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LONG TIME PASSING
Making fun of hippies is a pastime worthy of lawn darts and ig
noring MySpace. Part of the appeal is that it's a risk-free endeavor.
Since they're all about the peace and the love, one needn't fear
retaliation. And like making fun of yuppies, hipsters or the liberal
media, it's that much easier since no one self-identifies as a mem
ber of the respective tribe.
But those who might be ridiculed as hippies some 40 years
after the Summer of Love are more complex than the snarkier an
gels of our nature care to admit. In a time when a movement to
decriminalize marijuana has grown from the jam bandwagon to the
ballot initiative, something more than a party is afoot.
The story grows more complex in Dean Kuipers' fascinating new
effort. Burning Rainbow Farm: How a Stoner Utopia Went Up in
Smoke (Bloomsbury, London 2006). It's the tale of two gay, work
ing class men from the “Michiana" rustbelt who devoted their lives
to a farm that was more of a stuttering business than the hippie
commune many mistook it for. The farm's owners, Tom Crosslin and
his lover Rollie Rohm, were shot down by FBI agents on their prop
erty in Southwestern Michigan in 2001. Their crime: growing pot
and refusing to forfeit their land to the Feds.
Rainbow Farm was a real farm in the sense that stuff grew in
its soil. Its real purpose, however, was serving as an open camp
ground, music and marijuana festival venue. People came from
around the Midwest to listen to music and help organize aqainst
the war on drugs, but mostly
to share the kind bud in a
safe environment.
Cultural stereotypes may
be great fun. but they’re use
less in explaining Rainbow
Farm and Tom Crosslin. A
man of many contradictions.
Crosslin grew up something
of a rustbelt hillbilly in
nearby Elkhart, IN. In his
younger days, he flipped
junk cars before graduating
to start his own flagpole-
mounting business. He then
moved on to real estate. He
was never an angel. Enraged
by the Oklahoma City bomb
ing—and a wee bit sauced—
he assaulted an innocent
woman in a restaurant. On the other end, he spent thousands buy
ing toys and school lunches for needy children.
Ultimately it was a combination of marijuana use and homo
sexuality that shifted him from a “government off our backs"
Republican into a fighting Libertarian. This was abetted by the
febrile climate of the 1990s, when the mention of Michigan was
invariably followed with the word “militia."
Part of what makes Burning Rainbow Farm so compelling are the
unlikely political alliances detailed within. Many of Rainbow Farm's
early festivals found members of the Michigan Militia working
security, rubbing shoulders with earnest marijuana activists more
familiar with petitions than AK-47s. Strange bedfellows to be sure,
but united for a time that's been ignored, since the confrontation
that shut the farm down occurred on the eve of Sept. 11, 2001.
The demise cf Rainbow Farm had more to do with the imbecil
ity of existing drug laws and an overzealous state prosecutor than
with a stupid mistake on the part of Crosslin and Rohm: with law
enforcement drooling to shut them down, they somehow decided
it was okry to grow pot in their basement. When the raid went
down, this irrefutable fact was what would've sent them to jail
and handed their property to the state. Making it worse, Rollie's
son Robert (from an earlier marriage) was taken into state custody
because of his father's legal trouble. With everything to lose, a
violent showdown seemed all but scripted. Kuipers manages to
critique the war on marijuana while making plain the difficulties of
running Rainbow Farm as a business. Competing egos and ideologi
cally pure activists aghast that the farm's owners would desire to
make money led to schisms better known to soc*al movements. The
farm had its triumphs and failures, but ultimately could not beat
back the apparatus of the state.
Hippie culture invites derision for a lot of good reasons, not
least of which is its tendency to dress up indulgence as something
that's always "subversive." Kuipers doesn't get mired down in
these debates, but he does manage to make real and inviting a
subculture that's too easily dismissed. Rainbow Farm was some
thing way beyond a venue for jam bands and a place to toke up.
It was people creating their own space and their own brief, messy
utopia and paying a huge price for it thanks to an injustice carried
out by the FBI.
How * HMnur lllcfb Wrnt up in Hnuua
DEAN KUIPERS
John Dicker
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