While there is no rule statingthe Amishcan’t delight a honorable dirty joke on affair , foul gags are n’t typically what anyone tends to affiliate with Anabaptists . Why , then , does it seem like practically every town in Pennsylvania ’s Amish country has thekind of namedesigned to make teenagers snicker ?
Lancaster County , Pennsylvania , is base to such berth as Intercourse , Fertility , Blue Ball , Lititz , Paradise , Bareville , and Mount Joy . ( Paradisemight not sound dirty initially , but it would if someone was giving your mom a drive there . Similarly , if your name is Joy , the novelty ofMount Joywould wear off rattling quick . )
So where does all this seeming lewdness follow from ?
Intercoursefrequently has its guidepost steal by beguiled yucksters , and was the film emplacement for the 1985 Harrison Ford movieWitness . It owes its chucklesome name to one of a few somewhat mundane and unsexy hypothesis . One put forward that a raceway entrance was nearby and that a foretoken stating “ Entercourse ” slow morph over the years . Another approximation posits that the name refers to the town being at the convergence of the Old Kings Highway , which took hoi polloi between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia , and the road that people traveled to get from Wilmington , Delaware , to Erie , Pennsylvania ( which is how Intercourse got its original name , Cross Keys ) .
Being that the town was both an crossroad and a hybridizing , and that not everyone ’s mind is always in the toilet , no one made the maybe salacious connection when renaming the townspeople Intercourse . A third possible explanation is that the name refer to the friendly interactions that were at the heart of the community that earlier take root there : social intercourse .
Blue Ball was primitively named Earl Town . An inn built there in the former 1700s had a bluish ball out front as part of its signaling , string up there by landlord John Wallace , and the inn became known as the Blue Ball Inn , and eventually the whole town was rename after it .
Lititz is key after an old Bohemian castle;Mount Joyis key after a ship , theMountjoy;Paradiseowes its name to its looker ; birthrate seems to just be a “ Hey , let ’s be successful farmers ! ” kind of name ; and Bareville is named for Andrew Bare , one of the country ’s former settlers .
As for location : You could make a quick trip of visiting several of these towns at once . A 15 - minute movement south will take you from Blue Ball to Intercourse , with Paradise less than 4 miles forth from Intercourse .
