A BRIEF HISTORY OF TOMPKINS' COUNTY'S COMMUNES PART 2
Much like Dawes Hill, Owl Creek Commune on Owl Creek Road in Spencer was started in 1970,
by a group of friends from Cornell. A year later John Doe, a self described, "Old Hippy who is
now a school teacher [who would like to remain anonymous." {Sandy -- I will refer to him as
John Doe. (His real name is Jim - so don't use that name)}]"
"I was finishing a doctoral degree at Princeton and I got fed up with the whole graduate
school scene and took a trip to Nepal. When I got back I was spaced out and needed a quiet
place." Which was Owl Creek.
He says that it "We had a house and a barn." But, "We didn't function as a family. We
functioned as a boarding house. A bunch of people living together having a good time."
Doe says, "We had 12 people living there. Sometimes getting two personalities to cooperate
is hard enough for most people, let alone twelve." On top of that, "We never had any rules. That
allowed alot of problems to be created. There were conflicts when I got there and there were
conflicts when I left." And, "We had alot of people smoking dope, which I don't think is such a
good thing."
"We had no tv or radio. We actually tried to get out of knowing what time it was and what
day it was. There's alot of people who never quite recovered from that."
Doe believes that communes caught on because, "People were fed up with dealing with the
old system and wanted to do something else. A commune was a place to be to get away." In
fact, "Alot of people would just come for the weekend and do what those commune people do
that we can't."
Doe concedes that, "There were alot of really amazing experiences, we played alot of music."
But ultimately, "I felt like I wasted alot of time there."
"The Nixon generation resented the people who dropped out. When they saw 3/4 of a million
people at Woodstock that really scared the Nixon's, the Republicans, etc. That that many
people could get together. Also all the people who showed up and looked at each other and
said, 'All these people look like me felt empowered."
Doe did have some positive experiences, "I learned how to live without the dominance of
time and rules." But says, "It was not a good experience all the way around. It's hard to do
communes when you got people with money who thought there was a certain way to do it
mixed with people who were really living off the land." But concedes, "I hated to leave the
country."
"Today most of the places that do it have very strict rules. If you don't have strict rules
things get out of hand. None of those communes lasted very long, it's very hard to carry a
group."
Today Doe defines his communal living more urbanly. "I'm a great supporter here in Ithaca of
neighborhoods. Neighborhoods are where you raise your children and care for your elderly. But
in a neighborhood you have your own house to retreat to."
Some coops like Level Green and Fool on the Hill didn't see themselves as isolated groups
that dropped out the community. They got involved in their neighborhoods.
Doug Dylla, of Level Green says that, "There was a real sense of community amongst the
dozen farm families that lived there." And Level Green took part in their lives. "When we were
out at the neighboring households we would help the farmers with their haying. You had to
have a dozen people to do this operation. You had to store 100's of bales of hay for their
cows."
"The grandmother would bake cookies everyday at 4:00 PM. The highlight of the day was
eating these cookies. She told stories about how each of these communities, the Hartfords,
the Drydens, were functioning little towns. When she got married she and her husband rode
their sleigh to Ithaca for their honeymoon. I asked her, 'Don't you miss it?' And she said, 'Not
really, it was a very hard life.' And that she wouldn't trade her washing machine for anything."
Dylla says that over it's five year history Level Green resided in two different locations.
Taking it's name from the first one, Level Green Rd in Caroline, "We moved to
Hartford/Slaterville Rd two and a half years later with the same core group of people."
"A couple of us initially worked at East Hill School when it was the Alternative Elementary
School. We were looking for a place to rent cheaply and fix up. Jim Houghton's parents told us
about a property owned by an old farmer. A huge house with 6 bedrooms that had been empty
for a couple of years. It needed a tremendous amount of work, including a heating system."
"The most people we ever had was ten, and assorted other dogs and cats. It was pretty casual
so we didn't pay rent, but we did put in a wood burning stove and furnace. It was very
egalitarian, people put what they could into the mix. Whether it was cooking or cash for
supplies."
"At both places we would move into a funky old house and fix it up until we fixed it up
enough that the landlord said, 'It's time to leave.' so that he could rent it."
"The first landlord was a dairy farmer, so he used to let us buy milk before it was sent out."
"It was all farming families living there," So "I'm sure we were the talk of the town to have
ten hippies living in this funky house. It was important that we had the Houghton's there to
help with that transition. We used to help them too."
"We used to joke that they had a commune of their own because they had a menagerie of dogs
and cats and a pet racoon that they asked me to take care of when they went away."
"Back then Jimmy was drawing little caricatures and comics. He was probably eleven. It was
pretty clear that he was going to be an artist"
"We had big gardens and goats that were as mean and ornery as a creature can get and they
did try to eat everything. A dislike for goats is something that we all shared."
"We had friends who lived in the dorms. We would routinely take trips to Cornell dorms and
gymnasiums to take showers and do laundry."
"Food was king. We used to have great meals. We prepared our own food and it was all
vegetarian. We learned about grinding, whole grains, and sprouting beans long before the
cookbooks we know and love like Moosewood came out. We tried to grow as much as we could
and we had a big root cellar, but, our dreams were greater than our realitiy." But that's okay,
"We had great dreams!"
