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Although it wasn’t perfect, he still held the local community in high regard. At least it was better than any other he knew of in the United States. Its ban on owning motors made a huge difference. The Lancaster Amish, he said, could not imagine anyone surviving without motors. “They’re just having a hard time making do as it is!”

I agreed that going motorless was critical. To me the distinction between the hand tool and the self-operating machine explained a lot about the unraveling of modern society. I suggested to Cornelius that, for the Lancastrians, the hidden costs of automated devices went hand in hand with an upward spiral of material wants.

“Yes. But they just don’t see it.” He paused thoughtfully. “You couldn’t do what we do without Christianity.”

I hesitated. Kalahari bushmen came to mind. I told Cornelius what I had learned about the !Kung tribe while in school: that by gathering nuts and hunting, they were able to meet all their material wants while working only two or three hours a day. “If we are going in circles,” I said, “if we really thought about it, we would realize how silly it is. Simplicity is simply the intelligent or wise thing to do.”

He thought a moment and nodded. “I suppose you’re right. The point I was trying to make was that if you did it, it would have no values without Christianity. There are hippies who live much like we do, but they do all kind of other things.” He cocked his head a minute, reconsidering. “If we were really Christian, it would result in this.”

He shuddered at the moral condition of the present world. “One time I was in a hospital under observation for a week. I was in a ward with ten beds, and up in the corner there was a television set. They’d come in and turn it on at noon, and that thing would stay on ’til midnight. I’d watch for a few hours, then finally get disgusted and turn over in my bed. But I noticed that if I watched some programs, it got ’til I waited ’til the same time the next day to see how it would continue.” He let out a humorous “humph.” “I remember one that was called the Million Dollar Movie.”

“You mean the Six Million Dollar Man?”

“No. Believe it was the other. It had a big-time evangelist and all these good-looking girls, and he would go around killing them at night. He spent half his time preaching in front of the congregation and the other half involved in mob dealings. He finally even killed all of them that were in on it with him, and he was driving real fast down to a boat to make his getaway.” He stopped short, as if he realized that what followed was too horrible to relate.

But I couldn’t sit still. Finally I asked, “Did he get away?” Having prided myself on being weaned from television, I was slightly embarrassed to have to beg for the ending.

“There was a police blockade there, and when he came through”—he lowered his voice to a growl—“they just gunned him down.”

We both fell silent for a moment, as if pondering in this grisly example the death of America’s claim to moral leadership.

“There was another one with a real tall man and his father, and they were into witchcraft. They had an extra-good-looking daughter, and they were trying to find a husband for her. One day they found a young man for her, and they got him onto the porch. He took one look at the taller man and jumped right over the rail and got right away.”

“What made him do that?”

“It was just the way he looked.”

I realized he must have been talking about The Munsters.

“Then these two men decided they’d create a husband for her. So they went down in the cellar, and they took a frog and put it in a dish. Sometime later this repairman came to check on something, and the little boy took him down to the cellar. Then the two men came downstairs and saw him there. They thought he was the husband they made for their daughter”—his voice cracked and he emitted a jovial squeak—“and they caught him and tied him up.”

Television clearly had caught Cornelius’s fancy; but at least he had an excuse. His captivity