Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Four Changes
This is the first draft of a work in progress by Gary Snyder. It arose as a by-product of the Wild West debacle, from the warmth of numerous meetings of ecological activists working up to and out of a display at Wild West. It's been arising in Gary Snyder for years. On August 17 he submitted this draft for scrutiny by a group including Cliff and Mary Humphrey, Keith Lampe, Sterling Bunnell, Stephanie Mills, Joan McIntyre, Edward Bear, and others whose names I didn't get. Gary ran the scrutiny session with a light perceptive hand. The resultsyou will see in the final version soon to be printed throughout the underground press.
I. POPULATION
The Condition Position: Man is but a part of the fabric of life - dependent of course on the whole fabric for his very existence, and also responsible to it. As the most highly developed tool-using animal, he must recognize that the evolutionary destinies (unknown) of other life forms are to be respected, and act as gentle steward of the earth's community of being. Situation: There are now too many human beings; and the problem is growing rapidly worse. It is potentially disastrous not only for the human race but for most other life forms. Goal: The goal would be half of the present world population or less. Action Social/political: Legalize abortion; encourage vasectomy and sterilization (provided free by clinics), remove income tax deductions for more than two children above a specified income level, and scale it so that lower income families are forced to be careful too. Take a vigorous stand against the Catholic church and any other institutions that exercise an irresponsible political force in regard to this question; work ceaselessly to make all political problems be seen and solved in the light of this prime problem. The community: Explore other social structures and marriage forms, such as group marriage and polyandrous marriage which provide family life but which produce less children. Share the pleasure of raising children widely, so that all need not directly reproduce to enter into this basic human experience. Let no two persons produce more than two children. Adopt children. Let reverence for life and for the feminine mean also a reverence for other species, most of which are threatened. Our own heads: "I am a child of all life, and all living beings are my brothers and sisters, my children and grandchildren, & there is a child within me waiting to be brought to birth, the baby of a new and wiser self." Love, love-making, a male and female together, seen as the vehicle of mutual realization, where the creation of new selves and new worlds of beings is as important as making babies.
II. POLLUTION
The Condition Position: Pollution is an excess production of substances which cannot be absorbed or transmuted rapidly enough to offset their introduction, thus causing changes the cycle is not prepared for. All organisms have wastes and by-
products, and these are indeed part of the total ecosystem; energy is passedalong the line and refracted in various ways, "the rainbow body." This is cycling, not pollution. Situation: The human race in the last century has allowed its production and dissemination of wastes, by-products and various chemical substances to become excessive. Pollution is directly harming the ecosystem. It is also ruining the environment in very direct ways for humanity itself. Goal: Clean air, clean clear-running rivers, the Presence of Pelicans and Ospreys in our lives, unrnuddied language and good dreams. Action Social/political: Waste and by-product quantity must be reduced. Strong legislation controlling DDT and related pesticides with no fooling around. Direct exposure of the collusion of certain scientists, the pesticide industry, and agri-business in trying to block this legislation. Strong penalties for air and water pollution by industry. "Pollution is somebody's profit." Phase out petroleum fuels, explore all possible energy sources of a non-polluting nature: solar power. Tell the truth regarding atomic waste disposal and the threat it represents. Stop all germ and chemical warfare research and experimentation. Laws and sanctions encouraging the use of bio-degradable substances; and sanctions against wasteful use of paper, etc. which adds to the solid waste of cities. Determine methods of recycling solid urban waste; and re-cycling as a basic principle should inform all waste disposal thinking. The community: DDT and such: don't use them. Air pollution: use less cars. Cars pollute the air, and one or two people riding lonely in a huge car is an insult to intelligince and the Muse. Share rides, pick up hitchhikers, legalize hitch-hiking and build hitch-hiker waiting stations along the highways. Also - as a step toward the new world - walk more: look for the best routes through beautiful countryside for long-distance walking trips: San Francisco to Los Angeles down the Coast Range, for one. Learn how to use your own manure as fertilizer if you're in the country as the far East has done for centuries. There's a way, and it's safe. Solid waste: boycott wasteful Sunday papers which use up trees, and add vastly to the solid waste of the city. Refuse paper bags at the store. Organize park and street cleanup festivals. Don't waste- (a monk and an old master were once walking in the mountains. They noticed a little hut upstream. The monk said, "A wise hermit must live there - "The master said, "That's no wise hermit, you see that lettuce leaf floating down the stream, he's a Waster." Just then an old man came running down the hill with his beard flying and caught the floating lettuce leaf.) Our own heads: Part of the trouble with talking about DDT is that the use of it is not just a practical device, it's almost an establishment religion. There is something in western culture that wants to totally wipe out creepycrawlies and feels repugnance for toadstools and snakes. This is fear of one's own deepest natural inner-self wilderness areas, and the answer is, relax. Relax around bugs, snakes arid your own hairy dreams. Again farmers can and should share their crop with a certain percentage of buglife as "paying their dues" - Thoreau says "How then can the harvest fail? Shall I not rejoice also at the abundance of the weeds whose seeds are the granary of the birds? It matters little comparatively whether the fields fill the farmer's barns. The true husbandman will cease from anxiety as the squirrels manifest no concern whether the woods will bear chestnuts this year or not, and finish his labor with every day, relinquish all claim to the produce of his fields, and sacrificing in his mind not only his first but his last fruits also." In the realm of thought, inner experience, consciousness, as in the outward realm of interconnection, there is a difference between a balanced cycle, and the excess which cannot be handled. When the balance is right, the mind recycles from highest illumination to the stillness of dreamless sleep; the alchemical "transmutation."
III. CONSUMPTION
The Condition Position: Consumption is also a matter of balances and the problems that arise with excess. "The Wanton Boy that kills a fly shall feel the Spider's enmity."
Situation: Man's use of dozens of "resources" and his total dependence on certain of them (like dependence on fossil fuels) exhausts certain presences in the biosphere with incalculable results on the other members of the network: while rendering mankind vulnerable to the consequences of the loss of major supplies. In fragile areas animals and birds have all but been extincted in pursuit of furs or feathers or fertilizer or oil: the soil is "used up" and all of this to feed outrageous excesses like war, or a phoney consumption-oriented economy. Goal: Balance, harmony, humility, the true affluence of being a good member of the community of living creatures. Action Social/political: Seek out new self-renewable energy sources. And: it must be taught ceaselessly til it sticks that a continually "growing economy" is no longer healthy, but a Cancer. Restructure business corporations so that they can function without presenting a contunually growing profit; stress responsible, controlled production. Soil banks, open space, phase out logging on federal land. Protection for all predators and varmints. Absolutely no further development of roads and concessions in National Parks and Wilderness areas; build auto campgrounds in the least desirable areas. Develop consumer-boycott and consumer research power in the areas of irresponsible and dishonest products. Thus: expose the myths of capitalism and the cold war. & Communist myths of growth and production by the by. The community: Sharing and conserving; boycotting the wasteful. The inherent aptness of communal life, where large tools are owned jointly, and personal objects are private. If enough people refused to buy a new car for one year, it would permanently alter the American economy. Re-cycling clothes and equipment. (Goodwill and Salvation Army are useful: they should perhaps be confronted and straightened out on their pricing and wage policies.) Support local handicrafts in shoes and clothes. Learn to break the habit of too many unnecessary possessions - a monkey on everybody's back - but avoid a self-abnegating anti-joyous self righteousness. Simplicity is light, carefree, neat, and loving-not a self-punishing ascetic trip. (The greatest Chinese poet, Tu Fu, said, "The ideas of a poet should be noble and simple.") Don't shoot a deer if you don't know how to use all the meat and preserve that which you can't eat; to tan the hide and use the leather - to use it all, with gratitude, right down to the sinew and hooves. Simplicity and mindfulness in diet is perhaps the starting point for most people. Our own heads: It is hard to even begin to gauge how much a complication of possessions, the habits of "ownership" and "use" stand between us and a true, clear, liberated way of seeing the world. To live lightly on the earth, to be aware and alive, to be free of egotism, starts with concrete acts, but the inner principle is the insight that we are interdependent energy fields of great potential wisdom and compassion - expressed in each person as a superb mind, a beautiful and complex body, and the almost magical capacity of language. To these potentials and capacities, "owning things" can add nothing of authenticity. "Clad in the sky with the earth for a pillow."
IV. TRANSFORMATION
The Condition Position: The unbalance in man's relation to nature & his selves is partly an inherent existential question with biological and ultimate roots - birth, suffering, old age and death; and partly a cultural problem. In approaching questions of Being and Emptiness we have the wisdom traditions and some emerging sciences to help us. In transforming culture, we must augment the philosophical perceptions with a deep study of history and anthropology. Situation: Our civilized - and probably most other - societies of the last three millenia have functioned well enough up to this point. But they no longer have survival value. They are now anti-survival.
Goal: Nothing short of total transformation will work. What we envision is a planet on which the human population lives harmoniously and dynamically by employing a sophisticated and unobtrusive technology in a world environment which is "left natural." Specific points in this vision: A healthy and spacious population of all races, much less in number than today. Cultural and individual pluralism, unified by a type of world tribal council. Division by natural and cultural areas rather than arbitrary political boundaries. A Technology of communication and quiet transportation: land use being sensitive to the properties of each region. Allowing, thus, the bison to return to much of the high plains. Careful but intensive agriculture in the great alluvial valleys. Computer technicians who run the plant part of the year and walk along with the Elk in their migration during the rest A basic cultural outlook and social organization that inhibits power and property-seeking while encouraging exploration and challenge in things like healing songs, flute-playing, meditation, mathmatics, mountaineering, and all the other possible ways of authentic being-in-the-world. Women totally free and equal. A new kind of family responsible, but more festive and relaxed - is implicit. Action Social/political: It seems evident that there are throughout the world certain social and religious forces that have worked throughout history toward an ecologically/culturally enlightened state of affairs. Let these be encouraged: Alchemists, hip Marxists, Anarchists, Third Worlds, Teilhard and cryptoGnostic Catholics, Druids, Witches, Taoists, Biologists, Yogins, Quakers, Tibetans, Zens, Shamans, Sufis, Amish and Mennonite, American Indians, Polynesians - all primitive cultures, all communal and ashram movements of all persuasions, &c. The list is long. Since it doesn't seem practical or even desirable th think that direct bloody force will achieve anything, it would be best to consider this a continuing "revolution of consciousness" which will be won not by guns but by siezing the key images, myths, archetypes, eschatologies, and ecstasies so that life won't seem worth living unless one's on the transforming energy's side. Our community: Without falling into a facile McLuhanism, we can hope to use the media. New schools, new classes, - walking in the woods and cleaning up the streets. Let no one be ignorant of the facts of biology and related disciplines; bring up our children with natural things and a taste of the wild. Let some groups establish themselves in backwater rural areas and flourish, let others maintain themselves in the urban centers, and let them work together, a two-way flow of experience, people, money and home-grown vegetables. Investigating new lifestyles is our work - as is the exploration of Ways to change one's innerworld - with the known dangers of crashing that go with such. We should work where it helps with political people, hoping to enlarge their vision. And with people of all varieties of politics or ideologies at whatever point they become aware of environmental urgencies. Master the archaic and the primitive, as models of basic nature-related cultural styles, as well as the most imaginative future possibilities of science and technology, and build a community where these two vectors cross. Our own heads: Is where it starts. Knowing that we are the first human beings in history to have all of man's culture and previous experience available to our study, and being free enough of the weight of traditional cultures to seek out a larger identity. - The first members of a civilized society since the early Neolithic to wish to look clearly into the eyes of the wild and see our selfhood, our family, there. We have these advantages to set off the obvious disadvantages of being as screwed up as we are - which gives us a fair chance to penetrate into some of the riddles of ourselves & the universe, and to go beyond the idea of "man's survival" or "the survival of the biosphere" and to draw our strength from the realization that at the heart of things is some kind of serene and ecstatic process which is actually beyond qualities and beyond birth-and-death. "No need to survive!" "In the fires that destroy the universe at the end of the kalpa, what survives?" - 'The iron tree blooms in the void!" Knowing that nothing need be done, is where we begin to move from.
13. VIII. 40069 from WHOLE EARTH CATALOG SUPPLEMENT September, 1969 Usually aging in concrete vats or cisterns sunk in the earth adjoining the field is the only processing. After @ 2 months the material is a consistent fluid which can be ladled or pumped into the soil between rows of plants. Problems of worms and disease in Japan are negligible.
Okay. Play their silly game. In Arizona, for instance, I've rambled over mile after mind-boggling mile where you can stake a recognized mining claim by registering with a local office and digging a hole four by six by ten feet deep. Naturally, once you've proved your claim in this manner, you'll want to move right onto the property to keep an eye on it. To hold the ground, you're required to put in a hundred dollars worth of improvements plus a few dollars tax each year. Again, if that's too much trouble, just go out in the hills and squat. Thousands of others have. If you've got your heart set on legal title to fertile land that is close to the action of a thriving city . . . that's possible, too. It won't be completely free, but you can sometimes pick up an abandoned farm for back taxes. It requires some sleuthing and finagling, however, and the easiest way is just to buy a little family farm that an old couple wants to sell. The Strout and United Farm Agency catalogues - regularly advertised in the classified sections of many magazines and newspapers - always list a number of such farms in all parts of the country. Some can be purchased for as little as four-hundred dollars down. Newly organized communes and hip young couples with eyes for a rural homestead are snapping them up at an increasing rate. Once you've got your land, what about shelter? It's up to you: let your imagination soar! Leary and hundreds of others are into the aborigine thing these days and live in plains Indian tepees. It makes sense because, unlike white man's tents, a properly constructed tepee is warm in winter, cool in summer, and able to withstand windstorms that will flatten a frame house. Reginald and Gladys Laubin's The Indian Tipi will steep you in the rich tradition of this practical shelter and teach you how to build one. If you prefer something more substantial, you can construct a thoroughly modern ranch house dirt cheap by using just that - dirt. Even a definitive instruction manual, Handbook For Building Homes Of Earth, is free from HUD, Division of International Affairs, Washington, D.C. The basic structure will cost you little more than your labor and,
possibly, a few dollars for stabilizing agents. It beats the hell out of a thirty-year mortgage or monthly rents of one-hundred-and-twenty-plus. Then again, if you're squatting, chances are there's an abandoned trapper's or miner's cabin nearby that you can move into or salvage for a new building. If you put your money down on a farm, you probably picked one with a habitable home and serviceable barns. Or, as a number of drop-outs are proving, you can live in a structure as modern as tomorrow on a very thin shoestring: by spinning free-span domes from tops hacked out of discarded auto bodies, some of the new pioneers in the southwest have combined the best and worst of modern technology into a sheltering mutation. Since the car tops can be obtained free or for as little as twenty-five cents each, a thirty-foot dome can be thrown up for less than fifty dollars. With land and shelter under your belt, you'll probably want to turn your attention to food which is several notches above that polyethylene stuff sold at the supermarket. Fresh air, sunshine, and a garden where "fruits and vegetables are free for the picking" go together as naturally as ham and eggs from your own homestead. A subscription to Organic Gardening will give you that proverbial green thumb within a year . . . and teach you about the chickens, pigs, and cows, too. If grow-your-own intimidates you, you can still live high harvesting your share of the tons of free-for-the-gathering food that every square mile of rural America offers. The best guides to this bounty are Euell Gibbons' three books, Stalking The Wild Asparagus, Stalking The Blue-Eyed Scallop, and Stalking The Healthful Herbs . Gibbons regularly eats everything he writes about, and he covers it all from robbing bee trees to picking berries to gathering greens to brewing dandelion wine to making rose petal jam. But then, the nature bit may leave you cold. Let's say you love your apartment in town, you dote upon restaurant chow, and all you really need to make your life complete is travel, new scenes, and far-away places. Fine. You can do that without money, too . . . andgo first class all the way. The auto drive-away offers one increasingly popular method. If you're twenty-one and have a valid driver's license, you can get from almost any large city to almost any point in the U.S.A. at almost any time by driving a car for someone. AAACON, Auto Driveaway. and other services handle all the dirty details and advertise in the "Personal" and "Transportation" classified sections of the larger newspapers. You may have to juggle your departure date a little to get a car that's "full gas paid," but when you do - if you sleep in the car or camp out along the way - the trip will cost you only your food. It's even possible to get enough expense money to cover everything and leave some cash in your pocket. And remember: You'll have the private use of a generally expensive personal car. Load it with gear and forget all the hassles that hitchers put up with. I know some pretty big rock names that occasionally transport large quantities of guitars and amps across the country this way. Once I drove, a series of three luxury cars from New York City to Anchorage, Alaska, with less than two days of "down" time for changes . . . and I made money on the trip.
You can also savor the romance of traveling on your thumb . . . by business and private airplane. I've been doing this for fifteen years; it's easy. Go out to any medium-large private airfield on a nice day and station yourself near the flight line, aircraft parking area, or operations office. When you see someone heading for a plane in a businesslike manner, ask if he's going your way. You may pick up a 2,000-mile ride. "But won't I need to know a lot about aviation?" No. Pilots love to turn greenhorns on to flying, and a lack of knowledge can be your most endearing quality. If you feel uncomfortable hanging around airports, though, you can take a couple of the five-dollar introductory flying lessons that Piper and Cessna offer. Otherwise, dress neatly and carry only one very small bag. You'll get rides. If air hitching is not your stroke, how would you like to be asked to cruise the South Pacific, the Riviera, or even around the world in a private yacht? Yeah, I know. It's too good to be true. But it is true. Go to a yacht harbor. The bigger and plusher and more glamorous, the better. Ala Wai Basin just off Waikiki Beach in Honolulu used to work superbly for me, and friends who've thumbed across Europe say the expensive watering spots along the Mediterranean are great. If you're stuck on Mainland, U.S.A., find the nearest coastal city that has an extensive boat scene and go there. Hang around the ocean-going ketches, schooners, and yawls of forty feet and bigger. If you're warm, breathing, and can stand up by yourself, you should get two or three cruise offers a week. A "ride wanted" notice on the harbor bulletin board can start a stampede. Why? Because a lot of people have made a lot of money lately and much of that bread has been spent on luxury yachts. I mean, other than a Learjet, what else is there for sheer prestige? On the other hand, it takes a crew to sail one of the damn things, and crews are both expensive and hard to get unless . . . unless someone can be found who wants to go to Rio or Cape Town or Tahiti so bad he'll help man the vessel for the trip, meals, and - maybe - fifty dollars on top. And that's exactly where you come in. So okay. So it is possible to break loose . . . but where's the bread going to come from? Can you actually do exactly what you want and still coy the loot? Damn right. In fact, you're more likely to make vast quantities of cash if you are joyfully in tune with yourself. This is the electronic Information Age. Anything you know is a marketable commodity. Go where your fancy leads you. Develop the skills and cultivate the interests you want to have. Then trade that specialized knowledge for the money that others will be eager to force on you. Bradford Angier dropped out to a remote cabin in the Canadian Rockies . . . and made a small fortune writing about it. My old lady is hung up on English saddle-bred horses. She knows so much about them she can now instruct ten riding students at a time at five bucks each. I dig, of all things, little do-it-yourself one- and two-man airplanes that you build at home, and I make a better-than-average living dealing information about them. Go where you want to be and pick up the free percentage that's always there. You'll soon be considered an authority or a craftsman or - at the very least a fixture in your chosen field. When the money comes down, you'll get your share. And you'll also get some juicy, unexpected spinoffs. Like a two-month all-expenses-plus-pay tour of Europe with the people you love. I did, anyway, and it happened because I dug folk music when it was big and I spent a lot of time in the coffee houses where it was played. Gradually I came to know and became very tight with - a number of musicians. Since I was about the only one in the crowd who didn't perform, guess who was a logical choice when The Bitter End Singers needed a road manager for their European trip? That's right. And the moral of the story is simply this: You can get out of the pigeonhole "they" want to keep you in and you can live exactly the dream life you want. Just do it.
REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF THE SATURDAY EVENING POST AND DARRELL HUFF A free-lance jack-of-all-trades tells how a family can live like millionaires on a modest income.
A few years ago an old friend from the East Coast came to visit us. He enjoyed his stay in our modern country house, roamed our wooded hills, rode our saddle horses, swam in our pool and sunned himself on the terrace of our guest cottage. One evening after dinner - there was wine from a neighboring vineyard we projected some color pictures of a recent trip to Mexico. This led to lively talk about the year we were soon to spend traveling in Europe. A refugee from a crowded New York City apartment house our guest was obviously impressed with our way of life. In fact, when he got home, he sent us a letter larded with envy. "You had led me to believe you were a poor man," he wrote. "Now I know you have been deceiving me. However, I forgive you because I was glad to catch a glimpse of how a millionaire lives." My wife Fran and our two youngest daughters were sitting before the picture window in our living room as I read this letter to them. When I got to the word "millionaire," my daughters burst into giggles. I looked at my wife. Her face was serious. "Shall I disillusion him?" I asked. As most women, Fran seldom answers a question directly. "The funny thing is that it's all true," she said. "We do have these things, and we do take those trips. In fact, I'm not sure that we don't come closer to living like the rich than the rich do these days."
Sixteen Years of Plenty She was right. Fran my four daughters and myself have for the past sixteen years lived the life of millionaires at least in most of the ways that we think count. We've had a handsome home in one of the loveliest parts of California. We've had plenty of space to move around in. We've had animals, we've had a pool, we've had many months of foreign travel. And we've sent two daughters to college. But the curious thing about all this - and it's hard to make people believe it - is that during those sixteen years our total income has averaged less than $6500 a year. As it happens, that figure is close to the average for American families. What's more, we have not supplemented our income by dipping into capital. We've never had much to
dip into. How have we done it? To answer that question, I must go back to the beginningto New York City in 1946 - just after the Second World War. I suppose the whole thing got started because I developed a habit of grinding my teeth in my sleep. I was an editor at the time. I was also a typical entry in The Rat Race. I had two daughters then (Kay was eight, and Carolyn six), and in an uncomfortable gray-flannel suit I used to commute daily to my desk, where I earned $8500 a year. Weekends I lugged home a briefcase bulging with manuscripts to be read. My blood pressure has always been low, and so has my physical energy. The Race was taking its toll. One night when the teeth grinding was particularly ominous, my wife woke me. "This has got to stop," she said. I thought she meant the teeth grinding, and I agreed. But it turned out she had other things in mind. "Let's get away from all this," she said. "You can go back to freelancing." "You don't mean it," I said. "Yes, I do." Free-lance writing and photography had supported me through college, but I knew it was a precarious way of earning a living. Besides, I now had a wife and children to support. I could probably earn a bare subsistence for them as a free lance, but little more. My wife said it didn't make any difference. "If there are to be any luxuries in our life, we'll just figure out a way to have them without much money," she said optimistically. I don't think she believed it at the time, but nevertheless that's what happened. We decided to move to California and build our own house. Stiffening for our backbones was supplied by our neighbor, Paul Corey, novelist and pioneer do-it-yourself advocate, who promised to bring his family to join us the next year. We bought a secondhand trailer for $900 and attached it to the back of our 1941 sedan. We shipped a few personal possessions on ahead and lugged a few with us. Most of our belongings we sold. When we pulled out of New York City, headed West, we had about $4000 in cash. With our limited funds, we had little time to waste in finding a place to settle. Consequently, when we saw a section north of San Francisco known as the Valley of the Moon, we didn't hesitate. It was only five miles from Sonoma, where there were good schools, good doctors and good shopping, which we considered essential. We found ten stony acres with a beautiful view of the California foothills, and we quickly bought them for $1500. We parted with another $1000 for a well and a pump. Parking our trailer on the grounds, we entered the kids in school and started to clear the property for our house. I lost no time in unpacking my typewriter. Our cash reserves were down to about $1000, and I had to put in a fair amount of time each day writing. Whenever I wasn't writing, I worked on the house. Up to that time, my biggest construction project had been a bookcase and dining-room table. I found a house easier to build. Tolerances on a home can be fairly large - as much as a quarter of an inch; cabinetwork calls for more precision. Of course there is no comparison in the satisfaction one gets from the larger job. With hammer, saw, pipe wrench and sweat, I was able to create a home for my family. It was a heady experience, and it sustained me during the long hours of work, both building and writing.
"Toughest Day in My Life" I don't mean that I did it entirely alone. My family helped, and we had a small amount of hired assistance. We began by clearing the brush. No experts were necessary for that. Then we laid down a long concrete slab the length of the house. For this we hired three temporarily unemployed carpenters. We originally planned to build a frame house but could not, because of the lumber shortage. Instead we threw up concrete blocks, which were cheap, durable, fireproof - and unrationed. We put in huge picture windows that gave breathtaking views of the mountains beyond. And to frame those windows, we bought some cheap but hefty redwood timbers from an old mansion being torn down. The day a trucker and I sorted, loaded, trucked and unloaded that wood was physically the toughest day in my life.
I had drawn a rough plan for the house, but I knew nothing about construction codes. Fortunately we were so far from town that there were none to worry about. In fear of building an unsafe shelter for my family, I went far beyond most codes in providing strength and safety - though I didn't know it until one Sunday morning when my neighbor, a plumber and construction man, came to watch me placing steel reinforcing in the walls. "If we have an earthquake and tidal wave," he remarked consolingly, "you can be sure your home won't break up. It will just float away in one piece."
