Now Comes The Real Vote

Wow that was fun huh?  On the news today I heard unconfirmed reports that Canada has begun working on a wall along its southern border.  No word as of yet if they are planning on us paying for it.  So if your packing for the move north I suggest you get a move on.  For those of you wanting to stick it out down here we need your help!  As I am sure you know we here at E Pluribus Marvus are working hard on a new travel site that highlights that interesting, hidden and/or forgotten places that are and will be great about America no matter who we elect.

( If you need a refresher here it is, epluribusmarvus.blogspot.com/2016yuge-news )

We are excited to report that folks have already begun to submit great stories about their travel adventures.  We would love to have more fun stuff to read at the time of the site launch which is growing closer every day.

All you have to do is go our exploring and then share your story or photo blog with me at marvtrap@gmail.com so we can get it up there. 

What we are coming to you for your urgent help on today is the site name.  So far we have been using the working title 'Merican Meandering, which it turns out doesn't suite a site like the one we envisioned creating.  So we need your vote on name options.  You can be sure that  your vote will count, and that E Pluribus Marvus has a zero tolerance policy on voter intimidation.

Please check out this list and email of comment on Facebook the one or two you like, or write in one of your own.  You current and future Canadians are more then welcome to participate. 

Here is the list

- Carpe Detour

- Flyover Finds

- American Wanderlust

-And So We Wander

-Oh The Places We Go

-Dirt Road Stories

-Your Idea__________________________________________

Oh yeah and you can vote more then once, we promise to not complain about it on twitter.

Thanks for your help!

Cubs Win, We Lose

It feels like all of a sudden everyone is a Chicago Cubs fan.  Those lovable losers have finally made it back to the World Series for the first time in over seventy years; and the bandwagon is officially sold out. ESPN and FOX are in full blown pageant mode, and somewhere Bill Murray is crying tears of joy. Sure I get it folks, the Cubbies are a great story that everyone can get behind.  And of course if you're a legit fan of the team then this is a huge moment in your life, and probably in your grandpa's life as well.  After all its been since 1945 that they even made the Series and infamously since 1908 that they won it.  Along the way there have been years and years of heartbreak, the Curse of the Billy Goat, and of course poor Steve Bartman.  If I was a fan I'd be impossible to live with.  

But let me be a voice crying in the wilderness to warn the rest of America about the dire consequences a Cubs World Series win could have on this great nation. We all know no one likes a prophet, especially one that brings bad news.  But I will joyfully shoulder that burden if it means that the world stays on its axis for at least another year. Trust me, this is hard, but before you freak out and banish me to being a Mets fan (too late) please hear me out.

 One thing Cubs fans have to own up to before they can truly enjoy this is the public execution of Steve Bartman.  In 2003 the team was one win from the Series and winning the fourth and decisive game against the Marlins when this poor dude rocking headphones in the front row disrupted a potential catch by Moses Alou.  The cursed Cubs went on to give up eight runs in the inning and lost. They then lost the decisive seventh game the next night, that they were winning as well, and somehow squandered. Superstitious fans blamed the whole disaster on Bartman, whose life was practically destroyed over that incident.  So if the team wants to win this thing the right way they need to bring Steve Bartman on the field, shower him with love, and give him a seat for every game in the owner's box. Until then I can't root for this team.

 One of the things that makes rooting for a perpetual looser like the Cubs so hard is also the same thing that makes it great.  The ecstasy and the agony of a season, or one hundred seasons of futility become part of the very fabric of a city, and the DNA of its people.  When that team finally gets off the schneid the momentary elation is great, but the loss of identity can be devastating.  For the fans' sake I am happy the Cubs made it this year, but a win as well could be too much.  Getting blown out would mean something to look forward to next season.  Isn't that how baseball is supposed to work?

Lets face it people, we can't have any more crazy things happen this year.  In June the Cavaliers won the NBA Championship, thus ending Cleveland's fifty two year professorial sports drought.  That was a big enough sport moment for 2016. Sorry Cubs fans, but you have to wait till next year, otherwise the world may well end up going haywire.  I hate that you have to wait but we really can't have The Donald be the president now can we?  A Cubbies win might just push us over the brink.  Enjoy being there and then go out and try to win it all next year.  You'll have to face a dominate Mets team so there's that, but hey you never know.

Does anyone have any idea who Chicago is facing in this seven game tilt?  Why its the Cleveland Indians, a team from a town that just had its curse snapped by Lebron.  And lets face it folks Cleveland does not rock all hard.  The Indians haven't won the series since 1949 and the Browns are probably the worst professional franchise of all time.  Why not let the good feelings continue in a hard luck town whose river once caught on fire because it was so populated.  Let them win this year so they can go back to being the mistake by the lake.  Hey Chicago, at least you have the nation's second best pizza.  Hell even Cincinnati looks down on Cleveland.  

Finally, in your zeal to see the Cubs succeed please know that if they do we will be left without a lovable looser.  We used to have the Red Sox in that camp before they won a couple.  Now if the Cubs win we loose that drama every year that makes the season interesting.  The other day I was brain storming about this problem with my father-in-law.  The best he could come up with was the Washington Nationals.  Yeah I hear you smirk at that just like I did.  If the Nats are the new national underdog we're screwed.  Baseball and this country need the Cubs in their rightful spot in baseball and in our hearts.  Lets go Believeland!

