Guest Blog with Derek Flynn

Today I welcome Derek Flynn to my blog. He's traveled all the way from Ireland to be here and he's brought memories with him. Awesome! So grab your cup of coffee, or depending on which time zone you're in, your soda, sit back, relax and read.

Some years back – when I lived in New York – we took a road trip to Virginia. We spent our first night in the Shenandoah Valley. The site of many a John Denver song, the awe-inspiring landscape of the Blue Ridge Mountains more than lived up to their reputation. Coming from Ireland, the lush, green landscape wasn’t necessarily what impressed; it was the sheer expanse of it. I’ve never seen a country so big. You’ve got to wonder what the first settlers would have made of it, as they drove their makeshift wagons across the country, seeing nothing but more and more mountain ranges and forests. Did it scare the life out of them? Or were they just so glad to get away from it all – to find their own little piece of land – that they thought they were in paradise?

The following morning, we left the Shenandoah Valley and made our way into Pennsylvania. We decided to take the local roads instead of the Interstate, so as to better see the surrounding countryside and the little quaint towns that the aforementioned John Denver songs have conjured up for us, and we weren’t disappointed.

The map read like a Bruce Springsteen set list, with names like Waynesboro and Shawnee. But our next stop was a town called Intercourse, Pennsylvania. That’s right, Intercourse. The main claim to fame there is that the town and its surrounding area houses one of the largest settlements of Amish people in the U.S. It’s also the place where Peter Weir filmed the Amish’s crowning cinematic movement – the film Witness with Harrison Ford. Not surprising then that as soon as we turn on the TV in our motel, Witness is playing (I’m not sure if this is a lucky coincidence or if they just play the film continuously on the local station for the benefit of the tourists).

Intercourse was probably the oddest town on the trip. The Amish community shuns publicity and yet every year thousands of people descend on the town to gawk and point at them. The town meanwhile, is in the awkward position of wanting the tourist trade but realizing that it can’t seem too insensitive to the Amish community. Their solution has been to set up a visitor’s centre selling books and showing films aimed at promoting respect and understanding for the Amish and their way of life. Paradoxically while the town seems to be at pains to defend and explain them, the Amish themselves it would appear, couldn’t care less what people think.

Either way it was a strange sight driving along a country road at 11pm and coming upon a horse drawn buggy with its indicators and brake lights (recent additions that a new State law requires).

The next day, as we left Intercourse, we snapped our obligatory shot of the Amish and hightailed it out of town before any buggies give chase.

On the way home, I was thinking about the towns we’d passed through, and I kept coming back to the old maxim: nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t like to live there. As enjoyable to visit as these towns were for me, I couldn’t help wondering if, somewhere in the bowels of Intercourse or Waynesboro, there was a kid – just like me when I was their age and growing up in Ireland – straining at the leash to get out.

Derek Flynn is an Irish writer and musician. He has an Honours Degree in English Literature and Philosophy. He’s been published in a number of publications, including The Irish Times, and was First Runner-Up in the 2011 J. G. Farrell Award for Best Novel-In-Progress. His writing/music blog – ‘Rant, with Occasional Music’ – can be found here: http://derekflynn.wordpress.com and on Twitter, he can be found here: http://twitter.com/#!/derekf03