Long Term Plan
Long Term Plan
by Bruno Maestrini
Right off Illinois route 13, in the city of Crainville, lives a man known to the local community as Banjo Joe. Joseph James McAmish was born and raised in southern Illinois in the countryside and grew up listening to his grandfather's tales of mountain men and how they would live their whole lives being self sufficient and "off the grid". Little Joe knew at an early age that what he wanted to be was one of those mountain adventurers.
Raised in a farm, Joe learned to shoot at six or seven right there in his grandpa's lands, killing his first rabbits and squirrels early on. "Grandma used to cook what we hunted. Made the gravy and all, from the fat. Squirrel dumplings are my favorite", recounts a nostalgic 31-year-old man that has partially conquered his dream.
Joe now lives in a house he built with his own hands on the same property he used to shoot small animals when he was a child. Off the grid of any electric, water or gas company, Joe spends good part of his autumn and winter days chopping up wood to heat the house with his stove. Truth has to be told, Joe is no mountain man. "There is no way I could live like the mountain men of a hundred years ago. It's probably even illegal what they did nowadays. I have solar power, that's enough to light a few light bulbs and my TV and videogame. I love playing the NES and Dreamcast".
With a life divided between the modern comforts and the passion for the outside, Joe still enjoys hunting and cooking his own meal. "I just hunted four quails this evening. Had to shoot three bullets. That's a total of forty cents. I want to see a burger beat that in price or quality", he adds. Joe also has a small garden of vegetables behind his house, where he plants lettuce, radish and many other natural ingredients for his salads.
Married and divorced after two years, Joe considers himself a lonely man, and for the moment, he is satisfied with it. "It's hard to have a relationship and live like this. It has to be a special type of girl. But sometimes it gets lonely, so I go to the bar".
Besides nature and hunting, the passion that drives Banjo Joe's life at this point is his band, called "The Whistle Pigs". Joe puts all his energy into the band, which has sold thousands of records in the past few months, along with t-shirts and stickers. "We're pretty famous around here", he says. Long term plans? Joe doesn't have any, as the title song of his new album declares. But as he says, "I don't need much, I can live without money as long as I don't need to spend it".