A Day in the Life of a Merry Man
Robin Hood of Keene doesn’t rob anybody, but does like to help out those in need: particularly patrons of downtown Keene whose parking meters have expired. By adding extra coins, Robin Hood saves those patrons from the hassle and extra expense of parking citations given by the orders of the Crown of Keene and distributed by his sheriffs. After all, what business does the Crown of Keene have demanding money to park your car in a public place?
I’m one of Robin Hood’s merry men, and I’d like to tell you a story that happened to me the other day while carrying out Robin Hood’s mission. Two fellow merry men and I were checking the meters around Central Square when we found an expired one in front of Pepper Pete’s Hot Shop. I put in some coins, deposited a note on the car’s windshield to alert the driver, and was on my way. But as I left, I noticed Pepper Pete come out of his store and stand on the sidewalk. He said nothing but I was alert, because in the past Pepper Pete has accosted some merry men, accusing them of acting illegally and berating them for soliciting money.
I walked to the end of the street, finished my metering duties, and returned from whence I came, passing Pepper Pete again. Again, he said nothing. I was a little suspicious, so after I turned the corner, I stopped and peered back down the street through the window of the corner shop. I saw Pepper Pete walk to the car that for which I had deposited coins and remove my note.
I didn’t appreciate his intrusion into business that wasn’t his, so I walked back towards him. I asked him, “Which car did you get that note from? Was it this one?” and I gestured toward the car I thought it was. Pepper Pete silently confirmed it was the correct car, by nodding. I walked to the car and placed another note on the windshield.
Pepper Pete said, “I’m going to take that one, too.”
I replied, “No, you’re not,” and stood in front of the car facing him, looking him directly in the eye, smiling. He was silent and motionless. After a few seconds I realized that he could just go in his store and come back out when I left, so I sat down on the curb, guarding my good deed. I thought Pepper Pete was too cowardly to take the second note right in front of me, and I was correct. My fellow merry men joined me on the curb, enjoying the glorious weather. I heard Pepper Pete and his friend mumbling, and one of them told the other that we were assholes. But they were helpless for at least two reasons; they have poor communication and socializing skills, and they have nothing to defend except their own invasive and unfriendly behavior.
And here’s where the story gets funny. About one minute later, a man walked up to this car and started reaching for the note I left on the windshield. As he did, he saw me sitting on the curb and paused. He recognized me and called me by name. I was a little shocked, but as I looked at his face more closely, I realize I recognized him, too. It was George Donnelly!
I knew George only digitally prior to this, via Facebook, but I recognized his face from his profile picture. He was in town looking for a place to rent so he and his family could move here (as part of the Free State Project). In fact, he had just arrived only an hour before and had just eaten lunch at Pedraza’s, which is next door to Pepper Pete’s shop. We shook hands ardently as I welcomed him to New Hampshire.
So there we were, standing in front of Pepper Pete, who was impotent to do or say anything negative (and who apparently has chosen in life not to say very many positive things). His promise to take my second note off the car was now impossible – the car owner now held it in his hand. His desire to say something insulting or negative about Robin Hood was quashed, because he would be saying it to a potential customer who was right then befriending Robin Hood’s merry men! I was not looking at Pepper Pete, but I knew that both he and his friend remained standing outside their shop, speechless, watching us happily interact with each other. He must have been infuriated that someone would consider our action to be friendly.
Then, to put icing on my cake – and perhaps to drive the dagger a little further into Pepper Pete’s black heart – George said aloud that he’d like to make a donation to the Robin Hood Parking Meter Fund. The one part of Robin Hood’s plan that irked Pepper Pete was that we were “soliciting” money, and here was another happy person voluntarily giving us a donation – right in front of Pepper Pete! It was rather sublime to have been at that moment a cog in the machinery of the universe that doled out justice, and to witness it at the same time.
I exchanged contact information with George and we made plans to get him acquainted with New Hampshire and socialize with more people he hadn’t yet met in real life, and then we were all on our way. As I departed, I turned to Pepper Pete and his friend and, smiling, wished them a good day.
