Snortin' Norton

What A Strange Little White Boy 

   What a strange little white boy I must have been. My first memory of snow, snow was like 3 feet at least, it came all the way up to my waist, it was the deepest snow I ever remember, I was five at the time, an inch of snow would have seem like a lot. Superman and Rin Tin Tin were my favorite TV shows. I grew up with tales of religious bigotry. Tales of murders, tarring and featherings, false imprisonment, and being driven from our homes because of what we believe and how we choose to interpret that belief.
   I grew up mainly in the south, from South Carolina to Florida. I lived in white privilege, early 1960s, middle-class suburbia side of the railroad tracks, and those tracks ran right through my backyard. On the other side of those tracks, it was like stepping back in time.
   Long planks of wood overlapping and turning gray with age under rusty tin roofs made the houses look like something out post-Civil War photographs or maybe from the Great Depression. I just remember a little semi-open-air café. It had great hamburgers and a cabinet style soda machine where you slid your drink to the dispenser at one end of the machine and pulled straight up. I never really saw the disparity that I would see today.
   Racism really is learned. Southern racism is the worst. It is like not quite being able to get the smell of a skunk out of the clothes you got sprayed in, or like a bad taste in your mouth that won't go away. Southern society, society in general can shape who you are without you knowing it, if you let it. Don't let it! At least I know where what little racism I have in me comes from, and I can fight it every day. My heroes all persevered against incredible odds and won, Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, Pocahontas, Mulan, Aisha, Harriet Tubman, Wonder Woman - if you are sensing a pattern, you would not be wrong. Racism and bigotry is something you have to learn, it does not come naturally. The good news, it is something that can be un-learned.
   Hitchhiking 30,000 miles you see a lot, and you learn a lot. I have been on my own since I was 16, living on the edge of the road; it is how I met Flip Wilson, and got a ride in the most expensive convertible I have ever ridden in. I've seen the shame of America in the Reservations I rode and walked through, and I have experienced the generosity of the poor and shaming from the rich. I walked through Harlem in between periods of civil unrest and wandered through the streets of New York dining on gourmet hot dogs; I've slept in soft safe beds and I have slept under bridges. I found a way to get paid to carry a backpack, and a gun.
   The U.S. Army was 5 years of wargames on various levels. From always combat ready in South Korea with ammo stored at the ready, to playing gorillas and or rebels in wargames for the Green Berets training to overthrow governments. From heavy infantry, to a PSYOPS Company in Fort Bragg, from commanding my own squad, to pushing a broom because my job was under civilian contract, to being really bored, to volunteering to help out the Green Berets next door whenever they went camping for a couple of weeks or so. In the end, almost two years spent in the forests of North Carolina.
   Hitchhiking another 30,000 miles after 5 years in the Army you see the country through different eyes; than through the eyes of a child just trying to survive. What followed was a bunch of dead-end jobs and nowhere dreams as I passed through life going nowhere fast for minimum wage and maximum work; a silent observer of the life all around me, cast adrift in the great sea of life, I eventually washed up on an island in the middle of a desert.
   Now, I have set the stage and breached the mystical wall that hides us from the real world; all for a glimpse into one possible future for humanity. An island, floating serenely in a sea of sand and high-desert grassland, tucked away from all the white noise of the world; away from the racism and bigotry; away from a world filled with problems; away from the stress of everyday life; a diverse community still welcoming students, volunteers, and visitors from around the world to come learn about a different way to live with nature.
   We are not truly free until we are all free to live and chase our dreams unhindered.

Posted August 2, 2021