Yuge News

I count those of you that read this blog as friends.  And if you're my friend then you no doubt share my passion for the places in this country (you too Canada) that are not on the radar for the average tourist.  Everyone knows about Rocky Mountain National Park, but who finds out about and takes the time to go experience something truly amazing like "The Tank" in Rangely, CO?  Yes, the Grand Canyon is amazing, but how much better would your experience be if you knew about a hidden fry bread taco place in Flagstaff to hit after visiting the park?  Now you can share those hidden gems, the off the highway spots in your state or wherever you find yourself, with the rest of us by being a part of a new project we are launching call 'Merican Meandering.

'Merican Meandering is a crowd sourced travel site that highlights the experiences of everyday folks like you and me as we explore this country's hidden treasures.  Let me share one of mine.

One lazy Sunday, a few months ago, my lady and I decided to hit a new place in the neighborhood for brunch.  And as you can imagine we encountered a flustered wait staff and a twenty minute wait for a table.  So instead of huddling on the sidewalk with the rest of the hungry hoard we decided on a short walk through the neighborhood.  It was during that stroll on our return to breakfast that we passed a house near the corner of 44th and Zuni with a sign out front that announced "Red Beans and Rice." Needless to say I was intrigued.

Chickee's Lil Kitchen is a nondescript kitchen lean-to with a couple parking spots on a side street in Northwest Denver.  Actually its just a small window in the back of a house with a hand-written menu that dispenses an unlikely combo of Cajun goodness and breakfast burritos.  Getting my hands on some red beans and rice proved a challenge.  It seemed like every time I had a craving something came up, or when I drove down there they were closed.  But, persistence personified, I finally got my hands on a steaming container of New Orleans, right here in my fair city.  I ate like a Donner Party member right there in my truck, using the center consul as a table.

The whole experience was pure pleasure!  And very few people have any idea that you can get great Cajun food in the Sunnyside neighborhood of Denver.  Especially not someone visiting town who might be tired of eating Chipotle.  That is why we need to hear your stories.

I bet you have a place just like Chickee's in your town.  Is there a secret swimming hole in the mountains near your house you want to share?  Maybe its a clown museum in a small town that your itching to visit.  Or the worlds largest honey badger in a museum you want to see. You could tell all your local peeps and coworkers about the honey badger, but you'd really want to tell the whole world.

All you have to do is go and experience those spots in your area that you wanted to check out anyway and write a short blog or photo essay about what you discover, attach it to an email and send it in. Our goal is to have every area of the country represented and set it up so a Yankee like myself can click on Alabama and plan my trip there around a BBQ place that is only open three days a week, but is mind blowing.

If you would like to be a part of this new adventure email me at marvtrap@gmail.com.  Not only do you get to experience something new, but now you get to share it.  Please join us!

Revised Listening

A few years ago a friend of mine and I started playing a game we called Dinner Party.  In it each of us got to pick four to six people we wanted to have dinner and drinks with.  There were no rules to our little game, you could have anyone from any area over to dine.  So for instance if an evening with the Dalai Lama, Brett Favre, Janet Yellen, and your dad sounds good then all you had to do is click your heals together and yell "bleep Donald Trump," and wallah its on.  I am not sure Favre and the Lama eat from the same food groups so you might want to consider that, but hey its your dinner not mine. Just remember that this is a one time hypothetical game, so don't throw away your one chance by inviting A Rod, Jerry Falwell, Herman Cain, and Hope Solo.  Crazy can be fun for a while but you have to clean up afterword.  My list has always had a few stalwarts on it, and a couple openings in case I need to change things up.  Anthony Bourdain always makes the list because you know he'll cook.  Wendell Berry and John Stewart are pretty much locks at well, as is Teri Gross to keep the conversation going.  But number one invite goes out to a guy worthy of his own evening, Malcolm Gladwell.

If your not familiar with the work of Mr Gladwell then all I can do is ask that your stop wasting your time with my blog and go read one of his books.  "Outliers" or "David and Goliath" would be good places to start.  Or your could spend some time listening to the best new podcast out there since Serial.  Gladwell's Revisionist History (revisionisthistory.com) pod is so good I probably should warn you to not start listening to it when you have a lot to do.  I don't want to be responsible for the loss of your job, or burnt dinners at your house.  That being said the sooner you start binge listening the sooner season one will be over and, you can go back to your toil and trouble for a year as you wait for season two.

In episode 7 of the first season of Revisionist History, Gladwell talks a lot about how some art takes years to prefect and or to reach iconic status, while other works are instantly great and appear to come effortlessly.  I am guessing that the podcast has been a lot of work in the making, but I know for a fact that its great right now.  In each of the seasons 10 episodes he digs into a topic ranging from underhand free throws to university endowments.  In fact the three part series within the series on money and universities is really good.  I never would have guessed that topic could be so thorny. Episode nine about a pastor choosing to defy his church by marrying his gay son is profound. You will not be disappointed!

Having read most of his books the thing that makes Revisionist History special is its absorb-ability. Imagine reading a book were every chapter blows your mind.  After a while you feel like your missing out on half the good stuff because your brain can't take it all in.  The podcast is like one chapter of good stuff once a week so you can ruminate on it all.

I will let the man sum this up in his own words, since after all he is one of the best.

"If there is a lesson to the ten episodes of this first season of Revisionist History its this, that nothing of consequence gets accomplished without courage.  You can't educate the poor without making difficult choices, without giving up some portion of your own privilege.  You can't be a great basketball player without being willing to look stupid.  You can't heal your church without sacrificing your own career.  You can't even drive a car properly unless your willing to acknowledge that you sometimes make mistakes, stupid, involuntary, dumb mistakes.  The path to a better world is hard, is that depressing?  I don't think so, I think whats depressing is when we ignore everything history is trying to tell us"

Boom!

