#title Good-bye, IRS
#subtitle It’s Back To The Land, Via Kayak, To Escape Repressive Taxation
#authors Stewart Hedger
#date August 26, 1975
#source The Journal-Press (Aurora, Indiana), August 26, 1975, A Longer Look, page 11. <[[https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-journal-press/189119387/][www.newspapers.com]]>
#lang en
#pubdate 2026-01-17T10:25:48
#author Stewart Hedger<br>Managing Editor
#topics hermits,

A crusade passed Dearborn County this week; a one-man crusade propelled by a double-bladed kayak paddle.

Raoul DeGruchy, a 50-year-old French Canadian from Rochester, N.Y., has quit the rat race and an 80-hour work week, bid the inequities of the U.S. tax system adieu, and is headed back to the land.

He’s going to fulfill a dream of many years and live like a hermit, leaving behind a government which threatened to sieze his salary for back taxes, and is heading for the Gunters Mountains wilderness region of Alabama 80 miles north of Birmingham.

The government has forced his hand, but he’s making his dream come true in a 50-pound kayak, traveling from Rochester up the Genesee River, portaging overland to the Allegheny, then to Pittsburgh to hit the Ohio, and on to Paducah to hit the Tennessee and then up to Guntersville, Ala.

It’s a trip and existence DeGruchy has planned for 16 years, but it comes two or three years ahead of his personal schedule due to his rejection of what he believes to be the repressive policies of the U.S. tax structure.

He believes that tax structure penalizes a man willing to work his hardest and unwilling to accept government handouts. He’s not alone in that belief, but still tax propagates tax, handout propagates handout.

Thus, DeGruchy’s Crusade. His dream trip has taken on the added importance of spreading the word, telling as many people as possible along the way of his battle with the IRS, hoping enough people will take heed to correct the inequities before it’s too late.

After his 68<sup>th</sup> day in the water, DeGruchy camped his crusade at the foot of Lawrenceburg levee Thursday night, Aug. 14, did his grocery shopping and told his story to Lawrenceburg patrolmen Chuck Evans and Charles Ashley, Larry Damon of Dillsboro, and this reporter.

He tells of 16 years working an 80-hour week-holding down two full-time jobs associated with the huge Eastman-Kodak corporate complex of photographic industries and businesses around which Rochester has grown-and been controlled by.

It was a modest living (about $11,000 annually) and the DeGruchys and their four dependent children, aided by Mrs. DeGruchy who had to hold down a full-time third job herself, were able to save enough to pay off their dream house--they thought.

The troubles began shortly after their marriage. True to the American dream, they wanted a nice, modern home for raising a family. DeGruchy, a skilled carpenter, decided to build his own.

“It’s the spirit of pioneer America that opened up the country,” DeGruchy explains. “It’s typically American to build a home to raise your family. It’s fundamental.”

He did just that, although it took years to finish the home. He did all the work except for the electric, plumbing, and heating; building codes prevented his attempting those tasks.

He gathered fieldstone from a farm field since vanished to make way for a shopping mall. He split some, polished them, and made a beautiful fireplace.

Before starting he had drawn up the plans himself and taken them to town offices to determine the maximum tax assessment he could handle.

He decided he could swing the figure they quoted, so he went ahead and built. When they finally moved it they discovered the property taxes would be half again as much as they had been told by the bureaucrats—and still going up.

It became apparent all too quickly the DeGruchys could not afford their dream home. It had to go in favor of something smaller and more affordable. It wasn’t what they wanted; it was what they had to settle for.

DeGruchy quit carpentry in favor of the two photographic jobs that would afford him a higher income. He worked 40 hours a week for Carhart Photo, Inc., as a photographic laboratory technician, and another 40 hours for Fotomat Corp, as a delivery man.

Eventually the children grew up and the number of dependents DeGruchy could claim on his tax return dwindled.