Gradually our house began to take shape. I hired seventy-five dollars' worth of labor to lay down soil lines and a sewage system, an aspect of plumbing I didn't want to try myself. I hired a local handyman to build a massive fireplace that would take four-foot logs. All told, hired labor cost us $500. The kids dug holes, carried blocks and learned to swing a hammer well enough to nail on roof boards. Fran laid blocks, tooled joints and did all the painting. And the more we did, the more we learned. Five months after we reached California, we had a house of sorts. It lacked partitions, the interior was unfinished overhead and underfoot, but it was fit to live in. And after living for months in the trailer, it was exhilarating to move into a real house - with a huge fireplace, a wall of glass facing those glorious mountains, and bedrooms for all of us. After we'd carried our suitcases across the threshold, we built an enormous fire in the fireplace and settled back to enjoy it. The refinements could come later. We had a home of our own at last, and we felt like royalty. During all this time, of course, I continued to pound away at my typewriter, keeping our income at a subsistence level or a little better. It wasn't long before our family grew to five, and then six. And as we grew, the house grew. We kept right on building, adding a bedroom, a sitting room, finally a study. It took us about eleven years to finish the house, and we enjoyed watching it grow slowly but surely. During those eleven years we never had to borrow any money for the house. All told, we put into it about $1000 a year, roughly what we might have paid in rent. That was a good deal less than we had been paying for a house in the New York area, and the nice thing about our new setup was that all our money (and our labor) was going to build an equity. In the end, that equity consisted of a house of 1300 square feet, plus two big porches, a carport, a shop, a detached study and darkroom, and a guesthouse. If we had bought it, we figured it would have cost at least $22,000, or twice the amount of cash we'd put into it. And we had no mortgage. There were unexpected dividends along the way. Other people came out and admired what we were doing and wanted some of our land. We decided to part with a few acres, selling them for what our whole tract had originally cost. And so, in the end, our land cost us nothing. Part of that windfall we put into a swimming pool. Acquiring a pool can be a backbreaking expense, but for us it merely meant flexing a few muscles. By this time we had learned the shortcuts. The excavation was a pick-and-shovel job shared with the Coreys, now our neighbors again. It occupied all of us for weekends during several months. We had to buy concrete and steel, but we put the materials in place ourselves, plastering the concrete onto the sloping earth sides. We brought the whole thing in, for less than $400, and to us it looked as inviting as Waikiki. And now - about those saddle horses. Actually we owned only one: a mare that we purchased for seventy-five dollars. But the Coreys bought a horse at the same time, and we decided to share them, so we both felt as though we owned two horses. Having the mare prompted us to build a stable. When it was finished, our horse scorned it. At first the structure became a playroom; eventually it evolved into a two-room apartment for our older girls. And when they went to college, it entered a new career as a guest cottage.
College, incidentally, turned out to be far less of an obstacle than we'd feared. We knew that a year at a good girls' college could run to almost half what our annual income had been during most years, but Kay won a scholarship that took care of one third of her expenses. Another third was taken care of by a college job, plus summer work. We put up $700 each year she was at Mills College, no more than it takes to keep a youngster at home and send her to high school. Long before Kay had started college our family had entered upon a new and important phase of millionaire living - foreign travel. It started with a trip to Mexico. In 1955 we had almost a decade of California life behind us, and our house was all but finished. We were tired of being in one place, and the rest of the world beckoned. But how to travel on our budget with four kids?
For a while we were stumped. Then it came to us: Why not apply our do-it-yourself principles and camp our way across Mexico! A bargain fell into our laps via the advertising columns of our local newspaper. We acquired a camping trailer, with kitchen facilities and an attachable tent. It cost $175, but we got this sum back when we resold it at the end of the trip. We slept and cooked in our midget rig and had no need for hotels or restaurants. What had looked like an expensive venture turned out to cost just about what it would have cost us to stay home. Our two months' trip ran to just under $800. The Mexican journey piqued our appetites for travel abroad. After two years we could stand it no longer; in 1957 we left California for a year's trip to Europe. After camping across the country and selling our station wagon in New Jersey, we sailed for Rotterdam in July, tourist class, on the handsome new Statendam. The fare was $237.50 each, with half price for our two younger daughters. But with that large expenditure out of the way, we found that travel in Europe need be no more expensive than in Mexico. We picked up a used Volkswagen Microbus, and spent the whole summer camping-in Scandinavia, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, France, Belgium, Italy, Spain and Portugal, plus a side trip to North Africa. We bought our food in grocery stores (equivalent to U.S. prices in France and Italy, but less elsewhere), and, instead of rent, paid camping fees. Charges ranged from twenty-five cents a night in a few places to $1.50 in Paris, Rome and the Riviera. When the weather got chilly, we gave up camping for a series of rented houses, all of them near the sea. We had houses that winter in Majorca, Torremolinos and Naples. Rents averaged sixty to eighty dollars a month, and food forty to forty-five dollars a week, about one dollar a day per person.
Studying the Easy Way Our youngsters missed a year in school - no great loss, really. We brought along school books for Laurie and Kristy, who were in the third and fifth grades. It was a bit alarming to discover that by studying only an hour or two a day they were easily able to keep up with the work of a better-than-average American public school.
Our eldest daughter delayed her college work by a year, but picked up a bonus studying French in Europe. What she'd learned in France met two years of her language requirement. As for Carolyn, our second daughter, the year turned out to be a decisive one for her education. She fell in love with Spain. She kept a sketchbook and polished her Spanish and, when she later entered the University of California, she majored in Spanish and minored in art. Our stay abroad ended in September, 1958, when we returned home just in time for school. Looking back on it, Fran and I were convinced it was one of the most valuable educational experiences we could have given our children. That trip, however, didn't satisfy our wanderlust; we soon began planning another itinerary. This week Kristy, Laurie, Fran and I will return to Paris. We'll pick up a car there and head for Greece and some of the Iron Curtain countries. Expenses shouldn't exceed $15 per day although we may run into some occasional discomforts. As a matter of fact, our whole do-it-yourself way of living has frequent drawbacks. For one thing, there aren't many steaks in our diet. We seldom can afford the luxury of dining out. We also lack the money to buy even one tenth of the books we'd like; we have to wait until we can borrow them at the library. Free-lancing - whether it's as a writer, plumber, electrician or carpenter - also has its drawbacks. We never knew exactly what our income was going to be. Some years it fell as low as $4000, some years it soared above $8000. It averaged under $6500 and, when I subtracted business expenses the net came to a good deal less. With that kind of money, we had to be canny shoppers. We read the grocery ads for weekend specials, and we began our Christmas shopping with the January sales. We did a bit of installment buying, but mostly we stuck to cash. Our income limitations made us more niggardly in our charity contributions than we liked, but here again we decided to make up for it with a do-it-yourself approach. Since we couldn't give money, we gave ourselves. I have worked hard on school-building committees. Last year Fran devoted an afternoon a week to supervising the school library, and this year she has worked as an unpaid grader of high-school English papers. In general, most of the drawbacks have been slight in our eyes, and we have done all the major things we really wanted to do. We have always wanted, for example, to live by the sea. Consequently we reached a big decision: to sell our house. In view of all the muscle strain, sweat and bashed fingers we had put into it, parting with the house was wrenching. But the pull of the sea was strong, and so was the itch to get building again. We sold our Sonoma Valley place, along with several acres, for $19,000. Then we put $5000 into two exciting acres of land - a blend of pinewoods and sand dunes overlooking a magnificent stretch of seacoast on the Monterey Peninsula. The rest of the money was just about what we needed for the concrete and lumber and glass and all the other things you need to build a house. Our second house is now virtually complete. And although our brood of children has become smaller - the two older girls have already married - our new home has become larger. With its double garage, it comes to some 3000 square feet. It has four bedrooms, a study, three baths and a hexagonal living room that looks directly over the Pacific. Assessing the past few years, we feel our children have certainly thrived on our way of living. Last June our second daughter, Carolyn, finished college free of debt. Kay is now taking part-time graduate work along with her
husband, who plans to be a college teacher. Kristy and Laurie show promise as students, and their aptitude, combined with the self-reliance they have learned from building and travel, makes us feel that college will not be a big problem for them.
Our Surprising Assets Of course, we never seem to have any money. However, when we examine our balance sheet, it's apparent that we have achieved a position no worse than most. In fact, when I filed a financial statement at our bank recently, I was surprised to find how much our assets amounted to: Value of house (compared with building costs in neighborhood) Value of land Adjoining acre (two lots) Five acres left in Sonoma Valley Investment (7% first deed of trust) Auto Tools, photography equipment, furnishings, personal property
The interesting thing about our balance sheet is that it shows roughly ten times the net worth I could have claimed when we left New York City sixteen years ago. But if the balance sheet is gratifying, it's only fair to admit that we didn't really plan it that way. All we planned was to live the way we really wanted. Seldom - when we were building, or traveling, or studying, or riding horseback, or swimming, or just loafing - did we think much about money. In fact, if we thought about it at all, we felt we had discovered something far better. - THE END
FREELANCE CARTOONING
Now look, Gang, don't get us wrong: We're most certainly not suggesting that half the readers of TMEN are gonna run out and become freelance cartoonists immediately after reading the following articles. A few, yes. The great majority, no. We've gone pretty deeply into the HOW of this particular work-at-home. dodge, though, for several reasons: (1) It's a fascinating field, (2) It's part of the communications/persuasion industry which plays an increasingly important (ask Spiro T.) part in our lives, (3) Like writing, commercial art and various other skills and crafts, cartooning does offer a way out of the 9-to-5 rap for a certain number of talented and determined individuals, (4) It's mainly a mail-order operation which means it neatly sidesteps race, color, creed and most other excuses we all use for putting bad trips on each other and (5) Successful freelancing whether as plumber, cartoonist, cake baker, baby sitter, candle maker or whatever depends on a certain life style . . . a way of looking at things . . . all its own. The products (skill, drawings, pastry, mere presence, decorator items, etc.) may differ but the ground rules are always the same: You're either your own man, work when, where and at what you like and successfully exchange your output for what you need and want . . . or you go back to pumping gas on the corner. So, even if you think you have no drawing ability and you couldn't care less about trying to sell funny pictures to magazines, come on along. You're going to learn how to get a highly specialized art - or other - education for very little money (maybe even free), you'll find a definite step-by-step drop-out-and-do-your-own-thing plan used by one successful cartoonist and Carl Kohler's section, in particular, should (a) turn you on to some immediate money-making angles if you are, or want to be, a cartoonist or (b) just generally turn you on if you're not a tooner but need some inspiration from a sassy, successful practitioner of an alternate life style. So you wanna be a cartoonist? . . . Great! But why? Why? Yes, why . . . because if you're just looking for an easy way out, this probably isn't it. Cartooning, like most other endeavors, can be brutally hard work . . . and, like most other endeavors, it can be deliriously wonderful play that you just happen to get paid for. Let's stop and lay down some ground rules right in front: We presently live in a society that puts a price tag on virtually everything, right? Right. And that can be a real drag, right? Right. Because you always wind up having to put in your time on a job you hate just to get the necessities of life, right? Wrong! It doesn't have to be that way, gang. It's all in how you look at it. Remember, we said, "The society puts a price tag on virtually everything". OK. There's no reason why you can't make that work for, rather than against, you. It's easy. First, decide what you really want to do; second, start doing it (as long as you're not putting a bad trip on someone or something else) and third, figure out some way to exchange what you do for what you want and need. If you're hung up on horses and hate office work, in other words, you'd be damn foolish to work all week as a secretary just so you could pay the rent, put food on the table and-maybehave enough left over to ride an hour or two each weekend at some expensive stable . . . yet that's exactly what an awful lot of babes do. But not my clever
little wife. She loves horses so she teaches riding, trains, shows and judges horses . . . and, incidentally, makes twice what any desk job would pay her. Rule Number One in Successful Living, then, goes something like this: Get yourself together, find out where the action is for you, go there . . . and start making it happen. As Thoreau said, "Build your castles in the air . . . and then put foundations under them". So, for the sake of argument, let's say that cartooning is your thing. You're fascinated by the idea of communicating with handdrawn pictures, you dig the Ego trip of being a successful artist or cartooning just appeals to some artsy craftsy element in your nature. It doesn't matter. Don't analyse it. All you have to know is that cartooning is Your Thing. Fine. Now, how are you going to start? With ten years of art school or an expensive home study course and a fancy studio with all the trimmings? Not on your life . . . or, I should say, not with your life. You haven't got that much time. You're interested in beginning right here and now. And, just so you can walk away from that factory job (work) and start cartooning (play) any time you feel like it, you're gonna want to make it begin paying off just as soon as possible. Here's HOW: Every field of endeavor, every sport, every industry, every special interest group - it seems - in the country has one or two or 7 or 12 or more magazines, papers or newsletters published just for it. If the publication covers the field, it's called a trade journal. If it's put out by one company or subgroup within the field for "their own", it's called a house organ. TJs and HOs are what you look for whenever you want to get inside a field or a special interest group, quickly and easily. As a cartoonist, these publications should doubly interest you because a couple are going to teach you How and the others are going to buy a lot of your finished work. Forget the shysters who exaggerate the opportunities in the field while selling you an overpriced art course or a truckload of fancy equipment. Forget the dilettantes who always flutter about the edges of the action. Go right to the heart of whatever field interests you by getting your hands on current copies of the working trade journals of that field. There's no faster, easier, better way to pick up inside language, check out the economics, get filled in on the latest methods, spot developing trends and learn "who's who" in the particular establishment or power structure that interests you. When I decided to break into cartooning - back in the mid-50s -Don Ulsh's NEW YORK CARTOON NEWS and George Hartman's INFORMATION GUIDE were the two "bibles" that showed me the way. Through them, I learned very quickly that, while my cartooning was less than professional, there was definitely a market for the gags I was writing. So I switched to writing for other cartoonists (who I often found listed in NYCN and IG), and used the money I earned that way to finance the improvement of my drawing. Within six months (while I was still an ignorant 16 year old Indiana farm boy) I had had gags, drawn by other artists, published in Collier's, True and lesser markets and I was selling cartoons of my own. I had never had (still haven't) an art lesson, I owned no expensive drawing equipment and I definitely wasn't a genius. I had just used the cartooning papers as a magic carpet to get me where I wanted to go. I've since used my cartoon experience as a springboard into some nice public relations and writing jobs and I've kind of drifted away from the field. If I wanted to get back to the drawing board today (or if I was just starting out), however, my first move would be to get my name on the mailing list for the IG. It's now called CARTOON WORLD and is published from P.O. Box 30367, Lincoln, Nebraska 68570 for $15.00 a year. NEW YORK CARTOON NEWS is no longer around but, for an annual $17.00, GAG RE-CAP PUBLICATIONS puts out a regular cartoon sheet from P.O. Box 86, East Meadow, N.Y. 11554 . . . and I'd get it. I'd also, maybe, invest $3.50 in CAREERS IN CARTOONING by Lawrence Lariar and $4.95 for Jack Markow's CARTOONIST'S AND GAG WRITER'S HANDBOOK if I couldn't find them in a library. That, plus the following articles by Kohler, would give me (and should give you) enough marketing information to Make It.
And remember, whether you're trying to make it inside or outside the present establishment, the key to success is marketing. If you don't somehow swap what you have too much of (beans, fence posts, cartoons, ripe fruit or enthusiasm) for what you need (shoes, bananas and automobiles), you ain't gonna make it. But what about drawing . . . isn't that important too? Yes, but not as important as you may think. A poorly drawn cartoon with a strong gag that hits the readers of a particular magazine right between the eyes will always sell before the beautiful rendering that isn't really relevant. This is no excuse for lousy artwork, understand, but it does explain why, contrary to what most cartoon course peddlers tell you, you don't need to go to any art school or take any course on the market to become a cartoonist. As a matter of fact, I feel very strongly that - unless you're really a lazy lout who needs to be pushed, and pushed hard, to start a gag or finish a drawing (and what are you doing in cartooning, in that case?) - you'll find most instruction in the field (and most other fields, too) vastly overpriced and largely irrelevant. You don't really want all those pre-packaged assignments, penpal letters and a $500.00 diploma to hang on the wall, do you? Maybe so, maybe not. As for me, I was more interested in kicking the 9-to-5 job . . . and that meant selling cartoons. If you're determined to squander your hard earned loot on a cartoon or commercial - or even fine arts - course, I will give one company a left-handed recommendation: Any of the Famous Artists courses is a bargain . . . at about one-sixth the current asking price of, I believe, over $500.00 each. I made the rounds, one week, with a Famous Schools salesman and I know about what everything from the salesmen's commission and district manager's override right through the triple-page ads in the glossy magazines costs the company. After all the hype, there isn't much left for art instruction. No worse than other firms in the field, you understand, but not a lot better either. Besides, there's literally tens and tens of thousands of courses from that one company (and as many, if not more, from each of the others) gathering dust on bookshelves throughout this country. A two line classified ad in any big city paper should get you a lot of answers and at least one course for $75.00 - which is what I paid for mine - or less. A good course, used as a reference, can be valuable to you but it's only worth what you take out of it. The most important thing for you to do if you want to be a cartoonist, is to draw every chance you get. And don't take the lazy man's way out and only draw the things that are easy for you. You're only fooling yourself if you do. Draw, and keep on drawing . . . from life, from memory, from imagination. You don't need fancy drawing pencils and pads either. Ordinary note books and regular pencils (whatever number you prefer) are plenty good enough. The really important thing is the developing coordination between your hand and eye. And here's a fact that should surprise you . . . the best teachers in the world are all set to help you for FREE. That's right, the cartoonists who sell their work for the highest prices today are ready to teach you to draw. All you have to do is leaf through any magazine or newspaper that prints cartoons. If you don't have any lying around, go out and ask the neighbors for back issues . . . or make a trip down to the nearest waste paper firm. Get yourself a big stack of magazines with cartoons in them. Then go through all the publications and clip out all the cartoons you find. Keep it up until you've got drawings by every artist whose work you can get your hands on. These cartoonists are the best teachers in the world. Why? Because these are the guys who are selling their work, right now, today. Forget all the two-bit teachers who never sold a drawing in their life. Forget all the dated artwork in the cartoon courses. Study what the selling artists are doing. They're the ones who really know what cartooning is all about.
Notice how they place their characters. See how they vary the lines in their drawings. Study their methods of shading. Compare the different ways they draw people. Look at the way they sketch the backgrounds. Soak up every detail of every drawing you can get into your file. Then try to draw that way yourself. Use every trick you can steal to make your drawings sparkle just like the professionals. Gradually, you'll pick up one idea from one artist, something else from a second and another wrinkle from a third. Pretty soon, you'll be cranking out clean cartoons in a style all your own. If you don't think you can learn about drawing this way, let me tell you something: The pros do this all the time . . . it's the way it's done. So go to it. Some skills, such as learning to draw perspective, you'll probably have to learn from regular art books because it is hard to acquire such knowledge merely by looking at finished art work. In the main, however, you will find that the best cartoon instruction in the world is only as far away as the nearest printed cartoon. THE TOOLS OF THE TRADE As for supplies needed to begin cartooning . . . here again you can forget the sharpsters who want to sell you everything from hand-engraved sketch pads to chromed drawing tables. Essential, of course, is a pencil. Ordinary every day pencils are plenty good enough for a start. When you think you need something better, you will probably want a few real drawing pencils since you can specify their lead hardness much more exactly. They're graded from 7H (a very hard lead that makes a light line) through F (medium) to 7B (the softest, blackest lead). I usually wind up using a 2H and 4H most of the time. You may find other grades more suitable to your touch. Paper is another primary must. Professional cartoonists use regular typing paper for the most part and there is no reason for you to buy anything any more expensive. For rough drawing and just doodling, use a cheap 16 pound paper. Inked cartoons that are submitted to editors should be done on a good grade of 20 or 24 pound, 25% rag content paper. Only a few artists who regularly do complicated cartoons with tints and washes (colored or black ink mixed with water and used like water colors on a finished drawing) for the top-paying markets (Esquire, Playboy, etc.) ever use expensive drawing papers or illustration boards . . . and, then, only after submitting a rough idea on typing paper, usually. Another essential tool (at least for me) is a good eraser. Again, you can start with pencil erasers. But sooner or later you'll want a good "Artgum"and a kneaded rubber eraser. Cartoons used to always be done in ink, but that is changing rapidly now and it's not at all uncommon for a drawing done in black pencil and spray-fixed to be bought and reproduced in a middle or minor (or even major) magazine. Still, you should learn to handle ink . . . because you will be called on to produce an "inker" once in a while. As a matter of fact, while you're starting you'll make a much better impression on editors if you submit all your cartoons in ink. Later, when you're "in" with a few magazines, you can start sending in penciled roughs (rough drawings) or even typers (typed gags for an editor to read so that you only have to draw the particular cartoons he wants to buy). At any rate, black is the only color ink you'll need and most artists seem to prefer Higgins brand. Some artists use only brushes, other like pens and still others prefer to use a combination of the two for inking. You'll just have to find what is best for you. I've heard of cartoonists using brushes from no. 00 to no. 7. Afew popular pen points are Esterbrook 356 and 358 and Gillot's 290, 303 and 404. Gaining in favor are some of the new mechanical pens, particularly the Rapidograph, which are made in various sizes. A drawing board is pretty much standard equipment. Here again, you can save a lot of money by using a standard bread board or a piece of plywood for a starter. Prop it up on a table and you're in business. Later, when you have
the loot rolling in, you can buy a regular drawing table (there's some great bargains in used tables floating around) or make one from a flush door. Fancy light boards (which make tracing finished cartoons from a penciled rough much easier) are expensive so I made my first one from an old window pane and some scrap lumber. A mimeograph stencil light board also works well for less bread. A ruler, some paper clips, a few thumbtacks and a small piece of cloth for a pen wiper come in handy. For correcting ink mistakes, some opaque white is useful. Your local stationer's store probably has "Showcard" or "poster" white. As you progress you can pick up all kinds of stuff such as paste, T squares, a compass, triangles, blotting paper, colored ink, etc. but paper, pencil, black ink, ruler, drawing surface and eraser are all you really need to start. Remember, it's the finished cartoon you get paid for. . .not the equipment you used while drawing it. WRITING THE CARTOON IDEA Now that you're all set to draw, where will the ideas come from? Well, you can use one or more gag writers who will mail typed cartoon ideas to you. You then return the ones you don't like and draw up the others. When you sell one of the finished cartoons, you pay the gag writer 25% of the price you received for the drawing. Let's save the gag writers for your first dry spell: Here's how you'll think up your own gags: Start a morgue. All cartoonists have one and it's not as gruesome as it sounds. An artist's morgue is just a collection of pictures , cartoons, funny remarks, jokes, sketches, and a thousand and one other things. A cartoonist generally keeps two morgues: One of cartoons and drawings to refer to whenever he needs help while drawing and a separate collection of jokes, gags, etc. to primp the pump when he's writing gags. Organize your morgues any way you like . . . in old shoe boxes, cardboard cartons, filing cabinets, albums, notebooks or whatever. But do use a system so you can find what you want when you want it. Add new material constantly. Your morgue is your most valuable tool. Whenever you need fresh material, you'll start digging in the morgue and letting your imagination wander as you filter various bits of material through your brain. Pretty soon you'll come up with a combination you think is funny. You'll even begin to surprise yourself by suddenly thinking of a situation entirely different from the original idea you used to prime your creative process.
This is just a variation on the way most writers work and the magic word is cram. Cram yourself full of life. Use it all as your gag writer. Watch TV (if you can stomach it), listen to the radio, go to the movies, read, read, read and keep your eyes open. Soak up every impression you can absorb. Then, when you sit down to shape up some usuable gags, you will never have any trouble pulling ideas out of the air. Some of your best gems will pop out of your subconscious when you least expect it: While you're reading a good book or carrying out the ashes or just as you drift off to sleep. Once you train your mind to think up humorous ideas, you'll turn out material faster than you can use it. SELLING BEGINNING WORK Carl Kohler's excellent pieces which follow this diatribe are really gonna open your eyes to the marketing possibilities in cartooning. If you think you can only sell single panel gag cartoons to magazines, in other words, you're going to have your mind pleasantly stretched. Carl's underlying philosophy should prove quite valuable to anyone trying to make it outside the system with anything. Roughly translated, he's saying, "Life is just exactly what you make it". Although I kinda started at the top and worked down (my gags were published in slick, national magazines first, I next began selling the middle markets . . . and wound up doing local stuff last of all) most beginning cartoonists do best if they concentrate on digging the gold in their own back yard. Every top cartoonist in the country (the world, it seems) is trying to crack PLAYBOY, for instance, but you are probably the only artist knocking on the door of your hometown newspaper.
Prepare a sample kit of your very best work. Make it neat and as attractive as you can. Make two or more sample kits, and you'll have one to show and others to leave with interested prospects. Now visit local printers and stress the fast, customized nature of your work. There's a blue million "mat" and clip-art services . . . but there's no way for them to customize their art the way you'll be able to. Stop in at the local newspaper with some editorial or feature cartoons slanted especially for your town. Newspapers have access to more syndicated art work than they can use but most editors are always interested in something with a local flavor. Offer to do an editorial cartoon or a sports feature about local athletes . . . on a regular basis, of course. Maybe the paper is ripe for a feature reporting upcoming community projects. If you like to do caricatures or portraits, you might work up a regular weekly panel
featuring an outstanding citizen: The mayor, industrail leaders, local celebrities. Merchants can always use good eye-catching cartoons in their newspaper ads, posters, store windows, hand bills and all the stuff they give away free such as blotters, mailing pieces, etc. You just have to be enough of a gogetter to sell them on using your stuff. Do you know the comic strip, TUMBLEWEEDS? It's drawn by a fellow named Tom Ryan. Tom lives in Muncie, Indiana and I've known him a long time. When he was a beginning cartoonist (and that was just a few years ago) he sold one newspaper in Muncie the idea of using a little cartoon character, BENNY BEANS. This little guy was featured in the paper all the time: When the United Fund was having a drive, BENNY BEANS would be shown holding a poster or a collection can. During the yearly Paint Up-Fix Up-Clean Up campaign, BENNY BEANS would be seen sweeping the streets with a broom . . . and on and on and on. Tom was too clever to stop with that. He sold a local hardware store the idea of having another cartoon character, JIFFY JACKSON, in all their ads. And, eventually, Tom landed a syndicate for TUMBLEWEEDS and graduated into the Big Time . . .but his local cartoon work helped keep his family eating until he finally Made It. You might think that Tom had the cartoon business around Muncie all sewed up when he was doing the local work. Not so! A number of sign painters were doing the usual cartoons on trucks, billboards, buildings, etc.; another cartoonist occasionally contributed an editorial drawing for a second paper in town; I did some cartoons for WLBC-TV in Muncie; and a housewife successfully launched herself into a seasonal business decorating store windows with water color cartoons of Santa Claus and other Christmas scenes. I understand she still has a long list of regular customers for this service and she earns several hundred dollars every December this way. We'll go into the working methods of this idea in more detail in a later issue if anyone is interested, but about all it involves is chalking the basic layout on the outside of the plate glass windows of a store . . . and then going inside and doing the finish art work in show card colors. This is a little tricky because you're working backward . . . but, if you do the finish art on the outside of the window, rain and small boys will soon mess it up. One of the best ways to sell your work in the beginning is to offer to take your pay out in trade from the merchants you do work for. They like the idea and will often use your stuff this way when they won't pay for it in cash. George Hartman, publisher of CARTOON WORLD, says he always had 1,000 cans in his pantry throughout the depression just because he took goods in trade in return for printing a small town "shopper"on a mimeograph machine. We'll give you a more complete report on that idea later, too. Approach the chairmen of various clubs and offer to dress up their programs and announcements when they are planning special events. Maybe you can land a job designing a calender showing the year's important meetings for a club or lodge. Richard Riley, writing in the August, 1969 CARTOON WORLD (just in case you think the above won't work) says: "Our town has an annual rodeo each spring and since I do a great deal of rodeo-type cartoons I talked to the program manager of the Jaycees. After they had their dummy made up, they gave it to me and I did cartoons in the white spaces. The Jaycees told their customers about me as they sold the ads and I not only picked up a nice check from the Jaycees, but from the ads too. Also, my cartoon book, LIT' WRANGLER, will be sold at the rodeo . . .and I got ten free tickets, too!"