The Tank

Denver is a sleepy place at 6:00 on a Saturday morning.  I can't say Kelley and I were any different as we packed our gear into the truck and headed west on an empty I-70 for a quiet corner of Colorado.  If you read my piece last fall on high school football on the Eastern Plains then you already know our road trips tend toward the interesting places in our state that are hard to find. (For the record Casa Bonita is not interesting)  This morning found us heading northwest to a place neither of us had ever been... with the hopes of experiencing something truly beautiful.

Heavy Metal

In the northwest corner of Colorado, very much off the beaten path is a musical instrument well worth the five hour drive from Denver.  It's a place known simply as The Tank,  its part studio, part concert space, and part church to music lovers.  On a hill outside the town of Rangley is an empty water tank that stand 65 feet tall and is approximately forty feet across.  For as long as locals can remember people have been crawling through a three foot round hole at it's base to sing or play music that sounds like it comes straight from heaven.

Home on the Range(ly)

Rangley, Colorado is a place diluted by low gas and oil prices.  Pump stations still dot the high desert landscape but the drilling boom that brought new families and money to town has dried up, leaving Rangley searching for another well to tap.  These days the main street isn't vibrant but it is welcoming and the folks we met were upbeat and hopeful.  The White River snakes through town and is a lovely and underutilized sportsman's paradise.  Then there are the ATV trails, the college, and a new classic car museum.  But the true source of Rangley's relevance just might be The Tank.

Tank Deetz 

Exactly when and how The Tank became apart of the Rangley landscape is a mystery.  Even it's intended reason for being there is mostly conjecture.  What is clear is that it came from somewhere in Colorado, maybe the Arkansas River Valley, sometime in the late 1960s. Originally owned by the Rio Grande Railroad, it was hauled to that hill in pieces and reassembled, possibly by the power company, who may have intended to use it for something related to hydroelectric power.  But the tank was never again filled with water after the rebuild, apparently because the sandy soil was deemed an insufficient base for that much weight.  I do know that if you ask those who love The Tank why it ended up where it did you will get one definitive answer... "To bring beautiful music to the folks of Rangley and the rest of the world".

People of The Tank

Located just outside of town up a steep gravel road, The Tank sits on a large enough flat spot for itself, a welcome trailer and a dozen or so cars.  Over the last few years volunteers saved it from the scrap yard with a Kickstarter campaign and cut an actual door into the side to bypass the crawl (which you still have to do to get the proper experience).  Now The Tank is open on Saturdays to musicians, adventurers and amateur writers who want to be blessed by it's sounds.  We were met at The Tank by three ladies who volunteer their time as protectors and tour guides.  Everything I learned that day was thanks to them.

No shoes are allowed which adds to the sanctity of the place as you step inside.  The space is completely empty save for one chair and blankets laden with musical instruments of all kinds.  On one side is an oversized xylophone made from large metal pipes, and played with a rubber hammer. It's open for any and all to play their guitar, sing, or just bang on pipes and metal dishes if you're musically inept like myself.  Kids swing those noise makers above their heads or play kazoos. Even whistling sounds amazing.

It turns out that trying to describe what The Tank can do is really hard.  Sound in there doesn't so much as echo as it does roll around and around above you.  The reverb lasts for so long that you're forced to play or sing very slowly so as not to create a jumbled mess.  One guitar sounds as if you're listening to an entire orchestra.  Video helps but you need to go see it for yourself to truly soak it in.

Tanking

When you drive all that way to check out something new all you can hope for is to learn something and enjoy the journey.  But when you get both of those things and get to meet great people who share their talents, you have to count yourself as lucky.  When we arrived at The Tank a lone guitar player was just putting on his shoes to leave.  It turned out that his name was Sean, a local pipeline worker checking out the sound for himself.  I guess we managed to twist his arm because he stayed and played for us and hung out for an hour or so.  He played us a couple songs including one by Jake Owens.  I couldn't tell where his voice began and or where the echo took over.  One man and his guitar sounded otherworldly, like an elf choir in The Lord of The Rings.  All I could do was close my eyes and lean against the wall.  Trust me it was better then church.

Volunteering that day to welcome road warriors like us to The Tank experience was a young lady named Sam.  She remembers the days when her grandmother lived down in the bottom land below the Tank.  Musicians used to come knocking on her door with an extension cord in hand in hopes of powering their recording equipment.  Sam has been crawling through that hole to sing inside that metal amplifier since she was eight.  A feat which had earned her the moniker "Voice of The Tank" around those parts.  It was a quiet Saturday so Sam and the other ladies that were volunteering that day joined her to sing for us.  Sean told me to lie down on my back in the middle of the floor and let all the sound wash over me.  It started low and slow, then built into this crescendo that I am struggling to describe.  Astonishing, stunning, breathtaking, that's the best I can do.  The angels singing to the shepherds announcing the birth of Christ might just have some competition. Watch Kelly's video below and see for your self.  I guarantee you've never seen me get all Pentecostal before.

Go

Do yourself a favor and add The Tank to your travel plans.  If that's not feasible because you're Canadian or something then at least add it to your bucket list.  Just having it on the list helps get you there sometimes.  Go to the website tanksounds.org and spend some time exploring and listening to the music they have posted.  If you make it to Rangley go to Giovanni's for pizza.  You can't miss it right there on the main drag.  Oh and if it's warm be sure to bring your swim trunks because you're going to want to jump into Kenney Reservoir on your way out of town.  We sure did, but five hours of wet shorts was a deal breaker.

