SHOP THE CO-OP WAY AND SAVE!
THESE FINE PEOPLES ARE HAPPY TO SERVE YOU
The WWFC Coordinating Council has approved the following statement for publication. The Council voted on the statement line-by-line, and where the vote was not unanimous the minority opinion appears in brackets.
WHOLE WHEAT FLOUR
Ground on Our Own Millstone 12¢ lb.
[8¢]
ORANGES
6¢ ea.
MILK
39¢ ½ gal. 82¢ gal.
[What’s the markup for—the pleasure of your company? 7S¢]
CARROTS
15¢ lb.
[The carrots are not too crisp because the big honchos in this so-called organization don’t know how to call an electrician to fix the cooler, which has not worked for six weeks now. In fact, it’s like a steam pit in there. If the “coordinators” would come around once in a while they might find out about these things. The oranges are shriveled up, also the lettuce, and the carrots are like rubber. Organic or not, I wouldn’t feed it to apes. Diane.]
HOME MADE YOGHURT
Delicious 75¢ qt.
[Anyone who can in good conscience sell this stuff for 75¢ should be forced to eat it.]
ACORN SQUASH
30¢ ea.
[I will not accept more than 21¢ per squash and I am giving away the bread and milk free until this group shows a little more sensitivity to the women, who do about 2/3rds of the work. That’s no lie either.
I am at the store 1–4 p.m. Mondays and 5–8 Thursdays—the tall woman with reddish hair and glasses. See me for bargains. Marcia.]
SHARP CHEDDAR
80¢ lb.
[Stuff it in your ear, hippie ripoff artist! We’re busting out of this pukehole!]
SUPPORT [the boycott of]
YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD CO-OP
Last August, five of us pulled out of the Whole Wheat Co-op to form the Collective. Hopefully this article will try to explain what we’re doing and where we go from here.
At Whole Wheat we were making sesame-seed cakes and oat balls. We enjoyed our work, but we wanted to branch out into wholesome chocolates and nut bars. This proved to be traumatic for the Co-op hierarchy, which was into macrobiotic and organic gardening, the whole elitist grocery bag. They took the position that candy is bad for the people, it ruins their teeth, spoils their appetite, etc. Finally, we split. Our purpose was to set up a candy store where the decision-making would be shared by the whole community and everyone could contribute his ideas.
First, we visited the existing candy store in the neighborhood, Yaklich’s. We assured Mr. Yaklich and his son Baron that our intention was to cooperate, not compete, and we agreed not to sell cigarettes, cigars, newspapers, magazines, or adult books, which they are very much into. They are also into point spreads, and we agreed not to do that, either.
Second, we tried to get some Indian, black, and Chicano representation (of which there was none) in the Collective, but that was a problem, since there was none in the neighborhood, either, and attendance at our meetings would’ve meant a long ride on the bus for them.
Finally, we began soliciting community input. We began at the nearby grade school, where we met a lot of people who, though unfamiliar with the theory of running a collective, were very helpful and gave us a lot of new ideas. They suggested such things as licorice whips, nougat bars, sourballs, jawbreakers, bubble gum, soda pop, frozen delights, cupcakes, and Twinkies.
These are yet to be discussed, but it appears we have several alternatives: to go back to Whole Wheat, to help the grade-school community set up its own candy collective, or to serve them and their needs in order to create a broader base of support within which we can seek to familiarize them with where we are at. We invite anyone concerned to stop by the store (upstairs from the Universal Joint).
If you’ve decided to get a haircut, that’s your decision, but why go to a straight barber and pay $3.50 for a lot of bad jokes? Come to St. Paul’s Hair Center (in the rectory basement) where Rev. Ray and Rev. Don are waiting to see you. The price is right on and the rap is easy. Ray and Don are trained barbers, but more than that they know how hard this move can be and offer warm supportive pre- and post-trim counseling. They’re people-oriented, not hair-oriented, and if you just want to come in and talk about haircuts, well, that’s cool, too.
Most of us accept strict vegetarianism as the best way, but many find it difficult to change their eating habits. People’s Meats is an interim solution. All of our meat comes from animals who were unable to care for themselves any longer. Hoping to phase out the operation, we do not advertise hours, prices, or location. We do not deliver.
