“Park & Main?” I asked Daryl the other day. 

“What?” Daryl asked back in a “what” kind of way.

“I saw an advertisement on the television for Park & Main clothing and underwear. 

“I know all about Park & Main. An Amish family started it in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Their top-selling item [and here Daryl made a large “O with his hands] was the incontinent ibex brief.”

“What’s an ibex brief?” 

“An incontinent ibex brief. An ibex is an animal. This is underwear made of ibex.  It’s like what older people use if they can’t make it to the bathroom on time. It keeps everything together.”

“So you mean like a diaper?”

“Exactly. A kind of diaper.”

“Why do they call it an ibex brief?”

“They claimed their material was 100% ibex. Park and Main had many ibex apparel items – ibex socks, jackets. It was their selling point. 

“Why would anyone be interested in ibex anything?”

“Dunno. Maybe heftier, stronger?  In any case, they claimed they had created a new kind of briefs made from ibex material. This was a few years ago when people were shitting themselves left and right; so the briefs came in handy. They were snug enough to fit tightly but loose enough to carry whatever was in there. Easy to extract. I don’t know. This is what my Dad was saying. It was like a miracle brief.”

“Why did they call their company Park and Main?”

“My dad said it meant the company’s products were available everywhere. Park Avenue to Main Street – the whole globe, right? All people shit, right? So at some point everyone may need an incontinent brief. Elton John wears one when he plays Rocketman. Did you know that? I saw an ad for them once: Park & Main ibex styled briefs; in pretty stylish stencil; and then they kind of hide the other part in small lettering on the package “for incontinence.”

“If I asked my dad if he wore an incontinent brief he’d slap my face.”

“Well sure.”

“Is that the whole story.”

“No. I haven’t got to the best part. Apart from the store the Amish brothers also had their own shipping company to move things from their factory in the mountains to the different places the packages went.”

“Sounds pretty successful.”

“Yep – those Amish. You don’t mess with the Amish. They may look backwater. But they are industrious folks; once they start making things. They don’t stop.” 

“In the mountains? Aren’t most factories on flat land? Why did they call their company mountain barge?”

“Mountain Barge Trucking and Shipping. Dunno. Pennsylvania has lots of mountains.”

“Anyway, please go on. What happened to the brothers?”

“Well as they grew, they needed to consider expansion. Originally they were just in the tri-state area; but they hired a marketing consultant who advised them to go west. Open stores in Colorado, California, New Mexico.  So they found a partner out there who was also from Lancaster – but not Amish — who agreed to distribute and franchise.  Things went well for a while, until the new partner and the Amish squabbled over direction and the partner left and opened his own competing ibex brief store. And get this He called it the same name, Mountain Barge LLC.  And then an ibex war broke out with the two companies fighting over their old suppliers and over supplies. After all, there isn’t an unlimited supply of ibex in the universe.”

“This is interesting. So what next?” 

“I’m getting to it. So there was competition and both sides were fighting each other for market share. And the way Amish fight is not the other way other people fight. They are all Biblical and shit. So they would write letters saying things like you lack proper civility and such. Righteous language and such. 

“Things reached their height when the former partner decided to do a major promotion back East, right in downtown Lancaster, PA. His plan: line up 100 ibex on stage to promote ibex material briefs. And here is the kicker: each one would be sporting ibex briefs. So ibex wearing ibex.  The location. The idea. It was a call to arms.

“One brother heard about the plan through an intermediary and decided they would upstage the former partner. They would get 150 ibexes for a full-size ibex spread. Not easy to do on limited notice. It’s not like there is a registry of ibex. It was ibex fever out there in P.A. And brokers emerged . And everyone loves a feud; so the press began to pick up on it.  Especially where wild goats are involved. It became some status thing. Because they were both making ibex diapers and apparel. So on the day of the shoot news crews showed up and were pointing cameras at the stage where the former partner was, and there were klieg lights. And the former partner, he didn’t have quite 100 ibexes, but he had a whole lot of them. Maybe 90 + ibexes all lined up looking proudly at the cameras with their pouty-looking horns sticking way out. It was quite mesmerizing a scene to see so much livestock on a stage.”

“And what about the other brother? What was he doing?”

“He was across the street staring back at the other brother with an angry look. Because with such limited time, he had only been able to amass around a dozen ibexes, and these ibexes were not in the ibex prime of life, sad to say. In truth, they were scraggly; they could barely stand. He had to prop them up by leaning them against each other. They looked like seedy old ibexes. Dilapidated. 

‘So what the heck happened?”

“Well this is a small town so it was quite a show. The news people were unsure what to focus on; but soon they shifted all their attention to the former partner whose ibexes – and himself – were glowing in good health. So the brothers knowing they were upstaged did the last thing an honest man can do: they whipped up their ibexes, got them all riled up, so they would upstage the event. We all know that a dozen ibexes can’t defeat 100 fully-grown ibexes, even without the added insult of frailty and malnourishment. But they didn’t need to win; they just wanted to whip up a frenzy. So they began waving around kind of white flag they lit on fire until one of the ibexes started and leapt from their stage and, by force of motion ended up headed straight-long toward the stage where the former partner’s ibexes were on; and of course the rest followed headfirst, until sort of a melee broke out and, wouldn’t you know it, but in the calamity and bedlam and ruckus, the former partner’s ibexes caught fright and began pushing against each other until some fell and were stepped on and the others bolted, taking their ibex selves and ibex diapers with them. The two brothers came afterward each shaking a fist until the former partner took wise counsel and scattered too. The next day the paper quoted one brother saying “this unwise, unscrupulous ruffian has stolen our name and good will; and the revolt of the ibexes was Gods’s avengement.” And to add insult to injury he added: “this is the timidest Mountain Barge, LLC” of the west.”

“What happened next?” 

“Well, in the end both shops ended up closing and all the ibexes were sent back to Africa or somewhere. Park and Main is no longer.”

“Well, as they say, you don’t mess with the Amish.”

“You don’t mess with the Amish.”

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featured Photo by Stefano Zocca on Unsplash