Comments
46 Comments on A Day in the Life of a Merry Man
This was a fantastic read and extremely well written. I thoroughly enjoyed it!
do you have video of any of this? what’s his full name? also does this guy have some sort of government position?
plz pm me the answer or email, I won’t be watching this thread.
Well played, Mike. That story is beautiful. Pepper Pete got busted being a Sneaky Pete!
FYI: Pepper Pete is the same guy that called the police on Jesse for gardening on public land.
Merry Men For the win!
To bad Pepper Pete won’t ever find out about this… but is there a mailing address that I can send a donation to Robin and his Merry Men?
Robin Hood has his own web page, and there is a donation link. Click the “Robin Hood” link on this page, near the top, on the right (just above “Search Posts”).
I don’t know, Wes. He seems pretty in-the-loop about liberty activists. I bet he reads this website. The guy has a lot of time on his hands – he sits outside his shop and smokes cigars all the time.
Good work, Mike.
This is the first time I’ve looked into RH of Keene. I see the note on the Robin Hood site. Is that the note in its entirety? If it is, this is even more delicious, because there’s no contact information about Robin Hood on that note.
In other words, George may not have gotten an opportunity to donate to Robin Hood, had Pepper Pete not “forced” you to sit there until George returned to his car.
Well, no, it’s not quite that delicious. 
That is the complete note that Robin Hood places on cars, but there is also a stamped enveloped, address to the Robin Hood Parking Meter Fund, in case people want to donate. There is no solicitation for donations, no mention about it – just an envelope.
LOL. I’m pleased to have also been a cog in the machinery of the universe that doled out justice right there with you at the same time!
And thanks again for saving me from a ticket!
That’s awesome! I’m glad that the FSP & Freekeene welcome wagon of merry men intercepted George. Is Pepper Pete’s one of these hot sauce stores? It sounds like he has no steady customers thus all the time in the world to be a curmudgeon. Keep up the good work, Mike!
Sounds like Pepper Pete doesn’t need any of my business to me.
Fantastic story!
I am extremely pleased, not just because I was on my first Robin Hood mission in the city, but because I was able to share in the experience of watching Pepper Pete stew in his own foul juices.
As Pete cries you can almost detect the scent of chipotles in the air as what goes around does indeed come around. When Pete’s devoid of customers store, goes under from lack of business, he can keep himself busy shaking a cane and running kids off his lawn.
Long Live Robin Hood!
Dan
I wonder if Dorrie owns that whole strip of buildings. If so, she’d be Pepper Pete’s landlord. That storefront sure would be nice to have…
Maybe that building could be the home of a new burger joint that refuses to except stolen money from govt employees.
This makes me want to get out of Las Vegas that much faster! This was a great story. I don’t what type of place Pepper Pete’s is, but maybe so social ostracism would be appropriate here?
What type of business is Pepper Petes?
(great job Mike of protecting your work!)
It would seem that Pepper Pete should want Robin Hood to help out his customers like that. They may be hesitant to shop downtown again if they have to go through the hassle of a parking ticket. Silly Pete.
Pepper Pete’s sounds like a hot sauce, etc. food store.
If true, maybe this is why he’s such a hot head!
pepper petes sells hot sauce and if i remember correctly … red sox stuff and other odds and ends
why would he think you are hurting anyone?
and these shops wonder why they are losing to walmart and target …. who have friendly greeters and let you park in their lots for free
Absolutely brilliant, Barskey. And kudos to Mr. Donnelly for rubbing brilliantly-timed salt into the wound.
Congrats to you both. Can’t wait to be on the front lines w/ ya.
Kind regards,
Mike
I submitted this to http://dontpatronize.info/
Hopefully, it gets included.