"You don't play an instrument in The Tank, you play The Tank with your instrument"

                                     -Bruce Odland

Sect Life- Move Over Huckleberry Finn

Kids that grow up in communes or cults tend to have an inflated view of their place in the world.  They are largely kept separate from the rest of the world and constantly fed the idea that they are special, or set apart.  Not special individually no; but special because they are the kids of folks who believe they are living the right way while everyone else is hopelessly lost.  It's a good tactic by the adults to keep the kids satiated and hopefully heading toward membership when they grow up.   Sometimes this is manifested in ways that resemble today's suburb raised kid rocking Steph Curry's sneakers that thinks he is entitled to play hoops with the big boys.   He was born with a silver spoon and a mom taxi, which have blinded him to the fact that life can be unfair, or God forbid hard.  Sometimes the only way to teach that lesson is to knock him on his ass every time he tries to bring the ball into the lane. Or in the case of sect kids it might mean having the Coast Guard yank your Huck Finn raft off the Hudson River faster then you can say Tom Sawyer.

OK now that I have my hooks in you but before I tell this story please stop and take a look at this Google "street view" of the Hudson River.  

The Hudson River at the Mid Hudson Bridge.

It's big right?  In fact it's over a mile wide at this point.  And it's a major shipping route north from NYC to places like Albany and beyond.  Which means its full of barges like this...

So would you let your junior high kids build a raft, load it with camping gear and food, and float the whole thing down that river?  For more then one day? 

I know what you're screaming in your mind right now.

Hell No, Never in your wildest dreams!  NO, NO, NO.  Who can I punch right now? Someone needs to get fired immediately!! 

I got news for you folks, they did.

My memory of the impulses behind that rafting the Hudson brain fart are a little fuzzy.  I do have a picture taken in May of 1990 when I was eleven, of us after the voyage wearing faux leather Daniel Boone type shirts, probably because we were studying the history of river explores like Lewis and Clark in our "exclusive" private school. How things usually went when crazy ideas came to fruition there was that as long as our ideas were deemed beneficial to the rest of the commune, or to a sister group, or were some undeniable educational opportunity then we got the green light.  Once we managed to close down the factory where all the members work for half a day to put on our own faux version of the Olympics.  I'll never forget the time we talked them into letting us go protest some injustice on the steps of the capitol building in Albany. (you thought NYC was the capitol didn't you?)  Or that time we spent a whole summer building a village of primitive cabins in the woods and cooking our own meals on a open fire.  Not bad huh?

One thing about growing up on a large commune is that you can usually find plenty of stuff laying around to build things like tree houses, bird feeders for your Mom's birthday, or an occasional raft. And if for some reason the kids shop class area doesn't have what you need you can always raid the real wood shop, or the factory for that matter.  Need something welded?  Are you looking for barrels? What about a motor?  No problem we've got that.  Oh and here is a pond to you kids can use to build your raft and make sure it floats prior to launching it into a big ass river.

The raft itself was roughly a twenty foot square of wood that sat on the above mentioned steel barrels, which were sealed shut and provided the buoyancy necessary to keep the whole thing afloat.  We had built some boxes as well to hold supplies and act as benches.  And of course we had to add those long oar type things that the pioneers used to "steer" the their rafts.  

If my memory serves me correctly the day of the launch came on an overcast day in early summer. The plan was to float roughly twenty miles down the river to an island were we would camp for the night.  The crew consisted of the dozen or so kids that made up my age group, and our two teachers who were Sect members assigned to educate us...(or drown us).  A truck brought the raft north from the commune while we followed in a van to a spot called Bristol Beach near Malden NY, for those of you following along on Google maps.  We half dragged, half carried the raft down to the edge of the Hudson.  Waived goodbye to the transport crew, and pushed of into the river.  I am pretty sure we were wearing life jackets.

I honestly don't remember if we were on the water for ten minutes or forty.  I do know it wasn't long before we were approached from the south by a white boat full of armed men.  Which upon further inspection turned out to be a Coast Guard cutter out on patrol.  I really don't know if someone called us in or if they just stumbled upon our craft.  I do remember that they were pissed at us being out on the river on an unlicensed and non-seaworthy vessel.  Needless to say we were boarded as if we were drug smugglers and towed off the river to the Coast Guard Station at Saugerties.  

We were stunned, angry and emotional.  How could they do this to us at the very beginning of our great adventure? Didn't they know we were Sect kids who lived above and firmly outside of the laws that didn't convenience us?  What do you mean there were fat tickets that needed to be reconciled?  Now I wonder why no one got arrested that day.  I can just imagine what those guys told their wives when they got home that night.  

               My wife says my Daniel Boone gear was ill fitting.  What does she know?

If you're reaching this part of my tale and feeling a little sad I understand.  But don't feel sorry for us kids back then.  Instead of having to go back home with our tails between our legs as failed explorers we loaded up in the vans and headed for beautiful mountain lake to camp and lick our wounds.  Such is life when you own a very nice private lake in the Catskills.  Oh and we got a new teacher right after that.  Even communes have to draw the line somewhere.

Because Your Not Reading Jim Harrison And You Probably Should

Last weekend at Back of Beyond Books in Moab I picked up some poetry by the late, great Jim Harrison.  The writer of many works including Legends Of The Fall died this March, but left behind a cornucopia of literary goodness for us to chew on.  So in this age of Pokemon Go and The Donald why not take a break from the madness to ponder some poetry?  I even threw in a little pallet cleanser from Harrison for my fellow lightweights.  Enjoy!


Broom

To remember you're alive
visit the cemetery of your father
at noon after you've made love
and are still wrapped in a mammalain
odor that your are forced to cherish.
Under each stone is someone's inevitable
surprise, the unexpected death
of their biology that struggled hard, as it must.
Now to home without looking back,
enough is enough.
En route buy the best wine
you can afford and a dozen stiff brooms.
Have a few swallows then throw the furniture
out he window and begin sweeping.
Sweep until the walls are
bare of paint and at your feet sweep
until the floor disappears. Finish the wine
in this field of air, return to the cemetery
in the evening and wind through the stones
and slow dance of your name visible only to birds.


