gifte shoppes and many many beards, we wanted good, fresh food. All that was available was an ancient baked potato swimming in a lake of butter, and a dried-up "garden" burger. Kids screamed in the hangar-like building, and some unspeakable muzak played too loudly, unsoothing. It was an ordeal. Fuddruckers sits next to an Applebees, which in turn is next to a steak house chain outlet, a "family" restaurant franchise, a surf and turf place, and a gigantic K-Mart (are there any other kinds?). The concrete and tarmac was greasy and litter-strewn, everything seemed baked on by the heat. Someone dumped a shitty nappy by the kerb. So we were not in the best of moods when returned to the car, past the air conditioning units blowing hot fried heat out of the back of the Fuddruckers. As the night bloomed ahead, the most we had to look forwards to was an early night at our musty Howard Johnson's motel. Then Kay noticed the first one. At first she thought a blade of grass had caught fire, then another flash zipped in front of her, like an electric green smear in the air. She grabbed my arm and pointed at a patch of scorched grass. "It's a firefly," she said. We stood and stared and then I saw one too. And another. The grass was hopping with the little fellows. Whoop! There goes one, and - whoop! - another one. We stood mesmerised. I'd never seen a firefly before, apart from in Disney-esque cartoons. I thought they glowed with a constant light, and floated around you. Not these ones, zzzzip! Their flash lasts half a second and leaves a trail of phosphorescence behind, like a flash of green fire. Kay found us a firefly to look at, up close. We followed it, seeing it open its wings and flash it's little green arse at us, so cute! As our eyes adjusted to the darkness, we realised that the fields of corn, and the meadows past the back of the strip mall were alive with fireflies, so we sat and watched the pyrotechnics. There must have been thousands of fireflies zapping the darkness at any one moment. They lit up randomly, tiny twists of light. It was like watching a massive lightning storm in miniature. We sat there, totally enthralled by nature, it was an incredible sight, unremarkable to the other people getting back to their cars, and incongruous against the burger shops and shitholes of US-30, but completely magical to Kay and I. |
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