I come to freekeene.com quite a lot, mostly to try and educate myself on what is it the FSers want. This story just muddies the issue and further confounds me. How does paying for other people’s parking advance your cause? Is it because you think you are “getting around” the government’s imposition of fees to park for a reasonable time in downtown Keene? I know Clark (Pepper Pete), and it is essential to his business that people not be allowed to just camp in front of his store. But then, I’m guessing that the FSers are not all that into the capitalism thing.
Welcome. Paying for someone’s expired meter doesn’t do anything to keep them in the spot any longer than they otherwise would have been. They’re going to leave when they were going to leave. Meantime the paid meter prevents them from getting a ticket, meaning less revenue for the violent monopoly.
Also, our activists build goodwill with those who just wanted to get something done downtown and stayed longer than they expected.
Hope that helps. I’m all for capitalism, by the way. I imagine many other liberty-lovers are.
Thanks for the quick reply, Ian. But … I do get so weary of the term “violent” from the FSers. There is nothing violent about any of the authorities in this city, and to continue to maintain such only wears away at your credibility. As to the parking matter, Clark and many other businesses downtown have been forced to watch as people run to their meters every so often to shove coins in, so they can stay there and destroy any possibility of an available parking space. In Clark’s mind, a ticket or two for these people might contribute to the city’s coffers slightly, but would also discourage parking campers and increase business. Good for all, don’t you think?
Nicely put Ian,
It is exactly the point. If Pete (Clark) want to find a quick and easy way to run people out of downtown… Well, it’s to his own detriment. If it was my shop, I’d put a FSP porcupine logo in my window and WELCOME my new non-violent friends. Aw heck, but that’s just me (what do I know)
Thanks to you all!
Edan, just because you refuse to see the gun in the room, doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Fact is, all government programs and demands are backed by the constant threat of violence. You’ll never see the gun as long as you keep obeying their arbitrary diktats. Dare to live free, and see what happens.
What will happen to the peaceful marijuana disobedience activist Andrew Carroll if he doesn’t go to jail when the judge demands? Men with guns will show up at his house and demand he come with them. If he refuses, they could harm or even kill him. The same would have happened had he chosen not to show for the “trial” they demanded he attend and if he’d attempted to walk/run from the men with guns who abducted him. I know Lt. Maxfield is a good man and that he would do his best to not harm Andrew, but he *would* pursue and use force to subdue him. Government is force – sorry to bear the bad news.
In a world without “public” property, Clark would own his parking spaces and could set whatever rules he wanted for them.
edan,
I think it’s great you are trying to understand.
But it requires a paradigm shift in thought to understand why we think of the authorities as violent.
Let’s take the parking ticket for instance, what if I can’t pay (due to a layoff or something) the city will issue a warrant and eventually throw me in a cage. Whether I desire residence there or not. That is violent, and since I could never do that to you or you to me, it is a monopoly (they are the only ones that can do it).
It takes time to expand your mind to “think” differently. We appreciate your efforts.
Thanks for being part of the conversation.
I almost forgot to thank Mike for a wonderful post that has produced some lively discussion.
Thank You Mike!
Now I am seeing more and more that the FSers are of the “glass is half empty” mentality. In a “glass half full” world, I believe most people obey the law because they want to be peaceful, productive contributors to society. The fear of violence is not even in the forefront of their minds. But the FSers have the cart before the horse. Yes, I guess when it comes to controlling scofflaws, there needs to be some force used as a *very last resort* in order to maintain the admirable aspects of our society and protect the innocent. But the FSers want us to believe that violence and force are on the first page of the authorities’ playbook, and it just is not so.
Anyway, go on about it if you will, but I’m just saying that pounding on the violence theme only weakens your cause and doesn’t win you any hearts and minds.
Edan,
I have to disagree with you. “Pounding on the violence theme” is exactly what brought me into this movement. After a while, I simply couldn’t ignore the violence that the state threatens and commits ona daily basis against peaceful people.
I agree that most people want to be peaceful, productive members of society. The state is constantly interfering in our ability to live as peaceful and productive members of society. How many peaceful and productive marijuana smokers were arrested today by state employees? Obeying the law has little to do with being “peaceful and productive”.