The Current Poor

The rich are giving the poor bright-colored
balloons, a dollar a gross, also bandages,
and leftover Mercurochrome from the fifties.
It is an autumn equinox and full moon present,
an event when night and day are precisely
equal, but then the poor know that night
always wins, grows wider and longer
until Christmas when they win a few minutes.
Under the tree there is an orange as big as a basketball.
It is the exiled sun resting in its winters coolness.  


Blue Shawl

The other day at the green dumpsters,
an old woman in blue shawl
told me that she loved my work.

Sect Life - Oh Canada

Dear Gentle Reader,

It is difficult and potentially life changing for me to explore the topic of where I come from.  I know that the interweb is monitored for content related to "the sect" and that content deemed negative can result in unwanted attention.  For that reason I have chosen to not include the names of any people associated with this story, or to name "the sect" outright.  Please understand that my relationship to some members of my immediate family could be effected by the way in which this piece is spread online.  It's not easy to write this piece so thanks for reading and for respecting the lives of those involved!  These are my memories of growing up there and I am sure that others remember things differently and view the group trough different eyes.  This is a cathartic exercise for me that I am choosing to share with all of you. Enjoy!
-Marvin

One thing that happens when folks start a sect or a cult of some kind is that they start to develop their own folkways and mores which are very different than the rest of society.  The longer the group exists and the more generations that are born into it, the more entrenched those ideologies get,  That's why the Amish keep rocking black hats and driving horses. Sure they have spiritual reasons to do so, but really it's because they have been doing it since 1693 and at this point it would be really hard to to change up.  It has become embedded in their DNA. 

 Another thing these types of groups do is to seek out other groups or individuals that live and think like them.  Sometimes they even abandon their own group en mass to join another.  Several small hippie communes did just that and got in bed with The Sect in the nineteen nineties.  The Sect itself has had an on again off again thing going with the Canadian Hutterites since the 1930s.  The Hutterites are a bit like Amish, only with cars and cell phones.  And unlike the Amish they live in large commune-type settings.  Think Communist collective farm meets old school fundamentalist religion with some Canadian "eh's" thrown in. One of he biggest of my middle school adventures involves these people, a bus, wild grapes and poutine.

It all started out innocently enough.

The area around the Sect in upstate New York is prime real estate for wild grapes.  The smaller, sharp tasting forbearer of the domestic fruit.  And supposedly favored by some for the production of homemade wine.  And guess which type of old school religious commune likes to make their own wine? That's right, it's the Hutterites.  So like any good sect does when they are trying to keep the warm fuzzy feelings flowing between them and there compatriots, my sect sent it's followers into the fields and forests for wild grapes.  And it turns out that the harvest was bountiful, so bountiful in fact that they ended up with something like 50 boxes of grapes.  Not small boxes either, but the kind a grocery store or commune would have lying around after buying a truckload of bananas.  Which meant that some Canadian dudes were going to get pretty blasted on homemade wine, if they could only get the boxes across the border.  The plan was to pack them on a bus and drive north into Quebec and then head west to Manitoba and our brethren.

The thing to remember about cults and sects is that they tend to live outside everyday laws and customs of normal society.  Sometimes it gets crazy and people get arrested or get a lot of air time from Nancy Grace. (Warren Jeffs anyone?) Or sometimes it's thinking that your junior-high kids' bright idea of building a Huck Finn raft to sail on the Hudson River is a great idea. (keep an eye out for that story) And then there are the times when no one seems to consider what the Canadian Border Patrol will think when you roll up to the border crossing in an old bus full of unregulated wild grapes... for making booze.  I was on that bus along with my mom, dad and brother and sister.  We had been "chosen" for this task primarily because my dad was one of the very few who had good karma with that bus. To be clear it wasn't what you the gentle reader are imaging when I say bus. Your thinking of a old school bus painted up in bright hippie colors aren't you?  Nope this was basically a retired Greyhound bus with tables that turned into beds.  Like the kind a has been 80's metal band shows up to your town in.  And it was cranky and needed the kind of love my dad was willing to give.  

Yes this was to be our big family adventure.  To drive an old bus north to Canada and make our sect peeps really happy, and drunk.

I think my Dad might have had a premonition that our contraband would not be well received at the border.  How else do you explain his choice to attempt the crossing of said border far from the main highway and Montreal. Instead he chose a a sleepy town with a tired border, I think assuming that the he could reason with the "good old boy" guards. In hind sight a bunch of weirdos with a bus full of wild grapes was probably the biggest thing that had happened at that crossing since two kids tried to sneak a couple six packs of Molson Ice over from Canada hidden inside over sized hockey sweaters. We were too good to be true.

Needless to say we did not make it into Canada that day.  And instead ended up "camping" out like aging rock stars on our bus in some tired upstate NY town while the Sects lawyers and the feds tried to figure out the paperwork on something no one had ever tried to do before.  We would probably have had more luck had we made our bounty into wine before trying to take it to Canada.  We were stuck there for days people.  And all the while my Dad ranted and raved like a real injustice collector.  How could there not be a box to check on the customs forms for wild grapes was his refrain.  A couple days in my Mom and sister were air lifted back to sanity on the Sect's private plane.  I was pissed.  My sister said it was a white knuckle Cessna ride, so I felt a lot better had they broken out the Gulfstream to bring them home.

