Autumn in Indiana, Plain and Simple

Downtown Goshen brought the best meal of the trip, in my opinion: fresh seafood and a wine list at Bluegill restaurant on Main Street. Karen disagreed. She savors comfort food, which is what most restaurants in Indiana's Amish country serve: meatloaf or "broasted" chicken with sides of noodles and mashed potatoes.

"What can I say? My dad had an ulcer, and I grew up on bland food," Karen said. "This chicken is just like Grandma's." She ordered it three times.

At the Bluegill, we ate outdoors at a sidewalk table with a view of the bunker-style police booth, built in the 1930s to protect Goshen's banks from the likes of John Dillinger. A few doors away is the red-and-white awning of the Olympia Candy Kitchen, with a soda fountain from the 1920s. We ordered a cherry phosphate. Breakfast and lunch are served; confections are made according to 80-year-old recipes.

Another day, a notice for a haystack supper in Nappanee caught our eye. "What do you think, more noodles?" I asked Karen. "Only if we're lucky," she replied.

We were lucky. Haystack suppers are an Amish tradition, and this one just happened to be a fundraiser for an Amish special-education school. An estimated 1,200 people had dinner with us in a flea market shed.

Plates in hand, we walked a line of women and girls, who each added a scoop of haystack ingredients: cracker crumbs, rice, seasoned hamburger, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, peppers, melted Velveeta cheese and crumbled Doritos. We added the last component ourselves: a halo of salsa. All this was washed down with pop, as soda is called in the Midwest. Then we moved to dessert.

Pie-baking is a competitive sport in this part of the country. Best shoofly here, award-winning raspberry cream there, number-one-in-the-state lemon meringue over there. I surveyed the candidates and settled on a wedge of plain pumpkin.

"So what do you think?" asked Karen. I didn't know if she was asking about the trip, the dinner or the dessert.

But my answer was the same. "It's all a slice of heaven," I said, and I went back for seconds.

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Later that afternoon, we returned to Ben Borntreger's farm in time to meet five of his 11 children and his wife, Wilma. We got a first peek at more than 200 new and old quilts that would be auctioned off that weekend and were invited to leave a bid -- or two or three. The sale would be held in the barn. It would take in $53,000.

The house has generators to heat water, run the plumbing and even vacuum the floor; heat is provided by coal, lights by gas. There is a phone with an answering machine in a booth by the barn, but not in the house proper, so as not to disrupt family life. It is a business phone, which Borntreger said meets with the church's approval.

"Wilma has made it clear that she is too busy to run a bed-and-breakfast," our host said as he showed us how to light the lamps in our room. "She doesn't mind you spending the night, but she isn't going to cook for you."

Our quarters, generally used for visiting family members, were spic, span and spartan, except for the shower stall: a circular column in the middle of the bathroom, very modern and very out of character.

"If you want hot water," Borntreger instructed, "turn on the shower, turn on the sink, flush the toilet several times and wait. It will eventually get here."

We read by flickering light and slept under quilts with the windows open. At 4 a.m., the generator kicked on, waking us up and signaling that the family was beginning its day.

Susan Harb last wrote for Travel about painting in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.