Autumn in Indiana, Plain and Simple

The weekly auctions in the towns of Nappanee and Shipshewana are great bargains, even if you don't bid on anything. They're anthropological studies in what we keep, toss and hold dear. And they're theater: jubilation on the face of a woman buying a doll and a trunk of clothes like one from her childhood, sadness written all over a farmer watching his well-kept tools disappear one by one.

Advertising signs and porch columns, chicken watering troughs and feathered hats, railroad lanterns and wooden pulpits attract dealers and voyeurs alike. When the starting bell sounded in Shipshewana, eight auctioneers, standing on ladders in front of laden tables filling the 80-by-200-foot building, all started singing at once.

We strained to hear, bouncing from table to table. We missed great buys (but not the beat-up saxophone for $7, twig table for $12 or wicker chair for $25). We accidentally bid against each other. We took a pie break; the Auction Barn Restaurant was featuring rhubarb custard. Bidding goes nonstop until everything is sold, which is usually early afternoon. Or until your friend says, "Your car is full. You can't buy any more."

The pace slowed as we drove yardstick-straight country roads lined with goldenrod and dotted with one-room schoolhouses and white frame homesteads. At Miller's Store, an Amish-owned general store outside Goshen, gaslights made the surroundings seem romantic instead of utilitarian, though the merchandise was far from frivolous: hefty gas-powered irons, work gloves, hairnets, wooden drying racks, hand-crank blenders, harmonicas, local cheese and The Budget, the 117-year-old newspaper printed in Sugarcreek, Ohio, and serving "the Amish-Mennonite Communities Throughout the Americas." The paper keeps families -- without e-mail or telephones -- updated on births, deaths, marriages, bike and buggy accidents, and the weather.

Driving the back roads, we were never quite sure where we were, but we were never far from a shingle shop. The two-county area boasts hundreds of these family-operated businesses, mainly woodworking ventures that turn out everything from birdhouses and backyard swing sets to Arts and Crafts-style oak and cherry furniture.

We also visited toymakers and rug weavers, bakeries and apple presses. The small enterprises help maintain the economic viability of the family farm and allow the Amish to stay home and still earn money. Family farms can no longer support large families, so sons and fathers have gotten jobs in RV factories, mothers and daughters in the hospitality industry.

In Nappanee, the Newmar factory builds RVs priced from $40,000 to $900,000. It accommodates its workforce by sending vans to pick up and deliver employees. Shifts run from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., allowing workers time for farm chores and other daytime pursuits. Our tour guide said that 65 percent of company workers are Amish and that the pay is minimum wage with incentives. "Our average worker earns $25 an hour."

The $1,000-a-week salary is tempting, said Ben Borntreger, our guesthouse owner, whose oldest son chose the factory over the farm.

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At Gohn Bros., a Middlebury shop that has offered sewing notions, fabrics and plain clothing for more than 100 years, the wooden floor creaked under our feet. Men's shirts and trousers are made on the second floor. Hats -- both felt and straw -- come in 24 styles, though we noted some teenage boys wearing black ski caps, not the traditional brimmed hats, as they rode their bikes through town.

There were suspenders and nightshirts, black calfskin dress boots and bolts of heavy denim. We stocked up on black tights, fashionable this fall. Gohn's offers half a dozen styles, as well as black woolen shawls for cold buggy rides.

Nine miles south, in the college town of Goshen, we sought out the Old Bag Factory, home to artists, furniture makers, cafes and specialty shops. Built in 1896, the brick structure glows with creativity as potters and sculptors work in open studios. It began as a soap factory, then was a bag factory, and once made the tiny strips of sheer paper that peek out of Hershey's Kisses.