Anarchist to Abolitionist: A Bad Quaker's Journey

Government School

The 6th grade was an odd time for me. I had never given much thought to school. It was something I had to do because Mom and Dad said so, and I never thought about it beyond that until the 6th grade. In the early 1970s, the government education system was in a sad state in eastern Kentucky. During our brief time in there, I changed schools four times and had four different teachers in three different schools. Two of those teachers were very nice and tried very hard to do their jobs with the resources available to them. But one teacher just didn't care, and one was downright mean. However, they all had one thing in common; they knew next to nothing about the world outside of Appalachia.

At the beginning of the 6th grade, September 1972, I was ten years old, but I had attended seven different schools, traveled with my family across the entire country five times, seen Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, the Hoover Dam, and stunning Yosemite. I had stood on Lassen, the largest plug dome volcano in the world, I had ridden in commercial jet aircraft and in a variety of private airplanes, and my dad had even let me handle the controls of his plane on several occasions. I didn't realize it then, but I was not a normal ten year old child.

Taking all of the above into consideration, my government school teachers in Kentucky seemed quite stupid to me at the time. One of them, a very nice lady, had just returned from a trip to visit relatives in Los Angeles, when school started in 1972. It was her first trip outside of that little area where she had spent her whole life, and she was smitten with southern California. They had done all the tourist things; Disney Land, the zoo, the wax museum, the Hollywood Walk of Fame, SeaWorld, and the beach. She had eaten exotic foods, like burritos and tacos, and had been driven through China Town and Watts, without stopping of course. It was all more than she could take in, so her mind filled in what she didn't understand based on her limited experiences in Appalachia, which means almost every conclusion she drew was wrong.

The first day of the 6th grade, she was so excited that she had a new student, and this new student was from California. She bubbled over as she explained to the children that in California they don't have hot dogs, everyone eats tacos instead. She told the kids all about China Town, and how Chinese people don't use plates, bowls, knives, forks, or spoons. They eat all of their food from little paper boxes and shove their food into their mouths with sticks. With these and each of her other outrageous claims, she would pause and ask me to verify her exaggerations and misunderstandings. Laughing under my breath, I would nod and grunt, "Yup."

Later, as the school year progressed, she took leave of the approved geography lessons and brought out an encyclopedia, then focused on the geography and history of California. It was quite humorous, hearing her pronounce California place names using English phonetics washed through a thick Appalachian accent. It seemed the only Spanish words she knew how to pronounce were California, Los Angeles, taco, and burrito, and she gave the other Spanish words a thorough thrashing. But I believe she was honestly trying to expand the horizons of her students. For that reason, I count her among the top two or three government school teachers I ever knew, that were genuinely interested in their students and wanted what was best for them, even to the point of abandoning the official curriculum and attempting to impart actual knowledge to the kids.

I consider almost all of the rest of my government school experience as a jail sentence for a crime I never committed.

The House on Beechy Creek

The biggest thing that was happening in my life at that time was that my dad and I were building our house. It was Dad's design, and he and I did all the work together. From the pouring of the slab to the laying of every block, to the finishing of the roof, we worked together and built our house. My brother, Roy, may have helped some, but I don't remember. Reason being, the only thing that was important to me at the time was that I was building a house, just like the construction workers had done in the old orchard on Chevalier Drive.

In the spring of 1972, my running stopped for a few months. I was on our family farm, on one of the ridges, in a field of tall clover and fescue, running as fast as my body would allow, when I tripped on something, causing me to fall. My knee landed on a chunk of petrified wood. My sister, Judy, still has that petrified wood as a knick-knack. I had two lacerations, one short but deep, exposing the underside of my kneecap. The other laceration was about three inches long but less deep. This was the first time I looked into my flesh and saw a bone, but it wouldn't be the last time. Twelve stitches were the result. Oh, and no running. When the time came, I removed the stitches myself. Who needs a doctor to cut string? And just a reminder, I was ten at the time. Eventually I started running again.

As the economy continued to spiral downward, Dad expected the politicians to behave exactly like they did during the Great Depression; by increasing taxes and spending tons of money on jobs programs, make-work programs, and other nonsensical wastes of money. And they did. And the economy got worse, of course. Nixon imposed price and wage restrictions, and again that made it worse.

In expectation of that surge of government waste, Dad bought a small Ditch Witch trencher and a trailer to carry it. Cities and counties across Appalachia began tapping into the federal spending by expanding their public water and sewer systems. New water towers were being built and water and sewer lines were spreading out to new customers who had never had public water and public sewer systems. Dad formed a small company and, soon, the little trencher was replaced with bigger and better construction equipment.

Dad's little construction company grew, and pretty soon he had full time employees working on several jobs at the same time. This was a dream come true for me. I learned to drive bull dozers, tractors, the big new trencher, and dump trucks. I even learned to use a back hoe, which is the coolest of all construction equipment.

Life could not get better. I was a construction worker! By the time I was eleven, I was going out with Dad's crew, working side-by-side with the men. Dad told me that I had to pull my own weight because he couldn't show me any favoritism. So I made sure I always worked harder than anyone. I didn't want anyone to say that I was just there because my dad owned the company.

Yup, I had arrived. I had become that shirtless construction dude, with my back tanned dark and my curly blond locks blowing in the breeze.

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