the last free man

I have a cousin named Gatewood Galbraith, from Kentucky. Everybody seems to know Gatewood, or of him. I meet somebody from Kentucky, her husband was his roommate in college. It isn't solely because of his charming personality (which he has, in spades) so much as because he has run for state and local office, several times, although without success.

Gatewood probably has the highest IQ of anybody on my side of the family. He also has a free spirit like no other. He has campaigned for the legalization of marijuana all of his life.

I have another cousin, Mary Catherine, who is down this week with her husband to escape the cold of Kentucky. We met for lunch last Sunday at Frenchy's Salt Water Cafe and she gave me a copy of Gatewood's book, "The Last Free Man in America Meets the Synthetic Conspiracy." I am part way into it and I highly recommend it. He needed an editor who can spot comma faults but his story is compelling. I didn't realize he grew up with asthma. He gives marijuana credit for opening his lungs, letting blood fill the tissues like water on the parched earth of the desert, and curing his asthma.

His book was written pretty much the way he talks, with frank bluntness mixed in with humor. I know that he once disappeared from sight for months with my aunt and uncle not knowing where he was. I didn't know he hitch-hiked across the U.S. and back, not once but three times. I remember Dad telling me that his father opened their door one evening and there was their long-lost son. "I didn't know whether to hit him or hug him," he told Dad later. He hugged him, apparently, although that particular tale is not in the book.

By the way, he has a web site: http://www.gatewood.com

More later, as I get further into it.