Hi. I’m Hal. This is part 3 in the coffee break series. Grab a cup of coffee or tea, sit back and enjoy. I hope you’ll share this publication with one friend. Thanks!
The Battle Between
I was the last person ever to see Ann Wigmore alive. She was up late sitting at the front desk of the Ann Wigmore Foundation on Commonwealth Avenue in the Back Bay of Boston. Right before bed, She and I exchanged a few pleasant words and then we wished each other a good night. I went up to my room on the second floor and "Dr. Ann" retreated to hers on the third. In the middle of the night, I was awakened by the loud blare of a smoke alarm. I raced to the third floor to check on Ann but I soon realized that there was too much smoke coming out of her room to proceed. Everyone in the house made it out to the sidewalk that night except Ann Wigmore. She died in that fire on Feb 16, 1994. Though I was stunned from the loss of a human life, there was a part of me that was relieved. I was finally free from the living food prison that held me there at 196 Commonwealth Avenue.
In the summer of 1993, I moved to New York to get discovered. I arrived in the city with big visions and great talent, but I lacked the basic life skills to make my dream come true. I'll tell you the whole story another time, but basically, I stayed up too late, smoked too much pot, ate too many muffins, drank too much coffee and spent too much money at the strip clubs. For a guy living with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, this was not a good combination. I needed a cleanse. I needed a reboot of my immune system. I needed a major lifestyle change. That's why I signed up for a two week stay at the Ann Wigmore Foundation in Boston. Also known as the Hippocrates Health Institute, it was a retreat center that promised radical change through the living foods lifestyle.
Ann Wigmore was the wheatgrass guru of the world. Eating only foods that were alive with life force energy, she had rid herself of Cancer. At the Ann Wigmore Foundation, all forms of cooked foods were off limits -- no brown rice, no steamed vegetables, no bread, no meat and no dairy of any kind. Energy Soup, a blended concoction of enzyme rich ingredients, was at every meal. Fermented "rejuvalac" was the beverage of choice. Trays of sunflower greens, buckwheat sprouts and wheatgrass were growing on every windowsill and enema supplies were a staple in every bathroom. I'll never forget the smell upon entering that building for the first time. It was a living food shock to my caffeine, flour and sugar filled system.
I arrived in Boston's Back Bay in the Fall of ‘93. The Ann Wigmore Foundation was located in a grand four story townhouse on the corner of Exeter and historic Commonwealth Avenue. If you're so inclined, you can follow the Commonwealth median all the way to the Boston Public Gardens and you can stop to read history on the memorial statues along the way. It’s a beautiful street. The cross streets to Commonwealth run in alphabetical order. There was Exeter, Dartmouth, Clarendon, Berkeley, and Arlington — all the way to the Boston Gardens. Running parallel to Commonwealth Avenue is Newbury Street -- a coffee break haven of book shops, coffee shops and bakeries.
Being the spiritual guy that I was, before arriving at Dr. Ann's retreat, I stopped on Newbury St. for a ceremonial farewell to coffee and muffins. I walked into a coffee shop, breathed in the rich smells of my youth and I vowed a prayerful goodbye. I was entering a new phase of life -- a phase of healing through the living foods lifestyle. It was time to get serious about gaining back the health that was stolen from me with the onset of ME/CFS in 1991.
People came to the Ann Wigmore Foundation for all different reasons. In my two week stay, there were people there to heal from cancer, diabetes, obesity and addiction. Ann Wigmore promised miraculous results in two weeks and I was confident that I would be among one of those miracles. We learned how to grow wheatgrass, how to brew rejuvelac and how to make elaborate living foods desserts with avocado, dates, sprouted nuts and figs. We also learned the blessed joy of a detoxifying wheatgrass enema. The idea of living food as medicine and cooked food as poison was drilled into our brains as we were being cleansed. At the time, it all made so much sense to me.