Eventually somebody greased the right palm somewhere and we got the green light.  But by this time the grapes were starting to ferment right there in the luggage area under the bus.  Also my Dad had this idea that if you crossed the border in the middle of the night you would somehow appear less conspicuous or catch the guards napping.  Dude had it all backwards didn't he?  But we made it across... we were free, in the dark, in Canada.  And then the bus broke down.

Yes not five miles from 'Merica while my Dad celebrated his victory, pieces of metal started breaking free inside the engine and flying around breaking more stuff.  We ended up on the side of a country road in the middle of the night with a cloud of smoke where the engine used to be.  And then when the wrecker came to pick us up the dudes driving turned out to be scary secessionist nuts who lived in rural Quebec in a house surrounded by a giant junk yard.  Oh and they spoke no more then five words of English.  All I remember is sitting in the kitchen of this dark house in the wee hours of a scary morning, surrounded by a sea of mud, smashed cars and dudes with very dirty hands. Couldn't they have dropped us off at a gas station?

Why or how we ended up hanging out at these French Canadian dudes' "estate" is probably because my dad thinks that he is a good old boy and that he can commune with all other good old boys no matter which country they are from.  Dude would probably bro up to the Taliban if he broke down in Afghanistan. The problem is that he can't differentiate between an honest to goodness love-fest and polite indifference.  Especially when he starts pushing books written by the Sect's big dog, or espousing marital advice.  Thankfully my feelings about the bromance were echoed by the guys with black fingernails so at first light we were escorted to a garage in Montreal where the bus could be properly examined.

I am pretty sure that has an adult I would love a long weekend walking the streets of Montreal with my lady on my arm. The architecture and culture are definitely something to be enjoyed   But to a junior-high kid fresh off the compound, the city was an alien landscape.  Everything was in French including the menu at KFC.  All I could do was mumble and point at the pictures in order to procure chicken and mashed potatoes.  In fact without Colonel Sanders' mug on the sign you couldn't even tell it was KFC.    Oh and every single person seemed to smoke cigarettes as if the world was ending soon.  We needed an exit strategy and luckily my dad came through.

It turned out that my dad had a cousin living in Ottawa who turned out to be our knight in shining armor.   The details on this random cousin I had never heard, or how my dad had her number have always remained murky.  But she did come pick us up and get us to a place were people spoke English so I was happy.  Oh and we got to have showers and change clothes which was something hard to do on the bus.   And she took us touring around the Canadian capital, fed us my first rabbit stew and introduced us to poutine, someone's really great idea to mix french fries with cheese curds and cover the whole thing with gravy.  And she let us electronics deprived kids watch the World Series on a real TV.  The one were they "accidentally" displayed the Canadian flag upside down in Atlanta.

We never made it out to the Hutterites with our haul.  I honestly don't know if the grapes ended up in a landfill, were shipped out there without us, or if we brought them back to New York with us.  All I know is that as soon as the bus was fixed we turned tail for home.  Apparently the mechanics in Montreal left a rag in the engine when they put it back together so we barely made it back.  That bus was never the same after that.  I am sure even today you could get my dad to go off about what those dudes did to his beloved bus just by mentioning Montreal.  And by now I am sure that our Canadian friends have figured out a way to make hooch out of something they can find on their side of the border.

Sect Life- Animal House

Dear Gentle Reader,

It is difficult and potentially life changing for me to explore the topic of where I come from.  I know that the interweb is monitored for content related to "the sect" and that content deemed negative can result in unwanted attention.  For that reason I have chosen to not include the names of any people associated with this story, or to name "the sect" outright.  Please understand that my relationship to some members of my immediate family could be effected by the way in which this piece is spread online.  It's not easy to write this piece so thanks for reading and for respecting the lives of those involved!  These are my memories of growing up there and I am sure that others remember things differently and view the group trough different eyes.  This is a cathartic exercise for me that I am choosing to share with all of you. Enjoy!
-Marvin

Guinea Fowl Suck!  By that I mean they are ugly, obnoxiously loud, stupid, and useless creatures that often chase other animals and people.  Sounds nice huh?  Well we had one around when I was a kid and guess who got chased a lot?  Yeah they suck a lot.  And they're not even native to this country so really they're no different then kudzu and the Zika virus.  These African pests are about the size of a chicken, and gray with white spots.  One in particular still haunts me.

At pretty much all of the Sect compounds I have ever been around there was always a barn full of animals.  Less then an actual farm but more than a petting zoo, these were places where us kids could get our hands dirty and get up close and personal with livestock of every shape and size.  Usually there was some combination of horses, a cow or two, sheep, chickens, ducks, maybe a goat, always a donkey, and once a guinea fowl.  We would ride the horses, gather eggs, chase the goats and shovel a lot of animal shit. For a while we had a ram, a male sheep that would slam into your ass from behind when you weren't paying attention.  Preferably when that happened you weren't too close to the manure pile! One particularly sadistic kid solved that problem for the rest of us by spinning around to catch the ram mid ambush and break a broom handle across it's forehead.  After that things were cool when that guy was around... the ram wanted no part of more broom handles.  So you can see, we were living the dream.  Except when that damn guinea fowl was around.

The trail we had to take to the community swimming hole passed right in front of the barn.  And each time we walked by we did so with our hearts thumping wildly with fear that the guinea would come streaking out of the barn, screeching bloody murder, and try to peck through our tender Achilles tendons as we ran.  And to add insult to injury our escape route was over heavy gravel, which sucks when you consider that no kid there is ever allowed to wear shoes in the summer time.  I was in pre-school or kindergarten at the time and I was petrified of that beast.

