These Birds Are Moonstruck

Our house was nearly a mile from the closest highway. Between our farm, nestled at the base of the mountain and Route 45 was a small enclave of farms along Fiedler Road, most of them owned by Nebraska Amish. The Nebraska Amish are known primarily, in the Penns Valley accent, as the "Dirty Aw-mish," and often referred to as a butt of a joke. You drive like an Amishman. You smell like an Amishman. When you grow up you're gonna marry Amish. Most "English" people associate these folk with really slow, white buggies that crush dreams of speeding along Route 45, and the heady aroma of manure and Prince Albert pipe tobacco. When my parents moved out to this relative seclusion in the mid-70s, fresh out of college and newly-married, my mom mistook the Nebraska Amish women out in the fields, in their long purple skirts, black headscarves and filthy pinafores, for sequestered nuns.

A family lived down the hill from us by the name of Hershberger, in a sprawling old farmhouse just past the turn and over the hill. My parents soon befriended the Hershbergers, and Enos, the patriarch, would often kick their asses in cutthroat games of checkers. I remember Enos fondly, with twinkly eyes behind his little round glasses, and his black coat, and his big bushy beard. Enos was a friendly, mischievous man. Becky, his wife, was rather odd. Some of my earliest memories involve my parents taking her in our truck to various dry goods stores so she could buy a corset (she'd had at least 11 children), and the ridiculous amount of candy she'd consume. To even a 3-year-old's palate, an entire tray of Reese's peanut butter cups seemed like overkill, but I can still hear the crunch, crunch, crunch of her gobbling down that candy.

One day Mom needed to get some eggs, so she walked down to the Hershberger farm to buy some off of Becky. I can't remember if I was along with her when this happened, but the story goes vaguely like this...

Mom came across Becky and her assorted offspring, plucking freshly-butchered chickens.
Becky looks up and said, annoyed, "These birds are moonstruck."
Becky continued plucking the chickens.

Mom had no idea what that meant. Thirty years later, it's still a mystery.