HOLT CAMP

My plots are always very complicated. My characters bigger than life.  Another five hundred words.

And then, at a medal and sash-beribboned embassy-do, David overheard the American First Secretary, a tall elegant man with a fake British accent and an Adolph Hitler mustache, say to his wife, who was rich as Aristotle Onassis and looked like him, too, “I say, sweetness, how does one become President of an oil company at twenty-seven?”

“One’s daddy owns the company,” his wife brayed.

We were packed and out of there within a week.

“I’m through being Daddy’s little boy,” David snapped. “Besides the kids are slowing us down. The next time we have to run they’ll catch us.”

Father hung in there for another six months afer we split and sold the oil fields for a cool million, tax free, to a corrupt Paraguayan politico, and got the hell out of there before this man learned Father’s oil fields were not only dry they were non-existant.    That’s when Father went north and became the Colonel.

And David and I moved to Kauai.

David is a business man, and a good one. He makes enough money designing bits and pieces of things so essential to whatever goes on out in the real world that we, and Father, too, can live the life we choose.

When inflation, or Father, begins to erode too deeply into our healthy bank account, David invents some crazy little something and sells it to somebody, but not to me. I detest machines. My kitchen is late nineteenth century. I even had David design me a hand pump for my water, and it works. We can afford to be eccentric.

We are not hurting for money.

David has a complete shop and office a quarter of a mile from the house, where he walks to work every morning, whistling, minus his shorts. A pleasant walk from the house, on either side, I have my barn, organic garden, nursery, apiary, orchard, kennel, and poultry house. Also, an army of beautiful people.

David designed a water system independent of the county, an auxiliary generator which operates the few appliances I will allow-we use candles and kerosense lamps for lighting-and we are never at loss for strong young backs to generate whatever other types of energy we need. We are nearly self-sufficient. As a matter of fact, we don’t really give a damn what Rockefeller or the Arabs do with their oil.

I keep the house free of David’s machines. He keeps the house free of my zoo and my plants, which would inundate us were I to be given free rein. I worship trees. I would have a forest in the living room if I could. Actually, I wanted a house the horses could walk around in, but David balked. Well, I put my foot down when David wanted to install a fancy entertainment center in the house. If we want entertainment in the house, I can think of a dozen other way to get it.