Page:The Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist.djvu/157

CHAPTER 7. DOROTHY VISITS PHOENIX 144 later that a non-radical from Phoenix took a fast of 58 days and was cured of a number of diseases, any one of which could have killed him. Whether he went back to a diet of white bread, white sugar, liquor, cigarettes and canned goods and got sick again we did not know. Rest along with fasting and absolutely no medicine or vaccines is his method.

Here in San Antonio we looked up my roommate of 1955 at the University of Wisconsin, Bill Brockhausen, whom my wife and I had visited in 1923 when we were hiking. He was an advertising executive with a big house and servants headquarters where the Hopi soon were sleeping peacefully. Bill and I sat up until early morning talking over old times. His father had been a Milwaukee Socialist of the old school and Bill had been a natural political compromiser. He greeted me gladly in the midst of that product which has made Milwaukee famous. I had always been an extreme radical in his eyes and I suppose brought back visions of Debs and the old days before he had become so prosperous. In his overflowing good nature he told me to make his home my picketing headquarters if I ever came to Texas to live. Then his old conservatism coming up he said, "You don't do anything constructive, Ammon. Here you are roaming the country with two Indians." I did not argue the point with my extra extrovert friend. We left early without waking him.

We bought some bananas at Houston, massive town of skyscrapers, and left CWs at a Catholic church near where we stopped. All along we gave copies orof [sic] the Feb. CW, explaining that the Indians mentioned in my article on the Hopi were the ones with us. I had the address of Dorothy DaPonte, a tax refuser in Mobile. She had moved but when we drove into Fairhope across the bay where I had taught history in the high school 26 years before we found that Miss DaPonte was a teacher there. She came of an old southern family and nearly caused her father to have a nervous breakdown last year when she refused to pay taxes and had bravely escorted a young Negro girl to the front seat with her in a Methodist Church. By now her father was getting used to her, only deploring that there were no others in the community who also refused to pay taxes. Two teachers at the school planned to fast with us although they had to stay there and teach. Miss DaPonte would have liked to have come along but had to stay as a witness in some trial about segregation. As many do who are new in a movement she asked why I did not fast-to-the-death on the White House steps against the H-Bomb. I felt that if such an act came as the natural conclusion of holy life it would be worthwhile if the persecution came from the State as it did in Gandhi's case. It was nothing to be entered into lightly, but required much prayer and fasting.

Several times when we became lost Dan would point a certain way and this would be the right direction. He did not know one state from another and could not read signs but he had a sense of direction. At midnight in Atlanta midst sewer repairs he knew where he was going and we didn't. Toward morning we came to Clarkesville, Ga. and soon to the 800 acres of the Macedonia Cooperative Community. Here my old friend had social worker from Milwaukee, Dave Newton and his brave beautiful wife, Ginny, were members of this adventure in living. Before the first draft in 1940 we had discussed non-registration, but Dave