The Unwanted

Carmel, a little world of its own on California's Monterey Peninsula where artists, the indolent wealthy and year-round vacationers rub elbows, is well used to strange characters. But it discovered a new kind in 60-year-old Norman Duxbury, caretaker of the city's outdoor Forest Theater. Like all the other city employees, Duxbury signed the state's new non-Communist oath. Then, after the city clerk looked up his voting record, Duxbury admitted that he had been a Communist all along.

Two of the city councilmen wanted to fire him at once, but Duxbury was not a dangerous Communist, he calmly explained--merely a Communist in his own little way. He didn't belong to the party ("They won't take me in") and didn't want to overthrow the Government ("It will collapse from its own rottenness"); he had merely registered to vote as a Communist.

"Oh," said one citizen, "he's just another squirrel in the Forest Theater. Why don't they leave him alone?" That is what the council decided last week to do. "Why," said the mayor's wife in retrospect, "Duxbury was just one of those harmless souls who's neither a Democrat nor a Republican."

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