Five years ago we bought a house built in 1988 in the town of Bedrock, Indiana — a town that met all of our qualifications of having a drive-up restaurant, a stone quarry where I could get a job, and very lenient laws about street legality of vehicles. When we moved in, there was an electric fridge in the kitchen: We sold that as soon as we could. Now we have a period-appropriate bird that waves a fan at our food to keep it cool. Before the first wave of that fan I had to spend two weeks teaching the bird to look a guest in the eye, shrug his wings, and say, “It’s a living.” Most of the time he just makes car alarm sounds and plucks out his own feathers.