The Gamecaller

Tobe Terrell

Old Rag Publishing

404 SE 2nd Street

Gainesville FL 32601

The Gamecaller. Copyright © 2009 by Tobe Terrell.

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews.

ISBN: 978-0-9796271-8-7

Acknowledgments

I am fortunate to have had help from five different editors to the book. In chronological order: Ian Schleifer, Bob Meyer, Diane Childs, Stuart Silverstone, and Ryan Duval. Each deserves special thanks for their many suggestions that went beyond editing of the copy. Stuart, a noted graphics designer also designed the cover.

There are many others who deserve my thanks. I have changed the names of some of the persons who appear in the book, some at their request; some at my own choice. I am indebted to a few of them for their advice and comments; you know who you are.

Some of the events described in the book occurred more than thirty years ago. Memories fade and recollections sometimes are distorted in the direction of the rememberer. To persons who recall or interpret the events differently than I do, I acknowledge the imperfection of my own memory. The narrative in the book is the best of my recollection; none of the events are fictionalized.

“What we value and what we fear are within our self.”

                              Lao Tzu

To continue the gift economy experiment, in 2005 Tobe Terrell started The Gainesville Zen Center, where hospitality is offered to world travelers. The book that you are reading, another example of the gift economy, was originally given to a guest at the Zen Hostel. Please, after writing your name in the front, pass this book on to someone who might enjoy it.

If you liked The Gamecaller, you are invited to make a donation to The Zen Center, where the money will be used to produce another copy of the book.

Gainesville Zen Center

404 SE 2nd Street

Gainesville, FL 32601            

www.zenhostel.com

(352) 336-3613

This digital copy (epub, mobi and PDF) created and distributed by Joseph Matheny (http://josephmatheny.net) with the permission of Tobe Terrell.

THE GAMECALLER

Table of Contents

PROLOGUE      i

CHAPTER ONE      i

M.D. PETTIE      3

BECOMING AS A LITTLE CHILD      4

PITTSBURGH      4

HARE KRISHNA      7

COONER CANNON      10

LITTLE JOE      14

PALO ALTO      16

MINNEAPOLIS      19

CHICAGO      22

THE STROLLER      23

NYMPHS DANCING      25

MEETING PETTIE      26

ROY MASON      28

CHRISTOPHER BIRD      29

SITTING IN A CIRCLE      32

KEN KEYES      34

THE RED CABIN      35

THE FREESTATE      37

THE FIRST TRIP      40

THE FARM      42

ORGANIZATION      46

CHAPTER TWO      49

DECISION TO JOIN      49

MILITARY      50

BARBARA SYLVESTER      56

PETTIE’S DEPARTURES      57

THE INVISIBLE BANK      59

REAL ESTATE CRITERIA      59

THE FINDERS      61

FINDING W STREET      63

SMOKING      65

ANN STRUGGLES      66

PROPERTY SETTLEMENT      67

PRINCIPLES      68

ON THE ROAD      70

AUSTIN ENTREPRENEURSHIP      71

MEXICO      73

OAXACA      75

PALANQUE      79

FEDERALES      84

CHAPTER THREE      86

IT      86

A LOYALTY TEST      88

MORNING MEETING      89

CONFUSION      89

THE S.E.C.      91

KIVAS      94

RON ALLEMAN      94

CRAZIES      97

ALLAN SCHOEN      100

STEVE BELTZ      101

PETER RABBIT      105

CHAPTER FOUR      107

ARCHIE DODSON      107

NETHERS      108

PRIORITIES      113

WESTERN SWING      114

UTOPIA      116

JAN SHAPES      118

SYMBOLIC TICKET      120

PANAMA TRIP      121

MERLE PREBBLE      123

PANAMA CITY      124

CUNA INDIANS      125

AN UNLIKELY RENDEZVOUS      126

DEATH’S DOOR AT TIKAL      128

GUARDING      129

CHAPTER FIVE      134

SKULLDUGGERY      134

MARTIAL ARTS      136

THE WAREHOUSE      139

POLICE INVASIONS      142

RATS      145

VISIONS      146

SYNCON      148

CHARACTERS      152

ZEN WALKING AND ZEN THINKING      156

FEET OF CLAY      158

RAINBOW GATHERING      159

ANCESTORS      161

INTELLIGENCE      163

FREEDOM      164

MANKIND RESEARCH UNLIMITED      165

CHAPTER SIX      169

MEN’S TRIPS      169

ORLANDO      169

NOMADS      172

HOUNDED      174

SUNFEST 77      175

JESUS 77      177

WRAP UP      178

MUNCHKINS      181

MUNCHKIN WORK      185

CLOSET THERAPY      187

OLE JOGGIN’ TRAIL      188

THE GIFT ECONOMY      190

THE BUFFALO HUNT      191

BALTIMORE      192

ZANIE’S PARTY      194

THE MALL LIFE      196

CHAPTER SEVEN      198

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR      198

BALTIMORE AGAIN      201

KEEP MOVING      203

IMITATIONS      205

DENVER      207

FURTHER WEST      210

A DIFFERENT WAREHOUSE      212

LEARNING SAN FRANCISCO      216

THE TRIVIUM AND THE QUADRIVIUM      217

LEYLA      218

OAKLAND      221

CHAPTER EIGHT      224

COUNTERFEIT AND REAL      224

HAWAII      225

THE MORTUARY      226

PROSPERITY UNLIMITED      227

THE $20,000 CHECK      230

SAN DIEGO      231

SAM SPADE      234

IF A FOOL WILL PERSIST IN HIS FOLLY      236

BUNNY BATAGLIA      237

L.A.      240

SAN PEDRO      241

A NEW GAMECALLER      243

HAWAII AGAIN      244

INTERNATIONAL TRADE CENTER      246

MISSIONARY FAMILIES      248

CRYSTAL FLIGHTS      251

AROUND THE WORLD      252

PUSHING      253

CHAPTER NINE      255

HONG KONG      255

BANGKOK      257

MOSCOW      259

THE EURAIL TRAIL      262

LONDON      263

DEBRIEFING      264

CHAPTER TEN      267

THE BIG APPLE      267

SOHO AND GOLD      269

COCONUT GROVE      272

THE PEACE PILGRIM      274

THE PROBLEM-SOLVING CENTER      276

BARBARA’S START      278

CHAPTER ELEVEN      281

A NEW PHASE      281

NEW PLAYERS      284

JOHN COX      286

BABIES      288

MAKING IT HAPPEN      290

PARADISE      293

THINK GLOBALLY      295

PARADISE II      298

DIDACTIC DRAMAS      299

KNEE WALKING      301

WEANING      302

COUNTRY SITUATION REPORT      303

MR. P      305

CHAPTER TWELVE      306

HEADING SOUTH      306

ACCIDENT      307

OMEN AT ORACLE      308

GOATGATE BEGINS      308

DELIVERING THE LETTER      311

THE GODDESS INTERVENES      313

CONVICTED BY THE PRESS      317

A FEW FACTS EMERGE      318

SEEKING DIRECTION      320

CRAZIER AND CRAZIER      322

MEETING WITH ACCUSERS      323

NEW ACCUSATIONS      324

GHENGIS K. PLATO      327

MOTHERS RETURN      329

A WHIMPER OF AN ENDING      330

EPILOG      332

PROLOGUE

Entering Barbara’s front closet, I hear Pettie’s voice from above: “Y’all are too old for me. Every one of you thinks like an old man. Didn’t y’all ever hear that ‘a little child shall lead them,’ or ‘ye must become as a little child?’ You were perfect when you got here, but you were taken advantage of by your parents, your teachers and your government. You all know a lot, but most of it is not so.”

Inside the closet, I step lightly onto the ladder and climb slowly upward into the attic where several people are seated on the floor in a semi-circle around M.D. Pettie. He is reclining, with several pillows propped behind his head. I have to crawl to get into the attic which is only eight feet wide and five feet high. Two people move slightly to make room for me, as Pettie continues.

“To get some real knowledge you’ve got to get back to what you were when you came bouncing out of the womb. That’s what getting in touch with your true nature is. How are you going to do it? Barbara, you tell ‘em. Go ahead, tell everybody how they’re going to do it.”

Barbara begins, “Well, sir, I guess you...”

Pettie cuts her off. “Nah, you don’t know. You were just about to say something foolish, but I’ll cut you off, so you don’t embarrass yourself. I might tell you what you could do to become as a little child, but I’m not sure I should do it. I could tell you to go out and take a course. There are dozens of them out there. You just pay your money and somebody will be glad to tell you what to do to get back to your own true nature. In fact, they get their own self-esteem from telling you. That’s what it’s really all about. These courses, they’re for the benefit of the teachers more than the students. Jan, how much of your father’s money did you pay to Oscar Ichazo for his Arica wisdom package? No, don’t tell me. It might make me cry.

“I could send you out there to get some instant enlightenment from Werner Erhart at the EST seminars, but then he would be richer and we would be poorer and you would only think you had learned something. That’s what’s happening. Making people think they’re thinking. If they were really thinking, they would know they don’t need to pay for some wisdom course. They’re just putting old wine in new bottles, so they can charge you for it. They should be ashamed of themselves for charging for the truth. So I’m not going to send y’all out to take the EST course or some other instant-enlightenment seminar. I’m considering whether I should call for a new game, but I don’t know whether you all are ready for it and whether you really want to hear it.”

We have heard this kind of mock ridicule often before. It’s the truth, but served with a sweetened spoon.

“Please, sir, tell us what it is,” several people say.

“Well, if y’all say pretty please, I might tell you,” he says.

Then eight full-grown adults all begin talking at once, saying some version of “Oh, pretty please, sir, tell us, pretty please.”

“OK, I’m calling a game for each one of you to go on a trip. Pick whatever place you want. Stay gone for at least a month. Get out of D.C. Pick some spot where you are on your own. On day one, imagine you are one year old, on day two, two years old and so forth until you get up to the age you are now. At the end of the time, have a celebration and come on back. And make some money while you’re gone. Bring back the surplus. Put some pressure on yourselves. It’s tough being a little kid in a world that’s designed for big people. Just walk around and think like a little person. Get rid of those notions you got from believing other people and stick to what you have learned on your own. Everybody got that?”

Heads nod.

“It’s just a recommendation of how you can learn something,” Pettie continues. “If you get into the game, it will do you a lot of good, but you don’t have to do it to be in good standing with me. If you know what to do, just go out there and do it. If you don’t, then I’m recommending that you do this for the next month or so.” One by one we climb down the ladder and begin trying to become as little children.

CHAPTER ONE

M.D. PETTIE

The game Pettie has just “called” is but one of hundreds of examples of the mind-expanding and consciousness-raising experiments from his tireless imagination. This is a book about M.D. Pettie and the group that formed around him over the years and came to be known as The Finders. And it’s a book about my life and how he affected it.

That’s the title he gave himself in the late 1970s, “The Gamecaller.” It’s based on the ultimate in game theory, the notion that all of life is a game made up of a series of sub-games. If you were the instigator of the big bang, the ultimate source of oneness, the switcher-on of the light, and were speculating on existence, how could you come up with something better than the game of life? Wouldn’t you make yourself into billions of autonomy-crazed versions of yourself, male and female? And wouldn’t you trick yourself into believing, at least temporarily, that you were real, and just flesh and blood? And wouldn’t you want to play games? Isn’t that what we all do all day long, play games and take them seriously?

Sometimes we say we “have to” work or we’re “taking a vacation,” because we are so caught up in a particular game we’re playing that we have forgotten who we really are and think we’re not in charge. But they’re all games: the money game, the family game, the religion game, the nation-state game, the politics game, the fame game, the believing and disbelieving game, the glass bead game. And ultimately some part of ourselves judges how we played. And perhaps, when we get back to the place where it all began, we shake our heads and laugh at our performance and decide that, winner or loser, the game is so much fun that we might just want to play it all over again.

So M.D. Pettie called himself The Gamecaller. And he agreed to call games for those who showed up in the morning and wanted to play. Not many did, but for the few who did, life was never boring.

BECOMING AS A LITTLE CHILD

On this particular day in 1975, those of us who want to play the becoming as a little child game, pack our bags and leave The Finders’ Washington, D.C. headquarters. Pettie didn’t say how much money to take, but he said to put pressure on yourself, so I decide to take only the coins in my pocket. I grab a backpack and walk the six blocks through Glover Park to Wisconsin Avenue. People on lunch breaks are stretching their legs on this warm winter day. I catch the bus heading north up Wisconsin Avenue and don’t get off until the end of the line in Rockville, Maryland. Walking out to Interstate 270, I wonder where to go. The radio of a passing car is playing: “Take me to that highway and show me a sign and take it to the limit one more time.”

I head for Pittsburgh, because it’s unfamiliar territory. It’s slow going and as evening approaches, I’m on Route 31 at the turnoff for the Hidden Valley ski area. When it begins snowing, I begin to wonder whether I have gone too far in traveling light with only a light thin jacket and no sleeping bag. There is nobody around and no building in sight as I start to shiver. A hundred yards away, a large moving van is parked beside the road. It’s unlocked. Inside is a neat stack of quilted blankets for protecting furniture. I climb in, and fashion myself a bed. It’s pretty basic, but it looks like luxury to me. Then I close the door and get a good night’s sleep.

PITTSBURGH

The next morning is clear and crisp. The first car that passes takes me all the way. Pittsburgh does not embrace me with open arms and I wonder whether I’m in the wrong place. Then I remembered the game Pettie has called. I’m supposed to be thinking like a one-year-old today and maybe when I was one year old and trying to adjust to a world that was designed for the convenience of adult males, I thought there had been some mistake and I was in the wrong place. So maybe Pittsburgh is the right place after all.

Sitting on the steps of the University of Pittsburgh’s high-rise tower, I remember a very early trauma. I’m lying in my crib looking up at the ceiling. Suddenly the wallpaper begins peeling away from the ceiling and falling in long sheets on top of me. I scream so loud my mother comes running from a neighbor’s house. Then I remember having nightmares of electricity reaching out of the wall socket and filling me with paralyzing yellow light. I don’t know whether the dreams were based on an experience of being shocked or just on the frequent warning from my mother. But I know that I usually saw her warnings as challenges rather than helpful guidance. Maybe Pittsburgh is the perfect place, after all, for remembering the frustrations of having a one-year-old body.

I spend the rest of the day exploring the geography of the town, the universities and the riverfronts. That night I eat the last of the food in my pack. At the end of the day, I find a grassy spot against the brick wall of a church. The February sun has heated it enough to keep me from shivering for a few hours. I lay on top of and under newspapers thinking that this is putting pressure on myself and wondering what conclusions a baby might have reached by the end of his first year. It is an unsatisfactory sleep. Before daybreak, I wander into a café and offer to work for some breakfast. The man behind the counter is generous and gives me a big plate of food gratis. For the rest of the day, I try to see the town through the eyes of a two-year-old.

To avoid spending another night outside, I walk across a long bridge over the Monongahela River to the rescue mission. It’s still morning, and I’m told I have to come back after 4 PM to talk to a counselor. By four, I am tired from exploring the city on foot and crossing the bridge three times. I’m ushered into a small dark office and motioned into a heavy wooden chair in front of the desk of an overweight woman who talks for several minutes on the phone, before looking me over.

“We can give you a place to sleep tomorrow night,” she says, “that’s our rule. You’ve got to wait for 24 hours. You want me to reserve a bed for you?”

I feel the anger of a frustrated three-year-old rising inside me, but I know it would not be smart to have a tantrum.

“I don’t want to be a problem for you,” I say, “but could I possibly talk to the manager?”

“He’s busy right now.”

“Oh, that’s OK. I’m not in a hurry. I can wait.”

She says nothing, but turns and walks through a wooden door with a frosted glass panel. I hear voices on the other side. I whip out the checkbook from my jacket pocket, write a check for $50,000 and sign it. Then I carefully tear away the bank account name from the upper left corner and write “void” over the signature. A middle-aged man emerges from the office with the form I have filled out. He has a well-trimmed beard and his skin has the parched look and smell of a long-time cigarette smoker. I stand to greet him. He gives his name, but does not offer his hand.

“What’s the problem?” he says.

I shake my head slowly from side to side, tear the check in half and hand it to him. “I’m sorry,” I say. “My benefactor told me to give you this donation, but to first test you to see how well you treat the people you serve. I’m sorry, sir. You simply didn’t measure up. I’m just doing what he told me to do, sir. I’m sorry.” Then, without looking back, I walk out. I’m dressed in a business suit, so there is some chance he might believe me, but I don’t care. I’m doing it for myself, not to teach him a lesson.

As I walk back across the bridge, I am thinking about my pre-school years and how I must have dealt with situations where I was not in charge.

Children are never in charge as infants. They can’t be; they might not survive, especially in the manufactured world. But if parents don’t allow them to be in charge of as much of their world as possible, they can’t develop confidence in themselves. How much did my parents allow me to be in charge? A lot more than the parents of my friends. I remember how Herbie’s father used to yell at him and beat him when he was just doing what kids do naturally and I remember how Herbie used to defy his father in secret and I remember how his father stunk of cigarettes just like that small-minded bureaucrat I just left. I don’t know where I’m going to sleep tonight, but I’m not going to grovel to that guy for a bed.

That’s probably the attitude of most every one of these homeless people he deals with and they don’t want to humble themselves either. And they were probably more frustrated than I was as a kid. My father never laid a hand on me and rarely said anything rational. That’s the worst thing a parent can do to a three-year-old: talk sense. It’s a crime to deprive them of the joy of discovering what is sensible for themselves. Leave them alone and let them experiment. Kids will test to see how well their parents think they can function on their own. They know their parents get along better than they do in the world. They want to trust the judgment of their parents. Kids don’t need to be in charge all of the time. But if they aren’t allowed ever to be in charge, they might enter a fantasy world where they are in charge. Or, like I just did, they will figure out some way of getting control of the situation, rather than humble themselves. I think that’s the lesson from this experience, learn to be comfortable with humility. I think I can do that.

HARE KRISHNA

When I get to downtown, the buildings are emptying of workers. On the sidewalk, I see bright-colored Hare Krishna dancers and hear their cymbals and chanting. I fall in with them and dance up the street. A beautiful young girl invites me to a feast at the Krishna temple, a roomy Victorian house near the university. She sticks close to me throughout the evening telling me about the wonders of Krishna, but asks me nothing about myself. I ask her some personal questions, and she tells me those kinds of details are unimportant and it is Krishna who lives in all of us regardless of what we have been before. I agree with her, but don’t mention that Krishna’s name may change from one religion to another. After dinner, the dancing begins again and goes on for hours. It’s cool in the house, but I’m sweating. My energy is fading and I don’t know where I’m going to sleep.

Then she tells me that I’m fortunate because an important visiting swami from the Krishna temple in Moundsville, West Virginia, is going to speak. His name is Kirtanananda. It’s past eleven when he starts talking and I’m completely pooped, but I’m anxious to listen to a real live swami from India. But instead of an Indian, a young man who looks American sits down and begins speaking with a strong Indian accent and I whisper to my host.

“Is he from India?” She seems a little embarrassed, but shakes her head and shushes me to be quiet.

His talk seems like a parody and I’m reminded of Peter Sellers movies and his imitation of Indians. When he finishes, I ask my host where Kirtanananda is from and has that always been his name.

“He’s from Peekskill, New York. His name was Keith Hamm. But you leave that behind when you’re initiated. He spent many years near His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada and is now a high being.”

Years later I read a book called Monkey on a Stick in which the misdeeds of this swami from the Moundsville Temple are described. Swami Kirtanananda , a.k.a. Keith Hamm, is now serving time in the penitentiary for a variety of crimes committed against the temple devotees. When my young hostess says I’m welcome to stay for the night, I’m grateful. She turns me over to a young man who takes me to an upstairs room, hands me a sheet and points to a wooden floor–not the Ritz, but I don’t care. I wonder, as I drift off to sleep, what this experience could have to do with the consciousness of a two- or three-year-old.

At 5 AM, an unfamiliar hand shakes me awake. “The dancing is about to begin. You must come down now.”

I head downstairs where my hostess is waiting and she takes my hand. We immediately join the mass of jangling head-bobbing chanters. I’m game and keep it up for an hour hoping there might be some food at the end. But as dawn is breaking, I’m invited to head out with them for the day. I don’t know where they are bound, but I know they will be going without me. No doubt this young beauty wants to recruit me into the fold. At the front door, I extend my hand and thank her for the hospitality. She frowns and tells me I should make a contribution. I reach into my pocket expecting to pull it inside out to reveal that I have nothing. But I’m amazed to find a nickel. I raise my shoulders, tuck my head to my chest, and squint my eyes in a gesture of apology and give her my last nickel. It isn’t enough to satisfy her. She shoots me an angry look and turns away.

As I walk down the steps from the Krishna temple, triggered by our exchange, a scene from my childhood flashes into my mind. I remember my father standing in our kitchen when I must have been about three or four. I had learned what money was and knew it could be exchanged for candy. I asked him to please give me some money. He said he didn’t have any. I thought he was joking as he always did. I thought all adults had money, as much as they might need. The idea of a scarcity of anything had not yet entered my consciousness. I laughed and asked him again. He put his hand into his right-hand pocket and turned it inside out. I laughed and turned to his left. He did the same. I was stunned. He really didn’t have any money.

This morning is much colder. Walking toward the high-rise buildings in The Golden Triangle district, I think about my experiences of the last twenty-four hours. One thing is clear. I’d been exposed to true believers. What they believed required the setting aside of the rational mind. Their beliefs were as hard to accept as a literal garden of Eden, but they held them like a hard-shell Baptist preacher. When I was three or four, my parents used to take me to the Baptist church, long before I had the experience to evaluate religious belief objectively.

The things I heard from the protestant pulpit seem absurd to me now and I realize that the gospel music is my only positive recollection. Sometimes, the emotions of the congregation swallowed me up with them, but the idea that a big powerful guy made a deal with the people he created and that deal required them to believe something made no sense. Here I am, in middle age, opting for a different kind of rationality, an empty mind and leaving an ever-increasing part of my brain satisfied simply to watch and wonder.

And those bureaucrats at the rescue mission, aren’t they just as much true believers? They believe in a system that places people in different classes based on how much money they have. They are as much victims of their beliefs as the losers who kowtow to them for a warm bed.

Maybe power is a better way to think about it. Every one of us in this culture, me included, resents the next level of power above us and, in our interactions with it, delights at discovering ways to undermine it. At the same time, we make heroes of the power-hungry who are thought to be beyond our grasp, and believe that they would love us, if only we could sit down with them face-to-face.

And isn’t belief itself the enemy? Is it possible to live without belief, or with so few beliefs that we delight in discovering another and leaving it behind? I know that I’m far from this lofty goal. But I’m high, coasting on the lack of sleep and the absence of some agenda that takes me out of the moment.

The air penetrates my thin jacket and I hear “Take me to that highway, show me a sign and take it to the limit one more time,” from a radio. On a huge billboard above me, a stewardess is reaching down and pointing to a rising aircraft and saying “Wouldn’t you rather be in San Francisco?” I laugh out loud when the door on my right is opened by the first employee to arrive for the day. It is an American Express office. I whip out my credit card and buy a ticket.

In the shuttle bus on the way to the airport, I wonder whether I’m running away. ‘Sure, I am,’ I think. ‘And that’s OK.’ The first time I ran away I was six years old. That time, I couldn’t make it on my own. But I’m glad I did it. The schoolteachers were interfering with my own natural impulse to learn and to keep a hold on my own true nature. Resisting that was much more important than anything they could layer onto me with schooling. Something told me to run away then and it was the right thing. And something is telling me to run away now, and it is the right thing.

COONER CANNON

On the airplane I remember why I had run away at six. Before I started school, my best friend was a thirty-year-old named Cooner Cannon. He had only a grade-school education, was completely unfit for the day-to-day world of paychecks and reporting to work on time, marriage, family and what most people dreamed of in 1941. But he loved me and I spent most of my days following him around as he repaired the various homemade machines that surrounded the house where I lived from age two to seventeen.

It was a large Victorian located in Ocala, Florida, about ten minutes by foot from the center of town. It sagged with age, but was comfortable. A big porch wrapped around two sides and was set up off the ground to exactly the height that discouraged adult intrusion, but provided me with a wonderful sand-floored refuge beneath the entire house. Four families lived there, two on the first floor and two on the second. Each family shared a bath with the other. We reached the bathroom on the first floor, where we lived, through the hallway that ran from front to back. Cooner lived in this hallway, outside of our kitchen door, across from the bathroom, in a little alcove under the stair and behind a curtain that separated him from the public.

He was a lively fellow with a limp and a shuffling gait that made him appear to be lurching a little to the side. He was always moving. And he was always talking, mostly to himself, but when I was near he talked to me with the same words he would have used on himself if I were not there. It was non-stop nonsense. The house was owned by C.H. Cooner and his wife Annie Cooner, who was known to a good part of town as “Big Sister.” I don’t know how the name began, but based on the kindness she always gave to me, it was a good name. Cooner Cannon was somehow related to C.H. Cooner in a way that wasn’t discussable in those years by the Cooners. They were then in their seventies and very Victorian. But they had taken him in and he worked for C.H. Cooner, whose business was producing sour orange seeds.

Sour orange seeds are used to produce sweet orange trees. Oranges don’t run true to seed. If you plant the seed from an orange, the fruit is likely to be inedible, because the tree will be attempting to revert to a form that optimizes the survival of its species rather than just producing a sweet fruit. The commercial varieties of oranges are grafted onto the trunks of sour orange trees that are known to produce hardy rootstock. Most of the orange growing in Florida now happens much further south than Ocala, which is subject to occasional hard winter freezes. But during the 1940s and 50s, orange growing was the main industry in central Florida.

The Cooner’s property consisted of two or three acres with three houses. Although it was right in town, we had a garden, chickens and fruit trees of many varieties. In addition, the orange seed business was done from two large open sheds. It was in one of these sheds that Cooner’s wonderful machine lived.

To understand Cooner Cannon better, let me describe this machine, made specifically for the site. It was mostly wood, powered by a simple gasoline engine with a long flat belt, which snaked its way along the side and turned everything. Boxes of sour oranges were stacked by shirtless orange-pickers along one end and periodically dumped into a hopper at the top. The oranges fell into a circular trough where nails in a slow-turning wooden cylinder ripped them apart and crushed them against the sides and bottom of the trough. The juice produced by the crushing flowed out the side and into a barrel that perfumed the neighborhood. The seeds produced in the crushing fell through a wire mesh hardware cloth and into another wooden trough.

The larger pieces of orange peel and pulp didn’t fall through, because the nails had been spaced just the right distance apart to assure the remains would be too large. Instead they slipped down a slope and into a second barrel, kept moving by the action of an out-of-round wheel that shook the machine from side to side as the remains of the oranges passed across it. The seeds were moved to the opposite side of the machine and into a third barrel by a similar shaking action. The seeds were then spread out on large bolts of white cheesecloth and left on the expansive lawn to dry in the sun. Finally, sweaty day workers collected them in fifty-pound burlap bags and stacked them in the other warehouse.

This homemade contraption not only worked, it brought admirers from miles around to see it. It was all designed and built by Cooner Cannon, a man who appeared to be a half-wit at best and at worst, a malingerer to be avoided. Of the millions of orange trees planted during the orange boom of this period, a high percentage came from this unsung hero, who worked for room and board and slept in the back hall.

Every day, men from orange groves and nurseries wanting to buy seeds visited C.H. Cooner. Some were wealthy and well educated. They were the ones for whom Cooner most liked to perform. He would sing to himself and shuffle about with an exaggeration of his crab-like gait. It always made them talk down to him and brought out their puffed-up view of themselves. Cooner would ask them questions on subjects he knew they knew nothing about. Inevitably, they would hold forth, offering opinions on the progress of the war, Roosevelt’s policies on the economy, the latest fashion or anything else that would keep them talking. Sometimes, C. H. Cooner would give a demonstration of the contraption and tell them it was designed and made by Cooner Cannon. After that, these puffed-up visitors were always silent and looked at Cooner quizzically from the corners of their eyes.

After these encounters, which I was permitted to watch, it was always clear to me that these men in suits were no longer natural in the way Cooner was. He approached life directly and simply. And it responded to him in the same way. I saw men who had accepted too many rules to think clearly. Sometimes I would ask him why these men seemed so unnatural. His only reply would always be: “over-educated fools,” followed by peals of laughter.

Based on those early lessons, I began to place people in two categories: those whom schooling had made unnatural and all the rest. Many were in the latter class at that time and I spent many days with them. Most were black workers in the seed plant, day laborers who couldn’t read or write, but who could talk in a way that was free and easy and whose bodies and movements were works of art. Over time, the number of naturals declined until now there is none left who has escaped the classroom with its day-in-day-out elimination of natural urges and intuition.

Cooner Cannon was a major catalyst for me. I decided when I was six years old that I wasn’t going to become like the fools that I watched performing in front of him. I decided I wanted to be and remain natural. My first effort at doing so might be called a failure. When I was taken to school at age six, I didn’t like it. I was a lively kid who did what my body was telling me I should be doing. But they put me in a classroom and told me to be quiet and sit still. I knew this was wrong, but I was powerless to do anything about it.

The first week of school, I ran away from home. I didn’t get very far, only a few blocks. The lesson was very clear. A six-year-old cannot survive by himself in the world that I’d been born into. So, at that tender age, I decided that, as soon as I could, I was going to drop out of the normal world and find my way in another. I didn’t know when and I didn’t know what the other world would be, but I buried that decision in myself knowing I would dig it up again one day.

As it turned out, I had to wait for thirty years to unearth it. Along the way, I got caught in the system. I was changed by it. Schooling did to me what it does to everybody–robs them of connection to the natural world and the voices and urges that are meant to guide them in being and becoming the actors in the great drama of their own lives. I was swept up in the culture of my peers, competing for grades, vying for power with other males, pleasing the teachers, being attractive to girls, getting laid, and most of all, learning how to appear knowledgeable. The American public school system isn’t a vehicle for students to obtain knowledge. What the system teaches is how to appear to have knowledge. I became a master of this art. Everybody thought I was smarter than I was. I finished high school and drifted off to college, because, like everybody, I didn’t know what else to do.

So here I am, thirty thousand feet in the air remembering my first failed effort at freedom and my vow to get back to it, heading west and not knowing what I would find when the plane lands.

LITTLE JOE

During a layover at O’Hare airport in Chicago, I remember that Barbara’s father, “Little Joe Sylvester” is the dispatcher for an airport limousine company there. I ask around and locate him. He’s an Italian immigrant –wiry, intense and efficient—who Americanized his name from Sylvestri. I watch him for a while from a distance. I know from conversations with Barbara that he is heartbroken that she left her children with her husband and moved to Washington. I wait until he isn’t busy and approach him.

“Hi, are you Mr. Sylvester?” I say. “Sorry to bother you, sir, but I’m doing an article on your daughter Barbara and I wondered if I could talk to you for just a minute.”

He doesn’t understand. “She don’t live here no more.”

“I know, sir. She lives in Washington. I’m writing an article about her.”

“She do somethin’a wrong? I don’t know nuthin’ about her.”

“No, no, she’s doing everything right. She works in the White House now, you know.”

This was technically true. Barbara was working for a woman who was some kind of a contractor to the White House, but we could never quite figure out what she was doing. As near as we could figure, she had done something on contract to the White House and they had given her an office suite while she did it. The job had run out, but through some bureaucratic oversight, they hadn’t moved her out. She used the office and its White House address for self-promotion and writing proposals of one kind or another, which Barbara typed for her. She was one of the legions of women that I feel instantly in love with, though I can’t remember her name now. I wondered if every other man was like me, walking down the street, seeing a beautiful woman, longing for her, knowing that I would never see her again and feeling a great loss, even if only a temporary one.

I say to Little Joe: “She’s a very successful woman in Washington and I’m doing a profile on her.” He starts to cry, a little at first then sobbing. It only lasts for a few seconds and then he gains control.

Instantly, I think of my daughters and how they must feel about me for choosing a lifestyle that doesn’t include them and leaving them with their mother when they were barely in their teens. It’s a pain I’ve felt often since completing the householder phase of my life and it can still dredge emotions from me that verge on regret.

“I don’t know what she’s a’doin in Washington. I’m glad you tell’a me this. I’m a’glad. But we don’t know her no more. She leave her husband and she leave her kids and we don’t see her no more. We don’t know her no more. She was a good little girl. She always love her parents. She go to mass. She go to college. Catholic college. Run by nuns. She never do nuthin’ wrong. Then she move to Washington and we don’t a’see her no more. We write a’her letters. My wife, she write a’letters. We don’t get a’no answer. You tell me she’s a’workin’ in White House. OK. She can a’write to her father. You tell her write a’ to her family.”

There seems nothing more that can be said and I wonder if I have done the wrong thing in talking to him. I thank him and say goodbye. He has given me a glimpse into the lives of the families my playmates and I have left behind. Pettie has never explained his disregard of the blood relatives. But I know from my own life that no progress is possible toward discovering your own true nature so long as you’re living your life according to the plan of your parents or even while you’re trying to obtain the joy that comes from pleasing them. I conclude that Pettie is trying to help us get beyond the pull of family. But what about my daughters? Maybe this line of reasoning is valid for breaking the parental pull, but I’m not living my life to please my daughters. As I head back toward the passenger terminal, I remember that the Buddha left his wife and children behind and regain my equilibrium.

PALO ALTO

The flight to San Francisco arrives at midnight. On the plane, I sit next to a biologist who’s a consultant to the U.S. Agriculture Department and a board member of a food safety commission. All the way out, he briefs me on the meatpacking industry and the government’s inspection program. When we arrive he asks me where I’m going to stay. I say that I don’t know yet. I decide that if he offers me a ride, I’ll go wherever he is headed and if he doesn’t I’ll go the opposite way. He’s uncomfortable with somebody who arrives in a city at midnight and doesn’t know where he’s going to sleep, especially when he realizes that he did all of the talking and he hasn’t learned anything about me. We part at the concourse and I determine that, since he’s going north into Marin County, I’m heading south. I know San Francisco fairly well, but I’ve never explored the region that was then about to be renamed Silicon Valley.

It is 3 AM when I arrive in Palo Alto—damp and foggy. I walk around the deserted downtown area looking for a place that might be open, a boarding house, a youth hostel or some place that I might land as a temporary base. There’s nothing. I walk past a furniture store with a large mattress box sitting in the trash bin by the door. This might work for one night, I think. But not here. It’s too public. So I trudge through downtown Palo Alto with a mattress box on top of my head. Eventually I’m in some woods on the campus of Stanford University. It’s a pretty long walk, but the freedom inherent in such unorthodox behavior energizes me. In the mist at 4 A.M., I make out the monument and mausoleum of Governor Leland Stanford and his family. I set my mattress box down under a tree, crawl inside and strip to my underwear. It begins to rain harder, but it’s warm rain and I’m dry and comfortable inside my mattress box. The rain only adds to my elation.

The next morning I awake late. It’s cool and clear. I put my business suit back on and walk south on the El Camino Real. In the late afternoon I find the office of the local CPA association and learn that there’s a firm in Sunnyvale that needs somebody to help them prepare tax returns. When I appear in their office the next morning, I’m momentarily speechless; the receptionist looks exactly like my mother. Playing this childhood game is getting spooky.

I land the job. It’s easy. I take the information that’s in client files and put it onto forms that are taken to a computer processing center, which prints the tax returns. When they come back I look them over for mistakes. My years at the IRS and as a CPA resulted in my knowing more about taxes than the two partners in the firm. I make some suggestions that result in tax savings for the clients and they are delighted. They pay me well.

For the next two weeks, I work into the evening and do my wash-ups in the bathroom after everybody leaves. I take each day as it comes, some nights making my way back to my mattress box and other nights improvising a place to sleep on the spot. Sometimes I sleep in the office and leave the next morning before anybody arrives. One night I go to a movie. After the crowd leaves, I sneak behind the screen to sleep for the rest of the night and discover that the floor at the base of the screen is covered with jellybeans, apparently thrown at some displeasing actor.

It’s tax season and we’re working Saturdays, but on Sundays I go adventuring, wandering out into the beautiful hills or taking the train to San Francisco. Each day makes another year. I’m now in my teens and obsessing about girls. One night, I see several young women handing out leaflets next to a bus in downtown Palo Alto. They invite me into the bus to hear about their community. One of them stands up front and says that, to start off, another of the girls is going to sing a song for the audience. She begins to sing for me and the three other guests drawn into the bus. She can’t carry a tune. The guests look at each other and smile. I find that I’m immediately attracted to her. I wonder whether the unspoken message that she is sending is: “Look at poor little me. I’m so weak and helpless that I can’t even sing. Won’t you help me?”

I think that it’s somehow related to what Pettie recommends when going into a business meeting: “Leave a little shaving soap on your earlobe and they’ll like you better.”

It works. Despite my rationalization, I can’t resist her appeal. Maybe it’s just that I’m lonely, especially for the company of a woman.

Another thanks her for the song and begins describing their group. She says they just got themselves together and found some land a few miles north of San Francisco and they live simple lives and share everything with each other. They project images of innocence, as sweet as vanilla ice cream, and I’m disarmed. The girls then pair off, each with a male member of the audience. I find myself with the inept singer. We talk a bit, me asking all of the questions and she describing the place where they are now inviting anybody who wants to come for a free weekend visit. The more questions I ask, the more I realize that her answers seem rehearsed. Finally, I ask what utopian thinkers and spiritual leaders have influenced their group and whom she most admires. She says there are many, but mentions no names.

“One of the ones that I admire the most is Rev. Sun Myong Moon,” I say. “What do you think of him?”

“Oh yes,” she says. “He is one of the best.”

My suspicions are confirmed. No group of young communards, except the Moonies, would have any admiration for Rev. Moon. The whole thing has been a ruse designed to have young girls lure horny guys like me off to the mountains for the weekend in hopes of recruiting them. Later, I read a newspaper article describing this kind of Moonie recruitment that’s happening in other places around the Bay area.

When I have accumulated two thousand dollars, I decide it’s time to head back to D.C. I find a driveaway agency and pick up a new Ford Thunderbird that needs to be driven to Chicago. I set out in the evening and drive all night in a kind of trance, reliving the past few weeks. As I’m ascending the Sacramento Mountains near Needles, the voice of a jazz D.J. penetrates my mood.

“For all of you late drivers and early risers, there’s a rare sight in the sky tonight. It is called West Comet and tonight is the only chance you’re ever going to get to see it. It can only be seen for a few minutes in the eastern sky just before dawn. Look a few degrees above the horizon just before the sun comes up.”

I look up. There it is glowing with its little tail just above the silhouette of the mountains. I had read about the comet and its discovery and about its very brief appearance and considered myself lucky to have seen it. Then the D.J. says more: “This comet is an infrequent guest in the Earth’s night sky. It only appears once in a half a million years.” It’s such an emotional moment, that I have to stop the car, get out and watch it until the morning light makes it disappear.

MINNEAPOLIS

Just inside Arizona, I’m tired and pick up a girl and a boy who are hitchhiking to Oklahoma City. We drive straight through over I40 changing drivers as we go. I spend one night at their Oklahoma City house and start north for Chicago on I35. I pick up another hitchhiker who’s going to Minneapolis and change my plan. I’ve never been to Minneapolis, but I have a soft spot for the place and decide to look it over. I think over the adventure that I’ve been having, reliving my life a day at a time and remember my childhood connection with Minneapolis far away in Florida.

When I was growing up, the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra played the first classical music I ever heard. My mother’s Sunday school class used to have a season ticket to the community concert series that brought culture from the north to my small-town home. They gave it to me. At the first concert, they played Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture and fired cannons on each side of the stage during the most dramatic crescendos.

Then, when I was twelve years old, I became the batboy for the Minneapolis Millers during their spring training season. Baseball played an important part in my childhood. My father had been the captain of the high school baseball team and later was the catcher in a semi-pro league until he was badly spiked at home plate and almost lost his leg. I wanted to be good at it, because of him, but I had no talent at the game. My job as batboy was to rush out onto the field, snatch the bat dropped by the batter after he hit the ball and stay out of everybody’s way as I scrambled back to the dugout with it. It must have been a comic scene. I was small for my age, or any age, for that matter, and the bat was almost as long as I was. I kept the bats laid out in order in front of the dugout, so that each player could find his favorite. I performed my job with great enthusiasm. My pay was one baseball at the end of each game and any bats broken during the course of the game. I was also awarded a baseball cap and an occasional cast-off baseball glove. Pretty soon, I had a large inventory of equipment that I supplied for my buddies, so, despite my lack of ability, I always got to play.

When the hitchhiker gets out of the car, I turn on the radio and a voice says: “Welcome to Minneapolis. Hold onto your hat. You’re about to find out what Minneapolis has been preparing for you.” I pull up to a stoplight and a woman opens the door and gets in. This is a new experience for me. I’ve never thought of myself as attractive to women, especially not attractive enough that they would get into the car uninvited. In fact, I’ve always thought of myself as not attractive to women. When I was a testosterone-crazed teenager the images on which our personas were modeled were “tall, dark and handsome”–Gary Cooper, John Wayne and Clark Gable types. The tabloids revealed that, when untall heroes like Audie Murphy or Alan Ladd took the air with their leading ladies at their sides, they walked on ramps to elevate them, so strong was the need to portray them as tall.

As soon as she has closed the door, my passenger begins:

“I’m sorry. I know it’s funny to just get in your car like this. I’ve made a decision to join the army and I want somebody to drive me to the recruiting station. But I’m afraid I might be making a mistake. Nothing’s been going right. Since I got out of college, I’ve had three jobs and none of them were any good. I need something in my life that I can depend on. And I’ve decided to join the army. Do you think that I’m doing the right thing?”

She is of medium height and build, has brown hair and is dressed for travel in a suit. She has a fearful look in her eye. My mind is racing. I don’t know whether it’s the coffee that I’d drunk or the strangeness of the situation, but I lose the flow. Before that, from the time that I left Washington, I’d been in a magic flow of events that just unfolded before my eyes. Here is another, but my rational mind takes over and instead of just accepting what the universe is presenting, I begin to think about it.

Suddenly I’m a teenager again full of angst. Forgetting that this is cosmic theater orchestrated by forces beyond my understanding, the full force of my unconscious version of myself as unattractive to girls gives my mind its familiar twist and I conclude that any girl who’s attracted to me must be flawed in some way. First I think that she’s a prostitute, but I dismiss that. She’s carrying a heavy suitcase and is dressed for travel. Then I remember that Pettie had said to have a celebration before returning to D.C. and I wondered if this is the co-celebrant that is being provided. Then my old unconscious fear of women intervenes and I remember another similar occasion, a year before.

I’m living in an upstairs apartment on 40th Street in D.C., when I wake up one morning and find a young black girl in the bed in the front room. She’d come in late the night before and somebody had said it was OK for her to sleep there. When she wakes up, she comes naked into my room. I invite her into bed and was about to go to the next step when something makes me stop and think. Here’s a stranger, whose name I don’t even know, who seems ready to trade her body for something, probably a place to sleep, but maybe more. My intuition says don’t do it. I give her a massage, wish her a good day, and go in the bathroom to shower. When I return, she’s gone and I never see her again. I am relieved that she is gone and head out for the day.

As I leave the apartment, the girl of my dreams is waiting at the bottom of the stairs–Elizabeth Johnson, the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen—is sitting on my front steps. I barely know her. But some energy from having walked away from the sexual encounter moments before emboldens me and I say: “Elizabeth, how would you like to go for a weekend in the country?” She smiles, gets into the car and we head for the mountains.

My mind returns to the present. Here I am in Minneapolis a year later and I’m wondering whether history is repeating itself. The universe has presented a stranger. My rational mind is telling me not to proceed with this woman who has gotten into the car. It says wait for the next one and somebody like Elizabeth will appear. So I drive my passenger to the recruiting office and she gets out of the car with tears in her eyes. Later, I realize, in day-by-day re-enactment of my life, that practicing the art of living is knowing when to allow the rational mind to intervene and that most of the time it’s best to keep it asleep and let the flow continue. A second co-celebrant doesn’t materialize.

CHICAGO

The next day is Friday and I want to deliver the car to the driveaway agency before the end of the day. Otherwise I would have to stay over the weekend or leave town without a refund of the deposit I’d posted when I picked up the car. I get there a few minutes before five o’clock, park the car in the garage on the first floor as directed, ascend the elevator and breathe a sigh of relief when I see there’s still a man in the office. When I attempt to present my paperwork for the car, he says that it’s too late and that I’ll have to return on Monday to get my deposit back. I tell him that I want to head out that evening for D.C., but he will not budge. He turns away, ignores me and begins putting his papers away in preparation to lock up the office. I decide that I’m not going to wait around Chicago.

“Please,” I say. “This is very upsetting to me. Very upsetting. I’m not feeling well. Please, isn’t it possible to conclude this now? I’ll take a check. I’ve got my receipt here.” He ignores me. “Please. This is very upsetting. I’m not feeling well. Can’t we...”

With that I let my voice trail off and slump to the floor. I slap my hand on the carpet so that he will hear it across the counter that separates us. Instantly, he rushes around the counter. I allow a little saliva to run from the corner of my mouth and roll my eyes up so that only the whites are showing. He panics and runs out the door to the next office. He comes back in a few seconds with other people. I gradually raise myself from the floor to my elbow, saying nothing. They gather around me, propping me up and offering water. I allow myself to recover slowly. Before I rise to my feet, he places the money for the deposit in my hand. I exit, grinning and take the bus back to D.C.

When I arrive back in D.C., I tell Barbara about the encounter with her father in O’Hare Airport. She shows no emotion when I tell her about Little Joe’s tears. But a tightening of her lips that I have seen before on her face, tells me that she is holding back her own tears. Then I listen to the stories of where other people went over the past month: Barbara back to her old neighborhood to catch a glimpse of her children and visit the schools she’d attended; Rannie to Appalachia and work as a volunteer at Foxfire Magazine; Simon to Denver; Diane to Boston, which didn’t welcome her and required that Pettie fly to Boston and bring her back.

Late that night, lying in bed, I recall the previous month of reliving my childhood and wonder at how much M.D. Pettie had changed my life. I think back to the time I first met him. It had happened four years before. That was before he called himself The Gamecaller. At that point he was known as The Stroller.

THE STROLLER

Beginning in the 1960s he began referring to himself as The Stroller, because his main occupation for several hours each day was walking and thinking. When he wasn’t strolling, he was browsing libraries, making jokes, asking questions and exploring foreign cities in silence. Most of these activities were done alone, but that doesn’t mean that he was a loner. He preferred being around people and usually spent a good part of every day generally being the center of attention and lounging among the “fawning, adoring idiots.” That was the name given by his wife Isabelle to those of us who gathered around him and hung on his words like they were life rafts.

When he walked, at least when he walked by himself, he sometimes entered a kind of trance state where he was both oblivious and hyper-aware of his surroundings. I know this because I’ve watched him in this state and surprised him so that he automatically flailed out with his arm ready to disable me with a karate chop until he recognized me.

He was The Stroller when I met him and I often strolled with him through the streets of Washington, D.C., the country lanes of Madison County, Virginia, and in many of the major cities of America.

He was born in 1920 in the small Virginia town of Culpeper, left home at age thirteen and, thereafter, made a new home for himself wherever he traveled throughout the world. His mother, Virginia Burk Pettie, named him Marion Buford Pettie, after a local dentist, the landlord of their rented home. As a resourceful teenager, he changed his name and even his birth certificate so that his name became Marion David Pettie. He wasn’t overly fond of the name Marion, preferring to be known as M.D.

He practiced nin-jitzu for more than fifty years, making it hard for many people to describe him physically. He was six feet tall, of erect carriage, medium weight and of ruddy complexion. He had a great shock of hair, dirty blond, before graying in his fifties and turning white in his last years. He traced his ancestors back for seven or eight generations on the American continent to Germany from which he got his steel-blue eyes. He had a great bird tattooed on his chest, wings spread open with the wingtips stretching toward each shoulder.

“When did you have the eagle tattooed on your chest?” I asked him when I first saw him shirtless.

“It’s not an eagle,” he said. “It’s a phoenix. I had it done when I was a teenager.”

What was it about this man that inspired such intense reactions? He was so many persons, different to each person he met. Sometimes he jokingly called himself Proteus and, indeed, he was protean, ever changing and ever the same. Like the mythological Proteus he was difficult to pin down. I’ll attempt to describe him, but not to identify him. He created his own identity and it’s like no other.

Some call him a cult leader and say that he was power-mad. Perhaps, but in an age of madness, who can identify the sane? Power-madness? Isn’t that what being alive and having an identity is all about? Give anybody some power and what do they do? They try to get more. Name for me, if you can, the person who quits and says that they have enough. It’s not that MDP was or wasn’t power-mad that makes him worthy of a book, it’s that his particular form of madness was more interesting than most.

On the day I met him, in December 1971, I asked him what he regarded as the most important subject that a person could study. “Power,” he said without hesitation. “It’s the only subject worth studying. You can’t really explore knowledge in depth until you see everything in terms of power.” I asked him what he’d learned about it and he said, “power corrupts.” He had little of what most people think of when they think of power. He had no political office, no corporate directorship, no national name-recognition, no best-selling books, no billion-dollar portfolio, but he had power. He had great power over himself and that inspired a kind of power over the lives of the persons close to him that he wielded with skill and unique ingenuity.

NYMPHS DANCING

I had met Pettie in when a young friend of mine named Michael Helping, a self-described hippy from “The Farm” in Summertown, Tennessee, came to Washington looking for work and asked me to help him find it. I sent him to a real estate developer, whom I knew was renovating an apartment building. He came back a few days later to thank me and told me that, not only did they hire him, but he’d moved into the commune where the construction crew lived on the corner of Newark Street and Wisconsin Avenue.

He said he didn’t know much about them, but that the place was never locked and I should come by to see for myself. I did.

I walk up to the front door, which is supposedly always open. It is locked. On the door is a sign: “Knock loudly. Nymphs dancing.” After a minute, a woman wrapped in a sheet opens the door.

“Hello, I’m Barbara,” she says. She appears to be in her mid-thirties, prematurely grey and overweight, though graceful. I later learn that she and the other nymphs had covered themselves hastily only because of my arrival. She escorts me into the kitchen.

MEETING PETTIE

“M.D. Pettie,” he says, rising from the unpainted kitchen table and extending his hand without expression.

The kitchen is small for such a large house. Paint is peeling from the wall. Michael had told me that it was about to be demolished. Gallon glass jars full of rice and beans are stacked on the shelves. A five-gallon container labeled “Honey” is next to several boxes of tea. Two other men stand and follow Pettie’s example, extending their hands: Roy Mason and Will Poulsen.

I like Pettie immediately. He says, “Roy is the world’s greatest undiscovered architect.” This comment, which could have been considered a put down in some situations, is said with a straight face, but with a lightness reminiscent of some of the southern humor I’d seen as a child. Roy isn’t offended, in fact, he agrees with Pettie and says that he’s changing his name to Frank Lloyd Wrong.

Pettie begins learning about me right away. He asks questions, but with a style that isn’t intrusive. He accepts my answers without challenge and reacts in a way that makes me feel rewarded.

“How do you happen to know Michael?”

I tell him.

“Oh, yeah? That’s interesting. George says he’s a good worker.”

It turns out that George, the job foreman, is M.D. Pettie’s son.

“Michael says that you’re in the venture capital business. Pretty good. How did you get started in that line?”

I give him a little of my history.

“What kinds of things are you interested in currently?”

I describe some I’m considering.

“Well, that’s super interesting,” he says. “What kinds of people usually invest with you?”

His questions are phrased so artistically that I want to answer, expecting a good feeling by his reaction to my answer.

We sit around the kitchen table. Barbara comes in with a bowl of sunflower seeds and raisins and makes tea for everybody. We talk for an hour, with Pettie gently asking questions, the others deferring, sensitive to the direction he wants to take the conversation, but not obsequious.

“Michael is out right now, but I expect he will be back soon,” says Barbara. “Are you comfortable, can I get you anything?”

“Thanks, I’m fine. I came by to see Michael, but I was hoping to learn about the people he’s living with. What he told me made you sound interesting.”

“We live openly. There are no secrets. You can ask us any questions,” Barbara says.

Pettie interjects a question: “What had you heard about this place?”

“Not much. Michael says that it’s an open house where anybody can stay and that the door is never locked. I don’t have much experience with open places and he didn’t tell me much. Are you a part of some movement or religion?”

“This is the new ark,” says Pettie. “We are living on Newark Street. The world is drowning in a sea of words and this is the new ark.”

Then Michael comes in through the back door. He’s accompanied by a skinny kid with a few hairs hanging around his mouth in what would be called a fu man chu moustache, if there had been more of it. From the look in their eyes and the odor about their clothes, it was clear that they’d been smoking an illegal substance. I exchange a few pleasantries with Michael, make small talk for a few minutes and leave.

On the drive home, I speculate about Pettie. He’d been dressed in khaki pants, a blue shirt and a tie, but no jacket. He gave the impression that he might be the owner of the construction company that was being run by his son. I wondered whether he might be a real estate developer. That fit in with the fact that there had been an architect with him. Maybe he owns the house that is about to be demolished.

ROY MASON

The next day, Roy Mason, the architect, shows up at my office in the middle of the afternoon and we spend the rest of the day talking and getting to know each other. He’s different. Where the night before, he’d deferred toward Pettie, here, he obviously enjoys being the center of attention and I let him. After a few minutes in conversation, I conclude that his mind is so fast that his tongue can’t keep up with it. He talks in short machine-gun fire bursts.

“Where is your office?” I ask.

“Studio in my house in Arlington. Come by and I show...had a Georgetown...easier...I work at night. Last night...left Marion’s... just got up...worked all night. Night person...Marion too. I’m art director for the World Future Society. I do foam domes. Organic architecture...take you up to Virginia mountains. Got a crew working on foam house...like a cave...built into the mountainside...big boulders...come over, I’ll show you my stuff. You seen Marion’s place down in Nethers? Mountain place...I own place next door...I’ll take you down there...Old Rag Mountain. I’m an imagineer...free form...organic space forms...people places.” Laughter bubbles up from his midsection as if he has just told a joke. Then when nobody else laughs, he pulls his front teeth down over his lower lip and blinks his eyes rapidly, a gesture that I see often during the next twenty-five years as he appears, disappears and reappears in my life.

We finish a bottle of wine in my office and I accept his invitation to visit his studio. We drive in separate cars, me following him as best I can. He drives like there’s a fire at his house, which there will be a few weeks later. He has to stop and wait for me twice. We enter a two-story house with a basement, moderate in size, in good condition, unremarkable on the outside. Once inside, he rolls out drawers and extracts large drawings and blueprints of his futuristic designs.

“The great wall of Nethers. Marion’s idea...like the Great Wall of China. Winds around through the mountains, people live inside, up against the wall. Build a new part of the wall, next person build more...you know Solari, Arcosanti…architect…Arizona?”

His walls are pasted with drawings of fanciful structures that span canyons, grow outward like flower petals, houses whose walls are solar panels, inflatable domes, tensegrity structures with canvas stretched in between. As he pulls these out to display them his monologue continues: “Architecture of the future...build your own...foam better and cheaper...tree-cutting obsolete...ferro-concrete if you need something strong...courtyard living is...people who are on the same wave-length...have their own buildings with courtyards in the middle...build the wall first on the street...thick foundation...keep build them up as high as you want to go...people live inside...you can add rooms...Have you seen Mesa Verde?...look at these pictures.”

Occasionally, I interrupt him with a question: “Where did you study architecture, Roy?”

“Yale, with Paul Rudolph. Said I was the fastest student he ever had. I just sit down and let my hand do the work. It reveals itself on the page. These. I make money. These are my bread and butter. For developers out in Potomac. I design these for ‘normals.’ They pay me good money for these designs...but cheaper than anybody else...I turn ‘em out fast. Drive you through Potomac sometime. My houses on every block. Builders sell ‘em to buyers. I just do the designs. They do construction drawings and legwork.”

He shows me a stack of very normal looking high-end houses, which indeed look like the hundreds of houses I’ve seen rising among the trees in new developments in Potomac, Maryland.

I stay for an hour and meet two other men who live there with him. From their demeanor, I conclude that they’re gay and that Roy probably is as well. A few weeks later, his house burns to the ground. Jane, who had been Jim before his sex-change operation, emptied an ashtray into a trashcan. It had a lighted cigarette in it and the fire quickly spread throughout the house. Roy called on me to act as the interface with the insurance company.

CHRISTOPHER BIRD

The next week, I’m walking along M Street in Georgetown and run into M.D. Pettie. He greets me warmly: “Are you booked up? Want to have a little adventure?”

“Sure,” I say.

He turns around and heads in the opposite direction with me at his side. We walk a few blocks through tree-shaded streets. He’s a big man with a long stride and I have to increase my pace. We stop in front of a townhouse on a brick street. He enters a gate on the side and walks down a brick path to the entrance. A large man answers his knock and opens the door.

“This is Christopher Bird,” Pettie says, then introduces me. “Are you free for a couple of minutes?”

“I’m in the middle of work,” Bird says, “but come on in. I’ve always got time for you, Marion. What brings you out today?”

We enter a parlor lined with bookcases. Magazines are stacked on tables beside easy chairs where we’re directed to sit.

“Nothing in particular,” says Pettie.

Bird looks at me and then back at Pettie.

“No particular business?” he says.

“Interaction without preconceived results,” says Pettie.

“I don’t know, Marion. You always have something on your mind,” says Bird.

“No, nothing in particular. Anything that you need? Anything I can help you get?”

“Well, I’m about finished with a book about plants, I think I told you some about it. If you got any suggestions of unusual facts about plants...”

“That’s right,” says Pettie. “The Secret Life of Plants. Good name. If I think of something, I’ll let you know. Sounds like a best-seller.” (It was.)

His wife Lois, who had been listening in the adjoining room, enters the room.

“I’ve got something you can help me with,” she says.

Pettie gets up and gives her a hug. She is smiling broadly. She obviously likes him. He tells me later that he has known her since his days in the Pentagon when she was the young wife of Air Force General Marion Boswell. Later she married a psychiatrist from whom she received this gracious Georgetown house, before again divorcing and marrying Bird.

“You can get me somebody to clean this place,” she says. “We have a bunch of people coming this weekend and I can’t possibly do everything that needs to be done.”

Pettie introduces me to her and gives me a big build up like I’m some kind of a tycoon. He doesn’t sit back down and I follow his lead and ease my way toward the door. The leave-taking with Bird after a five-minute visit is awkward, but Mrs. Bird is friendly and sees us out to the street. We then continue our walk north on Wisconsin Avenue toward Newark Street.

“Bird is supposed to be working on a book about Wilhelm Reich. I don’t find most of the stuff he writes too interesting, but he does his homework and a book about Reich would be worth reading. Do you know Reich?”

“No,” I admit. “Who is he?”

“He was an original thinker who got in trouble with the U.S. government for revealing stuff that was too frightening to most people. They locked him up for it. Burned up his books and papers and trashed his equipment. He was a psychologist. Apprenticed himself to Freud, when he was young, but they fell apart when Reich got into his far-out stuff. You would probably like him. Look him up. He understood the human body and where it’s meant to fit in the universe.”

We walk back up Wisconsin Avenue to the New Ark house. Barbara greets us and introduces me to Sunshine, one of the nymphs, who had been dancing on the night of my first visit.

The four of us then sit down in a circle on the floor with two other residents of the house. Pettie asks if there’s anything that anybody wants to bring up. He then passes to the person on his left. Each person in turn says a few words then passes until it comes to me and I say something about it’s nice to be here and thanks for including me in the meeting. Pettie then describes the meeting with the Birds and asks if anybody wants to help clean their house. Barbara and Sunshine both volunteer. Then another person in the circle, a guest who is passing through, says he would be glad to go along. Within minutes they’re on their way with cleaning supplies. This is my first experience with sitting in a circle.

SITTING IN A CIRCLE

A few nights later, I again visit the New Ark and sit in a circle with Pettie. There are more people: a large man with hair falling in dreads who calls himself Zeus, a skinny, miserly man in his fifties named John, who claims that he’s both a prophet and a traveling journalist, a little guy named Martin Tilton, who holds a Jew’s harp to his mouth and quietly fingers it as the conversation goes around the circle, a kindergarten teacher named Herb Mizel, and a heavily accented Indian named Mohan. In addition there is Barbara, Sunshine, the fu man chu kid, whose name I learn is Randolph Winn, Rannie for short, Michael and Pettie’s son, David. We sit on the floor and each person talks in turn.

After we begin, John refuses to wait for his turn in the circle and leaves when his interruptions are ignored. Zeus keeps interrupting and making wild statements about karma and evil. Mohan tries to dominate the meeting, not by interrupting or disagreeing, but by a long monologue in lilting voice: “Eet ees true that I have come to Ameerika weeth new opportuneeties. But the Ameerikans do not recognize what I am offering to theem. If you are true Ameerikans and you love your country like I love eet, you must help me.” He goes on in this way for several minutes. I listen carefully trying to figure out what he’s selling or even what he’s talking about. After a few minutes, Zeus interrupts: “I been to India, man. I been there. I’ve seen stuff that you wouldn’t believe.”

He’s ignored and Mohan continues. “May I explain to you what I am offering, which truly is the essence of my being, learning at the feet of many masters in my country. If some of you can arrange for me to meet with representatives of your government, you weel be well rewarded, because what I weel explain to theem will be of great benefit to all of you and to the rest of the world.” He repeats himself over and over.

Mizel says, “Is there a time limit when you take a turn in the circle?” Nobody says anything. Mohan drones on. Then Mizel says again: “I think that we should set a time limit for each turn.” Nobody says anything. Mohan drones. Mizel says, “What do you think, Marion? Shouldn’t there be a time limit for a turn in the circle?” He looks at Pettie, who just looks back at him, opens his eyes very wide and raises his eyebrows in a gesture clearly showing that he heard him and understood him, but didn’t agree or disagree. After droning on for another few minutes, Mohan passes and the meeting continues.

The meeting is an interesting experience, but I don’t quite get the sense of what it’s about. It doesn’t seem to have a theme or direction. Some people describe what had happened to them during the day. Some announce plans. Others expound an idea or philosophy. A few bring up problems or questions. David Pettie says that his brother George is worried because somebody is smoking dope in the basement and keeping a stash down there. George had made the deal to live there while waiting for the owner to demolish the building and put up a high-rise. He’s worried that, as the official tenant, he might be held responsible for illegal substances in the place.

Few practical solutions are mentioned in the meeting, but Pettie suggests that they write up a sublease to the basement, where this person is living, and let him do whatever he wants.

“And any of the rest of ya’ll that want to dull your brains with the vile weed, I suggest that you find a spot to hide it down the street at the National Cathedral. There’s plenty of space in there and it’s easy to hide stuff. If somebody finds it, too bad for you for not picking a better hiding spot. It’s open twenty four hours a day.” I know this is true. I’ve walked through it at midnight and marveled at the fact that it’s still under construction after sixty years.

“I admire your patience,” I say to Pettie when the meeting ends. “That Indian guy could put anybody to sleep, but you just let him go on and on.”

“You can learn more from a fool than you can from a wise man,” Pettie says. “In a healthy culture, kids are anxious to learn from adults and they can handle positive teaching. But the school system has ruined that. Kids are overloaded with having stuff pushed at them all day. They react against it. After they’ve been in a schoolroom for twelve years or twenty years, it’s too painful for them to take in much. The best way to learn in this culture is to see a negative example. It will repulse you and sometimes you get an insight that sticks. Mohan teaches patience.”

“What about elementary skills? What about reading and writing and arithmetic?”

“If a kid is motivated to read, they will learn how. And it’s different if you ask somebody to show you something. Answering a question that hasn’t been asked yet is like trying to pour water in a bucket with the lid on it. Besides, some of the best problem solvers I ever knew couldn’t read or write. They were all good talkers and they had great memories. And they knew enough arithmetic. They always knew how to get ahead of me in any transaction I had with them. When I was growing up, the hollows down in the mountains were full of people who couldn’t read or write. Today almost nobody escapes the school system. There are still a few old timers left down there, but most of them are gone. When I first bought the property down in the country I had a half a dozen illiterates living on the place.”

KEN KEYES

My wife and I have split up, but I’m staying at my former home in suburban Chevy Chase with my daughters, because my wife, Carolyn, is on a boat in Florida with Ken Keyes. She’s editing his book that was to become the best-seller: Handbook to Higher Consciousness. When Carolyn calls, I tell her about Pettie and the unusual people who live at the New Ark. The next time I talk to her, she tells me that Keyes knows Pettie and describes him as a Zen master. At that time, I had no idea what a Zen master was, but I figured it was somebody who knew more about my new direction than I did. Every day I saw signs that my life was headed in a new direction. I didn’t know why or what the direction was, but it seemed that Pettie might have something to do with it. I was fascinated.

Ken Keyes is a self-help guru with several other books to his credit. He’s also a successful real estate developer and entrepreneur. Ken’s magnetism might be due to contracting polio at age 25 and becoming almost completely paralyzed, able to move only one arm and a few fingers. But he has a great spirit and doesn’t let his affliction slow him down. He parks his yacht at the Dinner Key Marina in the Coconut Grove section of Miami and opens it to fellow truth-seekers. They come by the dozens. Some are stoned-out hippies looking for a place to crash. If they are takers, he sends them on their way. Those who seem genuinely interested in learning and are willing to pitch in on the boat are allowed to stay without charge.

He gives talks twice a day and the rest of the time takes care of business from his onboard electrified bed, an ingenious device of his own invention that rotates 90 degrees to roll him over at his command. Part of his business is converting a former Greyhound bus into a vehicle suitable for carrying him and his entourage across America. After he finishes the bus, he sells the yacht to two young men who say they are marine biologists leaving on a scientific voyage to the Galapagos Islands. But that isn’t what they look like. After they came aboard and presented Ken with a briefcase full of hundred dollar bills, it was pretty clear that their plans for the boat were more likely to involve research into the transportation of green herbs rather than biology.

While Carolyn is in Coconut Grove with Ken, I am exploring my first taste of freedom after 13 years of marriage. I’d married at 22 right after college and my life had been directed since then by the obligations of family responsibility. With my daughters at puberty and testing their own wings, I move into a Georgetown apartment next to Rock Creek Park in D.C.

THE RED CABIN

On May 1st, I begin a personal retreat in the Virginia mountains at one of Pettie’s houses, known as the Red Cabin.

“It’s a good thinking place,” he says. “It’s stocked with anything you might want. Make yourself at home and stay as long as you want.”

He draws a map for me on the back of an envelope.

“I appreciate it,” I say. “And I’d like to ask you for advice. I’m going up there to the mountains to fast and get some clarity on a new direction for my life. What books do you think I should take with me?”

He responded immediately as if he’d been waiting for the question: “The Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu, The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts, The Master Game by Robert deRopp, and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake.”

What a revelation. Each day, I read some of each of these treasures, but they don’t prevent my foolishness from surfacing. I start out with ambitious plans. Though I don’t consciously know it, my plans might have been described as: “I’m going to fast for two weeks. I figure that by that time, I’ll be enlightened and I can get on with teaching the rest of the world how to live.”

I sleep on the screen porch listening to the clear stream flow down the side of Old Rag Mountain. The house sits under tall hemlock, white pine and tulip poplars and is surrounded by huge boulders–on 91 acres of land bordering the Shenandoah National Park. No sounds of civilization penetrate the trees.

I read for a few hours each day, then experiment with doing things that I’ve never done before. I wander far up the stream and into the woods without clothes trying to lose myself. I close my eyes and try to find my way through the trees by the sounds, until I slip on a rock and skin my knee. I lie on a boulder and allow a colony of ants to crawl over my body and head; they enter my nostrils and I can feel their tiny legs pulling at the corners of my mouth trying to get in. I make up spontaneous nonsense sounds and sing them aloud to see how long I can keep it going. I drink from the stream and bathe in the icy waters.

This is my first experience with fasting. It’s more difficult than I thought it would be. After the first day, my stomach is in constant motion expecting its usual ration. The third day is a little better, but I realize how much of my life has been regulated around eating at a certain time and vow to change this.

I had read of the experiences of seekers who were suddenly enlightened like, St. Paul on the road to Damascus. On the third day, I wander around expecting that any minute I would be struck blind and filled with the ecstasy, which I’m now convinced I’ve earned and am about to receive. By that evening, I have no doubt that I’ve gone far enough. The idea of a fourteen-day disciplined fast somehow eases itself out of my consciousness. I’ve now come to believe that the only thing standing between me and nirvana is the right tool to initiate the process. And I believe that I have just such a tool rolled into a small cylinder in my pack.

I light it up and draw the smoke into my lungs, holding each inhalation until I have to take in more air. I’m halfway through the joint, sitting expectantly and staring into space, when I’m suddenly seized with a great fit of crying. I’m baffled. Where did it come from? Then I find myself on my knees on the floor asking Jesus to forgive me. And I realize that this is some unconscious glitch dredged up from my fundamentalist Christian upbringing. And simultaneously, I experience a great relief and the certain knowledge that I have no guilt, at least at that moment. For some reason, that brings on another torrent of tears that last until I catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror. The comic figure that I see makes me think of a lovesick adolescent and my tears change to laughter.

THE FREESTATE

I’d heard people talk about the freestate and I want to see it for myself. “What is the freestate?” I’d asked Pettie a few days before. “I’ve heard that there are a bunch of people living communally in Nethers on your land.”

“It’s a place where people can come and live whatever style they want,” Pettie says. “There are no rules except that if you leave, you leave it all behind. If somebody builds a house on the freestate, they’re welcome to use it for the rest of their life, but they won’t have title to the land and, if they leave, the house stays. Give yourself a tour. Just walk up the road from Isabelle’s house. The people up there will be glad to see you.”

The freestate is in the village of Nethers, Virginia, about 90 miles from D.C., at the foot of Old Rag Mountain. It’s two miles from where I’ve been staying at the red cabin. I walk over to Nethers and when I step onto the dirt road by the old mill, I meet four barefoot teenagers walking up the hill carrying grocery bags. They’ve been walking for four miles from the Etlan Store, the nearest place to buy food. I tell them that I’m looking for the freestate. “Follow us,” they say. I take one of their bags and we walk a quarter of a mile up the road to an old graveyard. “This is it,” they say. They point me to a place where several vehicles are parked with a large vegetable garden beyond. We walk up a winding path through a forest of tulip poplar trees.

