After graduation (in absentia), I bought an old barn made of railroad ties on 4 1/2 acres in an apple orchard just outside of Taos, New Mexico. I put in a bathroom and a fireplace from an old boiler and moved in with my first wife Susan. We had a son, Jonah and five dogs. It was there that I first started using anything I could find for anything I needed. I added on to the building with bottles, cans and tires. I made light fixtures out of tuna cans, a bed for Jonah from wooden Coke cases and door handles from linseed oil can tops and more.
The first real application of “using anything I could find for anything I needed” was when I first moved into the barn. A local realtor had a son who had just gotten back from the Navy. He and his buddies had heard that some “hippies” were moving in to the old barn. Four of them came in a pickup truck. The way they got out of the truck clearly told me what was happening. The barn was full of all kinds of stuff from an old dude ranch. There were a bunch of bowling pins in there. I walked out to meet them with one bowling pin in each hand – my first successful re-use of discarded items. They decided to talk rather than deal with the bowling pins.
Susan, Jonah and the dogs in Cañon, an old neighborhood of Taos, New Mexico. Our garbage home stands in the background.
