Virginia and the Ms do not regard it as home. Home is in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.

Fairview, the apartment development where the Ms live, was built in the first years after World War I when there was an insatiable demand for homes. It was practical, economical, and reasonably attractive—the rectangular buildings have slate roofs and white "Colonial" pediments, the lawns were broad and green and young trees were budding by the quiet roadways. A small shopping center was across the principal road. Each of the 50 units held from four to eight families. It was clean and comfortable, but it had one major disadvantage—it was difficult to get from Fairview to Alexandria or any place, except by automobile. Bus service was nonexistent and the George Washington Memorial Parkway, the only accessible road, was a high speed thoroughfare not designed for walking or even crossing.

Most of the early settlers viewed Fairview as temporary, a place to stay until they bought their own homes. Most have long since left, but the Ms have not. The lawns are still neat, the buildings well kept, and the rents reasonable—and it is still almost impossible to get from Fairview to Alexandria or any place else without an automobile.

The Ms' apartment is compact. Two of the rooms, the living room and the dining room, are really one, ten feet by twenty-five, divided by an arched door almost as wide as the room. The furniture is as neatly arranged as the suites are in a furniture store display, and a thick green patterned rug covers the living room. Mr. M's green easy chair and matching hassock face the TV, a low sofa with doilies has its back against the wall, and a coffee table with a vase of artificial flowers is in front of it. The dining section has a heavily carved, mahogany-stained table and four matching chairs with red tapestry backs. It could be an illustration in a Sears catalogue except for one incongruous fact: a tall, white enamel freezer is jammed into the back corner of the dining room by the kitchen door. The freezer is there because Mr. M is a hunter, he needs to store his game, and there is no place else in the apartment for the freezer.

Mr. M works as a carpenter and maintenance man for a construction company that builds sprawling middle class housing developments in Northern Virginia. He keeps the houses in good repair until they are sold. He has a company truck to carry him on his rounds.

Mr. and Mrs. M own many things that consume energy—the most consumptive being a window air conditioner, a color TV, a plug-in heater, and a 1968 Chrysler Newport. Mrs. M uses the car (which they bought secondhand in 1969) to go shopping and to visit their grandchildren. The Ms are unusual in what they do not own—the landlord owns the gas stove and the electric frost-free refrigerator, and he also pays the utility bills.

Because of the central utility meters in their apartment building, no one—not the Ms, nor their electric and gas companies, nor their landlord—knows precisely how much energy David and Gloria M use. But their modest