I once had a job as potter's helper at Penland School of Handicrafts. Brenda and I lived with Jack Neff and Karol. In Laurel Cottage. I helped him around the studio for our room and board and wrote before and after work. I called myself a writer-in-residence, on my resume, rather than potter's helper.

The director was hesitant to let the four of us live together, because he didn't want Penland to turn into an arts colony, with hangers-on, who weren't producing craftsmen.

Also, there were many such places for artists and writers, but there was only one such place for craftsmen. Penland.

I told him I considered myself a craftsman, not an artiste.

For me, books were utilitarian objects, such as a working person would carry in his lunch pail, and read on break.

Books were necessary, like pitchers and cups. Casseroles.

Also, I said, I did the whole thing myself. I wrote them, edited them, produced them, by hand, sold them, out of the back of my car. I read from them to attract a crowd and answered questions about them from the crowd. If a customer was unhappy I refunded the customer's money and took the book back.

I was not the engineer, I was the bricoleur, the knacker in an abattoir, putting art together out of scrap.

Jakeleg and piecemeal. Improvised and for-the-nonce.

I made do.

I was an humble word mechanic.

My typewriter was a machine.

Machine and mechanic are related.

I never convinced him, but he let us live together anyway.

Laurel Cottage Cottage Industries never turned into a hippie crash pad.

We were a true cottage industry, or pair of cottage industries: hand-thrown pots and hand-made books.