CANTERBURY, N.H. (AP) — For almost three decades, 81-year-old David Lidstone has lived in the woods of New Hampshire along the Merrimack River in a small cabin adorned with solar panels. He has grown his own food, cut his own firewood, and tended to his cat and chickens.
But his off-the-grid existence appears to be at risk.
“River Dave," as he's known by boaters and kayakers, is behind bars after being accused of squatting for 27 years on private property in Canterbury. As the owner of the land seeks to tear down the cabin, Lidstone has been jailed since July 15 on a civil contempt sanction.
He's 81 and he's in jail. The USA sucks.
I once struck up a friendship with a street hobo who hung out on the near west side of Chicago - just to the west of the I90 expressway near Greektown Hasted and my old alma mater, UICC.
He was a cagey old fuck, and had built himself a cardboard cabin in a little area of overgrown shrubbery underneath one of the bridges over the expressway. He took me there a couple times to smoke doobs and suck down beers. Those of you have have ever met a real hobo, and not just some mentally ill street bum, know how resourceful a hobo can be. His place was the most decked-out cardboard box shelter I've ever seen. He'd built a little platform bed out of flattened cardboard boxes, had some kind of metal crate that he kept a little camp stove and a radio on and even a beat up old Coleman lantern for when it got dark.
Then one day the IDOT (Illinois Department of Transportation) guys came by and hacked down all the shrubs and tossed all the hobo's shit into a garbage truck and that was it. I never saw the guy again.
In Lotus World, hobos should be allowed to colonize freeway underpasses all across the USA completely unmolested, like they do nowhere else on the planet because, you know, the USA sucks.
Yeah, except that's not what I think. I think that society should be structured a little differently. Just differently enough so that people who are different don't get treated like garbage. That's all. It's not that hard to do. The country I am living in is proof of this. Hobos shouldn't have to resort to colonizing freeway underpasses. It's a big damn country. There should be places they can go that don't cause people to stroke out and call in the gestapo.
You took advantage of that hobo's hospitality yet gave no shits when they mowed down his home. Fuck you.
Our free society is structured just fine. the hobo in question didn't "resort" to living under the bridge -- he chose to.
As for the old guy in the cabin, if he was squatting on someone else's property, then his shit should all have been torn down and tossed in a garbage truck just like the hobo's. No one "forced" the old man to "resort" to building a cabin on someone else's land. Nor does it matter how long the old guy lived there. There's no "dibs" rule if you squat somewhere long enough.
I'm quite sure the hobo I knew would have stayed in that cardboard cabin for a long, long time had the IDOT guys not come by to rouse him out.
Yeah, okay, heartless.
Fuck yourself -- if you can locate your dick.
Heartless? How the fuck am I heartless? I'll have you know I paid for the beers and the doobs I smoked with the hobo were mine!
My fervent wish is that everyone who applauds when a homeless person's shelter is taken away also ends up homeless. Not because I am heartless, but because you all need to learn the concept "There but for the grace of God go I." You're not special.
If I ever become homeless, I'll be the best hobo I can be and will never rely on anyone else to hand things to me. Your problem is you are "paternalistic." You think, in your leftist wisdom, that you know what's best for everyone else.
You don't understand freedom.
You're useless.