Possum Living
It turned out to be the fascinating story of a young woman named Dolly Freed. When she was just 18 years old she wrote a book titled “Possum Living… How to Live Well Without a Job and With (Almost) No Money”.
It was based on her actual life….she and her father were living without jobs and with practically no money and had done so for several years.
The book became a cult hit and made Dolly one of the most famous teenagers in America. The book caught the attention of a young filmmaker named Nancy Schreiber, who made the documentary I watched.
Dolly and her dad Frank lived in a suburban Pennsylvania home. They raised rabbits in their basement for meat, kept a few chickens for eggs, grew an extensive garden, gathered fruit from abandoned orchards, and fished. And ate a little road kill now and again!
Their home had originally been an old general store that they bought for cash, cheap, and had refurbished into a home.
“We have and get the good things of life so easily it seems silly to go to some boring, meaningless, frustrating job to get the money to buy them,” Dolly wrote, “yet almost everyone does. ‘Earning their way in life,’ they call it. ‘Slavery,’ I call it.” She and Frank referred to their existence as “possum living” because “possums can live anywhere.”
Dolly and her book ended up being written about in the New York Times, and Seventeen Magazine did a profile on Dolly.
She was also invited to appear on the Merv Griffin Show, which is shown in the documentary. She told Merv that she and her dad were not “a couple of Thoreaus mooning about on Walden Pond….We live this way for a very simple reason: It’s easier to do without some of the things that money can buy than to earn the money to buy them”.
She gave Merv pointers on how to live cheap, and explained that even the outfit she was wearing on the show, which she had purchased at a thrift shop, had only cost 25 cents each for her skirt and sandals, and 15 cents for her blouse!
By the end of the short film I just adored Dolly and her life philosophy. Her humour, pragmatism and outlook on life were entertaining and amusing. And made perfect sense!
Dolly never completed high school… she was self educated. She had found public school a frustrating and miserable experience and by the time she was half way through the 7th grade Frank pulled her out.
At that time, home schooling was not legal and all kids had to be in school by law. So Frank simply wrote a letter saying that they were moving to California, and Dolly laid low during school days reading classic literature and studying on her own to avoid any roaming truant officers.
In spite of this off-the-grid lifestyle Dolly was a normal teenager with an active social life and a boyfriend. One of the highlights of the film, to me, was watching Dolly and her date dancing to the classic hit “We Are Family” by Sly and the Family Stone! Remember them?
Dolly went on to attend university and rejoin mainstream society to a certain extent. She married and now has two grown children. She lives in Texas where she is regularly consulted as the local expert on gardening and environmental concerns.
“Possum Living” is out of print now but you can read the entire manuscript online if you look it up.
It is quite an amazing document. You may not be prepared to catch turtles to make stew, but reading Dolly’s book will make you think.
Stephanie Kelley
