August 24, 2010
Dolly Freed
The delightfully unusual woman, Dolly Freed:
Between August 1, 1975, and August 1, 1976, Dolly and her father, a.k.a. “the Old Fool,” spent $1,498.75. “When I totaled up the figures and handed them to Daddy, his face went all white,” she wrote. “Then he sat down and checked that his heart was still working okay. ‘Impossible!’ he shouted. ‘Where did it all go?’”
Frank and Dolly had never planned to drop out of society—they just sort of woke up one day and were doing it, or at least the money part of it. They weren’t socially isolated—Dolly would have boyfriends and go out with friends—they simply needed far less than other people did, especially when it came to possessions and status.
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I love this, Andrew. Thank you.
“Half-possuming.” I can imagine Carole half-possuming.
you had me at catfish pose.
Oh dear, Shelia. You hit the bull’s eye. Or the possum’s. The Iowan and I have a deal, however. The natural world stays outside. Where it can’t touch him, as Michael would say. And that works very well for us.
I had not heard of Freed or the book or of possuming. The father reminds me of mine, a bit, although he was gregarious, gainfully employed and a non-drinker. Still, we often were involved together in our own possuming projects.
I’m just so glad to see this post.
The Iowan might have a rough time in my household, Carole. It’s hard to keep the natural world outside when your cat is a mighty huntress.
Carole! Have you read Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner? I recommend it to you. Highly. To others, as well, but most especially to you.
I don’t want to say much about it, but trust me.
Lolly Willowes has an epiphany in a London greengrocer’s
and she moves to the little hamlet of Great Mop, where she goes on long solitary walks and collects and cultivates herbs from which she concocts brews and distillations.
And she embraces her vocation: witch.
I haven’t, but I certainly will, read Lolly Willowes, that is. Thank you. I can just imagine re that mighty huntress. That’s like my father’s bird dogs who would go with us to pick berries in the woods and bring us terrapins and the like as gifts, drop them in our laps, so proud of themselves.