Well, where do you think I ended up ten days into the living foods transformation? Yep. You guessed it -- Newbury Street. I failed the experiment. I couldn't last two whole weeks without my coffee and muffins. With all the depth of history and the purity of health available to me on Commonwealth Avenue, I couldn't resist the pull of Newbury Street. I fell three days short of the two week experiment. So what did I do? Yep. You guessed it. I got a job at the Ann Wigmore Foundation teaching the living foods lifestyle. Hal Walker, the king of coffee and muffins, was the instructor and the guide for the sick and the suffering who showed up in Boston to heal. It was a crazy few months.
I remember a terribly lonely Thanksgiving in Boston. I walked the cold, quiet streets on Thanksgiving night and stopped at Dunkin' Donuts on my way back to Dr. Ann's place. After transgressions like these, I would always vow to start the living foods regimen again tomorrow. I used wheatgrass enemas to purge myself of the poison sugar, flour and the caffeine.
It must have been quite evident to my house mates that I was not cut out for the living foods lifestyle. In the middle of teaching one of my classes on making energy soup, one of the students observed, “Hal, you’re mighty energetic today. You seem like you’re high on sugar!” They were right. I was high on sugar and probably high on marijuana, as well. It was a constant battle between the spiritual path of Commonwealth Avenue and the medicated path of Newbury Street.
I went home for a week over Christmas and I tried to sell my dad on the living foods concept. "But Dad, you don't understand. When everything you put in your body has living enzymes and life force energy, food has the power to heal. Food is medicine." My dad tried to sell me on the traditional American diet. "Son. My parents have lived for over 90 years on a diet of simple protein, vegetables and a starch. The key to a healthy diet is to grill a hamburger in a pan, boil some potatoes and boil some green beans." It turns out my dad was pretty right on about a balanced lifestyle, but I needed a few more years of research to find out. After all the Christmas cookies and coffee in Ohio, I returned to Boston for six more weeks of insanity -- back and forth between Commonwealth Avenue and Newbury Street.
My time in Boston wasn't all bad though. There was a beautiful 10 ft. Steinway grand piano in the main room that I enjoyed playing on my time off. I remember learning some blues riffs on that piano that I’m still playing today. On occasion, I would offer concerts to the guests. It was a beautiful room to play in. For one of the classes that I led, we read aloud from my favorite children's book, "Hope for the Flowers." It's a story of a caterpillar who lets go of the frantic climb for wealth and power and transforms into a butterfly. If you’ve never read it, be sure to check it out.
After the fire, the Blue Cross gave us some grocery money and a place to stay for a couple nights. I guarantee that I didn't spend that money on living foods at the grocery store. I was free from it and I took the opportunity to load up on all natural peanut butter, cherry preserves, whole wheat bread and all my coffee break favorites. When the hotel stay was over, I lived in the burned out building of the Ann Wigmore foundation as the staff and I assessed the damage. The Steinway piano was destroyed. The smoke and water damage to the townhouse ended the life of the Ann Wigmore Foundation as we knew it. I'll never forget the deep smell of smoke that permeated the whole building. I slept there for about a week.
Eventually, I made the decision to move to Eugene, Oregon. My friend Warren lived there and I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. So, I bought a one way Greyhound ticket west with plans for a brief stop in Ohio. I got off the bus in Cleveland and I waved goodbye to my bicycle-in-a-box as it travelled on to Oregon. After a few days in Kent though, I realized that I was home and I never did get back on that bus. Kent, Ohio called me home. Eventually, Warren arranged to send the bike back to Ohio and I decided to make Kent my home for good. I was living back at my parents in the Spring of ‘94 when I wrote my personal anthem, "Come Home".
“Come home, says the river, there’s no more time for wondering from city to city looking for the perfectly cool community to make me perfectly happy.”
On Tuesday, I’ll be featuring that song in the next installment of “A Body of Work.” I hope you’ll look out for that email on Tuesday.
I’ve been back in Kent for almost 30 years now. Can you believe it? I don’t drink coffee and I don’t eat muffins, but I’m still living in this body of mine. In so many ways, I’ve been so fortunate. In spite of living with ME/CFS for 30 years, I’ve had a very full life. I look forward to continue sharing the stories until they’ve all been told. Thank you so much for reading. Thank you for listening. As always, I hope you have a good Saturday in that body of yours and I’ll see you next time. ❤️ Hal
The Battle Between