Above the path, tall straight trunks rise fifty or more feet before the first branches appear. Some are more than a hundred feet tall. Large stones are scattered throughout the forest and a fresh stream flows through. Along the path on either side are the living quarters: A-frames, wickyups, wigwams, teepees of canvas, shacks of packing crates and barn siding, travel trailers, box vans without engines, station wagons without back seats, plywood-walled structures with plastic roofs and a variety of other barriers for staying dry that is limited only by the imagination of the young builders. At the end of the path next to the stream is a sweathouse made of bent pine limbs covered with a plastic tarp. There’s even a half-finished geodesic dome. It’s a wonderland. Kids are everywhere. All of them are busy with something, building a fire, experimenting with cooking an animal they’ve trapped, learning to tie knots or talking in animated fashion about their latest discovery: “Oh wow, look at this. Far out.”

I stay around for the afternoon talking to the kids. Some are runaways from more distant places, but most are from metropolitan Washington. Some have their parents’ permission to be there and some are older and on their own. A few are in their thirties and attempting to establish a homestead. Before the afternoon is out, I develop great respect for the original homesteaders who settled this hollow in the 1700s with little more than an ax.

Some of their descendants still live in the area. At twilight, a pickup arrives carrying three of them, boys in their early twenties. They walk through without saying anything until they reach the top of the path. Then they come back and talk to several people in mock friendship.

“Ya’ll gonna grow a big vegetable garden? Ya’ll want us to show you how to grow it? Ya’ll gonna shoot some deer? Ya’ll want me to bring my rifle up here and help you kill some fresh meat?

“This here is John. He’s gonna be running for president. Ya’ll gonna vote for him, aren’t you? Ya’ll scared of the bears out here? We’ll come down here and chase ‘em off if you want us to. Ya’ll gonna go swimming in the stream. Ya’ll be careful. They’s snakes in the water ‘round here.” Finally as they’re walking away, one turns back and says “Ain’t no nigger-lovers in here, are they? We like nigger-lovers. Ya’ll let us know if any of ‘em come around here. We’re nigger-lover-lovers.”

After dark, there’s a community sweat. A big fire is built around a group of rocks, which are already blackened from previous fires. A young man explains that they only use rocks they know have been through the fire before and don’t contain moisture, because moisture might make them explode. When the rocks have been sitting in the flames for an hour, two guys pick them up with long poles and move them inside the sweat lodge through a lifted flap. They stack them into a pyramid in the center. A dozen or more of us gather around the rocks and somebody pours a bucket of water onto them. A cloud of steam rises up and fills the lodge. Suddenly it’s very hot. Everybody breathes deeply and stays as long as they can stand the heat. We’re all naked and I have a hard time keeping my eyes off the young girls, knowing they’re out here in the woods experimenting with their lives by gaining new experiences and that those experiments no doubt include sex. I wonder how I might behave so that I can be included in the experiment. Finally, each of us jumps into a deep place in the cold stream, sputtering and shouting.

I follow some of the freestaters down to a large campfire. Somebody is reading by flashlight from the book that is to become the bible for young hippies: Be Here Now, by Ram Dass. The reader is describing how, when Ram Dass visits Neem Karoli Baba, the Hindu yogi who later becomes his teacher, he’s asked to hand over the keys to his car. He balks and says that the car does not belong to him and he can’t do that. Everybody laughs loudly around the campfire to certify that they’re beyond the hold of material possessions. Later we all chant ‘Neem Karoli Baba, Neem Karoli Baba,’ as the inevitable joint is passed around the fire.

The moon is high. I walk down to the open field at the bottom of the freestate with two young girls. Somebody has built a yurt in the open. One of the girls knows the builder and tells me he has violated a taboo by locking the place. I absently turn the dial on the padlock and it springs open. We go inside, sit for a while talking and enjoying the evening. When we leave, I place the lock on a pillow and tie the door closed with a piece of straw. We walk back through grass so tall that, in the moonlight, I see myself as a festive elf.

Later, when I meet George Pettie, I learn more about the freestate: “I think that the freestate is a great experiment,” I say. “It’s terrific that your father just lets anybody live on his land without charge.”

“It’s not his land,” says George.

“Well, I know, but I mean the group’s land.”

“It’s not the group’s land. He dreamed up the freestate. But he didn’t put it on our land. It’s next to our land. That land belongs to a guy named Mark Shepard. Stroller found the land for Shepard, and he sort of looks after it for Shepard, but Shepard bought it and Shepard owns it. He lives in California. So if some kid dies of an overdose, it won’t happen on our land. The Stroller’s sly, you know.”

THE FIRST TRIP

I spend one more day at the red cabin, readjusting my body to eating, and the next morning, I decide that I’m going to have an adventure somewhere back in the world. I walk the quarter mile down the rutted dirt road to the pavement of County Road 646 not knowing what I’m going to do or how I’m going to do it. Just as I reach the hard road, a van pulls up and stops. It’s driven by Stuart Silvertones, a man that I’d met briefly. He and his girlfriend Gretchen are living in another cabin on the Pettie property. With them are two visitors: John Vallee, a wiry Peruvian with a ready hand and smile and Suzanne Graboyes, about whom I know little.

“Where are you going,” Stuart says. “Can we give you a lift?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“You want to go to Charlottesville? We’re going dumpster diving. We have a regular route that we follow. There’s a guy at one of the grocery stores that saves all of his rotten bananas for me.”

I get into the back seat of the van and John hands me a banana. It’s completely black, limp, and dripping an oily substance.

“Try one,” says Stuart. “They’re great. Much healthier than the under-ripe ones that most people eat.”

I make an effort to peel it and then eat it all, mainly as a gesture of friendship. It tastes much better than I expected. But, when another is offered, I decline.

In Charlottesville, they let me out at the University of Virginia campus promising they will return in an hour after their round of gleaning at the back doors of grocery stores. Suzanne gets out with me. We make a little small talk and somehow reach the conclusion that we should keep going. I have only a tiny over-the-shoulder bag and she has nothing, but that doesn’t matter. We step into the street and begin hitchhiking.

Catching rides is easy. Suzanne is young, trim and attractive, a honey blond who looks good to men barreling down the highway with testosterone pulsing through their veins. When they spot me behind her, a runty little guy of mild appearance, their ego is challenged and the brakes squeal. That afternoon we arrive in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Wandering the streets, we pass a used bookstore with interesting titles in the window: The Making of a Counter Culture by Theodore Roszak, Monday Night Class by Stephen Gaskin, The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment by Thaddeus Golas, and a stack of well-thumbed copies of the Mother Earth News. Looks like our kind of place. After a few minutes of conversation, the owner invites us to his place to spend the night. He lives in a simple pine house with highly polished floors, situated in the woods very close to town. He feeds us and offers an after-dinner joint. He and Suzanne happen to both be students of Aleister Crowley. I have never heard of the occult magician and they compete to tell me about him.

The next morning we head west, not knowing where we will land. The rides again are easy and we just take them one at a time, watching the next moment unfold, until the evening finds us in Atlanta. I remember a former roommate from college, Sam Skogstad, who has an economic forecasting business there and we look him up. Having two hitchhikers drop in on him is clearly unsettling, but there’s goodwill left over from our past association and he offers us hospitality for the night.

I strain the relationship almost to the breaking point when Sam’s wife, Jane, defends her protestant views. I rave on like a born-again mystic:

“Y’all are members of a church that is called ‘protestant,’ but you don’t protest anything. Those churches haven’t protested anything in a hundred years. They should be called ‘defendants.’ They just defend orthodoxy the same way the Catholics did back when Martin Luther did his protesting. You can’t tell them anything. Their minds are made up. New ways of thinking are sweeping across America from India and China and Japan. The kids today are expanding their minds.”

I’m tempted to tell him that the psychedelic drugs are playing a big part, maybe even offer to smoke the joint that I’ve been carrying in my pocket–a foolish thing for a hitchhiker to do. But I decide that that would be going too far and I’ve already offended our hosts enough.

THE FARM

The next day, we turn north toward The Farm, the largest and best-known commune in America, to visit Michael Helping. We arrive in Summertown, Tennessee and ask how to find it. Everybody in town knows The Farm. It’s hard to hide 500 stoned-out hippies in a rural southern county. From the looks we get when we ask, it’s clear that the place isn’t popular with the locals, but they tell us of the pickup point in town where people wanting a ride congregate and soon we’re standing at the front gate.

At the gate, we’re quizzed by longhaired earnest young males and granny-skirted females. Gate duty is considered one of the most important jobs at The Farm. Nobody is supposed to be let in who isn’t telepathic with the gatekeepers and therefore with everybody else in the place. We’re hugged and vibed and admitted. Most of the people there still live in the school buses they arrived in, but some have set up tents and a few simple shacks have been constructed. The first structure built by the community was the temple, which we pass as we walk up the winding dirt road. On the left we see a large garden. A few people are hoeing the sandy soil, naked to the waist. They wave. “Welcome, brother and sister.”

Michael Helping is glad to see me and invites us to stay over. He asks if we’ve brought any food. Food is scarce there and a custom has developed that visitors to The Farm bring gifts of food and dope. I give him my last joint and offer to buy some food, if somebody can get us back to town. We smoke the joint and later in the afternoon, we go to town where I buy some groceries. The pace at The Farm is very different from the outside world. Everybody is in the flow or trying to catch the flow. Chores must wait, food preparation must wait, everything must wait, until the vibes are adjusted among the clusters of people. When that has been done, everything is mellow and time moves at a pace that accords with the consciousness of the members of each group. We help out with some weeding of the garden and go to bed at sundown. The only electricity is at the central building a half-mile away and the night is beautifully black.

The next day is Sunday. We attend the service where founder and hippie-guru Stephen Gaskin will speak in the circular temple. Rows of bleachers surround a central platform where Stephen sits waiting. Hundreds of people silently enter and fill every seat. A sacramental tea is passed around the room and the smell of ganja is in the air. Steven stands for a long time in the center and says nothing. Finally he says “So much love. So much love. There’s nothing more to say. So much love.” He repeats this over several times and the service ends. We’re near the rear of the church and there isn’t enough of the sacramental tea to reach us. When we return to the bus where we’re staying, I learn that it was peyote tea. The three main sacraments at The Farm are psychedelic mushrooms, peyote tea and marijuana. “We don’t do initials,” Michael says–initials being LSD, MDA and other synthesized drugs.

Of course, none of the three sacraments grows on the farm. It would be possible to grow pot there, but it’s too dangerous for the residents of the farm to grow. So the peyote buttons, from which this morning’s tea was made, had been a gift from somebody visiting from a distance, presumably the southwest or Mexico.

The residents of The Farm are well aware of the dangers of using their sacraments. Their caution paid off not long after they established The Farm. People flying over had seen acre after acre of things growing and the local law enforcers had concluded that there was a big pot-growing operation inside the gate. A huge drug bust operation was organized. State troopers and the feds were brought in. The media were alerted with the expectation that the local sheriff would be a hero. Early one morning the authorities arrived at the gate with a search warrant and a helicopter descended from the sky. The authoritarians were red-faced when only vegetables were found to be growing on The Farm.

Somebody in our bus has obtained the dregs of the tea from this morning’s sacrament, brown remains of peyote buttons. It’s placed in a saucepan with water and reheated over a campfire. I feel like an honored guest. We all join hands and the tea is passed around the circle.

The only effect that I experience for a half hour is a little nausea. Then a buzzing begins in my head. I sit down against the trunk of a tree and close my eyes. I can hear the sounds of two little girls playing about fifty yards away at the edge of a field and wonder if I can call those two kids over without saying anything, just using my mind. When I open my eyes, the two little girls are smiling right in front of me. One of them says “You want to play?” I take their hands and we go off together.

I look around me and the world has been transformed into a theater of the mind. It isn’t real any more in the way that I’d thought of reality, yet at the same time, it’s more real. The colors, the textures, the way that everything is suspended in space, the surfaces of the trees, everything stands out in three dimensions in a way that I haven’t experienced before and cannot explain. I’m reminded of the William Blake quote I’d read the week before: “A fool does not see the same tree that a wise man sees.” When I look at the people, I see that they’re connected by arching rays of light above their heads running from one to the other as they communicate. The light changes color, brightens and diminishes as the conversation ebbs and flows. I wonder how I can keep this state of heightened awareness after the peyote is gone.

The next day, after working in the garden, we pile into a bus with some of The Farm people who are heading for a house in Nashville. Before we leave, we pass around a joint and Steven Gaskin appears for a sendoff. For a moment we look each other in the eye and I feel a stirring in my heart. We arrive late at night in Nashville and sleep in the next day until afternoon.

Suzanne, who plays piano, says that she wants to experience some of the Nashville music scene. So we make the rounds of some clubs and meet an organ-player who offers to let us stay at his place. We get there late after visiting several places where he’s trying to hook up with a band that needs a keyboard player, but isn’t able to even get an audition. When we get to his place, he performs some of his own compositions on an organ. He’s very accomplished, but tells us that he can’t get any work.

His place is a shambles, his bed a tangle of dirty sheets on a mattress in the corner, clothes piled about the floor, the kitchen sink filled with dirty dishes, the refrigerator door grimy, beer bottles spilling out of the trash can and onto the floor. Several other people live there. He offers me a corner to sleep in and a blanket. He says that Suzanne is sleeping with him on a mattress on the other side of the room. In a style that I’ve become accustomed to, she has been flirting and leading him on. He thinks that she’s interested in sex and begins the preliminaries by removing his clothes. She keeps her clothes on and merely turns her back. He becomes angry and threatens to throw us out on the street. Finally, he pushes her away and she comes over and sleeps on the floor next to me.

When I began this trip, I’d decided that it was going to be an exercise in discipline for me. Suzanne is a good-looking girl, trim and wiry, with bedroom eyes, but I knew her reputation. She seemed to get some pleasure from denying sex after leading men on. I never make any advances, though we’re naked together several times on the trip.

At some point, well past midnight, a hand shakes me awake and a voice says, “I gotta have a driver, man. You got a license?”

I don’t answer. The voice repeats: “You got a license, man. I gotta get to a drug store.” Thinking that this might be an emergency, I admit that I have a license. The voice belongs to a skinny guy with stringy hair that I’d met earlier when we arrived. He also shares the apartment and, like everybody in Nashville, seems to be a musician.

I get up, dress and agree to go with him. When we get to the car, he gets in the driver’s seat.

“I thought that you needed a driver,” I say.

“I just need the license,” he says, “in case we get stopped. You couldn’t drive this car anyway. It’s too dangerous.”

This makes no sense, but then the whole evening had made no sense. When I get into the passenger seat, I look across and see that there’s no floorboard under the gas pedal, brake and clutch. It’s rainy and water from puddles on the road splashes up from below as we drive a mile to an all-night drug store. On the way, I discover why we’re going.

“You don’t have any weed, do you, man?” he says. “Your girlfriend says ya’ll don’t have any weed. But maybe she don’t know. If you got anything man, I’m in a bad way. I gotta have something.”

“No, sorry. I had some, but we smoked it all.”

“They’ve got codeine cough syrup at this drug store. It will last me till morning, man. I gotta get something. I’m coming apart.”

The next morning I rise at eight in the middle of the chaos. I awaken Suzanne and we slip out, stepping over the several other unidentified bodies that have appeared on the filthy carpet during the night. We hit the road without enough sleep, but glad to be out of that place, and start back east. We’re back where we started in two days without incident. That is the last I ever see of Suzanne.

ORGANIZATION

At this point, I’ve known M.D. Pettie for a few months, gradually moving closer and beginning to think of myself in some way as a part of his organization, which, as far as I can tell, is ill-defined and informal. I realize that, since I met him, there has been much more magic in my life and serendipitous coincidences have become the norm. I wonder if it’s because of him or because of my lifestyle change. I conclude that it makes no difference, since I like him. But I want to know more about the organization of the people around him.

The next time I see him is the night I return from the hitchhiking adventure. He’s at the main house in Nethers, where his wife Isabelle lives. I tell him all of the details of the trip and he laughs heartily.

“Sounds like you had yourself in discipline for that trip. It will pay dividends for you later. Suzanne is what most people call a teaser. But I don’t judge her by what she does with her pussy. There’s a place for her in the organization, if you draw a big enough circle. I call her ‘a friend of change.’ She’s not really into basic change. Not many people are. I don’t suggest that you say that to her unless you want to make her mad. Most people in that category think that they’re doing something more important than they actually are. For the most part they’re fooling themselves as far as I can see. But then I don’t have a corner on the truth.

“She can’t stand not being in control of the situation. She’s willing to flow along with circumstances except in her personal interactions with people. When it gets up close, she gets more of a sexual thrill out of turning you down than she does from letting you put it in.

“One time I called Roy Mason ‘a friend of change,’ and he got so mad that he didn’t speak to me for a month. We used to live together in the same house, you know. It was up in Arlington. I found the house and told Roy about it. He bought it in his name, but we were supposed to both be owners. Then when he sold it, he kept the money and used it to buy another place. He never mentioned ownership of the new place to me. He’s got three pieces of land down here. He used to own one right down the road here. Let’s take a walk and I’ll show it to you.”

We walk west toward the entrance to the Old Rag Mountain Trail and he points out a beautiful farmhouse about fifty yards from the Hughes River with a superb view of the mountain. It’s set in a large pasture of rolling hills with the national park on its border.

“This is the old Weakley place,” he says. “The area to the left up the road onto Old Rag is called Weakley Hollow. Roy bought it a couple of years ago, but he doesn’t own it anymore. He had a lover by the name of Patrick O’Connell who lived with us in the house in Arlington until they couldn’t get along any more. When they split up, all of the property was in Roy’s name and Pat said it wasn’t fair. They asked me what to do and I suggested that Roy give this place to Pat as his share. He lives there now with his new lover named Reinhardt Lynch.”

“You said that Roy was only a friend of change,” I say. “If he wasn’t in with you, what kind of organization is there anyway?”

“Everything is informal and voluntary,” he says. “We put it together when we get up in the morning and take it all apart when we go to bed at night. Some of us are in a financial pool. We throw in whatever we get and take out of it what we need. My son George handles the money. He pays all of the common bills and takes care of the properties. We have six hundred acres of land in the country and a house in Arlington. We all used to live in the house in Arlington, but George’s wife wanted it, so she now controls the house except for the basement. Sometimes we stay in the basement. I move around a lot. Never know where I’m going to end up. The place on Newark Street is just temporary. When it gets torn down, we’ll move on. We’re looking for a place to buy in D.C. George is a good manager and a good provider for his family. But he prefers a more routine life than I do. He goes back to his wife in Arlington every night. Dave is a little bit more adventurous. He sleeps up in the attic with the rest of us. The women sleep on one side and the men on the other. If a woman wants company for the night, she just comes over and taps a man on the toe.

“So there are no corporations or legal structure of any kind. It’s all based on trust. The real estate is in my name, but there are unrecorded deeds to other people that could be surfaced at any time to respond to whatever situation might come up. On a moment’s notice, we could transfer the title to whatever name makes sense for the common good.”

CHAPTER TWO

DECISION TO JOIN

One night soon after that, I go to the New Ark and talk late into the night until everybody drifts off to bed. Before he retires, Pettie says: “You know you’re welcome to sleep here.”

“Thanks,” I say and watch him climb the stairs toward the attic where everybody sleeps, followed by several others. I decide that I’m going to stay, so a few minutes later, I start up the stairs in the direction of the attic. On the second floor, I meet Rannie. He acts very friendly and says, why don’t I stay the night. This seems a little odd, since he’d been there when Pettie invited me. I thank him and say that I believe I will. He then points me to an empty room and says that it’s the guest room, hands me bedding and disappears.

I lay down and wonder whether Pettie might have sent him back down to be sure that I didn’t come up to the attic. I wonder whether there’s some initiation that must occur before I can sleep in the room with everybody else and before I can be an official part of his entourage. As I lay there wondering, I realize that I’m lonely. I know that there’s something that I left behind many years ago and that I’m now bent on recovering it. I realize that it can only be found through intimate relationships with other people. And I know that, at the moment, the only intimate relationships I have are with my daughters and to a diminishing degree with my wife. I want more. I silently vow that I’m going to do whatever it takes to become a part of Pettie’s clan.

The next morning, Barbara greets me as she comes down from the attic saying, “Where were you last night? Pettie said that you were going to sleep here.”

I realize that Rannie had acted on his own and wondered at his motive. But I’m glad that he did, since it strengthened my resolve to become a part of the group. Pettie, coming down the stairs behind her, is his usual high-energy self, energy that’s different from other people. When someone is described as high-energy, most people see a fast-moving hustler speaking quickly and zipping about from one place to another. Pettie isn’t like that. His energy is intense, but not speedy. Will Poulsen described it by saying: “Most people run on 110 volts, MDP runs on 220.”

Will is a former military intelligence officer who dropped out of the Air Force in 1969 after his commanding officer gave him a hit of LSD while they were sitting on Waikiki Beach. Will had never heard of LSD and accepted it without question. In a few minutes, a fire-breathing dragon chased him down the beach, caught him and ate him. He loved the rest of the wonderful afternoon. After that, in the 70s, he delighted in filling his ordinary-looking tobacco pipe with weed and walking down Pennsylvania Avenue smoking it in front of the White House.

After breakfast, Pettie and I walk downtown to my office, an hour away.

“I usually walk about four hours a day,” he says.

“Do you follow a pattern?” I ask.

“My routine is to head out the door and walk once around the block while I get in touch with the Great Spirit and then figure out what direction I’m supposed to go in for the day,” Pettie says.

“What are some of your destinations?” I ask.

“If there’s an interesting conference or meeting happening in town, I usually check it out. Otherwise I head for a library or a museum,” he says.

“Where are you off to today?” I ask.

“I’ll just flow along with wherever you’re headed. I don’t know where I might go after that. Any ideas?” he asks.

“Any of those places sound great,” I say. I was wondering how he had the leisure to live that way. I thought that he might be a retired college professor. He senses my question.

MILITARY

“I never had but one job in my life,” he says. “I enlisted in the army in 1933 when I was 13 years old and stayed in it for 20 years.”

“Wow,” I say. “How did you pull it off? I mean, joining the army at 13?”

“I lied about my age and phonied up some papers that said I was eighteen. I was big for my age and looked older. I told my mother and father what I was going to do and that if somebody asked them they’d better lie and back me up or they would never see me again for the rest of their lives. I had done nervy stuff before that, so they knew I wasn’t bluffing. They didn’t say anything and nobody ever asked.”

“What do you mean by nervy stuff?” I ask.

“Well, I guess there were plenty, but the one that happened just before I joined the army came from a newspaper clipping. It described a boy whose parent hadn’t given him what he wanted and he killed his father. I didn’t say anything about the article. I just cut it out of the paper and left it on the dining room table, so my father would find it. I was very independent, but I was also a model child and never gave them any trouble, so finding that article sort of threw them for a loop. They never mentioned it.”

“What did you do in the army? I ask.

“I drank and gambled and traveled around, but mostly I was a chauffeur for the Secretary of the Air Force. When I started, the air force was called the Army Air Corps and it was headed by a guy named Henry Arnold. Everybody called him ‘Hap’ Arnold,” Pettie says.

“I’ve heard of him,” I say. “I remember his name from World War II.”

“That’s when I hooked up with him,” Pettie says. “When the war started. I was in the ceremonial troops, the ones who march in parades and guard the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. I saw the war coming, like a lot of other people, and I wanted to lighten my load. I figured that the less I had, the better off I’d be during a war. So I gave my car to a friend of mine by the name of Bruce Simmons. He was also a sergeant and happened to be the chauffeur for Arnold. Arnold was already a general, and when the war came along he was entitled to two chauffeurs. Simmons told me that Arnold was about to get a second driver, so I walked up to him in the hallway of the Pentagon and asked him if I could have the job. We stood there for a long time, just staring each other in the eye. I didn’t speak and he didn’t speak. Neither of us looked away. Finally, Arnold lowered his eyes and said, ‘Let me talk to my wife. If she likes you, you got the job.’”

Pettie and I are still walking toward my office through Georgetown. We leave Wisconsin Avenue and head east along Que Street under the shade of elm trees. Pettie is silent for a long time, like he was remembering that moment in the hall of the Pentagon as a significant moment in his life. Finally he says, “I learned a great lesson from that experience. It pays to be generous. The car that I gave to Simmons was new and cars were hard to get in those days. It paid off when he told me about that job opening up. The war was hard on a lot of people, but for me, it was just one delight after another. The government gave me a big car to drive around and most of my day was free. I gave them my body, but I never gave them my mind. I was able to think while I was driving and I always had a stack of books on the seat beside me to read while I was waiting.

“I didn’t just drive Arnold. I was assigned to be Arnold’s driver, but when he didn’t need me, I was available to drive other bigwigs from the Pentagon and the White House and Capitol Hill. When the generals wanted to go somewhere or to have somebody picked up, they would send me or one of the other drivers. During the war, they had even more power than they do now. I lived and worked down near Constitution Avenue until they finished the Pentagon in about 1943. I drove all of the famous and the powerful.”

“Did you ever drive the president?” I ask.

“Not while he was the president,” he says. “They’ve got their own drivers. But I drove Truman before he was the President and Eisenhower before he was president and Lyndon Johnson–although he didn’t like me. Plenty of others, too: Marshall, Patton, all of the other Generals, J. Edgar Hoover; just about everybody in those days.”

“Why do you think Johnson didn’t like you?” I ask.

“We weren’t in the same state of consciousness. I didn’t like him either. It’s almost impossible to arrive at any kind of equality with a politician. They always have some hidden agenda going on that they think will give them more power. It was a great job. You overhear a lot of stuff that you can learn from.”

“Did they confide in you?” I ask.

“Not much,” he says. “Arnold’s wife did, but not the men. But I would hear stuff. If I was driving more than one person, I could listen in on what they were talking about. Then I would read about it in the papers later and get some perspective. I heard what they were saying and understood the context. Then I’d see the way the press wrote about it. Quite often it was different.”

“Didn’t they try to keep you from hearing it?” I ask.

“No, never,” he says. “They never hid anything. They knew that it was safe to say whatever they wanted to in front of me.”

“Do you remember any of the stuff that you heard?” I ask.

“It was mainly psychology,” he says, “figuring out how the human mind works. They were all trying to get some power and hold onto it. I’d opted out of that game. Plenty of times, they offered to make me an officer, but I always turned it down. I wanted to keep my head clear for learning. If you’ve got some hidden agenda, like getting a promotion or being appointed to some big government job, you think different and talk different. You filter everything through your hidden agenda so that what comes out is designed to make you look like a hero.

“I heard plenty of that kind of talk from the back seat,” Pettie says. “But during the war, there was less of it than there is now. The generals could smell a phony. They had a war to fight and they couldn’t afford to waste any time on a phony. Arnold had a short fuse with anybody who couldn’t get right to the point. I remember one time, a lawyer was in his office and Arnold was telling him about something that needed to get done. The lawyer told him that it was against the law to do it. Arnold cussed and shouted, kicked at the desk and pushed the lawyer out the door. ‘You stupid asshole, I don’t need you to tell me it’s against the law. I know that. I brought you in here to tell me how to get around the law.’”

“Did you like Arnold?” I ask as we approached Dupont Circle.

“I liked him OK,” Pettie says, “but I got along a lot better with his wife. She was the boss. All of those generals are momma’s boys. Their wives all tell them what to do. Arnold was a man’s man. He was awkward around women and just did what she told him. All of the men liked him and followed his orders. He knew how to run a big game. But he was afraid of women. I never met any of those generals who weren’t afraid of women. I drove all of their wives at one time or another. They knew me and liked me. They could sense that I was on their side.       

“There was one of them who didn’t like me, though. She was the wife of General Andrews, the one that Andrews Air Force Base is named after. I was sent over to her house one time along with some other guys. This was when I was in the ceremonial troops, before I was a chauffeur. We went into her house and she handed out jobs. She told me to polish the silverware. Then she left and went upstairs. When she came back, she asked me whether I’d finished the silverware. I hadn’t touched it. In fact, I hadn’t moved from the spot where I’d been standing when she told me to do it. I didn’t say anything. I just plain didn’t like her and I know that it’s better not to speak to people who aren’t on your wavelength. She just frowned and sent us all back. After that, when the ceremonials were serving at parties and dances, I snubbed her. The word got around and the other wives would watch the interaction and whisper behind her back. But I got along great with all of the other general’s wives. They all lived on the army base at Fort Meyer in Arlington. The general’s houses are all lined up next to each other. Arnold lived next door to Marshall. They were good friends.

“I got along better with the wives of the bigwigs; it was more personal with them. But I got along fine with their husbands, because I kept my mouth shut and never bad vibed any of them. They rewarded me with easy duty. None of them was scarcity-minded. They had plenty and they were willing to share it with you if you did it exactly the way they wanted it done. It’s a valuable art form and not many people practice it.”

“How did you accumulate six hundred acres of land on a chauffeur’s salary?” I ask.

“I just bought it a little at a time with low down payments,” Pettie says. “I got other people to come in with me on making the payments. George made a lot of the payments on the land in Nethers. There’s a man named Eric Heilbert who was in with me at one time and made some of the payments. But he decided that he could make a fortune by investing in the stock market rather than real estate and wanted his money back. He asked for it at a bad time, when I didn’t have enough cash and I had to sell a mountaintop to buy him out. Very foolish man, he lost everything that he invested in the stock market.

“I had a little other income that helped me to pay for it, but I didn’t ever count on it. A poker game was always going on in the Pentagon in the squad room where the drivers could hang out when they weren’t driving. Five or six guys would be playing cards there. I found that the two best places to get flashes of insight are in poker games and on the mat during martial arts. In fact, the learning from playing poker was so good that I budgeted a certain amount from my paycheck to pay for what I lost. But as it turns out, I actually made money at the table. I never counted on it, but it helped out. I was an indifferent player and waited for something to jump into my head and tell me what to do.

“Sometimes I did stuff that didn’t seem to make any sense, but it paid off in the long run. Sometimes, I would bet without ever looking at my cards. I would lift up the corner like I was peeking at them, but I wouldn’t look. I was watching the guy across the table trying to figure him out. Most of the card players were black. They knew that I didn’t play by the same rules as the rest of them. They called me the professor. They would say: ‘ole ‘fessor, he got somebody sitting on his shoulder tells him what to bet. You cain’t tell what he gonna do.’ So, actually some of the payments on the land in the country came from the poker table.”

We were nearing my Jefferson Place office. “Have you decided where you’re going to go yet?” I ask.

“I might head up to the Library of Congress,” Pettie says. “I used to go into the libraries in a lot of government agencies, but since the riots in ‘68, they won’t let the public in most of them.”

I remember the riots well. I was working for the Internal Revenue Service Appellate Division in Northwest D.C. Remembering the black smoke seen from my office windows, I ask whether he was in D.C. during the riots.

“Oh, yeah,” he says. “I drove right up Fourteenth Street to check it out. I’ve always been interested in mob psychology, so I wanted to see it up close. Mob psychology is related to group consciousness in some way that nobody understands and group consciousness is what we’re trying to evolve.”

We’re now outside my office and say our goodbyes. I’m fascinated by The Stroller and the unorthodox life that he has led.

BARBARA SYLVESTER

Shortly thereafter, it seems like the whole gang around Pettie goes flying apart. Diane, Rannie and Will move into one of the cabins on Pettie’s land in the village of Nethers. Sunshine remains at Newark Street with a few others that I don’t know. Martin Tilton and a couple of others move into the basement of the Arlington house. Barbara, Pettie and Mark Homan move into the apartment of Margaret Mensart, the owner of an upper-class dress business in Georgetown, who was then living in London. The apartment is on the second floor above the business on P Street. It’s only a block from the apartment I have just moved into and I end up spending every night there rather than at my place. In less than a month, I canceled my lease and moved in with them.

Barbara Sylvester had arrived in Nethers, Virginia, in 1970 from Chicago. She and her husband, Dick, were both schoolteachers with the summer off. They and their three children were traveling the country looking at communes expecting they might join one. They’d toured the western U.S. and were looking in the east at communities that billed themselves as “spiritually-based.” They’d read about a place called the Nethers Community School that identified itself as a commune and free school. It was run by its founder Rabbi Carla Eugster. It sounded interesting to Barbara, though she was far from being Jewish. She was born to a Polish mother and Italian father. She’d been a true-believing, confession-attending Catholic for all of her life until her 34th year. Then one day, the experiences of her life and her rational mind overtook her ability to continue in the faith that she felt was still mired in the Middle Ages.

“I was standing in my kitchen in Mount Prospect,” she later told me. “I spoke out loud to God: ‘I’ve been a good Catholic all my life to this point. If I die now, I believe I’ll be acceptable to you. But I can’t swallow the rituals and the kind of stuff the priests say I have to do and believe in. So I’m asking that you strike me dead on the spot, here and now, if the priests are right. From now on, I’m going to reject all that stuff that I’ve been doing for the last 34 years as a power trip made up by the church. If you’re going to kill me, please do it now.’”

Nothing happened.

So Barbara didn’t care whether the place was run by a rabbi. She was looking for the community that felt best to her. The Nethers Community School had started out in the Village of Nethers where Pettie’s land is located, and had kept the name after it moved to another rural tract in Rappahannock County, Virginia. When Barbara and her family visited, they didn’t find it exactly to their liking, but Rabbi Karla told them about Pettie and the freestate. Karla’s description of Pettie was unflattering, but he sounded interesting, so Barbara and her family drove over.      

Pettie was sitting on the front porch. He welcomed them warmly and began a friendly interrogation that lasted the remainder of the day. Barbara briefed him on all of the communities they’d visited, a subject in which he had great interest. He’d already heard of most of them and had visited a few. By the time they’d exhausted this subject, it was dinnertime. Isabelle set out food and the dozen or more people who were there at the time joined in.

PETTIE’S DEPARTURES

Pettie always offered whatever food was available to all who were present. He always expected that there would be somebody there who would cook it and who would serve it and that there would be somebody to clean it up. Almost always there were people who did these things. He was a good cook, very inventive, using whatever ingredients he found in the refrigerator, but he rarely cooked. And he always gave his plate or bowl a quick rinse, but generally he left kitchen duties to other people. If his expectations were not met, he simply got up and walked away without a word and almost always undetected. At some point, somebody would miss him and ask, “Where did Pettie go?”

He seemed to hold no negative feeling toward those who hadn’t met his expectations. When he returned, which might be hours, days or weeks later, he simply resumed where he’d left off and was warmly welcomed back. On one occasion, while living in London with Margaret Mensart, he saw some fresh cherries at a local market and mentioned that he would like to have some, if it wasn’t too much trouble. The next morning she went to the market, but found that the cherries had all been sold. When Pettie came back later in the day and didn’t find the cherries, he picked up his bag and slipped out the back door. On this occasion, he was successful at getting away undetected, but she’d heard his arrival. She wondered why he hadn’t appeared in the living room. She searched the apartment and couldn’t find him.

Sensing what had happened, she rushed out and found him at the subway station just as a train arrived. She managed to coax him back by explaining that the cherries had been sold out. You might conclude that Pettie was rude and self-centered for this kind of departure. But the truth is that he just wanted to make sure that he was wanted and took no chances that he’d over-stayed his welcome. He constantly looked for signs and signals. His disregard for social convention like saying goodbye was another means of making sure that he was always welcome. His host’s de facto permission for him to be eccentric relieved him of the requirement to conduct himself in a way that was in the least unnatural and freed him to focus his mind on what he considered more important. Not that he was anything less than cordial and thoughtful in his interactions with people. He inevitably charmed most of the people he met. On this occasion, Margaret’s alertness saved the day and he returned joking all the way back and stayed for another week.

Barbara and her family don’t travel any further that summer. After a few days in Nethers, Pettie drives with them to the Arlington house. Thereafter, they just make themselves at home at both places. According to Barbara, her husband Dick decides that it’s time to leave after a few weeks. He says, “Barbara, let’s get our stuff together and get out of here. This place is a human zoo.”

She tells him, “You get your stuff together, I’m staying.” She has been there ever since, except for a brief return to take care of some business, including a divorce.

While she’s back in Illinois on this visit, she described Pettie and the Nethers scene to Diane Sherwood, another Chicagoan and Barbara’s classmate at Catholic, all-girl Mundalein College. Diane, who’s also in the throes of a marriage breakup, comes to check out the scene and stays with Pettie for 18 years.

THE INVISIBLE BANK

After spending many nights talking and listening to Pettie, I gradually start to understand the legal arrangement that exists between the people around him.

“It’s all voluntary,” he says. “Nobody has any legal hold on anybody else. It’s all based on trust. People pool their resources, but everything is a day at a time. You can take your share and leave any time you want to. George handles the bookkeeping. He manages what we call the ‘invisible bank.’ Everybody here puts money into the bank and he pays the bills out of what they put in. We make group decisions on what to do with the money. Mainly we use it to buy real estate. We’ve got six hundred acres in the country and that’s more than we can use, so we’re looking for people to share it. And we’re looking to buy some more land in D.C. or Arlington. For people’s personal consumption, we buy everything wholesale. We keep it here in a place where everybody who’s in the game has access to it and they just take what they need out of it.”

REAL ESTATE CRITERIA

“What kind of property are you looking for in D.C.?” I ask Pettie on one of our morning walks.

“Beauty is the first requirement,” he says. “When I bought the land in the country, nobody put any value on the beauty. Some do now, but, at that time, all that the locals around there could see was whether the land could be used to produce money. They priced it based on what you could grow on it. The land in Nethers had a half-ass peach orchard on it when we bought it, but it never made any money. The mountaineers who sold it to me thought they’d pulled one over on me. They knew I couldn’t pay for it out of what the orchard would earn. But I didn’t care about that. I bought it for the beauty.

“So that’s the first thing. It has to be beautiful. And it has to be located next to something magnetic. I would rather have a hovel located next to a university library than a mansion in the suburbs.

“I like unorthodox living spaces. If you live in a square room with four hard flat walls and a flat ceiling, it affects you. You’re more likely to be a conventional thinker. I like to live in round spaces with soft walls or places that were designed for something other than comfortable living.”

“What kind of spaces?” I ask.

“Places like warehouses and factories,” he says. “There are thousands of buildings around this country that are obsolete for the things they were originally designed for. But they’re perfect for living the way that I recommend. If you walk around Philadelphia along the Delaware River or around the harbor in Baltimore, you will see hundreds of buildings that are just right for group living. Most of them are empty and run down. There are plenty of other places, too. Every big city has areas where the manufacturing took place 50 or a 100 years ago when it was important to be located near a rail line or a harbor. Now all of those kinds of businesses are located along some big highway and those old places are empty.

“It’s easier to be creative in those kinds of structures. Artists have known this for a long time. But most artists are too individualistic to live in a community. There’s nothing wrong with artists or being individualistic. The world is all set up now to accommodate individuals. The economic system, the transportation systems, the housing arrangements, jobs, everything depends on people being individualistic and grabbing and snatching for the most they can get without breaking the law or at least without getting caught. So we’re looking for a place that a group can function in and be creative in. It could be any kind of place. There never were many factory-type buildings around D.C., but there are plenty of places with beauty.”

THE FINDERS

Later that summer, Pettie and I take our morning coffee across P Street into Rock Creek Park in Georgetown. If we had looked, we could have seen the Watergate office building where the famous burglary had happened a few weeks before. I’m 36 years old. I’ve decided to take my life in a different direction and I have more or less decided to throw in with Pettie and his gang. There is no name for the group, but I figure that I’m investing my future with him rather than with some artificial entity that has a name.

“Everything with a name is falling apart,” he says when I ask him whether the group should have a name. “As soon as you name something, you define it where it’s at at a point in time and then it becomes rigid and tries to stay the way it was. The life has gone out of all the games that once were dynamic–the Jesuits once had an intelligence network that knew everything that was important to know in the whole world. But now they are just academics.

“When what is now called the United States of America didn’t yet have a name, it was highly flexible. That was when it was just a handful of clear thinkers calling the shots and envisioning the future. At that time, and for a good while after it got a name, you could get something done and there was freedom and justice–so long as you were male and white. But now try to do anything innovative with the federal government. Or any of these organizations that have named themselves and become structured. Georgetown University was probably a pretty good place when it was just a couple of Jesuit priests sitting around under a tree with some earnest faces staring up at them. But nowadays all a university does is get in the way of your education.

“Max Weber talks all about this. He calls it ‘the routinization of charisma.’ It’s a pretty important thing to understand for anybody who’s into group work.”

Barbara has seen us and walks across to join us. “Who was Weber?” she asks.

“He was a German who wrote about organizations and history,” Pettie says. “He was pretty rigid, personally, like all of those old Prussians, but he had a flexible mind that didn’t get bogged down in categories of thinking. He would have called himself a historian, but people now call him a sociologist. His notion of the routinization of charisma is pretty important to keep in mind, if you’re into group work. He wasn’t charismatic himself, but he noticed that the people who were drew other people to them and formed organizations. Then when the charismatic leader died, the people in the organization set up rules and routines and the spirit that drew them in the first place disappeared.

“So we don’t really have a name for this gang around here. It takes an effort to keep the life in an organization. It’s too dangerous to name it. People are uncomfortable with uncertainty, so they will try to convert everything into some routine if we aren’t careful. As soon as I go around the corner, they will set up something rigid. And it’s my job to figure it out and bust it up.”

“Yes, sir,” Barbara says. “But what should I say to people when I go in to talk to them about work? They always want to know what label to put on what I’m doing. I tell them that I work one day at a time and that they can pay me whatever they want at the end of the day. And I tell them, if I can’t do it myself, I’m a part of a good network, and I’ll get somebody for them that can do it. Most people that I talk to can’t handle this much flexibility, but I can tell that some of them like me and they would like to do some business and they need a category that they already have in their head to put me into. What should I tell them?”

“I’ll think on it,” is all that Pettie says.

The next day, when he returns from his walk, he answers Barbara’s question: “You can tell people that you are a finder and that you work for finder’s fees.”

From then on, that description is used. All of those around Pettie, when they make a new connection, describe themselves as finders and say that they work for finder’s fees. It catches on. Pretty soon, when people refer to Pettie, they’re calling him the head of The Finders and the people around him are being called The Finders. For years, Pettie and everybody around him try to get rid of the name. But it sticks. To try to overcome it, new names are invented as temporary substitutes and abandoned. But the name The Finders persists. To this day none of those around Pettie will acknowledge more than a grudging tolerance for the name.

FINDING W STREET

“Do you want to walk over to the Georgetown University Library?” Pettie asked me in the fall of 1972. “I’ll show you an interesting neighborhood.”

“Sure,” I say and we set out.

“It’s a form of insanity to think that a human who’s born and dies can own a piece of the earth,” he says. “But that’s the system we were born into. And I used to own this house,” he says pointing to a two-story brick structure at 39th and Benton Street, “and the first apartment that we lived in after I married Isabelle was a couple of blocks from here. This is the neighborhood where you might want to start looking for property that we could buy in town.”

I like the area and the next day I walk every street in the neighborhood looking for “for sale” signs. I find five buildings for sale and tell Pettie.

“Get ‘em,” he says, “by hook or by crook.”

I start negotiating and make offers on five four-unit apartment buildings. Three of the offers are accepted and we’re scheduled to take possession in January 1973. The two apartment buildings at 3918 and 3920 W Street, NW, have a common wall between them, and 2216 40th Street is around the corner. The W Street buildings become the Washington headquarters for The Finders in 1973 and remain the principal residences and offices until 1999. The 40th Street building was given as a gift to Sunshine when she left in 1975.

Glover Park is a respectable northwest Washington neighborhood of brick single-family houses and low-rise apartments. It’s bordered on two sides by Glover-Archbold Park, which is completely undeveloped, except for a few acres set aside for the vegetable gardens of local residents. It contains about 400 acres divided by a stream that runs into the Potomac River. It’s criss-crossed by hiking trails–a wild oasis in the middle of the city. Many of the original residents of the neighborhood had been employed as servants of the rich families who lived on the other side of the park in the mansions along Foxhall Road. It had always been well cared for and had never declined into a slum. The W Street buildings are situated directly against the park, so that the rear of the buildings opens directly onto the woods and their flat roofs cannot be seen from the street.

We have been living in a one-bedroom apartment with five to ten people sleeping there some nights. Suddenly, we have twelve apartments, much more than we can occupy. Four apartments are vacant. Barbara meets with the residents of the other eight and tells them that they’re welcome to stay, but that, henceforth, the arrangement will be a day-at-a-time and on the gift economy. In other words, they should pay their rent daily instead of monthly and that they can pay any amount they want. Simple as this sounds, it’s too much for five of the eight units; the tenants move out immediately.

One of the residents becomes hostile and says he is going to sue, insisting that he has tenant’s rights and we can’t force him out. Barbara reminds him that nobody is asking him to leave, only to pay daily and to make the payment a gift rather than an obligation. He remains angry and refuses to pay anything, locks his door and refuses to talk. After a few days of silence and non-payment, at Pettie’s suggestion, I go to his office. He works at the Navy facility where new ship designs are tested. I show up and ask to speak to him. The receptionist asks the nature of my business and I say that it’s personal. He enters the room with a red face, the veins standing out on his forehead. He speaks in a low voice for fear of causing a disturbance in his workplace, but it is clear that he wants to hit me.

I try to be reasonable, describing the new owners as eccentric, but not hostile and reminding him that he can stay, but that we have expenses. I ask him again whether he would like to make a contribution.

“I’ll see you bastards in court,” he says in a loud whisper.

A few days later, he moves out in the middle of the night without paying anything. The people in the two remaining apartments like the new arrangement, pass money to us every day, and continue to live there for several years until they leave the D.C. area.

Soon after we buy the buildings, I get another lesson. In the basement, we set up a common food bank.

“Call it an alimentarium,” says Pettie. “Rules and regulations come into play as soon as you call something a store, a grocery, a buying co-op, a restaurant or lots of other things, for that matter. But there are no laws to regulate an alimentarium, so you can do it pretty much however you want.”

We buy hundreds of dollars worth of food and arrange it on shelves. We include a cash box where people can pay for whatever they take, leaving the amount of the payment up to them. Many take, but few pay. The system is too loose and the people who know about it include many who are only peripheral to the game.

SMOKING

But not all egalitarian financial arrangements are a failure. Glover Park is the perfect place for anybody in the group who’s a dope-smoker and, in 1973, that includes most. Neither Barbara nor Pettie are smokers, but they tolerate its use. If Pettie is in a place where a joint is being passed around, he always takes it and puts it to his lips as a symbolic gesture to show that he’s willing to break the law with the rest of them, but I never see him inhale.

“I’ll never smoke it again, if they ever make it legal,” he says one night sitting around the campfire in the country.

“Why is that?” someone asks.

“This is a repressive time,” he says. “If you want to succeed in group work, you have to go around the government. Pot smoking is about the only form of breathing together you can find today and it’s against the law. There’s no good reason for it to be against the law. I’ve been around a lot of people smoking it since the ‘30s and I’ve never seen it do anybody any harm. But it’s good to be willing to break the unfair laws in a repressive government like this one. Conspiracy is just a four-syllable word that means breathing together. That’s what is needed right now in history, is like-minded people who are willing to break the law to breathe together. That means to live naturally. If you want to live naturally today, you just about have to break the law. There are so many laws that you have to have a whole bookshelf just to hold the index. Nobody can avoid breaking some of them and a lot of them will take away your freedom. People sitting around a campfire and passing some pot is a huge threat to the establishment. It may only be simulated freedom, but people feel freer when they smoke it and that frightens the people in power.”

To accommodate the people who like to smoke pot, Pettie suggests that we create something that is outside of the corrupt drug distribution system. So we buy it by the pound, if possible from the grower. We then clean it and hide it in a hollow log. Where we hide it, in a remote part of Glover Park, it’s impossible that anybody would happen on it. Along with it, we place a scale and a jar to receive money. Only trustworthy people are shown the location of the log. When somebody wants some, they simply go and get it and put their payment into the jar. When the pot is gone, the jar is full and more is bought. This goes on for a couple of years, until interest in pot-smoking declines.

ANN STRUGGLES

Back in the fall of 1972, we’re living in an apartment in Glover Park that Barbara rented while we’re waiting for the closing of the W Street buildings. One morning I answer a knock at the door and a six-foot woman appears carrying a video camera. At this time, only TV stations are supposed to have such things, but there she is, pointing it at me. “I’m Ann Struggles,” she says. “A man in New York gave me your address and said that I might be able to stay here for a while.” I invite her in.

Introductions are made and she begins telling of her odyssey around the country with her Sony system. It’s heavy and black-and-white. It’s portable and the next thing I know, we have all stripped off our clothes and are dancing around the room in front of the camera. The monitor is small, but it’s the first time that any of us have ever seen ourselves on TV. Ann has been living in an artist cooperative in Greenwich Village trying to make a living with her camera and says she’s burned out on the big city and looking for a change. She also says that she’s been frustrated because of inadequate sex. Pettie says that he is pretty sure her needs can be taken care of.

George and Dave have just bought another house in Arlington, a big place with three lots that we immediately begin to call the nursery, because that’s what it used to be, a plant nursery. Ann is given a room at the nursery and moves in for a day. But she feels isolated and wants to move back to Glover Park where the action is. So Barbara accommodates her and we have wall-to-wall people sleeping there every night.

PROPERTY SETTLEMENT

When I decide to join my fate with M.D. Pettie and throw my assets into the common pot, it’s, more or less, a symbolic act. The money that I put in stays in my bank account. The car stays in my name. And when I make the down payment on the apartment buildings and buy them as group assets, the deed is put in my name. To the outside world the property seems to be mine.

In 1973, when my wife, Carolyn, and I have been apart for more than a year, she announces that she wants to come to some kind of property settlement. I ask Pettie’s advice.

“Give her everything,” he says. “Give everything to her and your daughters. Tell them that they can give some of it back to you, if they want to, or they can keep it all. And then forget about it.”

I do as he suggests. Carolyn calls and says that she and my two daughters have had a meeting and decided to split everything into four equal parts. My share is to be the three apartment buildings in Glover Park, the bank account and some other minor items.

I’m still running the investment business at this point and my income is good, but the lure of freedom is pulling me away from the routine necessary to keep it up. And I no longer believe in it. My only reason for starting the business and continuing in it is to make money. That’s not enough for me anymore. In fact, doing things only to make money is one of the problems of the modern world.

As soon as the closings occur on the Glover Park buildings, Pettie suggests that I take a trip: “Every time that I bought a piece of real estate, I took a trip around the world right after the closing.”

This seems reason enough for me and I decide to close the office.

“Great,” I say. “Any recommendations on where I should go?”

“Follow your intuition,” Pettie says. “Try to get a look at some people who live simple lives. Try to make some new contacts, but don’t be attached to doing that. In fact, don’t be attached to doing anything.”

“I am thinking of visiting some other utopian communities,” I say.

“That might be good,” he says. “But don’t expect to find much. I’ve been to plenty of them myself. You’ll learn something, but the learning that you get will mostly be negative. The people living in communes mean well, but they don’t know much. They haven’t studied. Most of these places out in the country think that all you have to do to be in the New Age is to smoke pot and say ‘fuck.’ There’s more to it than that. Without a vision the people perish. Why don’t ya’ll have a vision meeting and let me listen to it.”

PRINCIPLES

It’s Sunday afternoon. The room is full of people. We follow his suggestion and place big sheets of paper up on the wall and begin brainstorming our vision of what it means to live by our highest vision. In a few minutes the sheet is covered:

One day at a time

Settle up at the end of the day

Don’t do any business with people who aren’t in your state of consciousness

Children own, women minister and men advise and cheer

Offer things once in a soft voice. If they can’t see the value in what you’re offering, it’s their loss

Keep moving

Children first

Women control space, men control time

Keep your bags packed and be ready to go in any direction

Follow sapiential authority

Keep an empty mind

Keep it simple

If you don’t know what to do, make lists

When the fruit is ripe, it will fall in your hat

Never complain and never explain

The actionless leader

Become as a little child

You can learn more from a fool than you can from a wise man

Creative indifference is the ideal state

The perfect servant offers silent service

The gift economy

Know everything, do nothing

Live on the cutting edge of change

Live experimentally

Be careful what you wish for, you may get it

Take listings

Learning and serving

Learn a living

Only deal with people at the top or at the bottom

Don’t mess with Mr. Inbetween

Extract the best from the past, present and future and apply it in everyday life

First imitate, then innovate

Go through the want ads every day

Live in the interstices of life

Study primates and primitives

Be a paraprimitive

If you feel negative, go into the closet

Reward loyalty

Avoid lone possums, the ones who have no sense of loyalty

Separate the positive from the negative

Be transparent to your friends and invisible to your enemies

Love fools, but don’t get into their games

Stick with juicy fruits and vegetables with occasional meat as a condiment

Practice aikido, low-keydo and social ju jitzu.

Don’t be attached to what you already know; it may not be so

Cultivate suspended judgment

There’s only one place and you’re there all the time

Admit your mistakes and move on

Nobody can see themselves as well as other people can see them

Be a mirror to your friends

Never offer criticism unless it’s asked for and then rarely

Power corrupts

Don’t be attached to material objects

There’s a super-abundance of everything except good human relationships

Visualize the future and then expect it to unfold

ON THE ROAD

By chance, the next day, as I’m about to leave on the first leg of my journey, Michael Helping shows up again. I invite him along with a promise to drop him off at The Farm in Tennessee and we head out in a brand new Cadillac. I’d seen an ad in the newspaper offering the use of the Cadillac to anybody who would drive it to the new owner in Pass Christian, Mississippi. We spend the first night with Jean Old, a girlfriend in Durham, North Carolina, and then drive straight through to Tennessee. I feel like a Jack Kerouac character on the road again in a Cadillac watching America go by.

The trip is uneventful. I get into Pass Christian soon after dinner and expect that the Cadillac owner would offer me a place to stay for the night. Instead he pushes me out the door with hardly a thanks. So I take a bus to New Orleans and sleep in a cheap hotel. I’m anxious to get out of cities, so I head west the next morning. The last thing I do before I set out is to give away the joint I’ve been carrying. I’m afraid of having it on me while hitchhiking on the road in Louisiana and Texas. I see a young man walking toward me on the sidewalk. He has long braids and a tie-dye shirt. I’m exhibiting my usual look of Mister Normal American Businessman. He ignores me until I walk up to him and stick the joint under his nose. “Thanks, man,” he says with a dazed expression. Then, I put my pack on my back and stick out my thumb.

It’s a good day for hitchhiking and before I know it I’m in Houston, standing in the right lane of a limited access highway where I’m not supposed to be. Suddenly a car in the far inside lane swerves to the right, crosses three lanes of traffic and skids to a halt beside me. I open the door and get in. “Where are you headed?” says the driver. “I don’t know yet,” I say. “I’m just taking it one ride at a time.”

“Great,” he says. “Let’s head for Austin. Look in that shoe on the floorboard.”

AUSTIN ENTREPRENEURSHIP

I pull out the joint, light it, and we glide for the rest of the day until we get to his house. He invites me to stay at his place, which is a bungalow close to the university. He’s in his mid-twenties, owns the house and lives there with his brother. He has no hesitation in telling me that he makes his living as a marijuana wholesaler. I suppose that he figured that I couldn’t be a narc and out to nail him if I was hitchhiking hundreds of miles from his territory.

“Texas may be the worst place in the world to be in my business, but this is my home and this is what I do,” he says.

For the next four days, he gives me an intensive in how the drug game is played. I ride with him around town while he services his network. He’s just visiting people, not picking up or delivering anything, just making social calls and talking to people. On the third day, we drive to a metalsmith shop and he backs his pickup in through the overhead door. A man inside loads a big bundle wrapped in a tarp into the back. He thanks him and drives away. No money changes hands. I’m amazed. It’s a bale of marijuana. He drives it to another location and drops it off.

“Just a quick turnover,” he says. “You take a little risk and make a few hundred bucks. Doesn’t happen often, but it’s worth it when it does. Somebody needs some. I know where to get it. I had to pay for it in advance. I don’t like to do that, but I know the guy is good for it. Usually, it’s cash on the spot.”

He says that he goes to Mexico occasionally.

“I cross at a different place every time. I probably don’t need to. There are so many people going through, but those guys are always looking for somebody who’s coming through a lot. The only guy I know who always crosses at the same place is a crippled guy. He can barely get around. He has these metal crutches that he hobbles on. He drives a pickup rigged up as a camper and brings in a lot of weed in the back. He pulls up to the checkpoint and starts to get out. It takes him forever with his crutches. By the time he’s halfway out, they tell him never mind. They never unlock the back. He just looks like a poor old crip that lives on the road.”

“Do they ever check you?” I say.

“Nothing serious. I usually don’t have very much. Just a few pounds stashed under the back seat. Most of the time I drive an old car and I hire some Mexican guys to drive it for me and I walk across the border. They arrive at the border with about six Mexicans loaded in the car and talking loud and smoking cigarettes to hide the smell. I’m not an importer. Once in a while is OK, but mostly I distribute what somebody else brings in. The only time I ever did a big deal was when I had a van that was pretty loaded, several hundred pounds. I bought an old junker in Mexico and put it in the name of a Mexican guy that I paid a few bucks to. He’s right behind me when we come up to the border and just before they check me, he sets the back seat of the car on fire. When the flames started coming out of the windows, he jumps out and the border guys wave everybody in line right on through without checking them. It’s a great trick, but you can only use it once.

“There’s a million ways to get the stuff through the border. Some work and some don’t. I know some guys who bought a flat bed truck with round pipes all along the sides. You know, the kind of thing you see holding logs on the truck. They went down to Mexico and bought a bunch of weed, then they drove it down into the pipes with hammers to get as much in as possible. They got through the border OK, but then when they got back here, they couldn’t get the stuff out of the pipes. They pounded on it with hammers and chisels, but it was like rock. They tried cutting the pipe in sections, but the pipe got too hot and set the stuff on fire. They put it out and then they tried cutting it more slowly. They got some of it out, but it took forever and the stuff got all full of iron filings and buyers were afraid of it. They finally just sold the truck to be rid of it. I guess somebody is driving around with a bunch of pot they don’t know about rotting away in the back of it.”

MEXICO

Austin is a marijuana haze as I get back onto the highway, hitch south to Laredo and cross the border. Somewhere along the way, I’ve picked up some crabs, aka lice. It’s not the first time they have struck in the commune, so I know how to deal with them. It’s night when I enter a Nuevo Laredo pharmacy. I don’t know any Spanish and the pharmacist doesn’t know any English. I act out a comic charade pointing and scratching and trying to convey what my problem is. Finally he catches on with great laughter: “Insectos. Bueno insectos. Bueno.”

He sells me a bottle of something, but the instruction for its use are all in Spanish. I assume that it’s like the ones I’ve used north of the border. I rent a cheap hotel room and enter the shower. I try to lather myself up with the treatment. The products that I’m familiar with require that you put them on, wait fifteen minutes and then wash them off. This stuff does not lather well and it smells like kerosene. I never find out how it’s supposed to be used, but I know now that it’s not intended to be applied full strength to one’s private areas and left for more than a few seconds. The pain is intense. I wash as fast as I can. The resultant rash takes several days to heal, but it kills the “insectos.”

The next morning I take the train to Mexico City, an all-day trip, and early the next morning I head to Teotihuacan, known to the ancients as “the place where men become gods.” There I perform a ceremony. I climb to the top of the Pyramid of the Sun and play a spontaneous melody in each of the four directions. Then I proceed to the Pyramid of the Moon and do the same. I didn’t plan to do this and I don’t know why I’m doing it; I just do it and it feels right.

I walk the streets of Mexico City, through marketplaces and into areas where I begin to feel less safe. Some places feel like any other large city on the North American continent, but in others I’m quickly reminded that this is a very different place. In an unfamiliar area, I am tired and relieved to see a subway station on the other side of a large open field. When I start across the field, a soldier approaches and says something in Spanish. I smile, point and try to tell him that I only want to walk across to the station. He unslings the rifle from his shoulder. I back out of the field with my hands in the air, having no idea why I’m not allowed to cross or why the military is allowed to point their weapons at civilians.

I explore Mexico City for a few days, but I’m anxious to follow Pettie’s advice and find some people who are living very simple lives. I spend one more day in the National Museum of Anthropology getting the barest overview of the rich cultures that are thought to be dead, but may only be dormant beneath the modern veneer. Then I get back on the train and head for Oaxaca.

The trip is the most fascinating train ride of my life. It’s very slow, winding its way through canyons and past villages that look like they haven’t changed in a thousand years. Many of them seem to have no road approaching them. Some are only a few huts along the walls of narrow valleys with streams running beside the track. In most of the villages, there’s no evidence of motor vehicles. The main form of transport seems to be by burro. Mangos, peaches, loquats, citrus and other fruit trees that I don’t recognize are abundant. They appear to be only for local consumption. I see no evidence of a money crop. Sometimes the train moves at the same pace as walkers alongside the track and I’m able to take in some of the village life. The village pace seems as slow as the train. I feel like it’s all a tableau that has been spread for my viewing.

Sometimes the train climbs through barren hillsides for hours where there’s no sign of human intervention. Occasionally we make brief stops in villages where vendors reach up to the train windows to sell tortillas for a few pennies. The train ride takes two days. At night, it’s too dark to see any more of the villages, though I know they’re there from the flickers of candles. In one, a lone bare bulb lights a dusty village square. The night sky is bright with stars, undiluted by city lights. In the sleeping car, I’m lulled to sleep by the swaying cars and the dull kerlump, kerlump, kerlump, kerlump of the steel wheels rolling over the rails.

OAXACA

I have never seen a place like Oaxaca. I spend a week just sitting in the central square, the zocolo, observing the passing scene. All day, crowds walk over the cobblestone pavement under large trees, past fountains and local Indians in tribal dress preparing food over open flames and business people in suits, in the shadow of archways of the Spanish colonial government offices. Tourists speaking many tongues mingle with American hippies, soldiers, police and elegant guests entering and leaving the upscale restaurants. I eat all of my meals in the local market, experimenting. In the market, the vendors are all local and speak no English. In a few booths there are menus, but I can’t read them, so I point and wait to be surprised. Sometimes, when there is no menu, I simply nod when I hear the name of a dish with no idea what is coming.

I attempt conversation with local teenagers who want to learn English. We meet in the zocolo to exchange language lessons. I learn a few words of Spanish–enough to order food, get a place to sleep, and ask directions. Though when the directions are given, I usually can’t understand them and leave saying “gracias” and still lost.

I visit the pyramid at Monte Alban and again play my harmonica in a ceremony of my own invention. I take crowded smelly buses over dusty roads to destinations that are only names on the arrival and departure board at the bus terminal. Sometimes the destination turns out to be nothing more than a circle around a central dysfunctional fountain, or a crossroads with only a house or two. Sometimes it’s nothing, just a name of the place where the bus turns around and heads back. In one of these places, I’m surprised to see several young Americans.

I get off the bus and talk to them. They’re living in one of the mud houses, a beautiful adobe structure with a steep sloping thatched roof. They invite me in.

“Your house may not be up to code by American standards,” I say, “but it feels very comfortable to me. I could live in a structure like this.”

“We came here to experience what life is like for these people,” a young American girl tells me. She is wearing the loose-fitting brown dress of rough brown material that I see so often among the peasant women. “We have been here for six months and they treat us like family,” she says. “They’re wonderful people”.

“It looks like life is hard compared to what life is like in the states,” I say. “Is it?”

“In a way it is, but it’s simple,” she says. “At first, it was hard to adjust to the unsanitary conditions, but that passes in a few days. Money plays much less of a part in the lives of the people here. The most important thing is that the people have more time to just enjoy each other. We spend hours every day just talking. At first, I found myself always thinking that I needed to be doing something. But I got into the vibe of people here and I can’t imagine getting back into the speedy life that Americans lead.”

They try to introduce me to some of the women and children, but they’re too shy, smiling and lowering their eyes. They’re short, obviously Indian, with round faces, the women carrying or surrounded by babies and young children. Their talk is soft, punctuated with laughter. Most of the people I can see in the village are women, the men apparently off to attend to business. I ask the young Americans whether they’re associated with some organization that sent them there. “The human race,” I’m told.

I think of Pettie and his one-liners about tribal living. Before I left, we’d been reading from Gordon Rattray Taylor’s book Rethink and his concept of the Paraprimitives, who live like primitive persons, but in the modern world. I look at the native people around me and think that they’re doing the opposite of what he recommends. They’re adopting the modern world piecemeal and each new import diminishes the beauty that would have been their lives a hundred years before: the diesel bus that growls into the village twice a day with a dust cloud and vile odors, the piles of tin cans and glass bottles behind the house that used to be the compost dump, the broken plastic toys beside the road, the rusting truck without wheels in which the children play, the twisted aluminum awning that serves as a bus stop. Yet the spirit of these people is fine and pure. They’re the ones I like to be around when I stroll through the marketplace; they’re the inheritors of a tradition worth preserving by them and imitating by people like me, whose traditions now verge on bankruptcy.

One day, while I’m sitting in the center of the zocolo, I’m invited by one of the native boys to go for a ride. I’ve spoken with him several times before in our English/Spanish mishmash language. He takes me by the hand and leads me to a car where two older boys wait, one in the driver’s seat and one in the back. They direct me to the front passenger seat. The driver is the older brother of my young friend and the other is a close friend or relative. They drive me to a hillside north of town that overlooks Oaxaca to the south and Monte Alban to the west. On the way, a newspaper is produced from somewhere in the backseat. It has been rolled into a cone shape and is filled with strong-scented marijuana. We stop on the roadside. The driver produces a pipe, fills it from the newspaper cone, lights up and passes it to me. We sit and smoke with the windows open, careless of who might smell the smoke. Everybody is silent and meditative. After a few minutes, the driver turns to me and speaks. He has apparently rehearsed what he was going to say and speaks it well. He says: “You are one of us.” Then he drives on to the overlook.

I stand and look out over a brown valley with a stream cutting a green trail through its center. The stream turns in front of us and flows off to the north. The subtle wind blows in the opposite direction of the stream. As I watch, three heron-sized birds ride the wind, gliding effortlessly a hundred feet above the stream, their wings never moving. I watch them as they bank, following the course of the stream, and disappear in the distance. Monte Alban to my right sits atop a mountain that had been flattened and leveled to accommodate the pyramid. To the east across the valley, I see another mountain with the same unmistakable contours. It also had been altered by some long-dead people and made into a monument of some kind. And further away, I can barely see another with the same lines suggesting that this was once a much greater center of human activity than it now is. I wonder why nobody speaks of these other mountains. They are overgrown and obviously unrestored, but are they also unnoticed? I look at my companions who seem to have read my thoughts as I was staring at the distant vista. They nod their heads in wordless recognition of my discovery.

Charlie Williams shows up one day on the zocolo and introduces himself. He’s a mid-thirties construction engineer, between jobs and getting a look at a different part of the world than New Jersey from which he’d started out in his van on his way to the mushroom fields of Palanque in the Yucatan. He invites me to join him. We set off immediately and drive south into the Chiapas Mountains. It’s dark when we park at the edge of downtown San Christobal de las Casas. In the center of town, on the square, The Beatles blare Let It Be from a phonograph inside a rusting ring of carnival rides. Treacherous as it appears to me, a wobbly Ferris wheel is loaded with Chiapas Indians in their tribal garments.

We sleep in the van and the next morning explore the beautiful city. It’s rich with Spanish architecture, but peopled mainly with Indians from the surrounding mountains. We walk among shops selling artistic crafts and multi-colored garments more varied than those in Oaxaca. I hear German spoken on the street and discover that a German woman has lived here for many years and is a very influential advocate for the local Indians. It’s a lovely day in a lovely place. Charlie wants to drive north. The Chiapas Mountains are very treacherous at this point and he doesn’t want to risk driving through them. I elect to take the bus on to Palanque to meet him there in a few days.

It’s late in the day when I board the bus. This is fortunate, because I will not be able to see what would have been a heart-stopping ride. The driver goes much too fast on the narrow road. There’s no shoulder on the road and often there’s a sheer drop of hundreds of feet. In many places the road is unpaved and too narrow to pass. Before it becomes dark, I see numerous crosses along the roadside. In the darkness, as we roar through the mountains, I see a remarkable sight–thousands of fireflies. This area isn’t desert like so much of the area to the north. The mountains are green and tree-covered. Among them the fireflies float with their lights turned on. They are much larger than the ones I’m used to. And the strange thing is that they don’t blink on and off. They turn on their lights and keep them on.

PALANQUE

I arrive in Palanque in the morning and immediately take a bus to the ruins a few miles from town. Just before noon I buy my ticket and enter the central pyramid. At the anthropology museum in Mexico City, I’d seen a replica of the great stone that was found deep in the heart of the pyramid and read that it’s the only known Mexican pyramid that is the grave of a king. Reaching the tomb requires descending a long straight staircase and doubling back on more stairs. On the way down, I pass people who are on their way up. When I reach the bottom, I hear a voice shouting from above, but can’t understand what is being said, since it’s in Spanish. Then the lights go out.

At first I think there might be an emergency or a power failure, but then I realize that it was simply siesta time. I could climb back out, but I think that this might be a fitting way to be introduced to the Mayan culture, to spend an hour or two in the burial chamber of a king in the total blackness that has been his domain in the center of his pyramid for hundreds of years. I meditate there on my life as a journey, until the lights come back on.

I return to the surface in a high state. As soon as I step into the sunlight, I’m approached by a young Frenchman, who says his name is Alain.

“Would you like some mushrooms?” he asks and holds up a grapefruit-sized plastic bag full of purple and gold mushrooms. I think that he’s offering to sell them to me and I start to decline. I want some mushrooms, but I’ve heard how delightful it is to gather them in the fields and see no need to pay for them. He senses my reluctance and says, “No, take them. They are free. They are good and they are safe. I gathered them myself. Take them.” I thank him and accept the bag.

“We’re visiting the falls,” he says. “You can come. It’s very beautiful.” He’s with an American girl. I introduce myself and follow them for a few hundred yards down a trail to a swift-flowing shallow river. The water is clear and cool. We strip off our clothes and wade into the water. I’ve never seen any place like it. The water is saturated with lime from the surrounding limestone mountains. The lime attaches itself to anything that it flows over, so that, over time, thumb-sized snail shells become as big as baseballs. As the water flows, it forms intricate level terraces, with water flowing over the contoured sides in small stair-step waterfalls. It looks like a place designed by fairies.