In 1973, still working the two jobs, DeGruchy filed his tax return as usual with the number of dependents to which he thought himself entitled. His wife, due to the complicated IRS tax structure, had to file a separate return.

Then the IRS man called and told DeGruchy to trot on down to see him. The message: Mr. DeGruchy, you are working two jobs. You can claim only this dependent, only that deduction, on only one of the jobs—not on both. You owe Uncle another 600 smackers.

Pride goest before a fall—but it doesn’t goest before Raoul DeGruchy will fork over what he believes is an unfair penalty on a man living by the sweat of his brow; qualified for, but too proud to accept food stamps and other government handouts.

Raoul DeGruchy refused to pay the $600. The IRS started tacking on penalties and now wants $900 for 1973 alone. They told DeGruchy they were going to his two employers and attach his salary to get the government’s cut of his earnings.

After consulting with an attorney over the legalities—but primarily guided by his own pride and conscience-he decided what he had to do:

—He gave his two employers 10 days notice. The IRS wasn’t about to attach his hard-earned salaries.

—He liquidated all his assets and divided that money, plus all his savings, among his children, retaining the provision he could draw on that money until he could make a go of it hermiting in Alabama. The IRS wasn’t about to sieze his assets.

—He legally separated from his wife a week before he left Rochester and signed over his house to her and left his life insurance policy in her name. She also recently came into a large family inheritance. The IRS wasn’t about to touch any of it.

(He explains he and his wife had been incompatible for 10 to 15 years but had stayed together until the children were grown. They’re Roman Catholic so they can’t get a divorce.)

—He hopped into his one-man kayak with a 250-pound load and, with just $3 or $4 in his pocket, headed for Guntersville-a place he has never seen and chosen as a destination because “that’s where the waters take me.”

It was almost 25 years to the day since his marriage that he paddled out of his wife’s life, embarking from a boat livery in Genesse Valley Park with only his wife and children and a few Boy Scouts (he was a scoutmaster) to bid him farewell.

He hopes to settle on a remote site of one to 10 acres somewhere along a waterway, build what be tells everyone will be “just a shack” but which could be either a cabin or A-frame, and spend the rest of his life as a hermit—free of his tormentors at the IRS and the moral tone of his country.

“I went though a lot,” DeGruchy said at his campsite below the levee. “I’ve got a lot of pride—too much to take food stamp handouts—and I wasn’t going to let them do that to me.

“It was unfair for me to work two jobs and get only five or six hours sleep at night and then have them want another WOO. I dozed around too much on weekends. I wasn’t fair to a working man who’d raised his family.

“The thing that finally really turned me off was the Watergate thing. Why should Richard Nixon, the President, pay less tax than I did? If my own President doesn’t pay that kind of tax, why should a little fellow like me?

“But, I have no bitterness in me, it’s just something I have to do...but I am carrying my crusade. I want my case brought to the attention of the people in this country and create concern in enough of them to have an unfair law repealed.

“So far the response of the people along the way has been very, very warm, but if I’m to be successful it’s you people who are going to have to tell my story,” DeGruchy explained, pointing a finger of appeal to indicate be was referring to this reporter and his ilk.

So you want us to be your propaganda ministers?

“Why not? You print stories on all the new taxes and tell the people about the new IRS and government laws. Isn’t turnabout fair play? Tell the little man’s side of it.”

Alright, Mr. DeGruchy, you’ve got an interesting story. People will read it. We’ll be glad to tell it like it is, but we’ll let the chips fall where they may. Just you’d better be careful how many people you talk to about this.

You’re too good a propagandist yourself. You’re just too persuasive in your argument. If you talk to too many people you’ll have half the country down there on the Tennessee River wanting to live next door to you.

“That’s fine. Let ‘em come. I’ll be happy to have them. I’m pretty much of a loner and I’m going to live like a hermit, but I’m not a recluse. I like people and as long as they leave me enough elbow room I’ll be glad to have them as neighbors.”

