Free Martial Arts. A lot of people want something for nothing, and that ain’t good, but then, a lot of people want to be free, and that’s where the martial arts comes in. A study of an art like Karate, or Aikido, or some type of Kung fu, breeds the desire for freedom in the human spirit.
My first real glimmer of this came about when I taught a fellow from Eastern Europe. He came to America, I taught him Karate and other martial arts, and one day I asked him about life behind the Iron Curtain.
‘You can’t study Karate unless you are police, or son of politician.’
Really?
‘That’s why I come to United States! I want study Karate!’
That certainly blew Mrs’ Case’s son’s socks right off his little tootsies. Humbled me, it fair did.
My second brush up against this idea of the desire for freedom in the hearts and souls of men was not connected with the martial arts. I was doing some work for a gal, she had a slight accent, and I found out she was Cuban, and then she told me the story of her father.
He wanted freedom, so he took the inner tube from an airplane tire, which was a capital offense in Cuba at the time.
He then ripped a plank off a fence, packed a punch, and rowed ninety miles from Cuba to the US, just to be free.
She told me that midway to Florida he took a break, reached into his sack for a sandwich, chewed on it slowly and watched the sharks circling his inner tube.
Now he would have made a good Karate student!
The thing about freedom is that you are free to do what you want. Ignore the government, make a plan, and do what you want.
For instance, speaking of rowing from Cuba, I always wanted to make a car that could drive on water. A few of these contraptions have actually been made, and there have been plans published in such mags as Popular Mechanics and such, but I think about something easier to construct, easy enough for people to make with a few tools and a couple of days off.
I thought about a raft. You drive the car on, placing the rear tires between some rollers that are connected to the screw.
And, if you have to make a long voyage, say to Hawaii, you simply make a few inflatable canoes and fill them with gas and whatever supplies you need.
Anyway, that’s my cockamammie idea, and I don’t think it’s a bad one. Just hasn’t been done yet. Well, perhaps I should stick to my ‘free martial arts,’ eh?
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