Page:The Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist.djvu/85

CHAPTER 5. LIFE AT HARD LABOR—REFUSAL TO PAY INCOME TAX 72 seat. We struck a snow storm as we arrived in Oklahoma City. I put on my galoshes, which I had carried along with my lunch and other things which might be needed in a hurry, in a flour sack hung in front of me, which balanced the sleeping bag on my back when I hiked. A girth strap of wide leather, wound around the back and buckled in front formed a harness. As on the hike which my wife and I had made years before, I never asked for a ride, but waited for people to ask me: trusting in God instead of my thumb. During two nights in Oklahoma I slept in old vacant houses along the road. Doors and windows were missing, but the floors were dry. Both times I was directed to them by the keepers of small stores who were unwilling to permit me to occupy their nearby sheds. The temperatures these nights were below zero. My sleeping bag was warm enough, but tying it up in the morning was a problem, for my hands became very cold.

In Webb City, Mo., I met several soldiers with bus tickets in their pockets hiking from the west coast, trying to get home by Christmas. No room on bus or train. (My sisters had offered me a round trip ticket, but I felt that I did not wish to be the occasion of the government getting that much war tax. I found that even if I had a ticket I could not have used it. So the absolutist turned out to be practical for once.) In the afternoon a man who had attended Quaker meetings in Philadelphia in his youth, but who was now a Catholic, gave me a ride from near Kansas City to Des Moines. He was an officer in the Kansas Co-op Wholesale and a friend of Monsignor Ligutti. He was much interested in the copies of the CW which I gave him. It was now after dark and bitter cold. I phoned Msgr. Ligutti and made an appointment for 8:30 the next morning. Salvation Army, hotels and tourist camps were full, so the only recourse for this anarchist was to ask for the hospitality of his enemy, the state. With very little formality I was ushered into a tank cell and was the only occupant of a fifty-bed room. Later in the night some one else came in, whom I found in the morning was a young fellow whose employer had skipped town without paying him. They went around cleaning brass on the front of banks. I staked him to breakfast and a CW and each of us went our way. It was storming. Msgr. Ligutti greeted me cheerfully and I warmed myself before his cheery fireplace in the large house where the offices of the Rural Life Conference are located. He was to leave for Rome the next day. He was interested and sympathetic with my mode of life and enthusiastic about the CW. Presenting me with about ten pounds of literature he wished me well on my trip.

Near Stirling, Illinois, I walked about seven miles and it became dark. Finally I saw the lights of a 24-hour restaurant, had a cup of coffee and went on my way, being told that the next town was about seven miles away. I walked and walked and my fingers were nearly frozen it seemed. I thought I had surely gone the seven miles and stopped in at a farmhouse to get warm and ask directions. The town was still three miles away. Again I walked and walked in the darkness; suddenly I saw another 24-hour restaurant. Looking closer I saw it was the same one, for when I left the farmhouse I had walked four miles back the wrong way. I treated myself to a good omelet, for I was extra hungry and tired. The proprietor had overheard the conversation about my getting lost and suggested