Mullen Remembers M*****d

In There’s a House in the Land, Shaun Mullen chronicles how a tribe of Vietnam vets and associated pals and gals made an old farm north of Newark, Delaware into an island of freedom. Like his earlier work, The Bottom of the Fox, Mullen’s House provides insights on the American Seventies. This time, however, he treats those of his contemporaries inhabiting the piedmont west of Philadelpha, PA to a wild and wonderful reminiscence. 

Thousands remember—and more wish they did—the Flag Day parties, with their roasting pigs, the house band Snakegrinder, the socializing of bikers with profs, the abundant garden among disused trucks and cars, the tanker-loads of Genesee Cream Ale, and the mountains of marijuana, much grown there. 

The Seventies were the shore the Sixties washed up on. Those who climbed out of the surf were left to rebuild the American Dream, shredded by Vietnam, JFK, MLK, THC, LSD. Who knows how many such islands of self-reliance and rugged individualism there were in America, but few had in residence an amanuensis as talented as Shaun Mullen.  Mullen shows that while American rules were shattered, American values persevered.

Mullen chooses a sort of roman-à-clef approach, changing almost all the names except his own, that of the band Snakegrinder, and the dog Meatball. I, receiving an advance copy for my tangential familiarity, will not fink, only that New Park is Newark, Delaware, and the New Park Tavern, portrayed in its piss-smelling splendor, is the old Deer Park Hotel. There, it is apocryphally reported, Edgar Allan Poe drunkenly cursed all who stopped in that village of philistines that they might never leave. Still, many will recognize lead singer “Edward,” who died on the railroad tracks while attempting to flag down a train, subsequently appearing in a dream to tell “Rafe,” the Weather Underground fugitive, to grab his kazoo and start singing center stage. Many bought belts from Doctor Duck’s leather shop, but few, beside myself, ever tasted a sub on a whole-wheat roll from his short-lived deli.

In episodes and thematic chapters, Mullen details the geology of “Kiln Farm,” the flora and fauna, the architecture, the dogs, the goats and other livestock, the roles the denizens filled and the crafts they practiced, the ambiguous status of women, the tragic crash that killed “Pattie” and her daughter “Caitlin,” and Mullen’s road trips to Aspen and the Florida Keys.

Eventually, the tribe moved on. They “didn’t so much grow up,” Mullen explains, “as succumb to the mechanistic gravity of the real world that compresses all but the roundest of pegs.” The vicissitudes of erstwhile freedom were neither good nor bad, but they accompanied some wonderful progress in education, ecology, and human unity. Hey, the shit-house Bible at the farm was the Whole Earth Catalogue, that “Access to Tools” for anarchists and late twentieth century pioneers.
There’s a House in the Land may shock or titillate, but Shaun Mullen captures the spirit of a time and place. Those who were there will chuckle and maybe weep.

Mullen will sign copies of There's A House In The Land beginning at 1 p.m. on Sunday, September 28 at the Blue Crab Grill in Suburban Plaza off Elkton Road in Newark. Snakegrinder and the Shredded Fieldmice, a popular Newark band in the early 1970s, will reunite for the occasion. The title of Mullen's book is from a lyric in a Snakegrinder song. (Postscript Sept. 8: Due to the high demand, a second show has been added at 8 p.m.)
Shaun Mullen blogs at Kiko’s House and The ModerateVoice.

The Bottom of the Fox

A True Story of Love, Devotion & Cold-Blooded Murder
by Shaun D. Mullen
Fishy Business Press

In The Bottom of the Fox, local author and blogger Shaun Mullen (Kiko's House) has captured the ambivalent ambiance of the storied Poconos bioregion that just shoulders the piedmont where we Delawareans reside. What we learn from Mullen is that behind the tony resorts and meandering roads that grace those gentle green mountains is a world of in-bred isolation, territoriality, and violence. In the late seventies, Eddie Joubert wandered in. He was an entrepreneurial hippy and former Teamster who sought to bring the freewheeling spirit of the sixties to the Poconos by running a bar called The Bottom of the Fox and helping to organize The Delaware Water Gap Festival of the Arts. On November 28, 1981, while retrieving some beer from the Fox basement, he was brutally murdered with an axe.

Mullen does a great job tracing both the geologic and the social evolution of the Poconos as one of America’s earliest resorts. We learn about the various confrontations among the settlers who drove out the Indians, the politicians who sought to sell out the region’s beauty, and the subsequent waves of immigrants, including a bunch of hippy squatters who tried to take over some condemned properties.

Mullen also captures the spirit of a drop out culture that did not cop out. While Eddie Joubert had his vices, he was a warm-hearted soul who bonded with everyone from the local minister to the homeless veteran, and he boosted the economic and cultural well being of the society of his adopted home. Apparently, according to Mullen, as Joubert ranged easily among all the odd human fauna of the Gap, he came to know too much. The real powers in that community had too much to lose if Edie’s murder was investigated scrupulously, so the cops just chalked it up to some hippy getting himself killed in a drug deal involving outsiders.

Mullen has a strong suspicion about who killed Eddie, and I must confess I am not totally convinced about his conclusions. But solving the specifics of the crime is not the main point. It’s about young folks who were re-inventing the American Dream in the sixties and seventies. It’s about the underside of a smug establishment that marginalizes its visionaries as low-class bohemians. It’s a story we in Delaware know well.

Buy a copy from his site at www.bottomofthefox.com.

One dollar from the sale of each book goes to the Delaware Water Gap Festival of the Arts.