I spend a couple of days in New York City once or twice a year when returning a busload of Fresh Air Fund children who have vacationed in our community. Occasionally my husband accompanies me, and we stock up on favorite foods and visit museums. A happy observation I’ve made about New Yorkers over the years is that they’re not nearly as rude as the rest of America thinks they are. Except when they stare.
Whenever I arrive in New York, it takes me a few moments to adjust to people gaping at me. “Is my slip showing? Is my hair coming down? What is everybody looking at? Oh, yeah. New Yorkers think we look odd.” For religious reasons, I wear a veil on my head, a long, pleated dress and no jewelry. My husband wears dark clothing, a black hat and a beard without a mustache. Pardon my bluntness, but we think some New Yorkers look a lot weirder than we do. We’ve seen a guy with a Liberty dime wedged in his ear canal, someone with an earring in his nipple and people with orange and/or blue hair.
The only person who has ever been verbally impolite to me in New York, though, was a bag lady in the Port Authority bus terminal. I tried to give her a cup of freshly squeezed orange juice, a drink I consider a fabulous treat. She refused it most ungraciously and demanded 50 cents for a cup of coffee.
Apart from that, I feel like royalty when I’m in New York. I’ve been stopped on the street, welcomed to the city and wished a pleasant stay. A Jewish fabric merchant gave me an umbrella when a summer rainstorm began while I was in his shop. New Yorkers have held doors for me and have explained, unasked, the exact-change policy of buses.
I have seen some New Yorkers be horrifically uncivil to their own kind, though. They yell and barge ahead of each other in the subway. In perhaps the most embarrassing display, I saw grown women kicking each other to get onto a crowded elevator in an upscale department store.
Once, I was staying in the city a few days longer than my husband, Dwaine. When the time came for him to head back to the farm, I put him on a bus in the east 90s with orders to get off at Penn Station. Somewhere in the mid-60s, he realized that I’d neglected to tell him the street where the station is located. (The man can find a wandering heifer across three miles of farm fields, but he has absolutely no sense of Big Apple geography.) Fearing he’d miss his train, he inquired of several white-haired ladies sitting across from him, “Can any of you ladies tell me when to get off for Penn Station?” The rest of his ride consisted of a street-by-street account of the bus’s location and estimates of its arrival time at the station.
Although I am not nearly as directionally challenged as my husband, I’ve had some uneasiness. Last summer, I hopped on a bus at the stop where I always get a bus back to the hotel. Unbelievably, this bus immediately made a left turn and headed over the Queensboro Bridge. I don’t strike up conversations with strangers, but I had to get off the bus before it took me further into unfamiliar territory. (I have no trouble zipping around Manhattan, but I’d need a police escort to find my way out of Queens.) I timidly told the driver my dilemma, and, God bless him, he stopped the bus. He and a passenger pointed out the subway station and told me which line to take to get back to Eighth Avenue.
Along with kind assistance, many New Yorkers display great curiosity about us and, in their forthright manner, ask us whatever they want to know. I’m a bit hesitant in answering. I see strangers as potential muggers. Dwaine, however, will talk to anyone – a gang member, an inside trader, a transient, a lawyer. A businessman stopped him on Fifth Avenue once and said, “I’ll give you five minutes. Tell me what you believe.” Dwaine did, the man nodded and walked away. Efficient, these New Yorkers.
We’ve been asked countless times if we’re ay-mish people from lan-cas-ter. The correct pronunciation is ah-mish from lank-as-ter, and we’re neither, but that’s close. We’re Old Order River Brethren – a much smaller sect with similiar beliefs – living near Chambersburg, 80 miles west of Lancaster. (You’ve never heard of us because the tourist industry has no idea we exist, for which we are exceedingly grateful.)
Even with our careful explanations, some people still don’t get it. I’ve lost track of the number of people who’ve asked me if I’ve seen the movie “Witness,” and if it was authentic. Sometimes, the people who ask have just finished enthusing over what they think is my “Little House on the Prairie” lifestyle. I’ve never figured out how they make the leap from log cabin (which I don’t live in) to movie theater (which I don’t go to).
For the record: I have not seen “Witness.” I do know that it was filmed in Lancaster County, so we assume the scenery is authentic. I’ve already had the bawdy parts of the movie recounted to me by people whose motives I can’t fathom, so please spare me.
One autumn, an obviously intelligent, well-educated woman struck up a conversation with Dwaine. After inquiring about several aspects of our lives, she asked, “And do you believe that the earth is flat?” As our reason for visiting was to see the Columbus Day parade, we laughed about that one for a long time.
On another occasion, a shoe salesman, who was supposedly paying attention to my wide feet, got talking to Dwaine. “Do your cows have to be milked every day?” he asked. “Twice every day,” Dwaine replied. If I hadn’t been so wrapped up in my shoe problem, I’d have added, “That means Sundays, birthdays and school-concert days. Meditate on that the next time you think the price of milk, cheese or ice cream is too high.”
I try not to mind the questions, because most of them are sincere. New Yorkers do seem to recognize us as representing a religion. Although I’ve been mistaken for a nun or a Quaker, at least they’ve got me in the right category. What is not readily apparent to us is what a guy with a dime in his ear represents. It’s all part of the charm of New York, I guess.
If any New Yorkers come to Pennsylvania and visit Chambersburg, we’ll try to be as kind and hospitable to them as they’ve been to us. And we promise not to stare.