I return to the ruins and eat some of the mushrooms at the top of a high stone terrace. Suddenly, I’m overcome with a great joy that is beyond description. It’s so powerful that a torrent of joyful tears pours out of me. A young Mexican girl sees me and is distressed at my tears. She approaches as if she were going to offer help. Then she sees that I’m laughing. I try to explain, but lack the language. I want to thank her for her concern, by saying “muchos gracias,” but in my overwrought state, I come out with “buenos noches.” This brings on more laughter.

I look out over the beginning of the level plain of the Yucatan where it reaches all the way to the Gulf of Mexico and imagine what it might have been like to live here at the point where the mountains rise up, and to be a part of a tribal consciousness at its peak of power. It’s a clear February day, so I decide to walk the few miles back to the town of Palanque. Along the way, I’m surrounded by jungle and extravagantly colored birds, who call out with bell-like voices.

When I get to town, it’s twilight and I’m hungry. As soon as I sit down in a restaurant, a trim American girl with a long face and dark curly hair leans close to my face and says, “May I join you? I’ve got to talk to somebody.”

I offer her a chair. She seems agitated and speaks in a low voice.

“I went out to the mushroom fields today,” she says. “I had read about the mushrooms and I wanted to try them. I live in Washington, D.C. I couldn’t eat the mushrooms there. I would be too afraid of how I might act and that somebody might find out. I’m a therapist and it wouldn’t look right. My name is Mary Turner.”

I introduce myself.

“People had told me where to go to find the mushrooms–out in the cow pasture. I wandered around until I found some. People said the best way to eat them is right there in the field. So I did. They didn’t have any effect that I could see, so I ate some more. I lost track of how many I ate, but it must have been more than dozen. They never had any effect that I could see except that I felt nauseated.

“Then some Mexican men came along on horseback. They saw me in the field and called me over. I speak a little Spanish, but I couldn’t really understand what they were saying. All but one of them went away, and the one who stayed behind got off his horse and came over to me. He invited me to ride on his horse. I didn’t want to ride, but I also didn’t want to be impolite, so I said I would just take a short ride. As soon as I got up on the horse, he got on behind me and started kissing my neck. I told him to stop and he just laughed and tried to get the horse to move. Fortunately it wouldn’t go. He grabbed my breast and I jumped off the horse and ran. I’ve been in my hotel room all afternoon crying.”

As she’s telling her story, a voice within me, activated by the mushrooms, is explaining a version of what has happened to her. It tells me that she’s sexually repressed; all blocked up inside and this prevents the mushrooms from having an effect on her. It said that the energy of the mushrooms acts like a rocket ship pushing away the lid of fear that keeps a person from allowing themselves to feel good. And for that fear to depart, it must be faced. And the voice tells me that sometimes the lid is on so tight that something like this happens to put the fear right out there in front of your face. I’m aware that my own fear of women prevents me from being relaxed and natural. I wonder whether she has sufficiently faced her fear to let her move on toward more intimacy and I wonder whether I’ve faced my own fear enough to govern my intimacy toward her, a woman obviously in distress.

“Would you sleep in my room tonight?” she asks. “I’m still so uneasy that I’m afraid that I wouldn’t get any sleep, if I have to stay there alone.” Since I don’t have any other place to sleep and bedtime is approaching, I agree. She’s staying in the best hotel in town. We enter her room.

“It’s not a question of whether somebody wants sex,” I’ve heard Pettie say. “Everybody wants sex. It’s a question of what situation you require to let it happen.”

Sex is obviously the theme of the moment. I’ve just been invited to spend the night in a woman’s hotel room, a woman who may be sexually repressed. What should I do? I don’t know. I’ve always lacked confidence with women, never taking much initiative. The few times that I did, it turned out badly. Among The Finders, men never initiate sex. I like this style and, after joining The Finders, I quickly became used to it. But I know that, right now, I’m out in the wide world and not with The Finders. And I know that, out here in the wide world, men are expected to make advances toward women. I also know that the voice of the mushrooms that seemed to be speaking to me, might just as easily be egging me on to do something foolish and have to face some fear.

I want to do the right thing, and to do that, I have to find out whether this woman has invited me to her room as more than a security guard. She gives no sign. I know that my own relationships with women are partly based on the fantasy that I’m constantly looking for the movie star mom who’s going to take care of me. I know that my intuition regarding women is flawed or absent and that I don’t know what to do in this situation. I’m thinking that she lives in a world where men take the lead. Maybe I can make her more at ease, if I offer to give her a shoulder massage to help her relax.

I do. She accepts, but doesn’t remove any clothing. I touch her, very lightly at first and then apply more pressure. Her shoulders are like knotted ropes. I can’t soften them, though I try for a long time. She gives no sign that she wants anything more than a massage and, when my hands are tired, I leave to use the bathroom. When I return, she’s under the covers in bed. I strip to my shorts and slip in beside her. The bed is small, but I’m careful not to touch her. I wait long into the night for her to touch me. She never does and I finally fall asleep. The next morning she boards the train and heads back to Washington.

Charlie arrives and I do a more thorough tour of the ruins. I’ve been told that mushrooms have no effect if eaten two days in a row. Charlie decides to wait until the following day so that we can eat them together. It rains hard that day. A good sign, since the psilicybe cubinsis is supposed to be at its prime on a cool dry morning after a rain the day before.

Next morning it’s cool and dry and we head for the mushroom fields. I wander the pastures for an hour and find nothing. Other people are out in the fields. I wonder whether they’re finding any mushrooms. It’s a cattle-raising area of lush green pastures, exactly the kind of place the mushrooms love. They grow only on cow pies of a certain age, not fresh and still soft, not dry and disintegrating. They’re easy to identify with dark purple spores on their undersides.

Finally, I spot one. It’s a huge phallus pointing straight up. I pick it and eat it immediately. I’ve always heard them described as magic mushrooms. Within a minute or two of eating it, I understand why. Everywhere I look there are mushrooms. Where a few minutes before the field was bare, now there are hundreds. It certainly seems magical to me.

Charlie and I have become separated. I look around for him. Everything is in slow motion now. As I turn my head looking for him, I hear snapping noises as if electric currents are being broken and reconnected. I can’t locate him and walk back to town. On the way, a van stops and offers me a ride. The town is overrun by young travelers from Europe and the U.S., so I’m not surprised when they stop. It’s driven by an American who has obviously been burned over much of his body. His face is completely covered with scar tissue. I introduce myself. He shakes my hand, but for some reason declines to give me his name. With him is a beautiful young blonde, who introduces herself as Deena Dickinson. They invite me to drive with them out to “the waterfall.” I think they mean the waterfalls that I’ve already visited. But it turns out to be another about 15 miles out of town.

By the time we get there, the mushrooms are at their peak. We park beside a clear river and start down a trail. My shoes are in my backpack. I walk the last quarter mile to the falls barefoot over hot stones. I feel nothing. It’s as if I’m flying. But a few hours later, my feet are blistered and I can hardly stand. The river runs through a tropical forest to the edge of a cliff and falls fifty feet straight down into a deep round pool. Along the cliff walls are wildflowers and vines with huge green leaves. I can see about twenty young travelers swimming and climbing on the sides of the falls. Everybody is naked. The smell of cannabis occasionally wafts through the air. I strip off my clothes and plunge into the pool. Swimming on the surface, I look in the direction of the sun and am amazed to see a rainbow. But, instead of the horizon-to-horizon rainbow arc, I am looking through the hole in the center of a rainbow that has taken wings and formed a perfect circle formed in the spray from the falls.

FEDERALES

Toward evening, two policemen arrive. “Federales,” somebody shouts as their brown uniforms appear in the distance. They walk down to the water’s edge unsmiling and look around. The naked bodies are suddenly covered. The officers stand about for a few minutes, then squat beside a blanket that has been spread out on a rock beside the pool. One of them reaches in his pocket and pulls out what appears to be a joint. He tosses it onto the blanket and looks around.

“Theese yours, mon?” he says with a look of great seriousness, pointing to the joint and then to the guy who’s closest to him. “You go to prison, mon.” The two of them continue to squat by the blanket, waiting for a reaction from the young American. I’d heard stories of how the federales extract money from foreigners by pretending to find drugs on them and then taking a bribe to let them go free. Nobody says anything for a long minute.

Then, as if they could contain themselves no longer, the two policemen break into hysterical laughter and slowly walk back the way they’d come, leaving the joint behind. It was a sobering experience and left everybody not knowing what to expect next. Within a few minutes everybody leaves.

I decide to stay, not wanting to walk on my blistered feet. I have my pack with me and am prepared for camping out. In my pack, I have a hammock, a blanket, a piece of plastic to keep off the dew and two potatoes. I send word back to Charlie where I’ll be. I bake my potatoes in the ashes of a campfire and retire early. It’s a wondrous night. The waterfall pool is in a grove of giant mahogany trees. I string my hammock between two of them at the edge of a pasture so that I can see the stars.

Charlie arrives in the morning. It’s rainy and we decline to swim. We drive back to town, stopping several times to let giant tarantulas cross the dirt road in front of us. On the way into town, I notice that I have ticks on my body. Charlie lets me out at a river so that I can try to wash them away. When I strip off my clothes, I discover there are more than a hundred of them all over me. Apparently sleeping next to a field of cows is a bad idea. Deena Dickinson is there, parked beside the river. She loans me some soap and we fall into conversation. She leaves no doubt as to her intentions and says she would rather be traveling with me. I tell her that she’s welcome to come along, but that I’m traveling with only the pack on my back and it will be different than riding in the comfort of a van.

Charlie and I lounge around for the next couple of days, sitting in cafes, drinking coffee and philosophizing. We don’t do any more mushroom or pot. I’m getting worried about the burned bottoms of my feet. They have cracked open and are oozing liquid. I fear that they might become infected. That evening, a carload of Americans is heading north. Charlie and I exchange addresses. I get into the back seat of a Volkswagen Beetle and ride all night to Vera Cruz, where I take a bus to Mexico City and a plane back to Washington. A few weeks later, I get a letter from Deena Dickinson inviting me to join her in San Francisco, but I lose the letter and never hear from her again. Charlie stops by on his way back to New Jersey, but I’m not at home and miss him.

CHAPTER THREE

IT

When I get back to D.C., I tell Pettie of my adventures and of the experiences with the mushrooms.

“I’m all for mushrooms,” he says. “But then I’m for everything. So it may not mean much. The context is the most important thing. It sounds like your context was pretty good, but I recommend that people limit their use of pot smoking and that sort of thing to celebrations. If you don’t have anything to celebrate, wait until you do. If you can’t wait, then go ahead. It’s best to yield to a strong desire. But, if you can discipline yourself and wait, it will build your character and help you to discover your own true nature. You were sort of on a vision quest and that’s another time when mushroom or peyote might be appropriate. The problem is that so many kids around here are just doing it for kicks and they don’t have the right context for it.”

I ask him what he thinks of Carlos Castaneda and his experiences with Don Juan.

“I think that there’s some good stuff in his books, but there’s a good chance that he just went out into the desert somewhere and took some LSD. There’s a good chance that Don Juan doesn’t exist. It makes fairly interesting reading, but you can’t get what he’s looking for from a book. All books are good for is to confirm insights that you have already had on your own. It’s dangerous to read too much. If you want to read about other peoples’ experience in reaching out toward the great mystery, the one that I like the best is Zen in the Art of Archery, by a German named Eugene Herigel.

“Of course you can’t get it from drugs either. All you can get is a simulation of what you’re looking for. And it’s dangerous to do too many of them, because you might start to think that you have got it, when all you’ve got is a big ego.”

“What is ‘it?’” I ask.

“It doesn’t have a name,” he says. “It can’t be taught and it can’t be bought. But it can be sought and it can be caught. Every little baby has it. Somewhere along the line people lose it, usually from going to school. I never lost it. I caught on early in life that most of the people that I came in contact with were trying to get some leverage over me. So I rejected all authority at an early age. It’s all power. That’s the only thing worth studying, power. The other things that you can focus your mind on are interesting, but if you don’t know that power is at the heart of everything, then you will get off the track. If you do know that, then everything else falls into place.”

“When did you figure that out?” I ask.

“When my younger brother was born.”

“How did it happen?”

“He was born at home and the doctor came. So I asked him where the baby came from. He told me that he brought the baby in his little black bag. I asked him how the baby got into the bag. My mother jumped in and told me that she would explain it to me when I was eighteen years old. I didn’t know what eighteen years old was, but I sensed that I couldn’t trust her, if she was going to keep me from learning at my own pace. So I decided that I wasn’t going to believe anything that adults told me and I was going to get the answers for myself.”

“Do you still trust little kids or have you found any adults that you can trust now that you aren’t a little kid?”

“I think that I’m still a little kid inside, but I trust plenty of people, to some degree. Of course all you can expect when you trust people is that you’re going to get a good kick in the ass. I don’t mind, because I’m running a school for disappointment. Did you know that that’s what this place here is, a school for disappointment? If all you expect out of life is a little disappointment, you will never be disappointed. That’s really what life is all about: learning how to handle disappointment.”

Based on our conversation, I wrote a little rap ditty:

M.D. Pettie walked up to his mom

He said, “Where did you get that baby from?”

The doctor said: “I don’t like to brag,

But I brought that baby in my little black bag.”

He suspected that he smelled a lie,

So he looked his momma right straight in the eye,

He did not quibble, he did not nag,

He said: “How did the baby get in the bag?”

Well, she didn’t recognize the apprentice sage,

She said, “I’ll tell you when you’re eighteen years of age.”

Then the flames rose higher in the depths of his soul,

In a nameless place that never grows old,

He stood up tall and tucked in his chin

And thought, “I’ll never trust an adult again,”

A thought that is thrilling, a thought that is bold,

For a boy two years and two months old.

A LOYALTY TEST

What Pettie said is typical of the kind of talk that happened at W Street. I’d heard it before I left for Mexico. But something is different now. For one thing, the place is full of people. There’s also more talk about organization. Each woman has taken an apartment, but, beyond that, there isn’t much organization. One morning, he says that he’s going to jumpstart the organization and tells me what to do. I park the van under the ginkgo tree in the front of W Street. Then I make announcements individually to each of the women who lives there:

“Pettie has asked me to tell you that he’s about to leave on a trip and he has invited you to come along. He said to tell you that the destination is unknown and we also don’t know when, if ever, we will be coming back. He says that each person can bring one bag with them and that W Street will be turned over to the women who stay behind. The van leaves in one hour.”

At the end of the hour, we pile into the van, Pettie in the front passenger seat and me driving. Some women get in the van and some don’t. When we’re ready to leave, he turns around to the rear and says: "OK, the women who are now in the van are in charge of W Street." We all get out and go back inside. The organization is now clearer. Nobody is asked to leave, but none of the women who hadn’t gotten into the van remain at W Street for more than a few days thereafter. He had no legal authority that permitted him to say who was in charge of W Street. But he spoke with such presence and such assurance that his authority wasn’t questioned.

MORNING MEETING

“If ya’ll are going to get anywhere, you’ve got to have an organization,” Pettie repeats often at the morning meetings. “Nothing was ever accomplished without an organization and a plan. If you want to build a house, each one of you could just wander out into the woods and pick up a bunch of sticks, but you wouldn’t end up with much of a structure. You’ve got to have a plan that everybody agrees on and a leader who puts the plan together. I recommend that the women be the leaders, but in my way of thinking anybody can be a woman. Just say that you are and you are. And not everybody has to be in the same organization. Have a brainstorming session on what your highest vision is of how you want to live. People with a shared vision should form an organization. Then pick a leader for the day and move the vision forward a little bit. At the end of the day, come back, relax and then do it over again the next day.”

It’s a good formula for a simple life. We follow it, more or less, for many years. Each day we make lists of the way we want to live. Always the lists are similar, but they grow, over time, as new ideas and concepts are added. Sitting in the attic one night with several other people, I ask Pettie about list making.

“It seems to me that, if we just keep making lists over and over without doing anything about actualizing what is on the list, aren’t we just wasting our time? Isn’t there some way we can act more quickly on the stuff that’s on the list? Why do we have to list the same things over and over? I’m confused.”

CONFUSION

“Confusion is the first sign of wisdom,” he says. “Naturally you’re confused. The whole civilized world is confused and they’re working a mile-a-minute to confuse the rest of it. You’re confused because your natural instincts and intuitions have been repressed by your parents, your teachers and your government. Not just your parents, my parents, everybody’s parents. Today’s parents don’t really want their kids to learn. They all want their kids to achieve, but not to learn. This country is about achieving, not learning. They want their kids to perform in a way that makes the parents look good.

“Do you know what the biggest fear is? It’s the fear of being laughed at. Rannie, how about giving everybody a lecture on southern hypocrisy? You studied it first hand in the house you grew up in. No, never mind. I’ll do it myself. My parents were hypocrites and all of my relatives were too. They would come over to visit my parents and talk so sweetly to their face, but as soon as they got around the corner their negative gossip would begin. They would laugh and talk about what a worthless bunch of layabouts the other couple’s kids turned out to be.

“I don’t have much to do with my relatives, but, if they see me, they will act like I’m their long-lost pal. Then, as soon as I go around the corner, they will start talking about what a lazy bum I am: ‘He keeps hippies on his place. They ought to go up there with some sheep shears and make Marion cut their hair. I drove up in that hollow and it looked like a bunch of long-haired sheepdogs and poodles.’ That’s what parents are afraid of. Being laughed at and talked about behind their back. They want their kids to be normals. I’ve been in total rebellion all of my life against normals.

“Anyway, your parents and your teachers and your government don’t want you to realize your own true nature. They just want you to conform. Anybody who doesn’t do that is a threat. So you’re confused if you grow up in this culture and go through twelve years of having your natural urges frustrated in a classroom. Most of you went through more than twelve. How many years of schooling did you have?”

“Seventeen, sir.” I say.

“Well, naturally you’re confused. But that’s something to be grateful for. Look out the window. All of these people that you see out there walking the street, they’re not confused. They’re just continuing on automatic pilot.

“So that’s what making lists is all about. List-making will help clear up your mind. That’s why we make lists over and over, to dispel confusion. It may take a while, but if you get up every morning and honestly start over again and make a list of what your highest vision is, it will help you. Then you go out and do something. When you get back, take a look at the list and see whether your actions matched your words. Do you think that they will? Maybe some will, and over time, more and more of them will.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” I say. “But I still would like to know how making lists will help to clear up anybody’s confused mind. Would you mind explaining it?”

“This is not the explanatory university,” Pettie says. “This is the experiential university. If you want explanations, you should walk on down the hill and talk to the Jesuits down at Georgetown University. They’ve got explanations for just about everything. That’s the trouble with the schooling that you all went through. The teachers were all answering questions that you hadn’t asked yet. Questions are what is important. Relevant questions and tentative answers. As soon as you get an answer, you trade it in for a better question. Pretty soon you will start to know something.

“So start your meeting off with a list of what questions you’re working on. If you don’t know what question somebody is working on, you may be headed down the wrong track. You may think that Stan is working on the question of how to start the best community on the planet and what he really wants to know is how he’s going to get a little pussy. Of course, you can just assume that all males are working on that, so there’s not much use in putting that on your list of the most important questions.”

THE S.E.C.

One Monday morning in 1974, I get a phone call from a man who identifies himself as Matthew Brodsky. I’m not there at the time and he leaves a message with Barbara. He says that he’s a lawyer with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He tells Barbara that he wants me to come to his office on Wednesday morning at 10 AM He tells her that, if I don’t call him back and agree that I’m going to show up, he will issue a subpoena.

I am pretty sure that I know what the call is about. I’d been an officer and a member of the board of directors of two successful ventures: Comprehensive Resources Corporation of New York and Geodynamic Oil and Gas of Philadelphia. I’d run the Washington office for both. My function was to raise venture capital in the D.C. area. I’d succeeded and lots of money had come in. But I hadn’t had much influence and no decision-making authority in the companies. I’ve heard that both companies are being investigated because of the highly leveraged investment structure that resulted in extremely good tax benefits for those who invested. Both companies had successfully completed two public offerings and many private placements and I was sure that the government wanted to prevent other companies from using the same financial structure before it became a threat to federal revenues. Already a revision to the Internal Revenue Code was being deliberated which would stop anybody else from doing what we’d done.

Before I call him back, I ask Pettie’s advice. “Just go on down there now with an empty mind and see what happens,” he says.

I call the S.E.C. and speak to Brodsky. “There’s no reason to wait until Wednesday,” I say. “I’m not booked up. I can come on down right now.”

“No, we don’t want you here until Wednesday,” Brodsky says. “If you’re not going to cooperate, I can issue a subpoena.”

“I am trying to cooperate,” I say.

“I have a court reporter coming in on Wednesday morning and that is the time to come in.”

“OK,” I say and hang up.

Then I immediately get on the bus and head for Brodsky’s office at the S.E.C. When his secretary goes into his office and tells him my name, he immediately comes out and says, “Sir, I told you that we don’t want you here until Wednesday. We’re not prepared for you now. Do you understand?”

I say nothing.

“We’re going to take your deposition. We have to have a stenographer here for that purpose and that is going to happen on Wednesday, not before. Since you’re here, I’m going to serve you with a subpoena. Would you please have a seat while I prepare it.”

He disappears into his office.

I take a seat. It’s a large room with eight secretaries working behind eight desks. The S.E.C. lawyers’ private offices are behind the desks. It’s a cold day. I’m wearing a business suit and overcoat. While I’m waiting, I remove my overcoat. For some reason that is beyond my conscious mind, I then remove my suit jacket, then my vest, then I remove my tie, then my shirt and then my undershirt. As I’m removing my shirt, I notice that a couple of secretaries who have been eyeing me get up from their desks and leave the room. By the time my undershirt is off, every secretary has fled, including Brodsky’s, who has gone into his office. Immediately he emerges from his office with the subpoena in his hand. He finds me standing naked from the waist up with my garments draped over my arm. His manner is very different. He addresses me like he’s talking to a mental patient.

“Thank you for coming in today, sir. Now this paper that I’m giving you is called a subpoena. It’s an invitation to come back here to the office in two days on Wednesday. And it’s a serious invitation. If you don’t accept the invitation, a policeman will come and get you. Now, you wouldn’t want that to happen, so I hope you will come. Do you understand?”

I take the subpoena from his hand, but say nothing. As I walk out he says, “Thank you for coming in.” When I walk down the hall, I see people peering at me from the offices on either side. Word has spread that there’s a maniac on the loose. I enter the elevator and the door closes, but I don’t press the button until I’ve put all of my clothes back on. When I reach the first floor, I emerge dressed like every other male in the building, but I cannot restrain my laughter.

I take the bus back across town grinning all the way. The next morning, Tuesday, I show up again at Brodsky’s office. Brodsky comes out of his office again and says,

“Hello, Mr. Terrell. I really appreciate your coming in, but there may be some confusion. It’s tomorrow that we want you to be here. Tomorrow, Wednesday.”

I leave in silence. When I show up on Wednesday for the deposition, I suspect that the S.E.C. has given up any idea that they might try to make any kind of a case against me, not that I’d broken any law. Neither had any of my associates in the companies. Nothing comes of the S.E.C. investigation, but my office-emptying striptease had removed any possibility of being hassled by the investigators. My former business associates spent months in dealing with the S.E.C. and spent thousands in legal fees to defend themselves. But I never hear another word from Brodsky or the S.E.C.

KIVAS

Soon after moving into W Street, Pettie introduces the idea of separating the genders. For months, many people have been crowded into small apartments. Suddenly we have 12 apartments to spread ourselves among.

“In every primitive culture that I’m aware of,” he says, “the males live together in one place and the women in another. Most of the time, after a woman reaches sexual maturity, she has her own space, particularly if she pairs off with a man. But there’s always a men’s house. They call it a long house or a kiva, different names in different tribes, but it’s pretty similar. It’s a place where unmarried males sleep and spend their time together. In some tribes, a woman who enter one of these places could lose her life. We’re not going to be that strict, but I’m suggesting that we start the practice of having a men’s apartment or apartments. You don’t all have to live in the same kiva.”

RON ALLEMAN

One day Pettie says to me: “There’s a fellow living out at the freestate who sounds interesting. Would you like to check him out?”

“Sure,” I say. “What should I know about him?”

“I don’t know much,” he says. “He says his name is Ron Alleman. He’s retired military–actually not retired according to Isabelle–but he had sixteen years in. And he talks about me like he knows me, but I don’t think I’ve met him. He lives in a little travel trailer; walks down to visit with Isabelle every day. That’s about all I know.”

That night I drive down to Nethers and establish myself in the Hill House, one of two cabins on the property up the hill from the main house. When it’s becoming dark, I walk over toward the travel trailer, which is parked in the open with a pickup truck attached to it. I approach very slowly trying to read the writing that covers the truck before making contact. Before I can get close to the trailer, I hear a voice. “Come on in.”

I enter and see a wiry, muscular man of medium height with dark hair sitting at a desk, smoking a cigarette and drawing. “I heard you out there and figured that you were trying to sneak up to spy on me, so I thought I might as well invite you in. My name is Ron,” he says, sticking out his hand.

I introduce myself and say that The Stroller has sent me down to meet him and find out if there’s anything that he needs. I tell him that Isabelle speaks well of him and The Stroller thought that we should get to know each other.

“Well go ahead and ask me questions,” he says. “I don’t have any secrets.”

“OK. I’ve heard that you’re a veteran, but I don’t know anything else. Would it be appropriate to just ask you to tell your life history?”

He sits for a long time as if gathering his thoughts, his expression very serious. Finally he says:

“I was an orphan boy. I knew my brothers, but we lived in different houses. I started out in Marion, Indiana, but I moved around quite a bit, sometimes with some relative, sometimes living with strangers. As soon as I was big enough, I ran away. They caught me and brought me back a few times, but I always ran away again. Finally made it when I was sixteen and nobody bothered me anymore. I had a little brother, who used to hang with me, but he got killed in a railyard accident when he was eight years old. I used to blame myself for it. I was with him at the time. But I’ve forgiven myself for it now. I got some other kin, but I don’t bother them and they don’t bother me. I didn’t get much schooling. Didn’t get along with the teachers. I joined the army as soon as they would let me in and did sixteen years. Worked my way up to sergeant a couple of times, but they busted me back for some foolishness that I’m not proud of.

“Spent several years in Korea. Learned the language from a sweet Korean woman. I wish I was still there with her or that she was here with me. They are great people, the Koreans. I was trained as an underwater demolitions expert and saw a little action in Vietnam, but nothing to brag about. I was married once. I’ve got a daughter somewhere. My mother lives in Florida. In Orlando, I believe. We don’t talk.

“That stuff that you were trying to read on the truck is the saying of Maharah Ji. I think that he knows where it’s at. I wouldn’t call myself a disciple, but I like what he says. You can tell Mr. Pettie that everything that I’ve heard about him makes me think that he’s about the wisest man in the world. Isabelle don’t agree with me, but everybody else tells me about the things that he says and does.”

“Have you met him?” I say.

“He gave me a ride up the road one time, but I never have talked to him. I’d like to, though. I’d like to come into D.C. some time and meet him, if that’s OK.”

“Sure,” I say. “We have three apartment buildings. I have an apartment in one of them. You would be welcome to stay at my place. Normally, the women control the individual apartments and the men live together in one. But the Stroller has suggested that we attract more people and fill the place up. So each man and each woman has taken an apartment. I set a goal for myself of getting a ton of men into my apartment. I put a scale at the front entrance and I’m weighing in each new person when they arrive. So far I’m up to fifteen hundred pounds. It took eight guys plus me to get to that weight. There’s lumber on the back porch and a stack of foam pads. Each new person just builds themselves a bed. There’s no charge. But most everybody puts in a dollar a day and that more than covers the cost of the place. You don’t look like you weigh more than a hundred and fifty, but every ounce counts.”

“What kind of people live there?” he asks.

I am thinking that Ron would be an OK guy to have in the apartment, but I want him to know the kind of characters he might be getting in with.

“Weirdos and crazies,” I say. “We’ve got two who climbed over the fence at the White House trying to get to the president, not to harm him in any way, just to talk to him and tell him where he’s off the track. The guards caught both of ‘em. One of them has made the papers, because he tried it so often. His name is Gerald Gainus. They’ve locked him up in St. Elizabeth’s a couple of times, but he keeps coming back and climbing the fence.”

I am tempted to tell him about the other oddballs who live there, but I decide I’ll let him discover for himself. But he wants more.

“Who else?” he says.

CRAZIES

“The other guy who climbed the fence is named Foster McKinsey,” I say. “He’s a big guy who was referred to us by Ron Kahn. Kahn was one of the people who comes around from time to time to listen to Pettie’s jokes and pokes. Kahn got a call from McKinsey’s mother. I don’t know how he knew her, but she was asking for help. McKinsey was coming to D.C. on the train. When the train stopped in Philadelphia, he got off and wandered out of the station to the bridge over the Schuylkill River. He fell in love with one of the eagle statues at the end of the bridge and just sat there gazing at it for two days until somebody decided he was crazy. They put him into a mental institution and contacted his mother.

“She asked Ron Kahn for help and he drove up to Philadelphia and brought him home. But his mother wouldn’t let him stay with her. So Kahn called and I took him in. I like him. He’s weird, but he’s never dull. He claims to be a graduate of Yale. He says his father was a diplomat who retired from the state department and left a rich widow. You would never know he was a Yale man. He’s a white Rastafarian who claims he spent some time in a Jamaican jail. Sometimes he lapses into a Jamaican accent.

“He’s not just crazy, he’s a rock star. He’s got a punk rock group called Root Boy Slim and the Sex Change Band. He’s Root Boy. He’s wild on stage and just as crazy off.”

“Doesn’t sound like my type,” says Ron. “Who else?”

“There’s a guy named Steve Fox. He’s an overeducated fool who runs his mouth all day long about politics. He gets so excited in his political harangues that he almost gets into fist fights with the other people in the apartment.”

“Don’t worry about me,” says Ron Alleman. “I can handle myself.” He gives me a look of supreme confidence that might have been built in bar rooms and back alleys.

“Fox claims that he’s running for the Senate from Arizona, but he’s broke and you’d better watch your wallet around him. Another person living there is Cleve Simmons. He’s probably the most reliable of the bunch, but he has a shady past. He has alluded to doing some jail time. A bunch of us were working for a moving company called Poor Man’s Movers, owned by two good guys, Pizza John and I forget the other guy’s name. We’re in the back of this moving truck with our legs hanging over the edge and this guy, Cleve, is riding a bicycle behind us. He looks up and Big Jim says, ‘Want a ride?’ We stop at the corner of 17th and K in downtown D.C. and Cleve lifts his bike right up into the truck and rides off with us. He helped us with the moving job and then he just moved right in. It turns out that he’s got a girlfriend and she moves in with Diane.”

“Who is Big Jim and who is Diane?” says Alleman.

“Diane Sherwood. I thought maybe you knew Diane. She lived down here in the Hill House for a while. Do you remember a blonde woman living there with a skinny guy?” I say.

“Oh yeah. I know her. Very nice lady,” Ron says.

“Big Jim is James Samuel Clemons. He also has an apartment and is trying to pack it with fools. He’s an interesting guy. He’s the one that Steve Fox taunts and has almost gotten into a fight with. Jim is an intellectual from a place called Okolona, Mississippi. You don’t give me the impression that you’re an intellectual, but you will like Big Jim. He has a good heart.

“It’s interesting how he got there. He answered an ad that was run by Dave Pettie. You know Dave, The Stroller’s younger son? The ad was for people to share a house in Arlington. Jim went there and talked to Dave. Dave is the last person that anybody would accuse of being an intellectual. He dropped out of high school in the tenth grade and when the principal came around and tried to get him to come back, he said to Dave, ‘Don’t you know that you can’t even get a job as a garbage collector unless you have a high school diploma?’ Dave told him that, if he ever wanted a job as a garbage collector, he would come on back to high school.

“Anyway, Dave listened to Big Jim talking his intellectual stuff and the more he talked, the clearer it became that Big Jim was in the wrong place. Then when Jim was leaving, Dave handed him a piece of paper. Jim says, ‘What’s this?’ Dave says, ‘the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.’ So Big Jim comes to the address on the piece of paper and that’s W Street.

“Big Jim doesn’t live in my apartment, but he’s around there all the time and you’ll meet him. There are several more characters living there, but you’ve got a feel for the place. Come on up whenever you want and I’ll be glad to see you.”

He offers me a cup of liquid and it’s the worst tasting tea I’d ever tried to drink. “What is this?” I ask.

“It’s my own mixture,” he says. “Black strap molasses and creek water.”

I try sipping the tea while I listen to him tell about some of his experiences of living in the freestate. Inevitably we drift onto the subject of consciousness-changing substances.

“I found some jimsonweed,” he says. “You know locoweed? I read about how Don Juan gave some of it to Carlos Castaneda, so I made a tea out of some of it.”

“That’s not the tea you just gave me, is it?” I say, feeling a little apprehensive.

“No, no, that’s just this stuff,” he says handing me a bottle of dark syrup. “I drank a cup of the locoweed tea and I guess it made me loco. Maybe I was loco before I drank it, but I’m pretty sure that I am now. It didn’t seem like it had any effect for about two or three hours. Then I looked up and there was a woman sitting right there where you are. She came right into this trailer and didn’t say a word. She didn’t open the door and come in. She was just there. Didn’t say a word. I didn’t say anything either. I don’t know who she was or what she was. She just sat there. We never said anything. I got up and moved around, but she never moved. I cooked my food and offered her some, but she didn’t take any. I went to sleep and when I woke up, she was still there. She stayed there three days and then she just disappeared. Pretty strange.”

ALLAN SCHOEN

Ron Alleman is a heavy cigarette smoker. After he moves to W Street, he tries to give it up several times, but, when he does, he becomes so negative that nobody wants him around.

“I started smoking cigarettes when I was eight years old,” he says. “I guess that I’m going to smoke ‘em till I die. I figured it up one time. I’ve smoked pretty close to a million of ‘em.”

He’s now in the financial pool. His occasional jobs bring in a trickle of income, but his cigarette habit is expensive and there’s some resentment among the rest of The Finders who don’t smoke. Somebody brings up his smoking in a meeting. Nobody has any solutions, so the problem is taken up to Pettie. We have evolved a system where Pettie isn’t bothered with day-to-day routine matters. He is only consulted when problems can’t be solved.

When asked about Ron’s smoking, Pettie suggests that the group take out an insurance policy on Ron and then nobody would complain as he smoked himself to death. This causes a big laugh and everybody wants to do it, but they are concerned about Ron being able to pass the physical exam for the insurance. So Pettie suggests that Rannie, who’s then in his twenties and the picture of health, should take the exam for Ron.

So, it’s all arranged. An insurance company is called and a policy is bought. The medical guy who’s to conduct the exam is named Allan Schoen. He shows up at W Street with his little bag of probing and poking tools and his forms and Rannie introduces himself as Ron Alleman. The exam is conducted and he’s found to be more than insurable. He’s found to have a body that is twenty years younger than it should be based on the information in the application. Schoen is curious.

“What kind of a place is this?” he says. “I can tell that it’s not a single family situation. Are you into health and nutrition? I’d like to know more of what goes on here. Is this some kind of a health commune? Mr. Alleman is the healthiest 45-year-old I’ve ever seen”

He’s so impressed that within a few days he moves in. Eventually, he learns of the ruse, but twenty-five years later, he’s still a part of the group. And Ron Alleman is also alive and still smoking in his seventies.

STEVE BELTZ

One day Pettie gets a phone call from Steve Beltz, who says that he has a problem. He’s living in a mansion in Coral Gables, which he would like to buy, but doesn’t know how to do it. I don’t know anything about Beltz. Pettie suggests that I just head down to Florida rather than try to get information about him ahead of time. I take a plane to Miami immediately and Beltz meets me at the airport.

He has a bald bullet head and a wide smile, which he perpetually exhibits. He talks in a continual monologue with a heavy Jersey Shore accent in a style that immediately endears him to me. On the way from the airport, he wastes no time telling me his story:

“My earliest memories are of hiding under the boardwalk in Atlantic City and listening to the people up above. I had a great childhood hanging around the concessions, except that my father was always at me to perform. He died early, but I was already programmed for a type A personality. So I went off to Penn State and got a Ph.D. in psychology. I’m Dr. Beltz. In fact, I used to have a television program in Philadelphia called Ask Dr. Beltz. I was a television pioneer. Before that, I was on the radio. People would call in with questions and I would do the best I could to answer them.

“It was great. I was on television all the time. I was even on the Johnny Carson Show. I had my private practice and the publicity kept it growing. I wrote a few books and I was doing about as well as anybody in my profession. I used to go to all of the professional meetings and meet all of the big names. I went to one up in Boston and Baba Ram Dass turned me on. He gave me some LSD. His name was Richard Alpert in those days. After that, I got restless and wanted more than a professional life. It seemed phony. So I bought a school bus. The Stroller probably told you how I met him when I drove the bus down to his place in Nethers.”

“No,” I say. “He didn’t tell me anything about you, except that you were an interesting character.”

“Well, I took my family around the country in a big yellow school bus. We’ve still got it. It’s parked over at the property. You’ll see it. We took a bunch of other kids with us. I’ve got five kids, four girls and a boy. But we had five or six more with us. We toured the west. It was great. We went to the first Rainbow Gathering and I’ve been going every year since.

“Let me tell you what’s happening now. We found this great house and we have it for now, but we don’t know how long we’ll be able to keep it. It was the original house of the owner of a big piece of land that’s being cut up into lots and sold to rich people. It’s a mansion–you’ll see. We’ve got a great scene here. You’ll see. We’re going to have a big circle tonight with all of the people in the community to talk about how to keep the place. It’s now owned by some developers who are either going to tear it down or convert it into the community clubhouse for the whole development.”

“Can I ask you a few questions?” I say.

“Sure,” he says. But before I can ask any, he’s telling more about himself.

“I’m trying to get myself into a position where I can pull back. I’ve started the scene here, but the demands on my time are too great and I need more time for reflection. I want you to meet Peter Robins. He’s my right-hand man. I’ll have him do a tarot reading for you. He’s incredible. And you should meet Ellen Schachter. She’s my astrologer.”

We pull into a coconut palm-shaded enclave with a long circular drive and parking area. Two outbuildings and a large manor house on the canal are surrounded by mangroves. We enter the house through a series of French doors that run the entire length of the first floor revealing a huge central area like a ballroom. On the east end is a large kitchen and dining room and on the west end, what must have once been a library. On the second floor are many bedrooms and on the third, servant’s quarters. Kids are everywhere; they appear to be in their teens or early twenties. All have long hair and they’re dressed appropriately for the Florida winter, with few clothes.

Steve gives me a tour of the house and introduces me to his wife Judy. People are preparing a feast in the kitchen. In a few minutes it’s set out on a blanket in the center of the ballroom. Gradually, as it gets dark, more people arrive and join in. Eventually, they gather themselves into a large circle. There are perhaps forty people by the time the meeting starts. Steve begins by asking everybody to join hands and be silent for a moment, then he starts speaking.

“We have a tradition here that we speak in a circle. I know that most of you have been here before and know how it works. But there are some new people, so just let me say that we don’t interrupt anybody while they’re speaking and we try to keep it short so that everybody gets a chance to speak. When it’s your turn you can say anything that you want, but we try to keep it positive.”

Several joints are being passed around the circle.

“This is really a cool place, man. And I dig talking in a circle,” says the first person.

Steve says, “When you’ve finished, just say ‘pass.’”

“Pass,” is heard and the next person says something like “Ram Dass rules. Pass.”

“Power to the people, man. Power to the people. I can dig it, man. Pass,” says the next.

A few are a little more elaborate.

“I heard of this yogi in India, man, who could make himself disappear. This guy I knew, he walked up to him and said something and the dude started to glow all over and he just disappeared. He had disciples around him and all, and they bowed down to him and he came back. Heavy, man. Pass.”

Some are overcome with emotion.

“This is the way the American Indians talk, you know. I feel like I’m back in a pow wow with all of my brothers and sisters. Pass.”

One says how grateful he is to Steve and Judy Beltz for what they’re doing for the community. Steve then interrupts the circle again to say that there’s no charge for anything, but that they do have expenses and that they are willing to accept contributions. Nothing of substance is brought up in the meeting.

When the meeting is over, he introduces me to Ellen, the astrologer, a trim attractive woman in her twenties with eyes that look like they are always about to squint into a smile. I feel immediate rapport with her, like we have known each other before. I ask her to do my astrological chart. She agrees and brings it to me the next day. She decides to stay over and we share the same bed. In the middle of the night, Judy Beltz joins us.

The next day, Steve and I get down to business.

“What do you think of our community?” he says.

My response is that it’s not a community, it’s just a bunch of dope-smoking hippies that have found a free place to crash, but I don’t say that, because before I can open my mouth, he continues.

“It’s just the beginning,” Steve says. “We’re creating a model that can be replicated anywhere. Marion Pettie is a great guy, but the people around him don’t have heart. They don’t know how to feel. This community is all about feeling. We have compassion for each other. We love each other. I’m not afraid to say it. You don’t hear that word around Marion, but you hear it here.”

“Does your community have a name?” I say.

“People call it ‘Circle House,’ because we always talk by circling. But we never officially named it anything. We want to get everything onto a moneymaking basis. Marion told me that you might be able to help us. He said that you were in the venture capital business. I’ve had a lot of experience with money myself and I could probably do it. But I need to spend my time providing leadership for the community. And I want to write another book. I don’t know whether Marion told you that I’ve written three books. My last one was called How to Make Johnny Want to Behave. It got me onto The Tonight Show, but I didn’t make a whole lot of money from it. The next book will be about community. There’s a great need for it. People all across America are crying out for community.

“So I need somebody to take over the finances of the place. I need somebody who will just see that every bill is paid and that there’s enough in the bank to keep food on the table. And I want to buy this house. The developer says that they don’t know whether they’re going to sell it or what they would take, but I’ll bet if you made them an offer, they would listen. How much do you think it’s worth?”

“I have no idea,” I say. “Why doesn’t everybody here just kick in a couple of bucks a day for use of the place. You would probably have at least a hundred dollars a day coming in and that would be more than enough to cover everything. A hundred dollars a day is enough to pay a $300,000 mortgage and I know that the place isn’t worth anywhere near that much.”

“We put out a ‘Buddha bowl,” he says, “and everybody is supposed to put something in. But not everybody does. Last night we collected seven dollars. So we keep going in the hole supporting the community here and Judy gets upset. We’re almost out of money. A lot of these kids don’t have any money. And most of them don’t believe in money. They want to see money eliminated. So do I, but I haven’t figured out how to do it yet. I hate money. I don’t like to think about it. That’s what I hope you can solve for us.”

I am thinking, money isn’t something that you believe in or don’t. It’s the reality that has been presented to you and you have to learn to relate to it. But I don’t say that. I say: “I’m glad to be your consultant, but I don’t have any ready answers. Are you telling me that the forty people who were in that circle last night, only contributed seven dollars? Sounds like you need some committed people. Let me think about it.”

PETER RABBIT

I spend a few more days in Miami checking out the scene, touring around with Ellen and meeting new people. It’s pretty lively. I’m standing alongside the mansion one morning and I see a very tall man emerging from among the mangroves. He’s reed thin and bony as a walnut, which his weathered skin resembles. He extends his long arm and wraps his hand around mine.

“Hello,” he says, “I’m Peter Rabbit. You look different from the crazies that hang out here. Tell me about yourself.” I say a few words, and he quickly begins telling me his story.

“Have you ever heard of Drop City?” he says.

I admit that I have not.

“We started it as a place for the kids who had freaked out on LSD and couldn’t cope with life. I was out in Haight-Ashbury back when people first started dropping acid. I watched a lot of them just wandering around dazed. Their head were messed up and they were lost. So we got this place up in northern Colorado and started just letting them live on the land. We built some unusual structures up there, domes and stuff out of old cars, and we got some articles written about us. I thought you might have heard of it. I wrote a book about it called Drop City. Pretty good book. Take a look at it.”

We talk for the rest of the day and become friends. He’s a few years older than I am and has led an interesting life.

“A couple years ago some of us got together and started an artist colony called Libre up in the mountains of southern Colorado. Everybody who wants to live there builds their own house. Some great structures there. You should come and take a look at it.”

He tells me that he used to be in the Subud, the spiritual practice from Central Java, but was now more into Native American spirituality including the all-night sessions inside lodges where the men drink peyote tea and experience visions. He has just returned from a trip to Colombia where he’d obtained a vial of hashish oil. He produces a pipe and we sample it. That evening we pile into somebody’s Volkswagen bug, which has an inflated tire in the back seat. Nevertheless we manage to get seven people into it and drive across Miami to an evening of drumming and dancing. I meet lots of kids, with names I can’t remember, except for one, who introduced himself as “Here I Am.”

The next day, I fly back. Pettie meets me at National Airport, as he usually does when his troops return from an adventure. He has been invited down by Isabelle for a feast of bear meat. We drive 90 miles directly to Nethers, talking all the way, and continuing the conversation up the dirt road above Isabelle’s house.

CHAPTER FOUR

ARCHIE DODSON

“Archie Dodson told me that, if I bought him a box of shotgun shells, he’d kill a bear and give me part of it,” Pettie says. “I did and Isabelle said she’s cooking it up. I’ve bought shells for him before and he’s never failed to get one. One time he took me with him and he told me exactly where that bear was going to appear at noon and he showed up there just like he had an appointment at the dentist. He killed him with one shot.”

“Are you a hunter?” I ask.

“I’m a hunter-gatherer,” Pettie says. “I hunt and gather information. But I never have been into shooting animals. When I was a boy, I used to set snares and catch rabbits. I never did it for sport. I always roasted them on a spit. Archie is a master hunter, but he doesn’t shoot for sport either. He eats or sells what he shoots.

“The bear should be good. Isabelle really knows how to cook game. She’s a wonder at any kind of domestic stuff. George and Dave call me The Stroller and they call her ‘The Worker.’ When I first bought the property in Nethers, she wouldn’t go near it, but after she came down a few times, you couldn’t get her to leave. She just goes from morning to night at something. She talks like the whole universe is going to fall apart, if she doesn’t mow that grass and milk those goats. She grew up on a farm near Hancock, Maryland. Her parents were both hard workers. She said that she didn’t like that kind of life and wanted to live in the city. But once she got a taste of it again, it must have been in her bones and she went right back to it. Have you ever met Archie Dodson?” Pettie says.

“No, I’ve heard some of the moonshining stories that people tell about him, but I’ve never seen him,” I say.

“He’s a great character. He’s one of the last of a dying breed. When I first came down here, the hollows were full of mountaineers like him.” We’re walking up County Road 707 where it turns off the hard road and heads up toward Pine Hill Gap.

“This is where Archie lives,” says Pettie, pointing to two tireless school buses that are arranged perpendicular to each other. “His wife Frances has had about a dozen kids, but there are probably only five or six that still live here now. She’s lived around this hollow for her whole life and so has Archie ,except for a brief time in the army. He was drafted in World War II, but he ran off and hid up here in the mountains.”

NETHERS

“When did you buy the land up here?” I ask.

“I bought the first piece in 1951,” Pettie says. “I’d been studying real estate for about six years before I decided to act. It started on the night that the atomic bomb was dropped on Japan. That night something knocked me out of bed. I took it as a sign to start something new. So two things got started that night. George Pettie was conceived and I decided to start learning about property and money. I didn’t decide on this area right away. I started studying up around Camp David in the Catoctin Mountains. That’s where Isabelle came from, west of there. I used to drive the generals up there to meet with Roosevelt and Truman. It’s a good place, but I think that this is better. I studied a lot of places from there all the way south down to Charlottesville and over to Harper’s Ferry, before I decided to concentrate on finding land here. When I came down here, the area was undiscovered and the land was unbelievably cheap.”

“How did you get the first tract?” I ask.

“I was walking along just about here, but I was going in the other direction, down the hill, just below the graveyard. A little kid came running up and grabbed me by the hand. He said, ‘My daddy said to ask you if you want to buy some land.’ I don’t know how they knew that I was looking for land. No outsiders would ever buy in this hollow. The locals around here were too unpredictable and they made any outsiders that showed up here feel uncomfortable to scare people off. They wouldn’t hesitate to administer some kind of midnight justice like burning your barn, if they didn’t like you. Maybe they’d heard that I was looking for land or maybe they just wanted to talk to somebody from the city to laugh at them behind their back. They loved to do that.

“I followed him on back up to the house and met his father, whose name was Sam Finchum. He offered me 80 acres of land and a beautiful house for $3,200. He probably thought that I was going to argue with him and try to get it for a lower price, but I didn’t. I just agreed on the spot. It was a great place. It was all fenced pasture. It had a barn, an orchard, and a clear view of the Old Rag Mountain that was worth more than all of the other stuff put together. The house was made out of pine inside and out. Everything in the house came from here on the land except maybe the nails and the cement. It was built by Brother Dodson, who was related to the Finchums and to Archie. Just about everybody up here at that time was related to each other in one way or another.”

We have turned off the road and walked between two huge boxwoods and into an overgrown yard. Pettie lifts his arm and says “All that’s left of that house is these two chimneys,” pointing to two identical stone chimneys.

“How did it burn down?” I ask. “Was it midnight justice?”

“No, it was another kind of justice,” he says. “I figured that it was just the universe testing me to see if I was attached to it. The way that it started was that a young boy, who was staying there, liked to take saunas. So he brought in a sauna machine and set it up. He turned it on and then went for a walk and forgot about it. That’s what I did when I heard that it had burned, took a walk and forgot about it.”

We’d walked up the hill to the freestate, with him describing the passing scene and telling the history of the mountaineers who had lived there since the 1700s.

“The first log cabin up here is the one behind the main house. It was built in 1790. The main house was built by the Nethers family around 1900. Arnold Nethers was born a poor boy, but he was pretty smart and married the daughter of the Huffmans who owned the mill across the road. There were actually three mills here in Nethers at one time. It was a lot bigger in those days than it is now. The Nethers general store was right across the road and there were two more stores as you go on up the mountain.

“The original settlers around here were Germans. They came over with Alexander Spotswood and settled in what’s now called Germanna. Some of them moved up toward the mountains and started farming the good lands east of here. Some of the same families are still here. They got all of the good farmland. By the time that the Scotch-Irish got here, all that were left was the rocky slopes up here in these hollows. That was OK with them, because most of them were misfits anyway, who couldn’t even get along with their relatives much less anybody else. They moved up into these hollows and started producing offspring and they just filled them up. They scratched out a living by raising a little corn that they ate, milled, and made into whiskey. When they needed money, they hired themselves out by the day to the big farm owners down in the valleys. Some of them had pretty good skills. Archie Dodson is from that tradition. He’s an expert stonemason.

“That’s who I bought the property from. Not Archie–the descendants of those mountaineers. They gradually died out and their kids moved to the city. There are a few of them still living around here, but none of them lives up in the hollows any more. I’m related to a lot of the people around here through my mother, but either they don’t know it or won’t admit it. Jenkins is the most common name in this area. My mother’s mother was Jeannie Jenkins. She married Puller Burke when she was just a teenager and he was an old man. She’s almost 90 now and still alive. Aylett Jenkins, her grandfather, was an early settler in this hollow.

“One of the families that I bought land from up here was named Jenkins, but they didn’t claim any kin to me, even though they were. I bought two acres from Earnest and Sadie Jenkins for ten dollars. They thought they got a good deal. They were two of my favorite teachers. Earnest was a skinny little guy. He served time in jail for stealing a chicken, but got off free for shooting a man. One of Earnest’s prized possessions must have been his gold watch, because it was engraved with his name on it. Unfortunately, he made the mistake of dropping it in the chicken coop on the night he made a raid and they convicted him based on the watch. But another time, he shot a man and the jury decided that the one he killed deserved it and let him off. He also stole some stuff from me.”

“What did he take?” I ask.

“Isabelle had some antique furniture that was fairly valuable. We noticed that some of it was disappearing when we weren’t at home. We didn’t know where it went until, one night, Sadie invited us to dinner. Isabelle’s furniture was all there, arranged neatly in the front room. We just had dinner as if everything was normal and didn’t say a word. They had an explanation to justify it in their own heads. They didn’t say it to me, but the saying was, ‘Some has so much and some has so little.’ I find these mountaineers to be of great interest, but most people think that I’m a big fool for wasting my time with them. They’re interesting to me, but we can talk about anything that you want to talk about.”

“It’s fascinating to me,” I say, and he continues, walking back down the road toward the main house.

“They cost me some money, but you have to pay for your education. Watching them did me a lot of good. One of the properties that I bought is called Little Mountain. Look to your left; it’s up there where the tree line ends. It had a peach orchard up on top. I paid some of the locals to spray the orchard. They just sprayed it with water and claimed that they were treating it with chemicals. I knew what they were doing, but I didn’t say anything. I cultivated an image like I was the gullible professor who could be easily conned and it paid off in the long run.

“Rob Nicholson was the most colorful character that lived up here in my lifetime. He was also a Jenkins, but not legally. He was the illegitimate son of Matt Jenkins and kept on living on Matt’s land after Matt died. It was further up the road where we walked today up at Pine Hill Gap. Matt Jenkins had legitimate children, but none of them would make a claim on the property, because Rob had possession of it and he owned a gun. He lived up there until his wife died and then he moved down here. His wife was eaten by their hogs. Nobody knows whether she was dead before they ate her or not. They found her in the hog pen half eaten.

“I bought 20 acres from Rob for a dollar a day and gave him a life interest so that he could keep living on it until he died. That was in 1954. He died in 1970. He claimed to be 100, but I think that he was actually 90. He’s buried in that cemetery that we just walked past up the hill. He couldn’t read or write, but that didn’t slow him down. He’d traveled around quite a bit and worked in different places. He drew a Social Security check of $40 a month, which he lived on. He saw himself as my protector. He wanted the stealing rights on my property and he didn’t like it if anybody else came in here and tried to take something. Rob was Sadie’s father and the two of them considered that I was their private fool and that they would protect me from other thieves.

“Rob was always coming up with deals. One time, I put up the money and he bought a calf. We grazed the calf here with the idea that when it got grown we would sell it and he would pay me back, then we would split the profit. He sold the cow, but he never gave me my share of the money. Not only that, he came with a shovel and wheelbarrow and picked up the manure that the cow produced and put it on his garden. Another time he asked me to go to the bank with him. He wanted to borrow $50 to buy another cow. The loan officer took me aside and said ‘That old man is no good. Don't let yourself get locked in to his loan. He will just eat the cow.’ But I didn’t care, I was just practicing my art form. So I endorsed his note and the bank loaned him $50. Then I went off to Germany. A few months later I got a telegram from the bank that said, ‘Cow died, send money,’ which I did.

“I bought another piece of property from another Nicholson–Pete Nicholson. There was a bunch of Nicholsons around here. The next hollow to the west is called Nicholson Hollow. Pete was one of four Nicholson brothers who inherited the whole hollow. The main house where Isabelle is cooking the bear was built by Jimmy Nethers, but I bought it after it had changed hands and ended up in the Nicholson estate. The four Nicholsons who inherited it were Gideon, Haywood, Peter and Paul. Two of ‘em turned out to be winners and two were not. The local saying was, ‘Gid and Hay threw theirs away. Pete and Paul got it all.’ So I bought it from Pete. I also bought another 150 acres from Pete’s son James, who took more after his uncles than he did his father. I paid him $100 an acre, and he spent it on fast women and slow horses.”

The bear that Isabelle prepared was delicious. She’d marinated it for a long time and then cooked it like a pot roast until the meat fell off the bones.

PRIORITIES

That night we sit on the front porch of the main house and talk.

“There are two tragedies in life,” says Pettie. “One is not to get what you want and one is to get what you want. Here we are trying to help people get what they want, but I know that as soon as they do, they’re going to find out that it was the wrong thing and want something else. Well, that’s all right too. William Blake said that ‘If a fool will persist in his folly, he will become wise.’ People have been reading that for a hundred and fifty years. A few of them even understand it. But this is the only community that I know of that is trying to put it into practice. That’s about the most important thing that ya’ll could do here, is to gratify foolish desires.

“How do you do that? You can’t satisfy everybody all of the time. So you have to come up with an order to do it in. I’m recommending that you put the children’s desires first, the mothers’ desires second, the other women’s desires third and the men’s last. I have an idea that that is about the way the people living around here a thousand years ago did it. It’s the best formula that I know of for optimal happiness in group living. But I’m not attached to doing it that way. I’m ready to switch over to a better formula as soon as somebody shows it to me. And the parts are interchangeable. Anybody can be a man or a woman, just by saying that is the part they want to play.

“In about every place in the world today, except in some primitive cultures, the men are in charge and they want their desires satisfied first. It would be a totally different world if the roles were reversed. Most of the time, they don’t get around to even asking the women what their wishes are, much less the children. And the women know to keep their mouth shut and get what they want by subterfuge. They have to fool the men. Usually they do it in the beginning by pretending to love his sexual prowess. ‘Oh baby, shoot it to me again. Nobody does it as good as you.’ They get him hooked on sex and then they gradually wean him away and start pretending to love his wisdom. ‘Oh honey, you’re so smart. Tell me again how the transmission on the car works.’ The men get all puffed up and then they can’t do without it. It all gets started by mothers oohing and aahing over their little boys and making them show off to get attention.

“Anyway, in the community that I envision, none of that would happen because we would live by a different value system. Not that we’re doing it now. We’re just talking about it for the moment. But that’s part of the process. First visualize, then actualize.”

WESTERN SWING

The next morning, we drive back to D.C. and arrive in time for a morning meeting, which is just getting going at noon. Ann Struggles is talking and earnestly asking for help in solving a problem. She needs to visit her mother, who’s quite sick and might not live much longer. Her parents live in Los Altos Hills, California and her old junker automobile would not likely survive the trip. The day before, Tom Hickey had asked Pettie what he thought of the Rainbow Gathering and says that he’s thinking of going. Pettie also knows that another Tom, a teenager, named Tom Doozey, who had been interning at the Committee for the Future in D.C., wants to return to Antioch College. So he suggests that we all pile into a van and head west. The next morning we take off.

Tom Hickey has just completed his Ph.D. in philosophy at Georgetown University. He lived at W Street for a time while he was a student. He’s a Transcendental Meditation meditator and interesting conversationalist. In addition to the two Toms, Robo Bardston elects to come along with the idea that he’s going to play music on the street along the way to earn money. He’s a cellist with great musical ability, but lacking in discipline. And there’s Jim Lynch. Jim is a lawyer who has resigned from the Securities and Exchange Commission a few months before to pursue some new career that has not yet revealed itself. He and I are good friends who have spent long hours walking and talking about how the modern business world fails to satisfy human needs. He decides to go along for the adventure.

The first night, we drop Tom off in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and head across the country at a ferocious rate to be sure of quickly getting Ann to her mother. We reach the snow-capped continental divide on the Fourth of July. We’re heading down from the top of the mountain at 70 miles an hour. Hickey is driving. Large piles of dirty snow still line both sides of the road and there are large potholes in the middle, unrepaired since the winter. Hickey hits a large pothole then swerves into another. The car begins fishtailing and skidding sideways. To the left is oncoming traffic and to the right is a steep slope of perhaps a thousand feet. The van is completely out of control. We slide sideways. We skid to the right heading for the precipice, but at the last minute we slam into a guardrail and stop. All that is damaged is a slight dent to the left rear bumper where the impact occurred.

We get out of the car. Everybody is shaking, laughing and crying. Somebody comments that it makes no sense for us to get killed on the way to Ann’s dying mother. We have a meeting and decide that a leisurely trip would be more appropriate from then on. We make stops at the Great Salt Lake and Lake Tahoe before reaching San Francisco.

We head for a “spinoff house,” a place that was started by people who used to be associated with Pettie or were friends of Pettie. It’s the home of Freda Morris, a professional hypnotist and author of The Hitchhiking Hypnotist, and a couple of other books, Lee Sanella, a psychiatrist, Roberta Johnson, a lawyer, and several others who live together in Berkeley. I knock on the door and Roberta answers, “My god,” she says. “We’re having a conversation about you in the other room and you appear at the door. Mind blowing.” We’re invited for the night and have a big celebration.

The next day we take Ann to see her mother. She concludes that it was a false alarm and decides to keep moving with the rest of us. We head south along the coast highway, stopping to explore the craggy coast as we go and picking up hippies along the way. Then we turn left to tour the great American West. After a few days of traveling, Jim gets the clarity that he needs. He knows that his heart is with his family and decides to head back. Robo decides to go with him. We drop them on Route 66 in Flagstaff, Arizona and they begin the adventure of hitchhiking back across the land, two men and a large cello.

A few days later, we drop Hickey at the Rainbow Gathering, leaving only Ann and me. We climb the Colorado backroads of the Huerfano Valley up to the Libre community, where I renew my friendship with Peter Rabbit and hang out for a few days. Peter takes us down to the New Buffalo Commune for a native American celebration. Then we make a slow trip back to D.C., stopping at a few other communes on the way.

When we get back, we find that Robo has left with the cello, which wasn’t his. It had been bought for his use by the community, but he spirits it away in the night.

UTOPIA

“Well, did you learn anything?” Pettie says when I see him.

“I hope so,” I say. “I learned that it’s hard to get along for more than a few minutes when you’re traveling cooped up in a van.”

“That’s right,” he says. “That’s the first step, to recognize that it requires a lot of effort to keep things in harmony. The way things are structured today it’s almost impossible. There’s a super abundance of everything on the planet right now except good human relations. That’s what’s poisoning everything else. And nobody is doing anything about it except repeating the same old patterns. It used to be that everybody alive fitted into some kind of a larger whole. At least in the imaginary tribal world that I talk about. There were no individualists. If you were living as a Sioux Indian and one man and one woman decided to pack up their tepee and move off to the suburbs by themselves, they would be considered insane. They might have been able to survive for a while, because people had much better survival skills then than they do now. But no sane person would want to live like that. It’s not just the Sioux. It’s any tribe. And people knew that for thousands of years. It’s a basic human urge to be a part of something bigger.”

“I know that you’re right,” I say. “I see it every day. What can be done about it?”

“First you have admit that there’s a problem. The people in power now don’t want to change anything because they don’t want the power structure to change. Individualism is one of the worst diseases that has ever affected the species, but politicians and businessmen talk as if it’s the best way to live. They think that you have to stop being an individual if you’re a member of a tribe. The truth is that the American Indians were all great individuals. But they understood loyalty and they put the tribe above themselves. There are recorded incidents where white men cut off the arms of Indians and they still wouldn’t betray their tribe. In fact, they didn’t make a sound.

“But the great American patriots believed in something different and they saw tribes as a problem rather than a solution. They wanted to make this continent safe for real estate speculation so they invented a different scheme for exercising power over the land. They didn’t admit that there’s any problem with human relations and the people in power today still don’t. It will probably take something like an economic earthquake before anybody is willing to change anything. And it will probably have to be worse than the one in the 1930s, although that one was pretty bad. My parents had a hard time with that one. But it was delightful for me, because I was in the army, which was the greatest place for a learner to be at that time.

“So, if you admit that there’s a problem, what can you do about it? Well, you have to have a vision of some better way to live than the way that is causing the problem in the first place. And to get that vision, you could just sit around and dream up something, but that would be likely to just be a fantasy that wouldn’t work. But you don’t have to do that, because you can find out what has already been done and what worked and what didn’t work. If you’re like me and you want to live a utopian life, it makes sense to study the great utopians, Plato, Sir Thomas More, Fourier, Campanella–there are plenty of them. And there have been plenty of utopian communities. People always write about them. So you can learn what went right and what went wrong. You can also see what to look out for. And you better do it, because, if it looks like you’re going to get anywhere, you will be a threat to the existing power structure and they will find some pretext to knock you on your ass.

“So you study the past, come up with a plan for the future and try out some things. They won’t work, but you will learn something from your failure. Then you change something and try again. That’s what we’re doing here. It takes more than saying that you love everybody. I personally think that it’s too hard to love everybody. But you can love people that are on your wavelength and that is all that is necessary. That’s what it means to have a group consciousness, which is what we’re aiming for. If you can do that on a small scale in small groups, then the groups can link up in some way that benefits all of them through personal channels.”

JAN SHAPES

In 1973, the seeds of dissent are sprouting. Gas pumps are empty. The kids who watched as burned Vietnamese babies appeared on television screens are experimenting. Alternative consciousness is packaged and presented to the public and new movements appear like unwanted weeds in every American city: Hare Krishna is heard on downtown street corners throughout the land; posters asking “Who is Maharah Ji?” appear on telephone poles; newspapers advertise yoga classes and offer quick pathways to nirvana via Eckankar, Silva Mind Control and Transcendental Meditation; monks chant and Sufis dance. The Arica movement is one of the new groups. It was founded by Oscar Ichazo, a charismatic Chilean, who was trained as a boy by a Japanese monk. Some of them have been to meetings at W Street. They make a deal with us to take over the nursery, the latest real estate purchased by The Finders. They fill it with devotees of the Arica techniques.

One of them is Jan Shapes. She’s a mid-twenties, confessedly neurotic sailboat looking for the latest breeze. She has a master’s degree in philosophy and a ready laugh, but no job. Somebody tells me about her and I journey over to the nursery to offer her an earning opportunity. The job turns out not to suit her, but she invites me to a sex orgy that is being held that evening at the apartment of Jim Holswell, a fellow Arica practitioner.

I’ve never been invited to an orgy before and I accept. When we open the door, we find six men and six women sitting on pillows in a dimly-lit carpeted room. Moody Blues music plays softly. The air is heavy with the odor of ganja. Everybody knows that they are there for sexual gratification, so preliminaries are few. I am also seeking the kinds of new experience that will overcome my inhibitions. It’s a fascinating experience, but I never quite relax.

A few days later, I invite Jan to visit W Street. When she arrives, several of us are sitting on the floor talking to Pettie. She opens the door and starts to enter, then slaps herself on the forehead and says “Deja vu. My God, I know I’ve opened this door before and seen you all sitting here.”

The meeting goes on. Pettie is talking about the economic situation. “All of the wage slaves are worried,” he says. “And plenty of other people too. Even some of the politicians are worried. It takes a crisis to get anybody to do anything. But what the politicians are willing to do is just rearrange the deckchairs on the Titanic.”

Everybody laughs. It’s the first time that any of us have heard this metaphor and we assume that Pettie came up with it as he frequently did others.

“What has to happen is basic change and nobody will do that,” he says. “Greed is the motivating force now. You see what happens when people have too much power. Nixon is on the run. There have always been some criminals in the government, but this bunch are about the worst.”

The uncertainty of the economic future is good for business, if you are offering to take care of people. The big cults are growing fast. We’re contacted by the Moonies. They are planning a gala affair for Sun Myong Moon when he makes his first appearance in Washington, D.C. The coordination requires months of preparation by dozens of his disciples. They want a place to stay, so we move out of the buildings at W Street and rent them both buildings for $100 per day. For our generosity we’re rewarded with an invitation to have dinner with Moon. It turns out that several thousand others are also invited. We’re assigned seats in the rear of the great ballroom at the Washington Hilton to watch him introduced and translated, under the klieg lights, to the front row members of the D.C. press, who either ignore him or belittle him in the next morning’s papers and television broadcasts.

SYMBOLIC TICKET

In 1974, George and Dave Pettie begin to distance themselves in small ways from the rest of the group. One way involved an airline ticket. My income was high in 1973. To reduce my income tax, I buy ten round-the-world airline tickets in late December and deduct the cost on my tax return as a business expense. We’ve talked about world travel as a part of thinking big, and in our naiveté, we think that it’s just around the corner. But when the need for cash is bigger than the need for travel, the tickets are redeemed–except for one. That ticket is given to Pettie for his use any time he wants it. It’s mainly symbolic, because as a retired member of the armed forces, he has access to military aircraft traveling overseas on a space-available basis.

For years he has traveled the world in this way. “Hitchhiking,” he calls it. His style is to show up at Andrews Air Force Base, look over the flights that are heading out, pick some spot in the world that sounds the most promising and get on board.

He always keeps the symbolic round-the-world ticket in his shirt pocket. One day Pettie’s son George needs some cash to pay bills. When he finds Pettie asleep, he slips the ticket out of his pocket and cashes it. MDP sees the taking of the ticket as symbolic of his standing in George’s eyes, but says nothing to him. Sure enough, George and Dave announce that they want to divide up the assets and take their share, so they can run their own affairs. They have already achieved a high level of competence at anything connected with the building trades. Thereafter, each of them goes on to become a millionaire on his own, but that is years later. For now, they start a construction company renovating houses in Arlington. Their share of the assets is determined to be the house at 5200 North 22nd Street, where George’s wife, Mea Pettie, lives, the Nursery at 5260 North 22nd Road, which is occupied by Jan and the Arica gang, a house on Lincoln Street that is under renovation and a house on the corner of Lee Highway and Adams Street that was recently purchased. Although relations with George and Dave continue to be cordial, it’s clear that they prefer a more conventional life than the unorthodoxy of their father.

PANAMA TRIP

In January of 1975, Pettie says that he would like to take a trip to Panama and suggests that other people meet him there. He says that, to make it an earning and learning trip, we should stop along the way and give away our energy to people that we already know and to new connections that we make on the road. Six of us head south in a van: Barbara, Rannie, Diane, Margaret, an eighteen-year-old, whose flaming hair immediately names her “Red” wherever she goes, Jan, who has moved from the Nursery into W Street, and me.

We spend the first day doing repairs to the home of Rannie’s parents in Richmond, Virginia, where his father is the minister of the Second Presbyterian Church and president of an association of southern Presbyterians. Then south to Tampa, where Barbara’s parents are now retired. I’m told that the reunion with her mother and Little Joe, who is now terminally ill, is very emotional. But I don’t attend. For three days we clean and decorate the new Tampa Art Museum for the grand opening, then act as servers during the event. Next day we cross the bay to Clearwater, where Diane’s parents live in a condo overlooking the gulf. They’re cordial, but say that there’s nothing we can do for them.

Ned Lovell and his wife Carol are old friends of mine with three small children, living in Tallahassee. He’s the Superintendent of Schools for Leon County, Florida, overloaded with work. Carol has no help and their house has lots of deferred maintenance. When we pitch in and clear things up, they are grateful and offer us hospitality.

