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Show THE ZEPHYR/AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2006 ancintéevew wir }O Soe Dae Oe ee Sees se eo Ollie JS: So, it’s as if the American Southwest was a part of you from the time you were born. JD: Yeah, my grandfather had a ranch in Texas. And he lost everything in the Depression, eeea ea Nine FAMILY & THE WORLD Finally, I said, I’ve got to get out of here and I started running up and down the aisles, yelling at the top of my lungs, "More guns, less butter! Man was made for war...Woman was made for procreation!" They decided I was off my bloody rocker, so they finally. got the Navy to pick me up. I went to Corpus Christi first and then sent me back to the Philadelphia Naval Hospital. After a long hassle, they had a court martial and luckily they appointed a sympathetic shrink to decide why the hell I went and lived on the reservation; he asked me, "Why did you go live with the Navajo, what was that all about?" I said, "I was looking for God." And just handed this shrink a line of bullshit, about half of it true. Nobody would believe me, living with a hataali? Especially in 1952? And even before the trial I was foing watercolors in jail and the shrink liked my work. So, I went to the court went down the drain, the bank took everything, the ranch, furniture, everything. So, we had to move for about two years to, of all places, southern New Jersey...the Pine Barrens. My father went to sea as a First Mate during the Depression, kept us all alive. Losing the ranch broke my grandfather's heart. He hated the East. He thought everything east to the 100" meridian was barbaric and people there were little more than slaves, industrial slaves. So, in 1880, he quit, walked down in the hole and came out here to New Mexico. Then he homesteaded a ranch near Sun first Navoo? And that lasted up until the thirties and the Depression wiped him out, so we came back ...I came back around ’52, right after Korea with that nice fat pension. Tell me about Korea and your experience. I was in the Navy Reserves, my father was a Navy man. So when I was 17, he took me down and signed me up for the Reserves and | thought nothing of it. World War II was over and I was sure there wouldn't be any new wars for a while. Then the Korean War broke loose; I was studying at Columbia University in Anthropology. I was in a good school at that time and bang the big war broke loose and they called me back. I spent some time at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in the early days and a little time before that on a destroyer APB. _ They were shooting medics in Korea. They used the Red Cross for target practice and the North Koreans pushed all the down almost to Puysan. They yanked me off the ship and . they sent me back to Brooklyn yard, lined up for a uniform and I said, "Well, I’ve got a uniform for the Navy." And I looked at all of these olive drab uniforms and I said, "I’m not in the Marine Corps." The sergeant said, "You are now, buddy. You're a medic." The mortality rate was something like 50 percent for medics; I only lasted three months on the perimeter of Puysan. We were picking up a body and it turned out to be mined---it blew up. * Long Salt sent me on a spirit quest, fasting and sitting up on top of Navajo Mountain...Finally | came down and | told him about this and he said, "Those are your spirit guides, COYOTE and RAVEN... As long as you are good to (them) you'll be fine." I was leaning down and so it blew my hip off or parts of it and my buddy was beheaded. I woke up three days later in a hospital ship and everything was white. I was unconscious for three days and it was white---I saw this white figure with beautiful long blonde hair and I said, “There is a heaven, goddammit." It was a nurse. I was sure I was dead---] went to Philadelphia Naval Hospital and they started poking at my legs and started rebuilding the hip. The first two attempts failed and they tried again. First, they put in a Teflon ball for a hip joint and that didn’t work so they yanked it out and they stuck in a Titanium ball and that did the job. Then they wanted to do more surgery, poking around and I said, "Screw this." I could walk by then, so I just went over the hill. AWOL. I climbed the fence, went out and hitchhiked across the country to the Navajo Reservation from back east. I had five bucks to my name and I ate peanuts and raisins the whole way out. I got a job in Flagstaff, pumping gas for a few days. The guy knew I was interested in Native Americans and so he said, you know I bet the Cap Trading Post needs somebody and I took the job there for a while. I found out they were screwing the Navajos, so when I weighed flour or sugar, I gave them twice as they paid for. That lasted about two weeks and I got fired. I was going under the name of Thoreau then...I was John Thoreau for my hero Henry David and then I got fired and I took my pack and I hiked down the road, intending on hitchhiking somewhere---I don’t know where---New Mexico probably. Arid then a whole truckload of Navajos came by and they knew who I was because I was helping them out. And they said, "Hop in the back." I did and they took me out over the Gap near the Vermillion Cliffs to a hogan, a beautiful little..one of the old fashioned ones and