One sign of what’s going on in our society is the trend toward larger and harder beds. Queen-size, king-size, wider, firmer—beds that resemble a flat plain and the sleepers ships passing in the night, not knowing one another at all. We reject that kind of sleep with our Warm Valley Bed. It is built narrow and soft and shaped like a trough, gently urging its occupants toward the middle, to spend the night in each other’s arms. No matter how hard you fight it (and we all do), the Warm Valley Bed brings the two of you together into warm mutually reinforcing physical contact. The bed of commitment. Specify depth.
The way it is at the U.J. is like the five of us, Sully, Bill, Butch, Duke, and Bud, we’re totally together because we stay high together and when you come in with your car, say the car is really bummed out and won’t even start, before we even touch that car we’re going to sit down with you and get you up there together with us.
Now, a lot of folks can’t dig that. They say, “Here’s my car. When can you fix it?” or some other kind of linear crap. Well, we just got to talk that person loose. Because we are not in that fix matrix at all. We say, “We’re not there yet. We’re here.” Or we say, “You on a wrench trip? Okay, here’s a wrench!” But that’s not where he’s at or the car either, and on a simple planetary level they both know it. The car and him are one circuit, one continuum, and the ignition switch is right there in his head. Like we say, “The key is not the key! Tools are not the tools!”
So what we do is get very loose and very easy and very high. The afternoon goes by and the whole shop is like suspended up there in its own holding pattern, we’re all sitting around listening to the leak in the air hose and digging it, and slowly that person gets to copping to that car through us. It’s tremendous, a stone—you feel the energy really flowing. So we’re all sitting there revving on that and then the car starts to get off on it and pretty soon that car gets going. Sometimes it starts by itself, other times we got to do some laying on of hands, but it’s going. Wide open, you can feel it vibrating. So all that comes right back to us. Like the car is going rmmm-rmmm-rmmm and we’re going rmmm-rmmm-rmmm, and the next thing you know that person gets in the car and he just like takes off! Which was his Karma all this time—to go. Like he was in this place, now he’s in another place, pretty soon he’ll be somewhere else, and so on, but you know, it’s all one road.
The Stomach originated as a study group within the Whole Wheat Co-op, for people interested in vegetables as a tool in therapy. We were somewhat divided between eggplant and kohlrabi, but we got along pretty well. All of us felt that eating vegetables helped us free ourselves from authoritarian life-systems and become more self-sufficient and honest with ourselves and more whole. Wholeness was the key. But as we pushed it farther we came to feel that vegetables were merely raising us to a higher ego-level that was rather empty and intellectual. We felt whole but we didn’t feel full. It was then that we discovered “the other stomach.”
The group was on a five-day fast in order to get beyond food and onto a different thought plane where we could meditate with our stomachs and find out what they wanted. One night we went up to the roof of an apartment building to cool off, and as we lay there we saw a great membrane descending from the sky. The membrane shone with a pale moist light. As it came near, we saw hamburgers in it, a thousand of them, and pizzas—pepperoni, sausage, anchovy-and-sausage, mushroom—along with French fries, Cokes, onion rings, Big Macs, Pronto Pups, chow mein, Reubens, malts, frosted doughnuts, buttered pop-corn—everything right there within reach. We heard tremendous bursts of thunder from the membrane, and then a voice said, “Eat!”
We said, “But we can’t. We’re fasting, and besides it’s not our kind of food.”
And it said again, louder, “Eat!”
So we did—the stuff looked good—and to our surprise, it was good. It was hot and tasty and crisp, and the more we ate the more there was of it. We kept saying, “It is our thing, it is our thing!” Because we’d never felt that way before. A spreading circle of warmth from the stomach to all parts of the body. A great calorie rush.
The next night, the membrane came again. This time, we’d invited all of our friends. Hundreds of people joined in the feast. There was enough for everyone, and we became aware of a very profound physical sensation that we never got from veggies. Now we know: Around the little vegetable stomach there is a second and much greater stomach, which eggplant cannot satisfy. This second stomach is the whole body. As the voice said to us the second night, “You are not what you eat. You are eating.” You only realize that if you eat the right food.
We’re trying to carry out this philosophy in our café. We sell burgers that make people listen to themselves and understand themselves and we got a machine that turns out a single continuous French fry. The endless potato. When there are no customers in the place, we like to open the front door and let the French fry go out into the community to make contact with people. Some of them, like us, have eaten their way back to the beginning.
1973