Pete Wagner

A hermit is a person who lives in seclusion from society. I met my first hermit at a very young age. Here’s the story.

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Pete Wagner

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When I was 8 years old living on 3rd Street in Phillips, Texas, I would often see this old guy walking by our house with a full beard and he always looked dirty and had dirty clothes on. He wore one of those English cabbie hats.  After an hour or so, I would see him going back the other way carrying groceries and a jug of water. I asked my Mom who that guy was and she told me that he was Pete Wagner and he was a hermit. I asked her where he lived and she told me he lived in a cave he dug about a mile from our house on Dixon Creek Hill. That afternoon, I walked over in the direction she told he lived and I saw him sitting by a camp fire in a lawn chair having something to eat reading a newspaper. After a while he disappeared into the ground and was gone. I wondered where he went to take a crap, then I saw a clump of bushes not too far from his cave and I guessed that must be the place. Over the next couple of years, I saw old Pete a lot and heard a lot of rumors that Pete had a lot of money buried in or around his cave.

This photo represents how my old brain pictures Pete Wagner from that time in 1951. I often wondered what drives a person to live in seclusion like he did.

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One day someone told me that Pete Wagner had died and I headed over towards his cave to see what was going on. There were about 30 people with shovels digging up the area looking for the money that they thought he had buried. It turned out he had several rooms in his underground home. I don’t think he ever really had any money.

One thing old Pete did teach me was that it is possible to live on a Social Security check alone. All you need is a post office box, a shovel, a few blankets or a bedroll, two good legs, some public land, and a strong desire to survive.

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Thanks for reading Pete Wagner,
Bill