Get a big pad of newsprint or drawing paper and teach yourself to give interesting chalk talks. A size of 2' X 3' is good for this and you'll find charcoal crayons handy to work with. One subject you can use is "How cartoonists think up gags and make their drawings". Clubs and other groups will use you as entertainment for $10-$20 a throw with, usually, a meal for good measure, A lot of people will pay very good money for a custom mural done on play room or den walls. These are generally colorful scenes done in opaque water colors and varnished over when well dried. Better practice this one first! Banks and restaurants also go for these. A well drawn replica of a new home will sell to the proud home owner. Merchants will pay for good drawings of their stores. They hang em on the walls and use 'em on letterheads and in advertising. Most factories print a small paper or magazine for employees. Offer to do art work or a cartoon for them. Teach yourself to do a nice job of lettering . . . and learn to use transfer lettering. You'll find a lot more jobs coming your way. Drop in to the local TV station with a portfolio. Local stations can always use locally-drawn "spots". Some cartoonists have even landed a cartoon TV program of their own. MAGAZINE CARTOONING OK. We started telling you about magazine cartooning so it's about time we got back to the main subject. There are thousands and thousands of specialized publications printed in this country. You know about LIFE and NEWSWEEK and other national magazines . . . but have you ever heard of BOOT AND SHOE RECORDER . . . or PURE MILK NEWS . . . or PRINTING IMPRESSIONS? Probably not - but all three use cartoons. Go to the local library and look through the directories of business and trade magazines. One is GEBBIE's and another is published by N.W. Ayres and Sons. They'll open your eyes and give you enough names and addresses to keep you busy for a long, long time. But you'll be submitting your work a little blindly if you only use such directories. As I mentioned earlier, subscribe to the cartoonists' tip sheets. They'll keep you advised of buying action in the middle and minor magazines. So will Writer's Digest and Author and Journalist. They all list cartoon markets and, if you submit to the magazines listed, you should gradually build up a list of editors that will regularly buy your work, assuming it is of professional quality. These little magazines are actually pretty easy to work with and, if your gag sense is sharp and you can slant ideas to the readers of a particular publication, your art work can actually be a little rough. One word of caution: STICK TO THE FIELDS YOU KNOW. Since I lived on a farm when I was doing my heavy cartoon work, I drew mostly farm and dairy cartoons and had no trouble selling them to the smaller farm publications. I was also hung up on aviation and developed a secondary market around that interest. No matter what magazine you decide to submit to, give the editor what he wants for his readers. Not what you want them to have. This is called slanting your work. You send farm cartoons to farm magazines, girly cartoons to girly publications and supermarket cartoons to magazines for supermarket managers. If you run across a new market and you don't know exactly what kind of cartoons it uses, get a copy of the magazine and study it. If you can't find a copy, write the editor, tell him you're a cartoonist, offer your services and ask for samples of his publication. If he's interested, he'll send you a few copies. If he's not interested . . . it's better to find out right in front. Most editors are honest and hard working, but you'll find a few that won't return drawings or who use your stuff and never pay for it. Forget them . . . they don't last very long, anyway. There are more good markets than you can cover. Concentrate on the good ones.
SUBMITTING CARTOONS TO MAGAZINES After you've drawn up a good batch of 10 or 12 cartoons (or 5 or 6 for a very specialized market), address a 9 X 12 manila envelope to yourself and a 9 1/2 X 12 1/2 envelope to the editor. Stamp both envelopes with sufficient postage, put the cartoons into the smaller one and put it into the big envelope. A cardboard stiffener is also a good idea. Seal the large envelope and mail. It's now becoming increasingly popular to make a very light fold across the center of the batch of drawings and use half-size envelopes. They seem to stand up a lot better in the mail. You can seal cartoons, according to the post office regulations, and send them third class as long as you don't include a written note. If your local post office gives you a hard time on this, write to the Postmaster General in Washington, D.C. Always include return postage and a return address on the envelope in your submission. Sooner or later, you'll have to set up some kind of system so you can keep a record of the drawings you have in the mail, the ones that have already been to a particular editor, and the ones that haven't. You'll want to put your name and address on the back of each cartoon too. Editors sometimes get several batches mixed up together and this will help to keep everything straight. PAYMENT FOR A BEGINNER'S WORK The usual rule for a beginning cartoonist is "Get as much as you can, BUT GET THE JOB!" As you start doing work for local business men and newspapers, you'll find, that many of them can't - or won't - pay a lot for the work they use. Don't be discouraged. The experience acquired on these first jobs is worth a great deal to you. As you improve your work, you'll gradually slide up from, maybe, $5.00 a drawing to $15.00 to $50.00 or more. Some of the TJs even go over $100.00 to their regular contributors. A good artist who keeps at least 10 batches of cartoons in the mail at all times should average $100-$200 a week. A part-timer with only a batch or two out at any one time can generally pick up $10-$20 extra spending money each week. That's not great, but cartooning worked that way can be looked upon as a hoppy that pays its way. . . and I've seen a lot of times when that $10 came in very, very handy. Naturally, since you want to be a cartoonist, you're going to make every last drawing your very best . . .whether it's a paid-for-in-advance $100 cartoon or a $5 spot. Cartooning is no bed of roses but it can be a very fun way of making a living and - if you make it to the top with a syndicated strip of your own or as a regular artist for, say, PLAYBOYyou'll be in the Big Money, indeed. Now, for a detailed step-by-step plan for dropping out of the rat race to start cartooning on very limited means, read on. Carl Kohler is the fascinating guy who did just that . . . he also has originated many, many ways of selling cartoons and he will generously share some of them with you. And, I'll say it once more: Carl's section should inspire a lot more people than just the would-be cartoonists among TMEN readers.
outhouse and no running water . . . but I told you: If you want to cut that overhead to your freelance pocketbook size, forget your present standard of living for awhile! CHOW AND STUFF Okay. You've moved. Your wife's relatives, your relatives and your mutual friends think you've lost your mind . . . but you have moved. Fine. Now, as soon as you've unloaded your gear (I always rented unfurnished places, bringing a mere minimum of furniture of our own), hand your wife a hoe, grab a shovel and put in a vegetable garden. And do this right away! Next investigate the fishing in the area. I mean, study it factually. Remember, the fishing you'll be doing is primarily to put fish on the table. And I don't care how inexpensively fish are selling in the markets - you get your own and save those seemingly absurb few cents. It'll make quite a difference over a year's stretch. If your frau doesn't know how to feed a family of, say, four or five on $20.00 a week . . . and feed them an enjoyable variety of food on that sum - this is a swell time for her to learn how. It's been done. I know wives who are presently doing just that and it will be possible years from now. But only if you suppliment that $20.00 worth of store chow with vegetables from your own garden and fish caught, netted or speared yourself. Within six months you should be able to get by with as little as $15.00 weekly for purchased food items - and eating grandly. Naturally, this doesn't include steak regularly. SPENDING Aside from occasional items of clothing, art supplies, stamps and medical costs - I suggest you keep all spending (for the first three months) to a miser's range. In short, no wild splurging just because you discover (as you will now and then) that you've made four or five-or even six or seven-hundred dollars in one month. Assuming you've decided to freelance from an area not visited by heavy winters (and I do not see how anyone could make this particular method work outside of Florida, the southern states along the Gulf or California), forget all previous notions about what you must wear to be presentable. A clean shirt, clean washable britches and tennis shoes are fine. To hell with public opinion and convention, too for this first freelancing year, anyway. If your wife simply cannot be happy in cotton dresses and inexpensive sandals, you're licked before you start. My clever little gal actually made sandals for all of us, using old inner-tubes and secondhand leather . . . and those sandals outlasted anything we ever purchased in a shoe store. It's a tasty notion to keep $100 in the bank against the time (and it'll happen often) when every editor seems to be slow in issuing those checks. Secondary measures include friends who can and will loan you money until the checks finally arrive . . . or a landlord and grocer who understand the time element in your profession and don't mind waiting for their money while extending credit to you. I've used all three of these methods. I heartily endorse all three. Maybe you will, maybe you won't. AND THEN WOT HOPPENS? Without touching upon any particular method of marketing (several varieties work beautifully), I will underline the advisability of writing thank you notes everytime you make a sale. Editors like this. It even (although many selling cartoonists don't realize it) makes quite a difference in many extra sales. Within a reasonably short time you should be selling a certain amount of cartoons on arranged terms, regularly. Today's freelance - if he has halfway decent ability and common sense - does not entirely rely on total speculation sales. It just isn't necessary. Somewhere there are, at least, three editors waiting who will like your work sufficiently to buy from you regularly, give you assignment work and, in some cases, offer you cash advances against work-to-be-done. The last, of
course, holds only if you don't snow them about being a wealthy-type success and you honestly let them know when you can really use some advance loot. This money-in-front is not theory. It's fact. As of this writing I am into one book for better than $300 . . . strictly because the editor knows I can and will produce exactly what he wants for that magazine, when he wants it. Frankly, this isn't the best practice in the world but - given time, experience and accumulated skill - you'll be working the same deal occasionally. Those three editors mentioned above should be able to give you a total of $200 monthly in assured sales. If you have a distinctive style (such as Tupper, Thaves, Harley or Pete Millar), I would feel safe in saying that - within six months of launching your freelance career - you should have something like $275 to $400 in assured monthly sales. That's assuming your particular method of marketing includes getting editors interested in your availability . . . and keeping them interested. Same thing goes for any and all commercial cartooning. There just isn't (in my opinion) a very big difference between magazine editors and advertising purchasers. IN CLOSING I know there are a thousand ways to punch a million holes in what I've suggested . . . and only somebody with a better method will try it. You've got to want to freelance very much to do it the way I started and have outlined here. This same system has been worked with other variations . . . and there are undoubtedly still more ways to make it give a guy his start in freelancing. It would take a book to give you all the tricks and I don't have the time to write that book. I'll leave it to you. I used the system exactly the way I've outlined it on these pages - and it worked line. And why did I leave fulltime freelancing if things were so good? You may be silently asking that question and I'll be happy to answer: (1) I simply became disinterested in drawing cartoons fulltime, (2) I wanted to cut down the amount of hackwork necessary to earn a better-than-average living in order to try writing something other than pure magazine humor and (3) a magazine - SKIN DIVER - offered me a very fine four-days-a-week position. Since I have been a skin diving enthusiast for years, this has proven to be both fascinating and profitable . . . and I have the satisfying knowledge that I've learned enough about freelancing to go back to it, fulltime, anytime I find that either desirable or necessary, or both. Now , if Mel Millar, Charlie Dennis, Bob Tupper or Pete Millar (who only recently began freelancing) could be coaxed into writing down their opinions, methods and reasons for freelancing, the younger, less experienced cartoonists would have the information it took me some 15 years to obtain. In other words, don't imagine for one minute that the entire behind-the-scenes story of freelance cartooning and humor writing has ever been fully told. Because it hasn't.
Maybe I should tell you not to specify the manner in which the advertiser is supposed to use the cartoon. Some use them in newspapers, some use them on cards, others put 'em on blotters . . . and one guy (who bought $145 worth all in the same day) just hung them on the walls of his bar. DON'T GET YOUR CUSTOMER CONFUSED. UNLESS HE ASKS YOUR ADVICE - NEVER SUGGEST WHAT HE DOES WITH THE CARTOONS. He may get puckered and suggest what you can do with them. This has been known to happen. Frequently. It did, several times, to me. I'd rather make money. Now, I keep my big, fat mouth closed unless the client asks me how he should use the drawings. While the biggest advantage lies in dealing with local businesses (since you can actually draw the cartoons and collect the money the same day), there's nothing wrong with working by mail. Mail them just as you would regular batches. It usually takes a businessman about a month to make up his mind, but you'll always get your unsold drawings back if there was a stamped, self-addressed envelope in with your pitch and the cartoons. The pitch, itself, should be a paragraph (a short paragraph) long. Simply mention that readers remember cartoon ads . . . and look at them longer. That'll do it. It does for me . . . eight times out of ten. I charge (nowadays) $15 per cartoon. Unless it's a BIG outfit. Then the price slides up to $25. When I was a beginner-cartoonist, I charged $5 - and I sold cartoons (commercial cartoons, this way) for six years before making my first magazine cartoon sale. I know of no better way to develop a good style, professional draughtsmanship and make money while you do it. Not long back, another cartoonist showed me a copy of THE SKIN DIVER magazine. SKIN DIVER doesn't pay anything for the cartoons they use. They cannot afford to - their publishing budget is too small (they've since become quite successful and now pay real money - Ed.) This cartoonist claimed he'd drop from hunger before ever submitting cartoons to an outfit like that. Well, let me show you an angle: I give cartoons to the magazine. And, after they're published, I drop advertisers (in SKIN DIVER) little notes. I mention that they've probably seen my work in that magazine . . . and. . uh . . would they like to buy some good, exclusive (use the word exclusive) cartoons? They usually do. Last month, several did . . . to the tune of $150. Yes, I even like magazines that do not buy cartoons - so long as that magazine has paying advertisers. Get the idea? IG EDITORS NOTE: Wonderful slice of material from Relhok, eh? Selling slanted cartoons to local advertisers is a great idea. I know. I did it once and it led to the drawing of over 700 bread cartoons for a local baker. I hit the jackpot there. $7,000 worth of cartoons from one letter and a couple of samples. So, if you give this a try, always mention that you can do a SERIES for 'em, too.
the advertisers) field. I think $10.00 should be absolute minimum, even if your client has a small business. This is 1957, not 1931. (How about $15.00-$20.00 minimum for 1969, Carl?-Ed.) SHOULD I HAVE LETTERHEAD STATEMENTS? Definitely. It not only looks more businesslike (something in which your clients believe and will, therefore, judge you upon), it tends to help the client remember you. And that's important. WHAT IF I'M NOT A VERY TALKATIVE-TYPE GUY? You don't have to be. If you've studied your client's business before approaching him and have gotten some real punch in your samples . . . you can be a deaf-mute and still make plenty of good sales: The ad cartoon should be good enough, in its own right, to make the sale. Contrary to most conceptions of salesmanship, you aren't selling yourself. You're offering the opportunity for a client to purchase a hot idea, conveyed in an unbeatable medium, for the right price. Never succumb to the notion your client is doing you a favor. Quite the opposite. Idea men are actually rare. Which is why they are so sought after. You're doing the favor - even if you do expect to be paid for doing it. Great business, eh? SHOULD I CHARGE EXTRA FOR REDRAWS? That's entirely up to you. In some cases, it's better business to redraw without extra charge. In others, you'll lose money without charging additional for any changes in the artwork. You'll just have to learn how to tell the difference by gaining your own experience. And don't let a few mistakes or failures worry you: If I had 1 cent for every job I've goofed, I'd be a very rich pinhead. Remember this: The more you give for the price charged, the more clients you'll have. DO I NEED FANCY PAPER AND SUPPLIES? No. You can successfully sell ad cartoons on the very same type of 20 pound bond paper used in doing magazine cartoons. Stay away froms impressive matt jobs. A cartoon looks better the simpler it's drawn and presented. You'll make much more profit (in most cases) if you stay out of the color bit, too. HOW DO I START? You pick up a phone directory, pick ten potential clients, study their ads, make some fine, slanted, commercial-type gags, draw 'em up cleanly, carefully, put on your hat and...
HOW I DO IT
When I'm not going off at a tangent by getting myself involved with selling advertising space for various local magazines or animated signs or any other fast-buck deal that looks sufficiently interesting to lure me from the oftimes lonely drawingboard and typewriter, I usually produce freelance material in three main forms: (1) Advertising cartoons, (2) Entertainment cartoons and (3) Humor pieces. However, since I've done my share of howling estatically over the value of the ad cartoon - and since there are not likely to be many would-be humorous article or story writers in the IG audience - I think I'll stick to the singlepanel gag cartoon in this diatribe. To be begin, I reluctantly admit I have no supremely masterful method of formulating gags. In fact, my gag writing is rather a chaotic process: Something of a blemish upon my alleged professionalism if you consider that I have been hawking cartoons long enough to have whomped up some sort of systemized gag production. Anyway, I simply: (A) Choose the magazine I intend to hit, (B) Study it thoroughly, being quite certain to read the editorial section for slant and the ads for double slant and (C) Start working out gag situations based upon (generally speaking) some of the material already published in the magazine. Take the FISHERMAN MAGAZINE, for instance. I first sold to them just last year. After studying a copy of that book, I sat me down behind the lightboard and stared a neat hole in a clean sheet of paper. I quietly considered the editorial articles (freshwater fishing, saltwater fishing, types of gear used, boat handling, etc.), the advertising (rods, reels, hooks, lures, sinkers, boats, lines, etc.) and I mentally reviewed every fisherman I have ever known . . . tossing in recollections of my own fishing experiences for good measure. At last, I decided the best approach would be to pick some very typical problem or happenstance familiar to any guy who has ever spent a day trying to catch fish. Being married and knowing my wife is a good example of feminine criticism, I simply reached for a personal experience and came up with the following gag: Guy coming through livingroom carrying rod from which dangles an empty hook with fantastically intricate lure on the line. Guy is sunburned, tired and disgusted, and has - obviously - been fishing without catching anything. Wife stares at weird-looking lure on the line, fascinated. She chirps: "Honestly, John, you catch the dammdest looking fish!"
FISHERMAN bought that one (and four others similar to it) on the first trip out. I have little doubt but that you might find a fancy term for the gag, classifying it as a This-type or That-type. And you may be right. In my book . . . it's just a gag . . . and nothing more. A much neglected form (anyway, there aren't as many in print as I should think there would be if cartoonists understood them better) is the multipanel gag. Aside from being a roomier form for humor, the M-P also makes a dandy Regular Feature vehicle . . . being nothing more than a comic strip for magazines. Below: One that I produced last year. I choose it; for a sample, because - while the idea isn't especially hilarious the action has reasonably good continuity and this example clearly shows my preference for emphasizing emotional reaction to any given occurrence. I find it awfully difficult to put into words my actual method of dreaming up (modifying, actually) the notions I've picked for various multi-panels. Having once worked as a storyman in the animated cartoon studios probably helps give me a sense of timing and basic continuity. But, here again, I rather believe I just flub along in a series of attempts to work out the idea until everything kind of falls together - and the multi-panel seems (to my anxious eye) to have reached a salable point. In case anybody's curious: I draw on cheap dimestore paper (typewriter size), with a Scripto automatic pencil. Then, I slip the pencil sketch under a sheet of 20 lb. bond and ink the cartoon in, using an Esterbrook Inflexible 322 steel pen point. Naturally I do all my drawing and inking on a lightboard quite similar to the ones Gawge advertises. I simply cannot visualize working on any other type of board. If you haven't yet tried a lightboard . . . better look into it. Tracing inkers saves all kinds of redraw time and makes for cleaner roughs. Takes a little getting-used-to, though. Ordinarily, when I'm freelancing and nothing more, I turn out 10 cartoons each day, six dauby days to the week. These 10a-day are broken down into two batches of five drawings each. Thus I schedule some 12 batches - weekly - for First Trip mailing. I try to get at least one humor piece into the mail each week. Regarding the ad cartoons, I have no particular, schedule: I catch 'em as they come or produce them after canvas calls have hit payload points. Goldywise, I have two very firm rules: (1) I deal only with those books that pay promptly upon acceptance; (2) I maintain a $10.00 minimum rate for any and/or all cartoons. This is not to say I haven't been (in my opinion) shafted upon occasion by various shifty-minded publishers . . . but they only let me have it the Fast and Easy route once. I am fortunate in that I, currently, have a considerable amount of Assignment Jobs on a regular, agreed monthly basis. But these can be, occasionally, a pain where it hurts the most . . . especially when it's an elaborate assignment which is deadlined on the 10th of the month and I receive it on the 8th of the month. Certain editors (whom I shall mercifully refrain from unmasking) seem to have
a penchant for testing their contributors' patience, endurance, speed . . . and sanity. It takes me slightly over 15 minutes to draw and ink a finished cartoon, once I've decided whose old gag to revamp . . . or, during my better moments . . . settled upon which of my old gags to revamp. Once in a very long while I go a little mad and turn out tons of gags which I fondly believe are original. This is sheer insanity, of course, but it salves my troubled gag-thief's mind. I am, perhaps, one of three scintillatingly honest cartoonists who are willing to admit not everything (hardly) they turn out originated - idea wise - with them. I'd gladly name the other two guys but they've threatened to have me petitioned for Complete Blacklisting if I graciously exposed them. Now and then, some of my mordant critics stand up and demand to know where I get off copying Vip's style. This always confuses me because - while I admit I was, years old, influenced by Partch's marvelous ability. to handle grotesqueness - have deliberately used portions of other men's styles than the renowned Partch. I sincerely believe my present style of drawing is reasonably developed to the point where it can safely be regarded as a separate, unique handling all by its lonesome . . . and it's based upon a blend of elements lifted from the styles of Frank Adams, Syverson, Tupper and Steinberg with, maybe, just a dash of animator's technique tossed in. But I sure as hell wish I could draw like David Stone Martin. Who do you wish you could be as good as, eh? Kordially, of Kourse, Uncle Relhok
If there's anything an editor likes better than a well slanted cartoon, it's a well slanted, offbeat cartoon feature. Preferably, something he doesn't see arrive (in dozens) every day of the week. The CHARACTER SPREAD is such a cartoon feature. And what is a CHARACTER SPREAD? Pick a subject. Any subject. Sportscars, lawnmowing, seduction, fishing, drinking, sleeping, TV viewing . . . anything. Then, figure out 8 to 10 types of guys whose viewpoints on that subject just about cover it from every angle. Then - draw them . . . being certain you pack plenty of Oomph into each characterization and keep the backgrounds simple to the point of almost zero. Include only the props necessary to put each characterization across. Write two to six sentences for each character, put the whole works in the mail to whichever magazine it's slanted . . . and wait for the fat check to arrive from a delighted and grateful editor. The CHARACTER SPREAD - besides being sufficiently offbeat to warm the editorial heart - has the added advantage of being a fluid product insofar as the editor's space problems are concerned. If he is unable to filch the necessary space to use the whole spread at one time, point out that each unit (each Character) can be used one at a time over a series of issues. Most editors, however, seem to prefer using the spread all at once since it carries more wallop that way. Although many professional cartoonists use the CHARACTER SPREAD from time to time, it's a leadpipe cinch few editors of house organs and the smaller trade journals see decently built CHARACTER SPREADS. If you begin marketing this cartoon form to them, you're gonna make all kinds of money. Even in the TJ field, it's common to ask - and get - $100 for a 10 part CHARACTER SPREAD. This is, of course, assuming the drawings are good, the short copy fairly clever and the slant right on target. Don't get the CHARACTER SPREAD confused with the ordinary, garden variety gag spread which is comprised of several gag cartoons all on the same subject. The CHARACTER SPREAD has no gags, no gaglines . . . only carefully delineated types and accompanying short sentences with each character. It should go without saying (but I'll murmur it, to be safe) that you draw each character on a separate sheet of 20 pound bond paper, size 8 1/2 by 11 inches and the whiter the paper and the blacker the inker, the everlovin' better.
Carl Kohler, Noted Neurotic and Professional Loafer, hat done many of these CHARACTER SPREADS, selling them to all kinds of magazines for all kinds of prices ranging from $50.00 to $400.00 per spread. Here, taken from an exclusive interview, is precisely how he works: Recently, Kohler drummed up enough energy to turn out a CHARACTER SPREAD which he titled, TIME FOR A FEW QUICK SHOTS. Basically, the spread was to make gentle sport of hunting enthusiasts. It was divided into 8 parts: THE SPARTAN, THE, TENDERFOOT, THE CAMP BUM, THE IMPOSTER, THE STRINGMAN, THE IMPROVISOR, THE DIEHARD and TELESCOPIC VS OPEN SIGHT. Let's take two units for closer examination: THE SPARTAN: Drawing shows a lusty, muscular lout wearing only shorts, a hunter's cap and boots, packing a huge knife and carrying a rifle. No background. Accompanying copy reads: "This rugged type thinks camping equipment is strictly for sissies. Prefers to live off the land' and is never happier than when well isolated from civilization, depending entirely upon his woodsmanship for survival - and sometimes he actually survives to his everlasting pride. " THE IMPROVISOR: Drawing shows a crafty-looking chap wearing a disguise of assorted branches and leaves, holding all manner of moose calls, bear calls, squirrel calls and other gadgets. Vignetted background of trees. Copy says: "This boy is nuts about scientifically fooling the game. Has perfected the art and even added a few gismos of his own. Unfortunately he spends so much time luring the unwary game - he has never so much as gotten off a single shot at anything. " The CHARACTER SPREAD technique can easily be applied to any subject. If you should choose Cars, show 8 or 10 different types of drivers. If Electrical Wiring, Salesmanship or Plumbing is your choice, show 8 or 10 varying types of individuals engaged in those topics. But keep your spread to no more than 10 drawings. It's a splendid idea to always include a short note with every spread mailed, explaining that it may be used a unit at a time if the editor is cramped for entertainment space . . . and very honestly stating your minimum rate for the property. It's fabulous how many allegedly professional cartoonists are in a state of semi-poverty because they are too shy to state what they would like in the way of pay if the editor buys. There are even some dullarts who haven't yet learned most editors like to dikker. With approximately 8,000 markets for the CHARACTER SPREAD, you should be able to land on target with no trouble . . . and I hope you do, just as often as you like.
