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Crossposted from Expanding the Narrative, personal stories of government and public service

When I was a boy, a very young boy, I lived with my mother and father on a houseboat in the Bay Area. This houseboat was a part of a hippy enclave that was ‘squatting’ at an unofficial dock constructed by said squatters. We didn’t have running water. My mother would fill up a huge copper bowl for our water use. There were no guardrails on the docks for a little boy like me. I fell into the water so often that, eventually, this became a catalyst for us to move.

The community did what one would think hippies that were not particularly political would do; drink, smoke, and wander about seemingly aimlessly to a boy like me.

Read more at Expanding the Narrative