Children of Israel
This story in the Seattle Times details the continued diaspora of the Love Israel family, and it brought back some memories. I’m not intimately familiar with their history, but I’ll try to offer a brief synopsis. Sometime in the late 60s a guy who owned a string of appliance stores dropped out, renamed himself “Love Israel” and started a commune/group living thing in a spiffy piece of property on Seattle’s Queen Anne Hill. All those who joined took on an allegorical first name, some attribute that either described them or what they hoped to become, like Reasonable or Serious or Sobriety. All took the last name “Israel”. Anyone who joined was required to divest all their personal possessions to the Family. It was this stricture that led to my first contact with them.
It was 1974, and I had just moved to Seattle. On a purely technical basis, I was a pretty dang good bicycle mechanic, and I had vague designs on starting a bike shop when I moved here. Yet to be reckoned with consciously, but weighing heavily on my subconscious, was the fact that I couldn’t sell water to dying men in the desert, but while I waited for fate to make me its bitch in this regard, I was working in a forlorn little bike shop near Seattle’s “U” district called Spokesman Cycle. The owner was my exact antithesis - fat, lazy, absolutely no business sense, but he knew that, when necessary, he could sell something to someone when he needed to. I’ve always operated on the fallacious theory that the opportunity I’m currently pursuing is the last one I’ll ever get, and I’m always surprised when another arises through some cosmic miscalculation; he operated under the equally fallacious presumption that every fuckup he did was a do-over, and perceived an injustice when the cosmos wearied of the task of illuminating him and shone its warming rays on some other dog’s butt.
He was congenitally unable to maintain a check register, and many times, when he had to be dead certain that a check he wrote would not bounce, he would take cash out of the register (what was left after he robbed it for lunches and drinking away the afternoons that I spent repairing bikes and waiting on the few customers that came in, mistaking us for one of the several really good shops in the District) and open a new bank account in order to write check #101 to the vendor or government agency that could do us serious dirt if the check bounced. Lots of times it would bounce anyway, because he couldn’t keep himself from writing check #102 a moment or two later.
Owing to the fact that we didn’t represent any quality lines of bikes, and those we did rep we didn’t have the money to put on the floor, we offered to sell people’s bikes on consignment for 15% of the selling price. One afternoon a couple guys came in with an unprepossessing bike to sell. I forget their first names - Guileless and Kickme, maybe - but their last name was Israel. I asked what the deal was, and they told me that one of them was a new member of the Love family, and selling the bike was part of his material divestiture.
A couple weeks later, the bike sold, and the Israel brothers came in. Out of the owner’s earshot, I advised them to only take cash, not a check, for their payment. They said, no, they couldn’t handle cash because they wanted to be above suspicion in the family circle. I reiterated in the strongest possible terms, but they ended up taking a check anyway. Apparently they or the family proffered the check to a carpet vendor to cover a purchase and - surprise! - it bounced. Guileless and Kickme came in a couple times, and received assurances from the owner that funds were now available in the account, but somehow the check was never negotiated.
The next time they came in, they were in the company of a huge guy who introduced himself (and I’m not making THIS name up) as “Strength”. Strength Israel was polite, even soft-spoken, and he and the owner discussed the lamentable state of bank bookkeeping and veracity. Maybe the owner even offered to write him check #101 on an account he had just that day opened at a different, more competent bank, I’m not sure. But I do remember, as I worked industriously on a bike and tried really hard not to blow snot all over it while suppressing the guffaw hovering just above my diaphragm, seeing Strength’s knitted brow just about an inch from the owner’s quivering face, and hearing Strength saying, “you know, I really want to believe you, man, because I REALLY, REALLY like people.” I couldn’t see under the counter, but he just may have had the owner’s testicles gripped tightly in his huge hand during this Hallmark moment.
The result of this negotiation was that the owner cleaned out the cash register and, under the close guidance of Guileless, Kickme and Strength, piled into their rattletrap station wagon and paid a visit to the carpet store. Since the surname “Israel” didn’t have the same connotation as “Gotti” when putting a miscreant in a car and driving away, the owner returned an hour or so later, short of cash but physically unscathed. I fancy he grabbed the previously spurned check #101 and set out in search of a tavern he hadn’t frequented previously.
In their heyday, the Love Family had, in addition to the Queen Anne property, a “ranch” near Marysville in Snohomish County as well as other properties and businesses. In 1981, we gutted our Wallingford house and set about remodeling it, and moved to a basement apartment on Queen Anne in the interim. While living there, my wife found a little cafe/bakery that the Love family operated on McGraw Street, and we would shop there now & then. We had no illusions that they were entirely a happy, sunny hippy phenomenon. They were a cult, and we’d heard rumors of sensory deprivation of new recruits, as well as how Love himself retained a fulsome amount of material comforts, including a Martin Guitar and his choice of sisters to occupy his bed. Still, we suspected that Albertson’s and whatever had a big chunk of Mormon ownership, so what the hey? - the folks at the McGraw street cafe were pleasant enough, and there was a young woman there named Rejoice that was really easy on the eyes…
Sometime in the mid-80s, some sort of schism and/or setback occurred, and they had to divest the Queen Anne mansion and consolidate on the Snohomish property. They’ve lived there for the last 20 years, following, apparently, this catchy little mantra from their website:
Before enlightenment, planting vegetables and raising children,After enlightenment, planting vegetables and raising children.
Now and then we’d see an article about them, including one about how their children, attending public schools in Marysville, were playing on the football team and, after some soulsearching, the parents became some of the team’s most vocal supporters. Now it appears that their fortunes have deteriorated further. They declared bankruptcy last year and, just last week, sold the Snohomish property to, ironically, a Reformed Jewish group to be used as a camp. 40 of them will have to move east of the Cascades to a property they (or at least Love Israel’s wife) own and try to forge a new life. Between this and the Love Family’s website, you can piece together whatever I’ve missed in relating their history.
I am drawn sometimes to the idea of these cooperative living situations, curious about whether the intensity and increased human contact, as well as the giving of myself, would somehow make life richer (although I would be the last person you’d want in any situation based on religion). I have a close friend that has lived in a co-housing cluster for 15 years, and I’m tantalized by that a little, too. Then I remember how I got to hate dorm life in college, how anxious I was to see the last of my housemates when we bought our house after renting it, and how glad I am to come home from a camping trip, and I’m pretty sure that I’m not cut out for all that togetherness.
