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Next we visited Elbert’s buggy shop. He showed us a used spring wagon in good repair, with a second, removable seat that could be placed in the cargo section.

After paying $700 for Isabel, $650 for the wagon, $150 for the driving harness, $70 for the work harness, and $200 for a couple of used saddles, we were still almost $400 ahead from the sale of the car. Had we done something dishonest? We had made out like bandits. And the engine of our new cart, being female, was self-replacing.

Like magic, horse and buggy were in our barn. Could they really belong to us?

I had driven a buggy once in Lancaster County, but that was a long time ago. Now, as I picked up the reins, the first thing I noticed was the slight delay of the horse’s response. Because of the rapid speed of a spring wagon compared to a plow, I was prone to over-correct. On a wagon seat you sit very high and feel tippy—as if, at a bump, you’d rocket out into space. At the first slope, I nearly panicked and slammed down on the brake as we accelerated to the tremendous speed of fifteen miles per hour.

The wind gusted, and I felt a sprinkle on my face. I blinked, batting the droplets from my eyes. But there was hardly a cloud overhead. Where was the moisture coming from? Then I realized. From the horse. There was no windshield. I couldn’t help laughing.

And I relaxed.

It became a joy to reenter the world of sensory objects that is cut off from the driver of a car. You could actually touch the hedgerows slowly moving by (the driver sat on the right). You could literally converse with the human figures in their yards. The wagon was a kind of moving front porch, and we became transitory neighbors to every household we passed.

To be sure, we knew that some of the onlookers—not all were Minimites—probably said to themselves, “Ah, so they finally did go off the deep end, just as it looked like they were going to. Tsk, tsk.” To those skeptics, we wanted to shout back, “We aren’t doing this on a romantic lark! We are doing this because it makes sense! It is the next logical step in our search for technological mastery, for true human convenience!” We, in short, were seeking the same thing they thought they were. But they tried to do it in cars. Most of them supplemented their rural livelihoods by driving to nearby factories and by shopping in the centralized big-box stores that depended on generous motorists like them—who would never stop working, if only to pay their transportation costs.

The horse’s fanny waddled in front of us and the world slowly passed. We meandered from the planned route and tested the vehicle’s road-steadiness. The driving took less and less concentration. Isabel, at the same time, got to know the ways better. The responsibility became ever more equine. An occasional tug, a foot on the brakes, and she did the rest.

Owning a horse and wagon closed the distance for us among Minimite farms. Without a car, life miniaturized. We began to experience the community as a sort of village and to grasp its real structure from a villager’s standpoint.

The dental apprentice, Nate, was one farm behind us. The saw sharpener, Cornelius, lived three farms down from us. Next to him was the retired bishop who sold old-fashioned galoshes. Catty-corner was a farmer named Isaac, who marketed vegetable seedlings canning mason jars and sorghum molasses. Beyond him were Elbert’s buggy shop, Edward’s furniture shop, Wilbur’s harness shop, Jim’s general store, and Arthur’s feed mill—all contiguous and connected by shortcuts and backwoods paths. What appeared to be a backward farming district was a complete retail complex, with its natural equivalents of skywalks and escalators. No one had planned it; the whole had organized of itself, much as cells in the body differentiate to form a larger organism.

If the convenience was everywhere palpable, it was also surreptitious. New relationships and connections were taking place all the time, but in ways that could not be controlled or foreseen.

I happened to meet Howie