The Glow from the Church of the Good Mother Earth

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, Brookfield Center’s staid community doesn’t suffer wanton comportment. Sniff. As a designated site on the National Register of Historic Places, the principled town in western Connecticut boasts a wide range of architectural styles from the 18th century to the present—bungalow, craftsman, Greek Revival, Queen Anne, even eco-hip. Most assuredly not a foolish log cabin.

But to the chagrin of the puritanical locals, that’s exactly what Tony and Carol erected in the early-1970s on a few acres off Obtuse Road. Far from simpleminded, however, these refugees from New York City gave up the big life to live off the grid—raise goats, chop wood, and crap in a quaint outhouse. To guard against taxes, they established their homestead as the Church of the Good Mother Earth.

Tony was an opera singer whose voice had given out from an overuse of addictive substances and an underuse of ambition. He was probably a basso profondo—the deepest of deep voices. Although I never heard him sing, he looked the part—gaunt, coarse, and sinewy with hanks of rangy brown hair exploding from a hardened beardless face. He engaged a room with dark dramatic eyes. And, oh was he dramatic. He once showed up at a Halloween party wearing a bowtie. That’s it—a bowtie.

In his spare time, he offered singing lessons to young women and rustic hospitality to mature ones. Carol gave the former an eye-roll and the latter a cold shoulder. The couple viewed a lot of things differently. Tony whittled abstract figurines, which he deemed art and Carol called kindling. She wanted a family; he didn’t. So she settled for milking the goats that grazed about the grounds of the Church of the Good Mother Earth.

Carol, you see, could explain and frame everything in a positive light.  A marketing administrator, Carol was shrewd. She once screen-tested for a role in a Charles Bronson movie. But she was far from the stereotype of the petite waif needing protection. When she tired of Tony’s dalliances, she took off. On one cross-country road trip—trans-country, actually—Mexican authorities suspected she was the kidnapped Patty Hearst and her male companion a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army.

One bitter night, Tony and Carol sought the company of friends a few miles down the road for food, drink, and the deep warmth generated only by electricity—and for Tony, a comely young woman. Carol left in an early huff while the basso profondo serenaded his adoring fan well into the wee hours. When he did arrive home, he was heartened to see the front window softly aglow, reflecting the warmth of the Church of the Good Mother Earth within. He smiled. Carol had come home. The world was right.

Indeed, Carol had warmed their abode. Shivering in the cold cabin and confronting an empty woodpile, the resourceful wife quickly drew a fragile flame and breathed life into the dying embers of the sanctuary’s hearth. She then stoked it with every last one of Tony’s figurines. Calling it baptism by fire, Carol that night excommunicated herself from the Church of the Good Mother Earth.