Naturally, there are reasons for this. Here are three of them: (1) I usually query the editor in advance, briefing him on the particular approach or topic I want to cover, (2) I make it my business to study the book I'm trying to sell and (3) I always include cartoon illustrations since they help me sell the script. Maybe I better say that again, a bit louder: CARTOON ILLUSTRATIONS WILL HELP SELL ANY WELL SLANTED, REASONABLY WELL WRITTEN HUMOR SCRIPT. Occasionally I see a brother cartoonist making a successful stab at this specialized field . . . and doing very nicely at it. Pete Millar is one artist whose ability to thrum up a Special Feature utilizing words and cartoons is sheer pleasure. There are others who, in addition to hawking their roughs, frequently have a profitable change of pace into the Humor Piece department . . . but I seldom see a gagwriter hitting the bell. And this worries me. It worries me because most gagwriters are supposed to be, basically, Humorists. And if this assumption is true . . . why aren't they teaming up with cooperative (Cooperative: Thirty cent Armenian word meaning, "Hell yes, I'd like to make a little extra gold, dad.") cartoonists and storming the Humor Piece field? Like I say, it frets me. Editors were never more willing to be sold written humor. Many of them actually offer bonus pay if the writer will supply regular, monthly offerings slanted to their books. Bonus pay (in case you've never heard of it) is sometimes $20, sometimes $50, in addition to the regular check at whatever rates the books pay or the writer (or writer/cartoonist team) can demand. If you think this all sounds mighty like I'm smoking weird weeds, I humbly suggest YOU try it and then try bringing me down after the first three-figure check bruises your mailbox. You may, if you insist, cable me your love. I dig everybody but ingrates. And now you'll excuse me. I have a stack of typers to illustrate, several typed ideas to send PLAYBOY, another batch to get out for some cartoony friends . . . and a regular stash of humor copy (I may illustrate some if it myself) to get out. Good Lord, there's almost too much money to be made.
Jeeezely
You cannot possibly realize how courageous I'm being by simply writing for this Journal Of The Talented. Everytime I whomp up something for these pages, mail starts flooding my mailbox . . . all of it telling me what a dolt and laggard and poseur I am. Naturally, I'm learning Caution. However . . . all this talk about not doing cartoons for less than $10 was just too much for me. I've tried and tried hard (it wasn't easy) to ignore it, but I've succumbed at last and must laugh right in your face. And why am I presuming to be so rude? Because - as of this morning - I turned out 20 cartoons that will sell for $5 each. It took me all morning to draw them. Kinda crazy, eh? Spending an entire morning earning a lousy $100? Furthermore (and get this now), the editor wrote the gags. Pretty stupid setup, eh? What's more, I've got about five such editors - all of them editing very specialized books that badly need at least 4 technical cartoons a month, each - doing their own gag writing . . . and assigning the artwork to me. It can't be done? Wanna bet cash on it? Hell, there are many such editors who would be delighted to have a cartoonist (one whose style they prefer, of course) do the artwork on special gags. This is becoming a very commonplace method, in freelance cartooning - just in case you've been so busy spec-freelancing you've failed to hear about it. Nobody in their right mind draws except on assignment anymore. That is, for 80% of their Bread and Butter money. Naturally, everybody (I guess) still whomps out a few to "Hopeful" markets . . . and they should. But ignore all the assignment work in the middle and minor books? Not me, frent. And you shouldn't either.. But back again to this Brave Plan For Raising Rates. It may work beautifully for some of you . . . atsome books. However, you can safely wager there will be many, many books that will view such shenanigans with a cold eye. And those are the books I plan to approach (by mass query) with the notion of doing their cartoons on assignment if they'll write the gags. Have you ever thought of working for $5 per, say, for a few months and then, in a nice businesslike way, requesting a modest rate raise to $7.50 . . . and several months after that, to $10? Of course you haven't. You're a freelance cartoonist, not a sane businessman! But it works - assuming the editor really likes your work. And if he doesn't like your work that much? Then you aren't building any future by working for him in the first place. Editors are people. People do not take to change (especially sudden change) very kindly. But work them up to it, gradually, and you'll be astounded at the results. This simple advice is not original. It's been written hundreds of times by cartoonists much more gifted artistically than I'll ever be . . . and whose shrewd business sense makes me appear naive by comparison. And this simple (but sage) advice works. Years and years ago, Lew Card wrote: "You'll make more money with your typewriter than you ever could with your drawing board." He was 100000% correct. Trouble is, just because he invented the typer-system of cartooning, everybody naturally thought he was talking entirely about typers - which he wasn't. Not entirely. He meant . . . queries, too. A query is such a nice, uncomplicated item. It only costs 6 to send and it saves you a whale of a lot of time and
labor . . . and often produces rather wonderful results. Yet, sending out 200 to 1000 queries is damned hard work. And (I'm inclined to believe) most cartoonists would prefer to risk time drawing cartoons and risk postage by marketing them on pure (or near pure) speculation. That insanity seems to be a fairly uniform attribute of the cartooning critter regardless of style or stage. This has given too many editors the cruel upper hand, lo, these long years. I have nothing against $10 sales. Like any other working pro, I make a lot of them and I love them - if I can't get more. But I like the $5 variety too - provided I don't have to write a gag for it - and so should you on thesame premise. For instance: Ever thought of combing the small, specialty books with an offer to do a regular, monthly Feature Character panel for them? Offering a Trade Character doing hilarious things familiar to the guys in that particular trade . . . and asking, say, $7.50 for such a specialized item? Try it. It might surprise you how many editors would love to have a feature they could count on coming in, with the proper slant, every month. Eventually, you'll get $10 or $15 for it. Multiply that by 20 or 30 editors and you can tell the boss to go to hell while you retire home to freelance fulltime. It's been done. I know several guys who are beginning to do it, just that way, right now. But remember, write queries (enclosing a sample of the particular character you have in mind, which should vary with each magazine) first. I better quit before I find I've written a full chapter on the spec-less methods of selling cartoons. Goodbye, churls. . . . . . Carl Kohler
out $80.00 to $200.00 for 1,500 to 2,000 word humor scripts with two to four illustrations . . . PROVIDING you have given the book exactly what it needs in slant plus a lot more in offbeat feature material. Recently, an IG contributor suggested that a writer send his script to the illustrator working with him for added evaluation on rewrite. This is sheer nonsense and a waste of time. Most cartoonists don't know beans about writing. If the gagwriter knows his end of the business and has produced a salable script, the cartoonist will be doing his job if he confines his attention to producing equally good illustrations to accompany the script. I'm not saying cartoonists cannot learn to write. Many can. But I am assuming the only writer/cartoonists teams will be those comprised of gagwriters who cannot draw and cartoonists who cannot write. Why add confusion to the collaboration? If you are a cartoonist who can write, then you have no business hitching up your checks with a gagwriter. In fact, editors seem to possess a special preference for a cartoonist who can write and illustrate. Anyway, that's been my experience. Hardly a month goes by without additional illustration assignments coming my way from editors who have purchased humor copy sans illustration. And, for the most part, they prefer a package deal from one guy if possible. The only way a gagwriter can combat this is to learn how to turn out such superior humor copy that he is literally outwriting his competitors. I'll make it plain - right here - that I consider a 50/50 sharing of a check from a humor piece sale to be utterly stupid. If anything, it should be 70/30 with the writer getting the bigger percentage. It requires a hell of a lot more skill to turn out salable wordage than it does to illustrate that wordage. There are many magazines that will take a script and illustrations, monthly, if they are written in the First Person with a fictional treatment built around an imaginary character in keeping with the book's subject matter. Thus, if you turn out regular pieces using the ficticious name of Pete McPipewrench, there's a splendid chance that the ASSOCIATED PLUMBERS' NEWSBLATT will buy them all year long and love you for producing them. A final word on the matter: Keep the copy clean and with wide margins. Keep all illustrations drawn on the Vertical unless an editor specifies otherwise . . . . .Carl Kohler
mish-mosh
Whenever I hear or read that PLAYBOY or THIS WEEK or LOOK are the "Best Markets", I feel a little like drowning myself in one of the inkpots. Sure, these books are the Better Paying Markets. No doubt about that. Bit it seems to me that the "Best Markets" are whichever books buy most steadily from any cartoonist. . .whether their rates are $5.00 or $500.00 per inked outrage. I agree with you this philosophy could be nothing more than a fat bunch of sour grapes since my sales hover around the middle market range. But you must admit forty $15.00 sales each month somehow offer solace. Any cartoonist who has been plying his craft (oh, all right, let's be important and call it a 'profession') for more than five years and cannot make forty sales a month had better investigate the profits huddled behind rassling a paid job. *** Another of my insane theories clears its throat and chants: Too many promising beginners get into the misleading rut of waging a full-scale campaign to rack up sales when they could better be spending some of their drawing time studying The Improvement Of Drawing Technique. I'm fairly certain this accounts for the many, many cartoonists whose ability to draw simply does not improve as the years (and the sales) stagger by. While practice even that gained through drawing endless roughs to be marketed - does help anybody's drawing, there is nothing like some concentrated study to weed out chronic errors and smooth up a style. *** For years, I have wondered why the gagwriting element - those who claim a great passion for producing humor copy, anyway - have not gotten together with cartoonists and, in cahoots with each other, produced the short humor essays illustrated with three or four cartoons and slanted to the various markets that want this type of feature so intensely that they are usually willing to pay prices for said features which will wreck havoc with the books' budgets. For that matter, many magazines are delighted to have the chance to buy properly slanted lightly handled copy . . . and are quite willing to assign the illustrations to a fair-haired cartoony if the humor piece comes in sans pictures. *** I seem to sense a return to the truly - impossible among the cartoons being purchased and published by a good number of books. Perhaps I am just overly imbued with a hope that such a trend is quietly, powerfully taking place. Maybe I'm just sensing things I'd like to see. I don't know. But quite a few of the editors to whom I peddle humor have remarked-more and more, lately-that the quality of incongruity is what makes humor . . . and the lack of it is responsible for breaking humor. And incongruity does not, frent, consist of a drawing portraying a wife handing a husband the snow shovel while she chirps in clearcut Bodoni the cut-line, "Get going". I wonder what Ted Key will do if incongruity ever comes back in full force? *** A young cartoonist dropped in for a visit the other day, and he wanted to know if I didn't think most editors played favoritism to the hilt. I told him I certainly think most of them do - and I don't blame them for doing so. Everybody on earth has special preferences in food, clothing, art, literature, sports and women. Why, then, is it deemed so criminal for an editor to quite naturally have preferences among the various contributors who help him fill those blank areas between the advertisements? The trick is simply to keep submitting your stuff until you've found the two dozen or so editors who are flamboyantly partial to your work. And then ignore all other books until they hire new editors. Whereupon, you get into marketing motion again. Somewhere, there are editors who will think your cartoons make those of Carl Kohler look like pretty wrinkled prunes, indeed.
*** The April, 1958 issue of ESQUIRE carried a fine article by Malcolm Muggeridge, ex-editor of PUNCH, the British magazine of humor. Every cartoonist, gagwriter and humorist in this country should read it . . . and think upon what Muggeridge had to say. The lack of irreverence in today's humor offerings may be a hideous clue as to exactly how stifled humor will find itself in the years ahead - unless quite a number of operating humorists start doing battle right now. The book that refuses to buy humor material which gently spoofs the foibles of its own readership isn't really purchasing true humor . . . no matter how many illustrated jokes it may publish. Got a letter from a churl who wants to know: "Do you include a note to the editor when you submit stuff, Kohler? " Well, if I know him or have sold to him previously . . . yeah, I usually write a ten page letter. But I seldom enclose a note if I'm hitting a book for the first time. I figure the material should sell itself. Occasionally, I ask a question regarding editorial needs. But you gotta do this right or you'll goof the whole deal. *** Comes a nice, fat question from somebody in New York City: "I've seen your multipanel cartoons in several magazines and I've wondered how you manage to get so many regular cartoon features going? Well . . . you might write a brief letter, telling the editor you'd like to produce a slanted cartoon feature on a monthly, arranged basis for his book. Mention you'll submit pencil roughs in advance of his deadlines (later, he'll accept ideas from typers) giving him his choice of several. Or allow him to cue you on eachmonth's "theme" around which you'll build suggested situations. Stick in a finished drawing and several pencil roughs. Send out about 25 of these a week and you should be getting okays for regular feature work. Just be damn sure you never sludge a deadline. I don't want to advise you in too much detail, but you probably would have a tremendous success among the books with smaller budgets. For some reason (unknown to me) they are quite enthusiastic about this sort of arrangement cartooning. *** If you are interested in getting into Commercial Cartooning in a truly successful manner, the following may (or may not) put you in there bigger than life and twice as instantly: Make up a nice, all around presentation of your published and unpublished work, have it photostated, put the photostats into neat folders, enclose an original inker with each, write a brief note mentioning your availability and mail (or take) the whole furshlugginer works to several Advertising Agencies. It only takes a connection with one or two decent-sized agencies to give your monthly income a real boost. Anyway, when I was after this kind of assignment cartooning, I never missed a month without at least $100 worth of work on some assignment or other. Yes, there's a disadvantage: Usually the Art Director insists that you work as closely as possible with him. This entails trudging down to his office. Some of you churls won't mind this at all. Those who will mind it can return to their drawing boards now and forget that I said anything in the first place. Hell, I'm only trying to Think Positively. Honest.
In the "either-or" white mind, the tipi was flimsy and primitive when compared to a solid, substantial frame building. The fact that a tipi was bright, open, airy, warm, dry and easily transported over (and, therefore, a part of) all outdoors while the frame structure was - and largely remains - closed in, dark, poorly ventilated and rather pathetically rooted to one spot was completely beside the point to this schizoid way of thinking. Luckily, our "civilized" appraisal of the Indian way is now going through some changes and that more reverent life style is increasingly understood and embraced by the new Gentle People. As one result of this trend, the tipi - so much a part of Plains Indian life - is enjoying a sudden popularity.
"We could not only move our houses but could move entire villages, and we often did. In this respect we were better off than the white man is. We moved to suit the seasons, in summer or in winter; we moved to be near a good supply of wood and water, or for fresh pasture for our ponies." THE ARAPAHO WAY Althea Bass
The tipi is not the final answer for everyone, of course (even the Plains Indians built other structures), but it remains - time, money and labor vs. comfort, utility "The Sioux and Cheyennes used a
and versatility - probably the world's most efficient shelter. If you've ever wanted three-pole tripod foundation, with one for camping, semi-permanent or even permanent living, here's how to make it one pole being placed so as to support the right side of the door, happen: TIPI DESIGN There are two basic Plains Indian tipis: One uses three foundation poles and the other has four. Our plans are for the three pole design which is simpler, stronger and - in general - superior to the four pole model. The dimensions given here are largely taken from the Sioux tipi pattern presented by Reginald and Gladys Laubin in their University Of Oklahoma Press book, THE INDIAN TIPI. Just to get it straight right in front, the Laubin book isthe authoritive work on the Indian tipi and contains a wealth of information on the construction, tradition and lore of the tipi that you won't find here or anywhere else. We're going to give you detailed instructions on making, pitching and living in a tipi . . .but if you really want to learn about this shelter, you've got to read THE INDIAN TIPI.
thus projecting slightly lower than the others at the rear. The other poles were then piled around this foundation. The Crows used a four-pole foundation, the apex of which could be easily noted below the apex of the remainder of the poles." THE FRONTIER YEARS Brown and Felton
"The poles, necessary for the construction of these movable dwellings, are not to be found in any part of the country of the Kaskalas, but are purchased from the Indians of Missouri, or others THE POLES inhabiting countries more plentifully supplied with timber. Indian tipis varied from slightly less than 10 feet in diameter, for hunting expeditions, to permanent lodges with a diameter of more than 30 feet. The larger We are Informed by Bijeau, that structures naturally required more and longer poles than the smaller ones. We've five of these poles are, among the Bad-hearts, equal in value to a compromised on a tent diameter of approximately 18'6" (roomy but easily horse."
transported by car) and - for this size - you'll need 17 poles about 25 feet long.
The fifteen poles used in the frame should be three or four inches thick at the butt 1819-1820 Expedition and two inches through where they cross and tie. The two smoke flap poles need be no thicker than two inches at the butt. The best poles always come from a young, "The tanning is so fine that although it should rain bucketfuls, crowded stand where each tree has grown tall and slim reaching for the sun. Red and white cedar make exceptionally light, strong supports which were prized by some tribes. Lodge-pale pine (guess how it got its name) and western yellow pine are both heavier but still make good tipi supports. If none of these are available; use the best timber you can find for the job or buy some fast quality 2X4's, rip them lengthwise on a taper and round the corners with a draw knife or joiner.
it will not pass through nor stiffen the hide, but rather upon drying it remains as soft and pliable as before." Don Juan de Oate
If you do find some suitable timber, cut the trees early in the spring (remember, when selecting, to allow for removal of bark and shrinkage) and trim off all knots and branches "up the tree" with an axe or chainsaw. Lay each pole across two sawhorses (small blocks nailed to the horses 4" apart will keep the poles from tuning) and - starting at the butt - straddle the pole and peel it with a sharp draw knife. Season the peeled poles by laying them flat across pieces of scrap lumber spaced two feet apart on a patch of open ground. Let the pores air and sun cure for three to four weeks. Turn them regularly so they'll season out straight and true. The Laubins recommend a good application of pentachloraphenol, log oil or floor hardener to preserve and protect the finished poles. If you're on the non-chemical trip, you may prefer to let the wood age naturally . . . or compromise on a couple coats of linseed oil rubbed in. THE COVER A properly tanned hide tipi cover was a beautiful creamy white and you're going to want a white, pearl grey, yellow or other bright canvas for your cover. The colored canvas - blue, green, brown and olive drab - so dear to the hearts of most tent makers is not at all traditional and will make your finished tipi dark and dreary inside. The
coated "modem" fabrics also shut out too much light and the Laubins have found that muslin exposed directly to the sun has a short life. So a light colored, light weight canvas it is. If you can obtain an 8 or 10 oz. duck canvas in 72" width, you'll save some work and your tipi will have fewer seams. It's hard to find canvas that wide, however, so we're basing our design on a fabric of 36" width.
Shop around. I priced waterproofed 8 oz. duck from $1.10 to $1.75 and 10 oz. at $1.25 to $2.00 a running yard in Cleveland while writing this article. I believe I could have found lower prices if I had really gotten into it . . . so use the old purchasing. agent's rule of thumb: Always get at least three quotes before making any major purchase.
"I seen a bunch of squaws make [a tipi] oncet. First they sewed the skins together. No, first thar was a lot o' prayin'; ye kin suit yerselves; 'bout that - then they
[1] Cut six pieces of 36" wide, 8 or 10 oz. canvas (8 oz. is much easier to work, sewed the skins together an' makes a lighter tipi and is less expensive) 38'6", 38', 36'7", 34'4", 30'10" and 25'10" pegged it down flat on the prairie." long.
Caleb Clark Find the center of each piece and spread out the canvas as shown in Figure 1. The strips should be laid together like shingles on a roof so water will run off, rather "[The squaws] put in a peg at the than under, the seams. middle of one side. Then with a
A flat seam, like dressmakers use on a shirt, is recommended for sewing the strips must 'a' been a coord - they together. If you intend to "farm out" this part of the job, try to find a tent maker drawed a half circle - so." who will use flat seams. I'm sure there's a better way . . . but here's a method we Caleb Clark worked out for sewing such seams: (a) If your canvas is 36" wide (37", counting selvage), lay two strips together with ". . . and there is rows o' holes what will be the inside surfaces of the fabric touching and outside surfaces away down - on each side fur the lacin' from each other. The strip that is longest (and will later end up on top) should be on pins." the bottom and extending three-quarters of an inch. Caleb Clark (b) Turn the allowance edge evenly up over the edge of the top strip and sew. A double stitch is highly recommended. (c) Flop the two pieces of canvas over and . . . (d) . . . swing the strip which is now on the bottom through until it is an extension of the new top strip. (e) Run another row of double stitches down the lower edge of the seam. The finished flat seam will look like Detail f on Figure 1.
[2] When all six strips are sewed together, lay the cover out flat again and locate the center of the upper (longest) strip. Measure down 20 inches from the top edge of this strip and out 8'6" in both directions from its center line. Cut off and remove the 20" by approximately 10'9" rectangles from the two upper corners of the strip. Note that the cut made perpendicular to the edge of the canvas is extended to a depth of 24" even though the piece removed is only 20" deep. The extra four inches will later be turned under for a hem. Sew the two removed panels into one strip. Center and attach this long narrow piece to the bottom of the 25'10" strip. This will extend the whole canvas enough to allow you to chalk and cut a 19'3" radius from the center of the top edge of the tipi cover. Set a peg at point "X" and swing your chalk on a length of cord that will not stretch. You can also drill a hole for the peg in a board or piece of plywood, drill a second hole for the chalk in another and nail the two sections to a 2X4 so that the holes are the proper distance apart. The selvage on tent canvas - unlike the selvage on most other fabrics - is not cut off and removed. This means that your 36" wide material is actually 37" wide. The pattern we are using was designed to give you the most tipi from the least material and - if your six seams across the cover are one half to three-quarters of an inch wide - the 19' 3" radius will not run off the bottom edge of the pieced-together fabric. If the radius does run off the bottom, don't worry. Just cut another scrap and piece out the bottom center a little further . . . or pull in the string and make the radius 19'1" or 19'2". You'll never notice the slight difference in final tipi size. [3] Directly below "X", on the first seam, measure 3" each way from the center line (total of 6") for the base of the tie flap. Cut from these points straight out to Point X. Trim and hem the resulting long, narrow triangle (6" by 24") to a flap 6" wide by 8" long as shown in Detail 3a. The four inches (difference between 20" and 24") allowed when the corner panels were removed from the top of the cover can be turned down and pinned while a half oval is cut from each side of what will become the tipi's front. The half ovals will later form the door of the shelter and each cut should finish out, after hemming, approximately 46" long by 10" deep and be located 12" in from the cover's outside radius. The four inches down each side of the tipi's front can be permanently turned and hemmed before or after the door halves are cut and finished out. If you are - or can procure the services of - a good seamstress, you may want to put a facing around the door ovals and then hem the front edges. When you do sew this hem, be sure to make it
only 3 1/2" wide with the extra 1/2" turned under again (Detail 3b) so no raw edge is left exposed. After the 3 1/2" hem is finished . . . lay out, cut and stitch in the lacing pin holes below the door opening and between the door and the base of the smoke flaps. The holes on the left side start 3/4" from the hemmed door and the two rows are spaced 1 1/2" apart with the outside row set 3/4" from the edge. Use the same edge distance for the holes on the right side, but space the two rows 2" apart. The 1/2" difference will make lacing pin insertion considerably easier and neater when the right side is lapped over the left. The Laubins recommend a vertical spacing of 7" between each set of holes although - if you like a lot of tedious hand work - you can space them as close as 4". Note that it is not necessary to run the holes all the way to the base of the smoke flaps. Tie tapes, added later, will be better than lacing pins for closing that space.
To make each hole, cut a little cross with quarter inch arms in the canvas and buttonstitch around it with No. 10 unbleached shoemaker's thread coated with beeswax (3c). If done properly, this will make a 3/8" diameter, self-reinforced round hole and no grommets will be needed. [4] The top horizontal piecing seam is now opened for 39" on each side of the 6" base of the tie flap. A gore of 39"x39"x7" finished size (with one inch added all around for seams) is sewed into each opening (4a). Flat seams, again, are best and you'll probably prefer to sew in these gores by hand.
