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In return we have had Pieter, a bachelor, over for dinner and drinks many a time. Pieter is a vivacious conversationalist, exuberantly opinionated, and generally a great deal of fun. He also plays chess, which I quite enjoy, and we have whiled away many a winter’s eve by the fire at this sport.

Pieter, too, has taught me that motorized equipment, selectively applied, is not incompatible with mutual aid. I should know: I get to his homestead six miles out of town in the ’86 Blazer my dad passed on to me. I’d bike, but the highway is too narrow and curvy. I ended up accepting the vehicle only because its maintenance costs were next to nothing; the liability insurance in this area, for instance, is only about two hundred dollars a year. We try to use the car only when we cannot walk, bike, or take the train.

Pieter and I are in a card-playing group (poker, not bridge) with Steve. Steve and I also have a relationship that involves selective mechanical application. He runs the copy store. He is also a newcomer to town, and his store is the center of newcomer gossip. To make a single photocopy generally takes me, given the news I must catch up on, at least thirty minutes, and that’s if there’s no one else in line. It is a very inefficient way to make copies, but a very efficient means to converse. Mary wonders where I disappear to.

But Mary shouldn’t talk. When she goes out running errands, there’s no telling how long gab will grab her. At first I would think, “She must have gotten hit by a car; it’s eight p.m., suppertime is long past, and there’s no word.” Now I think, “She’s probably at the Borzillos.” We belong to a food co-op with them (transplants also), and Sally and Mary think and talk alike. Sally loves our soap, but she usually just pays for it. Mark, her husband, is a freelance engineer who cuts his own firewood, built most of his house, and tends a half-acre garden.

I no longer think much about Mary’s absences. We spend most of our time at home together anyway. But we have now established well-defined spheres of activity; otherwise we’d trip over each other. The system works well as long as you have a private bedroom in which to rendezvous from time to time. I disappeared for about a year into the walk-out basement, which I transformed into two guest rooms with private baths. The idea was to make our lower level an economy-priced bed-and-breakfast. My Minimite experience hammering nails came in handy. I fine-honed my carpentry skills one summer with a weeklong course at the Shelter Institute in Bath, Maine. I even acquired knowledge of electrical wiring. This town is a crossroads for bicyclists who take a trail along the river, and our B&B has been filled with grateful, paying bicyclists and other travelers ever since. Some of them have become dear friends. We call our place a “Bunk and Bagel.” It has turned out to be a greater moneymaker than the rickshaw, which is popular mostly on Saturdays.

While I clunk around with my odd projects, in the B&B, and on the rickshaw, Mary cooks, cans, and gardens. She also gives the kids their lessons. We’ve become home-schoolers, and with no television, our children have become book-inhalers. But their principal lesson comes from the living examples we provide. At eight, without my instigation, Hans made a wooden mailbox with a hinged door from scrap lumber left over from my basement project, using my hand drill and handsaw. After I traded in my two-passenger rickshaw for a larger one with room for two drivers in front, he became my driver-apprentice. He sits beside me, helping pedal. He earns fifty cents a ride and grins all the way to the piggy bank. Our daughter, Anna, now seven, knits, helps label soap, and can bake a respectable batch of cookies. At three, Evan was already helping push the mower; now, just turning five, he can do half the lawn.

There is a curious way that, after a while, a life with fewer automated helpers becomes lighter than one with more.