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.