Mariner and his wife often schedule small day trips to places never visited or not visited in a long time. The destinations almost always are within fifty miles round trip. They have visited small parks, historical sites, certain stores or restaurants, fairs and other social events. Unbeknownst to them until they arrived, they even visited a town that wasn’t there anymore.

A day or two ago they traveled a whopping 27 miles west to visit a store they had not visited in many years. This was a special store for two reasons: first, it was an old store established in 1985 in a small town in the middle of nowhere that is run farm-to-store-shelf by members of the Pennsylvania Dutch denomination (one of many Anabaptist sects), second, the ‘Dutchman’s Store’ had a grand reopening at a new location last week. It is the only store of its kind that mariner and his wife know aside from smaller stores in the Lancaster area of Pennsylvania. When measuring this new store, think of Walmart.

Dutchman’s is entirely stocked for Anabaptist folks from kitchenware (does your store sell a flour mill to make your own flour or three versions of ice cream makers?) to clothing just for the Anabaptists (mariner was sorely tempted to buy a traditional brimmed straw hat that he would wear to scare his family when they visited) to special slaughtering bullets, to ancient used books for sale (slightly aligned with Anabaptist teachings), to an astounding produce market fresh from the farm and large cuts of meat from every kind of farm animal, goats too. His wife surprised him by buying two large lamb steaks, a meat seldom if ever seen in supermarkets – at least in Iowa.

But get this – mariner has lived in Iowa for 31 years. He has berated the ‘pork’ state for not having, nor even knowing about ‘scrapple’. It is one of his childhood memories and has disappeared from grocery markets, even in Iowa. Back in the 60’s when mariner lived in the town he lives in now, only one older woman knew what scrapple was. She made a batch for him.  On this trip, his wife surprised him by buying a pack of scrapple from the Dutchman’s store. Wow! Then he read the small print: manufactured in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Iowa just doesn’t understand fine cuisine.

99% of the staff are dressed Dutchman style with beards and Anabaptist clothing and the women all wearing the same white bonnet. When mariner checked out, he asked the attractive young lady wearing the bonnet what the significance was of the hat since every woman was wearing one.

She said, “We regard the head covering as a mystical cloth that carries protective powers of angels for our women” (using 1Cor. 11:10—and yet the word protection is never used in this verse) “and empowers us to somehow live a more righteous life than those who do not wear it.”

Mariner asked if the bonnet was sort of like a halo? She grinned widely and said, “Yes.” Mariner responded that he was quite pleased to have met an angel ….. Only at Dutchman’s.

Ancient Mariner