The next day we drive to New Orleans. Barbara knows somebody at Tulane University, who lets us park the van in her driveway. We have a meeting and agree that we will split up and head out to find leads, and earning opportunities. If we get separated, we agree that we will leave notes in the Encyclopedia Britannica at the library under the listing for Panama.

I head off to the French Quarter. I’m quickly hired as a bus boy by a restaurant called the Court of the Two Sisters, but I cannot go to work until 5 PM. So with plenty of time I walk to the public library and leave a note in the encyclopedia under the heading Panama.

It’s still early afternoon, so I decide to see whether I can earn any money playing music. I find an empty French’s mustard box in the trash and set it in front of me on the street corner of Bourbon and Toulouse. For two hours I wail away on my harmonica and learn what I’m worth as a musician: two dollars, a dollar an hour. It’s 2 AM when I get off work. A waitress and her boyfriend kindly offer me a couch to sleep on at their apartment.

The next morning, I go to the library to look for a note. My note is still there. Nobody has checked. I go back to the place where the van had been parked in the driveway.

“We needed access to the driveway,” I’m told by the woman who owns the house. “Your friends left an hour ago and said to tell you that they were heading for San Antonio. They said that they left a note for you, but you didn’t respond.”

“Where did they leave it?” I ask.

“At the Tulane University Library,” she says.

I had checked at the public library.

My pay for last night’s work at the restaurant is meager. I have eight dollars when I start hitchhiking west on Interstate 10 heading toward Baton Rouge. My first ride lets me off in the middle of the interstate where it forks to the north in downtown Baton Rouge. It’s an impossible situation. I can’t cross the road and the traffic is roaring past. A state policeman pulls over, his light flashing. I see myself getting a ticket or spending a day in jail. “Get in,” he says with a smile. “Pretty bad place to be stuck.” He drives me across the huge Mississippi River bridge and lets me off with a wave.

I catch a ride all the way to San Antonio with a schoolteacher who is returning to get married. He’s drinking heavily from a six-pack of beer on the seat beside him. There’s an empty six-pack on the floor. We switch and I drive while he keeps drinking. He says that he has decided to give up his homosexual life and marry a woman after one last fling in New Orleans. Somewhere between Houston and San Antonio, we stop for the night and get a motel room. As I’m drifting off to sleep, he asks me to hold him. He gets into my bed and I put my arms around him and feel great pity for him, because I know that he’s lost in a world that provides no place where he can be himself.

MERLE PREBLE

I have Merle Preble’s address in San Antonio, where we are expected. I get there within an hour of the arrival of the van. They say that they’d been feeling guilty about leaving New Orleans without me and are elated to see me. I’m glad to know they were feeling guilty, because I resented being left behind, but I don’t say anything to them. Merle Preble, M.D., is a friend who had spent time at W Street off and on for the last two years. He’s a recent medical school graduate in the army doing his internship at Fort Sam Houston. Living with him is Heidi, whom he’d met at W Street a few months before under unusual circumstances.

When Merle arrives for a visit to W Street, Pettie says that it’s a good chance to practice the most generous hospitality. In the usual style in matters of this sort, the men who are there turn any decisions about the sleeping arrangements over to the women, of whom there were three that evening–Jan, Heidi and Margaret. They decide that it would be fun to have a big slumber party on the back porch facing the park.

Beds are arranged and those who are to sleep there are identified by the women. We lie in the moonlight asking Merle questions about his medical practice. In the course of conversation, he mentions that he has a speculum in his bag. The women decide that they want to use it, because nobody has ever seen the inside of a woman’s private chamber. Each woman is thoroughly inspected with a flashlight. Finally, the women confer and announce that any of the three would be glad to entertain Merle for the night and that he can have his pick. Merle has never met any of them before and is unsure of the names, but embarrassed to ask for clarification. He says that he would like to sleep with Heidi. When he’s ushered to Heidi’s bed, he’s surprised, but does not let it show. The next morning, he tells me that he thought Jan’s name was Heidi. But the mistake turns out to be fortuitous. He and Heidi get on great and a few months later, she moves in with him in San Antonio where we’re now visiting.

The day after we arrive, Pettie flies down from D.C. on a military aircraft. Then Simon who had been in Denver also joins us. Simon is a former Chicagoan, former Peace Corps volunteer, grandson of a rabbi and nephew of the author of a Walt Whitman biography. He has a ready wit and a good sense of adventure.

We stay in San Antonio for two weeks, giving our energy to Merle and Heidi, who in turn assign us to Isabeth Hardy, founder of the innovative school that Merle’s son attends. We spend many days doing fix-ups around the school and many hours talking about how to make it profitable. Then we head south.

Pettie says that he will meet us in Panama. I ask him how we will find him. “Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ll find you.” Merle drops us at the border and eight of us begin the journey to Panama, our ranks having been increased by Heidi and Simon. We take buses to Mexico City then to Oaxaca. Barbara, the most influential among us, seems anxious to get this trip over. She’s uncomfortable in situations that she can’t control and does not like traveling on public transport. The idea that we’re to give away our energy and build a network is quickly forgotten. By the time we get to Guatemala City, tensions are running very high and trying to keep everybody traveling together isn’t working. We split into smaller traveling groups with a plan to meet up in a week in Panama City at a designated park.

I get there a day early, tired, my mind dull from listening to the drone of diesel buses. In the Panama heat, I check into a hotel with a second floor room overlooking the park where we’re to meet and lay out naked across the bed, my body covered with an oily sweat. The gauze curtain hanging in front of the open window barely moves in the breeze. I listen for the sound of Barbara’s voice. Barbara has a very loud laugh and she laughs often, so I’m sure I’ll be able to hear her in the park below.

PANAMA CITY

As I listen for her, the sounds coming in from the street gradually become a musical composition, each picking up where the other leaves off. Birds answer each other, car horns punctuate the melody and children’s voices blend with the sound of vendors touting their offerings. Aircraft drone overhead, trucks growl, gears grind and police whistles and church bells all fit into a kind of sound composition that I’ve never heard before. I know that it’s simply a different way of listening and being in the flow of time, but it isn’t something that I decide to do, it has simply seized me and held my attention–my mind empty.

Everybody else shows up later that day, but Pettie never shows. Our days in Panama City are unfocused and our relationships forced and uncomfortable. Some of us spend our time in the Canal Zone, venturing into the business district only when necessary. Both Rannie and Simon are robbed in separate incidents, Simon with an ice pick at his throat, which leaves a small puncture wound. Barbara manages to reach Pettie in D.C. He says this has been a shakedown cruise to see how well we can organize ourselves under pressure, that we have learned a little, but we have a long way to go. He says that he isn’t coming down to Panama and that we should make our way back, but before leaving, we should visit the Cuna Indians in the San Blas Islands.

CUNA INDIANS

Pettie has visited the Cuna several times and knows the name of the chief of one of the islands. He suggests that we go there. We hire a pilot with a small aircraft and fly to the landing strip on Potosi Island. As is the custom, the arrival of an aircraft brings a boat and we’re taken to our destination. It’s one of the larger islands with perhaps a hundred residents, though it’s only a few hundred yards long. We meet the chief of the island, who’s as gracious as is possible considering the language barrier. He speaks some Spanish, but no English nor French. The French ambassador to Panama is staying in the hut next to ours and shares our meals.

The hospitality is basic. We’re provided with three meals and a place to sleep. Our accommodations consist of a hammock strung between posts under a thatched roof hut with a sand floor. The total cost is eight dollars a day. It’s wonderful. There’s nothing to do but swim in the crystal waters over the reef and watch the children playing. They’re the freest kids I’ve ever seen, completely unselfconscious. I watch them for hours as they invent games. As soon as they tire of one game, they drop it and start another. There are no adults nearby. There’s no need for them to be. There’s nothing on the island that could harm the children and they care for themselves, with the older supervising the younger down to the smallest. There are many organized games that are run by the bigger kids. They line up, chanting and moving rhythmically back and forth. The purposes and the rules of some of the games are still not evident to me after watching from start to finish, but it’s clear that the kids are completely engrossed in them.

The images that I collect among the Cunas will remain with me and supply me with a growing admiration for their resistance to technology and their determination to preserve their culture. It’s worth preserving. Not only do they have their own language, but a complete cosmology and social traditions that predate history.

We stay only a few days, but the experience leaves no doubt that their culture promotes human happiness to a far greater extent than the modern American way of life. As I sit on the beach in the shade of my palm frond hut and coconut trees, I wonder how this could be. It’s evident from the joy on the faces of the children and the almost total absence of conflict that these people are more content than what I’ll find when I return to modern highways, jobs and television sets. I conclude that it’s because the priorities of this culture are different. Here, human relations seem to be more important than anything else. They have stayed close to a vision of existence that keeps them centered today as it did a thousand years before. It’s a lesson that will guide me for the rest of my life and I silently thank Pettie for sending me all of these miles to find it.

AN UNLIKELY RENDEZVOUS

After a few days in the San Blas Islands, Simon, Diane and I start traveling back toward D.C. We take a bus to San Jose, Costa Rica. Then we set out hitchhiking. We catch a ride with an American couple who are driving all the way to Managua, Nicaragua. This is perfect, because Managua is where we’re meeting the rest of our travelers. We arrive at the border between Costa Rica and Nicaragua at midnight. When we attempt to cross, Simon and I are told that our previous visas have expired. Diane’s is current and she’s allowed to go ahead. We agree that we will meet her in Guatemala City at the Pension Mesa, where we stayed on the way down.

Simon and I are stuck. The border is located at an isolated spot. There are no hotels and no stores are open. A badly wrecked bus has been abandoned a few hundred yards from the border. We climb in, get some sleep, arise the next morning and hitch our way back to San Juan, which takes all day. The following morning, we obtain our visas and start back north. We know from experience that two men and a woman hitching have a much better chance of getting a ride than two men or even one man. So, we split up and agree to meet up again at a particular hotel in San Salvador.

At midnight I cross the border again having lost two days from not paying attention to details. I keep going for the next two days, taking it one ride at a time and seeing the countryside in Nicaragua and Honduras. I arrive after dark in a small Honduras town that is like many others. There are no signs in English and I have no way of even learning the name of the town, much less a hotel. I try to make myself understood, but there are few people on the street and none speaks English. Finally somebody keeps repeating “Gringo Charlie” and draws me a rough map, which I follow along dark streets. It’s a service station, cafe and miniature version of a convenience store, probably owned by an English-speaker, hence the name. But the door is locked. I find a soft grassy spot in the rear and lay down for the night. The place opens at first light. I walk around to the front and introduce myself to Gringo Charlie. We are sitting at one of the three tables in the café when I see an astonishing sight. A bus stops out front and Diane walks in. We’re both speechless. We’d parted at midnight five days and three countries away and, by chance, we’re thrown together at this remote spot in a town that I don’t even know the name of. I buy a bus ticket and join her. We arrive in San Salvador, but Simon isn’t there yet. I elect to wait until he arrives and Diane continues northward.

DEATH’S DOOR AT TIKAL

Simon comes the next day. We head for the ocean and a day of swimming, then take a slow bus trip along the Pacific coast of El Salvador northward toward Guatemala. We decide to travel to Tikal, the magnificent Mayan ruins in the remote Guatemalan jungle. Most people fly, but we stay on the ground. It’s a 16-hour bus ride from Guatemala City over unpaved roads. On the way, we eat whatever we can purchase from local vendors who hand their food up through the bus windows whenever it stops. At one point, far from any settlement, the bus fords a river and stops. Everybody gets out and scoops water from the river to drink. Simon and I are thirsty and do the same. We arrive in Flores, the nearest town to Tikal, and rent a room. Simon has met an American girl, who’s also headed for the ruins and he stays in her room. I don’t know whether it was from the street vendor food or the swamp water, but the next morning, we’re both sick with dysentery. His lasts for a day, but I have a much worse case. I have a high fever and become delirious. I lay for three days unable to eat anything or control my bodily functions. I conclude that I’m dying, but don’t mind. Simon keeps supplying me with water to which he adds electrolytes obtained at a local pharmacy. On the fourth day, the malady vanishes as suddenly as it had come.

We spend two days at Tikal visiting the ruins and hanging out with young Europeans and Americans, who are camped out in the jungle nearby. Simon elects to travel back to Guatemala City with his new girlfriend and I decide to travel further into the jungle and into Belize by the back road. We agree to meet in Merida, but when I get there after a few days of hitching and walking through Belize and the Yucatan, he has already left. I fly back to D.C.

GUARDING

By 1974, I’m beginning to become aware of my own ignorance. I’ve heard Pettie say that gaining knowledge is a process of ridding yourself of ignorance rather than packing your head with more of something that comes from the outside. I’m overwhelmed by his encyclopedic repertoire of fact and figures, books and authors, history, and philosophic understanding. And the irony of hearing that I should be getting rid of, rather than acquiring, is beyond my comprehension. He has become the model that I imitate from morning until night and I’m bent on reading and acquiring as much knowledge of the world as he has. At the same time, I’m concerned that I no longer have a regular source of income.

Despite the fact that I could make good money at it, I don’t want to continue in the venture capital game. Doing that sort of thing requires spending my time with people who are only concerned with getting more and I’ve become more and more uncomfortable around them. I’m in the financial pool with Pettie and others, and my consumption is low. Still I would like more than the occasional job that comes my way from my past. I ask Pettie’s advice.

“You’re too old to join the army,” he says. “When I was in my teens, the army paid for everything and sent me to Panama, which was about the best place I ever went to get an education from books. I was in the Canal Zone. They gave me the job of lifeguard at a swimming pool. My duties were to sit in a lifeguard tower and look around every so often to see if anybody was in trouble. They had a great library on the base. I would start out the day with a stack of books on one side and by the end of the day, I would have processed them and moved them to the other side.

“I believe that you’re a true seeker and I know that what you’re looking for can’t be gotten from a book. But, since you want to get more of what the world calls knowledge, I suggest that you get yourself a situation where you can get paid to learn. I decided early in life that I would never take a job where I couldn’t keep my head clear and be able to think on what I wanted to think about. I don’t know how you were able to focus on numbers all day long like you did when you were working for the IRS.”

Hearing him talk about his years in Panama was interesting. “What was it like in Panama in the 1930s?” I ask.

“It was a paradise for a learner,” he says. “Some people might not like sleeping in a barracks with two hundred other guys, but to me it was the perfect place to study human nature. There was always some kind of conflict. Nothing serious, but enough to see people’s unconscious urges come to the surface. And there was plenty of free time. The base had every kind of recreation you could want and everything on the base was free. You rarely had to go off the base, but if you did, it didn’t cost hardly anything. I used to go over to the San Blas Islands and stay with the Cuna Indians, like you did. And I knew some of them who had moved into the city. I had a pretty little Cuna girl who used to invite me to stay with her whenever I wanted to. They were some of the finest people that I ever knew. In those days they had a great tradition. May still have it, I don’t know. The tradition was that when a young man reached puberty and was initiated into the tribe, they would kick him out and tell him not to come back for at least a year. They told him that he should go out into the world and look for a better place and that he should only come back if he couldn’t find one. Almost all of them came back, but before they did you would see them around Panama City and Colon. A lot of them would sign onto a ship and travel around the world.

“Anyway, the answer to your question is that I suggest that you get yourself a job where you can get paid for learning and spend the minimum time having to think about anything that you’re not curious about. The best job like that that I know about is as a security guard, preferably at night. Most all of these big office buildings have somebody who sits at a desk all night and checks people in and out. Most of the night, you don’t have anything to do and you can read or do whatever you want. If you didn’t do anything but think and make lists all night, it would put you ahead of everybody else. If you’re going to read, it’s better to be reading the right stuff and thinking about the right stuff. It wouldn’t do you much good to just make lists of the women that you want to get into bed with.”

I take his suggestion. At first, I’m reluctant, because I’m afraid that some of the lawyers and businessmen who have invested money with me might see me, think that I’ve fallen on hard times and had to take on a menial job. That actually happens once. A lawyer named Leonard Silverstein that I’d done a fair amount of business with walks up to the security desk one evening and recognizes me. He starts to say something, but thinks better of it, looks sheepish and leaves.

The experience gives me an insight into M.D. Pettie. He’s completely aware of the status of menial jobs in the mind of the general public as compared with professionals. But that status is completely unimportant to him. His self-concept isn’t limited to what other people think of him. I’m beginning to think like he does. Why would I care what a person thinks of me, if that person finds his status in gaining power over other persons, rather than over himself; particularly if the status comes from doing the things that lawyers and other professionals do to get that power? I’d known this intellectually, but the experience at the security guard desk brings it home to me viscerally.

I find that the security guard jobs are very easy to get if you look clean-cut and have no criminal record. Sign up in the morning and go to work that night. I work at dozens of different places. The pay isn’t much, but the work is easy and I deepen my reading. I extract the best quotes from Nietzsche and put them on 3 by 5 cards, try to gain some insight into Swedenborg and Blake, read biographies and histories that were omitted from the limp education that I got in school and immerse myself in the present with wide-ranging periodicals.

Some jobs are better than others. If I’m assigned to a place where I have to make rounds with a key clock, I ask for a transfer to a different site. If the guard agency won’t transfer me, I quit and sign up with a different agency. A key clock requires that you walk around the building every hour or two with a portable clock to locations where there are keys that fit into the clock and record the time when you were there. In other words, they don’t trust you to make the rounds and want you to prove that you moved around through the building.

On one job, at a large industrial building in Baltimore, several guards show me how to pick up all of the keys on your first round and take them to your desk. Then you just insert the key periodically without ever having to move, then return the keys on the last round at the end of the night. Clever, but dishonest. I leave that assignment after one night. Most of the people attracted to this kind of work aren’t on my wavelength–not very bright and with a strong authoritarian mentality, coveting the power that comes with the badge, meager as that might be. On another job inside of the Gucci warehouse in Manhattan, a New York City policeman shows me the bedrolls that he’s stashed in a closet and offers one to me. He works all day as a cop and gets paid for sleeping there at night.

The best security guard job that I get is in the office building owned by the Motion Picture Association of America on Sixteenth Street, just two blocks from the White House. The Association occupies the basement and the first floor and the rest of the building has only two tenants, Time Magazine and the law firm of Covington and Burling. The law firm is then at the peak of their power among Washington’s elite. Its partners are retired senators and congressmen, former cabinet members and influential Washington insiders. Their clients are a roster of the Fortune 500 and the quiet moneyed aristocrats from Palm Beach and Newport. I know this because I spend hours going through filing cabinets and reading the correspondence. I examine the contents of the desks in almost all of the partners’ offices. Few are locked. Hidden in the backs of the drawers are a few treasures: Hustler Magazine and trashy novels, prescription bottles of one kind or another, letters from angry wives and children. There are bills from psychiatrists for partners, wives of partners and children of partners. One desk has a pistol. I conclude that this firm is no different from any other. I don’t see any evidence of joy or self-fulfillment. It’s men and women living unexamined lives, caught in the clutches of the great Moloch and unable to free themselves.

And they have a superb library, which occupies an entire floor. I use it extensively, taking books down to my security desk as soon as the librarians have left and returning them in the morning before they return. It’s a complete library including much more than law books.

I also explore the Time office, looking at the way assignments are handed out to the D.C. office and examine the edited copy to get a feel for how the Time style is created. The only office that is locked is that of the person that I’d never heard of, who appears nowhere among the names on the masthead and has by far the largest office with the best view. I can only conclude that he’s the behind the scenes money man, but never learn anything about him. The office of the Washington editor is never locked. I thoroughly examine his life through his files, desk and library. It’s clear that he’s a lightweight, neither a deep or original thinker. His desk is stacked high with books by other journalists, all quoting each other.

In the basement is the expansive private office suite of Jack Valenti, executive director of the Motion Picture Association, whose shower I use after midnight. Based on what I saw in his office, I conclude that I probably would like him. There’s also a luxurious private theater and a state-of-the-art commercial kitchen. On several occasions, I meet the chef and some of the waiters for the sumptuous spreads they provide for the pre-release screenings of the latest films and glimpse the Washington elite who have been invited. I remain at this job for the better part of a year because of its outstanding resources for educating myself.

CHAPTER FIVE

SKULLDUGGERY

One morning in July, we’re all sitting on the back porch of Apartment 3 at 3918 eating watermelon. Pettie, in his usual jovial mood, says, “I am going to give you all a riddle. I’ve been giving this riddle for 15 years and nobody has ever gotten it. Here it is: ‘I’ve done it, none of you has ever done it; it’s against the law to do it, but none of you would have any objection to doing it. My grandfather did it every day for thirty years. What is it? And I’ll add one more new part to it,” he says, turning to me. “You couldn’t do it, but everybody else here could.”

“Why couldn’t I do it?” I ask.

He quickly squints his eyes, puckers his lips and speaking in a distorted voice through his nose, says, “Because you’re too short.”

Everybody howls with laughter.

“Grave-digging,” I say.

He sits up straight with a look of surprise. “How did you get it?”

Nobody else had heard me, because they were still laughing. “What did he say?”

“Grave-digging,” says Pettie.

“It just popped into my head when you said I was too short.”

“I guess it jumped the circuits,” he says.

There’s a pause in the conversation. Finally I ask, “Why did your grandfather do it every day?

“He was the official gravedigger for the public cemetery in Culpeper. The town furnished him with a nice house and he lived right at the cemetery. He dug the graves of everybody who died in that town for thirty years–dug them all by hand. The house is still there, I’ll show it to you sometime when we drive by. Puller Burke was his name. He was my mother’s father.”

“What about you? When did you dig a grave?” Diane asks. “Did you help him when you were a kid?”

“No, not me. That would be too much like work. I decided at an early age that I was never going to do any manual labor. I only dug up graves after they were occupied.”

“Isn’t that against the law?” somebody says.

“I told you it was against the law. It’s a fairly serious crime, although there’s no rational reason for it to be. It’s all based on the fear of death that people in this country have. Nobody wants to talk about death or think about it or have anything to do with dead bodies. People who are willing to touch them are well paid for it. There’s a huge industry that’s grown up around it. They’ve got laws to keep people out of it and to make sure that you can’t do something simple like just stick somebody in the ground wrapped in a sheet like they used to. Now they put them in expensive bronze boxes and pump them full of chemicals to keep them from rotting. It’s a kind of mass phobia.”

“What were the circumstances of your digging up a grave?” somebody says.

“The first time was when I was a kid in Arlington,” Pettie says. “My buddies and I had a club. We used to meet in the loft of an abandoned barn. We dug up an old grave in an abandoned cemetery for the skull. We used to put it in the center of the circle when we held a meeting.”

“Was it some kind of a ritual?” somebody says.

“No,” he says. “It was just to remind us of our mortality. Everybody would be better off if they did that every day. Ya’ll ought to get a skull and put it in the middle of the circle when you have a meeting, so you won’t forget how you’re going to end up.”

In the travel office of Riley Curtis in Georgetown, I had seen a skull. So I walk down to Georgetown and ask how I can get one.

“I came from a medical school in India where they have been used by students for dissecting,” Riley says. “I’ll see if I can get you one.”

Within a couple of weeks, he calls and says he has one for $10. Pettie places it on a shelf in the attic where it can be seen every day.

MARTIAL ARTS

Will Poulsen has been driving a cab around Washington during the day and going to Aikido classes at night. Pettie asks him if he will teach Aikido to the people living at W Street. Will buys a square of canvas and spreads it out in the open field behind W Street every morning and we appear there and go through our exercises.

I ask Pettie about his martial arts experience.

“I wasn’t a natural,” he says, “and had to practice it, but I finally got to be pretty good. I recommend it. I learned more on the mat and at the poker table than anywhere else except maybe the bedroom.”

“How did you learn it?”

“I studied with a Chinaman by the name of Joe Chang.”

“What was his martial arts style?”

“It didn’t have a name. But if you had to call it something, it would be jujitsu. The basic idea is that you don’t know what is going to be thrown at you, so you want to be ready to respond appropriately to anything without thinking about it. Chang was a natural. There weren’t many martial arts teachers back then.”

“How did he learn it?”

“He claimed that he studied in Fujien, China, where he came from. But he couldn’t have been a martial arts master before he got here, because he was only fourteen. He was an orphan and a smart kid. Some Jesuits over in China sent him here. He didn’t speak any English, so they pinned a note to his shirt and put him on a boat for America. They sent him to a Jesuit school in Omaha, Nebraska. When he finished school, they sent him to Georgetown University for six years. He studied journalism and became the Washington correspondent for the Chinese News Service that was owned by the Chinese government. He had that job for many years until Mao took over.”

“How did you meet him?” I ask.

“I met him at the swimming pool at the YMCA. He taught his martial arts classes at the Y. Part of it was done in the pool. We learned how to defend ourselves in the water or any place else. He didn’t like anything structured. He always wanted to be ready to respond to whatever came his way. We usually wore regular shoes and street clothes, so we would be in the same conditions that you would be in if you ever had to use your knowledge, which I never have. I hung out with him about every night. He was a well-known character around D.C. He took me with him to the National Press Club and to the most interesting places in town. He would never talk sense and you could never pin him down in a conversation or on the mat.”

“Is he still around?”

“No. He married the wrong woman and he didn’t live long. She didn’t like his lifestyle and put too many limits on him. She didn’t like me much. After he got married, I didn’t see much of him anymore.”

“What was his philosophy?”

“He wasn’t an intellectual, but he was fairly smart and intuitive. I guess you could say he was a natural Taoist.”

“Was it the same YMCA that’s down at 18th and F Street?” I ask.

“Yeah. The same place. It was really a popular place during World War II. There was a big USO Club there. That’s where I met Isabelle.”

“How did that happen?”

“She was what they called a volunteer hostess. I was in the library, just thumbing through a book about Korea. She came over and asked me if I liked Korea. I knew that she didn’t have any interest in Korea and just wanted to meet me, so I just played along with the conversation until she invited me back to her apartment, which was right across the street. She wanted somebody to initiate her into the delights of sex and I accommodated her. After a while she told me that I should leave because her sister was coming back later that night. I started to leave, but I looked outside and it was raining, so I just turned over and went to sleep. I woke up the next morning and she was in the kitchen cooking my breakfast.”

“Where were you living then?”

“I always kept two apartments. I had one down at 22nd and L and another one up in Glover Park. I kept open house at both of them and would move back and forth, depending on where the mood struck me. There was always somebody to help me share the rent, so money was never a problem. The place on 22nd was always full of people. Three girls lived on the floor above and I also had the run of their place. There was plenty of sex in those days. During the war, everybody was sort of in a state of suspension. Nobody knew what it was going to be like the next day, so things were a lot freer, including sex.

“I remember one day I was standing on Connecticut Avenue looking in a store window and a girl came up and took hold of my hand without saying a word. She led me back to her apartment and we got into bed without ever saying anything. When we finished, the first thing she said to me was, ‘You’re not going to tell my daddy, are you?’ She was the daughter of a big-time Washington lawyer.”

“What was your first sexual experience?”

“I was big for my age. That’s one reason I was able to get in the army at thirteen. And I was sexually mature pretty early. Some of my friends had told me about a whorehouse down on Pennsylvania Avenue at about Fifth Street. The building isn’t there anymore. I just went down there and knocked on the door and they let me in, no questions asked. I believe I was thirteen.”

“How long did you practice martial arts?”

“I’m still practicing it, but I’ve switched mainly to social jujitsu. I practiced with Chang most every day for fifteen years. When I decided what I was going to do with my life, I knew I had to be super careful. Freedom is the most fearsome thing on the planet. People will kill you, if you threaten them with it and they think you’re serious. So I trained myself. Be careful, if you ever have to wake me up. Speak to me first. Don’t get too close. If somebody wakes me up by shaking my body, I instantly come wide awake and go for the throat.”

I never saw him do it, but I don’t doubt that he was telling the truth. I saw many examples of his remarkable martial arts skill. I once asked him what he would do if he was threatened and had no weapon.

“You’ve got to have an empty mind,” he said. “You have to respond in context. Don’t try to get some pre-arranged response in your head. You might only think that you don’t have a weapon.”

Then, in one motion, he whipped a handkerchief out of his pocket and sailed it like a Frisbee spinning to where I was standing eight feet away. It struck me across both eyes blinding me for an instant, but long enough for him to have attacked me if he’d wanted to.

He said that he knew several ways to kill instantly with his bare hands, but I never had occasion to see him do it and he never taught me the skill. One of his favorite tricks was to ask people to pick him up, saying that he would not interfere with their effort. Then when they would try, he would position his arm against them in a way that meant that they were not just lifting him, but themselves at the same time, which, of course, was impossible.

Another was to attempt to trip him. Whenever somebody tried, he would keep them just far enough away that they always lost their center of gravity and could not muster enough force to move him. And he did this with an effort so small that it was almost undetectable. “That’s good,” he would say. “You’ve almost got me. That’s good. Just a little more. You’ve almost got me. Just a little more.” He would have great fun at the exercise, but the truth was that we didn’t almost have him. Nobody came close to tripping him. He stood like a tree.

We had mats at the warehouse and, on occasion, we did martial arts exercise, though never to the extent that he had. I practiced rolling for a couple of months, then he would sometimes throw me over his back and I would land on the mat and roll. “Before you can throw,” he would say, “you have to be thrown until you get the feel of it. Then you can throw other people.”

THE WAREHOUSE

In June 1975, George Pettie finds a building that seems well suited for Pettie’s didactic games, a warehouse located in the wholesale food district at 1307 4th Street, NE in D.C. near the intersection of Florida Avenue and New York Avenue. It’s owned by two brothers named Schaeffer, whose family has operated a wholesale fish business there since it was built in 1931. It’s a rectangular box made of brick with two floors of 5,000 square feet each. The floors and roof are thick concrete slabs. There are double wooden doors in the front and the rear is a series of overhead doors opening onto an alley. There’s also a working elevator, which can be accessed from the street and also from the inside. On the first floor is what comes to be known as the Great Hall, open from the front to the rear. On one side is a large walk-in refrigerator, on the other a walk-in freezer in the back and a fish processing room in the front. There’s a mezzanine above both refrigerated areas. The ceiling is fourteen feet high and well lighted with large windows across front and back. The second floor is completely open.

Union Market, where the warehouse is located, includes about a dozen square blocks. Within it, trucks move about day and night. Produce and meats are rolled around on carts. Restaurant owners and mom-and-pop grocers bring their vans and pickups in to replenish their stock. There is shouting of orders, heavy bags and boxes being hoisted by hand and by forklifts and ethnic vendors of every sort: Greek, Italian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Jewish, Polish and Mexican. There are two banks in the market and several restaurants, one of them open all night. We make an offer to buy the warehouse and close the deal on July 4th.

We barter for a commercial stove from a restaurant that is going out of business and set up a kitchen in the old fish processing part of the building. The fish smell permeates the place, but gradually disappears after repeated scrubbing. We convert the mezzanine office into a library and begin filling it with books. When we run out of room on the mezzanine, we build shelves and expand the library to the walls of the Great Hall. Over the next ten years we accumulate more than ten thousand books. We get free carpet from a contractor that is removing it from downtown offices. The whole place is carpeted. Inside the freezer, we set up offices. The walk-in refrigerator is larger than most apartments. It’s made into Pettie’s living space. We set up a sauna in one end. Because of the airtight insulation, both the freezer and refrigerator are made comfortable in the winter by nothing more than a small electric heater.

Pettie says that we should make the place “green and global.” We pile into the van and drive out to a house in Bethesda where a yard of giant bamboo has been spotted. I try to introduce myself to the owner, a blonde German researcher at the National Institutes of Health, whose beauty makes me ache and I’m unable to speak. Finally I explain that we would like some of her bamboo. “Take as much as you want,” she says and my ache returns. We load the inside of the van and then strap more onto the roof. The bamboo extends well beyond the rear bumper, and drags on the street so that cars behind us see nothing but a bamboo mass moving down the street. Singing nonsense songs, we drive through downtown D.C. like a huge rag mop. Then we place it along the walls of the great hall and put up an eight-foot by ten-foot world map.

Every night we watch educational films borrowed from the library. Like nomads, each woman takes a part of the upper floor and creates an artistic living space for herself and whoever she wants to invite. We start ill-fated projects on the roof: a beautifully fitted out tent that blows away in the first windstorm, a garden that burns to a crisp under the summer sun, a waterbed that is stolen, and a compost pile that leaks goo over the side of the building when it rains. Still the roof is great for cool sitting in the evening with an uninterrupted view of the Capitol and the Washington Monument–a great place to watch the fireworks on July 4th when many guests arrive.

We never lock the building. Pettie devises an ingenious scheme to keep away the predators. Unlike passenger elevators, the freight elevator that opens onto the street opens horizontally, the top half lifting up and the lower half going down to sidewalk level. When it’s closed, it’s impossible to tell that it isn’t locked. If somebody opens it from the street, they find that they are inside of a disabled elevator that won’t go up, and they are facing a tiny opening that will require getting down on hands and knees to get through. Beyond it is a bright light, so that, when you are on your knees crawling through, a person is completely vulnerable. I don’t know whether any potential intruder ever opened the door from the street and made it into the elevator, but nobody ever went beyond it. If they had, they would’ve looked back at the hole that they’d just passed through and seen that it had been painted to resemble the eye of a needle. Pettie dubbed it the humility door.

POLICE INVASIONS

The only people who ever came into the building uninvited were the police. One night Pettie is alone in the building reading in the library. It’s after midnight and all of the other lights except his are off. His light cannot be seen from the first floor. The usual noise of the market can be heard in the background, but there’s a more immediate sound that could only be coming from inside the building. He turns off his light and calls out: “Who’s there?” He knows that any of us would immediately answer, but all he gets is silence. He calls out again. “Who’s there? You’d better answer or your widow will wish you had.” Then he hears:

“Police.”

“If you’re police, you’d better show yourself quick.”

A flashlight is turned on to reveal a lone policeman, who says: “We heard a noise and thought there was a burglary going on.”

Pettie knows that the police could only have come in through the window, but he asks:

“How did you get in?”

“Your window was unlocked and it looked like somebody could have come in.”

The window is ten feet above the level of the sidewalk and is closed, although not locked, and it’s impossible to know that it’s unlocked without climbing up to it. It’s a lame excuse, but Pettie does not challenge him. Pettie lets him out the door and he leaves. We’re now alerted to the fact that the police are aware of our presence and are probably trying to find out what we’re doing in the building. Our activities don’t fit into any category of normal behavior that they’re used to. We come and go at irregular hours, sometimes in the middle of the night. We’re dressed in suits and ties in an otherwise shirtsleeve neighborhood. There are also attractive, well-dressed women coming and going. We put up no sign to explain who we are and what we’re doing.

Pettie suggests a sign and Ron Alleman paints it. It says “Steel and Irony Available Here.”

Apparently, somebody at police headquarters has put out the word to find out what is going on in the building. A few months later, an event occurs which supplies the police with a theory of what we’re doing in the warehouse. Big Jim sees an ad in the The Washington Post asking for two men to play the parts of burglars in a television commercial that is being made by the Environmental Resource Foundation. Jim and I put on black clothes and wool knit hats. We head down to Dupont Circle and saunter into their office. “We’re your burglars,” were the first words that Big Jim says when we’re ushered in.

We’re hired for the parts immediately and offer the warehouse as a site for the filming. Two nights later, the camera crew shows up at midnight with bright lights and films us climbing in through the windows. Even at midnight, the lights draw a crowd including a curious police officer. The camera follows us through the dimly lit warehouse to a safe. We bend over with ears close to the dial listening as the tumblers fall. Then Jim swings open the door revealing, not money, but a safe full of returnable soft drink bottles. Jim and I, the burglars, act very happy with what we have found and my voice is heard to say: “Returnables, they’re a real steal.” Pretty corny, but it was fun. The spot runs quite a few times as a public service announcement, but the public does not embrace returnable bottles.

Not long after that, when we show up late one night at the warehouse, the police are waiting. One of them approaches me and asks,

“What are you doing here? Are you about to break into this building?”

I fall for it. “No,” I say, “We own this building. I have a key,” and produce a key that would unlock the front door. I don’t want him to know that the elevator door is unlocked. Without a word, he snatches the key from my hand and unlocks the door. He and several other officers walk in. They call other policemen on their radio and soon there are a dozen or more inside. I know that what they’re doing is against the law and a violation of my rights, but I say nothing except that they are welcome to take a tour. They threaten me with arrest and tell me to keep my mouth shut. They also say that none of us is to leave the building and they lock the front door from the inside.

Most of us stand around not knowing what to do, but Stan is scared and heads up to the roof hoping to remain undetected. Soon two cops come snooping up to the roof and find him. They ask him what goes on in the building and he tries to tell the truth. They say that he’s a big liar and threaten to throw him off the roof if he doesn’t cooperate. They say that they know that it’s a porno film studio and ask him to admit it. He tries again to explain what really happens there. One of them grabs him by the heels, starts dragging him toward the edge of the roof, and says: “If you don’t tell us the name of the cameraman, we’re going to throw you over the side.” He quickly makes up a name and they back off.

More cops come. They remain for an hour going through the whole building. They apparently conclude that the women’s spaces on the second floor are places where sex scenes are filmed. They are no longer paying any attention to me. I walk upstairs and then onto the roof. There’s a tree on the side of the building with branches overhanging the roof. I climb down the tree and walk to a pay phone on the corner. I call the warehouse and ask to speak to the policeman in charge. I say that I’m a reporter from the The Washington Post and have heard that there’s a raid underway. I tell him that I’m coming as fast as possible and would the police please stay until I can get there, so that I can get some pictures and a story. I hang up and climb back up to the roof and back downstairs. By the time I’m back on the first floor the cops are leaving. They have seen the place and reached their conclusions about it. The cop who has my key hands it back with a smirk and says, “Where are all your models tonight, mister porno man?”

I find out later that one of us has called Pettie to let him know of the police invasion. And he has also had somebody call the warehouse and say that they are a reporter from the Daily Planet and request a story from the police.

RATS

The next day Pettie laughs at the whole episode.

“When I talk about the criminals inside the government being just like the criminals outside the government, people say ‘What are you talking about? There are no criminals inside the government.’ You all could have paid thousands of dollars and not gotten an experience as good as that one. Your heads are full of preconceived notions. You believed what they told you at school and at Sunday school. You all need wakeups like this to bring home the reality of the world that you’re living in. Right here in the capital of the most advanced county in the world, the police will act like a bunch of criminals if you give them a chance. If you’re going to live experimentally, you have to expect this kind of thing and be prepared for it. The police mentality is exactly the same as the criminal mentality, except that they have chosen different sides. When they think that they can get away with it, they will switch sides.

“They think that they can do stuff like that to you, because, to them, y’all are like a bunch of rats. Everybody hates rats, because they try to live in the same buildings that people live in. Did you ever see a rat out in the country? They’re beautiful little creatures. People don’t hate squirrels, even though the squirrel is the first cousin to the rat. Primitive people don’t hate rats. But when you live in a city, you can do anything you want to a rat and nobody cares. You all are living by a different value system. Almost nobody would approve of your values. Not that those policemen have any idea of what your philosophy is. But they wouldn’t like it, if they could figure it out. Since they can’t, they put you in a category that they already have in their heads. They think that you’re in the pornography game and pornography to them is just like a rat. In their way of thinking, that gives them the right to do whatever they want. But, if they knew what you were really up to, they would treat you even worse.

VISIONS

“What are you up to anyway. I’ll tell you what it is. It’s called holistic living. There are plenty of other people who would tell you that they’re into holistic living. More power to ‘em. But I don’t think anything is going to change without community. The New-Agers are OK. But just learning how to sit in the lotus pose, chant, and rev up your prana energy isn’t going to be enough. People still have to get along in groups and nobody is doing anything to learn about that. Hundreds of books are written every year on what to do in artificial groups. They call it management literature. But what is needed is how to get along in intimate groups. At one time, everybody knew how to do it, but now it’s a lost art. In my opinion, getting along in intimate groups is essential to the survival of the species. Spending all of your time in artificial situations rubs off on you. You lose the human touch. And without the human touch, all of your decisions are made out of selfish motives.

“So that’s my version of what we’re doing here. We’re regrouping by affinity. There are a few groups in different parts of the world today that are doing what I’m talking about and they’re getting along about the best of any groups that I know of. Fifty million overseas Chinese work together and pool their resources. They do it in secret and the people who are affiliated with them are prospering. They’re right here among you, though you don’t know about them. And there are other groups, the Ismalis, the Mormons, they pool some of their money and they’re prospering. What we’re doing here is a more intimate level of cooperation than those groups. They’re into rigid structures. They have something of a group consciousness, but not to the level that I think is healthiest. The Mormons share ten percent of their income. What we’re experimenting with here is 100%. So far it hasn’t worked, but we have to keep on trying, because there’s nothing more interesting to do with your life than living experimentally.

“Why hasn’t it worked? It’s because there are too many personal problems. Everybody here is walking around carrying a load of unconscious urges. Then when it becomes necessary to give in to somebody else, one of these unconscious fears jumps out and messes everything up. That keeps you all from being able to cooperate and form affinity groups that could really turn the juice on. So we have to spend our time dealing with the personal problems and trying to smoke this stuff out of the unconscious, so you can deal with it. We spend most of the time here in what I would consider to be therapy. It’s different from the therapy that you might get when you pay a big pile of money to a psychiatrist though. That’s because they have a different standard of what total health is than I do. They consider you cured when you’re able to fit back into the normal world. To me that is just trickery. The way the normal world is structured today is unhealthy and, if you can function well in it, there’s something wrong with you.

“The kind of therapy that we’re doing here is designed to get you back in touch with your true nature. I’m recommending that you expose yourself to the lowest level of society and the highest level. It’s pretty hard to gain access to the highest level except as servants. But it’s easy to get access to the lowest level. That’s why I suggest that you all visit places where losers hang out. I’ve been studying losers for a lot of years and it has done me a lot of good. I’ve said that y’all would benefit from spending nights at the homeless shelters, but I don’t see you doing it. If you will get up close and expose yourself to those people, they will cure you. It’s like an immune system response in your body. There’s something in them that is also in you, but in you, it’s unconscious. You will be able to see it in them and it will cure it in you the way that an antibody works in your body.      

“I know that you all want to do the big stuff. So we might as well talk about playing the global games. I suggest that you have daily meetings and visualize what it would be like to have something going that works. But think of it in terms of the macro and the micro. To have something grow organically, you have to start with the micro and let it increase in a natural way. There are plenty of games that are growing a mile a minute, but they’re impersonal and not organic. Like McDonald’s restaurants. They have a hot game that makes money for a few of the people in the game, but it’s not a healthy game and it harms more people than it helps. Whether it’s organic or not you need a model to replicate. That’s what we’re creating here. If you can create a community that is based on healthy women and happy children, then other people can replicate it and it can grow by geometric progression.

“You start out in little affinity groups of two or three or four people and learn how to work together. These little groups then link up and form bigger groups. But you only talk to people who are in your state of consciousness. Natural lines of communication is the key thing. When these affinity groups link up, you form a United States of Consciousness. It can exist right alongside of the United States of America or in any other political group, but it works best if you keep it very low key and don’t challenge the existing power structure.”

SYNCON

One morning Roy Mason shows up at the morning meeting and invites anybody who wants to go to Montreal for the American Humanistic Psychology annual convention. Rannie and I grab our bag and get into his station wagon.

Of the many interesting sessions at the convention, the one that I remember is my second exposure to Chogyam Trungpa. As we sit waiting for him to appear, I think back to the first time I’d seen him in the fall of 1971 at a Unitarian Church in Washington. My yoga teacher had told me that a Tibetan monk was going to speak. I didn’t know where Tibet was exactly, but I knew that it sounded exotic and I’d never even been in the same room with a monk. I showed up early and took a seat in the third row. The talk was scheduled to begin at 7 PM. There were a few other people there ahead of time including a small man in a saffron robe sitting in the front row. It was well past seven and I kept watching the monk, wondering why he did not start the talk. 7:30 rolled around, then 8:00, but he did not move. Finally, two men entered through the back door talking loudly. They mounted the stage. One of them was limping, dressed in a powder blue suit with wide lapels, smoking a cigarette and carrying a can of beer. The other said simply: “Ladies and gentlemen, Chogyam Trungpa.”

I don’t remember much of what he said, but I had no doubt as to what he was. I’d never been in a presence like his before. As I sat there, I remembered a line from Walt Whitman’s Song of the Open Road. “I and mine don’t convince by arguments, similes, rhymes, we convince by our presence.” He seemed to fix his gaze directly on me. He talked about living in the world and each soul creating a future for itself in the day-to-day society rather than retreating into a monastery. Mostly he made people laugh and feel good.

Again in this session in Montreal, he seems to be speaking directly to me. The only thing that I remember is the way that he jokingly refers to the fact that he has come halfway around the world to talk about something that was already here all the time right in front of the people in the audience and how they carried it around with them all the time without knowing it and how they believed that they had to get it from some exotic person like him, when all the time, it was right there inside them and they needed nobody else to discover it.

From Montreal, we drive to Saint Johnsbury, Vermont and stay at the home of Dave and Terri Baggs, owners of Baggs Natural Products. Dave has his leg in a cast. He’d been digging a hole in his yard next to a statue of the Virgin Mary. But the digging undermined the statue and it fell on him and broke his leg. He seems fine while we’re there, but we hear a few months later that he died from complications of the accident. I wondered at the ironic symbolism when I learned that he had been injured in an auto accident by a Mexican farm worker named Jesus before being killed by a statue of the Virgin Mary.      

Next we head to Boston. We arrive in the evening at the home of Rick Ingrossi, a psychiatrist friend who has an unusual practice. So unusual in fact, that he’s later censured for sleeping with his patients, despite the fact that the patients testify that he has genuinely helped them. We’re there to help Barbara Marx Hubbard, who’s staging a “Syncon.” Barbara is one of the heirs to the Marx Toys fortune and brother-in-law to Dan Ellsberg, best known as the person who revealed the Pentagon Papers, still very much in the news at the time. She lives in a large mansion near Rock Creek Park, in Washington from which she runs the Committee for the Future, an organization that she created. One of the principle activities of the Committee for the Future is the staging of Syncons, short for Synergistic Convergences. We’d attended the first one when it was held at the Washington Hilton and we’d stored the Syncon props afterward on the second floor of the warehouse. The props are primarily plywood barriers, which are used to form a great circle in which the Syncon action takes place.

Inside the circle are further barriers that form pie-shaped wedges, each wedge representing a category of human knowledge. During the Syncon, which lasts for three days, experts from each field meet inside the wedges and try to arrive at a consensus on what to do about the most important problems in their field. When they think that they have done so, a wall is taken down between their field of knowledge and an adjoining field. Then the combined experts from the two fields redefine the problems and take down another barrier. The timing for the removal is determined by Barbara and her principal assistant Jerry Glenn. Gradually all of the walls come down until, at the end of the third day, everybody is sitting in one circle and considering the biggest problems for the planet as a whole. As usual, the Syncon is considered a success by all who come and they leave feeling that they have accomplished something, though follow-up is weak.

From Boston we head south and take the ferry to Long Island then down to Huntington, where we stop at Lindisfarne, a utopian community founded by historian and philosopher William Irwin Thompson. Pettie admires Thompson’s work, particularly At the Edge of History. He suggests that we stop off to get a feel for him and the place. Lindisfarne is named for the Northumbrian island where Christian monks took refuge in the seventh century and preserved biblical texts. Thompson is away in New York City, but we tour the place. It’s beautiful, a retreat of several acres located on a small lake with pleasant simple buildings. By chance, Thompson has left a pair of his loafers outside the door to the meeting room. I decide to test the maxim about walking in another man’s moccasins. So, I secretly slip into them and wear them during our tour. They’re a perfect fit. I determine that based on the shoe fit, I should read his books, which I do and find them to fit as well.

A few months later, we hear that Lindisfarne has lost its land and that Thompson is looking for another place. Barbara writes a letter to him suggesting that we might be able to help. The idea is that, if all goes well, we would offer him some land in Nethers as a location for the new incarnation of Lindisfarne, but the letter is very general, only offering to help. Barbara says that the persons offering the help are a group of women who pool their money and have a surplus to invest. He responds and says he would like to come to Washington to talk.

I meet him at the train station and walk him over to the warehouse for a tour and a snack. He likes the building, but asks no questions. He says that he has never visited the new wing of the National Gallery of Art, so we spend two hours there. It’s clear from our conversation that he knows modern art as well as art history. We then walk to W Street for dinner and a meeting with all the women in the community.

Thompson says that he’s a very poor businessman and knows nothing about managing money. He says that he has found a new place in Cooperstown, New York, that is to his liking and all he needs is $50,000 to get it started. The meeting is cordial and lasts for a couple of hours. When anything other than his getting the cash is brought up, he quickly dismisses it, saying only that he wants money and isn’t interested in any other place. I’m surprised that a man who’s such a good investigator of the past, asks no questions about the present and learns nothing about us.

As was his usual practice, Pettie does not meet with him, leaving that to his lieutenants. “Keep a light line and a strong reserve,” he would say. When we give him the report on Thompson’s visit, he says, “The world is full of people who don’t know how to manage money. Some of them, like Thompson, even admit that they don’t. But they all think that somebody who does know how to manage money should give large sums of it to them. His mind is very flexible when it comes to spotting some historical trend that most people overlook. But it’s very rigid when it comes to personal relationships. It never occurred to him to ask why a group of intelligent women with a pot full of cash would be willing to turn it over to a man who admits that he doesn’t know how to manage money.”

Barbara says, “We told him that we were an investment group, not a charity group, but he couldn’t hear it.”

CHARACTERS

The constant flow of characters through W Street continues. There’s Bill Thompson, a bright manic-depressive Chicagoan with a Harvard Law School diploma, who stands on the roof of the building and sings a perfect version of the Islamic call to prayer out into the quiet streets of Glover Park; Jodean Marker, a Ph.D.-level feminist and ancient Greek expert with a hysterical staccato laugh; The Servers of the Great Ones, a Boston group that advocates doing good things for the higher being they say will arrive any minute, but is unable to do anything for the lower beings who are already here, and Nan Roman and her boyfriend Tom Boback, whose parents want him to be in business for himself. We start a private security guard service and call it Boback Security. After Nan and Tom move back to their Nelly’s Ford, Virginia commune, Larry Ewers arrives and takes over Boback Security and its one client, the studio of Channel 9, the local CBS television affiliate. Then Michael Brennan moves in to escape his Irish Catholic father’s alcoholic temper. He takes LSD and moves to California with his exotic dancer girlfriend Ann Babalon.

John Fitzgerald, a schizophrenic painter recently returned from Paris, stays up all night painting William Blake-like female faces on one wall and covering the other wall floor to ceiling with gibberish until he sets the building on fire and is hauled off to Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital. Joe Blifstic, a frequent visitor whose actual Polish last name is unpronounceable, is evicted from his Pennsylvania Avenue apartment by the owners, who fear that the floor will collapse from the weight of the newspapers stacked floor to ceiling, leaving only a trail snaking through from the front door to the bed, the bathroom and the kitchen. The Cox brothers who escape from their CIA station chief father during adolescence, then go to work for the CIA themselves, because they can’t figure out anything else to do. Ed Elkin and his wife Pat Rice, both therapists, move to L.A., he an advocate of the use of LSD and MDA for his patients, she a convert to Scientology. Will Brittingham, a violinist and court reporter with an unfulfilled ambition to be a fundamentalist preacher, who delivers impassioned sermons to empty warehouse walls; John Wrenn Lewis, courtly British engineer and efficiency expert with great charm, and his wife Ann Faraday, both authors, he of What Shall We Tell The Children? and she of several books on the use of dreams in gaining self-knowledge, move first to California then Australia. Art Hermann, dropout from the successful computer company he founded, who has a vivid dream of crawling through the snow to a log cabin where he meets a man who supplies him with the vision he needs for his life, then actually gets his dream when he becomes lost in the snow and crawls to the cabin that appeared in his dream where this same man is waiting. Judy Turnbull, a Corporation for Public Broadcasting manager with a warm and generous nature and a compulsion for pulling her own hair, who breaks my heart when she moves to California.

John Pearce, the handsome teenage son of the author of Crack in the Cosmic Egg and The Magical Child, Joseph Chelton Pearce. John’s on his own for the first time trying to make his way with his skill at classical guitar. Christopher Hills passes through D.C. in his sojourn from the London ashram he’s leaving on his way to California to start the University of the Trees and the introduction of Spirulina into the American diet. Scott Brinkman, big ideas man and son of a Pennsylvania discount store founder, who used his inheritance to start The Planet Restaurant, the first place in D.C. to offer free computer access, long before the internet, and later several other visionary efforts that did not quite fly. Sherrie Litwin, a pixie originally from D.C., on her way to the challenge of Alaska, says, “I understand this place now. Everything is speeded up here. It’s like being in a Charlie Chaplin movie. It leaves the old me behind.”

“If you put out some bait,” Pettie says, “the fools will come to get it and you can learn from all of them. Some are more foolish than others. As the Bible says ‘ain’t none of us perfect.’ I love my fools. Spending time around people that you like is paradise, even if they’re foolish. And spending time around people that you don’t like is hell. To prepare yourself to be wise, you have to learn to love fools. Socrates was the wisest man of his day and he tolerated them so well that they all cried around his deathbed. How could you be wise, if the folly of your time drives you away from the people who commit it? You have to love fools. There’s a natural tendency against this. People shy away from abnormal behavior unless it happens to match their own. That’s how people sort themselves into the various churches, civic organizations and economic groups, even secret societies. It’s easy to love folly in children. Everybody loves it. You expect them to say foolish things and to believe fantasies, but when you see it in adults, you’re driven away.

“What I’m suggesting is that you force yourself to tolerate fools, even to egg them on. Why do you think that you all resist hanging around fools so much, even though I’ve been recommending it for years? I’ll tell you why it is. It’s because there’s something inside yourself that is just like that folly you can see exhibited in the person who’s standing in front of you and acting so foolish. You don’t want to be reminded of it. Otherwise, why would it bother you to watch a fool? You would just be rejoicing. ‘There but for the grace of God go I.’ I’m not talking about hanging around fools that are negative or hostile toward you. And I’m not saying that you should spend all of your time around negative teachers. But do as much of it as you can tolerate and your own unconscious tendencies toward self-deception will surface. How many of you spent a night at the mission this week?”

Only Stan says that he did.

“How many of you went to an AA meeting this week?”

Nobody says they did.

“See, there are two great opportunities for learning that don’t cost more than a cup of coffee and nobody took advantage of them.”

Stan gets a hurt expression on his face and pretends to cry.

“Oh,” says Pettie. “Sorry, Stan. I’ll amend that. Only one person took advantage of that. Everybody applaud Stan for spending a night at the mission.”

We all clap.

“So almost nobody does what I recommend, but it’s OK. Everybody here treats me nice and I don’t hold it against you. I love my fools. You don’t have to become wise to be tolerated by me. But if you decide to do it, it will do you all a lot of good. It did me a lot of good. I’ve been going to AA meetings for more than thirty years and I’m no more alcoholic than you are. It’s one of the few places you can go where people will tell the truth about themselves. The ones who get the most from it are the ones who have bottomed out and recognize it. They’re the ones who have acknowledged their own imperfection. That puts you into purgatory. Without that, there’s no hope to pull yourself up out of your own private hell.”

We have been sitting in the attic listening to Pettie. It has become almost a routine that, when he’s in Washington, people gather there and he holds forth. “Cussin’ in the morning,” he calls it. “I cuss you all in the morning to make you mad and get you moving and then baby you at night,” he says. It’s almost noon. We’re dressed, but nobody has yet ventured from the building to engage the outside world.

“One more thing,” says Pettie. “Don’t get rigid in trying to learn from fools. If you do, you will spoil it. The idea is to catch the flow. What I’m talking about is unstructured learning. That’s the weakness of all the New Age movements. They’re putting old wine in new bottles. You can’t teach the thing they’re trying to teach. You have to slip up on the truth and be in a state where you let it catch you. It won’t work with structured learning. Just spend some time with whatever negative teachers the universe sends your way. There’s a good chance that they have surfaced for a reason and it may be that they have something to teach you. There may be some kind of structure to it. But the structure is too subtle for the human mind to figure out. Whatever structure you try to put it in is going to miss it. You have to get yourself into a state where you let the universe dictate the structure.

“Is it noon yet? The new age day starts at noon. Why don’t y’all go downstairs and have a meeting to put the day together and I’ll see you back here tonight?”

With that, we file downstairs and list the day’s opportunities. It isn’t hard to make the list. What is hard is picking the leader and then doing what the leader says. This might seem very simple. But in a voluntary world it isn’t. The world outside of W Street comes with an already established order and protocol. It’s very easy to find something in that structure to blame when things don’t go exactly the way you want. When you have a job, you know who the boss is before you come to work in the morning. When a new boss arrives, people develop ways to accept whatever circumstance that brings. Occasionally you might be in contention to become the boss. This is stress-producing, especially when you’re not selected as the new boss and then have to work for the person who was picked instead of you. You don’t get picked in the real world and you learn to live with it.

But, in The Finders, it happens every day. For people with a high opinion of themselves like me, it’s a daily lesson in humility not to be selected as the person to hand out the marching orders. And I rarely am.

ZEN WALKING AND ZEN THINKING

One day I’m walking up Connecticut Avenue and I hear a voice behind me: “Don’t walk on your heels. Put your feet down flat on the ground.” I recognize Pettie’s voice and turn to greet him with a laugh. He’s damp with perspiration from walking and radiating energy.

“Zen walking,” he says. “Practice Zen walking. When you walk, imagine that there’s a string attached to the top of your head and you’re suspended by it from the sky. You’re just hanging there turning the earth with your feet.”

We walk back together toward W Street through Georgetown, then out along the railroad next to the C&O Canal. To stay centered, we practice walking on the rails for as far as possible without having to step off. He tells me about his study of the Alexander Technique.

“I was in Germany in a library when I read about F. Mathias Alexander. As soon as I read about him and his technique, I knew that it was the type of exercises that I’d been looking for. I got up right that minute and flew to London to check out his school. He understood balance and harmony. He figured out where the problems were in his own body and invented ways to center himself. The Use of the Self is his best book.”

We keep walking and I tell him about my negative emotions over not being picked as the leader. Imitating a Scottish brogue, he says, “‘Would the gods the gift ha’ gi’ us, to see ourselves as others see us.’ Robert Burns. They think you want the leadership and so they keep it from you. None of us can see ourselves. We think that we’re one thing and the people who look at us think that we’re something entirely different. You can accept either version, but you’ll get along better in life if you give a lot of weight to the feedback you get from the people you’re close to. Don’t be neurotic about it. Just consider the evidence. And don’t go around trying to please people. But if you want to discover your own true nature, it’s good to have some mirrors around who will reflect the truth back at you.

“People tell me they think you want the leadership. That’s nothing to be ashamed of. This town is full of people who spend every minute trying to get the leadership of something from the President on down. But that kind of effort will take you in the opposite direction from the way that I believe you want to go. Once people can see that you don’t care whether you have it or not, they’ll give it to you. I’m not talking about learning how to get the leadership. I’m talking about learning how to be the same, whether you have it or whether you don’t.

“Why do people want to be in charge anyway? It’s so they can avoid a challenge to their own foolish notion of who they are. Everybody has already got some image of themselves they can live with and they want to hang on to it. Look at that guy.”

We’re walking north on Wisconsin Avenue. An overweight man is crossing the street. He’s obviously a professional from the expensive suit he’s wearing, but has a huge potbelly.

“He thinks he’s a lady killer in his new suit. In his office, the secretaries probably think he’s a slob, but they won’t tell him that. That’s part of the way the system works. Everybody is grubbing for power at whatever level they can get it. But the real power, the only kind that is worth having is power over yourself. You’ve got that when you don’t care whether they pick you as the leader or not. Get yourself into a state of creative indifference and stay above the fray.”

FEET OF CLAY

The next morning, when we gather in the attic, Pettie says, “Does anybody here want to hear the truth about themselves?”

Everybody enthusiastically says that they do.

“OK,” Pettie says, “Everybody get a piece of paper and write down a few one-liners that would help the people here see themselves as others see them. Just one page for each person and just a few comments. We’re not trying for the Pulitzer Prize. Barbara, how about getting a notebook and put all of the pages in it. Anybody can add to it any time they want and anybody that wants to read what other people think of you can go and get the notebook. Nobody has to read it. We will keep it here in the attic. I want you to call the book Feet of Clay. Only read it when you’re feeling strong. Otherwise, it might just make you mad and reinforce some negative behavior pattern.”

He’s right; I read it often, looking for new entries and sometimes I can feel the heat from the blood rising to my forehead. But I have to acknowledge the value of the book. Each time I read something about myself there’s a tendency to deny it. But I know that other people can see me better than I can see myself and the people writing in the book have no reason to make up things that are not true. In fact their motivation is the opposite. They are all people who benefit from my becoming more artistic in my interactions with them. I grudgingly have to admit that the things they write about me are true:

“Always wants to be in charge.”

“Little Napoleon.”

“Would get along better, if he spent less time feeling sorry for himself.”

“Often takes unilateral action for things that he thinks are important, but which other people might see as trivial. Why don’t you bring up your idea and see who else supports it?”

“Too judgmental.”

“Sometimes seems to be competitive with other men.”

“Knock before you enter a woman’s space or you won’t be invited back.”

“Why is it so painful to you to admit that somebody else knows more than you do about a subject?”

“Your plans are not always everyone else’s plans (or the universe’s).”

“Sometimes holds back his energy when he’s volunteered to women.”

“Lousy dishwasher.”

“Don’t take it personally (or sermonize), if your plans aren’t met.”

“A good driver, but wait to be asked, before jumping behind the wheel.”

“Gets attached to his own ideas.”

“You lose points when you have been invited and then are late to a woman’s space.”

“Don’t assume that you’re going to be playing the same role today that you played yesterday.”

“You don’t have to be good at everything. Admit that you’re a lousy editor and do something else.”

“Talk less. Know what you want to say before you start speaking.”

RAINBOW GATHERING

That summer Steve Beltz announces that he wants to organize a Rainbow Gathering. He’d gone to the first Rainbow Gathering in Colorado in 1972 in a school bus with his family and has been going every summer since. There has never been a gathering of the Rainbow Family east of the Mississippi and Beltz hopes to make this the first. He asks whether he might use the “High Field.” He brings it up in a meeting. Nobody says anything for the idea or against it.

Pettie says, “Everybody talk at once and tell Steve that it’s a great idea.”

We do and he begins working on the project. The High Field is the land adjacent to the Red Cabin. It’s a 91-acre tract with a half mile of common border with the Shenandoah National Park on the eastern shoulders of Old Rag Mountain.

It’s an unofficial Rainbow Gathering, but hundreds attend and camp out for a week. Tents are spread along the path of the creeks and next to the huge boulders in the forest next to the pasture. We make new friends, like the members of the Love Family from Washington State, famous for their beautiful communal gardens, eccentric rituals and elaborate costumes and their leader Love Israel. Despite the many campsites with campfires and the need to dispose of trash and human waste, true to their word, when the week is over, the place is left in better condition than when they arrived.

After the Rainbow people leave, Pettie calls for each person to pick a spot on the property and create a personal retreat using a minimum of new material. “Do something that reflects your personality,” he says.

We set in doing it with vigor. I select a place between two branches of a stream under large maple trees. I find two pieces of plywood that used to be a sign and drag them to the site to construct a lean-to. It’s strong and doesn’t leak. I find a huge grapevine hanging from a tree, pull it loose and rearrange it over my structure so that it’s well hidden. Pettie comes around to inspect each site. He doesn’t say much and I ask him what he thinks.

“It’s OK,” he says.

I can tell that he really doesn’t think much of it. I press him: “You don’t seem too enthusiastic about it. What do you really think of it?”

“It’s not up to me to judge,” he says. “Your site is what it is. It’s fine.”

“Well, I can see that it isn’t the kind of place that you would have picked for yourself or that you would want to visit. I know that you were trained in the army and know more about picking a place than I do. And I know that you were trained as an intelligence officer. What would an intelligence officer think of this site?”

“It’s out of the way and not easy to find,” he says.

“I can tell that you have no enthusiasm for this place,” I say. “Please tell me what you really think of it. I really want to know.”

“OK,” he says. “It’s on a flood plain, which isn’t a good place to build or to sleep. It’s dark. It’s damp. And I said to pick a place that reflects your personality. What kind of a personality have you reflected by what you have created?”

“Thank you,” I said. And he left.

I was stunned. I sat and looked at my place. I’d completely forgotten that he’d said that it should reflect my personality. At least I’d forgotten on a conscious level. I’d made this lean-to out of my unconscious sending myself a message. There it was, a cold, damp place where no sunlight penetrates and I’d bound it up with vines. It was sitting there in front of me. I could not escape from it. This was a me that was completely foreign to my conscious self-image. I brooded on it for the rest of the day, but then was forced to sleep in the place that night. The following day I abandoned the place and never returned. We returned to the city that night. On the way, Pettie talked about the High Field and the other property that he had bought.

ANCESTORS

“Just above the stream where Rannie built his place on that little rise by the spring,” Pettie says, “is where I believe my great grandfather had his cabin and shop. His name was Bob Pettie. People still told stories about him when I was a boy. I’ve never been able to find out exactly where he came from. He was a bit secretive. May have had something to hide. He was also very independent. In those days most of the people around here were obligated to somebody else in one way or another. They were mostly sharecroppers who didn’t own their land and they usually owed something to the storekeepers, if they could get credit. Sometimes the storekeeper would give them enough credit to buy seed and then they would pay it back out of the crop. Some of them paid it back with moonshine.

“But Bob Pettie was independent. He was a wheelwright. He had his shop somewhere out there in the High Field and he just stayed there and minded his business until somebody came to him and needed something from him. He was good at his trade and his services were always in demand because everybody’s wagon had wheels. He was also reputed to have a lead mine somewhere up on the Old Rag. People saw him working with lead in his shop, so they knew that he had to have a source, but nobody ever saw where he got it. He took the secret to the grave. I’ve explored around up in the park looking for it, but I never found it.

“It seems like there might be something to the story. One day, I was walking through the woods from the white cabin up toward the park and I saw a series of orange-colored plastic ribbons tied onto trees. I followed them up into the park and, after a while, a man came walking back down with a Geiger counter. He was friendly and introduced himself. He said that he was from the federal government, the Department of Energy. He said that he’d been checking out the Old Rag for uranium. He said that there was a lot of it there. ‘A rich vein,’ he said. He also told me that the Old Rag was one of the oldest mountains in the world. When he headed on back down the mountain, I walked on up to the end of his ribbons. Then I turned around and came back. I cut all of his ribbons off the trees as I came and threw them away. He’s never been back as far as I know. I doubt they’d ever try to mine up in the park. Too many people would squawk, if they tried it. But it was interesting.

“I had plenty of other relatives living in this neighborhood, but Bob Pettie was the most interesting. All of the others were pretty dumb. My parents used to send me down here to stay with some of them in the summertime. Some of them couldn’t read or write, but they got along OK, because they were hard workers. One of them used to try to get me to do chores like he made his kids do, but I told him that I was a thinker and not a doer. I had a bunch of books and spent my time reading while my cousins worked. He was a pretty good sport, but he didn’t know hardly anything. He couldn’t read or write and he couldn’t talk very well. He only lived 80 miles from Washington, but he’d never been there. Sometimes he would ask me about it. He used to say to me: ‘Tell me about the governor, son.’ He meant ‘government,’ but I never corrected him.

“I had another relative who inherited a little money. He lived right on Route 707 near Slate Mills. He didn’t know anything about real estate or about the future and he didn’t do any investigating. He invested his inheritance by buying a little bit of land on a ridge. I’ll show it to you sometime. He told me that it was going to be the next boomtown and that there would be new houses all over that ridge. It was a pasture then and it’s a pasture now. There hasn’t been a new building put up there for a hundred years. He helped me to become a skeptic. You see those sheep in the pasture over there. Have they been sheared? No? You mean that they haven’t been sheared on this side. You’ve got to investigate.”

INTELLIGENCE

“You said that you were trained as an intelligence officer,” I ask. “How did that happen?”

“I was offered a chance to go to intelligence school in Germany by General Ira Eaker. They also sent me to American University for six months to study German. I didn’t like the routine of the language school, but I learned a fair amount of German. I took the intelligence training in Frankfurt, Germany. When the training was over, I was entitled to a month’s leave. I took a military flight to Panama, but I didn’t tell anybody that I was doing it. Then I took a flight back to the Pentagon.

I was only thirty-five, but I’d been in the military for more than twenty years. Everybody thought that I was going to stay on in the service after the intelligence training. But I went to one of the generals and told him that I was under new orders and that I was to be discharged. He asked me what was going on and I told him that it was so secret that I wasn’t even allowed to tell him. He gave me my discharge papers and I headed back to Germany. They are expecting me to show up for further training, but instead they see me walking around the streets of Frankfurt in civilian clothes and I don’t speak to anybody. They wonder what’s going on and that starts the mystery. I lived around Europe for a while in Germany and Paris and came back to the US occasionally. Then I took trips around to a number of military bases where there were nuclear installations. I had top-secret clearance, but I didn’t try to use it. I just showed up there so I would be seen.”

“Why did you do that?

“I was creating a smokescreen. I didn’t want anybody to figure out what I was doing. I knew that I was going to start living experimentally and that it might be dangerous if anybody thought I was a threat. I knew that the kind of a life that I advocated would get you in trouble if the authoritarians understood it. This was when Joe McCarthy was in his heyday. I thought the best cover I could have was for the different parts of the government to think that I was in some part of the intelligence operations of one agency or another. They all left me alone and they’re still leaving us alone.”

“What was there to be afraid of?” I ask.

FREEDOM

“The threat of freedom. That’s what they’re afraid of. To most people, freedom is the most fearsome thing on the planet. Almost nobody wants it. Almost nobody can handle it. Everybody says that they love it and will fight for it, but if you offer real freedom to somebody they will run the other way and if they see that you’re free they will try to oppose you.”

“That rings true,” I say. “Why are people so afraid of it?”

“Because if they aren’t free, they won’t have to take responsibility for their own lives. They can get out of bed in the morning and complain about having to go to work. And they can obligate themselves to buy the new car and then complain about the car payments, which they say that they have to have, because they have to drive to work. And they can complain that they didn’t get the raise because the boss is prejudiced against them. They can go on from morning to night, never take responsibility for their own life, and never have to think. That’s right. You never have to think, if you’re a slave, you just do what you’re told that you have to do. Then when they lay you out in the coffin, you try to complain that it’s the wrong color, but you can’t open your mouth and it’s too late. Your whole life has gone by like a dull Sunday afternoon and you never had to take any responsibility for it. And when you arrive up there and the great dispenser of karmic justice is about to speak, you can say: ‘It wasn’t my fault.’

