Page:The Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist.djvu/138

CHAPTER 6. LIFE AT HARD LABOR—THE HOPI 125 the steep hills and over to Berkeley and we had a picture taken on Delaware Street, in front of the house where my wife and I had lived in 1924–25.

Vic took me to an I.W.W. outdoor meeting where Tom Masterson, a vituperative atheist held forth. Tom introduced me and I presented the CW ideas for nearly an hour. Tom asked me if I was selling the CW and thus started others buying the paper. I spoke over the pacifistic radio station in Berkeley about my anti-tax ideas and my Christian anarchist ideals. I also attended an anarchist meeting and met readers of the CW. Paul Goodman spoke at this meeting and typified the traditional anarchist excuse for doing nothing in his speech. Some of those present asked my opinion so we had it back and forth most of the evening. To hide away instead of openly opposing the war or the government seemed to be the prevailing anarchist attitude. I pointed out that this was not the program of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman. Paul Goodman wrote in an anarchist paper RESISTANCE which I pointed out did everything else but resist. They just talked about it.

Vic knew the Carota's at Aptos and we visited there for a few hours. This exciting young couple had adopted seven babies and had a veritable nursery in their mountain home. I had read about them in the CW, and although they seemed too religious they at least did something more than talk about it.

George Reeves had come to visit me for a few hours in Albuquerque when I worked in the orchard. He was born not far from my home town in Ohio. He shuttled back and forth between gardening and teaching. I had an interesting visit with him and his charming wife. I had corresponded with Max Heinegg, a vegetarian who had quit his job in San Francisco as a commercial photographer at the beginning of the war, as about all the work he did had something to do with war work. He is the first vegetarian per se whom I have known, other than Scott Nearing, who really works. I had heard Nearing speak at Ohio State in 1915; he was my teacher at the Rand School in 1920; and my wife baby-sat his son John, while Nearing debated with Clarence Darrow on the subject Is Life Worth Living? I had met him each year when he came to Milwaukee. He had visited Sharon in Evanston in 1946 and came to see me in Albuquerque later. I do not agree with his emphasis on World Government but admire him as a down-to-earth man.

During the summer I ran out of work to do, so walked south and east along the highway asking each farmer for a job. Finally about eleven o'clock and four miles away a young farmer, James Hussey, a reserve officer, told me I could cut Johnson grass if I liked. After that I worked for him now and then. On Thanksgiving day I carried but one small sandwich thinking that James would invite me for dinner, but he went to his folks for dinner and I had this small amount of food and cold water. I was digging twelve holes in the middle of a hard driveway for the planting of rosebushes. One of the vegetarian arguments is that people eat too much, and that when the belly is full of food there is not much blood left to work the brains in the head. About 4:30 in the afternoon