Hippie Commune
Friday, January 8
Laurel Cottage Cottage Industries
Q: Was Laurel Cottage Cottage Industries a hippie commune?
A: No, Penland School of Handicrafts was a crafts school, that had visiting craftsmen, to teach students, and resident craftsmen, who didn’t teach. It was a community of working craftsmen. And students who wanted to become craftsmen.
Jack Neff was a potter. He had a studio at The Barns and a house to live in, Laurel Cottage.
Brenda and I lived with Jack and Karol and young John Neff. I was a writer who worked as a potter’s helper to pay our room and board.
We divided the housework up.
Jack and I would make pots and write and Karol and Brenda would have babies and work on the local economy for health insurance through their job.
Q: How did that work out?
A: We divided the chores.
Karol was taking care of John.
Brenda looked for work but couldn’t find any, because there was a recession.
Jack made pots and I wrote.
Jack didn’t sell any pots. I didn’t sell any books.
I looked for a job. We needed an income to pay the hospital and the doctor for Owen. Brenda was pregnant.
Q: Did you ever hear of giving hostages to fortune?
A: George Washington said to avoid entangling alliances, too.
But I wanted go get married and have children. So did Brenda.
We were married. She was pregnant.
I got a job as laborer in a feldspar mine.
When I lost that
job, and was offered a job in
Jack was spending his savings on food and I felt like Brenda and I were dragging him and Karol down.
Q: So your experiment in communal living failed.
A: We had too many artists and dependents and not enough wage-earners. Nobody was bringing in an income.
Q: That’s too bad.
A: It was too bad. I loved Penland.
I would like to live some place like that some day.
Q: When you are bringing in an income.
A: Yes.
Any place you’d like to live, you can’t afford it, because there are no good jobs. That’s why you want to live there.
Any place you can afford to live, because there are jobs, you wouldn’t want to live.
Q: Because of urban blight?
A: Urban blight, traffic, the suburbs, television. Fast food and billboards. Commercial advertisements and political propaganda. People trying to persuade you to do something. To buy something. To vote for them. People living off of other people.
Q: What are you going to do? Home-school your kids?
A: Larry and Hazel started the
Q: You should have stayed in
A: How does one know?
We did what we did.
I don’t regret it.
I’m like the dog who didn’t regret anything.
