Better Off_ Flipping the Switch on Technology - Eric Brende [5]
Admittedly not all of them had gone hog wild on machinery; some upheld the spirit of their rules and perpetuated lively practices of reciprocal aid and traditional agrarian labors. But they were fast becoming a minority. Hence my ambivalence when I spied the black-hatted man.
During a rest stop a few hours later, I noticed him standing beside the bus by himself. He looked a little lonely, so I sidled over to him. He seemed glad for the company. His features were fairly striking—his brows jet-black, his eyes alive and fiery. You could tell English was not his first language from the way he clipped his syllables and sometimes groped for a word. Though he was a bit equivocal about his origins, it seemed safe to assume he was Amish.
But he was not from Lancaster County. This man and his neighbors inhabited an area far from the dense human throngs of the eastern seaboard. Somewhere deep in America’s heartland, they lived the life the Lancaster Amish had mostly discarded. They brought in the sheaves over their shoulders and hauled them to their barns by horse-drawn wagon. They husked corn by hand, loaded hay loose, and cut firewood with bucksaws. They got by without electricity, telephones, and motor vehicles. And, he said, they observed a rule prohibiting all motors. This was a stricter standard than even the most conservative Amish usually upheld. My curiosity was piqued. Was he Amish or not? He hesitated. “You can say so if you like,” he said. He shrugged his shoulders as if, for all he knew, the scythe might well be taken up again by farmers everywhere.
A thought came to me, and my heart began to beat faster. I mustered some will, then made him a proposal. He grew silent. Shortly the twinkle returned to his eye, and he gave me his address.
Once having taken the bus, I was really getting carried away.
It was odd how my journey into the heart of technology detoured so readily to these untechnological yeomen. It was even odder how it led to my discovery of a research assistant.
I had one more semester of classes to complete, and as I did so I continued bicycling back and forth to school from my apartment off-campus. As I became more familiar with the route, a pattern of carelessness caught up with me.
It was a gray and drizzly day, and the car was gray too. It had the right of way, but I didn’t see it coming. There was an impact, and the next thing I knew I was on the pavement.
I ended up in the emergency room of the Cambridge City Hospital, and after three hours’ waiting, I was told nothing was wrong with me. The doctor was puzzled about the intensity of my pain. He guessed it came from a deep bruise, close to the bone in my upper left leg. He handed me a pair of crutches, and I left the hospital.
When I got home I was famished. It had been difficult enough crawling in and out of the taxicab. Now I had to balance on one leg while wielding pots and pans. In desperation I called a woman I had taken on a couple of casual dates. When she heard what had happened, she came right over.
I had originally met Mary, as it happened, because of a comment I made on the dance floor about my interest in the Amish. Over the din of the amplified music she had cried, “I’ve always wanted to live on a farm!” She had an impish twinkle in her eye and a shimmer in her movements that I found irresistible. She had the physique of an elf. She was five feet four inches tall and weighed 105 pounds—a weight, I found out later, that hadn’t varied in ten years. But she never dieted. In fact, for dinner she prepared three pork chops, and when I passed up the third, she happily ate it herself. What a rare combination of elfin grace and amazonian metabolism.
But what most attracted me was her sparkle. It wasn’t just in her eyes—her whole slender being seemed to shimmer and twinkle, beckoning to me like a waving banner.
I never planned it like this, nor would it have happened