Dang, it must be Digital Potlatch Sunday! In the midst of searching through old material for some nuggets to use in a new ebook series, I came across this post from October 16, 2002 that I wanted to share with you. It’s from an earlier edition of FarrFeed that used to run at Salon.com, and the subject is directly related to today’s preceding post about Yellowhammer Farm. (What’s real? What are we doing here? What do we really need?)
Luther is a real person and that’s his name. I met him that summer of ’71 and never forgot.
See, here’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. Well, the kind of thing I’d talk about if I had any sense.
Many years ago I was what I humorously referred to as a “woods hippie” in the wilds of Arkansas. Back then there were still a few overall-wearing old men with long white beards sitting on the front porch with a rifle or a banjo in their laps. I even met a few of them. But the fellow called “Luther” wasn’t old. For all I know, he might have been my own age (mid-to-late 20s). Luther was different.
He and his wife lived waaaay back in the hills without any electricity in a cabin he’d built himself. Luther had a beard too, but it was red, and he always wore nice clothes: I’m remembering him now in corduroys, with an actual sport coat or jacket of some kind. He also wore very sturdy shoes, a benefit of his part-time job at a tiny shoe repair shop at the edge of a nearby burg. He was one of those people I’m wont to call a “real” Christian, i.e. the non-preachy kind who’ve seen the Light and you know it ’cause it fills their eyes. This could apply to anyone, you understand, and I’ve met people who never go to church who fit the same category, but Luther did. Anyway, the thing about Luther was that he was always happy. He had damn near nothing, but I never saw him without a broad, quiet smile on his face. He and his wife raised six different kinds of grain on their little homestead, ground their own flour by hand, and raised a few animals besides. I don’t remember if they had any kids but they probably did, and who knows where all these people are today.
I don’t know where I’m going with this, except to say that I’m probably there already, so you won’t mind if I just repeat myself: no wealth, no electricity, no this, no that. Just healthy food and the biggest, warmest eyes you ever saw. There I was, educated and dropped out, running from Nixon’s U.S.A. and Vietnam, tormented and scatter-brained, provoking locals right and left and wondering what the fuck I’d do when my money ran out, and there was Luther, both feet on the ground , high on whole wheat and the Holy Ghost.
Goddamn, chill’un, goddamn.
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