Edan,
There’s nothing wrong with laws prohibiting violence, and of course any decent person is going to behave peacefully with his neighbors.
The problem comes when force is initiated against peaceful people who have not harmed others. Just as it would be immoral for me to use the threat of violence to force you to eat or drink certain things, or wear a seatbelt, it’s wrong for the government to do so.
You are right that the reason people obey many laws, even immoral laws, is because they would behave that way anyway. For example, I would continue to wear my seatbelt in NH if NH law prohibited it, because it’s the smart thing to do.
This does not make the law moral, however, just as the fact that you eat spinach every day anyway would not justify me forcing you to do so.
There are still other laws which people absolutely would not follow except for the threat of violence. Do you think people who oppose the Iraq war would volunteer for their money to be used to fund it, if they were not forced? Do you think people who oppose abortion would volunteer to have their money used for that purpose, if the government did not threaten to take their house away? Of course not.
The fact is, in these cases, the government is forcibly taking people’s money on threat of violence, and using their money for purposes which are morally objectionable to them. It would be theft if I did it to you, it would be theft if all my neighbors got together and did it to me, and it is theft for government as well.
People calling themselves government are not magically exempt from moral laws.
Edan, thanks for stopping by and looking in on us. I hope your stay with us has informative. I continue to try to help you understand our position.
Today, I can not just start up a bakery because today I decide to do so. Today, I’m not inclined to do so because of so much more work I have to do other then my business as a baker. There are fees, licenses, and other laws that dictate to me what I can and can’t do with my bakery. All of these laws have been purported to ‘protect our society’, but let me show you how they don’t actually protect anyone, and in fact hurt ‘society’ as a whole.
Overall, I have some twelve years of food service experience. If I ran a bakery, does it do me any good to give my customers food poison? Isn’t in my best interest to make sure that my counters are clean, my foods kept at proper temperatures, and a host of other things as well?
This doesn’t matter of course because I have to have someone come in, under the threat of force(after all if I didn’t let the food inspector in, he’d revoke my permits to be a bakery, another threat of force). This person comes in, and sits down in the lobby after ordering a cup of coffee and pulls out some paperwork. He’ll walk around my lobby looking for violations, then my bathrooms(if I decide to have them, or in some cases required by law to have them available) looking for more violations, and then walk through my kitchen sticking thermometers into various food stuffs(possible contaminating my foods. I’ve seen these inspectors just wipe the probe with a paper towel and stick it into the next food contaminating food the business I worked at). As you can see sometimes its the “State” that hurts you my customers. I have to pass this cost on to you, thereby stopping you from being able to pay my lower pricing that I could achieve by not having them in the first place.
Lets talk about me employing other people now. I have to take money from them and give it to the “State” without their consent. I can’t have a private contract with them outlaying their duties and expectations and pay them what they are worth to me, because the law says I have to pay them at a rate they tell me I have to. This alone could make my business fail. I have to provide them benefits if I have more then a certain number of them, even if we agreed before hand that they won’t get benefits. You may think that I’m a cold-hearted individual because I want to pay someone the lowest amount possible and provide them with the least amount of benefits that I can to keep them, but look at it this way. If I have to pay minimum wage, and have to provide minimum benefits to my employee’s, then doing so could jeopardize my business and in turn contribute to homelessness and unemployment.
Hopefully you can see a little bit more about how the ‘State’ hurts your with it’s laws, then it helps you. Your current paradigm is like most people, like mine was, that you have been taught that the ‘State’ provides safety and security(incidentally by the ‘State’ itself) but when you apply logic to what the ‘State’ teaches you, you find that they are lying to you.
On another note where would we be if Rosa Parks didn’t violate the law about people with black skin having to sit at the back of the bus. What about Gandhi, would India be independent today if he did nothing? What about the English Colonists of the America’s circa 1770′s, if they decided that it was okay to be subjugated and taxed to the brink of starvation by a King who wasn’t elected?