"In nearby Speedsville there was a fellow there, Bill Dean, who ran a lumbering operation
since before the depression. The way he operated was, whoever showed up at 7 A.M. in the
morning got work. He fed them breakfast and lunch. In between they would cut wood. We
wanted to build a sauna, so we went over to talk about it with him. We got all the lumber for
$40 and it stood there for many years, although it eventually did fall into disrepair. It was a
great way to weather the winter and bond with people." So, "We had one in both locations."
Gerald Wolfe was also a resident of Level Green. He says that eventually people started
moving out of the house and into individual structures. "I finished my own structure, a
transparent dome, and lived in it for one winter. Doug also built one."
Wolfe says that if he were to do it again he'd want more privacy, "I couldn't be in the group
all the time. I needed my own space." His advice to people wanting to try it again is, "Go for
it." And, "...allow people wanting privacy to build individual structures. I think it could work."
He adds, "There are outgrowths like Eco-Village with more structure and guaranteed
conveniences and there are places where this kind of lifestyle is the norm like kibbutzes in
Israel and the extended families in much of the third world."
Wolfe thinks that the blossoming of communes in the 70's, "...had to do with living with other
people and not being isolated. I really think that the Vietnam War and the draft had alot to do
with people dropping out and seeking alternative lifestyles too. And self sufficiency was also
a draw."
He continues, "Free love was a draw for people too. Although we didn't practice it, it was
before AIDS so free love was easier to espouse back then."
"There was a vision to espouse a gentler society and anger at the establishment. You can call
it naivete or optimism." Ultimately, "It was a happy time for those of us who weren't in the war."
When referring to drop-outs Wolfe says, "Even that was necessary. To give people a chance to
clear their head. In a world so achievement oriented, it can be good to ... smell the flowers.
There might have been people getting stoned, but we did alot of work. We cut our own fire
wood and fenceposts and sold them both as well. We raised animals and Doug raised
vegetables and sold them at the Farmer's Market."
Dylla says, "We had a Volkswagen bus and several bugs that would blow their engines pretty
regularly. A couple of people got Muir's book and got pretty adept at changing engines to the
point where they could change them in about 20 minutes. If we went on a long trip we would
take a spare engine. The room off of the parlor became a V-W repair shop."
But it wasn't all work and no play, Wolfe says, "We had a party for the food coop (then just a
preordering group known as the Food Conspiracy) in 1973. We had a mass volleyball game.
After that game we went to a pond and all these people went skinny dipping. Then people
started peeling mud off of the bottom of the pond and painted their bodies. It was a very fun,
spontaneous and primitive ritual."
Dylla says, "Gerald Wolfe really helped make music an incredible part of our lives. He was a
geat pianist and organist and able to read whatever I put in front of him. I would buy Scott
Joplin and he would be able to play it. We would pull out spoons and drums and play along."
Dylla says, "When it was cold we would fire up the big wooden stove, close the parlor doors
and tell stories until everyone fell asleep. It was either that or chatter your teeth in your
room."
"We had a refrigerator in the pantry, but it was warmer in the fridge than in the pantry
sometimes. We would put things in the fridge to keep them from freezing."
"We'd get three feet of snow. Somehow they would get the snow plowed. People would plow
each others cars out. You would drive towards the city and there would be less and less snow
and by the time you got to Ithaca it was raining."
Not everyone could hack it, "At least half the group left for the winter, so the group would
double in size in the summer."
Dylla continues, "Of course our parents were all aghast at our entire lifestyles through this
whole time. One of our housemates turned out to have problems in their digestive tract. He had
to have an operation. He went home to have the operation, and he came back with his parents.
They came back with bags and bags of groceries of things we would never buy, let alone eat.
They went around with all these instructions on what he was supposed to eat. We don't want
any whole wheat anything. He followed them until they went out the door."
Wolfe adds, "The first house was next to a cow pasture and we had alot of flies. Someone's
visiting mother wanted to buy a can of Raid. She said the flies would land on the cow plop and
then land on our food. I told her that I thought Raid was yechier than cow plop. At that point
she left." Dylla says, "It was a rich and hilarious time. It appealed to something on a much
higher level on Maeslow's hierarchy of needs."
"We had rituals. We would be silent for a moment and hold hands before dinner."
"We had a dish to pass supper and one person showed up with only a dish to pass and wound
up staying there for three years. He had many schemes, including building a solar cooker on a
solar tracking device which he found, and followed up on a fairly remarkable number of them.
But a number of them simply laid by the roadside. He was the last person to be there and he
decided that when he was alone he would try to live without external heat. He worked as a
music teacher at Henry St. Johns and built conga drums which were a big hit with the kids."
When asked why he thinks they ended Wolfe says, "Maybe because it was tried and no
revolution occurred. I'd like to think that there was a small revolution, but nothing dramatic
overnight happenned."
"I think that even though we left we're carrying what we learned into the world. Even though
we're back into the establishment some people are starting alternative businesses like Bill
Meyers of AFCU and Jeff Furman of Ben and Jerry's
with a different consciousness."
Wolfe concludes, "Even though I'm no longer there, I have no regrets, and would encourage
people to do it. It was an education in self-direction and self-education. Before I went to
Level Green I was very good at doing what was required of me. But I had never used tools.
There I learned how to fix things, how to cook. How to live in an alternative to materialism. "
Dylla says, "I look back at that era as learning so much from all that contact. It felt more
like a family in some ways than the family that I grew up in. It taught me survival skills and
confidence."
PART ONE
PART THREE
PART FOUR
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