“That’s the victim mentality and it’s rampant. It’s an epidemic in the government. The bureaucratic mind is the best example of it. People are attracted to the bureaucracy because they know that they won’t have to take any risks. They’re given a little power, but in most places in the government it’s the power to complexify, the power to delay and the power to say no. I don’t say that that is 100% true, but that is the typical bureaucratic mentality. So long as you can do one of those things, there’s no chance that you will have to think or to stick your neck out and take a risk. How did you escape that kind of thinking?” Pettie says.

“I didn’t escape it,” I say. “I saw it around me every day when I was in the government. And I can see that sometimes I thought like that. And I still do. But most of the people that I worked with were even more rigid than I was and they drove me out of the government. I didn’t want to turn into them.”

MANKIND RESEARCH UNLIMITED

When we return to the city, Pettie suggests that I check out an organization that Christopher Bird has recommended. Bird is a dowser, and in the course of practicing his avocation, he has come across an organization called Mankind Research Unlimited. I go down to their offices, which are in the basement of a new building on New Hampshire Avenue. It’s basically a one-person company that staffs up as needs arise. That one person is Karl Schleiffer. I enter and introduce myself. Schleiffer is a large man in his mid-40s. His style is very stiff and formal and his speech halting and careful. He has no scientific credentials, but has done an overview survey of everything having to do with the paranormal.

On the walls are Kirlian photographs of hands emitting sparks of energy from the fingertips, UFOs, dowsers in a circle with willow sticks all pointing downward and a man sitting in the lotus position inside of a pyramid. We talk a bit and I get a schedule of the events that he has planned. There’s something happening several nights of the week. His office has obviously become a Mecca for a certain type of person and this type is more interesting than the mainstream.

I take the schedule back to Pettie and we attend several of his sessions. The first is a demonstration of psycho-kinesis. There’s a crowd of about 20 people in the room all focused on a table in the center of the room. On the table is a clear glass dome, like a goldfish bowl that has been turned upside down. Inside is a lightweight metal device, suspended on a needle point with tiny wings on both sides. When the demonstration is to begin, Schleiffer announces that he’s about to make a phone call to Miami where the source of the psychic energy waits. When the phone is answered, he tells the person on the other end that we’re all ready and he should begin to concentrate on making the device turn on its needlepoint axis. We all watch in anticipation expecting to see the wings begin to spin. Nothing happens. Schleiffer calls back again to find out what went wrong. A second attempt is made. Still nothing happens.

We walk away chuckling. “He should have had a magnet hidden somewhere,” says Pettie, “so that the audience wouldn’t be disappointed. He lost a lot of potential customers there tonight. I don’t know whether he’s honest or dumb. People want to believe stuff like that. I used to go to see a lot of magic shows. I went to see one of them every night trying to figure out how he did his thing. I even followed him up to Philadelphia and watched the show up there. I never could figure it out. Still, I never became a believer.”

A couple of days later, I get a call from Schleiffer. He desperately needs two people to work in his office for a few days. I tell Pettie and he asks Diane and Barbara whether they want to do it.

“Be sure to tell him that you settle up at the end of the day,” he says. “I suspect that his operation is marginal and you would have a hard time collecting.”

They go to his office. He agrees to pay at the end of every day, but when the day is over, he’s out of the office. They return the next day and he does the same. On the third day, Pettie asks me to go with them to his office. I say that I’m their accountant and that they have asked me to come along because they are very inept at handling money.

This of course is a ruse and Pettie has instructed them on what to do. Before I can finish talking, both of them begin to cry. A little at first, then they begin to wail. They’re saying things like: “My rent is due and I’m such a fool. I owe the dentist and my teeth are falling out. I’m in trouble with the IRS and they’re going to put me in jail, if I don’t pay…”

The effect is amazing. Schleiffer is beside himself. He jumps up and runs about the office rushing over to them, starting to put his hand on a shoulder to comfort them, but finding that he can’t do it and then rushing over to me begging me to do something. I just shrug my shoulders and shake my head. Within seconds, he comes up with the amount he owes. Their tears are dried and they become business-like. They stay and finish out the workday. He pays them again at the end of the day.

That night, back at W Street, everybody laughs when we describe the events at Schleiffer’s office.

“He’s his own Gamecaller,” Pettie says.

This is the first time that we have heard the term “gamecaller,” but we instantly know what it means. The concept that life is a game and that every aspect in life is a game within the game of life, is familiar.

“At one time, everybody had a gamecaller,” Pettie says, “and they knew who it was. In a tribe, there was always a leader and there were subleaders. They changed sometimes, but everybody was loyal to something bigger than just themselves. They had tribal loyalties. In a tribe, you get to pick who your gamecaller is. At least, in the ideal tribe that I talk about. You pick somebody that has demonstrated a level of altruism that suits you. You pick somebody that you think is going to look out for your interest. People living in a close-knit group know who that is. They pick a gamecaller who’s going to do the most for the common good. I’m advocating a woman or some women to be The Gamecaller. Ya’ll have picked me, for the moment, but I’m trying to work myself out of a job.

“There may be a great gamecaller somewhere that is running everything. But the world is out of balance, because each person wants their own channel directly into headquarters. That’s individualism. If that worked, I would be for it. But it doesn’t and the world is in a big mess because of it.

“Individualism is based on the notion that each skin-bag is disconnected from the rest of the universe. In a tribal world, that kind of thinking would be called insanity. But in the world that we live in, it’s called normal.”

Martin speaks up: “Are you saying that there’s a God or that there isn’t or that God is The Gamecaller, or what? I’m confused.”

“Nothing wrong with being confused. The problems arise when you’re unconfused. God is the metaphor of individualism. Tribal peoples have a whole pantheon full of gods and goddesses. They may just be metaphors, too. But I’m satisfied with the idea that the universe is beyond understanding with our peanut brains. To me, wonder is the ideal state, not belief.

“Every individual consciousness seems to be a continuum. But that’s also just a metaphor. In my metaphor, I’m the bottom end of the continuum and the ultimate gamecaller is at the top end. I’m trying to clear the channel from the top to the bottom, by getting rid of the foolishness that’s in between. And what’s in between is a bunch of foolish beliefs and ungratified emotional needs.

“Ya’ll just handicap yourself by thinking that you need to either believe in or not believe in some god or goddess.

“A gamecaller is somebody that you pick. The best one to pick is somebody who can see you better than you can see yourself and is out to move you up on the ladder. Schleiffer wouldn’t be much of a gamecaller. Nobody would pick him and he is never going to elevate his consciousness with the kind of foolish games that he’s calling for himself.”

CHAPTER SIX

MEN’S TRIPS

For several years, Pettie has been talking about buffalo hunts. It’s morning and a group of men is eating breakfast at the warehouse. He says, “If you were a male in an Indian tribe, ya’ll would do your hunting together. You could trap rabbits and small game by yourself, but the serious hunting would be done in hunting parties. At certain times of the year, when the buffalo herds came around, you would all go out together. I don’t think you’re ready for a real buffalo hunt, but you might be ready for a shakedown cruise. I’m going to think about it today, while I’m walking around, and I might announce a new game tonight. I’ll meet you over at W Street.”

ORLANDO

We don’t see him until the following morning. Then he says, “As many men as want to can head down to check out Orlando, Florida, as a potential site for a winter base.”

It’s the spring of 1977. We’re sitting on the roof of 3918 as the leaves are reaching their full size, but still tender and a lighter shade of green than they will become in a few days. Seven men say that they want to go: Simon, Rannie, Big Jim, Lucky, Stan, Tom and I. Lucky is the most frequently used of the many nicknames that Pettie gave to Ron Alleman.

We have no transportation, so I call Mike Rios, the leader of a commune known as “The Community.” I know that he has a step van for sale. When he says that it runs, we buy it immediately for $1,100. It’s completely empty, except for a cage that separates the front area with its driver seat and passenger seat from the cargo space in the rear. It’s a giant metal box with a powerful engine. It’s heavy and hard to steer in the wind. But, it’s the perfect classroom for seven intrepid males foolish enough to turn their egos loose on each other with no place to escape. We’re ready to go in a few minutes, but wait for an hour while Mike installs a radio, which he gives us as a bonus; a gift that proves superfluous, because the roar of the motor is so loud, that we can’t hear each other speak without shouting, much less listen to a radio.

We head out in the early afternoon and drive all night, crossing the Florida line to the drone and vibrations of the van, which seem almost organic in our dreams. At daybreak, we arrive at Juniper Springs in the Ocala National Forest and are thrust into a radical environmental shift. It’s a place where I’ve spent hundreds of happy hours as a boy, hiking the trails, bathing in the sand-boiling springs and sleeping under the stars. We rent canoes and follow the winding river drifting above a sand bottom. The water is so clear that the canoes seem to be suspended in air. The sterile, industrial metal box and throbbing engine is replaced by birdsong, insects and the occasional thump of a paddle against the side of a canoe. We’re awed into not speaking to each other. We spend the rest of the day relaxing, then drive a few miles to the shores of Milldam Lake, roll out blankets and sleep under the stars to the sound of lapping lake waters.

The next day we drive south to Orlando. The first place we stop is a tobacco store to ask directions. When I open the door, I am staring into the face of Cynthia Karper’s ex-boyfriend, Gene, who had disappeared from W Street a year before when it became clear that Cynthia had switched her primary loyalty from him to Big Jim. He’s as surprised to see me as I am to see him. I get my directions and leave, feeling that we have violated him by penetrating his anonymity.

While I’ve been inside, two galvanized trashcans have fallen off a passing pickup truck and are rolling down the street. One of our gang races after the truck that has stopped for a traffic light and tells them of the lost cargo. We retrieve the cans and return them. The truck is filled with grapefruit. Big Jim asks the driver if he knows of any work that is available. He says to report in to him tomorrow morning at a grapefruit grove near Apopka, a few miles north of Orlando.

The next day we show up and are each given a squat bushel basket, a canvas bag and a pair of clippers. We watch the techniques of the more experienced pickers who are already in the field. They climb the ladders that lean into the trees, hold their bags under the fruit and clip the stems of each yellow ball, allowing it to fall into the bag. When the bag is full, they climb back down the tree and open a latch at the bottom of the bag. The grapefruit then falls into the basket. When the basket is full, a truck driver who credits your account picks it up.

By noon we’re all exhausted, but catch a second wind in the afternoon. At the end of the day, we are sunburned, our hands are blistered, our backs are aching from lifting the heavy bags and our hands and arms are punctured from the many thorn pricks that we have suffered. We are paid as the sun is setting and allowed to park the van in the grove for the night. By the time it’s full dark we’re all asleep. None of us has earned half as much as the experienced pickers with whom we shared the trees. Most are Mexican, but there are a few older black men, highly skilled at their craft, pacing themselves steadily through the day, seeming to move slowly, but filling more than twice as many baskets as we could through the efficiency of their movements. They’d been silent and scornful of our ineptitude at first, but ended the day friendly and joking with us, presumably because of our gameness.

Meager as it is, our pay far exceeds our expenses, which includes only the cost of food and gas. Our food is simple and healthy. We boil up some potatoes, cabbage and onions in a big pot, flavor it with some soy sauce, and serve it on paper plates, sprinkling on a little olive oil. Occasionally, we buy bread and cheese. For most of us, one day of this kind of labor is all that we can handle. But a couple of guys stay on for a second day. The rest of us spread out in Orlando looking for leads.

Big Jim strikes pay dirt. He follows up a lead found at the public library and meets a young entrepreneur named Bob Waterman, who owns an environmental company called Blue Water Consulting. Blue Water has been hired by the county government to fix a lake of perhaps three hundred acres near Haines City, Florida. It needs fixing because a huge molasses tank that sits on a hillside above the lake has exploded. When molasses is made properly, it’s stable and can last indefinitely. But if it’s diluted, it ferments and produces gas, like it did in this case. The molasses has all flowed down into the water converting the lake into a giant pool of sweet tea. The sweetened water has caused an algae bloom that is depleting the lake of oxygen, and the fish and other creatures in the lake are threatened. Blue Water needs a team ASAP. We head for the lake.

Blue Water treats the lake exactly like a home aquarium. We’re going to pump air through a tube and allow it to bubble up to the surface to increase the oxygen content. When we reach the lake, it looks perfectly fine: clear water and sandy beaches interspersed among cypress trees along the banks. We set up our gear along the bank: spools of half-inch plastic tubing perforated with small holes, plastic floats, monofilament fishing line, bricks, an air compressor and connectors for the tubing. Our job is to unroll the tubing and drag it out into the lake so that air can be pumped through it and into the water to restore the depleted oxygen. To accomplish this, two men get into a rowboat. One rows the boat out into the lake and the other holds onto the tubing as it unrolls from the spool on the shore. Others get into the water and place bricks on the tube to hold it on the bottom. It’s great fun. We’re being paid for swimming and rowing a boat. By mid-afternoon, there are plastic tubes snaking their way along the bottom all across the lake and little trickles of bubbles are bursting across the surface.

NOMADS

We want to leave the van there beside the lake and sleep for the night, but are told that isn’t possible, so we set out to return to Orlando. On the way we pass a RV campground and swing our steel box off the highway and in among the other nomads. The proprietors of the place are wary of our appearance, but rent us a spot for the night. We find ourselves among retired steel workers and government clerks, retired school superintendents and bookkeepers. They speak with the accents of the mid-west and New England, Pennsylvania and Long Island. Their mortgages are paid off, their kids have married and produced grandchildren that must be visited in various parts of America and they have hit the road. Many have sold their suburban homes and set up housekeeping wherever they land, sometimes for weeks, sometimes for years. They unfurl the awning on the sides of their RVs, bring out the lawn chairs and tap their signs into the ground: “The Jones,” “The Carpenters, Mabel and George;” “Fred and Mary Hinson, We Never Meet a Stranger.”

They are the new American nomads. Their camels are air-conditioned and they don’t need the safety of the caravan. They travel in twos. Their hair is grey and, like millions of grey-haired storytellers who preceded them across a thousand deserts and sat under the stars with travelers from distant lands, they begin their evenings among fellow travelers talking of their pasts. But, unlike those past travelers, they cannot see the stars, because of humming halogen lamps, and sparking bug-zappers. They talk of the places they have visited, relatives and little victories with the boss, politicians they have known or movie stars that they met, baseball players from their home town who made it to the big league and those who didn’t but should have, how good this restaurant is and how bad that one, what the president is doing wrong and how the world would be different if the last one had done this or that instead of this or that. They would like to talk about themselves, their inmost selves that they were going to talk about years ago before they got distracted. They still plan to do it, but first they have to talk about the weather and how there’s never enough time in the day and before they get around to the important topics, which they will no doubt get to tomorrow, they have to climb back into their RVs, because it’s time for their favorite program that is just about to start on the television. So they say how great it is to meet new people and make new friends and disappear.

But we aren’t among the friends that they will make today. From somewhere, Big Jim has obtained an army surplus tent. It’s sixteen feet by sixteen feet and on the top is stitched a giant red cross, identifying it as a site for medical treatment on the battlefield. It’s tattered and faded, but it will keep the dew off and we begin stringing it up on the side of the van. Before we finish, the owner of the RV park arrives with a delegation of three other men. He steps bravely forward, says that we should be ashamed for using a Red Cross tent, and tells us that we have to leave. We comply without resistance and doze the night at a rest stop on Interstate 4.

HOUNDED

Our troubles aren’t over. We spend the day individually scouting for property near Orlando as winter quarters. I put on a business suit and call on the realtor who assembled the property that became Disney World. I tell him that I represent a group that is looking for lakefront property within a half hour of Orlando. He obliges by showing me listings of a few places and telling me that it’s a sellers market, that things are booming and there isn’t much available. Then he begins telling me how he was the agent for Disney World, when it was bought twenty years before. We enter his war room where a huge map covers one wall, showing the entire region with the plats and names of owners. He shows me how he identified each one in the logical order for the purchases and brags that the entire acquisition was made without anybody suspecting that it was happening, using false names for each purchase. When the process was finished, Disney owned thousands of acres without the price rising above the levels when the buying began.

In the evening, we meet in the public park near Lake Eula. Everybody has come up with leads and we spend the rest of the day driving around looking at places. It’s late at night before the tour is finished. The last place that we visit is a warehouse along the railroad not far from downtown Orlando. We arrive there, park the van and walk around the outside, peeking in the windows. It’s a good location and of possible interest as a purchase. We return to the van and are about to leave when a police car arrives, then another. They fix us with their spotlights and tell us to come out and stand with our hands over our heads facing the side of the van. We comply. They proceed to search the van illegally, without asking for the permission that we would have given if they’d asked.

“Where is the crowbar?” one of the policemen says. “Who’s the boss here?” We have been following the usual custom in The Finders of having a leader at all times, voluntarily pick by the followers. People had been volunteered to me, so I speak up.

“I guess that would be me. I don’t know anything about a crowbar. I don’t think that we have a crowbar.”

“Did you just try to break into this warehouse?”

“No sir,” I say using my most respectful tone. “We walked around it and looked it over, but we weren’t trying to break into it.”

“What are you doing here?”

“We’re here in Orlando looking for a building to buy. This place is for sale and we’re just looking it over.” As soon as I say it, I realize how absurd this must seem to the police: seven men in a battered step van at midnight walking around a dark warehouse claiming to be real estate investors.

“You were reported by a neighbor to have a crowbar trying to open the front door,” the policeman says.

“No sir. We didn’t try to get in the building and we don’t have a crowbar.”

“That’s right,” he says. “You’re just looking it over so you can come back tomorrow night with the right tools to get into it. We’re going to be watching you. You show up around here again and we’re taking you in.”

We pile into the van and begin driving north, thinking that we would head up to Altamonte Springs and park for the rest of the night in Bob Waterman’s parking lot. The police follow us. After a while, we can no longer see them. But then another police car shows up. Again it disappears and another shows up. We realize that they are tracking us, presumably by radio. This continues for an hour. We pull into an all-night car wash to sort ourselves out for sleeping and to rearrange the bedding. When we’ve been there for maybe five minutes, a police car pulls up and wants to know what we are doing there. We keep heading north until we’re out of Orange County and finally can stop for the night.

SUNFEST 77

The next day, we head south toward Lakeland in Polk County for a tour of the Frank Lloyd Wright buildings at Florida Southern College and to sign up to work at Sunfest 77, a rock concert that has advertised for guards to keep out the gate-crashers. They hire all of us. It’s a one-day affair beginning at noon and lasting until dawn the next day. It’s situated in the middle of what had been a cattle farm of several hundred acres. A temporary fence has been strung around the entire perimeter except for the entrance. They give us bright orange tee shirts that say Sunfest Security and position us along the fence to stop anybody from coming in without paying. The organizers apparently wanted only giants for guards, because there are no shirts except extra large. Mine fits me more like a dress hanging to my knees. It’s poorly organized and many people slip in by raising the fence while the guards aren’t looking.

A cloud of marijuana hangs over the scene. The audience is a mixture of long-haired hippies and weekenders who have dressed down and gotten stoned for a blowout. Throughout the day, people pass joints to the security guards and by early evening, we’re more or less dysfunctional. After dark, I walk among the crowd. Lights have been placed along aisles marked out in the field. There are some folding chairs, but most people sit on blankets.

The lights create an unreal appearance to everything. I look at the people and see them as mad. All color has been removed. They are black and white creatures, dead, but still breathing. Their bodies are shriveled, their faces tortured in appearance. Some of their heads are only skulls with grey skin hanging from their cheeks, eyes shrunk into their sockets staring into empty space. It’s a convention of losers. They are here to collect their rewards. I see them as they are, on some level that I cannot understand, and wonder what I look like to them on this level. It occurs to me that this is my part of the world. I’ve come back here after many years of living in the northland, and the land of my birth has concocted this diorama for my benefit to show me the results of living a lifestyle that I’m studying rather than participating in–a life that I’ve rejected, but am not yet far enough from to understand. I see it and it’s repulsive. I know that I’ve been taken here to this vantage point by the herb that I’ve been smoking, but the scene is nevertheless real and important. I know that it will remain in my memory and that it will return to me in years to come when I need to be reminded of what I might have turned into.

Some of us are reassigned to other duties, keeping order in the crowd and walking about to create a presence. I’m given stage duty to prevent overexcited fans from charging the performers. The stage has been built for the occasion out of construction scaffolding with an awning above. It’s festooned with colored lights. A mound of large black speakers has been constructed on each side of the stage. I watch as bands parade onto the stage and blow away the audience with a shock of sound. I’ve never heard of any of them, but it’s evident from the hysterical response of the audience when their names are announced that somebody knows who they are. After I take my place on stage, the first band is called Pure Prairie League. An odd name, I think as I sit in the corner listening to their throbbing music. I can’t make out any of the words, but I can feel the energy that flows from them into my body. I decide that the name must be related to prayer. They are trying to create a league where they exist in pure prayer. I determine that to be a worthwhile goal and decide that I want to dwell in pure prayer.

The music continues all night. The main attraction, the band with the biggest national following is Jimmy Buffett. He’s scheduled to appear at midnight, but it’s 2 AM before he enters the stage. The audience, tired by this time, revives when he walks out, swings his guitar over his head and launches into Margaritaville. I’ve never heard of him before, but from my perch, I’m able to observe him clearly and unlike most of the other bands, his words can be understood. I ask Stan who Buffett is. He says, “Buffett writes songs for losers.” I listen to one after another and realize that Stan is right. He’s singing to people who believe that life is just a little too much for them.

Dawn comes. We collect our pay and curl up inside of the hot van for a few hours sleep. Then we spend the rest of the day cleaning the place, picking up trash and taking down the fence. By the end of the day, we have a bag full of joints that had been dropped the night before, but decide that it’s too dangerous to have them in the van and leave them sitting on a table for somebody to find. The people who are supposed to pay us for the cleanup aren’t there when the job is finished, but we leave anyway thinking that we can collect later, though we never do.

JESUS 77

The next day we drive to another rock concert a few miles away. It’s called Jesus 77. It’s just starting. We seek out the promoters and find that they don’t need any helpers. But they invite us to stick around just in case a need arises. The contrast with the last scene is dramatic. Where it was tie-dye tee shirts and cutoff jeans, weed and wine at the last, this is a Sunday school picnic. Everybody here has a plastic lawn chair. They have all brought ice chests with cokes, potato salad, napkins and a bright sunny smile. Hair is short and no facial hair can be seen. We listen to a few songs. At first, it sounds exactly like the music that we’d been listening to a couple of days before. But something is missing. The beat is the same, but it seems to be all imitation. There’s no spirit in it. They’re going through the motions, but they’re repeating phrases that they have heard, not something that they have thought and felt for themselves. It’s music designed to please your parents. It’s more frightening than the last place. We flee. On the way out, I realize that we have now been to two loser festivals. They cope with their loser mentality in different ways, but both relate to the world as something alien that they were not creating themselves.

WRAP UP

The next day M.D. Pettie shows up. We walk into the Orlando library and there he is reading a newspaper. We spend the rest of the day touring him around town, showing him what we have learned and looking at potential investment properties. He’s more concerned with the dynamics between the people than the real estate. We tell him about all of the tensions that have arisen and how we almost came to blows, backed off, forgave and started over.

“I have to give you all a pretty good grade,” he says. “Nobody killed anybody else and there aren’t many who could have survived for two weeks living in a tin can like this for more than a day or two. Let’s load up. We’re heading back to Washington.”

We take a leisurely trip back, stopping for a day each in Tallahassee and Atlanta. When we arrive, Pettie suggests that we get all of the women together and give them a rundown on the trip. We gather in the attic of 3918 and talk in a circle, each giving his version including the brushes with the law. When we have finished, Pettie says:

“Those authoritarians didn’t know what category to put you all into. So they probably put you into the category of thieves. If they’d known what you really are, they would have tried harder to knock you on your ass. They can understand thieves. They think a lot like thieves themselves. They have got another category called cults that they could have put you in.

“And it would not have done any good to try explaining anything to them. If any of them ever try to take you in, just let them do it and don’t resist. The best thing to do is just lie down on the sidewalk. They put people who are lying down in a different category than the ones who are standing up. Talking to them would just make it worse. Don’t say anything until they take you before a judge. Judges will usually listen to something reasonable, but cops are pretty dumb. Suppose that you’d said to them: ‘It’s OK, officer. You don’t have to worry. We’re just a nice cult. We just pool all of our money together and we’re trying to figure out what to do with the surplus. So we thought we would buy some property in your town.’

“It wouldn’t have made any difference what you called yourselves. A policeman would not have understood it. And he would have been frightened by it. The trouble is, he has the power of the state behind him, so you don’t want to frighten him. It’s better that he just thought you were thieves who didn’t get caught.

“What is a cult anyway? Cult is a label that outsiders stick on people who are working together. Nobody calls their own group a cult. The Baptists were called a cult when they came to Virginia. You can read old newspapers where they were outsiders as much as the Moonies are now. The locals even killed some of ‘em in a few places. Give a dog a bad name and it’s OK to shoot him. Why do you think that these lone possums like policemen hate you all so much? It’s because y’all are into personism. Some people call it ‘personalism’ and that’s OK, but it’s a little different from ‘personism.’ I’m into personalism too. But if you organize your life based on specific individual persons, I say that you’re into personism.

“That’s what I do. When I wake up in the morning, the first thing that I think about is the five Ws: who, what, when, where and why. Tobe, you’re action-oriented. You always think about ‘how.’ But I’m a thinker and the first one of the five Ws that I think about is ‘who.’ I put everything else together based on that. ‘Who’ is the most important question for me. That’s what scares the policemen. They don’t have much in the way of personal loyalty. They’re loyal to a set of rules that they call the law, and I’m loyal to some persons who are more important to me than the law. I don’t believe in breaking the law, but I would do it under some circumstances. And I could come up with a circumstance where I would put friendship above the law. There are plenty of people who would do that. Mothers almost always will do that for their children. I don’t want to spend any of my time around a person who wouldn’t.

“People are personally attracted to a charismatic person and form a group. But then the group gets rigid and routine and the spirit goes out of it. That usually happens after the charismatic leader dies, but it can happen before, especially in a big group. It can be a big group like John Wesley attracted and people started calling the Methodists, or it could be a small group like Jesus or Socrates. All three of them made a mistake by letting too many people know about them. At least two of them ended up as martyrs and I don’t remember what happened to John Wesley.

“If you’re perceived as a threat by the existing power structure, they will try to knock you on your ass. Even if the authorities don’t know about you, the inflexible people in an organization will eventually take over and they will rely on forms rather than essences. Then it won’t be personism anymore; it won’t be based on the intuition of the charismatic leader. It’s his ideas that appeal to people. It’s principles, guidelines, creeds, concepts or whatever words you might use. That’s what makes people act the way they do, but it’s not personism any more. The charisma has become routinized. There have probably been plenty of other people who came on the scene who had as much insight as Jesus or Socrates, but they didn’t have a Paul or a Plato. Without them, Jesus and Socrates would only have been footnotes in history. They had somebody who wrote down what they said and kept as much of the charisma in it as they could, but it’s not the same when you’re getting it second hand. You all can be charismatic. Just base your life on personism. Anyway, jerk the book on John Wesley and see what it says about him.”

“Jerking the book” refers to reaching up and pulling the Encyclopedia Britannica from the ledge below the attic entrance. The Britannica has become one of Pettie’s main tools since it was left there the year before by Jim Holswell. Holswell is a down-on-his-luck psychologist and Arica activist turned encyclopedia salesman.

Somebody opens the book, but Pettie senses that the men and women in the room, who have not seen each other for three weeks, would rather be in bedrooms than the attic and the meeting is called off.

MUNCHKINS

A few weeks after returning from Florida, Pettie gathers the men together again. “Are ya’ll ready for another shakedown cruise?” Everybody responds enthusiastically that we are. “OK, load up anybody that wants to go and head up to the School for Entrepreneurs at the Tarrytown Executive Center. When you get there talk to Bob Schwartz. He’s the guy who started it. Tell him that you’re there to learn from him and that you’re willing to do anything that he wants in return. Tobe, you would be the best one to do the talking. You can talk his lingo. Does anybody know anything about the place?”

Nobody has ever heard of it.

“It’s a training center for winners. Big companies send their executives there for a week or two and management experts tell them about the latest stuff from the corporate culture. If he picks up on your offer, you will learn a lot. If he doesn’t, don’t worry about it; call in and I’ll give you another assignment up that way.”

“Should we take the step van?”

“OK, but keep it out of sight. The step van projects a loser image.”

Nine of us head out mid-morning bound for Tarrytown, which is a few miles up the Hudson from New York City. We arrive in the afternoon and drop me off at the front gate. Up ahead of me I can see the long circular drive toward the imposing house at the top of a hill overlooking lawns and gardens. To the left is a view of the Tappan Zee, a wide section of the Hudson with hills on both sides. I approach the gatehouse to ask directions. The door is answered by a man of imposing bearing with a great head of grey hair.

“Hello,” I say. “I’m looking for Bob Schwartz.”

“OK, could you give some idea of the kind of business that brought you to see him?”

“Sure, I’m the spokesman for a team of people who would like to propose a deal to him.”

“What kind of a deal?”

“We’re a coordinated team who have been working together for a while, but we would like to become more efficient. We would like to offer our services to him in exchange for learning from him. We have a variety of skills and will do whatever he suggests and we can do it exactly his way.”

“Very interesting. Come on in. I’m Bob Schwartz.”

We enter the gatehouse, which he has converted into his private living area. It’s done with great style, a brick and stone structure ornamented with wood. Within minutes, he offers a deal. Starting the following Monday, we can report in to him. He will furnish us with a place to live, all of our meals and fifty dollars apiece per week. The group has authorized me ahead of time to make a deal, if I feel comfortable with it. I’m not concerned about the small amount of money, but I know that M.D. Pettie always wants to settle everything at the end of the day and not to commit for more than one day at a time.

“That sounds like a fair deal to me,” I say. “I can’t make a long-term commitment, but that sounds like a good place to start.”

He then gives me a tour of the main building. When we are finished, we shake hands and I walk back down to the entrance and am picked up by the rest of the gang who have been waiting out of sight. They have been driving around the area and are enthused about it. When they hear what Schwartz has proposed, a cheer goes up. They have had a meeting and decided that, if I succeed in making a deal, they want to buy a new van in order to make a better impression, keeping the step van in reserve as a work vehicle. They drive me to the station for the commuter train to Manhattan. I board and, within an hour, I’m on the Metroliner heading back to Washington. It’s Friday afternoon. I promise to be back before Monday morning with a new van when we are to make make our first appearance inside of the gate and everybody meets Bob Schwartz.

I arrive back in D.C. and go immediately to tell Pettie what has happened. He tells me what he knows about Schwartz: “I first heard about him quite a few years back when he was written up in some journal for starting a Japanese-style motel called the Motel on the Mountain in Severn, New York. He’d been a bureau chief for Time-Life somewhere and I’ve also read about his ability as a networker. He’s in with some of the New Age movers and shakers who live up that way. The main ones are Margaret Mead and Jean Houston.I recently read how he’d put together the Tarrytown Center. I’m not sure how long he’s been running it, but it’s a big hit among a lot of executives. He’s obviously a guy who knows how to get things done.

“It sounds like you’re on a good track. I don’t want to interfere. Just let it gather its own momentum and send me a daily report of how it’s going. At some point, I may come up there to join you. The only specific that I would suggest is that when he meets everybody you start out by doing the ‘Club Scouts.’”

I laugh and agree. “The Club Scouts” has it origins so far in the right brain that it’s hard to describe using the left. When we bought the warehouse property on 4th Street, Pettie had suggested that we consider it a clubhouse rather than a warehouse and told me to write a ditty about it. Then after he heard it, he said that we should do it as a march. Here are a few of the words:

If you seem to be stuck in your left-brain doubts

You must not be in our club scouts.

We’re full of folly and we thrive on flubs

And we all invite you to our right-brain clubs.

At this point the singing pauses for a moment and the troops who have been marching in single file tramp their feet more loudly and branch off into whatever direction they want, pivoting unexpectedly as the spirit moves them before resuming the words. The tramping then continues, with the words pausing between couplets.

There’s one near Georgetown that really is neat

Just take the D2 up to W Street

Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp,

And if you want to construct new nerves of steel

Or give yourself an ironic feel

Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp,

Just come on over where they serve the goop

And join with the kids in our scout troop.

Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp,

We’ll mix and mingle and imitate

We’re always open so you’re never late

Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp,

And if you finally think that the world’s flipped out

Come on over and be a club scout.

Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp,

As the end of the song approaches, we manage to tramp ourselves back into single file. Somehow, it happens that the Club Scouts is always performed by the men. It always provokes great merriment and it didn’t fail to do so when we stepped out of the new van and tramped around in front of Bob Schwartz before introducing ourselves. The spectacle of nine serious-faced grown men tramping around like kindergartners brought on loud laughter and applause from the kitchen staff, who were watching out the window. It was clear from the start that he wasn’t dealing with ordinary businessmen. Thereafter, he referred to us as “The Munchkins.” He never asked any questions about us, presumably afraid to discover something that would break the spell of his good fortune.

The “goop” referred to in the song is sweetened condensed milk. Pettie and several others add it to their coffee, resulting in a drink that is addicting to some and repulsive to others.

MUNCHKIN WORK

At the last minute, John Rippart decides to get in on the fun and comes with me from D.C. John is a classically trained pianist with a rich bass voice, who has raised the level of our music since he arrived a few months before. He’s a newcomer to the stresses of group work and unprepared for the commitment that he has made.

Schwartz introduces us to Lee. “Lee has been the manager here since we opened the place. Without him, it wouldn’t exist. He’s going to be your day-to-day contact. You won’t see me for a few days; I’ll be out of town. I’ll let you get rolling and then we can get together for a seminar and talk about your group. There are just three things that I’ll ask Lee to have you working on: One is to come up with some plans for how we could make this place more environmentally friendly. Second is to create a jogging path around the property with exercise stations along it. And third, to fix up the carriage house where you will be staying. You’re welcome to use it any way that you want and upgrade it in a way that you think makes sense. Lee will show you the dining room. Make yourselves at home there. The best place to eat is probably the terrace. And the best time is when the seminarians are in class. See you in a few days.”

Lee is now retired because of Parkinson’s disease, but still lives in the manager’s house with his family and does small jobs about the place. I don’t know whether it’s his loving nature or his daily portion of dopamine, but he exudes generosity and warmth.

The place was once magnificent. The main house still is. But Schwartz has moved strategically, gradually upgrading the properties as his budget allowed. There are two estates on 26 acres. Each was built and occupied by a series of rich and famous railroad and tobacco millionaires. The Mary Duke Biddle mansion is the main gathering place. Behind it, the Thomas King house is still not renovated fourteen years after Schwartz bought it. The woods and orchards between the houses are overgrown. There are several other structures that also need repair. Next to the main house, Schwartz has constructed first class living quarters for seminar guests. Below that is the swimming pool. In the remotest corner of the property is a small lake flanked by what had once been formal gardens and a boathouse.

The food is the best that any of us has ever had. There are three magnificent meals every day–prime ribs, lobster, soups and sauces, gourmet casseroles and cheeses, fresh fruits and vegetables of every kind, fresh baked bread and pastries. It’s piled onto huge buffet tables and there’s no limit to how much we can take. Our normal vegetarian diet flies out the window. We all gain weight.

We set to work the first day by cleaning out the carriage house and setting up a shop and living quarters. It was a large drafty building of indeterminate age, made entirely of wood. The walls and ceiling that hadn’t been damaged from leaks had acquired a rich brown patina. It has a few structural problems that we were able to correct easily by heading out to the lumberyard. While we’re there, we buy plywood to create a second level in the seatless new van. Eighteen inches above the floor, we build the passenger area with a plywood deck and add a layer of foam and carpet. Under the deck, there’s ample room for carrying all of our gear.

By the end of the second day, we have set up comfortable living quarters and begun creating the jogging trail. We spend several hours a day in left-brain activities researching and brainstorming a plan for transforming the place into a model of environmental innovation.

This is the first time that I’ve been the leader over a sustained period. I know the pressure of having to take orders from somebody else all day. But the pressure of being in charge is equally demanding. Pettie advocates “actionless leadership.”

“The leader should do nothing but think,” he says. “You’ve got to keep your mind empty when you’re in charge. A general isn’t out there on the battlefield with a rifle. He always has to be looking at the biggest picture that applies to the people that he’s leading. It’s a state of mind.”

I flunk. I get attached to having things done a particular way. Every day, I see things that need to be done and assign somebody to the job. When it doesn’t get done, I do it myself. People see this and let me do it, gradually diminishing their enthusiasm for doing it themselves. One day, I mow a field by the lake until after dark. I need a feeling of having accomplished something. But I lose the respect of my teammates by not playing the part of the actionless leader.

The experience at Tarrytown is also valuable for people on the receiving end of the orders chain. Most people have a lot of experience with having to do what other people tell them to do. But there’s a difference when it’s voluntary. You can no longer tell yourself that you’re being forced to be there. That kind of victim mentality keeps you in a state of perpetual postponement, never in the present moment. Here, there’s nothing requiring you to work except the fact that you’ve volunteered to put yourself through this exercise in discipline. John Rippart immediately succumbs to the pressure. After the first day, he “goes into the closet.”

CLOSET THERAPY

The closet, in this case, is the storage area under the deck in the van. We always designate a “closet” because it’s one of Pettie’s most effective methods of dealing with negative emotions. Rippart goes into the closet and does not come out for three days, a record as far as anybody knows.

Pettie’s theory, long since tried and found effective by most of those around him, is based on the idea that every person is the architect of their own misery. It’s a model of simplicity: when you’re feeling negative, you simply head for a closet, go inside where it’s dark and quiet and close the door. It’s obvious that it can’t fail, if the person is resolved not to come out until they’re no longer negative. The biggest hurdle that must be passed is admitting your own imperfection. Almost everybody will either say they’re not being negative or give some justification: “I know I’m angry, but... .” In other words, everybody justifies negative emotions based on some external circumstance. This notion is hard to support based on the obvious fact that emotions all originate within your own skin and you’re the person who’s most affected by your own negative reaction to what has happened to you. Still, almost everybody, when confronted with their own negativity, will have a reason that justifies it under the current circumstance or they will deny that they’re being negative altogether.

Pettie’s formula is that, anytime you even think you might be negative, simply go into the closet. And hone your ability to recognize negative emotions in yourself by observing them in other people, particularly how they deny them and justify them. This resolve to recognize them and to overcome them has paid off for all who have seriously determined to rid themselves and willingly acknowledged that their negative emotions exist, even when they arise from an unconscious source.

Sometimes a catharsis is reached in unexpected ways. Once Diane was feeling negative and entered the closet in the back bedroom of her apartment. She was naked. She sat in the closet for awhile, did not feel entirely relieved, but something told her it was time to emerge. She opened the door and found herself staring directly at a stranger, an intruder who had come in while she was in the closet. Without thought, she screamed. It came from the depths of her being. It was so loud that some of us came running from other apartments in time to see the intruder running away into the woods. She said that the scream was the ultimate in cleansing the negativity.

When Rippart emerges from the closet, we all greet him and award him with a paper that said he’d set a new record. He receives it with good humor.

OLE JOGGIN’ TRAIL

Creating the jogging trail is hard work. It requires that we cut through dense thickets and overgrown areas that were once showplaces of ornamental shrubs. Where possible we resurrect and prune. Some areas have eroded into trenches and have to be leveled, muddy places have to be raised and dried, fallen trees must be removed, and many other challenges, which we enjoy. The trail starts behind the main building and winds its way around the property for perhaps half a mile. We rent heavy-duty lawn mowers and chains saws, rototillers and a variety of hand implements. It takes almost two weeks to finish the trail. When we turn it over to Schwartz, we sing him a ditty to the tune of the Old Chisolm Trail:

If your business is ailin’ and you’re feelin’ down

Just see Bob Schwartz in old Tarrytown

For nothing could be truer for the entrepreneur

Than joggin’ on the ole joggin’ trail

Joggin’ trail

Than joggin’ on the ole joggin’ trail

We also give him a notebook of fifty pages in which we list and discuss plans for upgrading the place into an ecological model. It includes maps and schematics along with a budget. Schwartz lavishes praise on The Munchkins. That is the day that M.D. Pettie arrives. We make him at home and bring him gourmet meals from the dining room. He stays in our quarters and does not meet Schwartz, at least not Bob Schwartz. Two days before his arrival, Schwartz’s daughter, Nicky Schwartz, arrives. She’s a very attractive brunette in her mid-twenties from Berkeley. She’s very hip and open-minded. She sits with us in the evening listening to Pettie, and when it’s bedtime, invites Tom to join her in a nest that she has created in the old boathouse. Pettie stays two days, then calls for us to pack up and head back to D.C. Schwartz is disappointed. He had big plans for us to stick around indefinitely, but is gracious as we all depart. He never gets around to teaching us, but we learn plenty even if he didn’t teach.

In the van, on the way back to D.C., Pettie says: “Schwartz is a winner, but, if you’d stayed on much longer, it would have turned sour. He isn’t really in your state of consciousness.”

“How can you tell that?” somebody says.

“The best test that I know of to see whether somebody is in your state of consciousness is whether you laugh at the same things,” he says and I realize how simple this is and at the same time how profound. It’s what all relationships are based on, or at least would be based on in an ideal world.

We’re welcomed back by the women at W Street and we have a grand time all walking down to Georgetown through the Saturday night crowds. For years, dating back even to the time when I was a grey-suited briefcase-carrier on K Street, I’ve noticed that, on certain occasions, when I’m feeling high and happy, certain characters are likely to appear. First, there are the Krishnas dancing on the sidewalk. Then, there is the “Balloon Man.” He’s a large black man with a fistful of strings leading to dozens of bright-colored balloons floating above him. He stands on the sidewalk among crowds and calls out in a deep bass voice: “Make the ladies happy. Make the children happy. When the ladies and children are happy, everybody’s happy.” His presence is so uplifting that he has become a much-loved Washington character. Tonight as the returned Munchkins range through the streets of Georgetown, not only is the Balloon Man singing his song, but also the drums and cymbals of the Krishnas fill the night air.

THE GIFT ECONOMY

The next day, Pettie adds another comment about Schwartz.

“Schwartz sets a high style, but he wasn’t really very generous. It didn’t matter, because you all were there to learn, but nobody else would work for him for the amount that you did. You put him on the gift economy and he didn’t respond appropriately.”

“Could you say more about the gift economy?” Barbara says.

“Jerk the book on ‘gift exchange,’” Pettie says. The Britannica is pulled from the shelf and Barbara reads:

“gift exchange: the transfer of goods or services that, although regarded as voluntary by the persons involved, is part of the expected behavior. Gift exchange may be distinguished from other types of exchange in some or all of the following: (1) the first offering is made in a generous manner and there is no haggling between the donor and the recipient: (2) the exchange is an expression of an existing social relationship or of the establishment of a new one that differs from impersonal market relationships; and (3) the profit in a gift exchange may be in the spheres of social relationships and prestige rather than in material advantage. The gift exchange cycle entails obligations to give, to receive, and to return.”

“We talk a lot about making money,” Pettie says, “but that really doesn’t give much clarity. That’s the way that normal people think. What everybody rushes around doing all day long usually has something to do with the exchange of goods and services and you can do that on three different levels. Money, barter and gift. Almost nobody on this continent does anything but work in the money economy. But there are a few who work in the barter economy, which is a little more personal. But the highest level of exchange is the gift economy. At one time, all business was done in the gift economy. Now, almost all business is done in the money economy, at least within the world that has fallen under the spell of the west. When money was invented, commerce really took off, because you could do business with people that you didn’t know. But the consciousness of the whole world changed, because money promoted impersonalism and impersonalism has just about destroyed group consciousness everywhere. Impersonalism is the foundation of the individual ego.”

THE BUFFALO HUNT

One morning in late October of 1977, when the men are all living at the warehouse and the women at W Street, Pettie comes to the men’s morning meeting and says:

“I think that you have had enough shakedown cruises. I think that we’re ready to go on a real buffalo hunt. Anybody who wants to go can meet here at four o’clock this afternoon with your pack. We’re only going to take what you can carry on your back and don’t bring any money except what you already have in your pocket. I’m going with you.”

That last condition meant that we would have very little money. For the last few months, Pettie had insisted that the only pocket money that we carry would be in quarters. Carrying more than twenty dollars at a time meant that your pockets would soon have holes in them. Still this was better than the previous game when we’d only carried pennies.

At four o’clock, we walk one block from the warehouse and slip through a man-sized hole in the chain-link fence, presumably cut by some vagrant with bolt-cutters years ago. Then we walk along the railroad track and enter Union Station from the loading platforms. No doubt we are breaking some trespass law, but over the years we are never challenged and the train engineers wave to us from their windows as they pass. Inside we find an empty corner under the great echoing arched ceiling and have our first meeting on the road. There are nine of us: Simon, Rannie, Steve Rossoff, Tom, Stan, Pettie, Lucky, Mike Hoffman, an idealistic young man from Fresno, California, and me. We put all of our money into a common pot and begin reviewing our options. The Washington Hilton Hotel is looking for workers that evening to set up for a large breakfast meeting that will happen the next morning. They can use all of us. Everybody except Pettie heads for the Hilton to build an initial stake for our buffalo hunt. We work until well past midnight, then take the all-night bus to Ballston, a quiet suburban neighborhood of single-family houses to meet up with Pettie.

Big Jim and Cynthia are living there. They have made themselves useful to several small businesses and homeowners whom they visit on a regular basis, doing odd jobs. They have bartered for the use of a large furnace room, in which they are living. Big Jim is a cheeky guy with imagination who never meets a stranger. He has little trouble in establishing himself as a neighborhood character except at the newly opened Ballston Common shopping center where he appeared one day with a stool and, like a shoeshine boy, offered foot massages on the gift economy. It’s too much for the mall and he’s booted out. We show up at their furnace room and are welcomed. It’s the first cold night of the season and the warmth of the furnace feels good. We spread out sleeping bags on the floor around it.

The next morning, we rent a box van and load up. At the last minute, Big Jim decides that he wants to join us for the adventure. Cynthia doesn’t like it, becomes sullen and heads back to W Street after he leaves. Pettie tells Simon to drive and climbs into the only passenger seat next to the driver. The rest of us situate ourselves in the cargo area in the rear, sitting on our gear. "North," says Pettie.

BALTIMORE

An hour later, we’re parked below the statue of George Washington on Mount Vernon Place in Baltimore.

"Everybody spread out for the day and find some leads,” says Pettie. “See you back here at six o'clock tonight."

I make the rounds of bookstores, health food stores and libraries reading bulletin boards. During the day, I run into several others of our gang making the same rounds. Big Jim goes to the Peabody Conservatory and strikes up an acquaintance with Andrei Cordrescu, a poet, who’s reading there. Pettie finds a building that looks underutilized nearby and, when I run into him at the Johns Hopkins Library in the afternoon, he asks me to check it out.

The building is owned by an old man named Goresuch, whose relatives arrived early enough in Maryland to have a county named after them. He’s a shoemaker specializing in custom-made orthopedic shoes. He’s been in business in the same spot for more than 50 years. The building was once the storage area for leather, when his business was much larger and employed several other shoemakers. It has been empty for a long time, but still has a delicious leather smell. He’s a gentle old fellow and trusting enough that it doesn't bother him that we might be in the space at all hours of the day and night. Maybe he thought that we were an arm of some secret intelligence agency like so many other people did. He rents us the space a day at a time and is always glad to see me. We move in that night.

The next day everybody fans out again looking for people with needs. Rannie connects with the Streuver brothers who are buying and renovating old houses in the Federal Hill area across the inner harbor. They assign us to an empty townhouse where we report in with sledgehammers and crowbars, and by the end of the day, every wall has been converted into a pile of rubble. It’s a job with a beginning, middle and an end and there’s no denying the feeling of accomplishment when we look in the dumpster.

Other leads are being followed up every day. Through Cordescu, Big Jim has made connections among the theater and art crowd. One is with Ethan Allen Grenleaf, who traces his ancestors back to early New England settlers. He’s a jolly rotund man, who owns a large brick house in Bolton Hill. He has an apartment in the house that he wants to rent and would consider barter for it. Jim and I pay him a visit. He isn’t at home. But when we knock, we’re met by Jane Sloan, a very attractive woman of 32, who lives in one of his rooms. She invites us in. Something tells me that she prefers nonsense to rational conversation, so I introduce myself as Tony Torrelli, lay on a thick Italian accent and a burlesque of Italian body language. When we leave, after an hour of clowning around, she hugs me with an intimacy that suggests more tomfoolery might be in store.

Other short-term jobs are found over the next few weeks and we’re developing a database of Baltimore persons, places, things and ideas. Plus, we’re developing an affection for the town, which has a unique charm built on its early settlement, industrial base, Catholic history and Jewish business underpinning. The industrial areas are especially interesting, and we start searching for a warehouse building to buy. The search is highly educational, but nothing comes of it.

In mid-November, Simon makes a connection with the Becker Corporation, a company specializing in conventions and holiday decorations. They want us to decorate shopping malls for them for the upcoming Christmas season. They want to do it by contract, but we insist that the relationship must be day-to-day. They offer to post money with us up front to cover our expenses and labor with the understanding that they will settle up with us after we complete each mall.

Pettie heads back to D.C. at this point, saying that the work we have lined up will be a great chance for us to work under pressure until Christmas time. While we’re waiting for the work to begin, some of us make a trip back to D.C. with Cordresqu for a big party at the warehouse.

ZANIE’S PARTY

That winter the warehouse is the scene of several parties. The first is held by the Zanies. The Zanies are a group of young people living on a farm near Herndon, Virginia. The size of the group is constantly changing, but there’s a core group of perhaps eight people. The central figure of the group is Hunter “Patch” Adams. Patch is a lanky doctor and a wild extrovert. He plays the part of Professor Zany Ramorski, hence the name Zanies. He combines his medical practice with clowning, juggling, poetry recitation and spontaneous theater. His zany approach to life becomes legendary and, years later, a movie is made about him.

The Zanies invite a hundred or more of their friends to a party on a Saturday night at the warehouse. It’s the perfect spot for a loud all-night gathering, because there’s action and noise all night long in the market and nobody notices or cares. The warehouse is equipped with an oil-burning furnace which works, but which we never have used. Mike Rios, who’s helping set up the party, turns on the furnace. Unbeknownst to him, the furnace isn’t empty. Barbara had never been comfortable looking at the skull in Pettie’s attic. She’d secretly removed it and hidden it inside of the furnace. As the radiators begin to warm up, a strange smell fills the building. Finally, Rios goes to the furnace and opens it. It’s not hard to imagine the surprise of those present when they find a human skull inside. But Rios dismisses it with: “You never know what to expect from The Finders.”

Pettie sets himself up on the second floor and people visit him all night long, coming up from the first floor where the party is in full swing. Cordescu comes up and talks to Pettie for a while. Pettie finds him interesting, but too argumentative for developing much of a relationship. Pettie then tells us about some of the other writers whom he has known in the past.

"There were a bunch of them back in the sixties. There was a coffeehouse called ‘Coffee and Confusion’ later called ‘The Open Way.’ It was a magnet for unknown writers then. A lot of the beats came there. I used to go there pretty often. That's where I first met Steve Rossoff. He was sixteen years old and addicted to heroin or some other drug. He liked to hang around with the beat crowd.

“But most of the writers that I knew came down to the farm in Nethers. The main one who spent a lot of time there was Dick Dabney. He lived in the orchard house for awhile and some of his friends used to come down and visit him. Norman Mailer came down there and got in a fight with a guy named Lester Blackiston. Blackiston owned a bohemian bar in Richmond and considered himself a poet. They all got drunk and started wrestling with each other in the snow while the wives watched from the porch. They were shouting artistic insults with jibes about what lousy writers they were and spitting at each other. Maybe Dabney and Blackiston were trying to live up to Mailer’s reputation of being a fighter. They weren’t really trying to hurt each other at first. I can’t remember which one of them it was, but one of them said: ‘Multiply Ernest Hemingway by a thousand and that’s my writing. Divide Virginia Wolfe by a thousand, that’s your writing.’ At some point, Mailer pulled out a knife and cut Lester across the stomach. After that, they all left. Mailer was already under the eye of the police because he’d previously cut his wife. He didn’t particularly like me. We only exchanged a few words. Dabney later wrote a book called Old Man Jim’s Book of Knowledge with a character in it that some people claim is me, but I didn’t see much of myself in him. Blackiston was really proud of the scar. He would pull up his shirt and tell people ‘This is where Norman Mailer cut me.’

“Another one from that era that went on to fame and fortune was Barry Faber, who wrote some books and was the host of a radio program in New York. He ran for mayor of New York, but didn’t get elected. The one I liked best from that time was Rick Hart, Frederick Hart. He wasn't a writer, but he was a great artist and a warm-hearted guy. He was just a stonecarver at that time working on the National Cathedral, but he told me that he was destined to greatness and he was right.”

THE MALL LIFE

After the party, we return to Baltimore and begin the life of mall rats. We turn in the box van, rent a 22-foot truck and move into it temporarily. It’s large enough to accommodate all of the materials that we will be moving around from mall to mall and, when necessary, we can sleep in it. The first mall is called Neshimany. It’s brand new, located a few miles north of Philadelphia. We meet the mall managers and are assigned a space where we can keep our tools and supplies. We move in and it also becomes our living quarters. Some of the work can be done in the daytime, but most has to be done when there are no crowds. This means adjusting our sleeping rhythm. We quickly master such arcane subjects as applying artificial snow and keeping reindeer out of reach of children. Some of the work is done high up, so we rent telescoping lifts. It’s routine work, but we apply ourselves to it and finish before the date Becker had expected. So they send us on to Cherry Hill Mall, then the world’s largest. After that, we do small jobs around Philadelphia and Baltimore.

I learn much from this experience, making lots of mistakes. I’d been told that I was poor at following orders and that I always had to be in charge to feel good. On this trip, I see to what a great extent this is true. Leaders, according to Pettie, should be selected based on knowledge of the subject: sapiential authority. The person picked as leader should be the one who knows the most about the subject. I’d been picked as the leader at Tarrytown because I could relate best to the people who hired us. In this midnight mall project, I know less of the building trades than most of the other people. But that didn’t stop me from speaking up.

One night, Rannie is picked as the leader and tells Simon to finish a particular job.

“Stan was the one working on that yesterday,” I say. “Shouldn’t he be the one to finish it?”

I know as soon as I say it that I’m out of line.

“OK,” says Rannie. “I am turning everybody over to Tobe and he’s going to run the crew.”

He has dropped it on me. All I can do is apologize and learn from my mistake. I know from experience that a leader does not want suggestions unless he asks for them. Getting them at any other time interferes with his concentration and weakens the organization. I remember what Pettie has said: “When you’re not the leader, your only job is to offer silent service.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR

We complete the decorating jobs and head back to Washington. When we arrive, Pettie calls for a celebration and we all gather at the warehouse. The women sit in a circle and the men sit in a circle around them and massage their shoulders as they talk. Without a word, we place all of the money that we have accumulated in the center of the circle. It’s approximately $3,000.

“Anybody who has nerve enough can pick it up,” says Pettie.

Nobody moves for a full minute. Then Terri Baggs crawls over to the pile of bills, gathers it up and stuffs it into her purse. Nobody moves to stop her. I look around at the other women and there’s obvious concern about her having it. Terri has arrived at The Finders while the men were on the road. Some of us had met her and her husband Dave in Vermont where they ran a mail-order health food business. She’s now in the midst of a life-change after a statue of the Virgin Mary had fallen on Dave and he died after a few months convalescence. Terri and Dave had met at a state mental institution where they were both patients. They ran off together, traveled for a while then settled back down when Dave’s parents died and he inherited the business. It’s an open question among all of us whether she is mentally stable.

After she picks up the money, Pettie asks his usual question of what everybody wants. Everybody, including Terri, says that they are volunteered to Pettie. When everybody has had a chance to speak, Pettie says:

“I appreciate your loyalty. Desire is what makes the world go round. Let’s go around again and somebody wish for something. It’s your job to want something and my job to help you get it. The part of The Gamecaller is just a role. Anybody can play the part. The job of The Gamecaller is to listen to all of the things that people wish for and then to call a game that will help them get it. There’s no obligation for anybody to play the game that is called, but it will do you a lot of good if you do. The Gamecaller can’t do a proper job unless he hears what is on peoples’ minds. There’s no assurance that The Gamecaller will be able to get exactly what people ask for. But there’s a better chance, if people will speak up in the meeting and say what they want with more than ‘Angel Talk.’

“Saying what you want is an art form. If you were all a bunch of saints, you might only ask for a crust of bread and a little dialectical materialism, but we’re not at that point yet. You could say that all you want to do is smell little girl’s bicycle seats and The Gamecaller could probably figure out a way to help you do that. But if you say that it needs to be a redheaded, cross-eyed Chinese girl, it won’t be as easy. So The Gamecaller is asking you all to go around again and wish for something. That’s where the learning is. Ask for some particular thing. The more foolish the better.”

Still nobody brings up any specific desires until it gets to Terri. She says that she wants to travel. After everybody has had a turn and nobody else brought up anything more, Pettie says: “What’s the temperature outside?”

It’s late December and we’re in the former freezer room, now office, where the temperature is in the 80s and comfortable with the electric heater rattling in the corner. Tom jumps up and goes to check the thermometer on the front door and Pettie says, “OK, I’m calling a game. Terri and Diane should head out for Miami and start a network down there. When you’ve got a place set up down there, invite me down and, if it’s up to my level, then I might invite some other people to come on down for the winter. If the temperature is below freezing, you should leave right now. If it’s above freezing, you can stick around until tomorrow, and, if you want to, you can invite any of the men who just returned to join you for the evening. Any of the other women can also invite somebody, but Diane and Terri get first plucks. You can tell Ron Alleman who you want and he will be your liaison officer to pass the invite.”

Tom returns and reports that the temperature is exactly 32 degrees. Everybody laughs. Terri says: “I guess that means that we leave tomorrow.” Everybody laughs again. She tells Ron that she’s inviting me for the evening. I shower and run naked across the icy concrete floor on the second floor to the warm nest that she has prepared in the corner.

The next day, Terri and Diane leave for Miami. Two weeks later, they send word to Pettie and he goes down to visit them. But, he finds that they have done nothing more than rent an apartment and nothing seems to be happening toward building a network. Diane has gotten a job through the temps and what Terri is doing is unclear. This is insufficient to attract him to stay or to invite other people, so he returns to D.C. Diane stays, but shortly decides that she’s better off in D.C. and also returns. We never see the $3,000 again.

A few months later, Terri turns up again, still looking for a man. She’s introduced to Rob Wamm, a late-twenties carpenter of serious disposition, who, in turn had been introduced to the group by Merle Preble. Merle ended his brief career as an emergency room physician by crashing his airplane into a mountain at Sun Valley, Idaho after defying airport authorities’ advice and taking off in a snowstorm. Wamm’s British mother has died and left him a house in Bethesda and a substantial bank balance. He’s just what Terri is looking for and in a few weeks they’re married. She rejuvenates her natural food business and moves it to Nethers, where they buy a house across the road from Isabelle, with whom they become friendly at first then vicious enemies. The business struggles along for a few years, then peters out, they divorce and Terri becomes a nun in a Buddhist center.

“Angel Talk” is Pettie’s term for what people say when they’re asked what they want and they merely repeat what they think is the party line. It is always heard at every meeting. The morning meeting in January 1978 is no exception:

“I want to play The Gamecaller’s games and help to actualize his vision;”

“I want to find new players that I can help to actualize their dreams;”

“I want to recruit some other people who will share my life and the lives of the other people that are volunteered to Pettie;”

“I want to be ready to go any direction and to actualize whatever game is called;”

“I am volunteered to Barbara as my sub-leader and I want to be a perfect follower and a silent servant;”

“I want to discover my own true nature;”

“I want to smoke out my unconscious urges so that I can get them to the surface and deal with them;”

“I want to find the best games that are being played on the planet at this point in history and support them.”

When it’s my turn, I’m no more willing to say what I really want than anybody else: “I want to be able to change my direction as quickly as a dragonfly”– this inspired by the frequent observations from people that I’m rigid and once I’m started in a direction, I’m hard-headed and can’t change.

BALTIMORE AGAIN

In January, Pettie sends some of us back to Baltimore. This time, he puts Barbara in charge and says that we should find a place to buy or rent with an option to buy.

“Establish some kind of a base there,” he says. “Then just start gathering information about the place. Sooner or later, you will know enough and what to do will become obvious. When you know enough about growing fruit, you can stand under the tree on the right day and a ripe plum will fall in your hat. Don’t be in a hurry. Just learn to love learning. If you don’t already love learning, watch the people who hate it and you will be driven to learn. If you don’t know what to do, spend a night at the mission and the next day the world will look totally different.

“Baltimore is an interesting place. It’s full of buildings that are ripe for recycling. See what kind of deals you can make on them. It’s easier to deal with people who are more or less desperate, so look for people in distress and help them. Sooner or later, you will run across somebody who understands mutual benefit and you can make a deal. Try to find barter deals or no-cash deals, but get information on all kind of deals in the beginning. I’ll be up there when you have found a place to stay. Keep it a day at a time and take whatever you can get in the beginning.”

We arrive back in Baltimore and fan out, agreeing to meet back at the Pratt Library at 6 PM. I head for Fells Point to follow up on some buildings that I’ve already looked at. I don’t find anything. It’s a wasted day and I end up at the library early to get warm and to wait for the others to arrive. Barbara comes in beaming. She’s found a place we can use as a base and the owner is willing to barter for it a day at a time. She’s only seen it from the outside. It’s an old one-story brick building with a high ceiling. There’s a large overhead door opening onto the street. There are no windows. The owner meets us with a key, unlocks a small door on the side, turns on the light and all of us, including Barbara, get our first look. It’s dirty and stark. It has a concrete floor wide enough for two trucks. Fifteen feet inside the overhead door, there’s a loading dock in the rear that was used for meat delivery trucks from the building next door, where the owner formerly had a meat business. He has moved his business to a newer facility and plans to upgrade this building and the one next to it. He wants us to do some cleaning in exchange for using the space. Barbara agrees.

We pull the van inside and close the overhead door. It’s cold. There’s no heat in the building. We set to work sweeping and mopping a space large enough to accommodate our bedding, which we have to lay directly on the concrete. It’s a typical January night ,with the temperature well below freezing. It’s like a tomb. We’re short of bedding and have to huddle together with our clothes on to get through the night. The next morning, we head out immediately and have our morning meeting in the Fells Point Market. First order of business is for somebody to go to a thrift store and buy more blankets. We stay in the tomb for a few more nights, but the owner discovers that we have been sleeping there and says we can’t stay there after dark. It doesn’t matter. We have now found a house next to the Lyric Opera House on Mount Royal Street. It’s slated to be torn down, but it’s big and dry and located within a quick walk of Union Station, the University of Baltimore and the Pratt Library. We move in and divide up the spaces, men on first floor and each woman in a room on the second.

The next day, several of us sign up with guard agencies and Pettie, in his usual style, shows up and runs into Barbara on the street. That night I find myself in a guard uniform exploring the inside of a ceramics factory on the Baltimore Harbor. It’s huge, several blocks in size. Inside are highly specialized machines and kilns for making insulators, the kind that you see on electric poles with wires strung on them. Many of these are huge and so heavy that one man can’t lift them. In one part of the building is a room several stories high that looks like a set from a futurist movie of the 1920s or the experimental lab for Nikolai Tesla. In the center of the room is a humming machine with stainless steel rods reaching upward for 30 feet and forming a giant “V.” A lightning-like spark forms at the bottom where the rods converge and climbs upward, leaping from one rod to the other. There’s a strong smell of ozone in the air. I ask a few questions, trying to understand where this strange device fits into the manufacture of the insulators, but the scientists and technicians aren’t interested in talking to me as they file out of the building at the end of the day. My job is to sit in the overheated guardhouse and keep anybody from entering for the night. I spend the night in this giant building reading Small Is Beautiful by E.F. Shumacher.

We spend the rest of the winter in Baltimore. It isn’t a happy time for me. I see little of Pettie and spend most of my time at menial jobs. I have no relationships with any women and feel little joy. We investigate many great buildings, abandoned factories and warehouses that, in later years, are converted into living quarters for yuppies returning to downtown–but they’re not converted by us. None of the potential deals ever matures to a point where it satisfies Pettie’s taste for the ingenious, and the Baltimore experience pays off only in improving investigative techniques, seeing opportunities that others have overlooked and, most of all, day after day, in watching my own unconscious urge to get control whenever new circumstances leave a power vacuum. This imperfection in my own character haunts me still and continues to thwart my efforts at forming lasting relationships, but my willingness to acknowledge it rises like the morning sun in Baltimore.

KEEP MOVING

The lessons were like bee-stings to my ego, less palatable than the “negative learning” that was available from the many negative teachers that passed through W Street over the years. One of these teachers was Gary Davis. He came to W Street seeking money for “World Citizen,” the organization he founded as an effort to erase national boundaries. For a small charge, anybody could buy a “World Passport.” It was foolish, of course, to think that any country was going to give up the power over its citizens voluntarily, but his organization presented such a small threat that he was tolerated for the most part. Periodically, a bureaucrat in a government somewhere in the world would charge him with a crime when he tried to enter or leave a country using one of his passports. Sometimes these incidents made the newspapers. He thrived on the notoriety. When he came to W Street, he’d just returned from the Middle East, where he’d attempted to enter Israel from Jordan using a World Citizen passport. Israel had refused to let him in, Jordan wouldn’t let him return, and he spent a couple of days on a bridge basking in his notoriety.

He’d been living in World Citizen’s National Press Building office, because money was tight. We welcomed him and offered him hospitality on the gift economy. The only gift he offered in return was his presence, which we accepted for a while. He was a superb teacher, able to teach full time, but incapable of learning and completely unaware of the impression he made on people. He had initial charm, but most tired of him in an hour or two. I sat and listened to him, watching my own desire to leave the room rise up inside me as he bragged on about himself and reflected back to me aspects of my own personality that I didn’t want to acknowledge. “There’s a little bit of him in all of us,” Pettie says. “He will throw it in your face and you will find it so disgusting that you might change your habits.”

Ironically, the thing that I remember best about him was positive. He’d lived in India for a time at an ashram. He told us that the guru in charge told him that he was unsuited for the life there and sent him on his way with the advice that he should do three things: Keep moving, watch for signs and symbols, and never insult money.

“That’s really good,” Pettie says. “And it describes the life around here.” Pettie keeps us moving. Both men and women move back and forth from W Street to the warehouse and down to the country so often that always having your bag packed is a necessity, not just an option. When Pettie says to load up and head for another location, we leave immediately, taking only what we can carry. It was rare that we stay in one place for more than three days.

Before meeting Pettie, I doubt that any of us thought much about signs and symbols. But, after moving to W Street, it is impossible not to, because Pettie often brings it up: “Be hyper-alert to your environment. The universe is always trying to tell you something. Learning how to recognize it could mean the difference between a mediocre life and a great adventure.”

The same is true of money: “Don’t insult money, but don’t go grubbing after it either. If you live in a capitalist economy and don’t understand money, you’re a victim. Offer things once in a soft voice and if people don’t pick up on it, don’t worry about it. Keep moving and somebody will recognize the value of what you’re offering and you can deal with them on a personal level. Personize all of your financial transactions. But when money comes along, don’t insult it, accept it as your just reward.”

IMITATIONS

“There’s a fourth thing that Davis’ guru could have told him,” Pettie says. “He could have told him not to violate the eleventh commandment. The eleventh commandment is, ‘Thou shall not take thyself too seriously.’”

We keep the commandment most of the time, at least when Pettie is around. One of the main ways of doing so is by imitating each other.

“OK, Tobe,” Prttie would say. “I want you to imitate “Big Boy” (the current nickname for Allan Schoen) over at the Patent Office picking up his papers.” I stumble across the room with exaggerated bumpings into chairs and tripping over people’s feet with profuse apologies as I pretend to drop papers accidentally in people’s laps. Everybody laughs including Allan.

Or, “Lucky, how about imitating Tobe counting money.” Ron Alleman drops to the floor and quick-step on his knees around on the rug, Chaplin-like, moving his body from side to side like a wind-up toy soldier, passing from one person to another and dealing out imaginary bank notes at their feet, making a mistake in counting, picking up the invisible bills, counting again and finally with a quizzical look scratching his head. We all applaud.

Or, “Eric, Lucky’s not here tonight and I miss him. Can you give us a little imitation? Tell Diane that you’re volunteering to her for the day.” Then Eric stretchs his neck and raises his nose into the air in a mock version of Lucky’s posture and imitates the fake British accent that Lucky used when he was taking himself too seriously, which was most of the time. “Madam, this fool is here to offer you his services. Hmmm. This fool will give his best endeavor to provide you with silent service whether or not you assign him jobs that are remarkable. Hmmm. The only thing that this fool asks is that he be allowed to indulge his craving for nicotine from time to time. Hmmm. If you don’t mind, madam, that craving is now upon me and I beg permission to satisfy it. Hmmm.”

Imitations are a daily fare. Some of the imitation routines are repeated so often that we knew them by heart and Pettie would improvise a variation: “Simon, imitate Tobe imitating Rannie explaining how you calculate the area of a circle.” Simon drops to his knees, moves about like Lucky had done then tightens his jaws in imitation of Rannie’s speaking style and begins a technical monologue without moving his lips.

Another daily fare is singing. Usually in the evening, when everybody is relaxed in a circle, Pettie says: “Rannie, how about one of those old-timey songs.” And we sing something like:

This world is not my home

I’m just a passin’ through

My treasures are laid up

Somewhere beyond the blue

The angels beckon me

From heaven’s open door

And I can’t feel at home

In this world any more

Or “Tobe, how about one of those homemade songs” and we sing:

Momma’s boys

You can see from what we do we’re

Momma’s boys

At the sight of mom, we pale

And our brains begin to fail

It’s the curse of every male

We’re momma’s boys.

The singing never fails to elevate the spirit of the meeting. Often visitors show up at meetings. This might happen at any time of the day or night. Sometimes they ask “wisdom questions” of Pettie, which he answers appropriately.

