Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Hey West Virginia!


Don't forget to vote!

So little known story about RQ when she was a tiny girl of about 2 involving the great state of West Virginia.

I had hippy parents who would buy antiques in the south and on the east coast for cheap and haul them back to California to be refinished and sold at a ginormous mark-up. During one of thee trips we lived in an old hotel in West Virginia that was on the Pony Express route. It was owned by my parents friends (who lived next door) and my dad was rehabbing it. There are lots of funny stories about my dad trying to live off the land and make possum stew (he got as far as skinning the thing before he gave up and drove us an hour and a half into town for MacDonalds) and about being chased out of the house by both bears and snakes. I learned to swim in the creek (crick) behind the house cause we didn't have indoor plumbing and that's how we took baths.

Now our friends were farmers, hippy farmers and I think you can guess what they grew. When they got arrested by the local sheriff for growing pot, the locals got in a bit of an uprage. How dare the law try to interfere with a man who was just using his own property to grow something for his own personal use.

So when I think of West Virginia, I think of those old locals and their deep understanding of property rights and freedom and how they could expand those rights to a dirty hippy when the law couldn't.

Obama may have written you off as hicks whose vote isn't worth anything, but I know that you don't write people off just cause they aren't the same as you. I saw it myself as a tiny tiny child.


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