"Thar's a upside down pocket in the top side corner o' each smoke flap Caleb Clark "Then at the top of that pint ye fasten a short lash-rope." Caleb Clark
The Laubins rightly claim that all other popular writers on the tipi have overlooked these gores which so greatly help the finished cover fit around the tipi poles. Other authors, such as Seton, show the flaps cut wider at the top . . . but that's not the same thing at all. The Laubins deserve full credit, to my knowledge, for bringing this important detail to light. An 8" by 24" (final size) extension is now added to the base of each smoke flap (4b). These 8" extensions are more authentically Cheyenne than Sioux. The Sioux only occasionally added extensions of - usually - no more than 4". This slight deviation from a strictly Sioux pattern really helps to "weathertight" a tipi during heavy storms, however, and is a worthwhile addition. Again, allow for hemming the flaps and sewing them on with a flat seam. [5] Some pole pockets, cords and reinforcing added to the smoke flaps will now complete the tipi cover. For each pole pocket, cut two or three thicknesses of canvas, sew as shown in Detail 5a and attach firmly to the upper corner of the smoke flap. A switch of human or horse hair fastened to the tip of the pocket makes a traditional decoration. Sew two tapes, each three feet long, to the tie flap and an 18 inch long tie tape to the base of each smoke flap. The tapes are made by folding together a 3" wide strip of canvas into a triple-thick one inch wide band that is double stitched down both sides (5b). Note that the tape on the base of the left smoke flap is sewed to the top side of the hem and the right smoke flap's tape is placed on the under side of the hem. This is not a mistake. When the cover is in position with the right side lapped over the left, the tapes - so mounted - will be properly positioned for easiest tying. Buttonhole stitch a small hole in the lower corner of each smoke flap and attach a 3/16" cord 16 feet long. The crosshatching on Figure 5 indicates four layers of reinforcing stitched by hand to the under side of the cover in the areas of main stress. This reinforcing is essential. As a final reinforcement, you can-if you choose-sew a length of 3/16" cord around the tie flap and along the top edge of the smoke flaps. Use the same shoemaker's thread you used for the buttonhole stitching and sew over and over as shown in Detail 5c. It is not necessary to hem the bottom of the tipi since the cloth - cut on a bias - will not ravel. This again is traditional as the Indians themselves seldom hem their tipi bottoms. THE LINER The tipi cover is now complete but, if you were to stretch it over a set of poles and peg the bottom down, you'd find the resulting shelter no more comfortable than the average white man's tent. Wind would blow in at the bottom, rain run down the poles and drip on everyone and everything, smoke from an inside fire fill the structure under most conditions and moisture condense inside on every cool night. The tipi would be hot in summer, cold in winter, dirty, drafty and damp: In short, it would be unsuitable for camping and unfit to live in for extended periods . . . just like most white man's tents. One simple modification - the addition of a liner - changes all that, however. With a liner and a little common
sense, the Plains Indian tipi becomes warm and snug in winter and cool and dry in summer. A fire built in the center draws properly and dew no longer condenses inside. There's no draft, no dampness and no more dirt in the living area than in the average summer cottage. A liner, in other words, almost magically transforms the tipi from a tent . . . into a home. The liner-which might be described as "a tipi without a top within a tipi" - is very easy to make and Figure 6 gives all the basic information you'll need. Fifteen identical tapered panels - each six feet long, 34 1/4" wide at the top and 48 3/4" across the bottom - will be needed to make your liner. The panels can be made from any lightweight material butperhaps surprisingly - it is more important that the finished liner be waterproof than that the tipi cover itself be so treated. Since it will not be exposed directly to the sun, the Laubins recommend using heavy bleached muslin here and treating the finished liner with a wax compound. Balancing tradition and reasonable cost against other considerations, that seems a good way to go although some of the newer coated fabrics should be very attractive to folks with a healthier pocketbook. GERRY'S and HOLUBAR in Boulder, Colorado, THE SKI HUT in Berkeley, California and RECREATIONAL EQUIPMENT in Seattle, Washington are a few of the specialized outfitters that can supply the more modern materials. There's nothing wrong with 8 oz. duck canvas, either.
If you can't obtain the muslin or other fabric in a 72" width, 36" material sewed "In the winter, our villages stood together with a flat seam will work quite well. on low, sheltered ground near the Cut the panels (reversing every other one to save material, as shown in Detail 6e), river, where the wind and cold could not reach us; in summer seam them together and hem the top and bottom of the liner. If you rough cut all 15 they were moved to higher sections 34 1/2 to 35" across the top and 48 1/2 to 49" at the bottom, the finished ground where they could catch the liner should go completely around the inside and lap generously . . . depending cool winds." upon how the poles are placed, how tightly the liner is tied, etc. The Laubins - who have lived months or years in a tipi to my days in these shelters - have refined their liner design as noted in Figure 6. They recommend cutting only 12 of the 15 panels (C through N) to the full 34 3/4 " top and 48 3/4" bottom dimensions. Sections "B" and "O", they say, should measure just 31 3/4" across the top and "A" - for the door - should be cut 29" across the top and 41" at the bottom for a neater fit. A double 3/16" cord and reinforcing patch added across (Detail 6f) - or tie tape sewed into - the top and bottom of each vertical seam will complete the liner. If you use cord for these ties, it can also be fastened to the fabric in the traditional stringaround-a-pebble manner shown for attaching peg loops. See the center detail on Figure 7. This may be the best way of all because of the flexibility of locating the ties and the ease with which they may be changed . . . another example of the sophistication and practicality of the Indians' seemingly primitive methods. Make each free end of the ties 24 to 30 inches long. Note that the lower set of cords is located 6-8 inches from the liner's bottom edge and the last bottom tie on section "O" is set in from the outside vertical edge. This allows the bottom of the liner to be turned in all the way around and the meeting ends to lap. You'll find it easier to locate that last tie on "O" after the liner is hung for the first time. Some tipi owners prefer to tie the liner directly to the poles (Details 6a-b) but if you do, remember to insert two little twigs under each tie on the inside of the supports. This allows stray trickles running down the support to keep right on going instead of dripping off at the tie point.
THE ARAPAHO WAY Althea Bass
"No tent is so sturdy against wind and weather as a good tip[-the tilted cone with its back toward the prevailing storm winds, braced by the long slope of the forward poles; the weight of the poles themselves with their pointed butts piercing the earth; the taut conical cover offering no hold to the wind, no pockets or folds to catch water; the anchor rope taut from the apex to the ground Inside the tent; the pegs pinning the cover firmly to the ground-all these things make the tipi a strong, dependable protection." THE INDIAN TIPI The Laubins "Now, when ye set her up ye tie three poles together-so-an' set 'em up first, then lean the other poles around, except one, an' lash them by carrying the rope around a few
Details 6c-d show another drip-free method of hanging the liner. A quarter inch rope is stretched tightly from pole to pole and wrapped around each support so that it runs inside, rather than next, to the cover. The liner is then tied to the mid-point of each span of the rope.
The base of the lining is tied to the butts of the tipi poles, to the pegs used to hold down the cover or occasionally - to a separate set of pegs. PITCHING THE TIPI Since the prevailing winds on the Plains are from the west and southwest, the tipi - with only a few exceptions was always pitched facing east and the following directions are for pitching one that way. Look for a well drained, smooth, level area and remove all roots, stones, etc. Although a tipi can be comfortable in the broiling sun, you can pitch yours to the northeast of a tree or trees in the summer for late morning to evening shade, if you wish. Don't locate directly under trees because they can be dangerous during storms and drip for hours after a rain. You'll notice, if you refer to the upper right corner of Figure 7, that the floor plan of a properly pitched tipi is oval or egg shaped, rather than round. The tipi cone is also tilted and steeper up the back than the front. This is a main secret of the tent's comfort. If the tipi were an evenly balanced cone, the smoke vent would center around the poles where they cross and would be too large to close completely during a rain. By changing the floor plan and tilting the cone, the Indians were able to extend the smoke hole down the elongated front of the tent. This placed the crossing of the poles at the top of the smoke hole instead of in the middle and allowed the opening to be easily closed with the protruding flaps. It also moves the fire slightly toward the front of the tipi, which makes more efficient use of the tent's interior. Pick out the four heaviest poles. Three will be used for the foundation tripod and the fourth will be the lifting pole. Spread out the tipi cover and use it to measure the tripod poles as shown in the upper left corner of Figure 7. Note that, since the finished cover is not a true half-circle, this method automatically and correctly locates the tripod tie point lower on poles N and S than on pole D (remember, it's a tilted cone). Good tipi poles are sharpened on each end. If you intend to plant the butts of the tripod poles a few inches in the ground (as some, but not all, Indians did), allow for that right now and mark the three supports where they cross so you won't have to remeasure every time you erect the tent. Using one end of a 45 foot length of 1/2" rope, tie the three poles with a clove hitch as illustrated, wrap the rope around the poles three or four times and finish with two half hitches. Put the butts of poles S and D about where they'll be in the pitched tipi and, while someone holds taut the loose end of the 1/2" rope, raise the tripod by walking up under the ends of S and N. When the poles are almost vertical, swing the butt of N across to it's approximate final position. This locks the tripod and gives it a twisted dogchasing-its-tail appearance where the poles cross and are tied.
As nearly as possible (it'll be pure trial and error the first time), position the poles . . . the long rope that binds the exactly as they'll be when the tent is completely pitched. The two-and-a-half foot poles is carried down under, and
by two-and-a-half foot grid on one floor plan in Figure 7 will help. Note that this fastened tight to a stake that tipi measures 20 feet from front to back and 17'/2 feet across. Notice also, that the serves for anchor . . . " tipi's pole pattern is shifted just slightly off square around the perimeter clockwise. Set the next eleven poles into place exactly in the order shown: 1,2,3 and 4 from the right, or north, side go into the front crotch first; 5,6,7 and 8 then stack into the front crotch from the left, or south, side and 9,10 and 11 are put into the back crotch last. Again, strictly follow this order and be sure to skip a place on the perimeter at "L" for the lifting pole. The pole pattern should now look like Figure 7's lower right drawing.
Caleb Clark
At this point, carry the 1/2" rope outside the frame at pole S and wrap it clockwise four times (the sacred Indian number) around the standing poles. Snap the rope Caleb Clark tightly up into the area where the poles cross and bring it in over N. Angle a 2X2 peg three feet long into the tipi floor slightly behind center and snug the rope under "The opening that made the it. It helps if the peg has a knob on top. entrance was covered with a skin Lay the lifting pole down the center of the cover and mark it at the tip of the tie flap. Put the pole aside and fold the outside edges of the cover in to the center so that the lacing pin holes meet down the center line. Fold and refold both halves of the cover on themselves until each is a long triangle two feet wide at the base. Fold the two triangles together. Put the lifting pole alongside the canvas, butt to the base of the bundle, and securely tie the tapes (wrapping them over and over the flap in a criss-cross) to the pole where previously marked. Hoist the pole and canvas (you may need help), set the pole's butt into position and drop it into the last space in the rear crotch. Turn the pole as you lift it and let it fall so that the cover is always on top. If the cover fits too high or too low where the poles cross, swing the lifting pole back down and relocate the tie flap tapes.
"Now tie the top o' the cover to the top o' the last pole by the short lash-rope, hist the pole into place - that hists the cover, too, ye see an' ye swing it round with the smokepoles an' fasten the two edges together with the wooden pins."
or a length of canvas held down by a strip of wood that weighted the bottom. This was the only kind of door we knew, long ago. In fine weather it was raised on poles to make a kind of awning over the opening." THE ARAPAHO WAY Althea Bass "Wall, some jest lets the edges sag together, but the best teepees has a door made of the same stuff as the cover put tight on a saplin' frame an' swung from a lacin' pin."
Unroll the cover around each side of the frame to the front. Tie a pole (the one Caleb Clark you'll later set in front of the tipi door) across supports D and F1 to stand on while you tie the smoke hole base tapes together and insert the top lacing pins. The cover "Real hot weather the thing looks should be slack enough to allow you to lap the south (left) over the north (right) like a spider with skirts on and side. Remove the cross bar as you button down the front of the tipi. held high... "
Caleb Clark Insert the poles in the upside-down smoke flap pockets. Cut these poles just long enough to stretch the flaps tight when their butts cross or barely touch close against "in winter, there were windbreaks the back center line of the tent. Round the pole tips to protect the flap pockets. to shelter our lodges. The women
Loosen the smoke flap poles so they just help hold the cover even and begin pushing the frame poles out against the cover. Do not push the poles out tightly until the cover is properly pegged down. . . but do space them out evenly to aid in locating the pegs. By the way, as soon as you're sure the tripod is placed correctly, set the three poles with a shovel . . . if you intend to set them. The peg loops are 3/16" cord tied in a square knot around a 3/4" pebble six inches above the cover's lower edge. Tie the loose ends of the cord into another square knot, insert and twirl a peg to twist the cord tightly into a no-slip grip. Peg down the front, then the rear and - finally - both sides of the cover. Use a sledge and long iron rod to make lead holes for the pegs in hard or rocky soil.
went to the river in the fall and cut a kind of tall grass ...The women bound this grass into panels and set them up like a stockade fence outside our tipis, to shut out the wind and the snow. Then they pegged down the lodge cloth and laid sod or earth over it to seal it. When that was done, we were snug for the winter, however stormy it might be outside."
THE ARAPAHO WAY Now push the poles tightly out against the cover (loosen the anchor rope for this, if Althea Bass you have to). For a permanent camp, plant all the tipi poles by loosening a few pegs, digging under a pole, twisting it into the ground, replacing the pegs and "There was room for everything
moving on around the circle. If you find the door pole is too long, as sometimes in our lodge, and to us it never happens the first time a tipi is raised, plant it deeper or chop it off. If you chop it seemed crowded. Bags of meat and fruit that my mother had dried off, of course, it will cause no trouble next time. Spacing the poles for the first time is the hardest part of pitching a tipi. Once you get them right, swing a cord off the center peg and measure the distance out to each one. Write the figures down and use them the next time you erect the tent. You'll also find that smoke from fires in the tipi will darken the cover everywhere but directly behind each pole . . . and you'll soon be able to line up the supports with the white stripes on the canvas. Once you've got `em, retie the anchor rope. Set a 6 or 8 foot pole in front of the door to tie the smoke flap cords to . . . and your tipi is up. The door itself - a piece of canvas laced over a willow rod frame - is hung from the last lacing pin over the doorway.
hung from the lodge poles, out of our way; and around the outer circle of the room, In the space where the beds were and underneath them, folded robes and clothing, our toys, and our mother's tools and materials for handwork were kept." THE ARAPAHO WAY Althea Bass
A little study of Figure 8 will give you the basics of living year-round in your tipi. Set the smoke flaps quartering downwind under any given conditions and you should have little trouble making an inside fire draw properly. Stick up a brush windbreak and pile small logs around the bottom of the cover in the winter. This is nothing unusual for the Plains, you know: People there still stack bales of straw around the foundations of frame houses during the cold months. Roll up the tent's sides and take down the liner on still, hot summer days. And don't be too proud to cut a few boughs and lean them against the sunny side of the shelter on hot days when the wind is too gusty to raise the cover. It's all - just like sitting on the ground outside and reclining against the tent's slanting sides - fair use of the tipi. Once the lining is hung inside and its bottom six inches turned in all around, robes, a waterproof tarp, oilcloth, burlap, old linoleum or a plywood floor can be put down inside and lapped over the liner's edge. Waterproof layers are really only needed under the beds and other items affected by dampness. Ditch around the tipi to lead water away, make a couple of willow rod backrests, hollow out and line a fireplace circle with rocks and you're ready to dedicate your lodge. If you want to make sure the fire draws exceptionally well, you might dig a trench, remove the tops and bottoms from some tin cans and bury them in line to make a vent pipe leading from outside the tipi to the bottom of the fire pit. So, hang your shield and other medicine articles from a pole behind the altar of your lodge and move in. Forget storm windows, leaky faucets, plugged eave troughs, water in the basement, sticking doors, cracked sinks, missing shingles, compound interest and forty year mortgages. You're home. TIPI MATERIALS POLES:
15 poles 25 feet long, approximately 3-4 inches in diameter at the butt and 2 inches across at the tie point. 2 poles, somewhat shorter than above (cut to length during first pitching), 2 inches in diameter at butt. 70 yards of 8 or 10 oz. waterproofed duck canvas, 36 inches wide*. 36 yards of 36-inch wide* muslin or 8-10 oz. duck canvas. 45 feet of 1 /2-inch Manilla rope (for anchor). 20 feet of 1 /4-inch rope is the alternate method of hanging liner is used. 200 feet of 3/16-inch cotton cord. 10 feet of tie tapes (which you can make, or buy as "twill tape"). 25-30 hardwood pegs (chokecherry or ash are best), 18 inches long and about 3/4-1 inch in diameter. One or two anchor pegs 1 1 /2 to 2 inches in diameter and 30-36 inches long.
LACING PINS:
Eleven to fourteen pointed and seasoned hardwood sticks completely peeled except for the final 3-4 inches on the butt end. These pins should be 12-14 inches long and 3/8-inch in diameter. Dowel rods can be substituted. chemical waterproofing solution will be needed for the cover. Three gallons of a wax or chemical solution will also be used on the liner. Allow about 5% for shrinkage of the fabric.
WATERPROOFING: If your fabric has not been waterproofed during manufacture, about 6 gallons of a
MISCELLANEOUS:
Thread, needles, paint (if you decorate the finished, use ordinary house paint or enamel applied to a damp - but not wet - canvas), streamers or swatches of hair to hang from pole tips and other odds and ends will vary from individual to individual. Read through the directions and make your own list.
*Other widths of material may be used if you refigure yardage. TRANSPORTING THE TIPI It's not hard to roll up a tipi cover and liner for transportation in a station wagon, car trunk, trailer or truck. Seventeen poles - 20 to 25 feet long and weighing a total of approximately 300 pounds - is a little different matter. But don't sweat it: The problem has been faced and solved before. In the old days, before the Indians obtained horses from the white man, they simply limited their tipis to a size with poles small enough for a dog to drag. During the 1800's, when the tribes had plenty of horses (and a good horse could drag eight to ten poles), large tipis were transported throughout the Plains. As the buffalo were killed and the prairie fenced in, the Indians turned to wagons. Today, tipi poles are sometimes shipped from one place to another or carried on trucks, campers or cars. Here's a rack the Laubins rigged up with the help of a Sioux blacksmith friend. With it, they can haul a complete tipi, of the size described in this article, on top of a small coupe. About 29 feet of half-inch galvanized iron pipe, eight T-joints, two unions and four elbows were used in the basic rack with a 6 foot long 3/8" iron rod swung on a flat hinge from each side of the windshield as a brace. The bottom ends of the four uprights simply slide into sockets of 3/4" pipe fastened to the inside of the vertical sections on the front and back bumpers. The only joker is the fact that the Laubins' car happened to be one of those sturdy old gentlemen of 1940ish vintage: You know, the kind with big, rugged, honest bumpers that really stick out in the breeze. If your automobile is one of today's sleek, streamlined monsters with the recessed, tinfoil articles front and rear, you'll obviously have to come up with another system . . . but the sketch should give you some ideas.
The Laubins load their tipi poles with butt ends forward and sticking over the front rack just a few inches. The long, slender top ends of the poles are allowed to protrude, maybe, 5-6 feet. This brings the tail end of the load just over the front of a small trailer they sometimes pull. If you make a rig like this and don't pull a trailer, remember to hang a red flag or two on the tips of the poles. Cover, liner stakes and all the rest can be bundled up and carried on top of the "raft", if you like. Design your rack so the load just clears the car top and put some kind of a pad between the roof and the poles. Lash everything down securely.
Jane Bevans
While the militants and the liberals argue whether we're dropping out or copping out (maybe even flipping out!), we're out planting peas and dancing our eyes on all the new green leaves. Collectively we've been through years of pickets and vigils, planning meetings and fund appeals, demonstrations and happenings, peace walks, sit downs, sit ins and climb overs. We figure maybe we just dropped in. Where it's at is in the action, not in talk. So in the north country of Minnesota, where it still snows sometimes in May . . . we're doing it. We live here, 7 of us now; we have our hassles and our laughing times. We work together, share our lives, grow our food and love our kids (only one so far, but he mostly belongs to everyone and we give him lots of different names so he'll spread further). Here we live without laws, armies, or cops and no one starves, no one gets murdered or even commits suicide because things aren't going his way . . . and things get done. This is our new world. Here the revolution is almost over . . . all but the tears and the grief, all but the hard part when you find out you're not Christ, or Che, or Allen Ginsberg, or Ira Sandperl, maybe you're not even the you you thought you were. It's all over but the hard part, realizing that you not only know very little about nonviolence, you don't even know how to live with people you dig. Then here at last the revolution is beginning . . . . . A GRAND MASTER PLAN to build a world without fear or hatred to share one's life and livelihood to become what one really is to find the human way Step one: Go somewhere where no one else that you know is. Buy some cheap land, a copy of Organic Gardening Encyclopedia and some seed. Establish a base camp disguised as a self sufficient farming community. Step two: Make friends with the local farmers. Ah, good people! They don't have much, but they'd share that. Always they give us more than we can return, but like one neighbor says . . . "What's a few pumpkins between friends." Step three: Infiltrate the local peace group. And good people they . . . Come to visit us with electric coffee perculator, "Where's the plug?" We heat it on the wood stove and talk til midnite. Later they invite us into town to speak on panels: "Americanism in the '60's" or "Civil Disobedience." Turn people on to doing things for themselves. ("Stop bitching for better schools or housing or welfare. Go out and build them. Stop paying taxes for war. Refuse the draft.") Turn people on to community and living simply. Turn them on and see the light go click
behind their pale eyes. ("But you just can't live on an untaxable income!," "But, man, we're doing it! . . . much laughter.) Step four: Make friends with Heads and friendly students at your local teachers' college. (Even up here there is a psychedelic shop. Under the rocks and behind the trees come a few draft resisters, a poet and a folksinger, too.) Get them to set up a draft table at the college. Get almost thrown in the lake by the campus veterans. Retreat sometimes . . . but return again. Invite them on to being turned on without drugs. Let them turn you on with their music. Look at each other and smile a lot . . . who can help it!
font size="3" face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" color="#000000"> Step five: Make friends with your local Feds. (Ali, not so good people!) Entertain them when they arrive to ask you how come you're writing all those letters to the draft eligible men in the county or how come you're not in the army or how come you aren't married to the girl you live with. Offer to show them the cow. Or offer to show them the door. But remember their names. They will most likely come back . . .
Step six: Drop ideas on peoples' heads instead of bombs. Swoop into Duluth for a conference at the U. Let an audience capture you and spread the word. We're Free! You're Free! All you have to do is do it. Whatever bonds hold you are tied with your own hands. And you don't have to go to college for 4 years, or get a "Good" job, or get married, or cut your hair short, or wear a girdle, or join the army, or pay taxes. You may pay a price, but then there is a price for everything. Whatever it is that you really want to do, do it now, for life is short and love is fleeting when it's not spent. Meet new draft resisters. Love them all. Sing. Talk. Drink wine. Invite them out to the farm for a week when school's out. Then retreat. Come home. Dig your toes in the warm dirt. Pick a tick off your friend's neck. Have a few stupid arguments. Write to the urban poor telling them you'd like to help families get out of the city if they want. Go out and plant a row of carrots. Make a mistake. Roll in the grass and begin again. Patsy Richardson Free Folk Pennington, Minn.
YOGURT
If you're tired of plastic supermarket chow and you'd like to grow at least part of your food . . . but you live in a fifth floor walk-up or on board a pirate radio ship . . . keep the faith, baby. This series is for you - and anyone else interested in the world's best tasting, most natural, least processed, least poisoned, most nutritious . . . and least expensive foods. For, surprisingly, some of the very finest (from every standpoint) eating is not only easily grown right in the house - but is positively better when so produced. One such food is yogurt. Yogurt? Yes, yogurt . . . and I know all about the stuff they sell under that name down at the local market. I don't like it either. All I can tell you is that pure, natural homemade yogurt-just like homebaked breadis a quantum jump ahead of the artificially sweetened, flavored, preserved and processed variety. Trust me - even if your first batch falls flat on its face. Mine did too . . . but the second was better and the fourth or fifth was superb! Relax, experiment a little and you'll soon be producing perfect runs of one of mankind's oldest and most beneficial foods. And, if you're wondering what you'll do with all that yogurt, Catharyn Elwood has pretty well summed it up in her book, FEEL LIKE A MILLION! (Pocket Books, 75), "Yogurt has a delightful smooth-as-velvet consistency when properly made. It can be eaten any time of day as a between-meal or before-bedtime snack, because it is not too filling. It leaves the mouth with a fresh "clean" taste. Yogurt may be eaten by itself, as a dessert combined with fruits such as berries, pineapple, peaches, grapes, apricots, honeydew melons or any sprightly-tasting fruit. It is an excellent vegetable-salad dressing when combined with parsley, tomato sauce, and grated horseradish or spiked with chopped chives and Roquefort cheese. You'll use yogurt at every meal, including breakfast, once you acquire a taste for it." If you need more ideas, DaisyFresh (see the classified section of this issue) has compiled a booklet of something like 373 ways to use yogurt. Just remember; it tastes good, it's packed with B vitamins, protein and calcium, it aids digestion and very learned doctors believe it can - if eaten regularly - materially lengthen your life. Besides that, it's dirt cheap when you make it yourself: Twenty to thirty cents a quart. Once you really get into making your own, you'll want a "Culturizer" or yogurt maker. This is a constant temperature, electrically-heated base and a set of poly or glass (which I prefer) containers with tight fitting lids. Culturizers make four individual pints or quarts of yogurt at a time, take out all the hassle, are foolproof, cost from $10.00 to $15.00 and can save you $50.00 - $100.00 or more a year for years. You can start on a smaller scale with covered Pyrex containers or plastic freezer cartons and a heating pad, hot air furnace outlet, steam radiator or other steady low-heat source. Just like people who bake their own bread, real yogurt heads have a lot of recipes for the final product. Here's a few. . . just remember that needlessly disturbing the yogurt during incubation may cause the tender, custardlike curd to break up and "weep" or "whey-off". GAYELORD HAUSER'S YOGURT Add 1/2 cup of powered skim milk to one quart of fresh milk and mix with an electric mixer or by shaking in a Mason jar. Heat milk very hot but not boiling. Test by putting a drop on your wrist: It should feel hot but not burn. Stir in 3 tablespoons of the best tasting, unflavored ready-made yogurt you can find. Pour the mixture into a double boiler or into a pan set into a larger pan of water and place near a radiator or on the pilot light of a gas
stove. Cover with a folded towel just like you cover raising dough when making bread. You'll have more than a quart of fortified yogurt in about 5 hours. Keep in refrigerator. Hauser recommends eating a pint of yogurt a day. BEATRICE TRUM HUNTER'S YOGURT Any raw, pasteurized or homogenized cow, goat, soybean or other milk may be used. Reconstituted skim milk is also good. Keep all materials and utensils scrupulously clean. Pour a quart of fresh milk into a pot and bring to a near boil. Cool to lukewarm (105 to 115 degrees F. on a cooking thermometer or warm, but not hot, on the wrist). Mix the contents of a packet or bottle of Bulgarian yogurt culture into the milk with a wooden spoon. Pour the mixture into prewarmed cups of a yogurt maker and leave undisturbed for about 2 hours. At the end of this time , remove the cover from a container and gently tilt the glass. The yogurt should be about the consistency of heavy cream. If it's still liquid, let it incubate longer and check again. When the yogurt thickens, remove and refrigerate. It will continue to thicken as it cools. For subsequent batches, set aside a small portion of yogurt from the first batch. Within 3 to 5 days, "grow" another batch of yogurt following the above directions and using one quart of milk and t tablespoons of the "starter". Renew culture after one month. NOTE: The original culture may take as long as five hours to "set". . . so don't get discouraged. GOOD TIMES YOGURT You will need: A water thermometer (can be obtained from pet store that handles aquarium supplies) A clean 1/2 gallon container with tight-fitting lid. (Glass is best but plastic is OK) 1/2 gallon reconstituted powered milk with 1 1/2 to 2 times as much powder as is normally used. 3 tablespoons of commercial plain yogurt for starter. Yami works well. Old Country Bulgarian (from health food stores) is expensive and doesn't always work . . . but, when it does work, is fantastic. Finding a fairly constant source of low heat is the hardest part of making yogurt. A gas stove pilot light is usually best but a stove burner at lowest heat can sometimes be used . . . or a heating pad. Place the thermometer in a pot of water that is big enough to hold the yogurt jar. Experiment for several days until you find a combination (moving the pot closer to or farther from the heat source, turning the pilot flame up and down, covering and uncovering the pot with a towel) that maintains a nearly constant 94 degrees F. . . overnight, if possible. The rest is easy: Mix the yogurt with the milk, cover, place in the pot, fill to the brim of the jar with water and leave for 8 to 10 hours. Then taste. If the yogurt is watery and still tastes more like milk than yogurt, let it set for a few more hours. If the culture is sour, try a lower temperature or a shorter time with the next batch. Refrigerate. Be sure to reserve a few tablespoonfuls in a separate jar (to keep it clean) for starter of the next run. When the culture begins to deteriorate, get some more commercial starter. SPECIAL FLASH: As I finished this piece, I received in the mail the $6.00 packet from Daisy Fresh. There's no time now to really review the Daisy Fresh material, but Joe Reimuller of that company is really into yogurt. If you use yogurt at all, you've got to get the Daisy Fresh info. Joe's method of keeping a culture fresh for a year will more than repay your investment and, if you follow his instructions, there's just no way for you to make bad yogurt. And, as long as we're dropping names and giving our free plugs, here's another: Chocolate and cocoa are very bad for you. Carob, which tastes even better than chocolate, is very, very good for you. For an absolutely delicious variation on the basic yogurt recipes, try stirring 3 to 6 tablespoons of honey into each quart of milk before you scald it. Then, when you add the culture, stir three to six tablespoons of carob flour into the milk. The resulting yogurt will be rich and chocolately and fantastic. If you have trouble obtaining carob, drop a line to Carob Products. They've got an ad somewhere in this issue.
