Republic of Law

In 1961, Reed Gwillim Law and Jean Inglis Law separated. Reed and Bobbie Winifred Law bought a forty-acre lot on New York route 91 north of Truxton, at an auction. It had been seized for taxes from an old indigent. The owner had trash piled feet deep all over the interior. The name that sticks in my mind for the owner was Burton Nye.

The house was red brick, with a basement and two floors. Reed's first rehabilitation step was to fill an open well with the trash so that no one would fall in, and to tear out the interior downstairs walls making one big room. Subsequently, the "Tree Fort Club" (Reed Gwillim Law Jr., Steven Inglis Law, Charles Gridley and Jack Mitchell) took a big hand in the proceedings. We decorated the downstairs walls with garish pastel chalk pictures.

Further inspired, Steven and Gwil whimsically declared the territory seceded from the United States under the name of the Republic of Law. We constructed a fantastic narrative including a history and a mythology. The house was "the red-brick castle." An old barn to the right of the house was "the dwilch."

In the rough basement, we saw traces of the painted number 1809, as best we could make out. That was our only basis for guessing the age of the original structure.

In the winter, we had numerous sleep-overs there, often quite uncomfortable ones because of snow and cold. The Tree Fort Club went a lot.

Across the highway there was a trail that led to Tinker's Falls, which had cut a natural hollow out of shale. During the winter, the falling water froze into a wall that partly concealed this hollow. You could climb behind it and look out past the ice.

In the summer of 1965, Gwil used the red-brick castle as a shelter during a road trip. The upper floor was filled with bats, but they didn't molest him.

The Republic of Law remained Reed's and Bobbie's property until around 1967.