A MAN'S HOUSE IS.
William Carlos Williams
wrote this poem a few years back:
If when my wife is sleeping
And the baby and Kathleen
Are sleeping
And the sun is a flame-white disc
In silken mists
Above shining trees,--
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
"I am lonely, lonely,.
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!"
If I admire my arms, my face,
My shoulders, flanks, buttocks
Against the yellow drawn shades,--
Who shall say I am not
The happy genius of my household?
The happy genius of my household? At one age, it's "A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou beside me". At another, it is the sheer, unadulterated joy of a house that is all yours-no one else's. Ask any man. English common law referred to a man's home as his castle--the one place where he is law and king. It has never been put more eloquently, but like many simple truths, over use has robbed it of its meaning-its poetry.
Your own castle. That is the American Dream--the promise that America holds out for everyone. It's not about primogenitor here. It's not about what class you were born into. It's not about religion or skin color. Some men may be born more "equal" than others. A Rockefeller may have an easier time buying his first home than the son of a Black sharecropper. That is life. But no one can stop that Black kid from growing up and buying his first house. Despite inequities of opportunity, we are still all equal under the law. And despite injustices we are still more just than any country anywhere anytime in recorded history.
It's not the walls and the roof that matter. It's the feeling that comes from "owning" those walls and that roof. I was born to be lonely, I am best so.
I had that feeling last week. The kids were asleep. The Goobs was off with her girl friends in New York. It was dark--chilly outside. The fire was roaring. I had chain sawed and split each log myself. They almost had names. I was flaked out on the couch with a glass of Freemark Abbey Cab. The tube was ablaze with some video featuring a lot of Nazis running around getting shot by the good guys. Life was perfect. A new fire. An old vintage. A Nazi flick. It doesn't get any better.
I could do as I pleased, go where I wanted. I was safe-secure. I did not fear the KGB breaking down my door. I feared no Mafiosi, Taliban vice police, gang bangers Vandals, Visigoths, or marauders, busting in on me. I was king of my castle.
I was blessed. Not one tenth of one tenth of one tenth of one tenth the men in the world could feel what I felt that night. It's what we all aspire to--absolute freedom and security. Yet the world, and particularly this Valley is filled with well meaning people who would take that away from all of us.
And they would do it in your name. They would do it, supposedly to benefit you. They would do it in the name of the Greater good for the most people. They would do it through onerous government regulation.
Now I know that my right to swing my fist stops where your nose begins. Fair enough. If I'm polluting the creek, or taking more than my allocated share of the water, I should be stopped. But if I have lived near a creek that runs maybe 3 months a year, and I want to add on a bedroom?
Our family fought for and helped create the Ag Preserve. Zoning that favored Ag seemed righteous. Better than subdivisions. No one ever thought that years later newcomers would move into the Valley and then try to tell you what you could grow on your land, where you could grow it, how much you could grow. Minus reasonable building codes, no one ever imagined that anyone would dare tell you what you could do with your own land; whether you could cut your own tree or not; which part of your land you could use; what color to paint your house; where you could build a barn; how close to a seasonal creek you could plant--that if you lived on the flat you could build anything, but if you wanted to plant in the hills the thought police could deny it on the basis of how it looked.! Not if it damaged the eco-system, but how it looked to the eye!
Twenty years before the Ag Preserve we had just defeated World Wide Fascism. It never occurred to anyone in the Napa Valley back then, that America could ever even remotely approach what we'd just defeated. That thought police might tell them whether or not they can have a fire in their own chimney. Land was sacred. The land was owned, not by large corporations--not by wealthy industrialists--not by wealthy heirs--but just like it is today--mostly, by ordinary people trying to make ends meet the best they could. On the other hand, government regulations to stop flabby old guys from dancing--that I could live with.
Ever wonder who owns country property in the Napa Valley? Is it international wineries? Wealthy Dot Commers? Industrialist? Socialites from the city? Wrong. Mostly it's people like you-only they live a little farther from town.
Jim Pop was one of those city people, who hated concrete and wanted to move to the country.
When I was nine we bought a tiny, two bedroom one bath farmhouse on 12 acres, four miles from town, and a mile from the closest people out in Conn Valley. Up a muddy dirt road, it was truly country.
When it came to sports I was the best kid on the block. Of course, I was the only kid on the block. My two brothers and I had to make up our own games. There were no clubs to join, no kids to play with, no parks to walk to, no teams to play on. The land provided all of our entertainment. Trees, rocks, rock formations, creeks, grassy knolls, (not that one), were our world. Deer, rabbit, skunks, coyotes, rattler snakes, lizards, squirrels, occasional mountain lions and bears were our neighbors.
We were always alone. But like Whitman said, "Never was I less alone, than when alone". Country living teaches you that. One learns to depend upon his own imagination, his own resources, not the divertimentos of other people or outside stimuli.
Of course, it produces a certain social awkwardness. Those raised in isolation are not generally too good in crowds and may not have all the social graces of those raised in the constant presence of other people. We tend to lack tact and the social niceties that those forced to live shoulder to shoulder have learned as necessary for civilized survival.
Why do people move to the country in the first place? Are they simply misanthropes? (That's "mankind haters" for the Stanford grads out there). Are they simply nature lovers? Do they just love privacy? Do they just want a place to skip and go naked?
No doubt there are as may reasons for moving to the country as there are people who move there. But one characteristic stands head and shoulders above all else. They tend to be independent. They don't like other people telling them what to do!
This sense of independence and rugged individualism was cherished, admired and respected in America until the late 60's when "communal living", and consensus building became all the rage.
