January/February 1970
By the Mother Earth News editors
A person is expected to do his share of labor credits - but he may do them at any time he feels like it (excepting some jobs like milking the cows which must be done at a specific time for the cows' sake). You often see some people working in the hammock factory while others are standing by doing nothing other than enjoyably rapping with the workers, entertaining them while they work. And no hard feelings there as people know everyone will do his share before the week is out. The hammock industry was picked as Twin Oaks' first industry as it was something they could get into with little capital. The type of woven rope hammocks they make are not currently produced by machine in this country and the hammocks have a relatively high return on the hand labor that goes into them. Most of the market for Twin Oaks hammocks is through specialty shops on the East Coast - their advertising has generally been through word of mouth, though several of the members tried going to stores and playing "salesman", but no one liked this kind of work so they haven't done this recently. This past summer they had all the orders they cared to fill.
Twin Oaks is "run" by a group of three elected planners, one of whom rotates out of office every six months. Thus far, six of the members have been planners at one time or another. These planners appoint "managers" who are in charge of seeing that the various divisions run smoothly - for instance, there are managers for housekeeping, farming, hammockmaking, and child raising, to name a few. The child raising manager is in charge of handling discipline problems that may arise with the children in the community. The biological parents are not permitted to discipline their children. This is a step in the eventual dissolution of the traditional family structure. Several families have come to Twin Oaks in the past, but in every case so far their previous conditioning with regard to the tight "family" unit has caused them to feel ill at ease in their new surroundings and thus far the families have not stayed very long. There are several young people in the community - and the choice between going to "school" in the community (that is being taught by community members) or attending the nearby public schools is left to the young persons themselves. This has raised some interesting questions for the community: "Is it all right for a Twin Oaks person to go out for football? How about cheerleading? If so, does a member get credit for driving participants to the games? This must, of course, be put in the context of the fact that, generally speaking, Twin Oaks people look like freaks - and there aren't many freaks in central Virginia schools.
Wen we were driving around trying to find the place we stopped to ask a guy who was changing a tire on his worn-out car where Twin Oaks was - before we could say a word he said, "Oh, you must be looking for Twin Oaks," and pointed the direction. And we didn't look freaky either. Twin Oaks has a policy of not going out of their way to irritate the surrounding countryside (a KKK stronghold). For this reason, they don't argue (or even discuss) the Vietnam war, sex, merits of grass, etc. with the locals. Twin Oaks does not allow drugs in the community so as to avoid trouble with the police. Recently a visitor was asked to leave because he was turning community members on. Thus far the community has avoided serious trouble with the law or with local rednecks. The sherrif has dropped by on a number of occasions to check for "runaways" (he never found any) and is even sort of a friend nowadays - he bought a collie pup from the community. They acknowledge that the area they are located in isn't the most ideal in terms of culture clashes - but since the farm is the only place they can presently go, they are making do with the situation.
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