CHAPTER 5. LIFE AT HARD LABOR—REFUSAL TO PAY INCOME TAX 62
write to Congressmen in order that they would act like men; and that one person could not do anything. The one person who approved of my stand was Dorothy Day.
When I refused to pay taxes for 1943 on March 15, 1944, Mr. Simms fired me, saying "You will be arrested tomorrow and I will be disgraced for having harbored you in my employ."
I got a job at a dairy and orchard south of town after working a few weeks for a bee man bottling honey and trapnesting some prize chickens he had. The tax office did nothing about my report.
Meanwhile Sharon had been the guest of honor at a symphony concert in Albuquerque. I met her there and of course was proud of her. Carmen graduated from high school in Santa Fe in 1944. When we had named her Carmen in Wisconsin we had never thought that she would be graduating in a class with many others girls by the name of Carmen as was the case in this old Spanish town. That summer my wife and the girls moved to Evanston, Illinois in order that they might get the best education possible in the piano work which they had chosen. Meanwhile I had visited the Indians in nearby Isleta often and become acquainted with the priest who liked the CW.
The Simple Life
In June, 1945 the CW printed an article of mine on "The Simple Life" in which I explained the principle of voluntary poverty and non payment of taxes as I had learned them from Tolstoy and the CW. When I was working a man asked me "Why does a fellow like you, with an education and who has been all over the country, end up in this out-of-the-way place working for very little on a farm?" I explained that all people who had good jobs in factories, etc. had a withholding tax for war taken from their pay, and that people who worked on farms had no tax taken from their pay. I told him that I refused to pay taxes. He was a returned soldier and said that he did not like war either, but what could a fellow do about it? I replied that we each did what we really wanted to.
Here is my story of the simple life: At this dairy I live in an old adobe house. Father Sun, as the Indians speak of the ball of fire, rising over the Sandia (Spanish for watermelon) mountains to the east filters through the mulberry and cottonwood trees to my open door. I turn in bed and relax. A prayer for those near and dear and for those loved ones far away; in and out of prison and CO camp, and in and out of man's holocaust: war. The night before I had cooked unpolished rice sprinkled with raisins. With milk, and the whole wheat bread I have baked, my breakfast is soon finished. It is now 8 o'clock. I go to the dairy to see if any change has been made in plans for work for the day. If my student friend in the milk truck appears, he will take my letters to the mail box; otherwise I will take them myself.
Now the German prisoners have arrived from the nearby prison camp. Paul is to continue his work with me in the orchard pruning dead wood from the trees. Each of us knows a little of the other's language and we each aim unconsciously to please the other by speaking in the language native to the other. "Guten
