Because pacifism was a tenet of both our Quaker upbringing and of Bryn Gweled, as children we were unaware that we held a minority point of view in the world at large. Nonviolence was something we thought everyone always wanted, as Geoff wryly noted in "A Christmas Thought," a poem he wrote in 1963, when he was twelve:
"What do you want for Christmas, Sonny?"
Says old Santa, big and funny.
"A Mighty Moe is nice to have--
Shoot down light bulbs on Christmas morn.
A Tommy is nice, you see
Shoot poor Santa in the Chimney!"
All these war toys to celebrate His birth,
The time when peace was to come to earth.
By Jr. High BG kids were voicing their liberal, Democratic views more publicly, particularly in class discussions of social issues, and occasionally Geoff joined in. But the majority of Bucks County students, like their parents, were white conservative Republicans. In 1964 David Polster’s social studies teacher led the class in discussions about the Johnson/Goldwater campaign. David was the only student in the room to favor Johnson. He sat in class for the whole period with his arm raised, but the teacher refused to call on him. In the comfort of Bryn Gweled, though, for Halloween David and Geoff created, to great applause, a donkey they sewed from burlap feed bags and crawled into--Geoff wearing a donkey head, David bent over as the rump--and draped with a purple LBJ banner....
...We did think of ourselves as distinct, and our parents encouraged it. They spoke of the Southampton powers who had made it hard for BG to get underground wiring, sewers, or some zoning break because they wanted to dissolve our community. We kids heard such comments without understanding, but we took them to mean somehow that we were better, higher, special, and "they" were the unenlightened masses.
