Page:The Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist.djvu/158

CHAPTER 7. DOROTHY VISITS PHOENIX 145 was a liberal, not a radical, he registered and spent about four years in CPS. About the time the war was over he walked out of CPS and was in Sandstone prison with Bill Ryan and Walter Gormly. He was paroled out to Macedonia. All of the families here were CO's, many of them also vegetarians. Here each family lives in a separate house and breakfast is at home. Coffee at 10 in the common room for those who desire it and a common meal at noon is the rule. Supper is generally at home. There is a common storeroom where such items as have to be purchased are kept. Each one has a key and can take what they like without anyone else knowing about it; only they mark the amount taken on a chart so the stock can be renewed without sudden famine occurring. The main source of income here is children's building blocks and other play apparatus.

Expensive machinery helps in this production. Del Franchen, who was already fasting and who would go to Washington for a few days as he made a return trip with furniture, was one of two who attended to a small dairy. They furnished milk for all in Macedonia and living expenses of the two families who attended to the cows. A few garden patches were cleared. One family had lived here for about three years but finally decided that such a life was not for them. It is difficult to find both man and wife who will put up with the deprivations and hard work necessary to make community life a success. For young folks who are raising children it is an ideal place—that is until the arguments commence about private or public school and the desire to raise children for success in a bourgeois world. If I was thirty and had a wife who could take it I would choose to live here, but as it is and I am single I favor living "out in the world" and doing my propaganda among the "heathen." We left about 9 p.m.

The Hopi wished to visit the remnants of Tsali's tribe who by their rebellion in 1828 had not been deported with the other Cherokee to Indian Territory, so we went the long and mountainous way to Cherokee. We knocked on all doors about 2:30 a.m. but could arouse no one. Likely the unreconstructed did not live on this sign-decked highway that catered to tourists so perhaps we did not miss anything.

Winding around the beautiful Smokies and asking numerous directions we finally brushed along side a wagon where armed guards were bossing a chain gang in road-mending. Finally we met tall and well built Tilly Brooks, wife of the CO Arle Brooks, of whom Judge Welch spoke in Philadelphia in 1940 that he felt like Pontius Pilate in sentencing Arle to prison for non-registration. I had corresponded with them some years ago. Arle was away in a mountain helping build a house. There was a new brick medical center with nurse and beds and Doctor at hand under Quaker supervision. Each of several families here at Celo, N.C. owned their separate few acres and made their own living as they could.

We drove on steadily, and at 3 a.m. on April first knocked on the door at Inspiration House, 1867 Kalarama Road and under the efficient ministration of Bayard Rustin we were soon sleeping on the floor in the front room. We were among the first to arrive for the fast which had been postponed until midnight. I had many letters from friends feeling that I should not endanger my life by fasting. One of the first people I met was Emily Longstreth, wife