they said, "This is yours." So, I stayed there for a time, a number of months there...and then I went out to Navajo Mountain and for some reason, I can’t remember why, somebody introduced me ' to Long Salt, a hataali, a medicine man. And Long Salt talked to me and he said, "You’re in bad shape. You're in bad shape.” He said, "You're dying, you stay here with me and I'll bring you back to life. He was 90 at that time." I stayed with him for almost twelve months and he taught me to be his assistant in the sand paintings and I would grind the paints then put them in the abalone shell and I learned to create the different pigments. He sent me on a spirit quest, fasting, sitting up on top of Navajo Mountain——I went out of my mind---the purpose of this, he told me was to find my spirit side. After a week of fasting, a week of sitting there, I started seeing all kinds of things. I don’t remember if it was reality or fantasy but a raven came and sat at my feet and then another day three coyotes sat with me. Finally I came down and told him about this. I asked him whether it was a dream and he said, "Those are your spirit guides Coyote and Raven...As long as you're good to coyote and raven, you'll be fine.” He wanted me to marry his niece, who was a nurse in Tuba City but I was yopung, I wanted to go back to school, I wanted to paint, I wanted to live a whole life. He wanted to adopt me. He even gave me a Navajo name..I’m not even going to try to pronounce it, but it means Dawn Walker, but I decided, no, I’ve got to go back so I left and went to Santa Fe and I worked at Folk Art Museum. At some point the director of the museum wrote back East some information about me. A few days later, I came home and there’s a big black limo in front of my house and an aerial hanging out of it. He said, "FBI...Mr. Thoreau, you're Mr. John Depuy." He hauled me off and threw me in the Santa Fe County Jail and then transferred me to the Albuquerque County Jail. The same jail as the one depicted in the film Brave Cowboy, the film based on Ed’s book. The same jail. The Navy was having a hard time getting my papers and meanwhile, I was rotting in this damn jail with a bunch a drunks, and killers. PAGE 13 Finally | said, I've got to and down the aisles of "MORE MAN WAS MADE FOR WAR! get out of here and | started running up the jail yelling at the top of my lungs, GUNS, LESS BUTTER! . WOMAN WAS MADE FOR PROCREATION! martial and I’m sitting there listening to all this bureaucracy going on and then the day of judgement comes, just more crap and then I hear this guy stand up and say, "You are awarded 80 percent disability for life.” Oh, my god, I was free, free! Then there was this GI Bill Public Law 16?, which was for disabled veterans...... So, you got your 80 percent disability........... = And I was free, free as a lark, walked out of that Naval Hospital, had the GI bill, I studied for a while with Hans Hoffman from the Bauhaus in New York. He was Bauhaus German, then I went over to Oxford from the GI Bill to do graduate work in art history. Ed Abbey went about that same time to Edinburgh because of Robert Burns. I spent some time there and then after wandering around, came a new wife, child born in Oxford and came back home. I returned to Taos...home. One day I went to Santa Fe with this lady, Renny Templeton. Kind of a good Bolshevik. A very good Bolshevik. We were wandering around the plaza, had a few drinks. And suddenly this big ape appeared, also ripped to the gills. And Renny said something like, "You two are beyond hope." She introduced me to him because she was the art editor of a paper that this man had just taken over as editor. We were both drunk and she sort of propped both of us up, unlike he said in the book. She held both of us up to go to this concert. This turned out to be Edward Abbey...he was singing some damn litany about something like, "I’m the boss now the working class can kiss my ass" He was singing in this drunken manner. And we went to the concert which starred Odetta---she was kind of a heroine for everybody in those days, in the late 50s. She was the great black goddess of the day and Abbey, of course, fell instantly in love with her. After the concert we managed to wheedle our way back stage. We wanted to show her Taos-it was Christmas time--- and she was ready to go and she said, "Let me get my bags.” But her business manager walked in and said, "There’s no way on earth youre going with these two maniacs." So, she didn’t come. So Ed took over the Taos paper, this was in ’59. The publisher of the paper was a devout Marxist. Abbey was an absolutely devout anarchist—he even wrote his thesis on the subject. And they clashed head on. So, the paper struggled along for about a year with these two. Finally Ed wrote an editorial exposing his publisher’s political bent. "I admit, I’m a devoted anarchist; why the hell doesn’t he admit, he’s a devoted Marxist?" About two months later, the paper folded. There was lot of public discussion. The boss was furious and went into hiding. One night, Ed and Renny and I were walking down near the plaza in Taos when we were spotted by some members of the American Legion. They chased us with a baseball bat. They wanted to beat the pulp out of us, but luckily we ran like dogs and got away. continued on next page... |