No Money? Go Possum.

She was Thoreau in a peasant dress.

by Bruce Schimmel

In 1978, an 18-year-old woman, writing under a pseudonym, published Possum Living, an elegant memoir of her life as a suburban survivalist. Dolly Freed was hailed as a Henry David Thoreau in a peasant blouse. And then, suddenly, she and her book vanished.

The subtitle of Possum Living says it all: How to Live Well Without a Job and With (Almost) No Money. Dolly's tiny world revolved around a rundown home on a half-acre in a suburb north of Philly. She and her father thrived because they befriended their neighbors — and badgered those who thwarted them.

Now her cult of admiring bloggers can find out what happened to the pseudonymous, scary-smart girl. Dolly's practical guide to living on the cheap has finally been reprinted (Tin House, $12.95) with a new chapter about living like a possum today.

Dolly's story first caught fire as America responded to an earlier energy crisis. She and her underemployed electrical-engineer dad showed how to live nicely on about $1,500 a year — about $5,000 in today's dollars. No welfare, no food stamps. "More hillbilly than hippie," writes one admirer, "but in full possession of their teeth."

Dolly recently recalled in a rare interview that as a teenager, a 25-cent ice cream cone was a rare treat. But this frugal life also came with plenty of time to read, write and dream.

Pulled from school at 13, Dolly was trained by her dad to grow vegetables, raise chickens for eggs and rabbits for meat, and to make moonshine. And deliver the occasional threat when legal remedies weren't sufficient. Hence Dolly's pseudonym.

It's a pseudonym that stuck, even as Dolly garnered stories in the Inquirer and The New York Times; a nationwide talk show appearance on The Merv Griffin Show, and a documentary (viewable today on YouTube).

Dolly eventually aced her SATs, enrolled at Drexel and became an engineer for NASA — where she met her husband. Now the mother of two, she lives near Houston. In the ensuing years, her father became a full-time drunk; she disowned him when he pulled a gun on her husband-to-be. He later died in a car crash.

Today, the 50-year-old Dolly is an environmental educator and, to her neighbors' amusement, continues to live frugally. "Part possum," she says: no cable ("Television is a loud salesman in your living room"), owning older things (including video games "that are like 10 years old") and, until recently, dial-up Internet.

A few friends know her past, but she hopes to remain anonymous. But she's resurfacing, she says, because tough times call for possum living. But, she warns, one must be ready to pay the price: "You must be willing to be low-status. Just think about your priorities. Why do you think you care if you have matching towels?"

Above all, to survive in suburbia you must make friends of your neighbors. Because when you do bend the rules — as Dolly recently did in trying to raise chickens — friends don't dime you out.

"The most frugal thing you can do," says Dolly, "is to make peace with your neighbors. I think it's all about helping people when they need it." With soup for the sick, and time for other peoples' kids — just as neighbors cared for her growing up.

"Sure, people can be leeches," admits Dolly. "But when you recognize that, just deflect them."