Preacher's Kid

About the Book

I have often been called a lost soul, a scary liberal and a dreaded "Hippie-type", whatever that means. To me, that's cool, nothing to be ashamed of. But this much I know from actual experience: it's not always fun to be a loudmouth Hippie rebel. It's certainly not a way to win friends and influence people. Rabble rousers are a high-risk demographic. Oh, a rebel is a romantic, all right--- a hopeless Romantic, but the actual experience is not as attractive as Hollywood portrays it. It's usually a James Dean, one-way trip to nowhere. And we all know what happened to that young stud. But I always knew that rebellion was the right choice for me--- far better than living the lifestyle of the Poor and Obscure. I saw first-hand, the paranoiac 50's, replete with scared little people living their lives of quiet desperation, slowly dying for the company store--- lonely characters, people who lived much like Arthur Miller's fictional businessman, Willy Lowman, in Death of a Salesman--- the story of a man who slaved for his boss, ignoring everything else---only to lose his family, his pride, his mind, and finally, his soul. You've got 2 choices in life. Willy made the wrong one. In my world, the one I chose as a kid, everything has always been black and white, including big questions like "who am I?" You either enjoy being yourself or you don't. You either steer the ship or you let other people decide where your boat will land. Too many people become someone they think they'd like to be, or they try to become what somebody else expects them to be. Fuck all that. Those choices are dead ends. I say, don't let anyone change you. Recognize who you are, and stick with that decision, no matter who it offends. Even if you become a 21st Century Hippie. Imagine that. But whatever your choices, they'll always end up offending some of the holier-than-thou shitasses out there. My advice? Screw those bastards very much. Before they screw you. So in my black-and-white world, you either end up old and gray and blown away, or you live fast, die young and make a handsome corpse. With such an attitude and such a reckless nature as mine, the question becomes, why didn't I die young? Now, that's a very good question. I'm not sure I can answer that one. And so, incredibly, John Adams, Unholy Hippie Relic, is still hanging on, as of 2008, the Year of Our Lord, Global War.

About the Author