A family of five was living off-grid in a remote cabin in central Italy. Then the courts intervened CNN

[hunter]

10. I have to kick this because sometimes my parents were similar lunatics.

When I was a kid my parents, both artists, decided to move to Franco's Spain, mind you for no other reason then that they were artists. My dad liked Picasso, and my dad's mom had a Spanish Literature degree, spoke Spanish (a little too much of the Mexican sort) and wished she could travel to Spain herself. It was all very romantic. His dad was similarly enthralled and may have had some connection with Spain in the Second World War, channeling Nazi technology to the U.S.A.. He definitely had connections in Italy.

So there we were in Spain, and Franco's guys were, of course, watching us. Pompous men in uniform would stop by to chat. Unfortunately my mom was the sort of person who would always say whatever the hell she was thinking.

One night, after a somewhat uncomfortable encounter with one of these guys, my dad couldn't sleep, so we packed all our stuff in our Volkswagen van and took the back roads to France. Unfortunately my parent's money was in Spain.

We were living as indigent Americans in a French public park, people were giving us food, but they were very uncomfortable. So they gave my parents money for a full tank of gas and a car ferry ticket to Southampton, England.

In England my dad went to a Barclay's bank and they allowed him to open a checking account with an overdraft limit of, I think it was a hundred pounds, which was a lot of money then, and they got his money out of Spain a week or two later.

Thank goodness my parents never poisoned us with mushrooms and don't even ask me about what I think of hard-core rural living.

This is the twenty-first century. Everyone should have nice toilets, electric lights, and hot showers.