I have an Amish friend for whom I do work. He paints pictures and I photograph them and send them to his printer. They come back from the printer and become calendars.
He pays me, in part, with pizza, and fresh pie. His wife makes the pie and the local pizza place has the pizza.
On our last trip out to have pizza we were leaving his lane and these Guinea Chickens were out of the yard where they were supposed to be and across the road. My friend lives in the Dawdy House.
As we leave the lane the chickens were out. The chickens belonged to their grownup kids and my friends were a little concerned for their children's chickens that the traffic might run over a one.
Guinea chickens are like watch dogs. They are wary of things that are not normal and they can be loud if they wannabe. These seemed occupied with the idea that they had escaped.
As I said my friend lives in a Dawdy house that was build last summer.
Dawdy means (I think) Grandpa. I looked up to see how to spell Dawdy and there are multiple ways. It is Pennsylvania Dutch which is spoken by the Amish and is primarily an oral language without a singular spelling system. So if you see me misspelling something from now on just think to yourself: “Oh, he is spelling in Pennsylvania Dutch”.
The Dawdy House is often physically attached to the grown children's house. It is added to the existing house formerly occupied by the parents. Normally the kids move into the older part of the house and the parents move and occupy the new Dawdy house. The later usually being smaller.
My friends house is plenty big and he has a barn… of course… for his horses. His house is not attached to the kids. He has started to build work spaces away from his house in which he paints and does his illustrations. They are little cabins. I don't know why he has two, but so far he has two workspace cabins.
We went to town in one of our trucks, Pam and me and my friend and his wife. We went to a Amish run pizza place. We have some interesting restaurants here that are owned and ran by Amish and feature food from other cultures.
One is a Mexican restaurant out away from any town. They are only open on Friday and Saturday. I used to like going there until the service got really slow and we have not been back in a while. The Mexican food is what Amish think Mexican food ought to be. It is a hybrid of some sort. And it is usually pretty good. The restaurant used to be packed, but when I go by it now it doesn’t seem to be as busy. There are fewer and fewer buggies in the parking lot.
The Pizza place we were going to is also Amish. So you get Italian food… sorta… kinda.
They have a pizza buffet. So I went up to the buffet and was confused by the choices. I’m easily confused so this was normal for me. I carefully selected a slice of pizza based solely on it’s appearance.
I was the first back to the table so I politely waited for everyone else to make their selections and joined me. Amish pray a silent prayer to God by themselves. Normally when we pray at meals we pray out loud. So I waited until everyone prayed and then we all started to eat.
I started eating my pizza slice and it was unusual. It had bits of ham. Okay that’s fine. Some melted cheese. No tomato sauce. No other pizza sauces that you might find on an Italian pizza. Then I saw egg. Scrambled egg. As I worked my way toward the crust there was ground sausage and… wait for it… white gravy. The gravy seemed tucked into or under the soft crust of the pizza.
Although I’m slow, I realized here in the late afternoon I was eating a breakfast pizza. This just ain’t right I thought to myself.
The best thing I had to eat that night was the garlic bread. It was good and the closest thing I had that day to Italian food.
I think on our next outing we will go to the new restaurant in Emma that is owned by Amish and they serve American and Amish food. That might be better.
©David L Arment, 2026
May 22, 2026
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