FanStory.com - It Takes A Village?by T B Botts

Those who know me know that I spent ten years on a farm in the wilderness of Alaska. I suppose it could be called a farm because we grew crops there, or tried to. It was more like a commune, only not the hippy type. I kind of wish it had been sometimes. I think hippies had fun, something that was sorely lacking where I was living.

When we arrived in June of 1976, there were only about four cabins for the seventy-five or so people who were living there. All the cabins were divided up into four different rooms, with entire families living in each room. To say it was cramped would be an understatement. The downstairs of one cabin was used for cooking for the whole camp. The families would go to the cabin where the food was prepared, get it and retreat to their individual rooms to eat. It was like that until the tabernacle was finished sometime in mid-fall.

The tabernacle we built was a monster of a building, about seventy five feet long and thirty feet wide. A new kitchen made up one end of it, and a dining area took up another third of the space. We used some of the lumber that we milled to make picnic tables and benches.

Some genius had decided that we needed to eat together. It wasn't enough that we worked together all day, and attended church together, we had to have our meals as a corporate body as well. Oh joy.

I guess on the one hand it made more sense. We could contain the mess to one area, and theoretically the meal would be hot when we sat down to eat it. Considering some of the meals were less than appealing at best, letting them cool down made them inedible all together. That didn't seem to matter though. We had to have announcements and of course a prayer before we could eat, and depending on who was praying and the number of announcements made, your meal was usually lukewarm. When certain people stood to speak, there was an audible groan that rumbled through the ranks.

Like people everywhere, some folks are attracted to others for various reasons; we like their attitude, or they have a good sense of humor, or perhaps they came from the same region of the country as us, so we tended to gather together. However, the eldership, in all of their wisdom, decided that once a month we were going to play musical chairs, so to speak. A chart was created so that you didn't sit with the same people, aside from your family. I guess the idea was that we would get to know each other better and thus there would be more unity or some such thing. Of course I thought it was a stupid idea, but no one consulted me.

Periodically we'd be paired up with someone who just grated on me. I wasn't all that fond of many of the people anyway, but most of them I could tolerate. Others were a real challenge. I usually tried to get through the meal quickly so I could leave, but it didn't always work that way.

During the course of the ten years we were there, a number of people came and went. I always envied those who left. Anyway, one of the individuals who ended up at the farm with us was a gal named Carey. She was British and very proper. I loved listening to her talk. I felt that she was a little bit out of place though. We were living like Daniel Boone and she was used to tea time.

There was also a family that moved to the farm from Juneau for some unknown reason. There was the mother and father, Linda and Wayne, and a teen daughter and a teenaged son named John. I don't remember the girl's name. When John was a baby, an accident of some sort happened; an overdose or some medical malpractice apparently. Anyway, John couldn't speak and he was also left without the ability to swallow food. Once he had chewed, he had to manually take one of his fingers and shove it down his throat. It wasn't very appetizing to watch, but he couldn't help it.

It so happened that one day we had been seated with Carey. I think it was a bit of a challenge for her. We had seven kids under ten at our table and she was single. Our boys were about a year and a half old and were sitting in highchairs at the table with their food scattered on their trays. Being twins, they used to mimic each other. John and his family were seated at a table directly across from us. One of the boys glanced up and watched John eating and decided to follow suit, sticking his finger down his throat. His brother saw him and decided it was a great plan and decided to do the same. My wife Jan glanced up, saw what was happening and flew up away from the table shouting, "Stop! Stop that! I said stop that!" She couldn't yank them out of their chairs fast enough. Carey caught sight of what was going on, said, "That is disgusting!" and left. I was trying to process what had happened while attempting to stifle a laugh.

Apparently we were persona-non-grata after that. Carey was reassigned to eat with a more civilized family, I assume one without little kids. If I recall correctly, for the rest of that month we didn't have any guests at our table. It was just the way I liked it.