Johnny Likes Intercourse

I woke up Saturday morning with a terrible hangover. I don’t normally drink tequila, but it had flowed like the river the night before. So at 10:15 I staggered out of bed and into the shower, ready for the days adventure to begin. All I knew is that me and my buddy Ken were headed for a place called Intercourse, and that there were going to be a bunch of Amish at the end of this particular rainbow. But this was one of those trips where I wasn’t going to do any research. I was just gonna head out there and see what happened.

The anticipation grew hotter as we edged closer to Intercourse in the early afternoon. But first we stopped at a restaurant whose primary advertisement was an enormous barn. We rolled into the Stoltzfus Farm Restaurant, and I must admit, we were both a bit scared. This was family style, and sometimes that means you have to eat with a bunch of strangers. We were not in the right frame of mind for such activities. I was ready to cruise out of the place, but Ken convinced me that this would be the perfect place to eat, and boy was he wrong. The food was actually pretty good, but the ambiance…let’s just say this is the best lit resaurant west of Johnny Rockets. It was a smorgasboard. The homeade sausage (slaughterhouse on premises!) was right good, but the pork hash (not quite scrapple, not quite a hotdog), not so much. The real highlight of the meal was the six sixty-something ladies sitting behind us.
“My mother would go to prison today if she beat a kid like she beat us.”
“Oh, I’d be in prison for the spankings I gave.”
“But that’s just how you learned.”
Ken was a beast, eating two pieces of chicken, two sausages, and two pieces of ham hash, in addition to the corn, mashed potatoes, string beans and “chow-chow”, which was some crappy local dish that was veggies in that nasty bread and butter pickle sauce.

When we got into town, one of the first things we saw was a Pointed Edged Weapons Museum, and $3 later, we were inside. It was basically just what it advertised-lots of bayonets and such. I was bored quickly, and we soonbailed. We drove a bit further, and came upon the most special surprise of the whole day-that we had come on the day of the annual Intercourse Rhubarb Festival! What a treat this was, as we tried rhubarb in several different forms. The old lady at one of the little booths told us a bit about the plant then leaned forward to give me some additional info. “Don’t eat the leaves. They’ll give you real bad diarrhea, so we just tell people they’re poisonous.” Ha! Most people go around talking about the poisonous leaves of the rhubarb, but only a few of us rhubarb “insiders” know the real reason not to eat the leaves. There was a nice little petting zoo with goats and pigs and a donkey on the premises, so we swung by there and fed the goats. There was also a fake cow, so we milked it.

We hit the road, looking for a bake shop off the beaten path in nearby Bird-In-Hand (Sadly, there are no nearby towns called “Two in Bush”). On the way, we stopped for some homeade root beer. An Amish family ran the little booth, and let me tell you, that root beer was so…flat. Bad root beer. Don’t worry. I can talk bad about the Amish on the site. They don’t have computers. So we cruised out of there and headed for the bake shop. We got there just as they were closing up. I would have been disappointed, but fortunately, they had an alpaca on premises, so that made the drive seem worthwhile. Also, on the way back to the main road, we saw a Mennonite woman using a weed whacker. Those damn liberal Mennonites with all their fancy “Gas power”. Ken said that he liked the Amish, because “they don’t use any rationale, just like women.”


It was getting late, so we headed off for our next fun filled family activity: putt-putt golf. The brochure had talked of a beautiful garden and real grass greens. Apparently, by “real grass”, they meant “artificial turf”, because that’s what it was. Ken took an early lead, but I came back and pulled off a big win, which made me glad that I had taken this trip with Ken and not my ex-girlfriend, because she used to kick my ass at putt-putt. She’s now a lesbian.

We were growing hungry. So we hit the road, and after a short drive saw a really giant, creepy shining building that looked like somethings those weirdos in the Mormon Church would build. But no, these were apparently weirdos in the Christian Church who had build this enormous, glowing castle atop a hill. And apparently they had extravagant, Broadway-like shows in it about Jesus and things like that. I’m definitely going back for one of those shows, preferably while on hallucinogens.

Robert Fulton, who invented the steamship, was apparently born in the area, and they had a giant, flourescent inn dedicated to him. I thought we might wanna do dinner there, but when we got inside, it was too creepy, even though there was some glowing old car in a gift shop by the restaurant. I got a picture, and then we got the hell out of that creepy place. I think Robert would have wanted it that way.

We ended up at Jennie’s Diner, which had little jukeboxes on the counter. I played Johnny Cash, then some idiot at a nearby table played Jimmy Buffett. I asked Ken if I should walk over to their table and punch the jukebox, but he said no. I got the homeade lasagna, and it was delicious. It was 10 o’clock by the time we finished our meal, time to head back to the big city, and away from the land of alpacas, beards, rhubarb. But rest assured, I’ll be back. The Berry festival is next month.