DIGGER BREAD
Every time we make this bread, it's a big hit around our house. Have a big hit around your house. You will need two coffee cans for two loaves. The same cans are used for measuring and baking. It's a good idea to use the three pound size for measuring and the one pound size for baking, since the small tins bake most thoroughly without burning. Do up the wet mix first: 1/2 cup lukewarm water (but not over 85 degrees, as the yeast would be killed). 1 cake or 2 packages of yeast (the cake works faster; if the recipe is doubled or tripled this is still enough). 1 tablespoon of flour 1 tablespoon of honey or raw sugar Mix all of these in the can. If you wish, you may add a couple spoonfuls of honey, molasses, brown sugar, or dextros. A well-cooked potato put through a blender and incorporated into the water at this stage can take the place of the milk below. Mix the dry ingredients while the wet mix stands: 1 level can of whole wheat flour. Nasty old white flour will never do! Rye flour must be mixed with other flour or gluten because the loaf it makes is dense and does not rise well. Coarse ground flours, like stone ground and meals, also must be mixed with fine ground flour or gluten. (Note on gluten: this is the substance that holds the dough together and contains the yeast bubbles when the bread rises. It is developed naturally by kneading.) Add to taste any of the following: Salt - add a tablespoon or so. 1 /8 can of powdered milk Handful or two of raisins Something weird, wheat germ, soya flour, food supplements, nuts, dried dates, etc. Mix the dry ingredients in a huge bowl or pan. Combine the dry and wet mixes and blend until it is uniform. Toward the end of this process such things as ripe bananas or sliced peaches may be thrown in. Let the dough rise in a warm place until it has risen by half. The top of a stove with the oven on is about right. Sometimes this takes an hour or two. Take this opportunity to grease the cans and light a joint. Kneading Alter the dough has risen, sprinkle some flour on a counter or a table top. Be sure to keep the flour on the kneading surface, dough, and your hands! Turn the dough out on the floured surface. Knead by pushing down the top and folding the edges up onto the top again. Kneading usually takes 10-15 minutes. A well-kneaded dough is rounded and springs like a plump baby's bottom. "Why does a poor man make good bread?" "Because he needs it a lot." Be sure all cans are well greased. Divvy the dough, knead the halves into balls and put into the cans. Let rise again until dough has almost doubled in volume (about 45 minutes to an hour). Now you may switch to the baking portion of this here recipe. Baking Put can upright in an oven preheated to 390 degrees, and bake for one hour. The larger cans take longer to bake. After baking, let the cans cool for 5 to 10 minutes. With pot holder in hand, twirl bread in the can. It will glide right on to the counter or whatever. Eat healthy!
by Rod MacDougall The weather was perfect! Even the crying of the two car sick children and an assortment of frayed adult tempers could do little to dampen the enthusiasm of visiting one of Ontario's first rural hip communities. Situated in northeastern Ontario, five rural communal farms have been formed in the last year by young adults in search of life . . . they have found it. The author and a group of eleven Alternate Society menbers from Toronto spent five days living, working and grooving on a 100-acre farm known as Morning Glory Farm. The meals were an adventure in themselves: Apple pan dowdy, fresh baked corn bread, soy bean concoctions, natural cereal breakfasts and many other wholesome, naturally delicious foods untainted by Standard Brands or General Foods. On arriving, we were amazed by the serene beauty of the scenery. Past glimmering lakes, brooding hills, fields that spoke of limitless and unfettered freedom, we drove. The children - made ill by miles of droning engine and slowly weaving blacktop - were now wide-eyed and breathless with smiles frozen on their faces in the excitement of their rural roller-coaster up-hill, downhill ride. After a comedy of wrong turns . . . the splendor of Morning Glory Farm! Most of the farms in the area are without electricity, though the power lines run by most farms. Morning Glory is no exception. We left the power line (and, with it, the last vestage of organized society) behind and travelled a half mile through a creek bed valley and up the hill to our new home. Morning Glory is a group of well kept and sturdy buildings situated on 100 acres of rolling greenery crossed with charming stone fences and stands of beautiful fir trees. The soil is similar to that of the area in general; rich sandy loam. The owner, Mike, is a healthy and purposeful 18-year-old of amazing ability and inventiveness. His farm has eight or nine buildings and a large, comfortable house made warm with an abundance of human love. Some buildings are being converted to serve other purposes: The smoke house is being transformed into a sauna and the
hay loft to a music and play room. To solve the problem of cold storage for food, Mike has single-handedly dug an 8 x 4 x 8 foot hole that will be his huge underground freezer. Morning Glory has 1/4-acre planted with various vegetables that will suffice to feed the four permanent members through the winter. Any surplus produce will be traded with other hip farmers in the area for items Mike may lack. The hip farmers of the area have a deep and abiding love for the land. They practice organic farming. That is, no insecticides or artificial fertilizer. All garbage of organic nature is saved and dumped on the gardens. When the suckers run in the local creeks, they are netted and used for fertilizer as the Indians have done for centuries. . .these fish are considered "coarse" and no limits have ever been set on catching them. Pollution and poisoning of man's environment are two things the hip farmers are leaving behind. We spent the first day in wonder at the undertaking, and early the next morning weeded a large part of the garden. The author was first in the garden to start the weeding and - because he could find no substantial argument in favour of staying dressed in the warm morning sun - stripped nude. The second worker kept his clothes on until he, too, felt unable to justify so doing. By noon men, women and children were busily changing their winter whites to summer tans (or reds, in some unfortunate cases). The meals are prepared in the "summer kitchen", a separate building, so that the heat from the wood-burning stoves will not mar the coolness of the house in summer. However, the evening meals are eaten in the main house by the soft light of coal oil lanterns. In the cool of the evening, the community exchanges its functional dress for beautiful colourful capes and robes for peaceful walks of meditation through the countryside . . . to groove on bright and limitless stars, the sounds and smells of the evening air and the meaning of one's own existence. Another day, and a house raising at a neighbourhood farm. Will - a handsome, steel-spectacled and well-tanned man of nineteen years - bought a 15 acre spread ($450) and an abandoned log school house ($50) and - after having the logs dragged by tractor to his spread - proceeded to erect his new home. All the people from the hip communities in the area gathered at his place at 9 o'clock on a sunny morning and strained their muscles to place the large, heavy logs into position. None had experience in construction - few in any job entailing physical labour - but the building was raised in one day of laughter, friendship and cooperation. The women prepared their special recipes and, at dinner, I had the most incredible meal of my life. Under a magnificent shade tree (Will's home until the house is ready) we pitched into a myriad array of delicious foods laced with love and laughter. A shortage of cutlery only added to the fun. Delicious pea soup was passed around in a great pot accompanied by one large spoon. Next came a truly wonderful salad that was served in an equally large pot and eaten with the fingers. Following that was an array of fresh-baked corn breads, wheat cakes, robust stew (the same spoon doubled here), apple pie, unpasteurized fresh milk still warm from the cow and countless other treats. It was easy to pity the overclothed well-managed patrons of the Royal York who had to accept the pomp and ceremony that is offered by that establishment back in the "big smoke". The house up and the work done, we were cooled by a sudden summer storm. It was taken advantage of by stripping down and taking an unexpected shower. . . running through the wet fields, laughing and feeling the pure joy of being alive. As we piled into our rented bus, Will - standing on the overlooking hill - shouted, "Come on back, friends. My house is as much yours now and it always will be." We knew and felt that was true.
Morning Glory, we love you . . . but we will have our own land and our own lives. The cost of Mike's farm was unbelievable: $4300 with yearly taxes of $50. Will's place, with its self-built home, cost $500. There is much land available at incredibly low prices. Of the 12 people who went on the trip, six are buying a plot of 35 acres - complete with house and six buildings - for $2,000. Two others are also buying land next spring. I'll buy land as soon as I get together a small group of people who are compatible and want a better life.
which do not cost much money, there is the best life a human being can find. And, as you read a short time ago, it is not only the good life now; it may be the only life a man can lead and preserve his life, because always over us like a pall of smoke is the threat of sudden, devastating, complete atomic attack. But suppose such an attack doesn't come. We are still likely any day to wake up to the fact that our ancient and powerful enemy, Depression, is riding again. Remember the Depression which set in in 1929? Remember bread lines? Apple sellers on the street corners? Leaf rakers? Suicides among the once wealthy men? Pinched faces on the street? Worry and woe and the fear that you might never eat again? The simple life will help obviate that. Better than money in the bank, bonds in the safety deposit vault, credit at the stores are the things with which you live surrounded when you live the simple life. This, then, is your guide to getting back to the simple life; a practical everyday manual which will help you to put your feet astride the path that leads to the only life that, since the beginning of man's stay on earth, has led to his complete development and satisfaction--the simple life! SECTION I WHAT IS THE SIMPLE LIFE AND WHY YOU SHOULD LEAD IT "Our life is frittered away by detail. . . Simplify, simplify. " - Thoreau
The literal meaning of the word civilization is life in the city, and when we speak of the growth of civilization, we mean the growth of urban or city life. Unfortunately, city life is tempting, alluring, and so in ever-increasing numbers people turn to it. But it isn't the most wholesome nor the most enduring form of life, and now, what with the threats you read about in the introduction, civilization is facing its gravest peril since the time when Ghengis Khan and Tamerlane just about wiped it out with their barbaric hordes. When you read in the papers that the atomic bomb can destroy civilization it doesn't mean that everybody alive on earth will be wiped out. It means only those who are in the easy path of atomic bombs - that is to say, living in crowded cities - will be destroyed. If you destroy the cities, therefore, you destroy civilization. You have the choice of being destroyed, if the cities are attacked, or of saving your life. To save it, merely get far enough away so that the attack will not carry you in its wake. See how simple it is, how practical, how obvious to survive in an atomic world? The simple life is merely the life which gives up the complexities and useless possessions of modern city life. It doesn't mean reverting to savagery, eating raw meat, not washing. It, indeed, means leading a fuller life than you lead now - as ever so many educated, intelligent people who have willingly gone back to the simple life will tell you. There's that brilliant editor of Mears, Michigan, Swift Lathers, for your first exhibit. As long ago as 1912, Swift Lathers, law-trained, far-sighted, looked on city life, turned his back against it, moved to an isolated little village in the dune country on Lake Michigan, and started a newspaper which is still the smallest weekly newspaper in the world. "Consider me at my age," he recently asked his youngest son, Nathan, in describing the kind of life he hopes the boy will lead. "What do I need? What do I want? Firewood, food, shelter from the wind, a shelf of books, chess and two good feet that will let me walk fifteen miles on a March afternoon in the solitudes of the dunes. Night comes and the smell of potatoes frying for supper. And the patter of little children coming to spaghetti.
"There, Nathan, you have the recipe for a happy life. We seek fire, food, shelter and riches of the mind. We have to live only one day at a time. But every day should have a little bit of heaven. And that might be five minute's time to sit down on a rock in a new mown meadow or a half hour of quiet reading solitude with Thoreau." Another city man who decided on the simple life was Ted Richmond. After years of struggle in cities of the South, he bought a poor, worn-out 10-acre farm near Jasper, Arkansas, in one of the last frontiers in America. He was a city man, with soft hands, a liking for bright lights and movies, and his friends all thought him touched. After he had been living the simple life for a year, his friend, Charles Morrow Wilson, visited him. He found Richmond completely remade in health, in outlook on life, in the measure of happiness he found. And he was living so economically that his cash outlay for his flourishing life was less than $100 a year, for everything. And yet he was living better, more fully than when he was earning much more in the city, and spending it all for "a living." Another: George Livingston Baker. He had the further handicap of no money and 64 years of age when he set out to live the simple life in the Colorado Rockies above Denver. Less than $100 to his name he owned, and he was ill besides. But did he ever regret it? Not for a minute. At the age of 75 he is still going strong, cooking his own food, cutting his own wood, and making his adequate living in the ways that fill every day with satisfaction and adventure. One thing you will get out of the simple life is greater satisfaction in living. In the city the majority of the people are bored. "Let's get together soon," they tell one another. "How about a movie tonight?" "What's there to do around this joint, anyway?" "What'll we do now?" "I hate Sundays - they bore me," - you hear these expressions on every side. But no one who moves away from all that and gets back to the simple life is ever bored for a minute. C.W. Whitemore discovered that years ago. Whipped out by life in Philadelphia, "with axe, pick axe, and saw I came here (to the Pitts Hill Road in the Berkshires) and decided to build." He earned $1 a week as correspondent for a weekly paper, lived on that practically, and a year later wrote: "I am the wealthiest resident on Pitts Hill Road!" He never had a bored minute, always found an entrancing panorama of Nature, whatever the season, found treasure there he never found in the city. And health, too. Bob Davis, the roving correspondent who looked in on everything interesting, discovered his healthiest man on Caledesi Key, Florida - Henry Sherrer. "It is difficult to believe that this amazing man is in his seventy-eighth year; that his diet is bread, eggs, bananas, and an occasional cereal; that six hours of sleep is enough to refresh him," exclaimed Mr. Davis. "He reads without the aid of glasses and can hear a mile away the cooing of a turtle dove. "The chest of him is like a cask, his arms are as iron and the muscles between his shoulder blades ripple when he strides. The clasp of his hand is viselike, and his voice rich with kindly intonations." Maybe you have thought often - who among us hasn't? - of leading such a life. Maybe you wondered, living where you do in a large city or a small town that seems to offer no opportunity to break civilization's shackles, how, in the first place, you could do it, and where, in the second. If that has been your problem, you can take heart from this fact - that there are smart men and women leading the simple life everywhere in the world; yes, right on the outskirts of the largest cities. You don't have to traipse off to Mexico or the Andes or Morocco, cut all ties with the phases of your life you like, in order to lead the simple life. All you have to do is make a minor change-in the way that will be discribed in the next Section. SECTION II WHERE YOU CAN LEAD THE SIMPLE LIFE "If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has
Next to the question of deciding that you are going to lead the simple life, come what will, is that of deciding just where you will live it. The very phrase simple life connotes getting away from it all, up into the fastness of the mountains or on the far-flung desert, and you are wondering, with your slim resources and dependence upon being where you can sell your skill, whether you're quite ready to make drastic breaks such as this would entail. You needn't worry about that part of it, because the fact is that the important thing is to want to lead this sort of life. Given that, places where you can live it abound. Near large cities? Within twenty, thirty minutes of the largest cities you will find men and women living it. In any state? Why not? One state is as good as another, although in the West, where there are vast areas of public domain in the form of national forests, it is easier to find land, and cheaper, because, as you will read in due time, you can lease from the Government sufficient land for simple living for as little as $5 a year - but that isn't the only kind of land on which you can live this simple life. For instance, as long ago as ten years, there was a young Englishman working as a clerk in a London bank. If you think the city in which you live is crowded, try living and making your way in London once. And if you think the countryside around where you live is settled up, try finding a place without people near London; almost anywhere in Europe, for that matter. But this young chap was determined he was going to get away from the city. He managed it easily enough; he merely rented enough room for his tent from a friendly farmer, paid him a few pennies a day rent is all. "It is a delightful country, beautiful and quiet." From this beautiful and quiet countryside the clerk commutes to crowded, dirty London every day. When he's done with work, he hies back to his simple life-his quarters, winter and summer, consist of a tent 7x10 feet in size. It is furnished with a bunk along one side, a small trunk and a converted sugar box which he uses as a larder and kitchenette. Living thus simply, he has reduced expenses to a minimum-and raised satisfaction in living to a maximum. And all within 20 miles of the world's largest city. Or New York City. It would be pretty hard to find a place close to that city where this sort of life could be lived, you would think, wouldn't you? But two girls, secretaries in downtown offices, have managed it. They, too, rent from a friendly farmer, live ecstatically and very economically in a small cabin, built with their own hands. George Baker, whose story you have partially learned in Section I, the 64-year-old man who found ease and peace and satisfaction in the simple life, chose a spot in the mountains forty miles west of Denver, Colorado. He didn't buy his 14 acres. He leased it from the Forest Service at $1 per month. At the other end, to show you how you can fit this simple life into any scheme of living you fancy, there's a man named Clark Richardson who, tired of the city, tired of being broke, tired of working and having so little to show for it, decided that for him the real wilderness life was the thing. He had managed to save only $500, no more, but that was enough to get him past the Canadian Government officials, who screen those who enter their country. With that $500 he was able to "retire" permanently. He built a cabin on rented ground in British Columbia, and earns enough working by the day for a few weeks a year to live in comfort and satisfaction for the rest of the time. So don't hold back from making your leap into simple living because you happen now to live in a large city. Either move to the spot where you have always fancied you would like to live, or, if circumstances require you to be in the city for business each day, move out of the city far enough to find the sort of living you want. Don't say it can't be done. It can. Hundreds have done it. How do you know you can't until you have tried it yourself?
In this country for the past dozen years there has been a back-tothe-land movement that has elicited the cooperation of the Government in Washington. Shortly after World War II, for instance, the Goverment opened up tracts of five acres, under the Five-Acre Tract law, passed in 1938, in the desert of California. Hundreds of families and individuals have leased these tracts at $5 per year, $1 per acre per year. The requirements are not strict. The Act merely requires that you state the purpose for which the land is to be used. It can only be used as a home, camp, cabin, health, convalescent, recreational or business site, and not for farming. You have also to prove that you have financial responsibility to maintain yourself and carry out the undertaking for which you propose to use the land. Information about where to write for such land is included in Section VII. There also you will find information about other Government lands which are available for your use in living the simple life. But don't worry too much if there isn't public land near where you are. There's land. That is all that counts, because if you are persistent and earnest about it you can find a place for your experiment, all right. The main thing is, are you in earnest? If you are, you are ready to read Section III. It tells you just how you can live this simple life, what kind of house or other shelter you can live in, and how easy it is to provide yourself with the essentials of a roof over your head. SECTION III HOW YOU CAN LIVE "Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts, of life are . . . positive hindrances. " -Thoreau Your first requirement, of course, in leading the simple life, in going back to it, is to have something to live the simple life in. In other words, shelter. You have been used, maybe for your entire life, to apartments, hotel rooms, city dwellings, so you know what rent means. Budget experts figure on 25 per cent of the income for this one item of shelter alone. So if you have been earning $400 a month, you have been accustomed to laying $100 a month at least on the line for rent. Chances are, what with rents inflated like everything else, you have been paying out more than a fourth of your income for the mere sake of a roof between you and the stars. You are concerned about going back to the simple life for fear you can't afford what it costs, if you cut yourself loose from your income. Is that one of your misgivings? Forget your past conceptions of what it costs for shelter, because the simple life implies that you can get along with a different kind of shelter; one which is just as good but which costs you just a fraction. Part of the fun of the simple life is cutting yourself clear away from old ideas. Instead, for example, of living in a city apartment, at $125 per month, with its varnished floors, steam radiators, and janitor service, you get as far away from that as you can, and live in the simplest shelter imagimable. Why, you might even live in a cave! It sounds preposterous at first, but many persons have done and do it. Pat Lynch, born into an aristocratic Irish family, ran away from home, sailed the seven seas, then settled down in an isolated valley in the Rocky Mountains, still named Pat's Hole in his honor. He couldn't be bothered about building a house, so he cleaned out and patched up a natural cave just above the river. Here he lived in blissful comfort for 50 years. During his latter dayshe died at the age of 98 just a few years ago, hale and hearty to the end-some of his neighbors "took pity on the poor old man", built him a tidy log cabin, and moved Pat and his effects into it. But he didn't like it. He went back to his hole in the cliff. Those who visited him there found it neat as a pin, clean, sunny, and bright; as good a home as any human being could want. It shows one thing, what can be done. Chances are you will want a different kind of shelter, and no reason why you cannot have one for little or no cost.
For example, the market abounds with U.S. Army tents, sixteen feet square, made of the best canvas procurable. With sidewalls of lumber and lumber flooring, these pyramidal tents of the Army are as good a home for a simple liver as anyone could want, light, airy, wind-resistant, warm. What about winter in a tent? All right, what about winter in a tent. No one can answer that better than a simple liver who tried it, and here is the experience of Mr. and Mrs. Charles H. Macomber. Thomas Drier tells about how they managed it: "If as some philosophers have said, we are rich according to the number of things we can get along without, Mr. and Mrs. Charles H. Macomber are multimillionaires. They lived in a tent all last winter near Plymouth, New Hampshire. One time the temperature got as low as 32 degrees below zero. Attempts were made to persuade the Macombers to move into a house, but they protested they were entirely comfortable and neither they, nor their cat "Mittens", nor their dog "Peaches" had any desire to desert their tent. A trailer makes a fine home for a simple liver, and used trailers are going onto the market in increasing numbers now that the housing shortage is being relieved. Out in the west are ever so many persons who swear that a sheep wagon is the best place on earth for a human being to live, the most compact, the most comfortable, the most friendly. Frank Robbins of Glenrock, Wyoming, for instance, has spent maybe half his life in sheep wagons, on the bleakest, coldest, windiest spots in Wyoming. He never suffered, and although he owns a comfortable ranch house near town, he prefers living in his sheep wagon. Life there, he says, is simpler. It is reduced to its elements. It is beautiful. But if you want a permanent home-if you have the AngloSaxon feeling that only when a man lives underneath his own roof does he live-why that opens up a whole new field of delight for you. Build your own home. Let it be, according to the locale in which you build it, a log cabin, an adobe house, a rammed earth dwelling, even one made of bamboo or palm fronds. But if you build it yourself, you will enjoy it the more. And how do you know you can't build a perfectly satisfactory home for yourself? There are dozens of cheap manuals on log cabin, rammed earth, adobe, or other construction on the market, and the best advice you can receive is to buy yourself one of these books, live with it until you know it practically by heart, and then-go to it. While you are building your home, you can live in a cave or in a simple tent. George Baker, for instance, who has been introduced to you before and whom you will meet again in the next chapters, because he is such a paragon of all the pioneer virtues which make simple living practicable, did that. He had an 8x 10 wall tent. This he pitched on his rented homesite. In it he lived all one summer while he fashioned a oneroom log cabin with his hands. He said that no period of his life gave him greater enjoyment than the weeks he was arising early, working late on the first home of his own he ever built. You don't need much equipment to do the rough and ready building you are going to do. And you might, like Thoreau, even borrow what you need, but if you do, do be as careful as he was when he returned his borrowed tools to have them sharper and in better shape than before! Mr. Baker, when he built his house, had the most meager kind of outfit. He had: a shovel, a hoe, an ax, a belt hatchet, one crosscut saw, one panel saw, a brace and two bits, a sharpening stone, and two files: And that was all. His personal outfit, while we are on it, because you will need a personal outfit yourself, you know, consisted of the following: 3 pairs of U.S. Army blankets, bought second hand; one Hudson's Bay blanket, a canvas tarpaulin, sheet iron stove, set of cooking utensils, water pail, water bag, and small wash tub. In clothing he has a sheeplined coat, an army hat, several pair of heavy shoes, socks, an extra pair of trousers, two suits of underwear, an overcoat, one slicker. Don't let not having S 100,000 in government bonds or two or three business blocks hold you back from leading the simple life. Your shelter is going to cost you next to nothing-after you get your cabin built $3 to $5 per month is going to take care of that. And your actual living, food to eat, other expenses which are inevitable to a human being as long as his breath holds out, are not going to cost you much more.
