Payne Hollow: Life on the Fringe of Society

Hubbard, Harlan. Payne Hollow: Life on the Fringe of Society. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1974.



This book is an easy, quick read (167 pp., 4"X5", relatively large print, with Harlan's sketches scattered throughout). It is one couple's story--that of Anna (not a farmer, "town bred" ..."with high standards of respectability and cleanliness," a former librarian) and Harlan (a "shantyboater"). After taking a shantyboat down the Ohio, into the Mississippi and on to New Orleans, they spend some time in Bayou country along the Intracoastal Canal. There they sold their shantyboat and returned by car to a suburban house on the banks of the Ohio River.

The point of the book is the decision to live small. Though the couple could have enjoyed the relative comfort of a house in the center of suburban society, they chose to rent out that house and pursue a less cluttered life for themselves on the "fringe." They returned to Payne Hollow, a place along the Ohio where they had tethered their shantyboat for a summer, swallowed their "drifter and squatter" principles enough to purchase the small holding, and build their shelter with their own hands, raising their own food (garden and goats), living close to nature and telling their own version of The Good Life (Helen and Scott Nearing's tale of similar adventure).

This book is not for the person wanting to learn "how to" set up his or her own homestead. The lessons are writ large, not with the sort of detail needed to emulate the Hubbards. However, for the person needing inspiration to live well, now--especially for the person who feels confined, smothered, and oppressed by the constraints of today's polite consumer society and needs the encouragement and confidence that life can be lived bare bones, this is just the shot in the arm or kick in the pants to send you over the edge.