Edan, I don’t want to address whether Pepper Pete’s position is valid or whether Robin Hood’s position is valid. I want to take one step back and look at what enforcing those opinions, means.
Pepper Pete wants people to park on public property for only a limited time so that when they leave, more people can park there and patronize his store. Do those people have as much right to public property as Pete does? Yes. Do they want to park there longer than the government lets them? Some of them do.
In order for Pepper Pete to get what he wants, he must employ force (government) to get it: he must approve of a system that will cite people for using their own public property “too long;” if those people don’t want to pay the citation, they will be arrested (eventually); if they don’t want to go to jail, they will be beaten and forcefully jailed, or they will be killed in the process. I know that sounds silly to a lot of people – being killed for a parking ticket – but it is true. That’s what “the gun in the room” is: everything that the government demands is backed by force. That’s all the government has.
Now what if people want to enforce their desire to park indefinitely? They are not forcing anyone to do or not do anything. It is true that if there is an open parking space and they park in it, no one else can park there. But every person has an equal opportunity to find and use that empty parking space. If you find it first and want to park for 10 hours, then I have no right to force you not to. I surely could ask you to park there for less time to give me an opportunity to park there as well, or try to convince you that it’s in your best interest to park there for less time. But if the property is both yours and mine, then you have as much right to use it as I do. This is called the Tragedy of the Commons (you can look that up on Wikipedia if you are interested).
If I owned a store, I would want as many customers to be able to park conveniently and patronize my store as possible. But my desire does not give me the right to force people who want to park for 10 hours, to only park for 2 hours (unless I personally own the parking lot).
You also said that you were “guessing that the FSers are not all that into the capitalism thing.” My guess – and I know a couple hundred free-staters personally, is that most of them are into capitalism, but they define it accurately (and, in fact, many prefer to use other words for it because “capitalism” has been hijacked to mean something else more akin to fascism). Properly defined, it is the free exchange of values for other values. The most important part of that definition is the word “free.” As soon as an element of force enters (like the government mandating wage minimums, setting price caps, limiting competition with licenses, etc.), free will is limited or removed, and capitalism is destroyed.
Also, note that Ian said above “I know Lt. Maxfield is a good man and that he would do his best to not harm Andrew, but he *would* pursue and use force to subdue him.” And the preceding sentences exemplified that government will use force eventually. Yet you misrepresented this to mean “But the FSers want us to believe that violence and force are on the first page of the authorities’ playbook…” (my italics).
Edan,
I’m sorry you can’t see that the bottomline with all government is: If you don’t OBEY, men with guns will come for you and throw you in a cage (or worse).
Also to think that FSPers are not into Capitalism means you do not yet understand what makes us tick.
All Voluntary Associations should be proper and legal which means we love to deal/trade with everyone (except those who use guns to try and persuade us).
Government Indoctrination Wards (child prisons or public schools I mean) are extremely persuasive at making voluntary slaves for life.
Keep looking and watching here (listen to Free Talk Live. com also) and you’ll begin to see what it means to live free.
Good luck!
Free market capitalism sucks! You and Milton Friedman can go stick it. I live in NYC and if someone parked indefinitely we would all be seriously screwed. John Locke is rolling over in his grave. Parking tickets? Really? You gotta be kidding. Do you know how completely juvenile you sound???
“Free market capitalism sucks! You and Milton Friedman can go stick it.”
hehe. And *we* sound juvenile.
Jesse,
That’s why the government should not be running parking spaces. They should be owned privately, and then the owners can create whatever rules they think would be best, for their spaces, and compete based on price and convenience. It’s the tragedy of the commons, as another noted.
In the mean time, there’s nothing wrong with plugging someone’s parking meeter so they don’t get a hefty fine … that’s just neighborly 
.
In a free market, we would have choice. We don’t have choice now. I owned a car that wouldn’t pass smog (in Calif.) I only had street parking, so I was constantly being threatened of being towed, because I couldn’t register it w/o smog. Now there was a solution, for about 900 dollars I could convert my vehicle to propane, and it would surely pass smog.
