Lance Mannion: Vehicle of Hope and Change

My neighbor's having a yard sale today and earlier this morning while she and her grand-daughters were out setting up shop I was on the front porch, on the phone, talking to the great McEwan about Obama's picking Joe Biden for his running mate---neither one of us is thrilled, you'll be less than surprised to learn---and while we were grousing back and forth this appeared on my neighbor's lawn:

"McEwan," I shouted into the phone, "We've been invaded!"

"Who's invaded you?" the McEwan asked in a blase voice. She's used to my hysterics.

"The Amish!" I said.

"The Amish? You've been invaded by the Amish?" She sounded doubtful. She lives in Indiana. She knows from the Amish. They rarely invade anywhere unless seriously provoked. She was wondering what I had done, then, to provoke the Amish.

"Ok. Maybe not the Amish in the sense that all the Yoders and Millers have stormed over here from Shipshewana."

"So, how many Amish invaders are we talking about?"

"How many does it take to drive a buggy?"

"Don't you mean how many does it take to screw in a light bulb?"

"I thought the Amish don't use light bulbs."

"Sigh. Figure one driver per buggy. How many buggies have invaded?"

"One."

"One?"

"One!"

"What you're telling me is that you've been invaded by one of the Amish?"

"Well...at least one!"

"Kelly McGillis washing her breasts in your barn again? Get over that fantasy already, Mannion, it's so totally 1985."

"I'm not fantasizing. Well, now I am. And thanks for putting that image in my head. As soon as we're done here I'm putting Witness in my Netflix queue. Meanwhile, there's a real live Amish buggy sitting on my neighbor's front lawn."

I took the above photo and fired it off to her via email.

"Relax," she said when she looked at it. "It's not the Amish. That's the new Obama-Biden bandwagon."

"It is?"

"Sure," she said. "Don't you recognize a Vehicle of Hope and Change when you see one?"

April 2021