The few dollars it is going to cost you per month to live you are going to have little trouble in getting, as you will see when you read the next Sections. SECTION IV FOOD AT SMALL COST "We can call always fire on less, when we have more to live for. " - Stephen McKenney Maybe you have yearned for years to lead this simple life, but have been afraid you weren't ready for it, because you did not have an assured income from investment of from $100 to $1,000 per month, depending upon the extravagance of your tastes or your experience in what constitutes a living in a modern city or town. Revise your concept of what a living means and you can live like a king on very little, for much less, as a matter of fact, than $1 a day. And anyone can earn $1 a day regardless of where he is, regardless of how unskilled he is, because $1 a day can be picked up with just a few hours work a week. You are used to grocery bills running $100 a month and up, but it doesn't cost more than 10 per cent of that to sustain life and health and keep you well nourished. The trick is to buy simple foods, which are always inexpensive, instead of fancy foods which are always dear. Not only will these simple foods cost you less money, but they will nourish you better and actually keep you at a higher level of health. A man named Frank Tarbeaux was convicted of some petty crime in England a number of years ago, sent to prison for 27 months. He had been a successful gambler, a high liver, and what they fed him in prison at first dismayed him. He thought surely he would die of starvation, either that or boredom, because the meals were all the same. For breakfast and supper he and his fellow prisoners received a bowl of oatmeal, a chunk of bread, a jug of water; at noon they received bread and a large bowl of soup. And he thought he was badly treated. But after a few months such health as he had never known came to him, and when he was discharged and wrote a fabulous story of his life, he declared: "I am grateful to that sanitarium." Of course, it isn't necessary for anyone to go to jail to learn and practice the benefits of simple fare. Just let him live on a few cents a day, confine his purchases to items which can be kept within, say, 50 cents a day for everything under today's higher prices. Seven or eight years ago a research foundation in Minneapolis interested in proper nutrition, made a study of the actual cost to maintain a human being in the peak of health and fitness. The foundation concluded: "The average normal American needs only a few pounds of food a day. He can buy it at an average cost of eight cents per pound. He can be amply nourished, if he will build his diet around a few simple plentiful foods. "Millions of low income and moderate income American families are undernourished because of wasteful spending of their food money," the report continues, "which in turn is the result partly of 'over-civilized' eating habits and partly of lack of education in food values. Much of their precious food money goes for items of little food value - 'taste-ticklers' and stimulants." As to what is needed, these are the essential or protective foods: a pound of whole wheat foods and a pint of milk a day, which will supply most of the proteins, vitamins, and minerals needed for healthful, vigorous living. This basic diet can be fortified, according to this report, with an occasional orange or can of tomato juice and a bit of fatty meat two or three times a week. When this report was issued, the cost per pound of essential foods was around eight cents. Say it has doubled since. That makes only 16 to 20 cents per pound.
Current prices on essential low-cost foods as this was being written, in a large city market, ran: Soy beans, 18 cents a pound; split peas, 11 cents; navy beans, 11 cents; pinto beans, 12 cents, spaghetti, 18 cents; rice, 16 cents. Apples were selling for 10 cents a pound, tomatoes at 14, flour at 8, potatoes at 3, lettuce at 10 and sweet potatoes at 10. Milk was 17 1/2cents a quart. Some frugal buyers can shade even this report. There is V. Berglin, of Tucson, Arizona, for example. For years he has not spent more than $75 to $90 per year for his food, only $6 to $10 per month - and he is one of the bestnourished and peppiest individuals in the Southwest. One month's supply for a simple liver - this is an actual marketing list of a man who has followed this system for living for a long time - would run like this: 20 lbs. white flour, 10 lbs. corn meal; 6 lbs. bacon; 1 lb. salt pork; 1 lb. coffee; 1/4 lb. tea; 5 lbs. sugar; 10 lbs. potatoes; 3 lbs. macaroni; 2 lbs. raisins; 3 lbs. navy beans; 6 large packages each of corn flakes and oat meal; 12 cans of condensed milk. The cost will run you at today's prices around $12. And that, plus fresh meat which you will pick up or fish you will catch or small game you will snare or trap, will sustain you easily and well and give you a feeling of satisfaction and creature comfort. One of the saddest stories from World War II told of a British aviator whose plane was shot down over the jungle. He parachuted to safety but soon became lost and before he could reach friendly hands; before searching parties could reach him; his strength was exhausted and he died of starvation. When found, the body was lying in a bed of purslane-a common weed found in various parts of the world. In Europe, poor families often use purslane as a salad, and nutritionists have found that this common weed has a food value about equal to green string beans. The unknowing flyer had actually starved to death in the midst of plenty. Southern California today is one of the richest agricultural areas in the world. Rich soil and mild climate make for year around harvesting. But yet when the Spanish fathers first ventured into this territory they faced several years of precarious existence. Time after time they were on the verge of starvation and on the point of abandoning the enterprise. The small sailing boats took months to make the difficult journey from Mexico against adverse winds, tides and storms. Many of the crew died of scurvy each trip, and the meager supplies they, could bring were always inadequate to support the few dozen soldiers and priests in the early California missions. By luck, prayer and near-starvation they managed to hang on until gardens and crops could be planted and harvested and a livelihood assured. But in the meantime, there were many tribes of simple Indians whom the Franciscan monks had come to Christianize. These peoples - and anthropologists estimate they numbered about 100,000 had few or no clothes, only the simplest kinds of snares and weapons, and their homes were rude shelters of boughs, on the lee side of rocks. They needed nothing more. They lived on seeds, small birds and animals, the fruits and pulp of certain cactus and other desert plants, and their principal food was a meal ground from the abundant acorns of the live oaks and made into a porridge or baked into cakess and bread. The Spaniards, accustomed to a diet of cereals, meat, wine and olives, starved rather than try the food of the Indians. And many, many others - even today - are just such slaves of habit and custom, ready to starve to death before trying a new and strange food. Corn, called "maize" by many European peoples, is considered by them to be fit only for animal food. Relief agencies, trying to aid starving millions, have often been in despair by the rejection of such things as canned corn, hominy, cornmeal mush, corn-pone or "Johnny cake," which so many of us Americans regard as delicacies. Habit and custom bind all of us with heavy chains, but when combined with ignorance they form a barrier which is well-nigh insurmountable. Man is perhaps the most omniverous feeder of all animals. The stomachs of cows and grass eaters are especially adapted for their diet. Cats, dogs and similar creatures are particularly suited for a meat diet. But nature has apparently made the digestive apparatus of man so adaptable that it can handle the widest variety of foods. Fanatics have many times proved that man can live healthfully on a raw fruit and vegetable diet; on a diet that excludes all meats and animal products, and even on a completely liquid diet. A famous physician who has suffered so severely with amoebic dysentery that he was able to handle nothing but boiled milk, still lived comfortably and well for many years. A well-known engineer, faced with the problem of completing his senior
year of college on a very small income, solved his problem by mixing large batches of dry oatmeal with a little sugar and a few raisins. He had no facilities for cooking, but ate several handfuls of this Spartan ration daily, washed down with plenty of water. He suffered no ill effects on this diet, maintained normal weight and health and graduated with honors. On the other hand, the life of the Eskimo proves that a diet of meat and fish can be equally successful. The famous explorer, Viljalmer Stefanson, once spent a year in the arctic during which time his diet consisted solely of meat, yet he returned to civilization in vigorous health and weighing ten pounds more than when he left. Diet in man, therefore, seems to be very largely a matter of choice and education. Everyone who has watched a mother wean her baby must realize this. The infant is accustomed to a diet of milk and recognizes nothing else. When a spoonful of porridge is given him, he promptly spits it out. Only by the patience and persistence of the mother, during which time the food is spilled over bib and clothing, rubbed in the hair and played with, is he finally taught to eat it. Each new item of diet is more or less a repetition of the same routine. Where the mother is busy and impatient, or where the income and available food is limited, the diet of the child, and his food likes and dislikes carried over into adult life, may be very limited. Pellagra, beri-beri, scurvy and other nutritional diseases arise not from starvation but from a restricted diet. Even the meat-eating Stefanson found that to maintain health, he had to eat various kinds of meat and include fat, such as seal blubber, and the body organs - heart, liver, etc. Modern nutritionists now agree that the preferred diet is one that is varied as much as possible. Variety in diet insures ample supply of vitamins, amino acids and other trace elements which seem to be essential to health. With such a varied diet there should be no need for supplemental vitamin pills or potions. Perhaps more important from the standpoint of health than the actual diet itself, is the quantity of food taken. Although it has been estimated that at least half the world's population, chiefly in such densely populated countries as China and India, do not have enough to eat, it is equally true that a large part of the population, and especially in the United States, suffer from evereating. Gluttony is more common and more pernicious than drunkeness. Overeating is a habit more difficult to conquer than many forms of drug addiction. A large majority of all the ills we suffer are due directly or indirectly to overeating Excess food acts in the human body just as excess gasoline in an automobile engine. Valves stick, carbon accumulates, sludge clogs up the working parts and eventually slows down, damages and stops the motor. In a similar manner, too much food impairs and breaks down the functioning of the human body; fat accumulates, circulation becomes sluggish and labored, the heart is distended, strained, and all the organs suffer in consequence. It is interesting to note that the first man to warn of the harmfulness of overeating lived in Medieval Europe. Luigi Cornaro, a Venetian, came from a wealthy family and wasted his early years in such riotous living, drunkeness and gluttony that by the time he was 40 degenerative diseases had reached such a state that physicians despaired of saving his life. Given up to die he retired to a small country estate and took stock of himself. He was an intelligent man; well-educated for his time, and capable of profound reasoning. He came to the conclusion that the human body was designed to function most efficiently and well on the minimum amount of food that would maintain normal weight and strength. Overeating was not simply a waste of food but a definite strain and burden upon the body organs. He decided to experiment upon himself and found that - in his case - an intake of about fourteen ounces of solid food daily, with a pint of wine best satisfied his needs. His food was the plainest and simplest kinds, a coarse whole grain bread, a little meat - usually fowl - and a green salad. Caloric values were unknown five hundred years ago and so Cornaro concerned himself only with quantity. He found that in his own case the balance between enough and too much was so delicate, due to damaged organs, that the addition of only two ounces more than he required would produce a severe digestive disturbance. This was perhaps fortunate for it strengthened an already formidable resolution and Cornaro was able to stick to his diet so faithfully that he regained his health; became a noted architect; one of the leading citizens of the powerful Venetian republic; fathered a large family and lived comfortably to the ripe old age of 102. Cornaro wrote of his experiences and advised others to follow his example, but he prescribed no diets, and suggested that each person should experiment with the needs of his own body to discover the kinds of food and the minimum amount of food which would maintain health, weight and vigor. He recognized that this would vary with the individual and the kind of exercise and work performed.
But, although Cornaro's advice has been widely read, and his writings translated into many languages and published many times over, it is rare that anyone can be found with the courage, resolution and will- power to adhere to them. One notable exception was John D. Rockefeller, Sr., who recovered his health and lived to the age of 96 through careful attention to a minimum diet. In his case, as in Cornaro's, it must be pointed out that severe digestive troubles practically forced the limitation of diet. With most of us, food and the pleasures of eating are so important that we can seldom summon the will-power to practice such Spartan restraint. It is, however, a goal to be cherished and remembered, for the nearer we can approximate this end, the greater will be our reward in improved health and a comfortable long life. Although the annual seed catalogs list a large variety of vegetables, these are chiefly the familiar ones handed down from generation to generation of gardeners. Often they are not too well suited to our particular locality and often they have been selected and inbred for so many generations that they are now lacking in qualities which once made them desirable. Too few realize that varieties of weeds growing in the fields and along the roadsides may be just as edible; indeed may even be more nutritious, more appetizing, than our cultivated vegetables. Again, custom and habit and the resistance to change may blind us to the possibilities that lie around us. Just as the purslane in which the aviator lay down to die of starvation might easily have saved his life, so many of us waste our money on processed and factory packaged foods while much superior products may be trampled underfoot. Most country people know that tender dandelion leaves, lamb's quarters, and curly dock are superior to spinach as a cooked green, but there are countless other edible wild plants. Hunting edible foods in the hedgerows, fields and woods is as much fun as hunting game and perhaps even more profitalbe since these foods are sources of minerals, vitamins, and other health-promoting substances which so often are deficient in cultivated plants. If you are interested in the subject, there is a very helpful book which will serve as a guide. It is EDIBLE WILD PLANTS, by Oliver Perry Medsger, published by the MacMillan Company, New York City, in 1947. Perhaps your local library has a copy. Meat is equally available to the knowing. Rabbits, squirrels and game birds are available in most parts of the country in season, but few realize that other small creatures often considered pests are just as valuable for food . . . the grass-eating marmot or wood-chuck, the opposum, raccoon, muskrat, yes even the skunk or porcupine. Some years back, in an effort to encourage hunting of the pestiferous crow, dieticians investigated the food possibilities of this maligned bird and found it could be prepared as tastily as chicken. And almost every small boy who has played Indian has discovered that the sparrow and noisy starling, plucked, cleaned and roasted on a spit over a campfire are as delectable as quail, dove or plover. To this list should be added fish, frogs, turtle and crayfish available in most streams and ponds. In this Section, too, it should be pointed out that while the snares put out by various trappers supply houses are most efficient, there is at present a growing interest in the small boy's slingshot, made from a forked crotch, a pair of rubber bands and bit of leather for a pocket. Lopsided and misshapen stones which we used for ammunition in childhood prevented accuracy, but modern slingshot fans have found that lead shot, or small round pellets of clay, dried hard in the sun, can be fired with accuracy equal to the best bow and arrow and, indeed, comparable to a small rifle. The art of cooking is something that can be as elaborate as the concoctions of a skilled French chef, or as simple as the tin can of "Mulligan" on the hobo's fire. Taste, time, inclination and equipment dictate how and what we may accomplish in this line. For economy of time, effort and money, many simple one-dish meals cooked en casserole are possible. Simplest of all, of course, is famed "mulligan stew" in which available meats from a soup bone to a chicken are put into a kettle, or even a large tin can, together with vegetable, salt and pepper and cooked together to the consistency of rich soup. The Mystery Chef, famed radio commentator on cookery, once told of observing the unemployed during depression periods in London survive in well-nourished comfort on a similar dish. These poverty-stricken men, unable to find work, would gather up the discarded outer leaves and slightly blemished vegetables thrown out as unsalable by the green-grocers. With a few pennies cadged at panhandling or running small errands, they would purchase the cheapest cuts of meat such as shin bones, neck bones, etc. Cooking these together they would have the equivalent of a "mulligan" stew which was not only satisfying but also contained the elements for complete nutrition.
During the depression of 1907 a Boston newspaper reporter, Elmer Rice, made a carefully checked demonstration of how a working man could eat satisfactorily at a total cost of only one dollar a week. Food costs were, of course, considerably lower than in our day, but the chief factor in Mr. Rice's success was the stove, an unpatented device known as the "Atkinson stove." Since cooking costs were included in Mr. Rice's allotment and he was restricted to a low-cost-sleeping room of the type then used by so many unemployed it was important that his stove be efficient, simple and economical. The Atkinson stove was all of these. Heat was supplied by an ordinary, inexpensive kerosene lamp. The stove proper consisted of an insulated metal cover which rested on a grill a few inches above the lamp, so as not to interfere with the air supply. The slow gentle heat accumulating under the insulated cover cooks casserole dishes without shrinkage or burning and retains and blends food flavors in a way that can hardly be duplicated. The Atkinson stove can be used as readily for frying, boiling or baking. Set on a table, the lamp could supply evening light at the same time cooking is done. Costs are surprisingly low, depending upon the cost of kerosene. Doubtless the stove could be adapted very easily to use with a charcoal pot, alcohol, gas or gasoline burner. The essential element is the insulated metal cover, and this can be contrived by removing the bottom, from a fivegallon motor oil can, setting it inside a corrugated cardboard carton with a two-inch airspace between the can and carton, and packing this airspace with lightweight glass wool for insulation. SECTION V HOW YOU CAN EARN A LIVING "I have never been able to find one good reason for working at all, except for bare subsistence or for the fun of it. " - Charles Allen Smart Of course, even a meager living requires money, and money comes only in exchange for work of some kind, so you have to give some thought to the problem of earning a living, if ever so simple. And simple it is to earn a simple living, which is all you need. This man, Baker, for instance, comes back into the picture once more. As you have been told, he had less than $100, was 64 years old, decrepit and discouraged when he set out on his simple living jaunt. He didn't know whether he would be able to make a go of it or not. Besides, he lived 40 miles away from the city in an isolated mountain region. His only training was that of an office man and surveyor, both of which aren't badly needed in the hinterlands where he settled. So he had many hours during his first month or two to worry about whether they'd one day find a lonely old man starved to death in his cabin. He laughs now at the remembrance for he is confident that no matter where he would go he could earn all the living he needs. He has the know-how, you see. He got it during his first year of the simple life when he found 30 different things to do to earn money. What kind of things? The same kind you yourself can turn your hand to. He had a garden, raised more than he needed, sold his surplus - he earned $40 a year at that. He acted as a guide for fishermen and hunters - got $5 a day for that. He drove parties of tourists over the mountains (mountain-scared tourists who wouldn't drive their own cars). He experimented with different herbs, found a cough syrup his neighbors were willing to buy. He made rustic furniture, found it had a ready sale. Another man, John Burnham, living in upper New York State, went through the depression of 1929 - on without knowing there was a depression. His recipe is one you can copy and follows. "There never will be a time when everybody is broke," he believes. "nor will there ever be a time when every job that needs doing is done. There are fences to repair, wells to dig, letters to write, advice to give. Find out what somebody in your neighborhood wants. Then do it for him. Do it so well and at such low cost that you surprise him. Always give people more than they expect, and you'll always find plenty to do." So you will. So you will. No matter where you are, you can turn some of your talents to money and the little
money you need will not require many of your talents nor require them for a very long time.
What will be left in the way of talents, and energy and time will be yours to spend gloriously as you see fit, in living this most blessed life of them all - the simple life. SECTION VI HOW TO START LEADING THE SIMPLE LIFE "There is not a dream which may not come true, if we have the energy which makes, or chooses, our own fate . . . It is only the dreams of those light sleepers who dream faintly, that do not come true. " - Arthur Symons If you have read this far in this course you are convinced, aren't you, that the simple life is an easy life to follow and also the most desirable life,, and you have made up your mind that it will be your life. Don't wait too long to start in. Don't be like so many persons, dreamers who go on year in and year out saying that, Next year will be the year I will do it. But next year never comes, and in the end it becomes too late. Be, rather, like the Chinese gentleman who had a sign in his garden: "ENJOY YOURSELF. IT IS LATER THAN YOU THINK," and start as soon as you can. There is a certain amount of mental orientation and conditioning necessary before you set out, to be sure, and no one but yourself can make that change - about which will be required. You first of all have to decide whether the simple life is really what you are after and if you are willing to make the changes necessary. You have to do some giving up. You can't have the same kind of corner drugstore comforts you have in the city. You may have to build your own fires, wash your own clothes, read by a coal oil lamp, and eat off an oil cloth instead of damask linen, such as you are used to in the fine hotels. Your social life is going to be different. You can't spend your time at cocktail parties or chamber of commerce banquets or watching night club acts; and if these things are more important to you than the peace and serenity and independence which come from the simple life, maybe you had better not consider making the change. But if you go into this thing with your eyes open - always realizing in the back of your mind that in case of economic or atomic attack it may mean the difference between survival and destruction - you'll never find a better life anywhere than the life that is simple. But start preparing for it at once. Begin by buying the outfit you need to get started - sleeping outfit, cooking outfit, building tools, gardening tools, and the like. There's a world of fun even in preparing for the simple life, and mail order house and seed catalogs will enthrall you for weeks or months before you actually are ready to start in. Do not delay too long. There's a new life awaiting you out there, a fine life, a full life, and it's a shame, if you have gone this far toward living it, for you not to go the rest of the way - and fast!
SECTION VII
INFORMATION SOURCES YOU CAN DEPEND ON "Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes. " Thoreau For detailed information about different phases of your new life, here are sources of information:
ABOUT LAND AVAILABLE: Write to the Department of the Interior, Land Management Bureau, in Washington, for circular concerning five-acre tract leases. This is free. The Forest Service, also in Washington, will send you a circular about tracts in the national forests which you can rent. Read the Sunday classified ads. Frequently you can pick up small parcels of land for just a few dollars an acre. Talk to a dependable real estate man in the vicinity of the place you want your simple life to unfold, and ask about renting or buying land.
CABIN BUILDING: The U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, will send you on request a catalog of Government publications, several of which pertain to building cabins and other subjects of interest to simple livers. Many of these publications are free; others cost a few cents each. All are valuable to you. Ask your local library for books on cabin building and other phases of homesteading. There is a fairly large literature on the subject, and a few weeks of reading will make you expert in knowledge - only a few months actual work will make you expert in actual construction! But get the theory first. The publishers of POPULAR SCIENCE MAGAZINE (New York) have several excellent manuals on home building and repairing. They cost $1 apiece. This magazine and POPULAR MECHANICS (Chicago) are filled each month with practical howto-do-it articles which it would pay you to read.
CAMPING KNOWLEDGE: If you've never done much outdoor lisving, you had better read a book or two in the subject. Although fairly old, no other book gives you more background knowledge than Horace Kephart's CAMPING AND WOODCRAFT (The MacMillan Co., New York). This is a two-volume work and is a monument to Horace Kephart, who, incidentally, did exactly the thing you are contemplating - left it all behind and went to live the simple life. He was 43 at the time, librarian of the Mercantile Library, and apparently in a rut for life. But he bucked his way out, took a few hundred dollars, and hiked to the Big Smoky country in North Carolina. Here, living alone in a deserted cabin, he found a wonderful life. He likewise found a satisfying career as writer, friend of the natives, champion of conservation, and father of the Big Smoky National Park. The library will get you other books on camping, but start with Kephart's; he's one of your kind. FISHING AND HUNTING: A large literature exists on this subject, too, and you will find hours of interesting reading in it. Any manual on fishing in the vicinity of where you are to live will be invaluable; the same about a book on hunting. One of the most thorough and workable books on fishing is called FRESH WATER FISHING, by Arthur H. Carhart, published by A.S. Barnes Co., New York. It costs $5 but is well worth the price because it tells everything. If you plan to do some trapping write to FUR-FISH-GAME in Columbus, Ohio, for a list of the trapping manuals published by that firm. These are inexpensive, around $1 usually, but cover a world of practical experience. SUPPLEMENT TO SECTION IV FOOD ONLY $1.00 A WEEK
"Only one thing in life matters - independence. Lose that, lose everything. Get old like me, you'll find that out. Keep your independence!" - John Galsworthy in "Old English. " Soon after the first edition of the Course was distributed friends began to chide us and point out that, after all, it was some years ago that Mr. Rice made his experiments in living on $1 a week for food. The world has come a long way since then (most of it for the worse, many insist) and food costs in particular have advanced greatly. They doubted that anyone could live on $1 a week for food today, or anywhere near that amount. "Be reasonable," they said. "Make it $10 a week and more folks will believe you!" Frankly, we began to feel a little uneasy ourselves. We don't live on $1 a week for food; never have and don't expect to. We think it unnecessary for anyone in these times to impose such Spartan restraints. We only intended to point out that it could be done, and done satisfactorily, if necessity demanded. As doubt increased, we decided that we'd better have a careful test made and appealed to a man who had practiced the simple life for several years to give us the benefit of a laboratory experiment. His report follows: "Dear Friends: You know I'm in sympathy with your ideas, but I didn't expect to be made a guinea pig. At least, not in mid-July when my garden is burgeoning with the first ripe tomatoes, green beans, sweet corn, new potatoes, peas, et cetera, and you tell me I have to pass them all up because some of your Doubting Thomases may not have gardens. My advice to them is to locate where they can have a garden. What is life without a garden? "But since you were so urgent, here is my report, and I'm willing to seal it with blood, notarize it, and swear on a stack of Bibles if you insist. PURCHASED SUPPLIES 3 pounds whole hard wheat from feed store. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 pound soybeans from feed store. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 pounds powdered skim milk from bakery. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 pint blackstrap molasses from bakery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 package iodized salt from grocery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 yeast cake from grocery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 pound salt pork from market . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Total .12 .05 .20 .10 .05 .05 .24 .81
"There are several varieties of soybeans; and I like the big white ones the kind used to make bean sprouts. "Blackstrap molasses is the refinery residue and contains all the concentrated minerals and vitamins removed in processing for white sugar. Bakers use it for flavoring and sweetening. "Buying is important when there is need for economizing. At the time these purchases were made the market for select hard wheat was $2.22 per hundredweight; for soybenas, $2.43. These are the prices the growers get for their top quality. The feed store is entitled to a fair mark-up for handling. But a local Health Food Store asked 350 a pound for whole wheat in a fancy package; 25 a pound for soybeans; 30 a pound for powdered skim milk; and 30 a pint for blackstrap. They have a very limited market and must charge accordingly, but you don't have to buy at these sources. "Milk dryers were charging 5 a pound retail at their plants. I don't know what blackstrap was selling for at the refinery, but it is comparatively inexpensive; most of it goes into stock feed. The very dark molasses at the grocery is "blackstrap" - they just don't admit it. They priced it at 18 for 12 ounces.