“Sir, what do you mean when you refer to the ‘New Age?’ Is it a time based on astrology?”

“The world has been relying on male thinking. I call that kind of wisdom ‘Old Age.’ The New Age is when female wisdom becomes predominant. It’s time to turn the power over to the women.”

“When do you think that will start?”

“I like to say that the New Age has already started. It started with William Blake.”

“What do you think it will take to turn the power over to the women?”

“A few people will have to start living that way. That’s the only way that any great movement ever started, by a few people changing. We talk about doing it here, but I’m afraid we’re not very good exemplars.”

DENVER

“Does anybody here want to be working toward a big vision?” Pettie asks at a meeting one morning in October 1978. Everybody enthusiastically says that they do. “All right. If you’re going to be playing a global game, you need to have a better feel for what the globe is. I’m calling for everybody to take a trip around the world. Not right this minute. But that is going to be our next big goal. We may have to creep up on it a little at a time. If everybody starts visualizing it, sooner or later, we will pull it off. So I’m calling for Barbara to pick a team of three people and head for San Francisco. Take a van and set up a base and I’ll join when the time is right.”

“Yes, sir,” says Barbara. “I know who I want to pick. Should I say who they are now?”

“Go ahead,” says Pettie.

“Tom, Rannie, and Jan,” she says.

“How many of you have ever been to San Francisco?” asks Pettie. Barbara says that she has, but nobody else speaks up.

“OK, Barbara,” says Pettie, “I’ll have a private meeting with you to tell you what to do when you get there. The rest of you, stand by. There will be something dramatic coming up for you shortly.”

He tells Barbara that they should drive in from the north rather than crossing the Bay Bridge and that they should arrive after dark and camp out at the top of Mount Tamilpais. Their first view of San Francisco should be from the mountaintop in the morning sun with the Bay spread out below them, a dramatic introduction. They leave immediately.

Two days later, Pettie tells Diane, Simon, Rosie and me to pick a city somewhere west of the Mississippi and head out. “Get something started there and I’ll come,” he says.

At that point, the only vehicles in the community are two vans. Barbara and her gang have already taken one and we want to leave one for the people who are staying behind. So we head out for Chicago in a driveaway car that is bound for San Diego. The Chicago stop is to take a look at old neighborhoods. Simon and Diane both grew up in Chicago, only a block from each other, although they never knew each other at the time. I think of my childhood in Ocala and the impossibility of not knowing a kid who only lived a block away. We look at the places where they lived. Both are respectable middle class places, apartment buildings, but not highrises, on downtown residential streets. “Where did you play?” I ask. “I mainly stayed inside and read,” says Diane, “but sometimes I went to the yacht club.” We drive on toward San Diego.

Rosie is Rose Ann Validson, a honey blonde, petite in size and demure in style, who, like Simon, had a rabbi for a grandfather. She’d met Simon at Union Station, where each had been on unrelated business. They’d found that their eyes kept wandering back to each other, until Simon, ever alert to a new connection, spoke up. Within a week, Rosie had moved into W Street and brought her friend Judy Waits, a painfully shy heart-stopping beauty with black hair, blue eyes and a perfect body.

Simon has previously visited Denver and has a few connections. One is Leif Smith, founder of the Denver Open Network, who proves to be an excellent source of leads. We decide to stop over and check out Denver. Leif is all left brain. He seems to like me, but I think that it’s because I just let him talk on and on about whatever he wants without interrupting and he believes that I’m actually interested. In fact, I can’t understand anything that he talks about. It’s all theoretical economics based on the ideas of free-market economist Friedrich Hayek. I notice that as soon as he begins to talk, I get drowsy and have to fight to stay awake. But Leif is kind and generous and proves to be a good friend.

On our first day, Leif connects us to Tina McMurtry and I fall in love again. She manages an apartment building, where she offers us an apartment. I hit it off immediately with Tina and we spend hours together every day. But we have a car that needs to get to San Diego, so Rosie and I drive west. She wants to visit a cousin in L.A. I drop her off there and I take the car on. We each take the bus back to Denver.

When I return, I find that Diane and Simon have moved to the Oxford Hotel. It’s a rundown place with an interesting past that parallels the development of the city. It has been bought by a local entrepreneur who’s trying to upgrade it without much capital and is in need of help. Diane has made a deal to live there in exchange for work. They also need to create an accounting system, which I agree to create in exchange for a place to stay and a little cash. It’s a fun place and I like the people who work there. The hotel is the main Denver stage for touring groups and singer/songwriters like Dave Van Ronk, who performs the night I move in. I continue to see Tina every day and believe that she’s going to join our foursome. But I’m mistaken.

Pettie arrives on a military jet and stays for a day. We give him a tour in Tina’s car and he meets all of our new contacts. His last words before he leaves are: “I don’t believe that the new age is going to start in Denver. You’re welcome to come to San Francisco, if you want.” We’re having lunch at the hotel and he excuses himself to go to the bathroom and does not come back. Simon and I rush outside to see if we can catch him, but he has disappeared. We look up and there’s a big billboard across the street at Union Station that says: “Get out of town.”

FURTHER WEST

We don’t. At least not right away. Tina decides that she’s probably going to accept the marriage proposal of a man who lives in Oakland, California. She wants to head west to make sure that it’s the right choice. She asks us to help her move and offers to provide us with transportation in return. She rents a truck and we spend the last day loading it. That night, she invites me into her bed. Previously, there have only been a few indirect references to sex between us. It’s pleasant, but unremarkable and I feel some barrier has arisen between us. The next morning, Tina is cordial, but distant. I remember Pettie’s words when I asked him about my relationship with Tina on his recent visit.

“I can tell that she likes you, but it’s your mind that she likes and not your body.”

We drive north into Wyoming and then west. The west wind is so strong that the large rental truck has trouble sustaining a speed of 35. I drive the truck the whole way with Diane in the passenger seat. The trip takes so long that she reads aloud Doris Lessing’s novel, The Four-Gated City, in its entirety, plus several short stories by Ursula LeGuin. I’m grateful to her, particularly because she’s able to discuss what she’s reading. Her Ph.D. dissertation was on Doris Lessing. When we arrive, I turn over the keys to the truck to Tina’s boyfriend and wave goodbye. I never see her again.

From San Francisco we call Barbara. She and her gang are living in a house in Redwood City in exchange for yard work. There’s no room for us there. We spread out through the city looking for leads. Rosie and I both are successful. She finds a sign on a bulletin board offering to share a loft space in the American Can Company warehouse. I answer an ad for a night clerk at the Civic Center Hotel, a gay place on the corner of 10th and Market. When I tell them that I’d just left a hotel job in Denver, they hire me and I move into a room. Diane moves in with me. Simon and Rosie move into the warehouse.

My job is to sit all night at the desk in the lobby, answer the phones and audit the books for the day to make sure that everybody has paid. There’s an old manual PBX phone system with wires that must be plugged in when anybody calls in or out. I enjoy clandestinely listening in on many lovers’ spats and secret liaisons. Most of the residents pay weekly rather than daily and some have been there for years. It’s a place where friendships start and end quickly. Many guests come down to the desk at night to tell me their troubles like they might to a bartender. Saturday nights are especially funny. The Rocky Horror Picture Show is shown in a theater around the corner at midnight and there’s a regular gathering in the lobby of the people who are about to attend. They’re in full flaming costume and vying to out-swish each other. Pettie visits me at the hotel.

“Tobe, you have a talent for finding interesting losers,” he says.

I ask him how he’d found the other players in San Francisco when he arrived from D.C. I’d heard the story, but I wanted to hear it from him.

“I’d told them that I would find them when the time came. I got here and stayed at the youth hostel at Fort Mason for a few days waiting for the right time. Then one morning, I just walked out and stood on the street corner and they drove by and picked me up.”

“How do you do that?”

“I don’t know exactly. Something just sort of whispers in my ear. I just try to keep an empty mind and let good things happen to me.”

As soon as Pettie visits the warehouse where Rosie and Simon are staying, he says that the other people who are still in Redwood City can move in as soon as they would like. Barbara likes the comfortable place where she is, but reluctantly moves. Tom and Jan have meantime become live-in servants and moved into the large expensive Hillsborough house of San Francisco lawyer David Miller, his wife and two young daughters. I soon tire of having to stay up all night, so when Tom and Jan ask for some relief, I volunteer for part-time duty and move into the Miller’s partly-finished garage.

The first night that I’m there, in total darkness, somebody leaps on top of me trying to get to my throat. We wrestle for a few seconds and I realize that it’s Lucky. This act, which seems a little extreme at the time, is based on an ongoing game that Pettie has recommended. Any man who volunteers to be in this game is subject to be leaped upon from the rear by any other man, when it’s perceived that he might be vulnerable. If one of us sees that another is off in another world somewhere and not paying attention, that is the trigger to action. I think that Lucky has gone a little further than the game calls for, but we exchange pleasantries and find some more bedding to accommodate him.

This recollection reminds me of another of Pettie’s techniques to keep us in the now. He had us cut sections of bamboo to lengths slightly longer than the doorway entrances and bend them into place in every door. They were placed five feet above the floor, so that it was necessary to bend over to enter any room. Hardly a day went by without a piece of bamboo hitting the floor after somebody wasn’t paying attention.

A DIFFERENT WAREHOUSE

Gradually, one after another of us finds our way to the warehouse. We’re renting from a thin man with thick glasses who sits all day under a bright light in front of a grinding wheel polishing stones and fabricating tiny pieces of jewelry. He seems unaware of anything that goes on around him. The space that he has rented is about 1,500 square feet in size, but he occupies only a small fraction of it. It’s divided into two parts, one of 400 square feet and one of 1,100. We occupy the larger space and he never leaves the smaller. We have to pass him to enter, but he never looks up or acknowledges us in any way except when we pay him the rent. Pettie suggests that we rent it by the day and pay him enough so that his part of the space is free. He appears to be happy with this arrangement, but he must wonder at the strange people coming and going at any hour, cooking on hot plates and sleeping in makeshift tents on the concrete warehouse floor.

This is the second American Can Company warehouse building that we have been in. The first, in Baltimore, was available for sale and we looked at it, but it was too big for our dreams, probably several hundred thousand square feet. This one in San Francisco is even larger. It covers two city blocks along Third Street at Twenty-Second Street. Like the other American Can Company warehouses, it had been built during the era when tin cans became the predominant means of storing food for Americans. With post World War II prosperity and the proliferation of refrigerators and freezers, many of these warehouses became surplus and were converted to other uses. But the builders hadn’t foreseen the obsolescence of their product and had constructed them as if they were to last a thousand years. They are magnificent structures of ornamented brick and concrete floors designed to hold heavy steel canning equipment.

Our space has a view of San Francisco Bay and the huge Bethlehem Steel Shipyard, which begins in the next block. Pleasant as the space is, it’s insufficient, so we also rent another part of the building, the whole floor that used to be the executive office.

It’s a beautiful room with windows all around and high ceilings. We make it even more beautiful. The men close off one end of the room with a parachute and each woman takes a part of the room as her space. Each morning, we get into the van at daybreak and drive to Chinatown, where we pick up decorating material for the women. It’s mainly packing material that has been thrown away as trash by the Chinese merchants, but it’s magnificent to us. It includes large crates of rough wood that are labeled all over with Chinese characters presumably identifying the contents. And there are heavy ceramic jars two feet high in which “hundred-year eggs” had been shipped. Various large colorful posters advertising events that we can’t figure out add to the bright cheer of the place. We spend a little money and buy some handmade umbrellas of painted wood and rice paper. The effect is that of a Chinese village having a celebration. We gather in the center of our warehouse village on the common and Pettie directs the action, which always shifts us from the left brain into the right.

“You know, there has got to be something wrong with y’all,” he says. “You’re living in an old warehouse with a man who thinks that he’s in paradise and that you all are a bunch of angels. And you could all be out there living in the suburbs with a husband or a wife and two-and-a-half snotty-nosed kids. About now you would be finishing off the bottle of wine and getting up from the dinner table. ‘Shall we retire to the drawing room, my dear, for sherry and a snifter of brandy before we turn on the tube?’ Why do you think it is that you hang around all of this foolishness? Before you answer that, Tom and Jan, dance around a little bit cheek to cheek as if this were heaven instead of a drafty old cannery.” We all sing:

Heaven, I’m in heaven

And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak

And I seem to find the happiness I seek

When we’re out together dancing cheek to cheek

“OK, the rest of y’all join ‘em,” Pettie says and everybody else gets up and dances as we continue to sing:

Oh, I like to climb the mountain

And to reach the highest peak      

But it doesn’t thrill me half as much      

As dancing cheek to cheek

And I like to go a’swimming

In the river or a creek

But it doesn’t thrill me half as much            

As dancing cheek to cheek.

Dance with me      

I want my arms about you      

The charms about you

Will carry me through to

Heaven, I’m in heaven

And the cares that swirl around me through the week

Seem to vanish like a gambler’s lucky streak

When we’re out together dancing cheek to cheek.

Pat brings up a problem that she feels can’t wait until the problem-solving meeting, which usually happens in the morning.

“Sir, some of the other tenants in the building are squawking because, after we rented the whole floor here, they can’t cut through anymore on their way to the bathroom.”

“OK,” says Pettie. “Everybody sing ‘we were squawking along,’” and we all sing:

We were squawking along on Moonlight Bay

You could hear the squawkers squawking

They seem to say

You have stolen my squawk

Now don’t go away

As we squawked along on Moonlight Bay.

“Well is there anything that we might say to them?” Pat persists.

“OK, ‘the squawkers are coming’,” says Pettie raising his arms like an orchestra conductor and we all sing:

The squawkers are coming,

Hurrah, hurrah,

The squawkers are coming

Hurrah, hurrah

The squawkers are coming

Hurrah, hurrah.

Pat still looks serious and hasn’t joined in the nonsense, so Pettie says:

“OK, everybody talk at once and tell Pat what she needs to know about those squawkers.”

We all begin speaking loudly at the same time, so that it’s impossible to catch more than a word or phase in the din that is created.

“OK, Pat, did you get that?” Pettie says.

Finally, Pat shakes her head and laughs along with everybody else.

LEARNING SAN FRANCISCO

We all take jobs in various locations. I work a bit for Accountemps traveling around the Bay area on public transportation and getting a look inside various businesses. Then I take a job at the Bethlehem Steel Shipyard as a night guard on board some of the huge vessels moored there. I wander through the various levels and into the engine rooms, trudging up and down echoing steel staircases among shining engines, dials, gauges and instruments–an arrangement of machinery so complex that it seems no person could understand it. And I remember Howard Pease stories set in San Francisco that I read in junior high school about young men who went to sea as wipers working in the engine room purely for the adventure.

I want to learn my way around San Francisco, so I sign up as a foot messenger in the financial district. The company is owned by an old Chinese man and run by his wife and son. They employ more than a dozen messengers, all of them Chinese except me. All of the communication is in Chinese, but they like me and make an exception in my case. Within a few days, I’m familiar with all of the streets in downtown and have made friends with the other messengers, lively guys ready to laugh at themselves and the other messengers.

We follow the same rhythm in San Francisco that we’d followed in Washington. We have a morning meeting, somebody is picked as the leader and the day is put together. Usually, the men and women meet separately in the morning and we all meet together in the evening. Sometimes Pettie changes the game and we all function from the same organization. Sometimes Pettie comes to the morning meetings, but usually he disappears early and reappears in the evening. Sometimes we end up all sleeping in the same area and then, often, he holds forth for awhile before the morning meeting. On one of these mornings, Pettie talks about thinking.

THE TRIVIUM AND THE QUADRIVIUM

“All my life I’ve thought a lot about thinking. When I was in grade school, I used to slip away down to the Potomac and sit on the big rocks above Chain Bridge for hours thinking. I concluded that the best mode for thinking is not to believe or disbelieve hardly anything. From an early age, I decided that it was better to be in a state of suspended judgment that I call the empty mind. If you can stay in that state and bear in mind the right questions, insights will jump into your consciousness.

“But then how do you organize your questions? You keep the categories as simple as possible. So I use some mnemotechnical devices. I like to keep them in seven categories and those seven I keep in two sub-categories that I call “the trivium” and “the quadrivium.” The trivium is power, money and sex. And the quadrivium is food, shelter, transportation and communication. There may be more categories than that and there may be better ways to organize your thinking, but that’s the way I do it.

“I’m convinced that the whole world would be better off if everybody spent more time thinking and less time working. People have been working away a mile a minute for hundreds of years creating a material paradise, but there’s no more happiness in the world than there was before all of the technical development started. At least men have been working away. It’s mainly men who do the technical stuff. The universe might have given males better equipment for thinking about weight, number and measure. But that doesn’t mean that that kind of thinking is better than the kind of intuitive thinking that I advocate. It might be better for keeping the airlines running on time, but then maybe you would be better off walking than flying. That’s where I do my best thinking, while I’m walking.

“Anyway, I’m thinking all the time about the big picture of what is the best way to organize the whole planet right on down to the best thing to do for all of the people who are loyal to me. And sometimes I use another mnemotechnical device for that. I run through the categories of Persons, Places, Things and Ideas. In my way of thinking Persons is always first. I’ve more or less had the day off all of my life, so I’ve had a lot of time for thinking and it doesn’t tire my brain like it seems to with most people. It doesn’t bother me that most of the stuff I think about doesn’t get done. I can’t be attached to that. Otherwise, I would mope around feeling sorry for myself or always be trying to push my ideas like a shoe salesman. I’d end up like that guy in Death of a Salesman. What was his name, Stan?”

“Willy Loman, sir,” says Stan.

LEYLA

One evening, Pettie tells Barbara and me that he has a surprise for us and leads us onto a bus. In a few minutes, we walk into a Unitarian Church and find that Dane Rudhyar is speaking. Pettie knows that this will be of great interest to me. Rudhyar, philosopher, avant-garde musician and dean of American astrologers, is now married to Ellen Schacter. I haven’t seen her in five years. She’s there, selling Rudhyar’s books at a table. She throws her arms around me. We meet Rudhyar. She invites me to come down to their house in Palo Alto to talk about money matters. I go the following day and listen to Rudhyar playing some of his compositions, which sound dissonant to my untrained ear. He has the kind of money problems that everybody wants: where is the best place to keep his money? Ellen has changed her name to one suggested by Rudhyar: Leyla Rael. I find it easy to make the transition. She seems more like a Leyla than an Ellen. Maybe she was Leyla all the time. She takes me to the bookstore in which she has an interest and introduces me to some of the people in her network.

It must be the time for meeting old girlfriends. A few nights later, I’m at a meeting at the Kerista house. Kerista is an organization started by John Presmont after he had what he calls a theophonic experience. The way he tells it is, “I was living in Manhattan and working in a bank when, all of a sudden, a voice spoke to me from the heavens and said ‘You’re going to start a community based on love.’ I was just walking down the street when I heard it. It said: ‘It will be called Kerista and you will change your name to Brother Jud.’ I said ‘me? You’re not talking to me, are you? I’m just a bank clerk trying to get by. Find somebody else.’ But the voice just repeated the same thing over again: ‘You’re going to start a community based on love. It will be called Kerista and you will change your name to Brother Jud.’ It kept going on like that and finally I said OK. Then the voice said ‘good.’”

So he adopts the name Brother Jud, moves to San Francisco by way of a failed first effort in Mexico and, after ten years of his efforts, I’m visiting the results. Kerista owns several houses just west of the Haight business district. They have open house several nights a week when people come in to talk and listen to Brother Jud and other members of the group in what they call “Gestalt-o-rama.” They publish a periodical advocating polyfidelity and experimental relationships that clearly place them far outside of the mainstream.

I’m sitting in one of these meetings and saying nothing. Suddenly a woman throws her arms around me and says “Tony Torelli. My God, it’s really you. What are you doing here?” It’s Jane Sloan, the Baltimore live wire from Ethan Allen Greenleaf’s house, where I had pretended to be an Italian wise guy, the year before. I tell her my real name. We leave the meeting, go outside and talk for another hour. She’s on her way to Alaska to take a job as a baker. It’s a hilarious hour and we part with regret.

Our intellectual life is active in San Francisco and we make many new connections. Architect Christopher Alexander comes over for a visit to see our urban warehouse vision and we visit his beautiful Berkeley Hill house with its collection of oriental rugs. Diane develops a rapport with Margo St. James, former prostitute and founder of COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics). We go to talks by social critic Theodore Roszak, World Earth Catalog editor Stewart Brand, Noetic scientist Willis Harman and visionary Buckminster Fuller. I’d read the accounts by John Steward Service of his visit to the encampment of Mao Tse Tung at the end of the long march and his efforts as an American Foreign Service officer for a less caricatured understanding of the Chinese leaders who created the People’s Republic. I thought that he would be a person worth serving in some way. So, I write a letter offering my services, but I’m turned away by his wife at the door. A valuable lesson about how fearful famous people are when approached by strangers.

“Fame, fortune and power are driving a pretty high percentage of the people in this country,” Pettie says when I tell him about hiking the Berkeley Hills to the Service house. “Almost nobody knows how dangerous it is to seek fame. It’s very hard to hold on to who you are once you become famous, but millions of people keep on going after it. The most dangerous thing is to gain fame, but not have a fortune to go with it. But being a servant to the rich and famous is actually better than being famous and will give you a unique perspective and a better position to seek your own true nature.”

“Who are the best ones to become servants to?” I ask.

“I suppose that the best would be somebody that you think is a hero, so you could get up close and discover their feet of clay,” he says. “But better than that might be serving people who are on the cutting edge of positive change before they become famous. You can find them, but it takes some research. To my way of thinking, the two activities in life that pay the biggest dividends are learning and serving. And when you’re learning, without trying to feather your own nest, you’re serving. Know everything and do nothing until your knowledge is called for by the people that you’re loyal to. Make what you know available to people with the highest vision that you can find. But don’t push it. Offer things once in a soft voice and if they pick up on it, fine. If not, keep on learning. Be ready when some persons come along and want what you’re offering.

“Until then just be the D.C.I.A, the Divine Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA is a good model for the way to handle information. It’s there and it’s available to the right people, but they have to go through the right channels to get it and they have to ask the right questions. The Jesuits are also good models. They were the intelligence agency for the Pope, at least in theory. The truth is that they usually knew more than he did.”

An Episcopal priest, Dick Young, who’s studying at the Pacific School of Religion, is fascinated with our communal way of life and has attached himself to me. He comes over every day and sits in our meetings. I feel inadequate and embarrassed when he treats me like a mentor. One night he stays over at the warehouse. That night I have a dream:

I’m visiting a beautiful castle. I’m led by a robed figure through room after room and up into the tower with a view of the countryside. The figure never turns in my direction, so I’m unable to see a face. Then we retreat to a basement stairway. My guide stands aside and points down the steps. I start to descend. As I get near the bottom, I can see an open stone door leading to the side. A light begins to glow from inside the door and becomes brighter and brighter. A loud voice says: “Are you ready to be filled with the spirit of Saint Ignatius Loyola?” I wake up shouting “No, no” and realize how puny my efforts at community are. That day I go to the library and read for hours about how Saint Ignatius was a mortally wounded soldier who took refuge in a cave in Spain and, near death, had a vision that inspired him to start the Jesuit Order.

OAKLAND

As usual, Pettie suggests that I study the local real estate scene. He says that San Francisco would be a good location for a winter base for The Finders. I locate quite a few interesting properties. Most are industrial buildings like the well-known Artaud project where artists live and work in another former American Can Company warehouse. A lead for a boat comes through Michael Phillips, author of The Seven Laws of Money. Mike is then the treasurer of the Glide Memorial Foundation, a charitable organization housed in the Glide Church that promotes many worthwhile projects behind the scenes. He’s best known for sponsoring the very public concrete pipes that were placed in San Francisco Parks to provide shelter for the homeless. He tells us that the owner of the boat doesn’t want a lot of money for it, but then again, it isn’t worth a lot of money. I take a tour. It’s not a sailboat as I expect, but an antique cargo ship. It’s moored at a pier off Third Street south of downtown. A couple of people already live on board and it’s easy to visualize it as housing a hundred more. It’s a tempting project, since it’s cheap. But it’s listing to one side, full of rats, and in violation of its licensing both as a ship and as a moored boathouse, so we reject it as an option.

Pettie suggests that we include Oakland as a possible location. Oakland has hundreds of acres of empty industrial buildings. Pettie strolls through some of them and identifies one that seems worth investigating. We drive by it at night and then around the area to gauge whether it would be too dangerous.

The next day he sends Rannie and me over to talk to the owners. It’s occupied by a company that sells dry-cleaning fluid. There’s a tank car of the stuff sitting on a siding next to the building. They pump it into smaller containers and sell it to retail operations. They occupy only part of the first floor. The owners, a husband and wife, are irritable and though they want to sell, it’s unpleasant to talk to them. I wonder if they got this way from breathing the fumes of the stuff they sell, which we can smell as we tour the place. The building is old, strong and magnificent. Its walls are brick, but the interior is all made of redwood, which has never been painted. All of the huge beams and joists are exposed. We love the place, but not the people or the air.

We decide to walk from the building to the center of Oakland to see how long it takes and whether there are any sections that look threatening. It takes a half hour on foot through a warehouse district. When we reach the center of town and are approaching the BART station, we see people running in our direction. Some of them run past us. Then one of them falls to the sidewalk a few feet from where we’re standing. I think that he has tripped over the curb, but I see that when he hits the sidewalk and falls on his face, he doesn’t move. Then I see a small spot on the back of his shirt. Blood is slowly making the spot larger. He’s dead. Shot in the back. We draw back and look around to see if there’s any more danger. We see another man half a block away also lying on the sidewalk. Also dead.

We hurry into the BART. I ask Rannie what he thinks this means. “It means that this is a dangerous world and you have to be alert at every moment.” What he says is doubtless true. But to me it’s more than that. It’s an omen. We are here asking the Universe whether it’s safe to buy a building in this town and a dead man falls at our feet. It’s a sobering experience.

We return to the warehouse in San Francisco. In the evening, Pettie appears. He seems serious and distant. Everybody reports to him on their day. Rannie and I tell him about our experience in Oakland. He sits for a while. Everybody is silent. Finally, he says: “Anybody who wants to can stay here. I’m returning to D.C. Anybody who wants to meet me there can take the van and head straight back. Leave behind everything that you can’t carry.” He walks out without another word.

It’s 10 PM, January 1979. We have been in San Francisco for less than six months. Big Jim, Cynthia and Jodean are living above an all-night theater on Market Street. They don’t know that we’re leaving. We leave them a note. By midnight, eleven of us are loaded in the van and heading east. We drive straight through, stopping only for gas and to buy food in grocery stores. We eat in the van, sleeping in shifts, changing drivers every hour. The trip takes 70 hours. Our nerves are a bit frayed, but we make it without any serious conflict.

CHAPTER EIGHT

COUNTERFEIT AND REAL

When we get back to D.C., we learn that Pettie has taken a trip around the world to gain some new perspective on the game. When he returns he says: “The thing that is missing today is an exemplary community group that can serve as a model for other people who want to raise their consciousness and live a high principled life. Plenty of people out there are trying to raise their individual consciousness. Maybe they can do it on their own, but I doubt that they are going to succeed outside of a community of like-minded people. I just put out my antenna and traveled 25,000 miles trying to find a place in the civilized world where people are practicing real community. I hope that there are lots of them out there that I don’t know about, but every one that I do know about is either a counterfeit or something that was genuine that has gone bureaucratic. You can be pretty sure that if they’re charging you for the truth, it’s counterfeit. None of the great teachers charged for the truth.

“There are places where some young people who want to do the right thing have gotten together because they know that the world is out of joint and they want to set it right, but they don’t usually know much and when they’re faced with having to learn, it’s too frightening to them. They usually get a hold of a piece of land and try to scratch out a living from it with some other people. That’s all right, but it almost never works, because it’s hard work and there’s never enough to go around and they get into scarcity thinking and they get on each other’s nerves and a big fight happens and that is the end of it.

“Another good example is the World Future Society. They’re not bad people. I’ve known Ed and Sally Cornish for 20 years. They’re OK. But they haven’t got a community. The people that join the World Future Society don’t even acknowledge the need for a community. People join the World Future Society because they want to avoid the future; they’re afraid of it. Mostly they’re emotional cripples who’re trying to control the future so that it doesn’t creep up on them and cause something to jump out of their unconscious and reveal something about themselves. In other words, they have accepted a role for themselves that wouldn’t be appropriate in a community where people were transparent to each other. In the kind of community that I envision, you’d be invisible to your enemies and transparent to your friends. But no place like that exists anymore.

“Suppose it was up to us to create it. What would you do? I think about that all the time. I thought about it as I traveled around the world. The best that I can come up with is that you would take the best of everything from the past, the present and the future and apply it in everyday life. And you would hang around with people who were in your state of consciousness. If you can’t find any people in your state of consciousness, then you create them. Create may not be the right word, but it’s something like creating a new person when somebody gives up their way of thinking and being. Anyway, it’s up to you, as far as I can see. But don’t worry about it. There isn’t anything that is more interesting to do. And there has never been a better time in history to do it.”

HAWAII

A few days later, Pettie says: “Anybody who wants to can take a sheet of paper and draw me a picture of a happy person.” We have gathered in the morning up in Pettie’s attic and have yellow pads. Everybody starts drawing. In a few minutes, he looks over the drawings, then leaves without saying anything. When he comes back in the evening, he calls me to the attic and says:

“I am calling a game for you to go to Hawaii and set up a base. Pretty soon, everybody is going to be taking a trip around the world and I want you to get a place we can start from. I want you to take Rosie and Dawn with you.”

I thank him and say that I’ll leave ASAP. I climb down the ladder to purchase the tickets, tell the women and get packed. Suddenly, I remember the picture that I drew that morning. It showed a man relaxing on a beach under palm trees with a woman on each side of him. He’d managed to extract at least one person’s wishes, even if the wishes were unconscious. I also remember the admonition to watch what you wish for, because you might get it. I tell Rosie and Dawn. Both say that they want to do it. I make reservations to leave the next day and climb back to the attic to tell Pettie. He says:

“Dawn came up here as soon as you told her. She has wished for Allan to come with you. Naturally, I said OK. Throughout life, I’ve found that it’s better to go along when a woman wants something or changes something that I suggest. The universe equipped them with a better changing mechanism than the men got and I’ve always gotten good results, if I shift gears right along with them.”

Dawn Bargainsmith is an unknown. She’d arrived at W Street only a few weeks before through Allan Schoen–who was then known as Tiny, due to his 260-pound, six-foot-three body, which he steers about with what seems to be a studied ineptitude. He’d been hired as manager at the newly opened Bob’s Famous Ice Cream Parlor at Calvert Street and Wisconsin Avenue above Georgetown and had recruited Dawn as an employee. The relationship was transformed when she invited him for the evening and then further when he invited her to move into W Street.

THE MORTUARY

The four of us arrive in Honolulu and head directly for the youth hostel across from the University of Hawaii, a laid-back place run by a Chinese family. It looks like a construction site with tents, but it’s lush and green and the kids staying there are beautiful. The next day we spread out around town looking for opportunities. Rosie finds an open spot in a group house and moves in. I connect with a very unlikely enterprise: a funeral parlor. They need a person to sleep in the place, because sometimes bodies arrive during the middle of the night and must be checked in. It’s such an odd happenstance that I decide to take it. They furnish me with a first rate apartment, with kitchen, living room, bedroom and bath in the heart of the city on Beretania Avenue halfway between downtown and Waikiki. I would have been happy to have the apartment in exchange for occasionally being awakened in the wee hours, but the owner says that, by law, they have to pay minimum wage. So I’m paid for sleeping and have all day to explore other opportunities. My only living expense is food. It’s the perfect job for a lazy person.

On the first night, I decide that I must rid myself of any concern about sleeping down the hall from the dead. At exactly midnight, I unlock the morgue. It’s dark and I begin searching for the light switch, which turns out to be at the back door on the other side of the room. I have to go exploring around the walls to find it. There’s a little light coming from the open door, but it isn’t enough. I stumble into a waist-high gurney, which is below my line of sight and fall to the floor. Finally, I find the switch and see that the gurney, like four others in the room, is the resting place of a bright yellow rubber bag. I unzip it. Formaldehyde immediately rises up, takes my breath away and burns my eyes. Inside is the body of a grey-haired man. He has been cut from his breastbone to his pelvis, no doubt for an autopsy. The great wound is still open and his internal organs are visible. I don’t linger. The formaldehyde is more than I want to endure. I zip him up, turn off the light and leave, my curiosity satisfied and my fear of proximity to dead bodies gone.

A few nights later, I’m awakened by the bell from the rear of the building. I unlock the back door and ride the elevator down. The arrangement is that bodies are rolled on gurneys from hearses directly onto the elevator. I take them upstairs and leave them until morning for the mortician to find when he arrives at eight. He proves to be a surprisingly lively person whom I meet when he’s working late one evening. He gives me a tour of the morgue shows me where the giant needles are inserted into the chest and explains how the blood is pumped out as the embalming fluid is pumped in and how it imitates the blood flowing out to the capillaries and preserving the tissue.

PROSPERITY UNLIMITED

Meanwhile, back in D.C., there’s other morbid news. Ray Gumbrect has hung himself. Ray was a bit strange, but a generous soul. Generous to a fault. I first meet him when he lived in a high-end ivy-covered apartment building on upper Connecticut Avenue in D.C. He has a good income and a substantial savings account. But something causes his mind to start spinning. He quits his job and begins giving his money away. He opens a bank account under the name Prosperity Unlimited, moves out of his apartment and into the white cabin. The white cabin is a small concrete block house, one of two on the 91-acre property that Pettie acquired on the shoulders of Old Rag Mountain. Ray gives away his furniture and everything that he owns except his library, which he moves to the white cabin.

Somehow, he has gotten the idea that, if you give away your money, it will all come back to you, but in an even greater measure. Maybe this approach is too direct for the dispenser of karmic retribution, but for whatever reason, nothing comes back to Ray. Visits by his friends to whom he gave his wealth decline in number from frequent to seldom. As time goes by and no money comes back, he becomes more and more depressed. So one day, he drives back to D.C. His girlfriend comes home one day after work, opens her closet door and finds him hanging there.

Among the things that are found at the white cabin, left behind by Ray, is the checkbook to the Prosperity Unlimited bank account. It has a zero balance.

Back at W Street, Steve Beltz’s head is also spinning. He and his family had moved to Arlington a couple of years before and had rented a big house, which they were having trouble paying for. Steve had changed his occupation from psychologist to paperhanger and had been supporting his family with the income from his trade. But, lately, it’s rumored that he’s inhaling too much consciousness-altering herbal smoke and his income and his life in general were sliding downhill. His wife, Judy, has asked him to move out and he’s living at W Street.

Diane was in the attic when Beltz came up to consult with Pettie. She later reports on the conversation.

“Marion,” Beltz says, “when I was at Sandstone, people started coming around. People like Margaret Mead, Tim Leary, and others. I don’t want to claim that it was my presence that drew them there, but it might have been. What we did there has affected thousands of people without them ever knowing it. I want to get myself back into a position of influence again. I feel like I was put on the earth for something more than being a paperhanger. I’ve served my time being a menial and I think I might be ready to elevate myself. What do you think, do you think that I’m ready to return to the big time?”

“Oh yeah,” says Pettie with apparent enthusiasm.

“That’s why I’m not volunteered to you,” Beltz says. “I know that I’ve got a lot to learn, but I think I’ve passed beyond the level of the people who are in your organization and I think that we should be forming parallel organizations. Not to be competitive, but I think that the group that I form should work together with yours. When we’re able to do that, the energy that we generate between the two of us will be felt by all of the generations that follow us.”

“Right,” says Pettie, his stock answer when listening to what might be self-delusion. “How can I help you?”

Pettie’s usual strategy in dealing with situations of this sort is founded on Blake’s admonition that, “If a fool will persist in his folly, he will become wise.” One of the cornerstones of Pettie’s game-calling is what he terms “encouraging fools in their folly.”

“The only thing standing in my way now is money,” says Beltz.

“Did you know that four of my fools are over in Hawaii trying to put together a network?”

“I heard that they were there, but I hadn’t heard exactly what they were doing.”

“I told them that they should get something going there and that we would use it as a staging area for everybody to take a trip around the world. So far, they don’t seem to have done much. The only contact that is paying anything is a mortuary and it only pays minimum wage. It’s going to be pretty hard to build up enough cash to make it around the world at that rate. Do think that you could do any better?”

“I have no doubt that I could, if somebody gave me some capital.”

“Are you up for some heavy learning?”

“Marion, you know that I’m always up for some heavy learning. What do you have in mind?”

“Why don’t you head over to Honolulu and use your skills to see what you can put together? If you’re up for it, I’ll send Lucky with you as your assistant.”

“If you recommend it, I’m on my way.”

The Sandstone that Beltz referred to, was Sandstone Ranch, an Esalen-like center perched on a plateau high above the Pacific looking down over a steep slope to Santa Monica Bay and Santa Catalina Island. It was a popular retreat center in the late 60s and early 70s when Beltz was the director for a brief time.

Beltz isn’t the only one who’s asking for money. When asked what she would like, Dawn has said: “Unlimited access to unlimited funds.” The next day, at Pettie’s direction, Barbara writes a check for $20,000, signs it and gives it to Lucky with instructions to give it to Beltz, but not until they arrive in Honolulu. The payee is left blank and nothing is said to explain anything about the check. The check is from Ray Gumbrect’s Prosperity Unlimited bank account found among the things that he left behind when he hung himself. Of course, the check is worthless.

THE $20,000 CHECK

Rosie has met a woman named Rhilly Rainbow. When Beltz arrives, she introduces the two of them and they go together like lox and bagels. Lucky hands over the check to Beltz, he shows it to Rhilly and they move into her house, with Lucky playing Sancho Panza to his Don Quixote. Through a set of unexplained circumstances, I don’t see them for the first week they are in Hawaii. Rosie and I have been meeting every day at different places around Honolulu and Allan and Dawn are supposed to also come to the meetings, but I don’t see them after Beltz arrives. I make sure that Rosie invites Beltz and Lucky to the meeting, but they never show up. This seems odd and I wonder if Beltz is ducking me for some reason.

Before I ever see him or Lucky, I hear that they have flown to Hilo on the Big Island. Rosie finds out about the $20,000 check and tells me about it. I don’t know what to make of it. It would be very uncharacteristic of Pettie to turn over a check of any size to somebody who knows less than he does about handling money. I’d heard him holding forth on the subject:

“Institutional charity is a dumb idea. It’s rich people giving to poor people. That makes no sense. The rich people know how to handle money; otherwise, they wouldn’t be rich. It should be the other way around. The poor people should be turning over their money to rich people. They don’t know what to do with it, or they wouldn’t be poor.”

So I don’t understand the $20,000, except that I know M.D. Pettie usually has something up his sleeve. Rosie also tells me that the reason I haven’t seen any more of Allan and Dawn is that Beltz showed them the check and they moved in with him and Rhilly Rainbow.

Then gradually the full story emerges. Beltz goes to banks with the check, but none will cash a check so large on a bank that was located 5,000 miles away. The First Hawaiian Bank tells him that they would be glad to open an account with the check, but that it will take two weeks for the check to clear and he has to wait to get cash. Beltz says OK, but would they give him a loan based on the check if Rhilly Rainbow also signs on the loan. The bank agrees, so long as she pledges her savings account to cover it. She does. By the time that word gets back to First Hawaiian Bank that the check is no good, four thousand dollars has already been spent on air travel to Hilo for Beltz, Rhilly Rainbow, Lucky, Allan and Dawn, plus hotel charges, eating in restaurants and rental cars. It’s never clear to me why they went to the Big Island, but it was related to some investment scheme that either Rhilly Rainbow or Beltz had come up with. When word of what happened gets back to Pettie, he says,

“That check was for showing, not for depositing. Didn’t they ever read Mark Twain’s story called the One Million Pound Note?”

SAN DIEGO

By the time that the full story on the check is learned, Rosie and I are in Los Angeles and Barbara, Diane, Simon, Pat, Judy, Carolyn and Rannie are in San Diego. Carolyn is Carolyn Read, a bright young woman exploring the world for the first time. Pettie has dispatched Barbara’s team to her choice of San Diego or L.A. She picks San Diego. He tells me to pick whichever of the two I wanted and doesn’t tell me where Barbara’s team will be, because he doesn’t yet know. I would prefer to be in the same town with the others, but I try to make a rational decision instead of an intuitive one. When Pettie told me that I had the choice, I instantly thought of San Diego, but then I tried to figure out which place Barbara would have chosen and guessed wrong. Rosie and I go to L.A. where nothing happens.

I talk to Pettie a few days later. When he hears about the unexcitement in L.A., he invites us to come down to San Diego. We take the bus and hook up with Barbara and company, who have been staying in a campground. We drive north to La Jolla and Barbara makes a day-at-a-time deal with the owner of an apartment building that is only a few steps from the jagged rocks of La Jolla Cove. Pettie is still in D.C. A couple of days after we arrive, Barbara says: “Pettie says that airports are to be our temples.” Some of us have not heard that and ask her to say more.

“He says that every culture has its temples and you can understand a lot about the culture when you look at them. In Athens, the Parthenon was set on a hill where it could be seen. It was dedicated to Pallas Athena, the goddess of Athens. In the old cities in Europe you could see the towers of the cathedrals from miles away. They were always the tallest structures in town. We’re in the age of materialism, when the tallest structures are office buildings and antenna towers. People aren’t striving to please a goddess or a priest, they’re driven to get the most for themselves. Pettie says that skyscrapers are the proper temples for the greedy people, but that, if we’re going to have a global consciousness, our temples should be international airports. They’re always safe, clean and well lighted. People take care of them for you and the people that go there to worship are always feeling high. Why don’t we visit the local temple and take a look at the San Diego airport.” We load into the van and drive to the airport. When we walk in, Pettie is coming out of the arriving passengers’ door. Imagine the surprise and laughter. Nobody knew he was coming and we just happened to be there when he arrives.

We scatter around the area, traveling by public transport. Everybody has lined up some low level job within a few days and money comes rolling in. The fact that we’re all living in one apartment keeps our cost low and we have a surplus as usual. I’m working in the suburban office park in Rancho Bernardo for Burroughs Corporation in the accounting department.

As pleasant as it is, La Jolla is a long commute by bus to San Diego where most of us are working. Pettie finds an office that has been for rent for a long time. It’s large, clean and comfortable. But there’s a reason that it has not rented and it becomes evident as soon as we arrive to take a look at it. The building is situated on a ridge that is the highest point just before the drop-off to San Diego Bay below. The San Diego airport is directly below at the level of the bay at the exact point where this office building is situated. To touch down at the runway the planes drop very quickly, so they come in as low as possible and the roof over our head is as near as their landing gear gets to the ground before they reach the field. When a plane passes over, it sounds like it’s landing on our office. There isn’t much warning as they approach, but after they pass over and drop down behind the building with their thrust now pointing at the building, there’s a sudden roar.

It’s enough to wake even the soundest sleeper and our sleep is fitful for the first few nights living in this office. But it’s cheap, within walking distance to downtown and the desperate owner of the building is willing to rent it on a day-at-a-time basis. It’s a few blocks from Stone Soup, a vegetarian restaurant, with a good bulletin board that keeps us up-to-the-minute on happenings in the alternative community. Jan gets a job there as a dishwasher and I usually end my days helping her reduce the mountain of dishes before we walk home to our strange abode.

I tire of the long commute to Rancho Bernardo and take a job as a private investigator for a firm in downtown San Diego. The job requires a car. We have been offered a house sit by Lola Varga and the house includes a Volkswagen Beetle, which I can use. Lola Varga is the wife of George Varga, now deceased, an old friend of Pettie’s from his days in the Pentagon. Varga had been an intelligence officer in the O.S.S., ancestor of the CIA. Pettie had met him in the early 1940s and he quickly became the target of Pettie’s frequent practical jokes.

“Hungarians all love to tell jokes,” says Pettie, “but Varga fell for every trick I ever pulled on him. I used to tip the hatcheck girl at the clubs where we went to switch the tickets on his coat when he checked it. Time after time, he would come back, they would give him somebody else’s coat, and he would have to search through until he found his. It happened over and over. He was convinced that the hat check girls in America were all incompetent, and he never figured out what was happening.”

Through Varga, Pettie met other interesting Hungarians–Nicky Von Neuman, brother to the genius who invented the digital computer, John Von Neuman; and Andor Sikley, long-time correspondent for the Budapest News Service and dean of the White House press corps. Pettie, always alert to unseen possibilities, introduced me to Andor’s delightful wife, Gerta. To my great surprise, she invited me in her husband’s bed while he was away trysting with a perfume saleslady from Garfinkel’s department store, an experience made more memorable because she made me wait through long Brahms symphonies before our union.

SAM SPADE

My detective job takes me into some of the seamy neighborhoods of Chula Vista and among the crazies in Pacific Beach. Fortunately, there’s no breaking down doors for in flagrante delicto confrontations. The thing that I do most frequently is to interview people who are awaiting trial and try to find somebody or something that would help to prove them innocent. Most of the cases of my employer are from the public defender’s office, which has a small budget. So there’s little possibility that I can spend time really digging to help an innocent victim. The first case that I investigate gives me a wakeup to the reality of the criminal justice system for the poor in America.

But no amount of digging would have helped the eleven-year-old black kid who was accused of stealing a car from a school parking lot and taking it on a joy ride. I do the best I can and round up five kids who were there when the car was stolen, including the one who actually stole it. He readily admitted it. He’d driven it around the block, picked up one of the other boys and left it a few blocks away at a strip mall. We agree that the thief and the rider would not be identified to the court unless we could get immunity for him, but that the other three kids would testify that the accused boy did not do it. I naively think that the system is at least as interested in protecting the innocent as convicting the guilty.

Mary Sloan, an earnest lawyer from the public defender’s office, meets us at the courthouse. She has a full docket of cases that she’s shepherding through the court that morning, but has a particular interest in my case, because we both know the kid didn’t do it. We leave the five kids in the waiting room. Because juvenile cases aren’t open to the public, only the kid, his family, Mary and I are allowed into the courtroom. The prosecutor presents his case. It rests completely on the testimony of the security guard at the school who claims to have seen the boy drive the car from the lot. Mary’s questioning brings out that it was dark at the time and the guard did not see the boy outside of the car, only behind the wheel as he passed. She also has the boy stand up for the judge to show that he’s so small, he could not possible have seen over the steering wheel.

Then Mary tells the judge that she has other witnesses that she wants to call who actually know who had stolen the car, including one who had ridden in it. The judge will not allow her to call the witnesses. He arrogantly states that he would not allow another child to make an accusation in his courtroom, that it was up to the district attorney’s office to make accusations, not the public defender. Mary appeals to the prosecutor, whose response is that they already have a reliable witness.

The bewildered boy is convicted and sentenced to reform school. This is a terrible injustice that, without a doubt, will destroy any confidence in a court system that did this to him. But to make matters worse, the judge lectures the boy for another five minutes, telling him how he’d better change his ways. And the crowning insult is that the judge ends his lecture by telling the boy how fortunate he is to live in America where he would have a chance to redeem himself after he’d paid his debt. Mary says this sort of thing happens all the time, that she has become calloused to it for the most part, but a case like this is heartbreaking.

IF A FOOL WILL PERSIST IN HIS FOLLY

Beltz, Schoen and Lucky are broke in Hawaii, but somehow manage to get enough money for tickets to San Diego. When they return we have a meeting. Beltz says:

“Marion, I don’t understand it. Barbara gives Lucky a check and says to give it to me. I’m OK with that. I think I’ve demonstrated that I have some capability with money. Maybe I’m a big fool not to have asked what I was supposed to do with the check. In fact, everybody, including me, knows that I’m a big fool. But what did you expect that I would do with the check? That’s my first question. My second question is: isn’t Barbara running a risk by writing a check on a bank account that’s been closed? Rhilly said that she was going to sue Barbara. She even talked to a lawyer. After she talked to the lawyer, she said she was going to sue me. I don’t understand it, Marion. What am I missing in all of this?”

Pettie says: “Why don’t we let it go around the circle and see what other people think?” He passes to the person on his left. Each person then offers some observation:

“M.D. Pettie pushes people in the direction that they’re already leaning.”

“If a fool will persist in his folly, he will become wise.”

“He just does stuff like that to stir things up. When it settles, there’s usually some learning in it.”

“He didn’t say what to do with the check. That left everything open. You could have done anything. He just wanted to see what you would do. You could have donated it to the Salvation Army, then we would have gotten a different result.”

Pettie breaks in: “Everybody sing the Salvation Air Force Song,” and we break into song to the tune of the Air Force Hymn:

Off we go into the wild new yonder

Flying high into the nun

Foolishness, nonsense and wonder

Dull routine traded for fun

Calling upon magnetic forces

Steering us on a heavenly course

We live in flame

To hell with fame

Nothing can stop Salvation Air Force

It’s at times like this that we feel best. Here we are sitting in a circle with a person we can all feel superior to. There seems to be some need in humans to feel superior and here we are, doing it in our own environment that we control, discussing an event that Pettie had instigated to demonstrate somebody’s imperfections. That person isn’t me, but he’s sitting right here in front of me parading his ineptitude. Boy, do I feel superior. The circle continues:

“I’d be interested in hearing what Beltz and the other people learned from the experience.”

“Why would you think that you deserved for somebody to turn over $20,000 to you with no strings attached?

“What did you have in mind when you got the check?”

“Did it ever occur to you to ask what the check was for or what you were expected to do with it?”

“What M.D. Pettie does is encourage fools in their folly. He just gives you a chance to trap yourself so that you can’t escape with some rationalization and say that somebody else did it to you.”

It’s Beltz’s turn in the circle again: “Well, Marion, I’d love to hear what you had in mind when you pulled this little prank. Could you say something about it?”

“What they said was about right,” is all that Pettie says.

BUNNY BATAGLIA

Beltz loses no time in making a new connection. Within a few days of his return, he moves into the house belonging to Catherine “Bunny” Bataglia, an attractive 40ish Italian of high energy and confidence. She has gotten a Ph.D. from a college of holistic medicine and then started an organization that she calls The Health Training Center of San Diego. It’s based on the idea of taking charge of your own health care. The center has a space in a good location owned by a dentist named Dick Doty. It’s been in existence for less than a year and isn’t making a profit. Doty, a generous man who strongly believes in the concept of holistic medicine, is the mainstay and covers the monthly shortfalls in the budget.

Beltz brings Bunny to meet everybody. Pettie sends me to look over the business and figure out how it could be put onto a paying basis. The obvious answer is to increase the revenue. To do that, the best strategy seems to be recruiting more practitioners to be a part of the center. Bunny has recruited a handful of holistic practitioners: two chiropractors, several massage therapists, an acupuncturist, another dentist besides Doty, herbalist and nutrition counselors and psychologists. Each of them except the dentists spends one day per week at the center. There’s no M.D. connected with the place. We try brainstorming ways to recruit an M.D., but nobody comes up with much.

Bunny likes The Finder’s scene and becomes a regular at morning meetings. Some of us move into her house when her son leaves on a trip.

The use of any mind-altering substances has more or less disappeared among The Finders. But Beltz still smokes herb pretty often. In San Diego, he’s smoking several times a day and his delusions of grandeur return. He convinces Bunny that the two of them are about to become wealthy and the only thing holding them back is scarcity thinking and living. He says they should start living as if they’re already rich and soon they will be. He talks her into dipping into her savings and the two of them rent a country club villa next to the golf course and move in.

From the beginning, there’s conflict between Barbara and Bunny. Both are strong Italian women who are used to being in charge. As the newest person attracted to Pettie, Bunny makes an effort to submit to Barbara’s leadership, but her old unconscious urges toward power are too strong. She’s unaware of it, but each time she’s supposed to be the follower, she acts as if she were the leader.

“Most of the conflict in life,” Pettie says, “comes from confusion over who’s in charge. That’s why we spend so much time in playing leading and following games. Until you all can get to the point where your egos don’t get in your way all the time, we won’t be able to move into the big stuff. Barbara, I’m calling for you to volunteer to Bunny. You know more than she does, but if you want to promote harmony, the strong have to give in to the weak. So I’m suggesting that you make her the leader and see how it goes. She’s pretty smart. If she were a big dummy, I know you could do it, but this will be a challenge for you, because you all are so much alike, you’re like two peas in a pod.”

“Well, if you say so, sir,” says Barbara. “I can’t see that she’s anything like me, but I’ll take your word for it. I’ll do it. Do you mind me asking how we’re alike?” says Barbara, tightlipped and obviously not wanting to hear what he has just said.

Pettie turns to me and says, “Barbara is asking me to tell her the truth about herself. What do you think of that?”

“A courageous thing to ask,” I say, not wanting to say anything that could be disputed.

“How many people do you think are interested in hearing the truth about themselves?” he asks, again looking at me.

“Not many,” I say. “I know that there a lot more who want to ‘tell the truth’ to other people than want to hear it told to themselves.”

“Do you think that Barbara really wants me to hold the mirror up in front of her or is she just hoping for a compliment?”

“I think that she wants to hear the truth, sir,” I say, not knowing what is coming next.

“OK,” says Pettie. “The way that you all are just alike is that you’re both Italian angels who were sent to me to make my life more pleasant and I’m grateful for it.”

“OK,” says Barbara, “I know that you’re just bull-shitting me now, but it doesn’t matter. I’ll volunteer to her. If you want to tell me any more, I’m up to hear it.”

“What day of the month is it?” Pettie asks.

“It’s the 15th,” I say.

Barbara says: “He means what day of my menstrual cycle. It’s day twenty seven.”

“If The Gamecaller is going to do his job effectively, he needs to know the menstrual cycle of all of the women in his organization,” says Pettie.

“We’re all pretty close, sir, but I’ll find out and let you know.”

“The Gamecaller should get a piece of paper every day telling what day it is for every woman.”

“Yes, sir,” says Barbara and a new tradition is born.

“Look at Tobe,” says Pettie. “He’s sitting over there feeling so superior thinking that he doesn’t have one of those awful periods every month. And he’s scared to death that I’m going to hold the mirror up in front of him and he will have to face up to some fantasy that he has about himself.

“OK, Tobe, I’m going to tell you something. You’re a linear thinker. That’s right, your little accountant’s brain runs in a straight line. You think that women are worse off than you because they’re cyclical. But actually, each one of them is twenty-eight different women and you have to know which one you’re dealing with. The truth is that women should be grateful for having their period, because it gives them an experiential knowledge of change. Men can claim that they’re attuned to the universe or to the seasons and that they think in circles. But every woman knows in her bones that she’s changing.

“Now I’m going to tell you something that applies to both of you and to Bunny too. You all think that you know more than you do. And all three of you are more interested in getting power over other people rather than power over yourselves.”

L.A.

Barbara volunteers to Bunny the next day and, that evening, she reports to Pettie on all of the things that Bunny did wrong. Pettie listens patiently for awhile and drifts off to sleep before she has finished her report. The next day he disappears. He calls up from L.A. two days later and invites Barbara to bring her crew there. They leave immediately, not telling anybody that they’re going. The next day, he invites me to join them and gradually everybody makes their way north except Beltz and Bunny.

Barbara has found an apartment in West Hollywood, just north of Sunset Boulevard, that is available for a short-term rental while the actor/owner is away in New York. We all take jobs. I sign up with an accounting temporary agency and find myself moving up and down Wilshire Boulevard from one office to another on short-term assignments.

Pettie gets a phone call from Patch Adams. He wants money or land to start his free hospital. It’s a subject of much previous discussion. Patch is determined:

“I have no shame,” he says. “I’ll come begging.”

“OK,” says Pettie. “Why don’t you fly on out here and we’ll finalize the deal.” Patch gets on a plane and flies to L.A. We meet him at the airport and drive to Griffith Park, where we have prepared a gourmet picnic. We have a long meeting in which Pettie assures Patch that he’s going to get what he wants. When he leaves, Pettie gives him a deed to the mineral rights to some of the land in Nethers.

SAN PEDRO

A few days later, Pettie is walking down the street and a taxi pulls over to the curb next to him. The driver leaps out and grabs his hand. It is Michael Brennan, who lived for a time at W Street six years before. Pettie invites him over to the apartment, and that night Brennan suggests that we move onto the boat where he’s living in San Pedro.

The next day, we drive down to inspect the craft and check out the neighborhood. San Pedro is next to Long Beach, still a part of greater L.A., but it’s at least 30 miles south of our current Hollywood location. We arrive at the pier and are met by Michael with his usual ruddy complexion and grin. We slip under the rope on the gangway and onto the boat. It’s a large wooden yacht, but unseaworthy. The owner doesn’t have money for the repairs. It’s 90 feet long, with grooved teak boards all the way around a central section of one story, with a skipper’s observation deck and steering cabin above. It’s brown, in sharp contrast to the other spotless white vessels nearby. It obviously needs painting, but there are no signs of serious problems. It’s hard to tell what the boat was originally designed for. It isn’t luxurious, but it’s also not a fishing boat, a cargo ship or a passenger ship. Michael points to a door in the side of the cabin. We enter what must have been a lounge of some kind, with worn leather chairs and a few tables. He then leads us through another door and down steps to a large corridor running down the center of the boat with cabins on each side. All of the rooms are furnished, but unused. We’re told that we can have our choice. We start renting it for twenty dollars a day. The neighborhood is good for walking. Pettie likes it.

Pettie has suggested that some of us go to work as “menials for the rich and famous.” I’ve signed up with Doris Romeo, an employment agent located on Rodeo Drive in the heart of Beverly Hills. She calls and says that she wants me to interview with somebody, but won’t give a name.

“We have to be very careful here,” she says. “We protect our stars.” I go to the interview. It’s at a house well up above Beverly Hills with a view of the Pacific, the home of Jane Asher. Ms Asher gives me a tour then takes me in her car to the office of her brother Peter Asher, record producer for some big-name singers. It’s an interesting glimpse at the “star-making machinery.” We hit it off immediately and she wants to hire me as her steward, to make sure that everything is always in good order in the house. She also employs a cook and a part-time gardener. It’s a live-in position, with very nice living quarters, all meals and a good salary. She’s a good-looking blonde and I fantasize over what might happen in the middle of the night when she gets lonely. I’ve never heard of her, but years later I learn that she’s a singer, an actress and the former lover of Beatle Paul McCartney. The job is to begin in a week.

That night, I’m back at the boat in San Pedro when Beltz and Bunny show up. Bunny says, “Marion, I’ve decided that my life would be better off if I become a part of your organization full time. When I asked you for advice and you said that I should give the house to my kids, I got mad. But I’ve thought about it and you’re right. It simplifies my life to do that. Why should I hang onto it until I die and try to use it to control them? They’re old enough. So I gave it to them. I’m moving out. I want you to call games for me and I’m ready for more adventure in my life. I’ve turned over the Health Training Center to Dick Doty. Basically, I’m free. I’m ready to go in any direction.”

A NEW GAMECALLER

“We’re living experimentally here,” Pettie says, “so anything is possible. And we don’t all have to be doing the same thing. We have experimented with lots of different ways of relating to each other and it seems like there’s a consensus that people want the women to be in charge of the day-to-day operations. I’ve been playing the part of The Gamecaller. But anybody can play that role. It’s not particular to a person; it’s a role. If anybody else wants the part, I’ll immediately step aside and let them play the part and I’ll volunteer to them and do it exactly their way. Just say the word.”

Before anybody speaks up to say that they want him to be The Gamecaller, Beltz says: “I would like to be The Gamecaller.”

Pettie says: “OK, it’s good to have somebody who says what they really want. I’m volunteering to you.”

When the rest of us hear this, we all follow up by saying that we want Beltz to be The Gamecaller.

“OK,” says Pettie. “I am ready to go in any direction.”

“Great,” says Beltz. “Marion, I’m calling for you to go to Hawaii.”

Pettie gets to his feet and looks around for his pack. Somebody hands it to him. He starts for the door and somebody asks Beltz if it’s OK for them to drive Pettie to the airport. Barbara asks Pettie how we can reach him.

“You can send mail or messages to me at the NCO club at Hickam Air Base,” he says and he departs. We have been in the meeting for less than five minutes. The meeting continues, but lacks direction and people drift off to find places to sleep.

The next day, we attempt to function and to humor Beltz, who continues to say that he wants to be The Gamecaller. He and Bunny have stayed overnight on the boat, although they’re still living in a villa at a country club. We have a meeting and he “puts the day together,” telling people where to go. This means sending them wherever they have work. Then he and Bunny return to San Diego. The next day, Barbara is able to reach Pettie in Hawaii. He invites her to join him there. Within a few days, he invites others to join him, leaving behind only Tom, Jan and me. He says that we should continue to volunteer to Beltz. He says that we should tell him to assign us to something that will make some money and when we have earned our fares, we can join him in Hawaii.

We call Beltz and tell him this. Within a few hours, he calls back and says that he has lined up a job for us. Bunny’s ex-boyfriend, Peter Wolfe, has a marine hardware business and is behind in refurbishing a yacht. Beltz has made a deal for us to work for Peter until we have made enough for the trip to Hawaii. The three of us move from the San Pedro boat to the yacht in San Diego and get to work with sandpaper, scrapers and paintbrushes. When I think about the fact that I am leaving the day before I was to go to work for the blonde Miss Asher, I realize that unconsciously, I’ve been looking forward to the job and conclude I’m still looking for the movie star mom. Still unable to just live in the moment, I start looking forward to Hawaii. In three days, the job is finished and we have our tickets.

HAWAII AGAIN

We have no place to stay in Hawaii. Everybody has been staying at the Youth Hostel, but Pettie says to meet at the East-West Center near the University of Hawaii campus. It has a very nice cafeteria that is open to the public and we gather for breakfast.

“You all are too comfortable,” he says. “Some of you have been here for a week and you still haven’t made a connection with anybody who likes you well enough to offer you hospitality. So everybody should check out of the youth hostel. Meet back here tonight and we’ll see what you have come up with.”

That evening, we gather again in the cafeteria around a table and have a meeting. Everybody tells about their day, but nobody has made a good personal connection. Several people have signed up with temporary agencies and a few have found low-level jobs. But nobody has made a good connection yet.

“Don’t worry,” Pettie says. “If you keep moving, sooner or later you’ll meet somebody who’s into something personal. Don’t worry. But don’t let up either. To keep the pressure on, we’re going to stay here tonight.”

“Where?” says Barbara.

Pettie gets up and motions for us to follow him outside. The East-West Center is constructed of concrete dramatically laid out in huge slabs, one lying on top of another. The back of the building opens onto a Japanese garden with a stream flowing through it. When we reach the garden, he says, “How could you ask for a more pleasant place to live than this?”

“Where are we going to sleep?” says Barbara.

Pettie walks over to the concrete wall skirting the building, hoists himself up onto it and lies down. Above the wall is a concrete overhang that would keep away any rain or dew. He doesn’t get up. We all find a spot along the wall and lay down for the night. The night air is warm and fresh, but the concrete is hard and it pulls the warmth from my body. Still the night sounds are wonderful and I’m feeling high. We manage to get some sleep, even Barbara.

I think that I can find a job easily as a well-paid waiter in one of the hundreds of restaurants, especially in the Waikiki area. But I soon learned that the jobs are tightly controlled. Nobody gets one without being in some kind of a network and they don’t go to newcomers. The business people learned long ago that thousands of visitors every year fall in love with Hawaii and decide to move there, only to discover weeks or months later that they have “island fever” and move back to the mainland. So they don’t invest their time in employees who might be short-termers. I waste two days before discovering this. Then I concentrate on the areas of downtown and Chinatown, which are next to each other.

I like one of the old buildings that sits in the shadow of the new downtown office towers. It’s called the International Trade Center, a relic of a simpler time. It’s a three-story stucco structure that takes up an entire city block. It’s half empty, no doubt because tenants prefer the glitzier glass and steel neighbors. But it has retained some of the charm of old downtown. I stop by several times and find that the doors are never locked, probably because there are many people illegally living in the building. I suspect that this will appeal to Pettie, since, for years, the doors of The Finders have not been locked.

INTERNATIONAL TRADE CENTER

Pettie has also spotted the building and suggests that Barbara see whether she can make a deal for some space in it. She rents two offices that are next door to each other, but has to promise the manager in writing that she would not be living there. After we have been there for a few days, we see other people who look like they’re also living in the building. No doubt the manager knows people are living there, but she protects herself from the authorities by getting a written statement from the tenants. Both offices are small; one has two rooms and the other only one. We move in–all eleven of us. It’s the perfect spot to practice the art of maintaining harmony under adverse conditions and under the nose of the authorities. We time our entrances and exits so that we always enter alone after the workday has finished for most tenants. There’s water in the bathroom down the hall, but for showers, we go to the YMCA, which is a block away. The first time that we’re on our way to the Y, we hear a new song by Village People called YMCA. Tom learns the words and we sing it whenever we’re heading over for a shower.

Pettie calls our living arrangement the “pressure cooker.” The pressure gets to me. Twice in one week, I become so angry that I have to walk away. I’ve made a list for myself of things to do to pull myself out of the pit of self-pity:

Go into the closet and don’t come out until I’m OK.

Take a walk and don’t come back until I feel better.

Sing a song.

Write a song.

Visit somebody who’s worse off than I am.

Isolate myself from everybody else in the group until I’m feeling positive.

Spend a night at the mission.

Do something positive in secret for the person I’m mad at.

Do some vigorous exercise.

Do a complete inventory of my life to summarize everything that is going well and the things that aren’t.

Admit my imperfections.

I’ve tried all of these remedies at one time or another and they all work. Sometimes, I try more than one at the same time. One night in a meeting, Barbara says that I have a strong need to always be the boss and that my ideas never work. Openly criticizing a person to their face is considered a violation of etiquette at The Finders. But Barbara, because of her power in the group, sometimes does it and she isn’t challenged. It makes me mad to hear it and I know that for me to argue back and defend myself or even to point out that her open criticism is bad form, would be even worse than her breach of etiquette. So I take a walk all the way to Waikiki to cool off. By the time I get back, I’ve made up a new song, which everybody learns and sings:

Well you can stop me from locking the door,

And you can make me sleep down on the floor

But that just makes me keep asking for more,

‘Cause you can’t stop me from learning.

Well, you can walk me down to Waikiki Beach

And you can put those goodies out of my reach

And even when you don’t know that you teach

You can’t stop me from learning.

Well you can stop me from going to school

And you can top me at being a fool

And you can bop me on the head like a mule,

But you can’t stop me from learning.

The second time that I’m negative that week occurs when Rosie flirts with me all day and then invites Simon to sleep with her in the evening. I leave and head for a place that has just become available as an alternative, the Steiner cottage. Pat has been studying at the Anthroposophic Society of Rudolf Steiner and learned that they have a little cottage on the property where their library and meeting hall is located in a good neighborhood in central Honolulu. Stan talks to the director and makes a deal to use the space in exchange for doing some maintenance on the property. As I am falling asleep in the cottage, I think about what Pettie has said about dealing with negative emotions,

“Just figure that whatever negative emotion you are feeling is your unconscious trying to tell you something. If you can’t figure out the message, that’s all right. Just double up. Double your effort. If your nerves don’t get frayed living like this,” he says, “they must be pretty good.” When I return the next morning, I’ve written another song:

When your nerves are wearing thin, double up

And when you think that you can’t win, double up

When someone has popped your bubble

And your brickpile’s turned to rubble

Just give thanks for all your trouble, double up

When you make a new connection, double up

And when you get a big erection, double up

When she gets you all excited,

But you do not get invited

Don’t feel slighted, be delighted, double up.

MISSIONARY FAMILIES

Gradually everybody arrives in Honolulu. The only persons who don’t come are Sherry, who’s taking care of W Street, and Petita Spiggs, who has just moved in there. Sherry does a good job and manages to keep the place functioning and the bills all paid. Steve Beltz comes back to Hawaii and brings Bunny with him. The last to arrive is Judy Beltz. We need larger quarters. Barbara answers an ad to rent a house in the Makiki district. It turns out to be the house of one of the descendants of the missionary families.

The standard one-liner about the missionary families is that, “they came to do good and ended up doing well.” They all became millionaires, but native Hawaiians accuse the missionaries of destroying their culture. There’s no doubt that the corporate culture and materialism that is now America rules in Hawaii like it does in the rest of the country. The descendants of the missionary families who began arriving in 1820 were major actors in the transformation from tropical island paradise to commercial resort.

I learn about the missionary families firsthand. I take a job at the Hawaiian Trust Company preparing tax returns. The seventeen employees in the department are all of Japanese descent, except for the boss and me. All the department does is bookkeeping. The investment decisions are made elsewhere. Many of the trusts are from the fortunes made by the original puritanical New England missionaries who believed that they were called by God to convert the native Hawaiians and transform their clothing-optional, clock-free lifestyle. They succeeded not only in doing that, but in establishing coconut-pineapple- and sugarcane-growing plantations where they hired the native Hawaiians. They married royalty and started businesses, banks and trust funds that keep their descendants among the leisure class to this day. I was astonished to see the holdings of the trusts that crossed my desk.

The land holdings were especially surprising. I learned that most of the land in Hawaii is not owned by those who occupy it. There’s some fee simple ownership of land, but most land remains in the hands of the families who have had it for generations. The businesses and families use the land under long-term leases. And I’m also astonished to see the tax-deductible charitable contributions of these trust beneficiaries, the greatest proportion of which go to the exclusive Punahou School–the huge private school that was founded by the missionaries and today schools their descendants on a vast hilltop campus overlooking the Pacific.

The particular missionary family from whom Barbara is renting had owned pineapple fields for many generations. The fields are now suburban housing complexes and strip malls. The family has kept a few rooms in the house, but has now moved to a smaller place on the other side of the island. The mansion has several acres of lawns and fruit trees and a swimming pool fed from a bordering stream flowing down from the mountain above. Some of us stay in the pool house, which is now unused and needs some repair. The house is old and grand with a wide porch and rocking chairs. It’s located within a fifteen-minute bus ride to almost everything in Honolulu. I’m able to walk downtown to work.

Every evening, we gather for conversation, jokes and nonsense. One night Barbara brings out a half gallon of ice cream, something Pettie dearly loves, and starts to pass it around with a spoon. Before it’s completely opened, Pettie says, “Wait a minute, Barbara; before you can eat any of that, you have to kiss a toad.”

