Better Off_ Flipping the Switch on Technology - Eric Brende [76]
From time to time, my thoughts returned to Wilbur, the advocate of green manure and prospect for the ministry. Apparently thoughts of me had come to him as well. Unexpectedly he dropped by for a visit, and for part of an afternoon we sat together on the front porch and talked. It turned out he was another non-native; he had come here as a teenager with his family from an eastern state. Like Edward, his dad had grown progressively stricter, to the point of reviving Old Testament dietary rules. When he insisted that the rest of the group follow suit, even hardliners bristled, and they asked him to desist. He didn’t, so they asked him to leave.
I think I could begin to see the source of some of Wilbur’s depression.
He asked me about myself. I mentioned my work at M.I.T. and told him about Boston. I described the street system, with its six point intersections, traffic rotaries, and narrow twisting parkways spanned by old stone bridges. I recalled my harrowing experiences as a bicyclist, and he clutched his head.
“It must take a lot of mental strength to survive in the city,” he said, “driving down the highway with little cars darting in and out in front of you.” He made weaving motions with his hands as the scene swam before him. Sighing, he reclined on the porch swing, his eyes wide in sympathy and his long beard matted against his chest like the fur of a brown bear.
“I couldn’t think fast enough to keep up,” he went on. “My country mind moves slow. They must have so much mental strength—” He mused as if awed by the thought. “I’m just”—his eyes brightened as the awareness came to him—“a poor man. And what they have to do there!” He grasped his head again, seeming to glower at papers on an imaginary desk. “All day!” He nodded as if imparting a secret revelation that only the two of us shared. “I think that eventually the only ones who will make it are the ones with the fastest, strongest minds. And everybody else—”
A row of baby turkeys was roosting on a railing next to him. They looked like so many fluff balls.
“I don’t know why,” said Wilbur, “but I like them baby turkeys.” He sidled over and began…ever…so…gradually…reaching…with his huge hands until he had grasped two of them. Then with each hand working independently he began stroking them, first on the breasts and slowly moving up the scruffs of the necks. He scratched the scruffs more rapidly and the turkeys warbled in response.
“Did you know they’d like that?” I asked.
Wilbur chuckled and flushed slightly. “I don’t know. I ’sume they do.” One turkey’s eyelids were drooping languidly, and he continued his stroking. The other turkey, however, had become restless and slipped away. “This one doesn’t like it,” he said. In a low voice he continued, “Are you getting used to the country life?”
I explained how my body had been adapting, and mentioned the growing satisfaction I was taking from field work.
“You grew up on a farm?”
“No,” I said.
“Do you have any…apprehensions”—he arched his brow—“about farming?”
“You mean beginning my own farm?”
“Yes.”
“Well,” I said, “if I just bought some land all by myself in no particular place, then yes. But if I could somehow get in with a community like yours, then no.”
“Do you think what we’re doing is practical?”
“You mean, does it work?”
“Yes.”
I thought a minute, trying to ascertain if there was a catch to his question. “Of course it does because—”
“We all seem to be surviving.”
“No one seems to be going bankrupt. Or at least I’m not aware of anyone going bankrupt.” Then I found out what it was all leading up to. Wilbur told me that recent guests from another more modern Amish settlement had toured this one and published their findings in one of the Amish periodicals. The article described how “backward” the inhabitants seemed, but mentioned “the unusual thing about them is that they are debt-free.” Wilbur elaborated.