"Of course, no one likes to sell in these little quantities and you wouldn't want to buy in dribbles either. Wastes too much time and temper. Better economy would be to buy fifty or even a hundred pounds of wheat, if you can keep it in dry, clean storage; ten or twenty-five pounds of soybeans; a fivegallon tin of blackstrap, and ten pounds of powdered milk, providing you can keep it in air-tight tins, or tight glass jars. It absorbs moisture from the air and turns rancid if exposed needlessly. MONDAY "Breakfast: I ground half a cup of wheat through my old coffee mill, adjusting the burrs to a coarse, percolator type grind. This I cooked with water and a pinch of salt, and ate it sweetened with molasses and drenched with milk. I mix the powdered milk with water, shake well, and let it stand overnight in my spring cooler. "After breakfast I took a couple of pounds of the wheat and put it through my coffee mill, adjusting the burrs to the finest, drip type grind. It put it through three or four times until it came out like flour, but coarse, of course. "Where did I get the coffee grinder? I bought it at the hardware store for 50. Said he'd had it on the shelf since 1922. You don't expect me to charge that in my week do you? That is a capital investment. "I measured out one and three-fourths pounds of this flour and stirred into it one level teaspoon of salt. Then I crumbled the cake of yeast into a cup of warm milk, stirred it up good and added another cup of warm water. This, mixed with the flour, made a dough of good consistency. I then set it aside to rise for twenty minutes. "After scrubbing my hands, I rubbed them with a bit of the salt pork, which I also used to grease two tins. Then kneaded my dough good, dividing it into the two tins. There was lots of life in the yeast, so I set the dough aside to rise again and in about half an hour it was swelling over the top of the tins. Meanwhile, I had the stove going to get a good hot oven. It took about an hour to bake the bread well done, with a nice hard crust, which I like. "I soaked a cup of soy beans in water while I made bread and when it was done, I put the beans into a crockery pot with a tablespoon of molasses and a couple of strips of salt pork and cut the stove down so it would simmer cook the beans for the evening meal. I put in plenty of water so they didn't need watching. "For noon lunch, I had three thick slices of my fresh bread and a slice of salt pork. I fried out most of the grease and dripped it onto my bread. With a glass of milk, this was very satisfying, but I took a walk down to the back pasture afterward and ate a few handsful of wild raspberries, which are beginning to ripen now. "Since you won't let me use my garden sass, I also gathered up some still tender leaves of lamb's quarters, some tender wood violet leaves, some watercress, and a small bunch of sour sorrel. These would be chopped up, drenched with salt pork drippings and made into a very tasty salad. "Half the beans, the salad, a cup of hot mint tea, and a slice of bread spread with molasses made the evening meal. I suppose I should have picked a saucer of raspberries and eaten them with milk and molasses, but I didn't think about it, so will have them later. "The mint grows along the run-off from the spring and I use a lot of it, and dry the leaves for winter. I like the tea strong and straight, but sometimes I sweeten it with a little molasses and sometimes I put in a pinch of crushed sorrel leaves, which gives it a little tang like lemon. TUESDAY "Breakfast consisted of a couple of slices of bread, toasted lightly and smeared with a little salt pork drippings, plus a cup of coffee. To make coffee, I put a tablespoon of the blackstrap into a cup and pour boiling water over it. Then I stir it up good and lighten it with a little milk. Tastes about like postum, and now that I'm accustomed to it I prefer it to the tannic acid solution that used to give us heartburn and indigestion in the Navy. "For lunch, I warmed up the beans and polished them off with a glass of milk and a slice of bread. You'd like my bread . . . it is 100 percent whole wheat and no fooling; heavy and dark, with a rich nutty flavor. It's the kind of 'swarzbrod' the poor peasants of Europe had to eat while the nobility ate cake. But you'll remember that the peasants lived long and heartily while the aristocrats lost their teeth and their heads at an early age.
"A family of rabbits has been making free with my cabbage since early spring and I decided this would be a good time to reduce their numbers. I set a snare. "For supper, I took half a cup of soy grits, which I make by grinding them coarsely through my coffee mill, a pinch of salt and some salt pork drippings for added flavoring, and boiled the mixture in the simmer-cooker to make a thick, rich soup - very like old-fashioned split pea soup. A slice of bread, a cup of mint tea, and a dish of raspberries and milk filled me up. "Afterward, I cooked up a batch of whole wheat cereal with bits of salt pork from which I had fried out most of the grease. When it was thick and done I poured the mixture into a pan to cool and set overnight, to make a variation of scrapple WEDNESDAY "I was up bright and early and sure enough, there was a cottontail about three-quarters grown in the snare. I killed it with a quick rap on the back of the neck and cut his head off with a heavy knife, saving all the blood I could in a tin can. This blood, mixed with ground cereal or soybeans makes fine catfish bait and I like to have a can of it buried in the cool mud by the spring where it keeps quite a long time. "The head I carefully split in two with a long ear for a handle on each side. Then I buried both pieces in my compost heap for a use I will tell you about later. "I skinned and cleaned the rabbit, cut it up and wrapped it in a damp cloth to store in my food box in the spring. I like to have all the animal heat well cooled before I cook it. "For breakfast I had a bowl of whole wheat cereal with molasses and milk, and a cup of molasses coffee. "For lunch, I cut some of the scrapple into half-inch slices and fried them brown and crisp with a slice of salt pork. A glass of milk and some wild salad greens went with it. "For supper, I fried the two back legs of my rabbit, ate a bowl of wild salad greens, a slice of bread and finished off with a cup of mint tea and a dish of raspberries and milk. THURSDAY "Breakfast: two slices of toast, a slice of salt pork fried and drained, and a cup of molasses coffee. "After breakfast, I put the remaining pieces of rabbit in a paper sack with half a cup of whole wheat flour, and a pinch of salt and shook them around until they were coated well. Then I browned them good in a frying pan and put them in my crockery casserole with half a cup of soaked soybeans, a handful of tender lamb's quarters leaves, and three small wild onions. These wild onions are small but potent and have to be used with caution. I sometimes chop the green tops in my salads - when I don't expect visitors! I sprinkled the casserole with a little more salt and dripped a tablespoon or two of salt pork grease over all. Then I boiled a cup of milk with two tablespoons of whole wheat flour until it thickened, and poured this in the pot. I put the casserole on to cook soon after breakfast but by lunch it still wasn't done, so I continued to simmer cook it all afternoon. "For lunch, I fried what was left of my scrapple and ate it with a glass of milk which I warmed, flavored with a spoonful of blackstrap, and drank. "By supper time, the rabbit casserole was done just right and I ate half of it, with a slice of bread, before my belt began to feel tight. A cup of mint tea and a dish of berries and milk for dessert. FRIDAY "Breakfast: whole wheat cereal and molasses coffee. "Lunch: two slices of bread made into a sandwich with a filling of chopped watercress, and a glass of milk. "After lunch I dug the pieces of rabbit head out of the compost pile. They really weren't ripe enough, but I figured
they'd do. I tied a length of stout string to each ear, got my minnow net and went down to a swampy, slow-water part of the creek. Here I tossed the rabbit heads in about three feet from the bank and left them for half an hour. When I came back and slowly pulled them up they were covered with crawdads (crayfish is the scientific name). I repeated the operation until I had selected about five dozen nice ones, each about three inches long. "I washed them good, took them home and dropped them into boiling salt water. They turn a bright scarlet when cooked, look like miniature lobsters, and when the tails are separated from the inedible bodies and shelled, they taste very like fresh water shrimp. I ate half of them for supper with a salad of wild greens, a slice of bread, and a cup of tea. The rest of the crawdads I put in a covered bowl in my spring cooled food storage box. SATURDAY "Breakfast: two slices of toast and a cup of molasses coffee.
"Lunch: warmed up rabbit casserole and finished it. Slice of bread, glass of milk and dish of raspberries - plentiful right now. "Supper: two slices of bread soaked in milk and fried brown on' each side in salt pork grease. Cup of mint tea. SUNDAY "Breakfast: wheat cereal with molasses and milk. Coffee. "Dinner: I fried the rest of the crayfish with a bit of salt pork; fixed a salad of wild greens. Two slices of bread, a pot of tea, and raspberries. "Supper: I eat a late noon dinner on Sundays - around two or two-thirty - and usually skip the evening meal. However, I was afraid you might cry 'foul' on me, so I ate some bread and milk in the evening and called it a week. "P.S.: Never got around to spending the last 19, so I think I'll splurge it on an ice cream soda next time I'm in town. Folks who use the kerosene burner would probably spend most of it on fuel. I use wood and charcoal which costs me only sweat. "What would I do in a big city? Well, there are woods, fields, bunnies, and edible plants as well as fishing lakes and streams within trolley and walking distances of most cities. In the big cities, too, pigeons are a nuisance. But they are fat and easily snared, and they cook up nicely if given plenty of time on the simmer-cooker. I've lived in New York, Los Angeles, Omaha, Denver and lots of cities in between and I noticed most city park lily ponds are swarming with crawdads. They are pretty well distributed all over the country and, indeed, all over the world. "You must keep in mind, also, that meat is not vital. George Bernard Shaw recently celebrated his 94th birthday. He has been a strict vegetarian for half a century and his good health and work capacity -he has just completed a new play - are testimony to his beliefs. Soybeans are the only vegetable which approach the protein content of meat and are therefore the best meat substitute. But soybeans can be prepared in hundreds of satisfying ways. "Soup bones, chicken feet, and government inspected horse meat are also cheap additions to a low-cost diet available to most city dwellers. "If you think my week's menu was a bit monotonous, just remember that in my garden now (July 26) I have ripe tomatoes, sweet corn turnips, carrots, kohlrabi, kale, cabbage, edible podded peas, lettuce, cucumbers, summer squash, new potatoes, onions and green beans. "What about winter? Well, I'd eat more meat; might even get a deer. But there are also raccoons, possums, and red squirrels in addition to rabbits. For greens, I grow watercress in a Small aquarium and lettuce in a window boy inside a sunny window. I also sprout soybeans. That's in case you wouldn't let me use the stuff preserved from my garden - which would include dried and canned vegetables and fruits, as well as potatoes, rutabagas, squash, et cetera in the root cellar.
"And say, I have a loaf of bread and another day or two of food left on hand. Maybe two can live as cheaply as one! Yours faithfully" Competent authorities now agree that diet is the most important single factor in the environment of all living things. More simply stated: "You are what you eat!" Stockmen whose livelihood depends on their skill in raising superior beet; poultry-keepers whose success depends on the egg laying abilities of their hens, have long known this. It is incredible that, in the face of continuous experimentation and demonstration of the amazing improvements and benefits possible in animal husbandry, the science of human nutrition has lagged so far behind. Organic gardening - growing food plants with natural composts and fertilizers as opposed to strong chemicals and poisons - has proved again and again that more vigor and greater resistance to disease and insect pests can be developed in the plants and that their food value and appetite appeal is greatly enhanced. Scurvy, pellagra, beri-beri have long been recognized as diseases caused by diet deficiencies. But how much more of our ill health is due to faulty nutrition? A little flourine in the drinking water may prevent tooth decay. A little pantothenic acid in the diet may prevent gray hair. Now scientists are discovering that certain elements in the diet govern brain power and intelligence. We are blind, indeed, if we cannot profit from this new knowledge to make our own lives healthier, happier and longer through a simple diet of easily available, natural foods, properly prepared. "Only one thing in life matters independence. Lose that, lose everything. Get old like me, you'll find that out. Keep your independence! " John Galsworthy in "Old English"
Twin Oaks
The Great Farm Revolution
They publish a little booklet titled "The Revolution is Over:We Won!" , or as the subtitle says, "The Radical Commune Approach to Revolution." All of which is a good introduction to the Twin Oaks Community quietly thriving in its third year down in the heart of Virginia. They live on 123 acres of what used to be a tobacco farm the first year on the place they even raised a crop of the noxious weed under the direction of a friendly local farmer. But now farming gets less attention as their hammock manufacturing industry grows large enough to satisfy much of their "outside" economic needs. When we visited the place there were 13 actual community members along with five or six visitors. These visitors were part of a never-ending stream of people who come to see the new life at Twin Oaks and their presence raises the actual population at Twin Oaks to about 20 people at any given time during the summer. Visitors from the outside, like we two, are very important to the revolution they speak of. For while Twin Oaks was designed to be a living experiment in community, it also aims to stimulate others to do the same. As one member said ". . . we generally hold to the opinion that people who don't start communities (or join them) are slightly immoral." It's all part of the revolution being over - they define revolution as a "radical restructuring" of society, both economic and, more important, cultural. (But maybe you can't really separate the two.) One member summed up a desirable post-revolutionary society as: "a society that creates people who are commited to non-aggression; a society of people concerned for one another; a society where one man's gain is not another man's loss; a society where disagreeable work is minimized and leisure is valued; a society in which people come first; an economic system of equality; a society which is constantly trying to improve in its Many will, of course, dismiss all of this as mere rhetoric claiming that communities are escapist or that, if they ever did become a real threat to society, then society would destroy them. But Twin Oaks people see themselves as only the beginning of what they expect will become a very large movement - a movement of young people forming groups so alternate social structures may be experimented with to find the structures that produce the things that people value. Twin Oaks people will tell you that the size of this movement and its obviously better way of life will make it impossible to repress. You can get the impression - because of the strength of their belief - that some of them even get kind of religious about these notions. But religious or mystical they are not. Their first and foremost belief is that answers to social questions come only from social experimentation and scientific observance of the results of these experiments. They think of philosophers and politicians as being on the same level as religion - dead! The ideas behind Twin Oaks originated in behavioral psychology and the Community is in a great many ways modeled after Psychologist B.F. Skinner's Walden II, which is a description of a fictional utopian society. Twin Oaks was started by a group of people who met while attending an "academic" conference during 1966, at Ann Arbor, Michigan, on the formation of a Walden Il community. (Former Grinnel Professor George Eastman was a committee chairman of this 1966 meeting.) One of the Twin Oakers related how this conference resulted in a very elaborate, academic type plan on how to get a Walden II community going. But when the conference was over the professors all returned to their teaching posts and nobody had any idea where they would get the several million dollars that the plan called for to start the thing. So, eight people decided to start right away with whatever resources they could get together. One of the original founders had enough money to purchase the farm where they are presently located - he has since left due to a disagreement about the way the community was being run, but he is leasing the farm to the group on a 12-year lease at the end of which time he will deed the farm over to the Community. Twin Oaks Community either already is, or is working toward, all of the above-hence, the members think of themselves as a post-revolutionary society. ability to create happy, productive, creative people." Twin Oaks is different than most other rural communes in three important respects: It is not an agricultural subsistence commune; they raise only part of their food - the rest they purchase with money earned by their
hammock-making industry. They consider this a more efficient use of time (hence less hours of work) than trying to raise all their own food. Second, Twin Oaks embraces rather than rejects modern technology - their aim is to use technology in every way possible to reduce the per-person work load and enable people to lead more satisfying lives. Twin Oaks is working hard to develop a strong economic base. And third, Twin Oaks is not a religious or drug-mystical community. Rather, it is based on experimentally altering societal structures so as to discover structures that are most satisfying to the people of the community. This process is an ongoing thing which will take into account peoples' changing values - this is especially important for the first transitional generation that will only gradually be able to throw off their previous conditioning by straight society. Ideas at Twin Oaks are oriented towards an ever-expanding group of people. Twin Oakers hope their own community will grow to encompass a large number of people, perhaps 500 to 1,000. Then other communities will be formed, some by people who have lived at Twin Oaks. All of these communities will hopefully cooperate economically and in other ways. They don't want to be isolationist, rather, they and their counterparts want to eventually have a system of living, government if you will, that can be successfully applied to whole nations of people. Central to Twin Oaks is the "labor credit" system of dividing labor among the members. Briefly described, the community decides each week how much work and what jobs need to be done. Then people sign up for the jobs they want to do. The number of hours each person must do is determined by dividing the total number of hours of work for that week by the number of people there are to do it. The various jobs are given different "labor credits" depending on their "desirability" or "non-desirability" and this is determined by the number of people who sign up to do any given job. If not enough people sign up to do a certain job, say dishwashing, the labor credit value of it is increased (hence, a person will have to work less hours doing that job to receive the same labor credit) until enough people want to do the job. The labor credits are constantly changing as people get tired of a job, the seasons change, etc. Visitor labor ("slave" labor as one member referred to it) is figured into the system and materially lowers the total amount of work a person must do. When we visited the community, people were doing about a 40 hour week - actually comparatively little compared to the typical straight world person, as the 40 hours at Twin Oaks included such things as cooking, dishwashing, shopping, etc. And at Twin Oaks, a week is seven days long; work, play and rest going on every day - as opposed to the straight world's five day "work" week and two days of "rest" (recovery). A person is expected to do his share of labor credits - but he may do them at any time he feels like it (excepting some jobs like milking the cows which must be done at a specific time for the cows' sake). You often see some people working in the hammock factory while others are standing by doing nothing other than enjoyably rapping with the workers, entertaining them while they work. And no hard feelings there as people know everyone will do his share before the week is out. The hammock industry was picked as Twin Oaks' first industry as it was something they could get into with little capital. The type of woven rope hammocks they make are not currently produced by machine in this country and the hammocks have a relatively high return on the hand labor that goes into them. Most of the market for Twin Oaks hammocks is through specialty shops on the East Coast - their advertising has generally been through word of mouth, though several of the members tried going to stores and playing "salesman", but no one liked this kind of work so they haven't done this recently. This past summer they had all the orders they cared to fill. Twin Oaks is "run" by a group of three elected planners, one of whom rotates out of office every six months. Thus far, six of the members have been planners at one time or another. These planners appoint "managers" who are in charge of seeing that the various divisions run smoothly - for instance, there are managers for housekeeping,
farming, hammockmaking, and child raising, to name a few. The child raising manager is in charge of handling discipline problems that may arise with the children in the community. The biological parents are not permitted to discipline their children. This is a step in the eventual dissolution of the traditional family structure. Several families have come to Twin Oaks in the past, but in every case so far their previous conditioning with regard to the tight "family" unit has caused them to feel ill at ease in their new surroundings and thus far the families have not stayed very long. There are several young people in the community - and the choice between going to "school" in the community (that is being taught by community members) or attending the nearby public schools is left to the young persons themselves. This has raised some interesting questions for the community: "Is it all right for a Twin Oaks person to go out for football? How about cheerleading? If so, does a member get credit for driving participants to the games? This must, of course, be put in the context of the fact that, generally speaking, Twin Oaks people look like freaks - and there aren't many freaks in central Virginia schools. Wen we were driving around trying to find the place we stopped to ask a guy who was changing a tire on his worn-out car where Twin Oaks was - before we could say a word he said, "Oh, you must be looking for Twin Oaks," and pointed the direction. And we didn't look freaky either. Twin Oaks has a policy of not going out of their way to irritate the surrounding countryside (a KKK stronghold). For this reason, they don't argue (or even discuss) the Vietnam war, sex, merits of grass, etc. with the locals. Twin Oaks does not allow drugs in the community so as to avoid trouble with the police. Recently a visitor was asked to leave because he was turning community members on. Thus far the community has avoided serious trouble with the law or with local rednecks. The sherrif has dropped by on a number of occasions to check for "runaways" (he never found any) and is even sort of a friend nowadays - he bought a collie pup from the community. They acknowledge that the area they are located in isn't the most ideal in terms of culture clashes - but since the farm is the only place they can presently go, they are making do with the situation. We accompanied several community members on a shopping trip to nearby Louisa - and they seemed to be well accepted by the town. One old farmer even stopped and had a long talk with one of the freaks. The community has a new business of raising calves for the "pink veal" market - in this the calves are kept confined and fed a diet of milk only. This produces a meat of a lighter color and more tender flavor. They are also starting to breed cows for selling to dairy farmers in the area. Most of the agriculture that goes on at the Community is centered around the cattle operation. with large crops of hay and wheat being raised for use as feed. As a consequence of the dairy cow endeavor, there are unlimited supplies of milk, and the members make butter, cottage cheese and other dairy products from surplus milk. They also raise hogs, have a smoke house (really delicious bacon!), chickens, geese and a large assortment of cats and dogs. Women's liberation, in a very practical sense, is a serious concern at Twin Oaks. The manager of the farm division is a girl, and boys are expected to do their share of the traditional "womenly" things such as cooking and dishwashing. Several of the women have instituted a class in "remedial automobile mechanics." Because of the behavioristic orientation of the community they are more aware than most of the effect of conditioning by a screwed-up society on men and women. When you visit Twin Oaks you realize that something is different and that here are some people who have taken concrete steps to thwart that conditioning. One area where problems were still obviously present was the subject of "interpersonal relations." They have a code of conduct which states "We will not discuss the personal affairs of other members, nor speak negatively of other members when they are not present or in the presence of a third party." The section goes on to say, "This rule is both unusual and difficult. Most of us find a certain pleasure in gossiping or grumbling about other people. We feel that this type of talk is harmful to a small community. If a member is unpleasant, or lazy, or gross, let each other member discover this for himself : . The Community is constantly trying other means of dealing with interpersonal complaints and problems." The Community uses first names only, and does not recognize seniority nor heirarchies (in theory, anyway). The planners and managers are supposed to think of their job as just another
form of (undesirable) work and are not supposed to think of their positions as "power", as ego trip, etc. Coming out of straight society as all of the first generation members must, this takes quite some doing. We did think, however, that Twin Oaks was the most equalitarian and "leaderless" group of organized people that we have ever encountered. And Twin Oaks is organized. Many left type people would be rather completely turned off by the total organization of the place - but Twin Oaks would counter by saying that they are only making a workable society which can rapidly respond to changing desires of the members. Twin Oaks is primarily an experiment in rapid cultural change - and according to the plan of the final degree of organization - or lack of organization - will be directly related to the needs and wants of the people-or to the basic qualities of the "human nature" that will eventually be discovered through scientific investigation. And all of this will be constantly adjusted to the ever-changing level of technology and its corresponding, but currently unknown, effect on human behavior. Twin Oaks is always seeking new members (expansion being one of their goals) and a new member is admitted to a three month trial period during which time both he or she and the community can decide if they want to live together. Thus far, every prospect who did not stay, left voluntarily - but the present members have an option to reject prospects after the trial period. One of the current problems of the community is its small size and the attendant difficulties of members finding a satisfactory mate. At present, Twin Oaks operates on a more or less typical "monogamous couple" pattern of sexual relationships. One member said the main reason thus far that people left the community is that they were unable to establish satisfactory sexual relationships. Eventually the sexual pattern of the Community may evolve into a more complex pattern which would allow more freedom in sexual patterns. But, again, the strong cultural conditioning of the first generation members may take a long time to overcome. Single visitors of either sex cause problems also in that they bring with them their unliberated values with regard to the opposite sex. One 15 year old girl member said, when asked what she has learned since coming to Twin Oaks: "Virtually everything I know. Italian history, shorthand, most of my typing, cooking, housework, planting and hoeing, driving a tractor, driving a car. How to use positive reinforcement to handle a small child, what happens when you try to answer aggression with aggression. Just before I came here I discovered that I really don't have to do much of anything I don't want to - or at least that hardly anybody has any authority to speak of if you want to push them far enough. Basically I can get away with doing whatever I want. But at Twin Oaks I am beginning to believe that in the long run I don't really want to try to get away with everything. Because I've seen other people here act like that, and seen how it affects the whole group, and I think people who act completely selfishly are shits. I don't want to think of myself that way." And another said, "I have learned to be completely comfortable with and take for granted the friendship of over a dozen people. Before I came here I never had more than one or two friends at a time. I don't mean that everyone likes me. But everyone here has a pretty realistic view of me and likes or dislikes me pretty much in proportion to my virtues and faults. There aren't any pretenses to speak of, and very little fear." As their booklet says: "Experiment with social structures and find the ones that produce the things that we value." Krystine Newman and Henry Wilhelm Reprinted from PTERO by way of WIN
model speed record for a run at Daytona beach in the early 1900s. They will have drawbacks . . . but please note, they won't explode. And just incidentally, a gasoline car will, and often does, to the surprise of its driver . . . if he survives. One drawback, for instance, would be a short time, up to three minutes, required to warm up to driving power from a totally cold engine. (Most Americans seem to believe that a gasoline engine does not need to be warmed before zooming off. They stay with this belief firmly, in spite of blue oil smoke clouds billowing from half-oiled and burned up engines . . . oh, well.) They need water from time to time . . sometimes as often as every couple of hundred miles. Filling a tank with water is almost as time consuming, but not as expensive, as filling a tank with gasoline at forty-five heavily taxed cents per gallon. Isn't it? But there's one enormous drawback to a steam car . . . if you happen to be a garage mechanic, or a shop owner. They require only about a tenth as much repair work, most of it fairly simple; and they last, and last, and LAST. (There's a beautiful steamer running around these parts, wearing a Packard body as a disguise; but under that 1940 tin beats the stout pulse of a 1915 Stanley.) All right. There's your commune, building a car or so a week; selling them at a price which is about the same as the price of a 1969-70 gasbuggy. Who's buying? Take a choice. A 1970 GM product, made of materials that you damned well know are inferior, if you know beans about engineering. Assembled by men who hate their jobs, who do not, literally, give a damn. Sold by hucksters who do not care if your car collapses under you, once the financing contract is signed. It will last, at best, five or six years. It will depreciate in value to half what you paid for it, the day you drive it out of the showroom. It will need constant repairs, expensive ones, and half the time you'll be solidly skinned by the mechanic you take it to. And, more, that monster will gulp gasoline, and convert it into cancer gas, at a steadily increasing price. It'll hurt at both ends, as the man said when he ate the chili. But don't worry; if the steering gear fails, or the automatic transmission suddenly kicks in when you didn't expect it, it may kill you before it wears out. And for the same price, you might buy a car that needed no gearshift, thatjackrabbited 0-60 in a time that would make a professional dragster blench, that rolled along at a good clip, using fuel that would set you back all of a couple of cents in ten miles . . . and which would NOT make smog, not ever. That car could be assembled by craftsmen, who were part of a living family; who felt pride in their work, whose hands touched that machine with the thought and feeling that a good workman gives. (There's a reason for the price of a Rolls, and it damned well isn't the speed, because I can wash out a Rolls with a hopped-up Chevvy.) And maybe that one little family of People building Cars might scare the hell out of the companies that slap together jalopies. Especially if more such families got the idea, and built cars, or generators, or tractors, or whatever there is to be built. I wonder if anybody will do it. I keep hoping that somehow, someday, the people will take the great art of engineering back, away from the peddlers and medicineshow salesmen who own it today. I'll bet it could be done. You can put me down for a sedan, and paint it sunrise color.