Word: portlanders
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...elders claim no special credit for the dowsing revival. Nor do they cite a renaissance of American gullibility. Their official explanation: dowsers came in demand again with the exodus to the suburbs after World War II and the need for more drinking water. Commenting on skeptics, Norman Leighton, of Portland, Me. says: "If thickheaded clods would rather have laughter than water, it's all right with...
...gnarled, 89-year-old man with a face like Robert Frost's, Gordon MacLean of South Portland, Me., looks exactly like what he is, one of the country's foremost practitioners of an ancient and mysterious art that science sneers at and country people swear by. He is a dowser. As people all over the back hills of Vermont will tell you, dowsers can find water in the ground when almost no one else can-literally at the drop of a forked branch or the twist of a metal rod. No one knows how dowsing works, if indeed...
...conformist University of the Trees, the skeptic is flattered to learn that he has a yellow aura - "a sign of intellect." A friend is told that she has a pinkish glow, which means that she loves people. Archetypal Dowser MacLean, who still works as a chemical engineer in Portland, claims he can divine the arrival of oil tankers even when they are still far beyond the horizon. He adds: "Doesn't make any difference how far the object is if you have the power." California Dowser Jack Livingston professes to have spotted water as far as a continent away...
...back on the road, went all the way to Portland that night, slept in the Greyhound station and next morning got on the eastbound bus and didn't get off until I had reached St. Louis two and a half days later, having seen the Rockies and Salt Lake City and the Great Plains as one great blur en route. Thanks to a friend in St. Louis, I had a nice warm bed and some home cooking again. I gave up all pretense to membership in the great club of hippies, freaks, road people and adventures. Six days, four friends...
...Portland...