The most direct route from Philadelphia to my destination in northern New Jersey uses the Garden State Turnpike. Two years before, I'd taken turns relieving a friend driving this turnpike connecting to New York City. At check-in, the rental car attendant noted "deep fingernail prints on the passenger side in the armrests and dashboard." Deep indentations made by my friend, no doubt, as I roared in from a ramp to blend a Mertzon, Texas driving style into a mayhem of motorized insanity unmatched anywhere on asphalt.

This time I ordered a road map of Pennsylvania and New Jersey to chart a new course beforehand. Communicating with the tourist bureaus broke down without ever beginning. I'd ring up an 800 number and say, "This is Monte Noelke down in Texas, Mertzon, Texas. Ma'am, I need to know a road to go from Philadelphia through the country to Waterloo, New Jersey to a poetry festival." (One lady said, "I've never heard of such a thing as a poultry session.")

Next, I'd explain that I knew to use the Turnpike. But I wanted to go through the rural Amish and Dutch area to see sights besides taillights and bumper stickers. Pennsylvania travel referred me back to New Jersey travel. The car rental clerk in Philadelphia said she'd been off the Turnpike once going to New York, but hadn't seen any Amish people around McDonald's.

In the end, I wheedled enough directions from all information booths to hit a highway skirting the Metro area, looping into the Pennsylvania Dutch region. After about 40 miles of the 140 miles to Waterloo, a few small cornfields appeared along the roadway. Stands selling fresh produce enjoyed a swarm of customers starved from living off franchise burgers. One lady left her car door open in her excitement to find real food. Closest I came to finding the Amish people, however, was a brochure at the fruit stand saying tours of authentic Amish homes are available at Lancaster, Pennsylvania some 50 miles off track.

The words "authentic such and such" and "real so and so" are tips to be on guard for a phony exhibit. After 40 linear miles of billboards advertising anAuthentic Swiss Village in Georgia or, say, 40 road signs hawking Real Texas Chili leading to El Paso, the mind rejects such labels and wonders if thevillage is authentic and the chili real, why it requires so much advertising.

All I wanted to see were those old guys dressed in black suits and matching hats sitting by ladies in black dresses and white bonnets, jigging along in a black-topped buggy pulled by a big black horse, oblivious to draft cards and public school ordinances. But I was too discouraged to ask for more directions. Highway signs were as scarce as the Amish, so I had to hurry on to Waterloo before dark overtook me.

The festival opened the next morning at nine. The first day brings high school competition and student day for the kids from New York City. By opening, the students mill in small groups dressed in dark black and purple costumes, adorned in gold ear, eyebrow and tongue baubles, giving off an aura of a strange tribe committed to dyeing their hair in wild streaks to complete the rites of passing through puberty. (Reader 's Digest wrote recently of a 19 year-old Swedish woman dying from "heavy cosmetic metals and tattoo ink poisoning.")

Inside the largest tent ever raised, the students cheered the poets from their respective schools. Parents and grandparents waved toward the stage from crowded chairs seating some 3000 souls. At intermission, to play for and to the audience, a rock band thundered into ultimate amplification, sending the mothers and dads scurrying for the concession stands and book tent to escape decibels of sound ricocheting off the tent poles.

I sought refuge farther away in a small tent where the 95 year-old poet laureate, Stanley Kunitz, read his work. Frail in his dotage yet sharp of mind, Mr. Kunitz's voice flowed forth in a rhythm of gentle words deep in contrast to the raging rock music one half mile away. The poet laureate is the best of all government posts. He or she can not start wars, raise taxes, or plunder our treasury. For thirty-eight thousand a year, they serve the cause of culture and art. Scorned by the power brokers and the spin doctors, held in disdain by blind legislators and administrators, the post of poet laureate is a thin link to decency.

For three more days, the tents filled with fans and poets sitting on steel chairs from eight in the morning until 10 at night. Soft rain fell on the green tent roofs. Removed from the sorrows of weather failure and dull markets, I felt at times the whole festival was being held in my behalf ...

November 9, 2000