People who live in the country do things their own way by choice and often necessity. They're frugal. Innovative. Self reliant. They build gates out of iron bed frames. Cut barrels in half or use old bath tubs for water troughs. They pound led water pipes into the ground for fence posts. Use corrugated tin roofing for corrals. They gerrymander water systems. They clear fields of stone and use 'em for rock walls. They build houses that fit them, not others.
They are vulnerable. There water comes from a well or spring. They don't get it like you by sending in a check every month. They are one minor tremor, just one rock slide, or just one "Act of God" away from losing their water supply. Even if they could afford it, there is no guarantee that they could dig another well and find water.
Their homes are often referred to as "get-aways". Why? Because they are literally getting away from all that is restrictive, confining, repressive and suffocating about living in a social setting.
Mostly, they love and respect nature. They are great stewards of the land. They have to be, or they'll lose it. For many, there land is their livelihood.
But you, the Thought Police, might not like an iron bed post as a gate. It might offend your eye--your view shed. So you would have them remove it--for the greater good, of course. You might not like how vines look in the hills--maybe your prefer trees or orchards, so you would have them be restricted.
Many homes and barns were built near streams in the old days (hint: It's where the water is). But you would have them not add a bedroom for their kids or a barn for their horse, because it is within 150 feet of what you consider an "important" habitat-even though the land owner knows it is no more than a ditch that carries run off two months a year.
You would regulate their land. For the greater good, you would tell them how much water they can pump, and where they can use it. You would tell them what to plant, and how much to plant. You would regulate the square footage of their cottage, though you may live in a McMansion on the flat. You would okay a new mega--hotel 20 feet from the Napa River, but deny them the right to build a wooden corral near a dry stream.
You would tell them not to burn their own logs in their own fireplace. You would not let them pave their dirt roads, dig new wells, cut trees, plant vines, build fences, plant lawns, build barns, hang basketball hoops, dig pools--even though you may have done it on your property. You would regulate them into submission. And you would do this all without any substantial scientific evidence to support your claim that these regulations are necessary. Why? What did they ever do to you?
What is it about a man being, what William Carlos Williams called "The happy genius of my household", that you don't like?
Dante said a man can't spend his life walking up and down other men's stair cases. Yet he was a wonderer, a searcher. We Americans have always been a restless people. Yet did any Movie resonate more with the American psyche than the Wizard of OZ? What was Dorothy's ticket back to Auntie Em? "There's no place like home. There's no place like home". What about Mr. O'Hara's admonition to Scarlet? "The Land Katie Scarlet". Tara, their sacred plantation was tantalizingly close to Terra, Latin for land.
When I was coming of age Jack Kerouac's On the Road Was all the rage. The Sierra Club, back when they were preservationists, before the Brown Shirts took over, published a beautiful book On the Loose.
It was how we all pictured ourselves--footloose and fancy free, hiking merrily off into the sunset singing: Val der ree, Val der Rah, Val Der Ree Val der Rah ha ha ha ha.
Once, hitch hiking was not a dangerous mode of travel. We all did it, all the time. A rite of passage was to go to Europe for a few months and hitch hike around the continent. Even young women did it alone, without fear. The only cereal killer we could think of was too much milk on the Cheerios.
"If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with", went the refrain. No chains. No commitments. No ties. That was also accompanied by no jobs and no responsibilities.
Being a vagabond. It was a great life--if somewhat adolescent. The trouble was that at some point the money ran out and the years began to add up. If nothing else got you, at a certain age sleeping on cement isn't as comfortable as it once was. But while it lasted you were free--the goal of all young men--as opposed to tied down like your dad. He was part of the establishment--the enemy of all that was good and pure. He'd been corrupted by materialism and was a slave to his job--a slave to his mortgage. No doubt he even voted Republican.
You were never going to be like him. No man in the Gray flannel suit for you. No man living in suburbia in "Little houses made of ticky tacky"--not you!
And then she came into your life. Suddenly, you didn't need to travel any more. The road was no longer taking you to any place, but instead was taking you away from her.
You found what you didn't even know you were looking for. Now what? Dare you even think it? Settle down? Hey. How about a little house with a white picket fence? Would that be great or what? Just the two of you, alone against the world. You would be unconquerable. And hey, yeah, why not? A baby. How cool would that be? And you would raise her right--not like your parents did. You'd never make the same mistakes they made.
Of course, a house would be expensive, but you could go back to grad school (while your wife worked--fair's fair after all) or maybe take a grown up job. Then after your wife put you through school, you could make enough for a down payment--have a couple of kids--buy a bigger house--get into your 40's and dump your wife for a younger model. It became the American way.
Or you could stay married. Work on the house. Maybe buy another, bigger one and discover what a home is all about.
And what is it about? I'll leave it to the poets to describe. But it is a feeling like no other. A home is truly a man's castle, the one place he or she can be lord and master. It is a refuge from the horrors of the world where "Ignorant armies clash by night". It's the place where you can call the shots without government or bureaucratic interference.
It is not to be trifled with. Where you once thought the road was freedom suddenly you discover that only in one's home--on one's own property is one truly free.
And when you see the county, the radical arm of the Sierra Club, or a few trust fund babies with lawyers in tow, grab for what you have worked so hard for, you realize, it's not about stream setbacks, it's not about "viewsheds", it's not about erosion, it's not about steelhead, it's not about the environment--you already care about all those. It's about others stealing from you that which makes this country great and separates it from others. It galls you that Dad, in his quiet way, was right after all.
Jeffrey Warren
Website: www.jeffwarren.com
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