Everybody laughs. Barbara is bewildered, silent, and starts to close the ice cream package. I touch her on the arm, raise my finger indicating that she should wait a minute, rush out the door and into the tropical night. My intuition and Pettie’s are in sync. In seconds, I’m back carrying a huge spotted toad, which had been waiting in the grass. I place it at Barbara’s feet, holding onto his hind legs. She frowns and turns her head. Lucky speaks up: “Sir, would I be permitted to substitute and kiss the toad for madame?” Pettie shakes with laughter as Lucky crawls forward, bows to the floor and kisses the frog to everybody’s applause–as the ice cream is opened and goes around.

Judy Beltz answers an ad and connects with Jud Banks, a realtor specializing in managing Waikiki condominiums for absentee owners. A building boom has been going on for the last few years in Honolulu, particularly in luxury condos. They sell as quickly as they come on the market to people who hire agents like Banks to manage them as vacation rentals. At first, it was highly profitable to both the owner and the manager, but the boom has passed its peak and there are clouds on the horizon for absentee owners, particularly when you look around at the thousands of condos that are under construction as the vacancy rate grows. Banks has a large inventory of these condos. He hires Judy to work in his office and gives her a condo as an incentive to work for him. Some of us move in with her, but I stay at the mansion. In addition, we get a house-sit in Makiki near the mansion. There are nineteen of us now in Honolulu and we have an abundance of space.

CRYSTAL FLIGHTS

One morning, I’m walking past the old International Trade Center. I glance down as I pass the Olsen Temporary Services office, which is a half level below the street. I see Jane Sloan ascending the stairs. She sees me at the same time, rushes up the stairs and throws her arms around me. “I can’t believe that it’s you again,” she says. I’m as surprised as she is. It has been a year since our chance meeting at Kerista House in San Francisco. We walk to Chinatown and spend the morning together.

“I came from Alaska,” she says. “I’ve been living on the beach on the other side of the island. It’s so wonderful here.” She looks great, trim and healthy. “I’ve been working as a baker for the last year and I’ve gotten really good at it. I changed my name to Alice Froster. I’ll bake you something. Do you have a kitchen?”

I explain our living situation. “Can I move in,” she asks.

“Sure,” I say, “as far as I’m concerned you can. But you should talk to Barbara. In the game that I’m playing men don’t make decisions about space.” That night she appears with her backpack and sleeping bag at the mansion and is welcomed.

Changes continue. Back in Washington, Petita Spiggs sends a letter to Martin Tilton, a sometime player who has been living at W Street for many years, and has just arrived in Hawaii. The letter begins: “To the dearest, sweetest man in the whole wide world,” and goes on to announce that she’s pregnant and that he’s the father. He panics and denies paternity. Stuart Silvertones also arrives at W Street, after a six-month stay at a huge commune in Austria called A.A.O. He has split up with his wife and wants a new life. Pettie calls for Rosie and Simon to return to D.C. and to get married.

Each woman now has her own room and Pettie has called for each of them to have her own organization. Most of the men are volunteered to Barbara, but Pat has Stan; Judy Waits has Martin; Diane has Herb Fyfield, a new player; Judy Beltz has Lucky. Beltz and Bunny arrive and he volunteers to her. Pettie suggests that if we’re going global, each woman should call her team an airline. Alice Froster renames herself Crystal Flights and says that her airline is to be Flights of Fancy. I know that she’s an acid queen, so the name seems appropriate. She asks whether she can recruit me for her airline. I tell her that, for the moment, I’ll stay as part of Barbara’s team, but maybe later.

She gets a job as the pastry chef at the East-West Center. I visit her in the vast basement kitchen and am impressed with her skill and knowledge. She begins making breads and goodies for the house. Every morning we have fresh baked bagels. She gathers mangoes from the yard and creates delicious treats with them. She invites me out on dates. I go and enjoy myself, but resist getting involved in a romance, which she obviously wants. We take long walks into the Honolulu hills, visiting the waterfalls above Manoa and above the Lyon Arboretum. We go to a concert and dance on the grass to the music of a group called Blue Oyster Cult. It’s a pleasant, easy time and the money in the common pot is getting bigger.

Why would I resist romance? I want to have a close relationship with a woman, but something holds me back. I tell myself that I resist because the relationship has to be anchored in the community and I believe that Crystal’s main goal is to “cut me out of the herd.” Each day my loyalty seems to be tested. She’s ideal in many ways, beautiful–adventurous, passionate, creative and full of energy. I want her to be a part of the community and don’t know how to make it happen, except to try to stay centered in the life I’ve chosen and hope that she finds it attractive.

AROUND THE WORLD

Pettie decides that it’s time for the next leg in the trip around the world, but we don’t yet have enough to pay for everybody to make it all the way around. We have a meeting and Pettie proposes his solution:

“It’s the push-and-pull program,” he says. “The women go first and the men push them around the world by working here to pay for their trip as it unfolds. When you have enough for the first ones to leave, buy them a ticket that will get them started. Keep sending them money as they progress. The destination is where we started from–back at W Street. When the women have been pushed around the world, they will start earning and pull the men around the world back to D.C. the same way they were pushed.”

“We have enough already for some of them to start,” says Rannie, who has been keeping the books.

“OK,” says Pettie. “The women should have a meeting and decide what order to go in. I’m going to throw in one little curve ball. Barbara and Bunny should travel together. Everybody else can decide whether to travel by themselves or with somebody else.”

“Yes, sir,” says Barbara, obviously unhappy to be traveling with the person with whom she would least like to be traveling.

“If the two of you can make it back to D.C. without harming each other, you will both be wise women,” says Pettie.

“Yes, sir,” says Barbara, tight-lipped. “How long should this trip take?”

“One month is a good target time,” says Pettie. “This isn’t a vacation trip. It’s a learning trip. The purpose of it is to get a quick overview.”

“Do you think that it would be better for me to travel with somebody else or by myself,” I ask.

“‘Down to Gehenna or up to the throne, he travels the fastest who travels alone.’ Who said that, Diane?”

“Sounds like Rudhyard Kipling, sir,” says Diane.

“You’ll learn more, if you’re a little bit lonely,” says Pettie. “That goes for everybody. It makes you more alert to know that everything is resting on yourself. Pick the countries that you want to know more about and see if you can get a feel for them. You can take as long as you want in each place. Travel by whatever means of transport you want. But you’ll be traveling west, so you’ll be flying out of here. Tobe, you should see what kind of deal you can make with a travel agent. Check out the Chinese. They usually have good connections in places where cheap tickets are available.”

PUSHING

The next day, I talk to some travel agents in Chinatown. The one I like best is named Preston Lee. He’s an ethnic Chinese from Bangkok. “We have very good connection in Bangkok,” he says. “We get you best price for everybody. You buy here, we take good care you. Bangkok have best world price. I get Bangkok price for Honolulu ticket.”

He’s true to his word. I spend a few days checking out the best prices for world travel and his price is always better. We become friends and he invites me for a superb dinner in Chinatown. He knows where to go and what to order.

“Where did you get the name Preston?” I ask. “It’s an unusual name for a Chinese.”

“My American name,” he says. “Thai name hard for American to say. Sound little bit like Preston, but too hard for American. Preston easier for American.” The irony is that when he says Preston, it sounds like Pleston.

We buy the first tickets and women begin departing every few days. The men keep working. Everybody is doing something that pays during the week, and on the weekends we’re working across the island in Kailua on the home of Jud Banks, whose roof has sprung a leak. He’s pleased with the repair job and asks us to paint his house. It’s a big job and everybody pitches in. People see us working and stop by to recruit us to do their house. Soon we have enough for all of the women to make it to D.C.

Crystal Flights and Judy Beltz are the last two women left. Each decides that they will not go around the world. Judy is working to build up her own private bank account and Crystal wants to continue her job at the East-West Center as a stepping-stone on her resume. Crystal is living in the apartment of a new friend who’s away and left it to her to watch. It’s on the twentieth floor of a building on Wilder Avenue looking down across Honolulu at the Pacific. We sleep on the balcony and wake up to the fresh breeze and the magnificent view.

I am working in Jud Banks’ office on some prior-year tax returns that have not been filed. He refers me to another realtor who also has delinquent returns. It keeps me going full time and the money flows in.

CHAPTER NINE

HONG KONG

Finally the men leave one at a time. I have an emotional goodbye with Crystal, with whom my romance has progressed, despite my protests that it would not. She promises to meet me later in D.C. I fly to Hong Kong. It’s my first visit to the Far East. I find an offbeat youth hostel in Kowloon that calls itself the Kowloon Hilton. It’s on the tenth floor of one of the hundreds of identical concrete structures that line the streets on this part of the peninsula. Kowloon appeals to me more than the glass and steel towers across the harbor on the island of Hong Kong. I roam the streets and alleys late into the night, peering into shops and buying food from street vendors.

The place I like best is Cheung Chau Island. I leave early one morning, planning only to ride around the harbor for two or three hours. I go to Lantau and Lamma. Both look interesting, but I spend only a few minutes in each and get back on the ferry. Then I arrive at Cheung Chau and it seems to pull me right off the boat and into the narrow cobblestone alleys. It’s like being in a Chinese movie set in prehistoric times. There are no cars on the island. The main industry is fishing. The small harbor is crammed with Chinese junks. A stone wall encloses the harbor and the bustle of the town begins at the harbor’s edge. The wall is lined with hundreds of three-foot-wide wok-shaped baskets, each filled with tiny fish drying in the sun. Every breath suggests anchovies. Set back from the harbor wall are shops selling fresh vegetables, fresh seafood and dozens of other things I’m unable to recognize.

At the end of a lane is the village temple, constructed in classic Chinese style. In a glass case on the wall, in a place of honor, is a fabled sword. It’s as long as a man and could only have been wielded by a giant. There are few visitors and the attendant seems glad to have a chance to practice her English. She takes down the sword and offers it to me to feel the weight. It must have weighed forty pounds. The legend is that, after a storm, some fishermen from the village pulled in their net and found that the sword was their catch. The temple was built to honor it. Circling the central supporting post of the temple is a ferocious wooden figure with his hand above his forehead shading two huge piercing eyes as he stares out to sea. “He’s looking for storms and pirates,” says the guide. “He has hundred-mile eyes.”

I give up any plans for the rest of the day and yield to whatever temptation leads me. There’s a footpath up to a ridge that forms the spine of the barbell-shaped island. I follow it and discover the Hong Kong skyline six miles away. It’s like looking into the future from medieval times. I follow the trail to the other side of the island and find a white sand beach set in a little cove. I strip to my boxer shorts, hide my clothes behind a tree and slip into the clear warm water. Then, I nap on the grass until I’m awakened by two little girls tickling my nose with a blade of grass. When I wake up, they run away laughing to their mother. I watch them for a few minutes playing in the water, dress and head back up the trail.

I cross another trail and follow it toward a clearing. In the center is an open-air pavilion. People are streaming toward it and I follow. I take a seat in the rear waiting for the performance to begin, but I’m unable to determine when it starts. There are actors and musicians on the stage already and they seem to be tuning their instruments and arranging the scenery. The audience pays little attention to the stage, but goes on talking, eating and moving about while the action on the stage continues. After a while, I realize that some kind of a story is unfolding, but I can’t tell what it is. There are fabulous masks of dragons, birds, horses and goats with horns that sneak up behind the players and butt them about the stage. Everything is made of brightly colored silks that blow in the wind created by a large electric fan. Lights flash. Firecrackers explode. Cymbals crash. Bells, flutes, drums, and stringed instruments occasionally interrupt the bewildering action. Sometimes an instrument accompanies a singer. But then the baffling action recommences. I’m captivated by the whole scene. It’s like I’m witnessing an allegory of life, with the characters buffeted by circumstance, blown by the wind, frightened by demons, yet sometimes transported by unexpected beauty. The sun is sinking when I walk back to the village, with the action on stage continuing, never seeming to have had a beginning, and repeating itself over and over, without my knowing what it was about and having no reference points from my own experience to understand it. It was wonderful–a day always to remember.

BANGKOK

The flight to Bangkok arrives late, and the airport is a great distance from the city. I have no hotel room nor any knowledge of where to go. I’m at the mercy of the taxi driver who speaks no English. He figures out that I am looking for a hotel and drives me to a place that looks acceptable. A bellman shows me to a room with mirrors on the walls and on the ceiling. I give him a tip and expect him to leave, but instead he opens a side door and an attractive young woman enters. She doesn’t raise her eyes. He says something to me that I can’t understand, but I have no doubt that the woman is being offered to me for what is left of the night. I try to tell him that I’m tired and just want to sleep, but he either does not understand or pretends not to. He keeps making motions indicating that the woman and I should get together.

Finally, they both leave and I begin to undress for bed. Then another man enters, again the woman is with him. He speaks a little English and tells me that the woman goes with the room. The pathos of the situation begins to dawn on me. But I repeat that I’m only interested in getting some sleep and, with many “thank yous,” I try to move him toward the door. He assures me that there’s no extra charge. I tell him that it isn’t a matter of money.

I’ve never shared a bed with a prostitute. I’m in a foreign country with an unsavory reputation for its sex practices. It’s after midnight and I don’t know where I am in the city. I’m on a round-the-world trip and I don’t want my travels to be complicated by the entry into my body of some exotic microorganisms that might require medication or cause fluids to begin dropping from my penis. So I tell him again that I just want to sleep. He tells me that this is her room and she has no other place to sleep. I tell him that she can have the bed and I’ll sleep on the floor. He has trouble understanding this. I suppose that it’s too bizarre for him. Finally, the two of them leave. As she walks out the door, she raises her eyes, looks at me for the first time and gives me the hint of a smile.

I don’t know the meaning of the look but I lay in bed thinking about her. I doubt that any woman goes into prostitution voluntarily. I wonder what she might have been like as a little girl, how she might have gotten into the business. I wonder at the kind of self-image she might have, spending each night with a different man, focusing her efforts on pleasing him, doing it with an enthusiasm as close to genuine as she’s capable of, sometimes being disgusted by him, being asked to do things that are degrading, and knowing that she’s valued by her culture only for the pleasure she can give to men who have no loyalty to her. I wonder whether she’s able to preserve some current of her own real desire. I wonder whether she has any perspective on the rest of the world and how she sees her future. I think of Margo St. James testifying in Congress on the subject of legalized prostitution, saying to a congressman: “But, sir, we already have legalized prostitution in this country. It’s called marriage.” I gain no insight, only questions and finally fall asleep.

The next day I head for the American Embassy to find a good place to stay. At the entrance, I meet some young travelers who send me to a concrete edifice of many rooms at reasonable prices. It’s filled with kids from all over the world. I’m told that it’s the hotel where the writer and mystic Thomas Merton electrocuted himself. I’m careful not to step wet from the shower onto the concrete floor and touch an electric wire as he did.

I buy an Aeroflot bargain ticket to Amsterdam for $180, including a three-day stopover in Moscow, for which I have to obtain a visa. I go immediately to the Soviet Consulate and begin the necessary paperwork. The visa clerk is a beautiful Russian blonde who speaks perfect English. I’m in love again. I walk around Bangkok all day trying to figure out some pretext for luring her away for a weekend in the jungle. I run through all kinds of intriguing scenarios–each with the risk that she’s a decoy that has been planted by the KGB to entrap an American into marrying her and taking her back to America, where she would become a spy. But she’s so beautiful that I decide to at least ask her whether I can take her to dinner. When I return to pick up my visa, she isn’t there. Instead, a stern-faced young man greets me. I casually ask the whereabouts of the pleasant young woman who had taken my application. “Oh, my wife,” he says. “It’s her turn with the children today.”

MOSCOW

I fly all night and arrive in Moscow the next morning. My fellow passengers tell me why the tickets to Amsterdam are so cheap. The airline and the huge Soviet oil reserves are both owned by the government, so fuel is cheap and there’s no pressure to make a profit. There’s also a severe shortage of hard currency, so they offer the stayover in Moscow in hopes that the travelers will buy something and leave their dollars behind. At the airport, we’re asked to show all of the cash we’re bringing into the country and are told that we will be required to show how much we have when we leave. We’re told that we can convert as much as we want and reconvert whatever we don’t spend. I convert almost nothing. My room and all of my meals are free; all I need is a little carfare.

I expect that my bag will be searched. I don’t care. I’m traveling with nothing more than an over-the-shoulder airline bag, a fact that amazes my fellow travelers, most of whom are youth hostellers lugging metal-framed backpacks with sleeping bags laced to the top.

When I enter the streetcar from the Aeroflot hotel, a young Russian approaches me and asks if I would be willing to talk to him to help him perfect his English, which is already very good. “Sure,” I say, glad to have somebody to act as tour guide.

“It would be better if you look straight ahead and don’t let people see that you are talking to me until we get onto another streetcar,” he says. “It will not get you in any trouble, but the conductors are told to report Russians who speak to foreigners.” We stand shoulder-to-shoulder and angled away from each other until he signals me that it’s time to get off. We take another streetcar. It’s unbelievably cheap to get around Moscow. Each ride is less than a penny.

My young guide, who identifies himself as Alexander, says that he’s a student at Moscow State University, which he points out, a Russian Gothic structure from the Stalin era with a steeple toward the sky. He constantly asks questions about the world outside of the U.S.S.R. and I fire questions back at him about his life in it. He seems candid both in what he asks and in his answers. We talk mainly while we’re on public transportation or walking among crowds. When we enter a building, he insists that I go first and tells me where he will meet me inside. He says that he wants to watch to see if I’m being followed. Every building has a guard at the entrance. It’s interesting to look back now and see how Americans, who at that time rarely posted guards in office buildings, have come to imitate the Russians of that time. Alexander says it’s too dangerous for him to pass the guard inside the building with the two of us together. Midway through the afternoon, he asks me to go with him into the shop that is reserved for foreign tourists. I meet him inside.

“You must show your passport to buy anything,” he says. “Russians aren’t allowed in here, but I’m not worried, because everything is so expensive that Russians could not buy anyway. And you must buy with foreign currency. Rubles are no good here. They don’t even bother to spy on this place. Do you suppose that you could buy some books for me? I’ll reimburse you with rubles.”

“Sure,” I say, thinking that I would spend some of the rubles on a dinner in a Moscow restaurant and cash the rest of them in at the airport on the way out of the country.

We browse the books that are available. I’m surprised to see many British and American classics in both Russian and English: Dickens, Shakespeare, Faulkner, T.S. Eliot, Longfellow, Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead, and a whole shelf of books by Jack London, whom he tells me is the biggest seller. All are hardbound in college textbook fashion. To my surprise, he also points out books by dissident Russian authors. And there are even copies of Masters of Deceit, written by J. Edgar Hoover.

“It’s all show,” he says. “These books are here to show the tourist that there’s no censorship in Russia, so the government can say, ‘See, there are books by our critics right here on the shelf.’ But no Russian can read these books. If they found one of them on me, they would arrest me. They would not arrest me for having the book. But they would find some other reason.”

He buys four books, two in English and two in Russian, for a total investment of about $20.00. He accompanies me back to a spot near the hotel and thanks me profusely. When I leave the streetcar, the conductor says something that I don’t understand. I haven’t been able to figure out the payment method, which involves some small pieces of paper. I step down off the car and he shouts at me and gets off himself. I try to give him money, but he will not take it. I walk toward the hotel and he follows shouting. He makes threatening motions and I hurry away into the lobby. He follows me in and walks up to a guard at the desk.

The guard motions me to stop and walks into another office with the conductor. I wait as images of being shipped off to the gulag in Siberia rise in my imagination. I wonder if I’ve been followed when I was touring with Alexander. I wonder what the fine might be for passing contraband books to Russian citizens and whether Alexander was setting me up in some way that I can’t understand. In a moment, they return with another man, the conductor still talking loudly. Meanwhile, the streetcar is still waiting on the rails in front and the riders are milling around outside, some of them occasionally shouting. Then, from another door, some other hotel employees emerge. From the deference given to one of them, it’s clear that he’s at a different level. He comes toward me with an unctuous smile. “I am very sorry,” he says. “There has been a misunderstanding.” He then pushes the conductor out the door and shoos everybody back to their jobs. I watch the conductor return to the car, still talking loudly. The car pulls away. I never find out what the whole hubbub is about.

The next morning, a few minutes after I board the streetcar, I’m approached by an old man. He hands me a dirty unsealed envelope. On the outside, written in a rough hand is, PLEASE TO GIVE BBC. Inside is a handwritten document of perhaps ten pages in Russian. The man says a few words to me in Russian, gives me a pleading look, and gets off at the next stop. I don’t know whether I’ve been given the useless ravings of a madman or some state secrets that could have me executed as a spy. But I like the drama of the whole thing, so I put it inside my sweater and determine that I’ll detour through London on the way back and deliver it to the B.B.C.

When we get to the airport that evening, I’m concerned that my B.B.C. letter might be found by officials as I attempt to board. I decide that the best strategy isn’t to attempt to hide it, but to carry it openly in my hand along with my passport and other papers. Sure enough, they go through my bag at the airport, but nobody pays any attention to the papers that I’m carrying, except to ask for specific documents, which I hand to them.

But there’s one departure problem. My money is counted and when I try to exchange the rubles I’ve received from Alexandria, the official finds that the rubles I have exceed the number that I had bought at the airport. So they know that I’ve obtained them illegally. I’m told that the only use for them is to buy something from the airport gift shop. I did not want to add to the eight-pound baggage quota that I have allowed myself and besides, there’s nothing of interest in the gift shop. It’s almost barren. Finally, I buy a huge bag of Russian chocolate. For the next few days, I give away chocolate to everybody that I meet.

THE EURAIL TRAIL

Pettie has called for a quick overview. I cover nineteen countries in twenty-one days. I have a Eurail pass, bought in Hong Kong, which allows me unlimited train travel in Europe. After a day of walking, I board the first train in Amsterdam, find an empty compartment and stretch out over the wide seats for a good night’s sleep. It’s cold when I wake in Innsbruck, Austria. I have no coat, but when I reach up onto the overhead rack for my bag, there is a corduroy jacket left behind by a previous traveler. It’s large, but serves me well when I walk outside. Snow is falling on this July morning. In a few hours, I’m back on the train, rolling down into Italy. Then, each day blends into the next. I wander through the great capitals of Europe until I am tired. Then to the train station to check for a location that is about eight hours away, sleep, then off the train to explore, then back on to sleep, then off again in a different country. Images are bursting in my head–the stone steps of Zurich, the grape arbors as far as the eye can see in Italy, the pushy American in the line at the Amsterdam airport who makes me ashamed to show my American passport, the beautiful blonde walking on Elizabeth Strasse who smiled at me in the Bern twilight as she passed, the Goetheanum at sunrise, the American W.A.C. whose address I failed to get after she invited me to visit her in her apartment in Heidelberg, Mount Blanc across a lake from a train window, Brunelleschi’s dome from the hills above Florence, and many more which continue to come to me for years.

LONDON

On my second day in London, I take the paper from the old Russian to the B.B.C., an unpretentious office building furnished with the kind of sturdy desks, chairs and typewriters you would expect at the Department of Labor in Washington. Admirable in a way, considering the importance that they represent to the world outside of America. It’s a surprisingly informal place and I have no trouble reaching the right person. I’m introduced to Niles Hatchwarden, a tweedy man of about thirty with a public school accent, very British in manner. He says that his Russian isn’t perfect, but that he will “have a go at it.” I hand him the paper and watch him read the first few pages. It’s clear from the speed of his reading and the way his eyes scan the pages that he was just being modest in describing his Russian reading ability.

“We get one of these every couple of weeks,” he says. “There isn’t much we can do about them. But maybe it provides a bit of hope for the writer. This fellow seems to be saying that he was denied his pension after working for forty years. Apparently, he has been bucking the bureaucracy for years and nobody will listen to him. He refers to having been imprisoned. I think that it had something to do with his insistence on getting his pension, but it’s not clear from what I’ve read so far. I don’t think that it’s anything that the B.B.C. would want to air, but it’s full of colloquialisms, so I’ll have a native Russian speaker read it over and get a better evaluation of it. In any case, we will keep it on file. It adds to our general impression of what life is like for the average man living under socialism there. And thank you so much for acting as our courier.”

Back on the street, I reflect on the experience. The substance of the letter seemed, at first, not to have amounted to much in the global sense, although receiving it and carrying it across borders and through so many countries added to the drama of my trip. But the more I think about it, the more poignant it seems. A man spends his entire working life doing what he’s told to do by his employer, who’s also his country and the great authority in his life and, now in his old age, he’s still butting his head against that authority. He probably resisted the authority, as most of us do, but it was probably a half-assed resistance, more a foot-dragging than a rebellion–like the extended conversations at the coffee machine and reading the sports pages under the desk that I used to see in my days of working at the I.R.S. What a sad life, all centered on some circumstance outside of himself as the reason of his happiness. He will probably go to his grave saying, “It wasn’t my fault,” and “If only they’d...”

Among the players of the round-the-world game, I’m the next-to-last to arrive back in America. It’s months before Martin Tilton finally makes it. He runs out of money in Germany and calls back to Washington. Pettie says to ask him for an address where he can receive a wire service money transfer. He gives a mail service at the Frankfurt airport. “Should we send him some money, sir?” somebody asks. “Not today,” Pettie says. “Bring it up in the meeting every day and we might send him some later. The main thing is to keep his hope alive. It’s not a good idea to deny somebody’s hope. Even if it’s a false hope. He may give up after awhile and take his life into his own hands. That’s where the real hope is.”

That is what happens. Tilton lives for three weeks without money in the vast reaches of the underground complex at the Frankfurt airport. Finally, after a few more phone calls to D.C., he decides that no money is coming and thumbs a ride to Switzerland and another to Spain. He takes odd jobs, saves enough for a return flight and returns renewed and stronger than before he left.

DEBRIEFING

Pettie meets every one of his returning troops at the airport as they arrive. When he picks me up at Dulles, we drive down to the Red Cabin at Old Rag Mountain. He asks questions all the way down and I play out the entire journey to him as it unfolded each day. He has already been to all of the places that I visited, but is very interested in hearing my recollections. When I’ve finished, I ask him what he thinks the benefits of our round-the-world trips will be.

“I’ve been in sixty countries and fifty states, but I couldn’t tell you exactly what the benefit is. It works on a lot of levels. But I know that experiential learning is the only kind worth getting and you can’t beat the experience of looking at somebody else’s culture.

“On another level, there’s only one place and you’re there all the time. One thing that the trip did for you was to relieve you of any preconceived notions that you had about the places that you went to. Preconceived ideas are usually pretty far from the truth, so that’s a big benefit. Preconceived notions are what’s holding back the world. People’s heads are full of them; y’all are no different from anybody else. The school systems are working a mile a minute to put more preconceived notions into kids’ heads.

“Almost nobody escapes from them now. They put a bunch of kids into a room and stick them behind a desk and a bored teacher stands up in front of them and says ‘Class, today we’re going to study geography.’ Then she drones on with a bunch of facts and figures about some place that the kids aren’t interested in. Their bodies and their hormones are telling them that they should be out there in the bushes with the opposite sex, but they try to force themselves to think about this place called Japan, because the teacher might embarrass them by asking a question: ‘Japan is a series of islands off the coast of Asia, blah, blah blah.’ Before the teacher can say one sentence their minds have drifted back to what their hormones are telling them. Besides that, the woman who’s teaching them about Japan has never been there and whatever she says isn’t from her own experience. What does she know? She’s just there collecting a paycheck and teaching what somebody else told her to teach, not the thing that is inspiring her. How can you solve any problems without getting the facts? To get the facts you have to go where the facts are.

“Another thing that this trip did was to give you a taste of loneliness. The world is full of people who have been driven crazy by loneliness. When you get back, the people here don’t look as bad as they did when you left.

“Another thing was that you found out what a big place the local planet is and how every square inch of it is already claimed by somebody. There’s no place you can run to get a game going. You have to do it within the confines of the games that are already in place. It used to be that you could just keep going west and find a place where there wasn’t much competition. Y’all are something like the Mormons. They have about the hottest game going now, at least in the competition among the religions. But at one time, they were hated and pushed around from one place to another. Some people who didn’t want to have any competition even killed their leader. So they had to keep moving west to get their game going. But you can see from your trip that there’s no place left to go. You’ve got to get your game going right here among the people who all have a vested interest in not letting it happen. That’s all right. It’s still the best time in history to do it.”

CHAPTER TEN

THE BIG APPLE

In September, Crystal Flights arrives from Hawaii, saying that she wants to play Pettie’s games. She settles in and takes an apartment. A few days later, Pettie calls a new game: “Everybody take $500 and go somewhere. Set up a base there and I’ll come to visit. Don’t come back until you have doubled the $500. If you’re a part of an organization, your organization should take $500 and double it. Tobe, I’m calling for you not to be in Barbara’s organization; you and Crystal are in an organization for this game.”

For strategic reasons, I’ve been in Barbara’s organization for the last few years. I’ve never been comfortable volunteered to Barbara, but that’s where the action is. I know that Crystal is crazy by most people’s standards, but the idea of having an adventure with her excites me. Then he adds one more thing. “Tobe, you’re to be in charge.” This too excites me, my deep-seated desire to be in control rising quickly to the surface.

We grab our bags and walk to the bus one block away on Benton Street. It’s Sunday morning and the bus is empty. We spread ourselves out on the wide seats behind the driver. Part of Crystal’s charm is her little girl enthusiasm. She lowers her eyes and asks in her little girl voice: “Have you decided where we’re going?”

“The big apple,” I say.

She shivers all over, raises herself a little above the seat with her elbows pointed out, fists raised and says, “Yes!” We take the Metroliner and arrive in mid-afternoon. It’s a clear blue-sky day. By good fortune, there’s a parade. We walk down 5th Avenue as it passes. The sidewalks are filled with people. We buy a recitation from a street performer who offers us a menu of Whitman, Longfellow, Frost, Yeats and Eliot. Crystal chooses The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, which he executes with appropriate drama. A crowd gathers to listen and applauds the completion. Somebody else buys another performance and we walk away hearing: “A boy’s will is the wind’s will and the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

We’re feeling so good that we just keep walking through the city heading south oblivious of our packs. We find ourselves in little Italy in the midst of the San Gennaro Street Festival. We eat from vendors on the street and Crystal asks where there might be a youth hostel. She learns about a place on Tompkins Square on the Lower East Side called Everything for Everybody where we might be welcome. We walk there in the gathering darkness. The manager says there’s one space available in a dorm room for women. I’m not allowed there and there’s no place available for men. I pick up the bags, which we have laid on the floor, and ask if it’s OK for me to carry them upstairs for her. When we get to the dorm room, she goes in. I walk down the hall and find an unlocked window leading to the roof. Out I go. It’s a warm night and I go to sleep looking at the New York skyline. The next day a room opens up and she takes it. Couples aren’t permitted in rooms, so I continue secretly on the roof.

Everything for Everybody is an old building several stories high, to which some enterprising people have managed to gain title. There’s no charge for staying there and the food is free, having been gleaned from stuff that would otherwise be tossed by Manhattan restaurants. There’s a large kitchen, with refrigerators containing date-labeled food, so that the age of the contents is evident. It reminds me of many of the no-nonsense setups I’ve seen in communes in other places.

The Lower East Side is one of Manhattan’s most dangerous areas. One night I’m sleeping on the roof and I hear a woman screaming. The screaming goes on for more than an hour, with nobody responding. I keep expecting to hear sirens, assuming that somebody would call the police, but none ever come and I have no idea what it was all about. The building is on the east side of Tompkins Square. It must have been elegant at one time. But now it looks like a refugee camp. Almost every inch of the park is covered by tents made of old blankets and discarded construction materials. Hundreds of people live there, keeping warm with campfires and using makeshift toilets. The park residents know each other better than the neighbors who live next door to each other in the apartment buildings that surround the square. They know each other, but are wary of strangers, as I discover when I stroll through.

SOHO AND GOLD

On the third day, Crystal runs into an old acquaintance who tells her that a mutual friend named Hico is also in town. Hico is living in and managing a loft building at 66 Crosby Street in SoHo. We go to see Hico, who immediately invites us to move in. His living area is an entire floor of six thousand square feet. The real estate-speculator-owner is emptying the building as leases expire for the garment sweatshops that currently rent there. We’re awakened each morning to the vibration of hundreds of sewing machines from the floors above. The space is wide open except for columns and a glass enclosure in the center, which had been the sweatshop supervisor’s office. We use it as a warm area, since the floor is otherwise unheated.

Crystal sets up an area for herself and I do the same designating it a kiva. We then write up 3x5 cards and post them in bookstores, restaurants and bulletin boards in SoHo and Greenwich Village. They say:

Informal Hostel Space Available

66 Crosby Street

Potential Guests Interviewed Between 6 and 7 PM

People come. Within a week, we have five or six guests every night. Some of them move in and make it their home. One is a man who calls himself Leather Wing. He has two women traveling with him who say they’re his wives. This fits very well with us, because, in The Finders, the current custom is for each person to recruit two persons who know less than they do and to consider them to be “wives.”

According to Pettie, “The male principle is wisdom and the female principle is love. The ideal arrangement is to put yourself into a state of creative indifference and cultivate your wisdom. Wisdom is magnetic and when you have enough of it, you will attract some wives who love your wisdom. Then you will have an organization based on universal principles. You don’t have to be a female to be a wife or a male to be a husband.”

It’s interesting to compare the way that Leather Wing relates to his “wives” with the way that Pettie recommends. Leather Face would have been a better name for him. His face is mahogany-colored from the smoke of the Bull Durham tobacco cigarettes that he rolls and smokes constantly. His wives, Madeleine and Sylvie, also smoke. He wears a leather vest and a leather cap. He plays the patriarch with them and they seem not to mind the way he patronizes. He claims to be a Native American, but when I asked him about his Indian heritage, he says that his spirit is Indian and that he was born and raised in the Bronx. After that, I can detect some Bronxisms in his speech, which usually sounds more like the Lone Ranger’s sidekick Tonto. He takes himself very seriously. He claims that he knows an incantation that, if everybody in the world says it at the same time, would trigger the New Age and we would all live happily ever after. I dutifully learn it and promise to pass it along to others, but forget it when the three of them disappear.

Other interesting characters show up. One evening Wavy Gravy knocks on the door, saying that a guy in Washington Square invited him over to smoke some reefer. I refer him to Hico and the two of them smoke on the roof, while I sit and listen to his nonstop entertainment. But not every visitor is benign. One is a big Italian known only as Leo, recently released from the Riker’s Island prison, who gets angry at our resident intellectual, Stanley Rosen, an NYU graduate student, and kicks him in the face, knocking out two teeth and opening a large gash on his cheek. We take him to the hospital and then have to decide what to do about Leo, who’s holed up in the place. Leather Wing proves his courage. He goes alone into the building and talks Leo into leaving and we see him no more.

I take a job on Broad Street, a few doors from the New York Stock Exchange, with a gold trading firm run by Jim Sinclair, a devotee of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Jim, who meditates in the back seat of his limousine as he’s driven to work every morning from New Jersey, has established a meditation room in the office, even though it seems never to be used. I work in the accounting department at simple stuff and have plenty of time to watch the epidemic of gold fever that grips the place every morning. There’s a “trading room” in the office, where furious activity is the standard–phones ringing, people shouting, numbers being written on blackboards, people huddling, others shouting at each other and little slips of paper constantly flowing into the back office, where I work recording and settling the transactions. They are making big money as the price of gold climbs from $400 to near $600 in a few weeks. The office legend is that Sinclair bases his strategy on his frequent trips to Quebec, where he consults a psychic. I tell him I’ll work for him for whatever amount he wants to pay and that he can pay me with gold. He seems to like the idea, but he’s so focused on the gold frenzy that I hear no more about it and my paychecks keep coming in dollars.

Back in D.C., they’ve been running an ad offering to trade an apartment in Washington for an apartment overseas. They make a deal for a place in Paris and Pettie shows up in New York on his way to the Kennedy Airport. He spends a night in the loft and meets the people. “Looks to me like you have created a pretty good bunch of teachers here,” he tells me. “You’re bound to learn something, but I wouldn’t hang around too long.”

I didn’t. I head back to D.C. a few days after Pettie’s visit. In typical Finder’s style, I just disappear without saying anything to Crystal or anybody else. This unorthodox behavior is based on achieving the state of detachment that Pettie calls “creative indifference.”

“I won’t be presumptuous and call it divine indifference,” I’ve heard him say. “But it’s headed in that direction. For the moment, creative indifference is enough. It’s easy to talk about being detached or being indifferent or letting go of the notions that hold us back, but being able to live your life out in the civilized world, you’ve got to get to be emotionally tough. That takes practice. These are exercises in social jujitsu. When you get out there in the real world, you’re going to get tested. If you have to abide by all of the conventions of polite society, you will be easy to pull off center. It’s good to have all of those skills, but use them consciously. Get yourself centered. If somebody doesn’t kiss your ass the way you like to have it kissed, notice it, but don’t spend more than a millisecond thinking about it. If you don’t know what to do, think about what people in the normal world do and do the opposite.”

COCONUT GROVE

A week after I leave New York, Crystal arrives in D.C. By that time, I’m setting up a bookkeeping system for Community Computers and living in their Arlington, Virginia, basement. It’s a pioneering effort in the emerging personal computer business started by Mike Rios. Crystal moves in with Beltz and Bunny, who have taken an apartment in Arlington.

Then, Pettie calls for several of us to go to Miami with Judy Beltz, who’s now back from Hawaii. Her realtor friend Dee Glaser has asked The Finders for help in upgrading two houses she bought. We move into one house in the center of Coconut Grove and begin offering hospitality there while we paint and fix up the other. Pettie sends us out and says not to come back until we have a job. I go to work washing dishes and mopping a café in the neighborhood at night and look for a better paying job during the day. I take a job with an old CPA firm in downtown Miami, preparing tax returns. The owner wants to retire and turn the business over to me, a frightening prospect, which I don’t refuse, but decline to discuss.

Jan, Judy and Carolyn arrive. Because they’re all trying to get pregnant, they are now known as the teeming women, shortened to “the teemers.” We have a big celebration when they arrive. We butcher and roast the pig that we have been fattening in the yard. The timing is right. The authorities have just given us notice that we cannot keep a pig in the city. We’re inexperienced and don’t know how to kill the pig, finally hitting on the idea of holding it with its head downward into a bucket of water until it drowns. The teemers arrive on February 2nd, which we dub ‘Drown Hog Day.’

Evenings are warm and relaxed. Coconut Grove is tolerant of our unusual lifestyle. Typically, we gather in the large living room for repartee with Pettie directing the hijinks:

“Tobe, is that a new pair of shoes?”

“Yes, sir. Scott Brinkman bought them, but they were too small and he gave them to me. Very comfortable. They’re Gucci shoes.”

“OK, Tobe take your shoes around to everybody, so they can admire them and everybody sing Gucci shoes to the tune of Goober Peas.”

We all sing:

Shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes,

Wearing Gucci shoes.

Goodness how delicious,

Wearing Gucci shoes.

Or, a visitor asks some question, like what kind of food we eat and Pettie says:

“OK, everybody sing ‘we were eating along on Moonlight Bay.’”

And we all sing:

“We were eating along on Moonlight Bay

You could hear the eaters eating

They seem to say:

You have eaten my heart

Now don’t go away

As we ate ourselves along on Moonlight Bay.

This is a favorite nonsense song. Many verbs are substituted over the years.

Crystal arrives in Miami, but does not return to Washington with the rest of us when we leave after a month. Instead, she heads for London when she hears that Beltz and Bunny have gone there accompanying Bob Meyer. Bob has just completed a stint at the Office of Management and Budget in the White House and is embarking on a second year of graduate study at Oxford. Crystal moves into a holistic health center and is heard from no more. Bob, Beltz and Bunny return to W Street.

Before leaving Miami, Diane goes to a Sufi meeting in Miami Beach and meets John Cox, owner of a mini-computer business in Gaithersburg, Maryland. He’s an overweight alcoholic with a ready laugh, active in AA, full of tales of his crazy exploits during his drinking days. He delights in describing his small victories and how much money he has made. Pettie dubs him a first-rate teacher. He and Diane begin a torrid love affair and eventually get married. They try to live within the confines of the community, but Cox is rarely satisfied there, having a strong need to be in control.

In the summer, we all drive to Toronto for the World Future Society meeting where the theme is “Think Globally, Act Locally.” Beltz has lined up a contract to provide logistical support for the conference and we spend our time behind the scenes setting up tables, providing audio-visual equipment, making sure that all the props are where they should be, handing out meeting schedules, answering questions and directing traffic. This success for Beltz is the beginning of a new business. It takes awhile for him to get it going, but eventually he gives up wallpapering and managing conferences sustains him. He moves away from The Finders and soon attracts two partners, with whom he lives for many years until his untimely death from cancer at age sixty-two.

At the conference, Bunny meets and seduces Bill Mollison, the Australian inventor of the permaculture concept. He’s a charismatic man full of good ideas and high energy. I like him and am disappointed when he doesn’t come to Washington as he planned. For years we talk about actualizing some of his ideas, but they never reach the top of the priority deck.

THE PEACE PILGRIM

One evening I hear a knock at the front door. I open it to see a white-haired woman wearing a jogging suit. On the front of her jersey are the words “Peace Pilgrim.” I invite her in and when she passes, I read the words on the back of the jersey “25,000 Miles on Foot for Peace.” I give her a seat in the Problem-Solving Center and gather a group to meet her. She says that she got our address from Helen and Scott Nearing, the back-to-the-earth pioneers who have stayed at W Street while in D.C. She says that she has been walking for about 30 years and has covered much of the U.S.A. and parts of Canada. She’s entertaining and her story is fascinating. She’s carrying no bag and says that she owns nothing but the clothes on her back. We immediately offer her a place to stay and somebody brings her some food. We’re delighted to have her as a guest and soon learn that she likes to talk about as much as she likes to walk. Like most who come there, she asks nothing about the place where she’s staying, but we don’t mind. She has developed a whole system of how to elevate your consciousness and lives completely by faith. Everybody warms to her immediately and genuinely agrees with her philosophy of life.

We ask her questions about herself, but she won’t say much. She won’t even give her name before she became the Peace Pilgrim. She says that she’s in her seventies, but won’t give her exact age. She’s obviously healthy and strong. She stays for a few days and then sets out just as she has come, with heartfelt hugs from all.

It’s not unusual for people to resist the questioning they receive at The Finders. Almost nobody is prepared for it. When a guest arrives, at least one person appears with a yellow pad and begins learning as much as possible about them. There’s no motive in doing so other than learning. You might say that we’re seeking friends and that would be correct. But, if that were the only motive, we would certainly be considered failures, because very few who come there remain in contact.

“People don’t want to tell you much, because it gives you power over them,” says Pettie. “You know more about them than they know about you. They could learn just as much about you, but they don’t know how to ask questions. It’s a lost art. It’s the most fundamental skill in the art of conversation. Nobody practices the art of conversation anymore, at least in the civilized world. But it’s an art that you can learn and the art of conversation is fundamental to practicing the art of living.

“Don’t worry if people get nervous when you ask them about themselves. Occasionally, you’ll find somebody who has no secrets and they might recognize a fellow pilgrim. The Peace Pilgrim is a great old lady, who has made her life an art form, but she’s on a different path than you all are. She lives a solitary life. I’m for that, too, but what we’re doing here is creating a community that can be a model for people who want to live together. And what is the first rule to remember when you’re doing that?”

He scans our faces with a serious look. When nobody answers, he says, “Don’t take yourself too seriously.”

THE PROBLEM-SOLVING CENTER

“Y’all are addicted to talking on the telephone,” Pettie says often. “The only way to do business is eyeball-to-eyeball. How can you size somebody up over the phone? Y’all come to the meeting here and listen to me talking about personizing your life and then, as soon as I get around the corner, you get on the phone and start making impersonal deals.”

Based on this philosophy, the only telephone at W Street for many years was a payphone in the hallway. But that was the old days. Now there are phones everywhere. Pettie does his preaching against it, but phones continue to proliferate. Occasionally, somebody asks a question like:

“What about using the phone for making appointments, sir? Doesn’t it make sense to call ahead to make sure that we aren’t wasting our time in going to meet somebody?”

“You’re going to get me to cussin’,” Pettie would say. “Here I am, the world’s greatest advocate for spontaneous living and you all want to create a surprise-free future. Follow your intuition. If you have lost it, as you all have from going to school, you won’t get it back by making more appointments and talking on the telephone. If you don’t want to live spontaneously, that’s OK. I don’t want to make a pest of myself.”

He would be greeted with voices saying that everybody wants to invent their own future in the present moment or words to that effect and then he would go on:

“If you want to get in touch with your own true nature, you have to recognize that you’re doing all of this yourself. Everything that you see around you is you–in some way that none of us can comprehend. It’s your own invention. If you become hyperaware of your environment, it will send you signs and symbols and your intuition will get better. If you want to get it back, you have to make mistakes. It’s a knack. I can’t teach it to you, but you can learn it. Now, what are you going to do? As soon as I leave, y’all will jump right on the telephone and start making appointments.”

We hold open house all day. Somebody is always on duty at W Street in the room that we call the Problem-Solving Center or PSC. It’s situated in what had been the living room in a one-bedroom apartment on the first floor of the W Street apartments. We paper one entire wall with the largest world map available from the National Geographic Society. We arrange a dozen deck chairs in a circle on top of an oriental carpet. In the center there’s a glass-top round table supported by a square chrome base. Available close by are the tools of the problem-solver’s trade: magic markers, large sheets of newsprint for taping to the wall, 3x5 cards, telephone directories and yellow pads.

Most of the action in the PSC happens at night. People who want something simply appear there. We sit them down in the circle with one or more of us, offer them food and drink and “take their listing.” That’s all that we ever promise to do: take their listing. The idea is that we will list whatever they want and, perhaps through our connections, they might get it. All of the things listed are written on big sheets of newsprint and considered in our daily meetings.

“We never charge fees, but we do accept gifts,” we tell the persons who come there. Many come back and a few stay. The thing they want most often is a place to live. We offer short-term housing on a day-at-a-time basis. There are always people there. Sometimes, the whole place is full on one day and nearly empty the next. The first ethnic group that we accommodate in large numbers are Iranian exchange students. During the last few years of the Shah of Iran, thousands of Iranian males come to America as students. Many of them go to Georgetown University, George Washington University or American University, all of which are within walking distance from W Street. For a couple of years, we always have some of them staying there, sometimes a dozen or more. They’re a cheerful group, always ready to talk and anxious to learn and imitate the American lifestyle. Many of them march as protesters through the streets of Washington, wearing black masks to hide their faces, when the Shah comes for a visit. As bad as he was, the repressive government that takes his place is worse and no more Iranian students come.

Our accommodations are simple. We set hollow core doors on stacks of concrete blocks, with a piece of foam on top. Each guest is issued sheets, towels and pillowcases. On the walls, we hang Chinese screen prints. Some of the floors are carpeted, but most are covered with oriental rugs over hardwood floors. In some rooms, there are bunk beds. We can accommodate up to thirty people. Each apartment has a kitchen.

Then, somehow, we get listed in some guidebooks as a hostel and we have a steady stream of foreign students that lasts for years. Of all the visitors, the Chinese are the most frequent and most numerous. After Richard Nixon’s visit to China, the People’s Republic opens its embassy on Connecticut Avenue. We visit and tell them of our place. Soon, Chinese students begin arriving in America. Most, or perhaps all, come to Washington as a part of the American experience, which is orchestrated by the Chinese government. The embassy sends a representative, who looks us over, likes our simple setup and begins sending students. Then, as the number of students increases, more and more of them come to W Street. They’re the cream of the crop of the young Chinese. Many are scientists. We often talk to them, but find them reluctant to say much about anything political or having to do with Chinese philosophy, about which they seem to know little. But, I learn from my exposure to them that the kind of understanding found in the Tao Te Ching and the I Ching is deeply ingrained in the Chinese, regardless of whether they have read it, as most have not.

BARBARA’S START

In December 1980, Pettie sends Barbara and her team to Houston. We buy a new van before leaving town. As I drive it from the showroom, I contrast the luxury van in which we’re about to travel with the spare and seatless vehicle with which we started. We have three 15-passenger vans. Our lives are now less personal, despite Pettie’s advice to the contrary. In the beginning, we followed Pettie’s lead and walked everywhere or took public transportation.

When we arrive in Houston, the “flu” that’s been troubling Barbara for the last few weeks flares up again. Part of the reason for our trip is to find a warmer climate where she can escape the December cold of Washington. Her condition gets a little better for a few days, but she still seems below par. We rent a motel suite and spread out around town making new contacts and learning about the city. But it’s Barbara’s team and she’s in no condition to meet anybody.

I ask her to go to a hospital. She refuses and describes an experience she had several years back in Chicago. After her last child was born, for some reason they’d given her a drug in the hospital that completely disoriented her and caused the doctors to think that she was suffering from some kind of mental breakdown. They’d kept her there for more than a week in a state of total confusion. This was very unusual, because nobody who knew Barbara would ever have described her as mentally unstable. Then they changed her medication and she immediately returned to normal. The experience with the hospital turned her against anybody with an M.D. and she never entered a hospital again.

After two weeks in Houston, she’s much worse. So in early January 1981 we put her on a plane back to Washington, with Tom to accompany her. The rest of us drive back. Her last words to me as we see her off at the airport are: “I don’t know what you’re doing, but it feels really good. Keep it up.”

She moves back into her old space at W street and says that she just wants to rest and get her strength back. Pettie suggests that she go to Georgetown University Hospital to see what the doctors would say is wrong with her. She refuses. She remains in her apartment with her condition improving and declining several times a day.

February 13, 1981, is a very cold day. Several inches of snow accumulate. With noontime temperatures dropping and more snow threatening, federal employees are sent home early and other offices follow suit. I’m working in an office building on K Street. After I watch each crowded bus pass without stopping, I decide to walk back to W Street through the snow. When I enter the back door, at four o’clock, I’m met by Stan, whose first words are, “Barbara died.”

A radio is playing and an excited announcer breaks into the program to say that a plane with more than 70 passengers aboard has crashed into the 14th Street Bridge and the Potomac River, in full view of thousands of homebound commuters. A television truck is on hand at the Bridge and–with tears running down our cheeks for Barbara–we watch spellbound as Lenny Scutnick slips into the icy water. He rescues the lone surviving stewardess as she’s about to slip beneath the water, her arms numb and no longer able to move. A few remaining passengers freeze on the tail section a few feet from the 14th Street Bridge and slip one-by-one into the slushy Potomac. It’s a day of death for Washington. We also learn that people have died that day in the first accident in the history of the Washington subway system.

An autopsy reveals that Barbara died of septicemia caused by a ruptured appendix. It’s a great tragedy, which could have been avoided by standard medical intervention.

Life goes on. We gather in the woods for a private ceremony. Tom spreads her ashes in a stream where it emerges from the Shenandoah National Park, flows into the High Field, down the hill in front of the red cabin, and on into the Hughes River, the Hazel River, the Rappahannock River, Chesapeake Bay and, finally, the Atlantic Ocean. We rename the stream Barbara’s Run and the meditation spot where her ashes were spread we name Barbara’s Start. Pettie puts on an ankle-length leather coat discovered by Big Jim in a Baghdad bazaar and stands above the stream in the trees looking like Rodin’s figure of Balzac in mourning.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

A NEW PHASE

Barbara’s death marks the end of an era among The Finders and the beginning of another. While Barbara was alive, there was great confidence that an effective organization would evolve under a woman’s leadership, as Pettie had always advocated. She was the unquestioned dominant female. Thereafter, no woman emerges who has her self-confidence and leadership ability. Bunny has enough self-confidence, but lacks both the judgment and the loyalty to Pettie that could bind an organization together. Also, during Barbara’s period, there was a strong emphasis on dealing with the personal problems of the players, i.e. elevating consciousness beyond personal hang-ups. These themes continue to be present under the surface, but to a much greater degree than before, the dominant theme becomes discipline.

Pettie never asks people to submit themselves to his discipline, so he never explains how becoming a disciple benefits the disciple more than it does the leader. It was only after I experienced the disciplined life that I began to understand it.

One day Pettie says: “Tobe, go down and take a listing from the concierge at the Four Seasons Hotel. Make up some business cards, so he will know he’s not dealing with an amateur and offer him emergency services in a soft voice. Just see if there’s anything he wants that he hasn’t been able to get through normal channels and let him know you’re available, if he needs something. If he doesn’t pick up on it, don’t worry about it.”

I’ve watched the hotel under construction on the edge of Georgetown and I know it has just had its grand opening. I tell Pettie I’m going to do it. I expect to get it done that very day. But, as I’m heading out the door, I remember that I’ve been planning to put some wire mesh over the hole under the eaves of the attic. Raccoons have been getting into the back corner and I want to stop them. I think that I’ll get it done quickly and then head down to get the business cards made. I do the work, then when the time comes to leave, I think about the fact that I haven’t been getting enough exercise, so I walk instead of taking the bus. When I get to the print shop, it has just closed for the day. Pettie has told me exactly what he wants and I’ve told myself that I want to follow his orders explicitly. But here it is, the end of the day and I’ve superseded his priorities with my own.

And whose priorities are they really? I have made the rational decision that I want to follow orders. Yet there is another me, hidden somewhere inside my skin, that steps in and keeps it from happening. Isn’t that what we are trying to do, smoke out our unconscious? Could I have discovered this other self that interferes with my rational resolve without attempting to follow somebody else’s orders?

This and many other experiences like it occur among The Finders for years. Pettie never says something like:

“Tobe, what happened with the concierge?”, or, “Did you ever go down to the Four Seasons?”

But time and again, we miss out on opportunities by not moving on his timing. And, for years, it doesn’t occur to me, that there’s something in me that unconsciously substitutes my judgment for his, despite the fact I’m determined to act otherwise.

When I say “my judgment,” I am referring to a fear-defined self. What is this self afraid of? Could it be the fear of oblivion, of no longer existing? Not the death of the body, but the disappearance of the matrix of fears and reaction to fears that this body has developed to cope with everything that went before? It’s that mind-body identity that I think of as “me.” It reassures itself by circumventing the visionary self that I have decided I want to become.

When I arrived on the scene, I didn’t know that I needed a gamecaller. I’d heard the oft-quoted line from the Robert Burns poem: “Would the gods the giftie gie us to see oursels as ithers see us.” But I didn’t know its application to discipleship. And I didn’t grasp the irony that discipleship is a door to freedom. I thought that by submitting myself to the control of somebody else, I was giving up freedom rather than gaining it. I suspect this is a common misunderstanding. Like most other people, I thought I was in control of my life and my day-to-day decisions were based on a rational process that I understood and controlled. I saw the irrational way most people conduct their lives, but I could not see it in myself.

That is the end goal of discipleship–to know yourself. In attempting to do what you’re told to do by somebody else, you inevitably run up against an obstacle. You decide that you want to follow orders. You publicly state that you want to live in a particular way for a particular period of time and are going to do it, without complaint, exactly as you’re told to do.

And yet, you find that you’re unable to do it. Somehow, something comes into your mind that interferes, distracts you, and looms before you. It seems more important, so it must be done first. This thing tells you the right thing to do is something else. You forget your resolve until, at the end of the day, you realize that you have not done what you, in your rational resolve, decided to do. If you’re truly motivated and courageous, you will see a pattern and begin to realize that some unconscious urge has been directing you and controlling you. You think that you’re the rational being who’s deciding what to do. And to some degree, you are, so long as you’re deciding among the options that you have come up with on your own.

But, as soon as you’re not, as soon as you are determined to do somebody else’s bidding, there’s a chance you can discover the unconscious urges that are directing what you think and what you do. This realization, if it comes, sets the stage for you to change. It fosters humility, which is the gateway to higher consciousness.

When I arrived that first night at the New Ark, I was riding high on recent financial success and thought that I knew far more than I did. To be more precise, I knew a lot, but most of what I knew was wrong. Consciousness-raising is a process of elimination rather than addition. It’s not what we don’t know that limits us. It’s what we believe. Belief isn’t knowledge. Belief is the enemy of knowledge. Knowing is experiential. Belief is cerebral. There’s only one thing to know. To know it, requires that you be free of belief.

So, I arrived taking myself very seriously and believing I was ready to move on to the next level, whatever that might be. You might say that I had topped out. I had enough money and I’d done pretty much everything that my early upbringing had programmed me for. I didn’t know why I felt unfulfilled. And I didn’t know I was unlikely to figure out why by myself.

During the first ten years I was with Pettie, he never pushed the idea of discipline. And, he never explained how it could help me or anybody else. Instead, every day, he asked what each one of us wanted. And also, every day, he asked us for our highest visions. Gradually two things happened, at least for me. First, some of the things that I said I wanted, I got. And second, what I wanted moved closer to merging with my highest vision. The moving and merging expanded with each discovery of unconscious impediments to accomplishing what I set out to do. These discoveries were enabled by the discipline of having a gamecaller. The adventures and games he orchestrated helped me change my paradigm of what life was and could be.

NEW PLAYERS

After Barbara’s death, several new players arrive. Bob Meyer returns from England, Silas Topham and Big Jim return from their round-the-world trip. Silas attracts Eric Blair, a boyhood chum. Michael Holswell, Jim Holswell’s son, joins in. Bob Meyer’s old girlfriend Kate stays around for a few days on her way to Colorado to join the Emissaries Community there.

Pettie has me drive her and Bob to the bus station so he can see her off. But I’ve secretly packed his bag and bought him a ticket, per Pettie’s order. As he’s saying goodbye, I tell him that he’s to go with her and when they get to Colorado, they’re to get married. He’s shocked, but gets on the bus. After they arrive in Colorado, they abandon the idea of marriage. But, the shock of such a high-handed act as calling for a marriage is too much for Bob and he announces that he’s no longer volunteered to Pettie.

“I see which way somebody is leaning and push them in that direction,” Pettie says. “I’m just cooperating with the Universe. Sometimes the push is enough to wake them up and they change directions. At other times, it’s just where destiny intended them to head and they keep going. I sent Simon and Rosie back from Hawaii to get married, because the next generation was just waiting for them to get together. I didn’t know that, but something whispers in my ear and tells me. In Bob’s case, his true nature was trying to assert itself and needed a jolt. He and Kate were not suited for each other.” After more than 25 years and three kids, Simon and Rosie are still together.

Bob stays out west and takes a job in the city planning department of Fort Collins, Colorado, where he meets Kris Boundst, who has recently received his masters degree in city planning from Harvard. After a few weeks, Bunny urges Bob to return and he does. Boundst, who wants more adventure in his life, follows and volunteers to Pettie. His girlfriend, Mindy Pickles, then follows him. Pettie calls for them to get married. And they do, in a grand ceremony in which we all participate, along with the relatives of the bride and groom who come to D.C. But Mindy hates the life at The Finders and complains from morning to night. After a few weeks, she flies back to Minnesota and gets a divorce.

Pettie calls for Boundst to become the servant of Art Juarez, a handsome young Georgetown graduate of Castilian appearance, who, at one time, lived at W Street. Juarez’ only talents seem to be buying expensive clothes on credit and convincing over-educated bureaucrats that they should send him to Argentina on vague missions. Juarez accepts his new slave as if it were his due and Boundst moves in with him. After a few days, Pettie pulls him back. He’s relieved and has a new grasp of the effects of blind ambition on the human mind.

Courtney Kels, a sometime visitor to the Problem-Solving Center, gets tired of her daughter Kay hanging around the house and suggests that she move temporarily to W Street until she finds a place of her own. Kay moves in, recognizes that life there is better than what she could come up with on her own, becomes one of the “fawning adoring idiots” and stays for twenty years. Pettie assigns her to Judy Beltz.

Bunny rents a townhouse from Ann Lewin on Logan Circle, where some of Washington’s most elegant residents used to display their wealth. But the house, like the Circle, is now decrepit, with whores nightly plying their trade. Several people move in with her and a steady stream of players passes through. Many short-term characters are also attracted. The neighborhood is in transition and the house is sold.

All move back to W Street. Laurie Frets, a plump and vivacious young woman, moves in, but finds the lifestyle, particularly the sex, to be too much for her and she moves to Orlando saying that she has been made mentally unstable by The Finders.

JOHN COX

Cox moves in at W Street and says that he volunteers to Pettie as The Gamecaller. But Pettie recognizes that he prefers teaching to learning and always keeps him at a distance. He treats him cordially and defers to him, but never calls any games for him unless Cox has made it clear exactly what he wants Pettie to call. Pettie’s style is so subtle that Cox feels like he’s a part of everything despite his real standing only as a teacher. To reinforce his feeling of belonging, Pettie gives him the name: “Jonaboy.” Then he assigns him Silas and Eric as apprentices and sends them to Panama to set up a base. When they come back later, Silas and Eric report that they considered Cox a comic character, laughing at him behind his back and watching him make a fool of himself.

Pettie then assigns Lucky to be Jonaboy’s dog-robber, a function that Lucky has been performing for Pettie. “Dog-robber” is an old military term of unknown origin that describes a personal servant of an officer. Pettie sends the two of them to his hometown of Culpeper to get something going. A few days later, we’re in a meeting and Pettie says:

“Tobe, I’m sending you down to Culpeper to study that fat fool.”

I take no offense at him calling Cox a fool, any more than I take offense when he calls me “that little fool.” He calls everybody a fool.

“We’re all a bunch of fools. I’m the biggest fool of all,” he often says. “Fools aren’t a problem to anybody or to themselves, if they never stay in the same place for more than three days. That’s why I keep you all moving. This is a ship of fools. Jerk the book on Sebastian Brant.”

We do it and read about Brant’s satire called Ship of Fools.

“What should I do when I get to Culpeper with Cox?” I ask.

“Just humor him,” Pettie says. “There’s a little bit of his form of self-delusion in all of us. If you get up close to it and do exactly what he tells you, it will cure you. You’ll be so repelled by watching his folly that you will despise the little bit of it that might be in yourself. Blake said that ‘If a fool will persist in his folly, he will become wise.’ I’m adding a little bit to that: If you watch a fool persisting in his folly, he will make you wise.

“You might also learn something about Culpeper. It’s a first-rate little microcosm to study. In my educational system, children would live in a danger-free environment, saturated in nature, until they reach the age of understanding, which is about eight. They wouldn’t even see anything manmade but the simplest objects that they use in their everyday life. And they would know and trust everybody that they encountered. Then they would move to a village of a comprehensible size and live there for awhile, until they knew everybody and understood how the power structure worked. Then they would move to a small town and live there studying it until they had a good feel for the power at that level. Culpeper is a town at that level. Then they would move to a city and apply what they have already learned to the power structure there until they understood it. By the time they reached their thirties, there would be some who were capable of running a whole country. The way that it’s taught in school today, it’s all disjointed and kids memorize stuff they don’t understand at an experiential level.

“Anyway, Culpeper is a good small-town model. I’ve been studying it for 50 years and I still find it fascinating. Find out what the main games are in the town and who controls them. Cox is pretty good at it. He can drive his Mercedes up to somebody’s front door and they will usually let him in.”

He does. Within a few weeks, Cox meets most of the people who have positions of power in the town and begins sharing the other half of a duplex with the mayor. Diane moves in with him. I go back and forth between Culpeper and D.C., keeping Pettie informed on the progress as the town is studied. Cox rents an office on Davis Street in the center of town and Diane begins a listing service. A reporter from the Culpeper Star Exponent comes and Diane has her picture on the front page. We make maps of the town identifying the owners of every property we think important. Cox meets a local investor named Pat Troiano, who owns an old empty warehouse next to the railroad, a block from the center of town. Cox buys it with Pettie’s approval. It’s huge, even bigger than the D.C. warehouse. We begin making the monthly mortgage payments. Cox rents out part of it and we create whimsical art in some of the rest. Most remains dusty and unused. Cox is also spending part of his time in D.C. He still has his Gaithersburg, Maryland, computer business, but has turned over the day-to-day operations to other people.

Cox meets a lawyer who owns a building on Morse Street near our warehouse in D.C. and rents it with an option to buy. It has only one story, is much smaller and lacks the drama of our building. But Pettie calls for all of the men to move in and help Cox get something going there. It’s a mess and we spend days cleaning it. Cox puts Beltz in charge of the space. We all watch with fascination as inefficient schemes unfold.

For some reason, Lucky can’t restrain himself. There’s a large disabled walk-in cooler in the warehouse. A small electric heater is enough to keep it warm, so we use it as headquarters when we are in the building. One day, while Beltz is alone in the cooler, Lucky locks the cooler door from the outside the door without telling anybody. We’re all occupied in other locations. Two days later, he unlocks the door and Beltz, assuming that Pettie was behind his captivity, leaves vowing that he never wants anything more to do with The Finders. Nothing happens with the Morse Street building. It’s simply a financial drain and after a few months, the lease is canceled.

BABIES

Babies begin to arrive. Petita’s daughter, Joyce, is born in mid-1979. But Petita does not like the fact that Martin, the man she identified as father, declines to play the part. So she picks a new candidate, a sometime lover named Ray that none of us know.

Pat already has a son, who lives elsewhere with his father, but she becomes pregnant by Stan. So Pettie calls for them to marry. Max is born in 1981.

Kay becomes pregnant and goes with Judy Beltz and Allan, the father, to Gainesville, Florida, for the birth. The teemers also want to be there as witnesses to what might soon be their future. I drive Pettie to Gainesville. We get there in the afternoon and Ben is born that night. He isn’t immediately called Ben. Kay gives Pettie the prerogative of naming him, which he doesn’t exercise for two years, during which time he’s simply known as Mr. Baby. His official name is Benjamin Franklin.

There are no more births until the following year when Judy, already married to Tom, gives birth to Honey Bee, and Carolyn, already married to Eric, gives birth to BB. The following year, 1985, Jan, married to Rannie, gives birth to Walker.

The Culpeper game is still alive. A property with two houses, on the corner of Routes 522 and 229, is on the market at a good price: $70,000. One of them, 508 North Main Street, is a large two-story duplex with full basements. The other is run down and likely to be demolished when Route 522 is widened. We have been studying real estate in Culpeper for more than a year now and have a good idea of values. Jonaboy Cox wants to buy it and Pettie encourages him to do so. We do so and put the property in Jonaboy’s name. The men move into the old house and begin upgrading the duplex.

There’s a lot of traffic back and forth between D.C., Culpeper and Nethers. Kay, who’s nursing Ben, is put in charge of the 508 Main Street house and takes on the duty of minding the two toddlers. She’s usually supplemented with somebody else. One evening, a fire breaks out when the kids find some matches on the second floor landing and begin playing with them. It’s not serious, but requires the fire department to come and put it out. Except for the hole that the fire department knocks in the roof, the damage would have required little more than a paint job. Somebody from the fire department suggests that the fire might have been set to collect insurance money.

Pettie says: “Give a dog a bad name and it’s OK to shoot it. People around Culpeper have figured out that you all are cooperators. They don’t care if you cooperate, so long as you’re playing the greed game that they’re all playing. They didn’t have any doubt about Jonaboy, but then all of these other people show up and word gets around that you all are some kind of a cult. Anybody who works together is fair game.”

Pettie calls for Stan and Rannie to fix the roof and the insurance company balks at paying. Pettie says to do nothing and forget about the insurance claim. Jonaboy complains. He considers it a rebuff to him. It’s the second incident that angered him. Shortly before, he’d wanted to go to West Palm Beach and invest money with a friend of his who was supposedly returning a favor, and had guaranteed him a return of $40,000 after a few months. He could simply have done it, but he apparently wanted Pettie to sanction the deal. Pettie never said don’t do it; but in typical style, he simply said nothing. This is too much for Jonaboy. He becomes angry and says that Diane will have to choose between him and Pettie. She tells him that he’s a big fool and that Pettie is only humoring him so that the rest of us can learn from watching his folly. He’s livid and files for divorce. Diane could have asked for a property settlement and ended up with at least one of the properties in her name. But Pettie says to forget about it and get on with your life. This means losing the two Culpeper properties, which are in Cox’s name.

MAKING IT HAPPEN

During the period between 1980 and 1987, The Finders concerned themselves with children. From the beginning, Pettie has always talked about kids being the heart of the community, but now we’re making it happen.

“The only thing that will make any real change in the world,” Pettie says, “is for people to start treating children differently. There is no place for them in the impersonal world. Parents just try to buy them off by going down to Toys ‘R Us and bringing back some plastic distraction that’s going to sit in the landfill for a thousand years after the kid figures out a way to break it. It’s a big person’s world. It wasn’t always that way. It used to be a kid’s world too. There was a place for them all along the way. They didn’t have to get their affection from the same source as they got their discipline.

“I’m going to tell you about the tribe that I like to talk about. There may not have been one that ever existed exactly like the one I talk about, but I like to talk about it anyway. In my tribe, kids don’t know who their father is. A lot of the world’s problems have been caused by knowing who your father is, especially among males. Males usually cause the problems in the world anyway. A lot of them happen because some boy is imitating his father and believes that he’s going to feel good once he has achieved more than the old man. Or, some father pushes his dumb kid into a position of power, instead of another kid, who knows more, because he’s trying to relive his life through his son. He knows he has some kind of free-floating anxiety, like everybody else, and believes that it might go away if his son is successful. In other words, the drive for power among the males is at the heart of most problems in the modern world. Some of that would be relieved if males didn’t know who their father is and were free to set their own goals without worrying about pleasing the old man.

“Anyway, he may just think he’s the father. Usually the female knows who the father is, but, if she’s got a choice, she will say that it’s the one who’ll give the kid the best chance for survival.

“If you want to think clearly about human relations, the first thing to think about is the preservation of the species. Females are always thinking about that, even if they don’t always know it. This doesn’t mean that females are without guilt in putting the power drive into young males. Women also have power drives.

“In my tribe, babies would get all of the skin contact they wanted. They would always be with their mothers until they could walk. Usually they would be carried next to the skin. When babies don’t get enough skin-to-skin contact, sooner or later, they become neurotic. After they could walk, their mother would still be the center of their world, but they would range outward in a circle for experimentation. Babies do this naturally. They always want their mother in sight and they will venture further and further away and stay gone for longer and longer times. Other kids come into the picture pretty early too. In a healthy society, as soon as kids are old enough to talk, they start asking questions But nowadays, they have to ask their parents: ‘Momma, can I go out and play,’ and hear, ‘Did you do your homework?’ ‘Momma, where do babies come from?’ Momma says ‘Ask the school nurse.’