One day my Dad and Uncle had decided somewhat surprisingly to take the three kids at the time in my family camping out by the swimming hole.  It must have been one of those rare Saturday nights when no members-only events were planned.  And since my Dad loves driving a horse and cart whenever it's even remotely possible, we were using the wagon to haul the camping gear.  I was riding in the back on a pile of sleeping bags with my brother, a fortuitous choice on my part.  Which became clear when we passed the barn and the horse was assaulted by the streaking guinea hen. Despite my Dad's attempt to control the horse it did what every horse would do in that situation, it bolted.  But instead of just giving us a really fast ride to the pond, it ran up the bank on the right side of the road dragging the cart with it.  Eventually the cart reached an angle it could not sustain and flipped over on its side, spilling us out on the ground along with the tent, camp chairs, cooler and the sleeping bags, the latter of which might be the reason I am still here to tell this story.  Why my Dad didn't chase down that guinea and swing it around his head until he heard its neck snap is beyond me.  I know I wanted him to.  Luckily we moved soon after that so I don't have to seek therapy now for guinea hen-related PTSD.

A kinder gentler story(at least until the end) of animal life as a kid is the story of me getting my own cow.  It's unclear why the powers-that-be decided that me and my friend should raise cows, unless it was because they wanted to eat them.  None-the-less we were chosen for the task and got to ride out to a nearby farm to secure our very own baby calf.  There were a half dozen one or two day old calves for us to choose from in a muddy fenced-in lot.  I'm pretty sure I chose the first one that tried to suck on my fingers through the fence, a predominantly white one with black spots.  My buddy chose one that was black with white spots to balance out my choice.  It was love at first sight!

We took our long-legged and wobbly new friends home to the barn and settled them into a clean stall lined with straw.  We had to feed them with warm milk through a giant baby bottle three times a day. Since we were both juvenile football fans we named our cows after NFL running backs.  Mine honored Bengals runner Icky Woods, while his was christened Ricky Waters.  From that day on everybody knew them as Icky and Ricky.

It turns out that milk framers don't have much use for male calves, which is probably why they try to offload them on young kids and it soon became apparent that the Sect didn't want two young bulls around trying to hump every other animal in sight.  So one day we had to do something that makes my skin crawl just thinking about it.  We fastened a small, tight, rubber band around around Icky and Ricky's private parts, so they would essentially rot off and render them eunuchs.  Nasty right?  Well I was assured that it didn't hurt them and that their balls would one day fall off harmlessly in the pasture.  And sure enough one day we showed up to check on them and they had been castrated by a rubber band.  I am not sure why but we looked for their shriveled man-parts in that field for a while, but alas ended our search disappointed.

As you can imagine, Icky and Ricky grew up into full sized eunuch cows.  They were part of our lives for a year or two until one day the grim reaper came calling.  I wasn't around to see Icky "meat" (pun intended) his fate at the hands of the executioner.  I don't even recall being that sad about his demise; after all we knew from the very beginning that day would come.  I know that his brief life on this earth was a mostly happy one of bottle feeding and lots of good green grass.  I do know that the steak I had that night for dinner sure tasted good.

Sect Life -Modeling and Moving

Dear Gentle Reader,

It is difficult and potentially life changing for me to explore the topic of where I come from. I know that the interweb is monitored for content related to "the sect" and that content deemed negative can result in unwanted attention.  For that reason I have chosen to not include the names of any people associated with this story, or to name "the sect" outright. Please understand that my relationship to some members of my immediate family could be effected by the way in which this piece is spread online.  It's not easy to write this piece so thanks for reading and for respecting the lives of those involved!  These are my memories of growing up there and I am sure that others remember things differently and view the group trough different eyes.  This is a cathartic exercise for me that I am choosing to share with all of you. Enjoy!
-Marvin

I was a child model.  It's understandable if you're skeptical when you consider my less-than-glamorous appearance, but it's true, and I have the pictures to prove it.  No I wasn't rocking sweet kids outfits in the Macy's catalog.  I was repin' preschool toys for Commune Playthings, the business arm of the The Sect.  In fairness I was a pretty cute kid, and since kids there spend most of their early lives in daycare playing with those toy anyway it wasn't much of a stretch.  I appeared in semi glossy early '80s catalog pics astride a scooter/trike thing next to my best friend Lawrence, mounted on his own wheeled steed.  And on hands and knees playing with the latest wooden dump truck, or on an indoor climbing gym being pushed down the slide by a kid named Colin.  In each shot I am wearing some sort of overalls and my blond hair is shaped in my Dad's signature Amish cut.   Unfortunately my modeling career was short lived which I sure had nothing to do with my obvious talent and good looks. I bet that the powers that be didn't want me to get to into being photographed, since that might make me unsuitable as a follower.    Such was the strange but true and often wonderful world I grew up in.

If you're new to this tangent on E Pluribus Marvus then let me briefly catch you up.  I came into this world in upstate New York as the first of six kids born to two members of a religious commune.  I have debated calling it a cult (Google it) but as an olive branch have chosen to stick with The Sect as a working title.  I struggle to describe the place to the uninitiated so here is how another kid that grew up there lays it out.  Sorry no names used here.  Anyway this is how they described it. "It's is a christian commune, not part of any major denomination, but rooted in Anabaptist teachings.  They currently have about 2,500 - 3,000 members, who live in groups of about 300 with locations in the U.S., Germany and Australia (and more).  The group was founded in 1920 by a young theologian Eberhard Arnold and his wife Emmy.  Members have no money as all basic needs are provided for.  Families live in semi-communal houses, all meals are taken communally, and all members work on the commune, few go to college and children are schooled in the community."  Well put! If you're wondering what it is try watching M Night Shyamalan's "The Village".  Its some of that minus the explicit use of monsters in the woods to keep people in line.  There the monsters appear more as worldly ills than dudes wearing costumes (spoiler alert).

