American Limbo

This morning on my drive into the office, as has become my habit, I listened to “This American Life.“ This particular episode was “American Limbo” and tells the story of the Jarvis family from West Virginia.

The story begins with the Jarvis family living off the land and off-the-grid in West Virginia on 140 acres of land. The parents are children of the sixties, minimalists and raising their children to be the same. The middle of the story occurs right across the peninsula from where I was living in West River, MD—at the same time the Jarvis family was living “on the hard” (as boat folk like to say) at Backyard Boats in Shadyside, MD. This family was literally rock-throwing distance from where my office was located at Parish Creek Marina. The candid actualities with the parents and children provide some amazing insight into how their family survived and the effect it had on all of them. This may be the best individual ‘act’ I have listened to on This American Life:

Act One. The Family That Flees Together, Trees Together. The Jarvis family, a group of eight, goes on the run from the law — for seven years. They live on a boat, in a treehouse in a swamp. They escape capture time after time. And how do the kids turn out, living a life outside of society, as fugitives? Surprisingly great. (22 minutes)