“‘Momma, Johnny says I have a pussy. What’s a pussy?’ ‘Momma says, ‘Oh, my god, who’s Johnny?’

“In my tribe, kids get most of their information from the kids who are just a little bit older than they are. This is also where they learn the rules. The older kid, if he doesn’t know, asks the next older kid. If she doesn’t know, she asks the next older and so on. Kids want to follow the rules. They don’t naturally rebel like all of the textbooks tell you. In my tribe, there’s no need to rebel; kids have never been given the idea that they aren’t free to follow their own course. All of that rebellion comes from adults trying to control their kids. School psychologists, preachers, politicians, doctors and other dummies will tell you rebellion among kids is natural. But it’s not. It will happen if a kid has to prove himself by resisting the control over him that some adult is laying on him. But in my tribe, kids are allowed to grow up free. They’re weaned in a danger-free environment where you don’t have to slap their hand when they reach for the light socket. If you saturate them in nature from an early age, they will feel comfortable and unrestrained. Then, as they get older, if their authority figure is another kid who’s a little older, they won’t grow up just waiting for the day they can get back at their parents.

“When adolescence rolls around, which is when most kids rebel, in my tribe, they would be initiated into manhood and womanhood by the men and women of the tribe. They would go through some kind of ceremony and then they would be accepted. There would be no need to rebel. I’m talking about an ideal tribe. It’s pretty hard to find the ideal in life and actual tribes vary a lot, but initiation is common to all tribal cultures. And kids will naturally gravitate to older kids for direction, if you raise them free.”

We have heard all of this before. We have written it on big pieces of paper up on walls in cities all over America. We have written it on 3x5 cards that we carried with us in our back pockets and briefcases. We have repeated it to visitors who came to see our social experiments, until we all know it. But we have never done it. Until now. We have the danger-free environment. Pettie has not only done his homework and visionary thinking, he has acquired 600 acres of beautiful mountain land where the real experimentation can begin. And we have prepared ourselves. We not only know the philosophy, but we have the money to pull it off. We have been pooling our resources and watching the bank account grow to six figures.

PARADISE

Max, big for his age, is three and Joyce, small for her age, is four. They are the first kids to be introduced to paradise. It’s located on a small grassy rise above a stream in the High Field. For generations, the High Field had been a cow pasture, grazed by a local farmer who kept the fences in good repair. But the beef market has declined and the farmer has allowed the fences to fall down and no cows have been there for a few years. Still it’s pristine–tall straight tulip poplars in tracts of a few acres, surrounded by open rolling hills where two streams run down from the Shenandoah National Park. There’s a spring just below the place that we select for the first paradise.

In the springtime, we set up a lean-to, spread a ground cover under it and put bedding down for the kids. Then we encircle about two acres with a barricade of tree limbs and brush, low enough for us to easily hop over, but high enough to be a serious obstacle to a toddler. The barricade appears to be a part of the landscape, connecting with blackberry brambles at several points. The grass has not been mowed or grazed down by cows, but it’s spring and the green shoots are new and soft. The stream is only ankle deep and the water is pure and sweet. There are many trees with ample shade.

We bring the two kids down to the spot. Nobody tells them where they’re going and they don’t care. It’s our practice to say very little to the kids. “Never say anything rational to a child,” Pettie says. “They’ll become rational soon enough, but let them evolve the thinking apparatus for themselves. It’s all in there. They come equipped with it. All the rational talk does is short-circuit it.” So we talk nonsense around the kids and sing lots of songs.

We carry them into paradise and they immediately begin playing with each other. Then we disappear from their view. Pettie has assigned a team of four men to be with the two kids. We set up tents on the other side of the barricade, out of their line of sight. Two men are always on duty watching them. They are never out of sight of an adult. We have binoculars, but they aren’t necessary unless we want to watch the expressions on their faces. We change shifts every few hours and periodically other men arrive from D.C. to replace us. At night, one of us slips up behind the barricade and sleeps close by. There are no lights and the kids go to bed at sundown without a word. They wake at sunrise and the sleeper has to slip away without being seen by the kids. In fact, we go to great lengths to never be seen. Years later, after he has become an adult, Max recalls being in paradise at age three. He says occasionally he would catch a glimpse of one of us, but he always knew we were there watching and never felt a moment’s apprehension.

Several times a day, when the kids are away from the lean-to, we slip over and leave food for them. It’s always natural and usually raw; fruits and vegetables, with occasional bowls of oatmeal. We also straighten their bedding and replace anything that is soiled. They simply play all day long from morning to night. They never complain. They never cry out for us to come and get them. A few times, they have the kinds of accidents that kids always have. Joyce slips in the stream and scratches her hand. She doesn’t cry for her mother. She cries a little, but goes to Max for comfort. We inspect the hand after dark with a flashlight, while they’re asleep, and see that it’s nothing. To them, there seems to be no time. They simply move from one beauty spot to another, inventing their toys from among the rocks and twigs they find, singing songs that we can’t make out because of the distance, making up games and living completely in the moment without responsibilities. We leave warm clothes for them, in case they want them. But they never do. They remain naked and unashamed. Joyce is unquestionably the boss. She’s a year older, a huge gap at age three and four. But she isn’t a tyrant. They share everything without conflict.

It’s a sacred experiment. Those of us who watch and participated in it feel honored and awed by it. We believe we’re witnessing the true character of the human species. It’s not greedy. It’s not hurtful. It’s not selfish. Whatever it is, it’s full of affection and beauty. Like all of Pettie’s games, it comes to an end. But the scene that unfolds there is never quite out of my mind. The images I collect there shape my thinking for the rest of my life, especially after they are reinforced by Paradise II, which does not happen for another two years.

THINK GLOBALLY

In the meantime, Pettie continues to think globally. He dispatches his troops overseas, almost always to the Pacific Rim. People are sent to Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and, once it opens up, China. Later, London is included. The first trips are exploratory, but it soon becomes apparent that those with journalistic skills can not only make a living freelancing overseas, but can actually generate a surplus. At that time, Silas and Eric, despite being in their early twenties, are the most experienced at writing for trade journals. Kris soon reaches their level, after working for a year as an editor at The Saturday Review. Bob and Rannie also make some overseas trips. I stay home. I want to go, but I also want to learn to follow orders, a skill in which I know I’m deficient. I never ask for a foreign trip. I figure that, at some time, when we have overseas bases, I will travel.

We continue to experiment with leadership and talk about women being the leaders of the whole organization and of any sub-group. But no clear women’s leader emerges. Diane, as the oldest, is most often picked as the women’s leader. But there never is enough momentum for Pettie to throw the whole organization behind her. Often another woman is chosen as the leader even among the women. With the men, it’s different. A trend develops.

In Silas Topham, Pettie seems to see two things. First is a reflection of himself. Pettie had dropped out of school in the tenth grade. Silas has finished high school. But at Woodlawn, a free school in Arlington, Virginia, where he and Eric went, they were able to go and come as they pleased and did not have to endure the things that drove Pettie from the classroom.

Like Pettie, Silas and Eric are both very bright. But Silas’s brilliance is more evident. This isn’t due to some natural charisma, but to his upbringing. His father and mother are both Ph.D.’s in scientific disciplines. They made it clear that their children were supposed to follow their lead. According to Silas, it was a household completely devoid of affection. The only attention received by the children was for displaying some knowledge that indicated an intelligence level above the herd. This forged good concentration in Silas, rapid reading speed with excellent comprehension, an understanding of science that one would not have expected from a first semester college dropout, which he was, plus writing and analytical skills. It also gave him the warmth of a refrigerator and a determination always to be thought of as the person who knew the most of anybody present. Somehow, he managed also to have a sense of humor, though I never saw him laugh at himself, unless he initiated it.

I believe that the second reason Pettie empowered Silas came from his World War II army experience. I have heard him describe what happened.

“When the war started,” he said, “the Army was mainly a bunch of old soldiers who hadn’t done anything important for more than twenty years. They weren’t paid much, they didn’t know much and they didn’t do much. The top generals knew they couldn’t win the war with those guys, so they brought in a bunch of bright young fellows and promoted them fast. I saw young boys, still in their 20s, promoted right up to colonel and general.”

In Silas, Pettie saw his general. Silas had no close personal friendships except with Eric and that faded over time. But he was clearly able to put together the troops in a way that was efficient for earning. The “Blank Bank” increased. Each day Pettie is given a one-page summary of all of the assets, which includes a listing of all the bank accounts. In addition to the money in the bank accounts, we have a large hoard of cash. In case the summary is discovered by an outsider, we don’t want anybody to learn that we have cash on hand. So along with all of the other names of banks, we call our stash the Blank Bank.

The cash is kept in different places at different times. And it’s kept in many denominations. In the early seventies, Pettie insists that all of our “walking around money” also know as “WAM,” be kept in pennies. So we have big pots full of pennies sitting around all the spaces. Anybody can dig out a handful of them any time. With inflation, we evolve up to quarters. At one time, we have $60,000 worth of quarters stored in the old fish tank at the warehouse. For some now forgotten reason, Pettie calls for them to be deposited in the bank. We load them in the van and haul them down to the Riggs Bank on the corner of Ninth and G Streets in D.C. The van keeps sinking lower and lower as we load them in and I fear that the springs will break. We’re met by security guards at the bank and everything is weighed in. I’m amazed when none of the bank people ask any questions. Money rules, even if it’s only coin.

Under Silas’s leadership we hone our office skills. In the early 1980s, personal computers are primitive and rare in homes and offices. We embrace them and learn how to use them as moneymaking tools. We buy a half dozen laptops, before the term laptop is invented. They’re Radio Shack Model 100s. Their 28K of memory is laughable by today’s standards, but, when they appear on the market, they are state-of-the-art. We sign up with MCI Mail, a pioneer email provider before the word “email” is invented. We carry them everywhere with us in our briefcases and use them for our internal communication, slipping rubber suction cups over pay phone receivers in D.C. and in airports, transmitting at a baud rate so slow it scrolled the sentences across the page before your eyes.

We become freelance patent searchers for several patent lawyers who want “quick and dirty” searches. It pays well and lends itself to our freewheeling lifestyle, allowing us to do the searches on our own schedule. In the summer, we live in tents in the High Field, rising early in the morning, loading into the van, where we have our morning meeting, and driving to D.C. Then we scatter for our earning projects and meet up again at a predetermined Metro station for the ride back to the country.

We hire ourselves out as abstracters, reading some of the first articles on personal computing and creating summaries for a database. We abstract the annual reports of public companies, condensing them to a paragraph to include in investor newsletters. We compile a survey of the boards of directors of all public companies in America for the National Association of Corporate Directors and summarize them in an annual report. We spend countless hours at night in the offices of Steve Weitzman, a high-priced bi-polar lawyer, who in his manic phase, works us all night preparing for class action lawsuits.

During all of this time, Pettie is tuned in to the psychological condition of each of the persons volunteered to him. He watches for signals that alert him when each of us is being directed by some unconscious urge and based on his reading of each, he calls small learning games for individuals: “Take 50 dollars and live at the mission until you have doubled it.” “Take 100 dollars and go to Richmond and learn as much as you can in a week,” “Hitchhike to Warrenton, get a job and start something magnetic, come back when somebody else comes with you.” “Go and volunteer to (fill in the blank...Eric Heilbert, Ted Reiss, George Pettie, Mildred Loomis, and many others), do whatever they tell you and take whatever they give you. Report in with a postcard every day and I’ll tell you when to come back.” “Everybody be silent for a day.” “Nobody say anything today unless it rhymes,” and on and on; the list was endless.

PARADISE II

Babies continue to arrive. In 1984, John Paul is born to Petita and, in 1986, Walker is born to Jan. Gradually, one after another, the children, now seven of them, are moved to the country. We have entered a phase where the visions we have talked about for years are happening–we’re going to actually raise a generation of kids in a way that’s radically different from the mainstream. We select a new site for Paradise, somewhat more remote than the first–down the trail behind the white cabin along the largest stream that flows across our land from the national park. It’s out of earshot of the cabin for ordinary conversation, but a shout can be heard. It’s out of sight of any road. No sounds of civilization can be heard there except the occasional aircraft. The nearest paved road, Madison County Road 646, is only a quarter mile away, but it’s a rarely used lane and no noise penetrates the thick covering of trees which separates it from Paradise. A rutted road of very poor quality runs from 646 to the white cabin and then up the mountain. We dig it up in places, making it almost impassible.

Further up, the stream is steeper and filled with stones. The water tumbles over them and around them and in some places forms chest-deep pools. It’s raw nature, rarely seen and never disturbed by people. At the point where the kid’s camp begins the water still has a swift current, but the stream levels out and splits into two tracts, forming a small island in the center. Sunlight reaches the island and grass grows in the rich soil that has been deposited by the flowing water, ideal for little feet. Along the stream bank we set up tents for the kids and their caretakers. We also have a tent with our foodstuffs and other supplies, blankets, tools, etc. For long-term storage we use two refrigerators at the white cabin.

All their food is cooked at the campfire. The kids see the entire process and participate in it to the extent that they want. They have no responsibilities other than the ones they take on themselves. “No adult should ever give an order to a kid,” according to Pettie. The kids set up some basic rules for themselves, like the location of the toilet. The older ones enforce this rule on the younger.

The adult caregivers avoid talking to the kids and, when they do, they never say anything rational. The older kids are always ready to correct the younger, but there’s little interference from the adults. The ideal is to remain in the background paying close attention. Lucky’s style with the kids is effective and worthy of imitation. When he finds it necessary to speak directly to the kids, he always addressed them as Mister or Miss: “Miss Honeybee, would you ask Mr. BB if he would like to go on an adventure?”

DIDACTIC DRAMAS

Often quick dramas are staged for the kids. Sometimes they are didactic, carried out to get some point across to them without giving them a direct order. For example, sometimes the kids rush down to the white cabin where our tools and food are stored. If they get into the food, they waste it, leaving it lying half eaten on the forest floor. And they leave the tools scattered in the woods when they lose interest. We don’t want to lock the kids out of the building and we don’t want to set up rules, which would restrict their freedom. We know they will encounter rules enough when they enter the impersonal world a few years hence and we want them to develop enough self-possession before that happens.       

So we have to be creative. If one of the kids takes a tool, we might have an adult take a tool from the house down to Paradise where one of us would find it. Some of us would then gather around the offending adult and berate him about what happens when tools are left to rust in the rain. We might then tie it around his neck and make him crawl back to the white cabin to replace it. All this would be done with exaggerated gestures from the beraters and remorseful tears from the offender. The kids always stand and watch. They know that it’s a staged drama. But they laugh at the drama and they sympathize with the offender. The point isn’t lost on them and the number of offenses declines.      

The dramas are always fun. For example, Michael and Bob sometimes don costumes, masks and wild wigs. This usually happens when the kids need to be distracted from something that is causing a lack of harmony. One of us comes running through the clearing yelling, “Mean Mike and Bad Bob are coming, Mean Mike and Bad Bob are coming.” The actors then enter the camp as if they were monsters or wild men with appropriate gestures and props. The kids cower behind tents and trees in mock horror and equilibrium is restored to the camp. These kinds of dramas are required on a regular basis and are sometimes repeated, but to be effective new dramas are continually necessary. The imaginations of the caregivers are always challenged.

The manpower appropriated for kid-care is huge. In fact, it’s misleading to even call it kid-care. We don’t think of it as caring for the kids. It’s done as an effort to provide a situation where the kids don’t have to be cared for, but could care for themselves. Still, it takes at least two and usually more men to be in the country with them at all times. We hope that a critical mass will be achieved after there are more kids. Then they will resort to adults only when there’s a problem that kids can’t solve. In the ideal arrangement, the younger kids would be cared for by the older ones and kids could select the caretakers who allow them to always feel in control of their own lives.

The way we are treating our children is so different from the mainstream and requires so much effort that almost nobody would attempt it. In fact, almost nobody even considers the possibility.

Another reason we don’t consider what we’re doing to be kid-care is; it’s a laboratory for our own education. Watching the kids with the conscious desire to learn from them is an incomparable learning method.

KNEE WALKING

In any interactions between big people and kids, Pettie suggests the adults be on their knees. This is especially important when the kids are inside a building. We make kneepads for ourselves. Out in paradise, we all sit on the ground, cook on a campfire that is at ground level and sleep on the ground. We are in a place without constant reminders that the constructed world isn’t designed for kids. When we’re inside one of the cabins with the kids or in one of the apartments in D.C. with the kids, we stay on our knees in their presence.

When you get down on your knees with them, it quickly becomes apparent that it’s an adult world. If you’re on your knees at kid level and you want a drink of water, you have to climb up to the sink to get it. Or if you’re hungry and want to cook something, you have to climb up to stove level. Or if you want to wash yourself or a dish or pot, you cannot do it from kid level. In the manufactured world, without a word being spoken, children learn that they are second-class citizens in their own home from the time they can walk. They simply accept the world as they find it and it never occurs to them that they are being programmed to get out of the present moment and always focus on the future, “when I grow up,” as the time when they will become important enough to use the world that adults have created.

I begin looking at chairs differently. They become places where big people sit. Even the little kid-size chairs are only imitations of big people’s chairs and reminders that the real action takes place above the head of children. I begin thinking about non-western countries where people don’t sit on chairs and where cooking and washing take place at ground level. I begin to see how unhealthy habits are fostered just on the basis of designing the world for adults: “Mommy, would you get me a glass of water; I can’t reach it?” “Mommy is busy, wait a minute.”

Sometimes we set up a new camp nearby but out of sight and not on the regular trail. Then there’s an expedition through the underbrush. It’s done with hand signals and miming to capture the kid’s interest. They quickly catch on and follow. The adventure might take a circuitous route, but eventually wind up at the new campsite where the kids find tents set up and a new environment to explore. Eventually, the kids learn the environment so well that longer hikes are required. Hundreds of thousands of acres of national park land adjoin the property, though we rarely venture into it, our own land being more than large enough.

We give each child a tent. It’s their space and nobody else is supposed to invade, though kids often do. Big people only enter it to clean it up, but never without getting permission. If a kid finds a new place they like, they can move their tent to it. The kid usually starts taking down his tent and drags it to the new location. Sometimes they can get it down without help, but usually a big person would help move it and set it up. They know we’ll help them. They also know that we will do most of the things they ask us to do, and they don’t usually go too far and make unreasonable requests. When they do, our creativity is again tested.

WEANING

In the beginning, while the kids are still nursing, the mothers are the main caregivers. Then gradually the men take over. The weaning at age two of both Honey Bee and Ben is traumatic, and in hindsight, we realize they had been poorly handled. There’s no gradual tapering off. They go from nursing on demand to complete deprivation. Max and I are the only two persons present when Ben is weaned. He cries all night and cannot be quieted. I hold him for hours, but, again and again, he squirms his way out of my arms and wanders into the woods, mindlessly screaming for his mother. Finally, I have to stay with him in the locked van. Neither of us gets any sleep the first night. The only nourishment he will accept is mashed sweet potatoes. I spend a rough three days with him in and around the red cabin as he tries to make the adjustment, comforting him as much as I can in dealing with a new reality he did not want and did not understand. It’s the best I can do, since the weaning decision is out of my control. The report I hear of Honey Bee’s experience was similar. On the positive side, the undivided attention given to both of them during their infancy deserves admiration for their mothers.

Inevitably, conflicts arise. The kids test each of the big persons to see whether they are willing to play the part of referee. “Ben pushed me,” or “Joyce won’t let me have any potatoes,” or “Max called me a shit-head,” or a thousand variations on the juvenile search for justice are heard. It was up to the monitor to then whistle a tune, yelp like a dog, stand on his head or do some other non-rational thing. If he’s successful, it distracts the young justice-seeker, and makes it clear that this guy isn’t going to take sides in the dispute. It has to be solved without recourse to an adult. If successful, the conflict is forgotten and laughter, the great balm for a temporary identity crisis, restores equilibrium.

Of course, these kinds of tactics can backfire and have to be administered with full consciousness. Kids become bored and will try to get big people to entertain them. So sometimes, the attempts to get you to take sides have to be met with stony silence, until it becomes clear that the entreaty is going to be fruitless.

Sometimes the expeditions lead to more distant regions, which take all day. The new location might only be a few hundred yards away, but the kids are herded toward it slowly, dawdling and playing as they go, stopping to explore everything of interest along the way, poking at ant hills, building twig houses for frogs and grasshoppers, watching the actions of crayfish burrowing under rocks, trying to catch water beetles, collecting rock specimens, playing hide and seek, coating themselves with mud, letting it dry, then washing it off or chasing the chickens or goats they might find waiting for them at the new location.

COUNTRY SITUATION REPORT

Occasionally, Pettie visits, but he never ventures into the kids area. Instead, he waits in the red cabin and dispatches people from there. We remove the exterior wall from one end of the cabin so that it opens directly onto a view of large granite boulders surrounded by thick woods. The stream runs a few feet away. We set it up with soft bedding and a small library. It’s Pettie’s when he’s there and others of us use it when he’s not.

It’s a few minutes walk to the kid’s camp from the red cabin. Between assignments of watching the kids, we return and describe the kid scene to Pettie. He’s always curious:

“Lucky, how about giving me a situation report on the kids,” he says.

“Yes, sir. The kids are healthy and happy, sir,” Lucky answers.

“Do they have a hierarchy of power?

“Oh, yeah, Joyce is always the boss.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“Well, she’s the oldest and the smartest, I guess you could say. But that probably means the quickest. She’s not the biggest or the strongest. Max is bigger and stronger and Ben is just about as big. Maybe, she’s smarter because she’s a girl. I’m not sure. But gender doesn’t seem to make much difference at this age. They notice the difference in their equipment, but they treat each other more or less the same.”

“Who has the longest attention span?”

“Hmmm, I’m not sure that I know the answer to that one, sir.”

“OK, Stan, you’ve got a short attention span. Go back out there and watch the kids for an hour and come back and tell me who has the longest attention span.”

“Do any of them cry for their mothers or say that they want to go back to town?” Pettie says.

“Very seldom,” says Lucky. “Sometimes, one of them will get mad at another one and say that he wants his mother. But there isn’t any crying involved. It has only happened a few times that any of the kids have asked for their mothers. I don’t think I could say that there’s a particular cause. The crying usually happens because somebody hurts himself. It happens to all of them, but it never lasts for more than a minute and it’s never anything serious. When their mothers aren’t here, they never mention them. But as soon as the mothers show up, they begin whining and crying and saying that they want to go back to the city. After the mothers leave, it takes a few minutes for them to return to the state of tranquility, but then they don’t mention their mothers until they show up again.”

“Kris, you’re an intellectual,” says Pettie, “go out there and watch them for an hour. Then come back and tell me whether they’re more interested in developing their manual skills or their intellectual skills.”

“Yes, sir,” says Kris and off he goes.

“Overall, how do you think the experiment is going, Lucky?”

“Well, sir, I think that it’s going about as well as you could expect, with the number of kids that are here. I’m trying to allow the kids to turn into what they want to become instead of trying to become what somebody else wants them to be. We’ve got a pretty good environment for them to do that in. But it would be a lot better if we had more kids. It would be better if they didn’t have to see any big persons most of the time and all of their interactions were with people just a little bit older or just a little bit younger than they are.”

MR. P

The kids rarely see Pettie. But they are very much aware of him. He’s referred to as Mr. P. He’s always held up as the distant authority who is looking out for the kids. He visits one moonless night when Lucky, who always tries to keep the place magical, has set out more than the usual number of candles. I don’t know where he got so many, but they are everywhere, defining the outline of the camp and the boundaries of the little island. And in the middle of the island, he has created a miniature lake a few feet across. This he also ringed with candles, which are then reflected on its surface. We sit in the dark around the edge of the camp and sing songs to the kids in their tents. A night to remember.      

CHAPTER TWELVE

HEADING SOUTH

When the weather becomes too cold, we move the kids to the hill house a couple of miles away where there’s a wood stove. It’s too cold for the adults before it’s too cold for the kids. They don’t like to wear shoes until the ground is almost icy. In the winter of 1985, the mothers take the kids to Florida, stay in some campgrounds for a while then rent a house in Tampa. In the winter of 1986, Max and Joyce go to San Diego with a group of other adults and find a warm place in the country. The smaller ones stay behind with their moms.

Then in January 1987, Pettie sends the kids south to find a warm outdoor place until spring. This means that there would be nobody in the country to feed and look after the goats, Igor and Henrietta, so we butcher them and have a goat feast. Naturally, the kids participate in the process and get to see what the inside of a goat looks like including the uterus of Henrietta, who was pregnant. We take pictures of the kids during the slaughtering and butchering.

Five men set out with six kids in two 15-passenger vans. Before leaving, the mothers write a letter giving permission to the men to take the kids south for the winter. All five of the men are named in the letter, which is placed in the glove compartment of the blue van.

They drive first to Reverend Jim Wycker, a protestant minister in Kentucky, who has visited W Street. Wycker is starting a retirement home called New Hope and asked us for a work party. They stay at Wycker’s place for a few days and help him with some upgrades, then head south toward Florida. Pettie then calls for Bob and me to drive him to Florida to meet up with the kids and caretakers at an organic farm near Archer. When we get there, they drop me off with the others and he and Bob head west toward the women who are in Berkeley, California.

We camp for one day at Juniper Springs in the Ocala National Forest, letting the kids relax in the sunshine, then we spend a day at Shoesole Lake with Irving Feld and some members of the Quarry community from New Hampshire, who are at their Florida cabin. We spend the next night at Payne’s Prairie State Park south of Gainesville and plan a leisurely drive west in the sunbelt, thinking we might end up in Mexico. The next morning, I plug my Model 100 computer into a pay phone and receive an urgent message from Bob to call a number in Tucson, Arizona.

ACCIDENT

I call and learn that there has been an auto accident. Pettie had been driving on Interstate 10, east of Tucson and had been unable to avoid a piece of a large tire from a semi in the middle of the road. He swerves the car into a guardrail and did quite a bit of damage. Nobody is hurt, beyond a bruised hand. The car is a small Mercedes, only a year old. Since it’s registered in my name, Pettie wants me to fly to Tucson to deal with the insurance and the auto repair. In typical fashion of maintaining an air of mystery, he says that I’m not to tell the other players where I’m going. Stan drives me immediately to the Gainesville airport and I’m in Tucson in a few hours.

The next day is spent in dealing with the body shop where the car has been towed. It’s a high quality place run by a man with a winning philosophy.

“I don’t work on anything but Mercedes, BMWs and Cadillacs,” he says. “People with other cars always want to argue over the price and they think that you’re trying to cheat ‘em when you tell them what it’s going to cost. I used to work on all kinds of cars, but every day was a hassle. Now, every day is a pleasure. The people who own the cars that I work on don’t mind paying for repairs. They only want quality work done without cutting corners and that is what I give them. I only deal with winners.” A philosophy worth remembering.

We’re told by the body shop that the repairs are going to take two weeks. We stay in a motel until the following day when we’re able to finish the paperwork with the insurance company, which provides us with a rental car. We set out for Berkeley.

OMEN AT ORACLE

As we’re driving west toward Phoenix, near Oracle, Arizona, we see smoke rising ahead from the train tracks that paralleled the highway. As we get closer, a surreal scene unfolds. A train of perhaps 15 cars is stopped beside the highway. The smoke is coming from the train, but not from the engine. The wheels of the train are on fire. We stare at the sight in amazement. Yellow flames are blazing upward for several feet out of every wheel on every car, despite the fact that the wheels are made of steel. We say nothing, but slow the car as we pass. There are no people to be seen anywhere around the train.

“That must be some kind of an omen,” I say.

“Could be,” says Pettie. “Pretty hard one to figure out. What do you think?”

“I have no idea,” I say.

We drive on in silence. I’m uneasy, but don’t know why.

Meanwhile, back in Florida, after having very little success at earning in Gainesville, the men have moved on to Tallahassee and split into two groups. The earning group of Kris, Stan and Tom is to stay in town and generate a surplus while Michael and Doug take the kids on to the Apalachicola National Forest to stay in a campground for a few days. They plan to stay in touch by email. We don’t know this yet and have to piece it together later.

GOATGATE BEGINS

We expect to drive straight through to San Francisco, but stop in Phoenix for dinner. Bob plugs in at a phone booth and downloads a message from Stuart in D.C. He brings it back to the restaurant table. It says:

“Doug and Michael have been arrested and the kids taken into custody. I don’t have many details, but I know that it happened yesterday afternoon in a Tallahassee park. Tom, Stan and Kris were in the other van when it happened and are staying out of sight waiting for guidance on what to do. Somebody was in the park with a video camera and filmed it. It’s on the local TV news there. Ready to go in any direction. Stuart.”

The two arrested are Michael Holswell and Doug Hammerstand, a relatively new player from Florida, who has been living at W Street.

We check into a motel and wait for the 10 o’clock news. It begins with:

“Yesterday six children were picked up by authorities in a park in Tallahassee, Florida. A spokesman for the Tallahassee Police Department said that two men, who were with the children at the time, are being held on suspicion of child abuse. The parents of the children are unknown and authorities are asking anyone with information about the children to contact the Tallahassee Police.”

We’re stunned. I know that there was a letter in the glove compartment from their mothers identifying the kids and giving permission for them to be in the care of the men who are with them. How could this happen? Nobody says anything. Finally, Pettie says:

“Get some sleep. We will sort it out tomorrow.”

He wakes us at daybreak.

“Bob and I are driving on to San Francisco,” he says. “You two should write a letter saying that the whole thing is a mistake. Tobe, you fly back to D.C. on the first flight you can get and take the letter to everybody who’s got it wrong. Make yourself available to talk to the press and the police to answer any questions. But explain it in a letter first. It shouldn’t be over one page or nobody will read it.”

I immediately make a reservation that barely leaves time to get to the airport. On the way, Bob and I draft a letter, which he types out on a Model 100 while I drive. When we get there, we try to find a place where we could get it printed, but run out of time. It doesn’t matter, I remember the contents and I’ve got a few hours on the plane to write it again on a yellow pad. I figure that I would go directly to the warehouse, key it in on one of the computers there and print out whatever copies I need.

I ask Bob to send an email to Stuart, who’s the only person in D.C. at the moment and ask him to meet me at the airport. I write the letter quickly and spend the rest of the flight in a kind of agitated state wondering what I’m going to find when I arrive.

Stuart isn’t at the airport. I take the subway to the Judiciary Square stop and decide to walk to the warehouse to clear my head. It takes 30 minutes. I walk up New York Avenue to Penn Street just above the warehouse. It’s 5 PM, so I turn on a Walkman radio and listen through earphones as I turn the corner above the warehouse. The first thing that I hear is “The puzzle deepens today as authorities try to figure out the identity of six children found in a Tallahassee, Florida, park.”

At that point, I get a clear view of the warehouse in the gathering darkness, a block away down the hill. It’s bathed in the electric blue light from three large television trucks. Satellite dishes point skyward from above the trucks and a crowd is in front of the building. Television reporters are standing in the light, microphones in hand. TV cameras are pointed toward them and they’re in animated conversation, alternatively pointing toward the building and staring back at the camera, as they describe their interpretation of an event that has now spun way beyond what any of us could have imagined. I keep in the shadows, walk on the other side of the street, past the media frenzy and back toward downtown. I abandon my plan to use the warehouse office to type and edit my letter.

I head for the new offices of Future Enterprises in the National Place Building at 13th and F Streets, where I have a computer and desk. Future Enterprises is a state-of-the-art computer training facility owned by Joseph and Marsha Marinich, hard-working entrepreneurs, whom I admire and have worked for on a part-time basis for several years. I have a key to the office and know the elevator code that will allow me to ascend above the first floor. On the way, I continue to listen to the news:

“Tallahassee Police have tentatively identified the children as connected with a Washington D.C. group that calls itself ‘The Finders.’ The spokesman, Scott Hunt, says that the identity of the children has not been determined and that the two men arrested are being held on bail of $100,000 each.”

I’m astounded. How could things have gotten so blown out of proportion? Then the voice of Hunt delivers the most frightening lines:

“We’re investigating every lead, but we believe that this organization is probably the headquarters for some kind of satanic cult, which goes from coast to coast and from Canada to Mexico and may be involved in international kidnapping.”

It’s now completely dark and few people are on the streets. I’m glad. I don’t want to be seen. I’m relieved when I find that there’s nobody in the office. I call W Street on the off chance that I can reach Stuart. He answers.

“How did you know I was here?” he says. “I’ve been hiding out all day and I just sneaked in here for a minute after dark to get some clothes. Amazing. I’ve been here for less than a minute and would have been gone in a minute more.”

We both laugh and it breaks the tension that I didn’t know until that moment had been building in me.

“The police have been here going through the building,” Stuart says. They have also been in the warehouse. And they’re looking for the van. You know that they’re also looking for the second van in Tallahassee?”

“No, I don’t know much of anything. Are you in the new van? How do you know that they’re looking for it?

“It’s on the radio. I’ve been parked out of sight in Arlington all day.”

DELIVERING THE LETTER

I tell him where I am and we agree that he will pick me up at the entrance to the National Press Building at precisely 9 PM. We synchronize our watches so that I won’t have to stand and wait and possibly be recognized. I key in the letter and print a stack of copies. Pettie said to make myself available to the police and the media. I have to decide how to do that. I can’t use the phone numbers for W Street or the warehouse, because I’m afraid I might be arrested if I show up there. I decide to give the number of Future Enterprises. I know that the police can determine the location of the telephone, but it seems the best that I can do at the moment, since I know that somebody will be here to answer the phone during the day. Before leaving the office, I fax the letter to the Tallahassee police and to the newspaper, The Tallahassee Democrat.

Stuart arrives exactly on time. I’ve brought with me a copy of the phone book. We go through it mapping out a route to all of the TV stations, radio stations, The Washington Post, Newsweek, Time Magazine, the D.C. Police and finally the FBI.

It seems that the police are everywhere. Each time we see a police car, we tense up and wonder if they will recognize us.

I want to make sure that our story gets into the hands of media people who will recognize it as more than one of the many routine letters they receive every day. So Stuart drops me off at each location and drives around the block until I return. I know some of the places well, because of having worked there. I insist with security guards that the letter get into the hands of the late night professional who’s on duty. The last two deliveries are to the D.C. police and the FBI.

“Gutsy,” says Stuart after we drive up to the police station on Idaho Avenue, leave the letter in the hands of the drowsy duty officer, and hurry out the door. It’s 10:30 when we drive up to the massive J. Edgar Hoover FBI headquarters building. The only door still open is to the lower level, where a guard controls the entry. Stuart drops me off and says he will call me at Future Enterprises at midnight. I explain to the guard that I need to get the document into the hands of an agent now. He says I should come back tomorrow. I insist that I have to put the paper into the hands of somebody tonight. He resists.

I say: “Do you mean to tell me that the FBI does not have somebody on duty all night in case there’s a national emergency? Would we have to wait until tomorrow morning if the number one criminal on the FBI’s Most Wanted List was having coffee next door and I have to tell the FBI about it?”

He doesn’t answer, but dials the telephone. After a few seconds, he points down the ramp and says “that way.” A steel barrier large enough to stop a tank then slowly sinks down into the concrete driveway and I’m allowed to pass. As I’m walking down the corridor, I hear it rise back into place and clang to a stop. I wonder if I’ve just walked into a situation from which I will not be able to return. A dark-suited young man flashes me a smile and takes the letter.

“I hope that somebody will be able to read it tonight and pass it along the appropriate channel,” I say.

“That somebody would be me,” he says. We stand for a moment looking each other in the eye. Then he smiles, shakes my hand, thanks me and leads me out through a different door.

When I enter the Future Enterprises office again, the phone is ringing. It’s a reporter wanting to ask questions. I take his phone number, saying that the person who wrote the letter isn’t here at the moment, but that he’s anxious to talk and will call back early tomorrow. It rings again and the routine is repeated. When it rings a third time a voice says: “This is Special Agent Athena Varounis from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I’m in the lobby of your building. I wonder if you would mind coming downstairs and talking to me for a few minutes.”

I catch my breath when I hear her. It has been less than half an hour since I left the letter at FBI headquarters. They checked the location of the phone and they’re here already. But she doesn’t sound menacing. “It will only take a few minutes and you can leave when we’re finished,” she says, apparently trying to reassure me that I’m not about to be arrested.

THE GODDESS INTERVENES

“Sure,” I say. “I’ll be right down.”

“I’ll be at a table in the food court. I’m wearing a dark suit and carrying a yellow pad,” she says.

I know that the food court will be deserted at this hour.

When I open the door to the office, which is on the 12th floor, I see a man with a TV camera and two other people approaching me. I can’t imagine how they got the elevator code and made it above the first floor. I misdirect them:

“You’re probably looking for Mr. Terrell,” I say. “Take that corridor down to the end and knock on the last door.”

They head down the corridor and I head down the elevator.

I spot her standing near the entrance. We shake hands and sit down at a small round table, where Stuart joins us. I like her immediately, but I say nothing. She smiles before she begins:

“It looks like you got caught in some media madness. I think that we can help you, but it’s going to take a little time. Do you think that you can work with me to help us straighten it out?”

My emotion is so strong, I can hardly contain myself. I say, “I think that you’re the goddess Palas Athena come to our rescue.”

She laughs heartily and I relax for the first time since seeing the train with the wheels on fire.

“I’ve read your letter. It’s just about what I thought it was; a slow day for the press. They have to fill up the newspapers and the TV time. It got picked up by the news services and it struck a sensitive chord with the public. Do you have a lawyer?”

“No.”

“You should think about getting one. It will get worse before it gets better. Can you call me tomorrow? I won’t be able to tell you what I’m doing, but we will be working behind the scenes to put a lid on this thing.”

“I can call you tomorrow,” I say, “but I don’t know where I’m going to sleep tonight. The D.C. police are looking for our van and I guess they’re looking for us, too. The places they’re most likely to look would be W Street and the warehouse. Do you think that we would be safe there?”

“If I were you, I would keep a low profile,” she says.

“Well, I’m hoping to be meeting with the media and the D.C. police over the next few days. Do you think that would be a mistake?” I ask.

“Actually, that’s probably a good idea,” she says. “I’ll see if I can set up a meeting between you and the D.C. Police. Meantime, if you have another place to sleep tonight, I would go there.”

I thank her and tell her that we will cooperate with her 100% in whatever she wants us to do. At the moment, she seems like our best shot to restore some sanity to the situation. And beyond that, on a visceral level, I trust her. I learn years later that she’s the FBI agent on whom the character of Clarice Starling is based in The Silence of the Lambs movie.

I leave a hasty note to Joe Marinich apologizing for using his office. In it, I ask that the switchboard please forward all calls to the warehouse number. Stuart and I decide to return to the warehouse, so that we can set up a situation room and get organized in an environment that we control. It’s risky, but I had not seen any police there, so we consider it our best alternative. We drive to the warehouse and park the van in the next block, hard to distinguish among produce vehicles.

When we approach the front, we see the lock has been broken off and the door pried open, leaving it unusable without serious repair. The police have placed their own padlock on the door. We enter through the side door, which the police left intact. The place is a disaster. It reminds me of news footage of buildings after tornados have passed through. Papers cover the entire floor of the office. All of our computers are gone. Some of our boxes of files are missing and those that are still there have been dumped onto the floor. Cigarette butts have been crushed underfoot into the carpet. There are half-empty Coke bottles on all of the desks. One of them has spilled onto a desk and run down onto the carpet. The lights are all on and the doors are all open. I feel an emptiness in my belly. It looks like a movie set for Orwell’s 1984 or Koestler’s Darkness at Noon.

This was all done by the very people who are supposed to be protecting the citizens: the Metropolitan Police Department of Washington, D.C. The arrogance of their entry is like the last time they entered by snatching the key from my hand and holding us prisoners in our own building for two hours. But, this time the destruction and disregard for our rights is much greater and I suddenly lose all of the security I’d fallen back on from living in the Nation’s Capital.

We’re too tired to try cleaning up the place. We bring bedding down into the office and try to sleep. The phone wakes me early. It’s Joe Marinich from Future Enterprises. “What the hell is going on?” he says. “The press is everywhere. They won’t leave us alone. They’re looking for you. They think we’re a part of The Finders. What the hell is The Finders? We can’t get anything done here. We’ve got classes scheduled here at nine o’clock, but you can’t even get through the lobby. What the hell is this all about?”

“Have you seen the news reports about some kids being picked up in a park in Tallahassee?” I ask.

“No,” Marinich says.

“It’s hard to explain in a few words,” I say. “The Finders are a group of people I live with and our children were taken from us in Tallahassee through some mix-up and it has gotten all blown out of proportion by the media. I’ve written a letter explaining it and I gave the Future Enterprises phone number because I didn’t know where else I could receive phone calls. I thought I could just sit in the office and talk to people, but the news people have gone nuts.”

“Why the fuck did you give our phone number? We’re running a business here. We’ve got nothing to do with your people. Why the fuck did you give our number? We’re going to have to cancel classes today.”

“I’m really sorry, Joe. It was probably a big mistake to do it. I can’t justify it. It just seemed the best option I had last night. I was under a lot of pressure. I still am. What do you want me to do?”

“Tell these people we’ve got nothing to do with whatever is making them crazy,” he says. “They all want to talk to me. They want to know who owns Future Enterprises. They want to know all about you. They were waiting outside of the door this morning when our people started to arrive and we couldn’t even unlock the door to let our students and employees in. They’re still out there.”

“The best thing I can think of, Joe, is to give them this phone number and tell them to clear out. Call the police or building security. Tell them I’ll talk to them, if they call here. Maybe you can just write it on a piece of paper and tape it to the door. Any calls you get, send them to this number. I’m sorry, Joe. I know I’ve caused you a super headache you don’t deserve. That’s all I can do at the moment.”

Within minutes of hanging up the phone, it rings again. Stuart answers and takes down the name of a reporter who wants an interview. Thereafter, each time the phone is hung up it rings again. Within a few minutes, people begin banging on the front door. It’s bitter cold outside and inside of the building. We turn on the heaters in the two insulated rooms and try to figure out what to do. We take the phone off the hook and ignore the reporters, because we know we would be overwhelmed if we don’t develop a plan for dealing with the chaos that is trying to sweep us away.

CONVICTED BY THE PRESS

That morning, Saturday, pictures of the kids are spread across the front page of the The Washington Post and the headline says: “Official Describes ‘Cult Rituals’ in Child Abuse Case.” The sub-headline reads: “Photos of Youngsters Seized at D.C. Warehouse, Probers Say.” A second article is headlined: “Finders Group Has Its Roots in Popular ‘60s Hippie Refuge.” The articles go on for another full page, alleging that the kids were “brainwashed” and that The Finders “used children in rituals,” that photos had been seized by police “showing children involved in bloodletting ceremonies of animals and one photo of a child in chains.” This kind of nonsense would be frightening, if I heard about it happening to somebody else, but it’s happening to us. We’re being accused of crimes and immoral behavior in the newspapers and we have no way to counter it. Slowly, the realization sinks in that we never will. I know that many thousands of people, henceforth, if they ever think about me and my friends again, will believe we are criminals and perverts and there would be no way to convince them otherwise.

The television coverage is equally skewed toward the sensational. All of the network news organizations devote large segments of their broadcast to The Finders. Since there’s nothing of real substance to the story, they reach for something to justify their attention. The footage taken by chance of Michael and Doug being hauled off to jail by the police is shown over and over. The photos of the faces of the children, taken by state officials, are freely distributed to the media, who sensationalize–“The fear on the faces of the children is evident as they are placed in the hands of Florida Department of Health and Human Services.”

Of course, the fear is evident. The ages of the children range from two-and-a-half to six. What child at that age would not be frightened, when they have been taken from the people they trust by strangers. But there’s nothing we can do, but wait while Athena works behind the scenes.

The police have seized the pictures of the kids taken when the goats were slaughtered. They are shown for several days with comments like, “Police spokesmen point to photos of what they call ritual sacrifice of goats as potential evidence of cult practices.” Footage of our library, which contains about 10,000 books, zeroes in on a single book on the subject of witchcraft and ignores the 40 Bibles that are in the same collection.

A FEW FACTS EMERGE

Gradually the facts of what had happened in Tallahassee begin to emerge. It’s weeks before we get a comprehensive picture and we will never know what was being said between the various law enforcement agencies. Doug had gone to check out a place to sleep for the night and left Michael with the kids in Meyers Park. A woman living next to the park in Tallahassee saw the kids get out of the van and called the police. These are free kids, raised in the woods, unrestrained by the rules that might have damped the shouting and hijinks of kids accustomed to daycare or kindergarten. It’s not surprising that anybody observing them would have seen they were different. Still it’s hard to imagine anybody would have called the police. But they did.

This is the era of the McMartin Preschool madness in Manhattan Beach, California, and many other child abuse witch-hunts that swept across America during the 1980s. Dozens of innocent people were sentenced to long jail terms, some of more than 100 years, based on stories told by children. The stories are so fantastic they could not possibly be believed. But, they were believed by juries. Most of those convicted have been released after careful study of the children’s interrogation made it clear the fantastic stories were planted in the minds of the children by the way the interrogators asked their questions. That is the fearful mindset of many Americans in 1987. Millions of dollars are spent by government agencies aimed at making people aware of child abuse. Some people see a child abuser lurking outside of every playground. No doubt, the woman who called the police in Tallahassee is proud that she did her duty as a citizen.

Gradually, we learn more of what happened that afternoon in Myers Park. When the police are called, an unlikely set of circumstances begins to unfold. Tallahassee Police Officer Tony Mashburn arrives just as Doug returns with the van. The kids begin getting into the van and Mashburn begins asking questions of, first, Doug and, then, Michael. Michael and Doug are the two youngest of the players and neither is experienced or comfortable talking to authoritarians. Mashburn is then joined by another officer named Suchoki, who sees the kids, concludes something is amiss, and calls other police officers. At some point Michael remembers something he has heard from Pettie and says he will write down the officer’s questions and will have his attorney get back to him. When Mashburn hears this, he tells them to stay twenty feet from the van and the officers begin questioning the kids. A higher-ranking officer arrives and says unless he’s given a phone number where the van owner can be reached to confirm that it’s not stolen, they will be arrested. Michael gives the phone number at W Street, but the officer decides to arrest them anyway. They begin putting the handcuffs on Michael and he remembers something else Pettie has said and falls to the ground.

Many times, sitting in the attic at W Street or walking the lanes of Madison County, we have all heard Pettie talk about the best strategy in dealing with authoritarians: “If anybody who has the least bit of power finds out about y’all, they will exercise it against you, especially the ones at the lowest level. Keep a low profile and don’t let ‘em know you exist. If you ever have to interact with a policeman, keep an empty mind. If you’ve got some predetermined response in your head, it might work, but it also might be the wrong thing. So just do the thing that is appropriate in every situation and you can’t tell ahead of time what that is going to be. If you don’t know what to do, just lay down. They have a totally different way of dealing with people who are in a horizontal position than they do when you’re standing up. Judges are much more likely to understand you than a policeman on the street. If you don’t know what to say, say nothing and wait to do your talking with the judge.”

Michael, hesitant and unsure of his words and actions, neither knows what to say nor what to do. He can only think of one thing and that’s Pettie’s admonition. He clams up and lies down. The police think this is some kind of resistance or that it suggests he’s trying to hide something. They pick him up and drag him to a patrol car, taunting him with “he’s just faking it.” Doug is also arrested. At that moment, by poor chance, Jerry Mintz, executive director of the National Coalition of Alternative Schools, is in the park with two students. One of them, 13-year-old Joe Dixon, grabs his video camera and records the police dragging Michael to the police van with Doug, in handcuffs beside him. Then he sells the video to the media who show it again and again on national network TV.

SEEKING DIRECTION

The next morning, after I return to D.C., there’s a message on MCI Mail from Bob giving a phone number in Berkeley. I call and he answers. He and Pettie have driven straight through from Phoenix and arrived late at night. They sat in a circle with the mothers of the kids who are there. Neither Carolyn nor Judy asked Pettie to call games for them. Pettie pleasantly encouraged them to do whatever they wanted, but suggested it would be a mistake for them to go immediately to Tallahassee while the media frenzy is in full swing.

Bob says Pettie wants to stay above the fray and keep a clear head. He says I should relate to him through Bob. I tell him the current scene. He leaves the phone and tells Pettie. Pettie says he will be thinking about it. His only suggestions for the moment are to control the press by allowing myself to be interviewed by one person at a time, and to make Stuart my press officer to arrange the interviews. He also recommends I use the hot tub, keep myself relaxed and don’t lose my sense of humor.

Stuart immediately begins putting together a notebook of all of the media and an appointment calendar. He then puts the phone back on the cradle and begins answering it, making a list of each media person who calls.

I call Athena. She says to be patient. She says the police in Tallahassee think they are onto something really big and aren’t ready to listen to the facts yet. She says the D.C. Police also aren’t ready to talk yet.

One by one, I begin talking to the reporters from newspapers and television stations. Stuart is spending all of his time on the phone and is compiling a long list of names and phone numbers of media who want to talk. We meet periodically to look it over and decide who would be most strategic to talk to next. We decide that The Washington Post and the three local TV network news affiliates are the most important in Washington. But we also want to try to get through to Tallahassee.

I receive a phone call from the Tallahassee Democrat. They have assigned the story to Rosalind Bently, a young and inexperienced reporter. I talk to her for an hour, but she seems not to understand anything I’m saying. I can’t imagine why they would have assigned somebody like this to the story. There’s no way I can get through to her. I can think of no way to describe her but hostile. If I ask her a question, she says, “I’m asking the questions here,” like I’m on the witness stand. I would have ended the conversation quickly, but I think it’s important to try to get through to the public by getting an unbiased news story into the paper. I finally realize she’s acting out some kind of a role of the tough reporter from a movie or TV program and there is going to be no way of changing her perception of the facts based on the fantastic stuff she has been told by the Tallahassee police.

From my conversation with her and the briefer conversations with other reporters, we begin to put together the puzzle. Apparently, a Tallahassee police detective who was assigned to the case called the D.C. Police Department to check the registration on our van, which they’d seized. In the course of the conversation, the detective asks if the D.C. Police have ever heard of a group called The Finders. I don’t know where he heard that name. Sure enough, D.C. has an open investigation under that name with the same address as the van registration. It’s being handled by a detective named Jim Bradley. Bradley tells the Tallahassee cop that The Finders are a “satanic cult.”

It’s weeks before we find out how we were given such a horrific label. Finally, we learn that Allan Schoen had gone to a Jewish celebration and met a woman named Myra Dwork. They liked each other and soon became lovers. It turns out that she lives just a few streets away in Glover Park. She visited W Street several times with Allan. Then, when Allan lost interest in her, she became angry and contacted the D.C. Police. Apparently, Allan had said something to her about raising free children and maybe described the way the kids were living in Paradise. She then went to the police with the story that The Finders are a satanic cult that abuses children. The only evidence to support this claim is a small circle of stones in the park behind our building. This circle of stones, probably left by campers years before, apparently is enough to justify telling the Tallahassee police we are a satanic cult.

And it must have been enough to satisfy the Tallahassee police. They immediately inform the media that The Finders are a satanic cult and the police are now cooperating in an investigation of child abuse and a worldwide investigation of possible kidnapping.

I’ve never heard the term “satanic cult” and don’t know exactly what it means. I presume it must refer to a group of devil-worshipers. I’m tempted to point out to the media that being a satanic cult or a member of such a cult, whatever that might mean, isn’t a crime. But, I don’t want to seem like I’m defending myself, so I avoid the subject and ask the reporters repeatedly to please help us discover what crimes the authorities claim we have committed.

CRAZIER AND CRAZIER

Athena is right. For several days, the allegations become more and more fantastic. We begin getting requests for interviews from foreign journalists. The U.S. Customs Service somehow joins the investigation, then Interpol. For the first few days, the Tallahassee police maintain they don’t know who the children are or who their parents are. If asked about the letter I sent to them, the press officer says it has been received, but they have no comment on it other than that “it raises more questions than it answers,” and “the investigation is continuing.” According to the newspapers, the Tallahassee police are asking anybody who recognizes the children to please contact them. They receive more than 200 responses from people who claim to be the parents of our children. The most outrageous thing is that the Tallahassee police refuse to talk to me even though the van is registered in my name.

Athena arranges a meeting with the D.C. police. Several officers arrive at the warehouse and two come inside. The two are Jim Bradley, who told the Tallahassee police we are a satanic cult and another officer identified only as Starkey. Athena arrives separately. We lead them into the large cooler. There we’d arranged a circle of eight chairs. Bradley and Starkey see the chairs and immediately move them so the circle is broken.

MEETING WITH ACCUSERS

“We want to cooperate with you in every way we can,” I say.

“Right,” says Stuart, who’s in the meeting with us. I’m about to say more, but Starkey interrupts:

“OK, you can start with telling us who you sell the porno videos to.”

“We have a style here,” I say, “that we give everybody a chance to talk and when it’s their turn, they can say anything they want. We like to let the conversation go around in a circle and ask or answer any question that comes up. Why don’t we let it go around and that way we can keep it from getting confrontational.”

“Bull shit!” says Starkey. “I’m asking you a question and you better answer it if you know what is good for you.”

“When you have finished talking, you can just say pass and the next person in the circle can take their turn,” I say. Starkey is sitting directly across from me. Athena is between us on my right and Stuart is on my left next to Bradley.

“Bull shit!” says Starkey. “I’m not here to play your games. I’m asking you who you sell your porno flicks to and I don’t want any of your wiseass games. We know you have stage sets on the second floor. If you tell us who you sell them to, we might go easier on you.”

“When you have finished, you can just say pass,” I say, but before I can finish he shouts:

“Bull shit! Are you going to answer me or not? I’m not here for bull shit, I’m here for answers.”

“I’ll answer you when it’s my turn,” I say.

“It’s your turn now,” shouts Starkey, red-faced and angry.

“It might go easier if you just go along with the custom,” says Athena looking at Starkey. “If it’s my turn, I pass.”

“OK,” I say. “You’re accusing us of making porno movies. Your conclusion is no doubt based on the women’s spaces that the police saw when they came in here a few years ago. Or through the hole that somebody drilled in the brick wall while we were out of the building, presumably for observation by police. I don’t want to be confrontational, but we don’t make porno movies here or any other kinds of movies here. What I’d hoped to do was to talk about getting the D.C. police to help us clear up the mess in Tallahassee. Can you please tell us what we can do to move that process forward? I pass to Stuart.”

Before Stuart can say anything, Starkey interrupts again.

“Don’t give me any of that ‘pass bullshit.’ I’m asking you. Are you denying you take pictures of naked children?”

I don’t say anything, but turn toward Stuart, since it’s his turn in the circle.

Stuart says: “Doesn’t every parent take pictures of the kids when they’re naked? I didn’t know that was against the law.”

“It’s against the law if you sell ‘em,” says Starkey.

“If it’s still my turn,” says Stuart, “I think that the most important...”

Before he can finish, Starkey interrupts again: “It’s your turn when I say it’s your turn.”

Nobody says anything. The veins are standing out on Starkey’s forehead. He obviously can hardly contain his anger. I’m a little worried, since he’s carrying a gun. I’m grateful Athena is there, which probably restrains him. He rises slowly to his feet, says “bull shit” in a low voice and walks out of the room. After a few seconds, Bradley shrugs his shoulders, gets to his feet and follows Starkey out the door.

“Is that the best the D.C. Police Department can send us for a meeting?” I say looking at Athena.

“Kind of a cowboy,” she says, shaking her head. “Don’t worry. Things will calm down. It just takes time. What is happening with the mothers?”

“They’re on their way, but I don’t know how soon,” I say.

NEW ACCUSATIONS

On Saturday, and again on Sunday and Monday, Tallahassee police investigator Cheryl Weigand announces to the world that “...more than one of the children has been sexually abused.” How is it possible to refute this kind of charge? We’re stunned that such wild statements can be made by a public agency. I know this could only be true if some pervert in the bureaucracy has done something to the kids after they were picked up.

Worse still, I begin to imagine what is happening to the kids, as strangers, doctors, nurses and social workers traumatize them by probing them with cold stainless-steel implements and peering into their body cavities. The next day, John Awad, Health and Human Services District Administrator, in Tallahassee backpedals a bit by saying there was “a possibility of sexual abuse, but no conclusive evidence.” A few days later, the state announces that it has hired an outside professional and that the previous information is incorrect; there has been no sexual abuse. The media does not consider this to be very newsworthy. It’s not even mentioned in the dozens of newspapers where a week before the sexual abuse had been reported. In the minds of most people, we’re already convicted child abusers.

After a week, the rumor mill about The Finders is grinding at maximum speed. Old myths about our being connected with the CIA are resurrected, fueled by the fact that Silas is in China when the news breaks and Eric is in Hong Kong. Both of them hear about The Finders on the radio. The CIA issues a public denial that we are connected with them and U.S. News and World Report cynically laughs it off with: “sure, sure, that’s right, no connection.”

I’m wondering where these journals are getting their information. There seems to be a secret dialogue going on among agencies and news organizations about the group that has been the center of my life for 15 years and nobody is asking me any questions. Not only that, but I’m supposed to be the news source for the group. My long-standing doubts about the validity of what I learn from the media and the government are being confirmed daily.

For the first few days, there’s no mention of Pettie. Then his name surfaces and his picture runs in several newspapers. Of all of the pictures they might have run from the dozens that were taken from the warehouse by the police, the media, in lockstep, all run the same photo. It shows a sinister-looking face, angry and dark. It hardly resembles him. I conclude that the picture must have been selected by the police and handed to the media. When this happens, Pettie and Bob disappear. They’re out of touch for two days and we don’t know where they are. When Bob resumes his twice-daily phone calls, he doesn’t say where he is. It’s weeks later before we learn that they have flown to Mexico.

The investigation expands. Some police organizations arrive at the houses in the country with the media in tow, enter and remove whatever they want. One item they remove works both for us and against us. They find pictures of the kids, and some of them are pictures of the slaughtering of Igor and Henrietta, the two goats. To some, this removes any doubt that they are our kids, but to others it’s seen as a satanic ritual. Perhaps the best thing they find is a doorpost with markings on it. It shows the names of the kids, marking off their growth year by year. Still the police are not deterred.

After the police and media leave the country properties, somebody calls the authorities and claims that he knows there are dead bodies buried in the High Field. He gives them directions of where they should dig. This isn’t surprising. There are many people in these mountains who have heard of M.D. Pettie and the group around him. What they have heard is almost certain to be inaccurate. But few of the people there are hostile toward Pettie. He’s a local with a long history of generosity to the people there. He’s considered to be a wealthy gentleman around whom one removes his hat.

But, among the mountain people, there’s a long history of pranks. Many of them involve playing on the gullibility of the city people. Most likely, this new police rumor is the work of a prankster, who shakes his head among his chuckling neighbors, with tongue in cheek, and says, “Wonder who it could have been told that to the police.”

In any case, all of the media circus comes back from Washington and drags their equipment down country lanes for the digging. A backhoe is brought in. The sheriff doesn’t ask our permission, but all day the digging continues. Of course, nothing is found but a bunch of rocks. At the end of the day, our property looks like it has been bombed. Holes are everywhere and none of them gets refilled. But the non-event does not escape the vigilant eye of the media.

In the twilight, the 24 residents of the tiny farming settlement of Etlan stand in amazement. They watch smartly tailored young women stand in front of four huge TV trucks, with arc lights blazing, as they speak with animated faces, in inflected tones, without regional accents: “Sheriff’s investigators today returned to the rural property of the group that continues to come under scrutiny almost a week after six children were taken into custody by authorities in a Tallahassee park following a bizarre arrest of two men. Madison County, Virginia, deputies were searching a pasture where an anonymous caller had said that human remains would be found. But, the only dead, after a day of probing with a backhoe, was another dead-end in what has become a series of rumors based on the mysterious lifestyle and games of the group known as The Finders. For other developments in the case we go to...” And the non-story that will not die continues.

GHENGIS K. PLATO

The weather is bitter cold. Reporters continue standing in front of the warehouse bundled like Eskimos as they do their on-the-spot reports. Otherwise, they sit in cars and trucks with the engine running. I suppose there’s no other news of any import to take them away. I’ve been bringing them inside the building, one at a time, for lengthy interviews. Bob calls from Mexico and says Pettie suggests that we invite all of the media into the large cooler, where it’s warm, and have a press conference. He says to offer them warm hospitality. He also says I should introduce myself to them as Genghis K. Plato.

From the outside, the warehouse is an ordinary two-story grey brick building. A passerby would have trouble distinguishing it from its neighbors. There would be nothing to indicate what goes on inside. When the front doors swing open and Stuart invites the reporters inside, they don’t feel the relief of warm air. Rolling their video cameras through the great hall, they might have looked around and concluded they were in a library where the heat had been turned off. High bookshelves line the walls on either side. On the left, they are ushered through a heavy insulated door hung on huge metal hinges. When it closes, there’s a final swoosh of air and then absolute silence. We’re insulated from the outside world by cork walls more than a foot thick. It’s warm and bright, with comfortable chairs and a carpeted floor. Coffee and snacks are spread on a table. They take seats.

Stuart makes small talk with them for awhile as they settle in. Then he excuses himself and comes to the office, where several of us have gathered. Michael and Doug are still in jail, but by this time, Chris, Stan and Tom have returned from Florida in the other van.

“They’re ready,” says Stuart. “They have asked you to show your face. They say it’s very boring to the audience to hear a voice and see nobody’s face on the tube.”

The reporters know from previous interviews that I don’t want my face seen.

“Yeah, sure,” I say. “It’s great for them, but what about me? From now on, people will say ‘where have I seen you before? Oh yeah, you’re one of those child molesters from that cult’.”

“What about this?” says Stan.

He hands me a Ronald Reagan mask. I put it on and everybody laughs.

“OK,” I say. “Let’s do it. This will give them something to look at.”

Then I imagine how hard it would be to talk to reporters with the mask over my face. I put the mask on the back of my head and walk into the news conference. I ask the video crew to come around behind me. When the cameras are turned on, the audience sees a roomful of reporters facing me and asking questions. The reporters can see my face and hear my responses to the questions. But the viewing audience only sees the back of my head and it’s covered by a Ronald Reagan mask.

As usual, Pettie’s sense of timing is on the mark. He has intuited the moment to win over the media. Thereafter the tone of their reporting changes. They enjoy the break from their usual routine of serious news reporting. When they ask me a question, they address me as Genghis or Mr. Plato. I don’t understand the dynamic of it, but–despite the fact that they are talking to a man who has given himself an absurd name and is wearing a Ronald Reagan mask on the back of his head–that press conference humanizes The Finders in the eyes of the media We become real people, rather than the cartoon characters the media has created.

The news conference is short. After a few minutes, the reporters sit silent, unable to think of any more questions to ask. Maybe talking to Ghengis K. Plato suggests to them how absurd the whole situation has become. In that evening’s coverage, a CBS News reporter asks whether the media and the audience “might not be the subject of one of The Finders’ games.”

MOTHERS RETURN

Pettie sends word that the women should do whatever Athena says. When they return to D.C., the press camps out in front of W Street. The women don’t venture out alone. When they leave together to meet with Athena, they are followed by the press to the local FBI office, a huge, featureless, grey brick building in southeast Washington. The press wait out front while the women are inside.

Athena advises them to go to Tallahassee and they agree. As a diversion, Athena suggests Carolyn go down to speak to the press out front. Meanwhile, the rest of the women slip out of the back entrance. After the media learn that the rest of the mothers are gone, they leave. The mothers double back, pick up Carolyn and they all leave for Florida. Before arriving in Tallahassee they want to be sure the timing is right, so they stop in Valdosta, Georgia, and wait two days before proceeding.

At this point, Pettie tells me to disappear from sight into the great anonymity of Los Angeles. My only assignment is to write a ditty each day about the recent episode, which we have begun to call “goatgate.” I fly out immediately, find a little cottage in a rundown area of Hollywood and spend my time reading walking and composing ditties–one of which I mail each day to Michael and Doug in the Tallahassee jail. My only excursion is to spend a day on public transportation going down to Manhattan Beach to look at the McMartin School and take the pulse of the town where another child abuse hysteria has squeezed away all common sense. In the evenings, I go to Emotions Anonymous meetings out of loneliness and to hear people tell the truth about themselves.

I have no way of knowing that the mail I send to the jail is stopped and opened by the sheriff or that he allows none of it or any other mail to get through. Nor does he allow them access to any books or reading material. They are kept in isolation from the other prisoners “for their own protection” and allowed access to the exercise area for only a few minutes each day.

Michael Allen, the Tallahassee public defender assigns the case to Mike Minerva, a young inexperienced lawyer who fails to see that he’s been handed the case of a lifetime that could make his career. Instead, he tries to talk them into a plea bargain that would release them if they would plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge, which they refuse, knowing that they have done nothing wrong. After three weeks in jail, his only success is to get their bond reduced from $100,000 each to $10,000 each. We have no way of knowing that, on the morning after he was arrested, when Michael still refused to say anything, he was tortured with a stun gun by the Tallahassee police. “I screamed,” he later told us, “but I remained limp. The officer said that if I didn’t get up, he would do it again. I got up.”

A WHIMPER OF AN ENDING

While I’m hiding out in L.A., the bureaucratic wheels are turning slowly. Tallahassee police are sent to D.C. and D.C. police are sent to Tallahassee. Deputies in Kentucky visit Rev. Jim Wyker who confirms that the kids were there. When it’s all added up, the authorities spend millions of taxpayer dollars and the media spend millions more. The authorities in Tallahassee finally acknowledge that there’s no doubt the kids are the sons and daughters of the Finder’s mothers. But, they are told there’s no way they can be returned to them without a hearing, since an accusation of abuse has been made. In D.C., Police Chief Maurice Turner makes a public announcement that The Finders are odd, but have broken no laws. According to news reports, the D.C. police blame the Tallahassee police for overreacting and the Tallahassee police blame the D.C. police for overreacting.

As the time for the hearing approaches, Pettie returns to D.C., and I fly in from L.A. to Tallahassee. Pettie calls for the mothers not to hire a lawyer, to stand mute at the court hearing and take whatever judgment is meted out. Kay and Pat do so. But Carolyn, Judy, Jan and Petita hire a woman named Paula Walborski to represent them. She does everything in a conventional way, and 20 days after the children were seized the three youngest are returned to their mothers. Victor Cawthon, the judge who hears the case, decides to wait for an unspecified time before releasing the others, because of his concern that they receive a “proper education,” despite the fact that only one of them is of school age.

In Tallahassee, I visit Doug and Michael in the Leon County Jail. I’m the only visitor they have had. Instead of being able to sit and talk to them, the guard points out their cell and leaves me standing in the hall on my tiptoes in order to see through the glass in their door. It’s impossible to speak to them without shouting.

Later, when the court finally establishes the parentage of the kids and released them to their mothers, the case against Michael and Doug isn’t dropped. They are held until their lawyer files a motion to dismiss the charges against them. When the motion finally comes before the court, it’s not opposed by the district attorney. On Wednesday, March 18th, 42 days after they were arrested, charges against Doug and Michael are dropped and they are freed. I pick up the van from the police impoundment lot. In it, I find the letter from the mothers giving everybody’s name and giving permission for the kids to be with the men. Had it been ignored by the police, or were they so incompetent that they didn’t bother to look to open the glove compartment?

The mothers return to D.C. with their kids, but they don’t stay. Within a few days, Judy, Jan and Carolyn take their children and move to Boulder, Colorado. Petita and her kids remain in Tallahassee. Eventually, Ben’s grandmother is given custody over him and Max decides to move to Berkeley California, where a number of ex-Finders eventually settle.

EPILOGUE

What of The Gamecaller? It has been many years since Goatgate. What of M.D. Pettie? For the first few years after the women’s departure, he flows along with the change and continues to call games as if nothing had happened. The games become more global. I get my wish and live abroad for a year, first in Japan and then in Russia; the emphasis shifts from raising free children to building networks across national borders. In hindsight, something personal is missing, at least for me. I stay for another four years. Others drift away and make new lives for themselves, while some remain.

But this is a book about M.D. Pettie, a natural man, the kind of man who is probably impossible to find today. Although we’re all born natural, to remain so requires a combination of circumstances and will. The circumstances of his early years are fertile for an inquisitive mind, but not unique. The strength of his will is the tower on which his monument stands. He took his life into his own hands without prompting from any voice but his own. He saw the beauty in the art of living and began practicing it long before he could articulate what he was doing.

Art is a mysterious balance between inspiration and technique. He lived an inspired life and learned how to merge with the spirit that breathed through him. He perfected the techniques of the art of living on martial-art mats, poker tables and sitting quietly on a back seat in the salons of the rich and famous and bedrooms of the beautiful. He sat silent behind the steering wheels of the powerful. He walked dusty pathways in India and China and the streets of Paris and Baghdad, sat in circles with challengers and sycophants, studied in libraries, lecture halls, museums, public exhibitions and conventions. He was so many people that all descriptions are accurate. He was a master of nin jitzu and impossible to spot in a crowd. Yet, when walking down the sidewalk surrounded by young men who strained to hear what he was saying, his presence was so strong that people stepped aside in wonder as he passed. He could talk on any subject, but sometimes sought solitude in remote countries where he spoke to no one for long periods. He never sat silently in meditation with his eyes closed, yet remained constantly in a meditative state and was a master of yogic breathing techniques, which he never mentioned unless asked.

Did he pass along his art form to anybody else? The seeds he planted in the hundreds of beings he encountered may sometimes be long in sprouting. I suspect they’re growing in many places where they now only may be considered weeds. When I was a young boy rushing about the overgrown vacant lots and fields of central Florida, I always encountered the tough woody shrub called lantana. It took over any area that wasn’t cultivated and maintained. We used to kick at it and try to pull it up by the roots, so we could clear an area for baseball. Everybody I knew considered it to be a weed. Then, when I was 17, I hitchhiked to Washington, D.C., and visited the National Gallery of Art for the first time. There in the garden court, surrounded by marble columns, in an honored focal point of the museum, was a perfectly pruned, glorious lantana exhibiting its clusters of multicolored flowers for the world to admire. Since that day, I’ve loved the lantana as one of the treasures of my birthplace, loved it more because once I could only see it as a weed. I needed the proper perspective to recognize what it represented to me.

M.D. Pettie died in October 2003. When he was on his deathbed, I took him the first draft of this book and asked him what he thought of the words I had put in his mouth. “Tobe,” he said, “what you wrote about me sounds more like me than I sound like myself.”