Chapter 5: The Farmer, The Hippie Colony and the Magic Muslim Painter

Landine was the only daughter of the old Mr. Oxenburg. He was the town doctor and something of a great farmer. Landine's mother died within days of her being born. She had been a very beautiful hippie girl, and, as it was with some hippie girls, she was attracted to older men. She married the old farmer doctor and they made love day and night and never a child was conceived until she, herself was much older, maybe too old to have babies, but when she was pregnant with Landine the world seemed magical.

Ursa came to town with one of the hippie colonist groups that settled the town when it had a very few citizens. Dr. Oxenburg was one of them. He had only left Cabinville for one period in his life and that was to go to become a doctor. He really liked to farm and so he returned to the remote, hilly but wonderfully rich soil of Cabinville. When he came back, the first of several new settlements had begun. This first settlement were industrious. They built the town from the ground up, most literally. There really had been nothing there where they built. They didn't go crazy, however, only building what they felt they needed in a town.

One of these settlers was a strange artist who said he was a Spanish Muslim. He painted all of the buildings with his own special colors, as he called them, into many geometric patterns. The eye could go along from one building to the next without the patterns being broken.

"The lines of paint present a mathematical equation. Some of you will see heaven in it, others will see hell. It is your choice."

That is all he would say about it when it was finished. His name is Petrok. He lives in the Cabin behind Milo and Landine's. People do things like build fires and give him food to keep him alive. He doesn't paint or philosophize anymore, just sits there in a solitary chair, rocking, chewing his gums by the fire.