Page:The Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist.djvu/78

CHAPTER 5. LIFE AT HARD LABOR—REFUSAL TO PAY INCOME TAX 65 bedroom is 13 by 13. The walls are nearly four feet thick, made of native adobe, and the ceilings are ten feet high.

Tradition tells of treasure hid here in this house at the time of Indian raids. For the house was once an old fort in the times when the whites were encroaching upon the Indian country. The treasure that I have found here was buried, all right—buried deep within my personality, and it took the peace and quiet, the productive labor among kindly, common and everyday sort of people to discover it.

Originally all doors led upon a small patio in the center open to the sky. The east wall is now torn down. Part of the house was used as a Catholic chapel in the early days. Enough cracks here and there allow Brother Mouse to come and go. At a former place where I lived by myself I was able to stop up all cracks and holes within two months so that mice did not enter. It was their home before it was mine. They have a right to live, to chew and gnaw, but they do not need to do so in my two rooms. There is plenty for them in nearby fields and farm buildings. They do not bother old copies of the CATHOLIC WORKER or other pacifist or radical papers. Their especial taste seems to be for the CHRISTIAN CENTURY—but then they may have developed certain tastes from the former owner of the place.

It is now a bright morning in early May. By this time my skin is nearly as brown as that of Hans. Last year the blisters on my back worried others much and myself but little. This year not a blister came from my exposure to the sun. Two electric pumps bring water from the irrigation ditch and from a well to irrigate the 100 rows of trees. For a short distance the water runs between banks uphill until it reaches the trees. (The saying here is that only a Mormon can make water run up hill. They understand irrigation, are good workers and their system of helping each other could easily be studied and used by all of us. I have some Mormon friends who like to read the CATHOLIC WORKER.) The gopher has made holes in the ditch bank and this is a continual trouble until they have all been stopped up. Hans watches the ditch bank for leaks and I see that the water reaches each tree.

Melons have come up from some left in the field last year. I plant onions, parsnips, rutabagas, tomatoes, carrots, lettuce, blue Indian corn from nearby Isleta pueblo, and the native pinto bean. Later sweet potatoes and peppers will be planted. Last year I planted a small patch of wheat but soon afterward came to work here and did not harvest it. My employer has doubts about my ability as a wheat farmer but I planted about an acre. Much of it is up but some of the ground is black alkali where even weeds will not grow.

Old timers here and there along this Rio Grande have watermills where corn is ground between two stones. They go with exceedingly slow motion but there is no cost, and these stones have been grinding for centuries. If it is possible to get my blue corn and wheat ground at such a mill I will do so; if not, the hammer mill of my employer can grind it. The primitive way of cutting wheat, binding it by hand (for few people raise wheat and use a binder here) and threshing it out by hand on canvas seems queer. By itself it may seem foolish, but taken as part of a pattern of life it has meaning. Orthodox economists tell us that the