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Peter is medium height with an enormously strong upper body and an iron constitution. Handsome in a Paul Newman sort of way, he has always been quite popular with the ladies...that is, with those women who did not fear his weird ways. To illustrate these points, consider this story.

One night, we were out drinking in a rural Oregon logger's bar. Since we were farmers and had to get up early, we left before the bar closed, but not before everyone, including us, was a bit loaded. Peter decided he was going to kiss all the logger's wives goodnight and after he planted a wet one on one woman sitting at the bar, her husband, who did not take kindly to this, walked over to Peter and without warning, wound up and launched a vicious uppercut, so fierce that it opened a cut in Peter's chin which required four stitches the next day. However, before he could draw back his fist, Peter grabbed it with one hand and, forcing the man to his knees merely by pressing hard backward and bending his wrist, Peter looked him straight in the eye and said calmly, "If you can't hit any harder than that, you shouldn't oughta get into fights!" Then he smiled and waved to everyone, released the poor man (who I think was shitting in his pants), and together we walked out.

He was and is a wondrous "grunt" auto mechanic. That is, using baling wire and twine, he can resuscitate old cars and not only make them run, but keep them running long past their time. This was a wonderful skill to have on a commune. Since the cars were driven a lot, and by a lot of different drivers, they often broke down. Peter's main job around the farm, besides caring for the animals (a job he shared with many others, including me), was keeping our small fleet of cars running. On the frequent occasions that he got wanderlust and headed for parts unknown...or, alternatively, got a little too rambunctious for the rest of us and we threw him out (he always returned)...we really missed this talent.

One of the women who lived at Crow Farm, a college student named Vivian, had brought a particularly cantankerous Oldsmobile station wagon with her. It had a bad transmission for which it was very difficult to find parts. Furthermore, Vivian constantly bitched about the inconvenience of "sharing" her vehicle with everybody else. Note that everyone who arrived to live at Crow Farm was immediately required to toss all worldly possessions into the pool. Since it was a station wagon, it was good to use for shopping trips, meaning that she would have to wait for a group to assemble to go into town in a different car, so she could get to school. She couldn't seem to understand why she, being the registered owner of the vehicle, had to stand in line to use it. One day, Peter and Torgy...Michael Torgerson...had enough of her griping. During a time when the car was under repair, they took our D8 caterpillar tractor...a tracked vehicle only slightly smaller than a tank...and ran over the car, end to end, until it was only about two feet high...ending any further discussion of who was going to use it. As I said, it was very hard to repair anyway.

But the story doesn't end there. Peter was also a betting man. He could do various wondrous physical feats...like do a pushup into a standing position from a completely prone position...on his stomach with arms stretched over his head...and liked to win small bar bets doing them. One day, when a local farmer was visiting him at our farm, Peter bet the man $50 that he could not only start the crushed vehicle, still standing in the barnyard, but also DRIVE IT FIFTY FEET! Now, you have to understand that this really appeared to be an impossible deed. Not only was the car as flat as a pancake, but the wheels were gone and the axles pointed upward. It also did not appear possible to even get into the car, much less drive it. However, the man no sooner plopped down his fifty dollars, when Peter entered through a small space in the rear, squirmed and crawled to the front of the vehicle, turned over the ignition and the car, axles turning like the paddlewheels on a riverboat and digging into the ground, immediately began to move forward. It made it almost 100 feet before gasping its last breath.

We had to pull Peter back out of the vehicle feet first. After the man left, still shaking his head in perplexity, Peter exclaimed, "Hee, hee! The guy doesn't know it but I cheated!"

"How's that?" I wondered.

"Last night, I jury-rigged the engine and transmission so that as soon as turned on the key, the engine started and the transmission was already in low drive." he answered.

"Well, I suppose you COULD call that cheating." I thought to myself. Aloud, I asked, how did you get any gas into it?"

"Oh, I just poured some into the carburetor last night," he answered. "I knew it would go at least fifty feet." he added, anticipating my next question.

"Well how did you know the axles would turn like that?" I wondered, still a bit awe struck myself.

"I don't know. I just figured they would, you know, physics or something like that." he offered.

"Yeah, right!" I exclaimed under my breath. Despite his rough exterior, Peter was actually an intellectual, reading voraciously. Besides, as you can see, he had marvelous intuition. The rest of us objected at first to his incessant betting. After all, he was betting with OUR money. But he lost so seldom...well, we just stopped bitching about it.

But my favorite story about Peter took place on the very first day we moved into Crow Farm, before we had even set up our sleeping arrangements. An old friend from Minneapolis, named Starling Fishman, showed up with her latest man-friend in tow, an effete intellectual-snob psychotherapist. I became the "designated host," since everyone else was busy getting the house into shape. The three of us sat chatting in one of the bedrooms, sitting cross legged on a mattress. We talked about old times, about what we were planning to do on the farm and so on. Star's lover, apparently entranced with his own sexual prowess, eventually launched into a long boring dissertation on Tantric methods of sexual fulfillment, complete with ample arm gesticulations in an insufferably condescending tone.

In the midst of this rant, Peter walked in and quietly sat down with us, listening intently. Quickly catching the gist of what was going on, he waited until the lecture reached a pause and interrupted.

"Didja ever fuck a chicken?" he interposed.

"What?" the man exclaimed, not quite believing his ears.

"I said, 'Did you ev-er fuck a chick-en?'", Peter repeated very carefully, articulating each syllable.

"No...why, no, I haven't." the man responded, not quite knowing how to relate to this dangerous looking man. Peter had a way, when he wanted to intimidate, of pulling in his chin and going "sanpaku." That is, he would position his eyes and look at you so that a lot of white was showing under the iris. This usually had the desired effect, and it was having it now.

"First, you got to tie the legs together and bind 'em to the body," Peter continued, "otherwise those suckers can really scratch your crotch bad!"

Now he had the man's rapt attention. "Then, you grab it like this," Peter went on, holding his hands as though he were grasping a chicken by the wings, "and lower it right down on your cock, like this."

Then, making up and down motions with his arms, he demonstrated how you consummate the act, all the while explaining, "You wouldn't think an ordinary chicken could take a man's dick, but they're bigger than you think and real, real soft in there."

By now, the man's mouth was hanging open. His eyes glazed over, he looked like he was about to drool. But, Peter brought him back to reality by stating plaintively, "But, one thing you have to remember..." pausing until he had the man's attention once again.

"...you GOT to wear a rubber." he concluded.

"Uh...why's that?" the man asked.

"What do you think I AM..." Peter asked indignantly, shaking his head in mock astonishment, "...a FUCKING PERVERT?!"

Star and her friend got back on the road shortly thereafter, never to return.

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