So yeah like I said, I was born in the very late '70s (Gen X baby!) and spent the first few years of my daycare childhood at Woodcrest, a "village" about an hour and a half north of NYC. My Grandmother was around as well as my Mom's sister, her husband and a couple cousins.  I have pictures of us playing with our new wooden toys under the Christmas tree when I was two or three. Things were cruising along nicely when one day when I was about four out of the blue we got traded to an arm of The Sect in Pennsylvania.  And that might have been the beginning of the troubles.

The Sect in Pennsylvania is in an economically depressed area of the state a stones throw from West Virgina, and about an hour  (extra and) and a half from Pittsburgh.  Unlike the hilltop world of Woodcrest, New Meadow Run is just that, a grassy valley with a creek running through it.  Everything about life there except for the people and the topography was exactly the same as the old place, so it wasn't much of an adjustment.  Yeah more daycare time!  Don't get me wrong, daycare there is pretty sweet.

And then out of nowhere we got kicked out.  By that I mean that my mom or dad (OK, it must of been my Dad) did something bad, so we as a nuclear family suddenly found ourselves living on  a rapidly declining farm not far from the compound in rural Pennsylvania. Who did what and to whom has never been revealed to me. And it's not as if you can file a freedom of information request with those folks and get some old documents that detail my parents's transgressions.  More then likely my folks (Dad) said something prideful or pushed back a wee bit on some directive from above and that was deemed to be an affront to the unity of the group; so we were sent to our rooms.  I have asked my folks on multiple occasions what happened to get us a timeout, but they quickly turn into Donald Rumsfeld dodging questions from Congress about the Iraq Invasion.  Man you talk about filibustering!  My guess is that my Dad, since he is the rebellious one,was asked to do something like change jobs or move to Pennsylvania for God's sake, and he gave some push back.  That's all it takes to get a timeout for an attitude adjustment.

Lets pause the story here for a minute to talk about the psyche of your average Sect member.  The saying "there is no I in team" might as well be tattooed across the foreheads of every man, women and most of the kids in the group.  In fact the whole structure of the place is held together by the one principle that self always takes a back seat to the whole body.  Every person has a place in the system, the machine, and one selfish act or attitude starts to threaten the unbroken circle.  The whole thing would collapse in about three days if people started thinking for and about themselves.  Thus when the members hold "votes" on doctrine or day to day policy that have been presented to them by the leadership, they always unanimously vote yes. Every single damn time!  So you can understand how seriously they take keeping people in line and all moving in the same direction,  And you can imagine how quickly members fall on their proverbial swords and welcome disciplinary action in order to expedite their fall from grace and swift return to their spot in the system.  Nothing is more lonely then being on the outside of the group.  Hell back then if you were bad you had to wear different clothes then the rest of the members, and take your meal at home instead of in the dinning hall.  Yes even us kids knew when someone was a screw-up.  They might as well have been rocking a scarlet letter around their neck.

Back to the farm then.  I am sure my parents were in full blown panic mode at finding themselves on the outs. But me, I was tickled to death!  Suddenly me and my two siblings at the time were home all day with Mom, something that you don't experience as a kids growing up at The Sect. There when you hit six weeks old its off to the daycare center for ten hours a day so your mom can go back to her work within the community system.  You stay in daycare pretty much the rest of your formative years, basically until you got to high school.  So being home with Mom all day was a huge treat. Suddenly we were a normal American family.  My dad worked for a local construction company and we stayed home and played in the dilapidated barn and swung from on a tree swing in the old orchard on the property.  I remember my grandparents coming out for diner and taking Sunday afternoon roadies to a nearby water fall.  Normal huh?  One day a roofing crew came to the farm to re shingle the roof of the house. It was a warm summer day so most of them decided to forgo shirts.  Guess who spent the next week refusing to wear a shirt? And we pounded a lot of sliced tomatoes slathered in mayo during our hiatus since for once we could eat what we wanted, and my Dad is nuts about sliced tomatoes.  Life was great!

I have no idea if we were gone a month or six months, but it was probably about the length or the summer.  All I know is one day we moved back to the compound; or should I say we moved one step closer to the compound.  Really it was a house on a hill above the rest of the non sinners were we could transition back into group.  My Dad started working at the factory with the rest of the men, but my Mom kept us home and kept doing normal stay-at-home Mom stuff.  I mentioned earlier that back then they rocked different outfits from the rest of the group.  Specifically that meant that the women wore a different colored head scarf then the ones in good standing.  I don't remember what the men had to give up, maybe suspenders?  Which frankly would have been a welcome break.  And to be clear I was to young to remember if my mom really did go "scarlet scarf" during that time.  

At some point we moved back down the hill into a huge old hotel that most of the members lived in. There was no welcome committee or formal ceremony when we arrived.  I am sure my parents had some sort of official welcome back into their spots on the wheel at a members only meeting.  But us kids just slid back into daycare, learning to ride bikes, and me cracking open my chin in an attempt to ice skate. Needles to say my modeling career was never resuscitated.   

A few years ago I was in the area and with guidance from my uncle I found the old farm. The barn was leaning badly to one side, and the brick house was crumbling.  Old cars, bicycles and trash decorated the yard in the local custom.  No one I ever knew now called it home.  I'll choose to remember the place as clean, cheery and welcoming.  A nice place I called home for however long it was, and a brief glimpse of my families sojourn into the American Dream.