But the state has to certify conversions, and the only company that offered a conversion for my car wasn’t certified. I called the company, the guy told me it was about a million dollars to get certified (per model), and he said “we don’t gross that in a year!”.
So here was a solution for the supposed smog problem, but the state prevents common sense. Now multiply this little problem a million times and you see, we’re not free at all. If we don’t follow the idiotic layer of “rules” we have no rights.
I liken it to the Mafia “protection” racket, so long as you pay on time, we’ll not use force against you.
Also, we can’t give government rights we don’t have ourselves, if we can’t do it to them, they cannot lawfully do it to us.
Peace
I LOVE what you people are doing to fight the ever-infringing government. You have my blessings and, I will do what i can to help your cause when i visit NH every year. !!!! I live in MA and you can’t imagine how the government is screwing us people…but we have no one here that will stand up to them.
Jesse, put down the Naomi Klein and pick up something a bit more interested in intelligent discussion. I’d recommend Kevin Carson.
The state is an ever growing menace world wide not just in the US.Try living in a country where it is illegal to withdraw your labour and people praise the cops for bashing motorists who have had too much to drink and have a child in their car.This is justified in their eyes because the guy was drunk.Imagine what would happen if that same guy bashed the cops in return….liberty is a distant memory,slavery is the norm.
Maybe the Crown of Keene extorts exorbitant taxes from Pete and he worries that if the sheriffs fail to collect enough gold from parking tickets, they’ll want even more from shop keepers like him.
May be if Robin actually robbed from the rich he would be able to collect enough gold to pay the taxes of all the people of Keene.
Robin Hood was a statist and a typical bureaucrat stealing to distribute wealth but the Robin Hood of Keene performs his acts truly selflessly harming no one in the process, except, joyfully the criminal state!
Clark Anderson’s store is known as “CC&H Framing”. The “CC&H” refers to “Clark’s Cards & Hobbies”. That was the name of the store/shop he ran in the location where Blueberry Fields is now. Also, along w/his brothers, Clark has run various businesses in Keene for decades. His current location on Central Sq. truly is a “hobby” business. Clark doesn’t need the money. He keeps it open to have something to do. Something, like sit outside and smoke cigars all day, because he knows it pisses people off – especially all those fucking bleeding-heart liberal anti-tobacco nazis we have around here. So yes, Just like the “freestaters”, Clark does shit just to piss people off. So any “concern” over parking spaces is just crocodile tears on Clark’s part. Also, being Roman Catholic, Clark feels most comfortable when he believes that the law protects him exclusively. He’s a statist/elitist, as most Catholics are. Church dogma says that there is “no salvation outside the “church”(of Rome.)”…Hmmm, and no *FREEDOM* within the church, either! So, what “new business venture” will “take up too much of his time” for him to run for City Council?…Keep watching, you’ll see *NOTHING*. The *REAL*, *ACTUAL* *TRUE* reason that Clark withdrew from the City Council race was a little episode of very poor judgement on Clark’s part. He gave $50. to a disabled girl(young woman…), got her drunk, and performed a sex act on here. Yes, Clark is a sexual predator. Given that his little JOHN-DANCE occured *AFTER* he had filed to run for the Council, well, even the Keene City Council does have limits. And female Councilors. Oh, and the woman? Because of the medication she must take for her disability, she should not drink excessively. Clark doesn’t care about that. He just wants to do what all sleaze-bag fat cats do! EXPLOIT PEOPLE, and BULLY THEM. I do find Ian’s analysis of Clarks’ personality to be very accurate here, based on my knowing Clark for 20+ years!…Well, enough for now. What a dirty, dirty, dirty, rotten little town gov’t Keene has!
MindOfMo
BRAVO, BRAVO to Merry Men of Keene, in Free State of New Hampshire, for random acts of parking meter kindness. EXTREMELY well played, Sirs.
about 8 hours ago from web
MindOfMo
STARVE THE BEAST.
about 8 hours ago from web
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