Better Off_ Flipping the Switch on Technology - Eric Brende [10]
Mr. Miller stopped by later to drop off the mower. It was a cutting cylinder, two wheels and a handle. I remembered how my grandfather panted as he pushed one like this at his home in Hutchinson, Minnesota, when I was a child. The moment had arrived. I felt a few nervous flutters. The grass was green and tall and still wet in places. Here, it seemed, was the task that would set our whole fate turning: push (wheeze)! push (wheeze)! push (wheeze)!…
The whole yard took about an hour and a half to mow. The grass could have been a little shorter and less damp. I had to do some of the thicker rows twice, and to overlap widely on each pass. Pushing took effort in the chest muscles, lower back, and legs. My shirt was soaked with sweat. And yet I was not exhausted. Nor can I say the task was unpleasant. There was something delicious in the feeling of hand mowing through thick turf. As the spiraling blades transmitted my own power into cutting—snick, snick—the sense of sinking my own teeth into that chore was palpable, as if to say I had bit off something I could chew. Later I learned that lawn mowing was considered a woman’s chore here, and not a very heavy one at that; nine-year-old girls often did it. But for now I felt a small, smug sense of satisfaction.
The next morning Mr. Miller appeared at our doorstep and asked if I could help him carry something. On the back of his wagon sat an old white appliance, a circular washing machine with a crank handle in the center. We brought it into the house, and Mr. Miller left us alone. Mary gazed at the thing in astonishment. I helped her heat the water on the kerosene stove Mrs. Miller had lent us, and she gathered the other ingredients. In went the water. In went the clothes. In went the biodegradable detergent. Mary took hold of the crank and began to turn.
We have since learned that among hand-operated washing machines, the ones with back-and-forth handles work best. A swinging motion, as technological historian Lynn White Jr. has noted, is far more amenable to the physiologies of earthly beings than is a circular motion, which can be seen in nature only in the stars. That is why we later purchased, from a local Amish craftsman, a custom-designed swing-handled machine.
Still, for now the crank-handled machine offered Mary surprisingly little resistance. Having received the tip that two hundred strokes completes a load, she stopped turning after about three minutes. The load was clean. She pulled each sopping item through the rubber ringer and dropped it in a basket.
What a novelty it was. Actually washing clothes—not just pushing a button and hearing a hum, but washing your own clothes without the mediation of distant power suppliers disgorging pollutants into the biosphere. It was really rather cathartic for both of us. We were cleaner in more ways than one. And whenever Mary did the laundry again, I sensed more than willingness in her cranking movements; I sensed zest. This was productive. Thought and action coincided. It was the upper body workout she never had time for on her lunch break, yielding a meaningful end-product. Mary had come down from her counting tower and added body to soul. I liked the sum I saw. When she was done with that first load, we grinned at each other, each knowing what the other was thinking, and I helped her hang up the clothes.
But not too much could be concluded from a little hand mowing and bit of hand-washing. The greater part of the manual labors still lay in store. No grant funded this experiment. If I couldn’t get food on the table, there was no financial cushion to fall back on. About $1,500 remained from my first year’s fellowship money, not even enough to pay the rent for eighteen months. Mary had savings, but these I deemed sacrosanct; they were held in reserve for the day her turn came to choose our adventure…unless she returned to the city single. Now that our technological