This lone crusader left Rochester on May 17 and except for about 324 miles he had to pull his 300-pound load on wheels up and over a few mountain portages he has come 753 miles by water.

Why Alabama? That’s the closest southern state to which the waters will take him. He’s decided to stay away from Mississippi—“I’ve beard too much about that place.”

It has been an inexpensive trip; so far he’s spent only $117 on food, most of it health foods and vegetarian fare. He brought along fishing gear but didn’t use

,it and thus left it with his parents in Akron, Ohio, on a brief side trip off the trek down the Ohio User.

“I’ve got no fixed schedule,” DeGru-chy smiles through a beard. “I expect to get there by the last of October to start looking for a place to buy. Hopefully, some farmer will have a little treat he’ll be willing to part with.”

He’s taking along a single trap which he’ll use to supplement at least part of his diet and provide enough furs for bartering to provide a small income. Maybe, he’ll have to get part-time Job with a farmer.

“I’m not running off to hide from the IRS,” he adds. “My family knows where I am. I told the IRS what I was doing. And, I’m getting plenty of publicity in the newspaper along the way so they can’t say I’m hiding. If they want me they won’t have trouble finding me.”

He’s had one accident along the way, flipping in a western New York stream log jam, losing his billfold and some few other possessions in a tangle of brush in the process.

He suffered only slight abrasions to an ankle he originally injured during World War II which brings him a small but regular disability payment.

He served with the U.S. Army armored field artillery during the “big war” and was with General Douglas McArthur’s troops when McArthur fulfilled his pledge “to return” and landed in Leyte Gulf in the Philippines.

Those disability payments will also help provide his subsistence in Alabama where be plans to get a goat (no cows, please) for milk and a couple of chickens to suppliment the meat he hopes to get through trapping.

“I expect to live comfortably,” he says as be casts a long look down the Ohio as if to contemplate some far off destiny. “I’m seeking only peace and tranquility. I’m over half way and I’m making better time than I thought I would:”

He expects to live out the rest of his life as a hermit, never owning another automobile or luxury of any sort, having nothing more to do with money. The serenity of nature will replace a life of quiet desperation.

“Any system that will not pay a hard-working man enough money from one job to raise a family is fundamentally unsound,” he says. “I had to work two jobs and my wife another. You can tax the spirit out of a man. I decided to get out of the rat race and become a hermit.

“Hoboism used to be popular in this country before welfare and food stamps. There is something vastly more dignified about being a hobo than living on a welfare check.”

His hoboism will be aided by his scouting lessons. He was in scouting as a youngster and continued as a scout leader, preparing himself for living off the land as hobo and homesteader.

For years be thus prepared himself through weekend camping, learning about wild foods and medicines, map reading, and boating. He chose his kayak for the journey rather than the canoe he would have used if his son had joined him on the journey.

“My son would have come along on my trip if it had been for, say a week or two,” DeGruchy tells of his journey alone. “He couldn’t see spending five months on the water. He’ll be down to see me, though, and maybe help me with my ‘Shack’.”

The gentle man from New Brunswick, Canada, before moving to the US. when he was about a year old, laughs when be tells of his journey, “I’ve bad myself a ball. I’ve had no problems so far from anybody and I don’t anticipate any.

“The response of the people has been very, very warm, and the further south I get the more friendly the people get—I guess it’s that southern hospitality.”

He has had many fanners and others meeting him on the trip who have read press association news articles about him, his tax troubles and exodus. They repeatedly voice sympathy to his cause.

“They see me and say come on in and talk with them,” he smiles in treasuring those associations. “Some even invite me to eat with them. One farmer saw me out in the middle of the river and waved me in. He’d read about me and wanted to talk to me.”

The man also invited DeGruchy to spend the night and share a couple of meals with him. He also wanted to give DeGruchy some money but the hermit-to -be refused because he says he doesn’t need money.

“Once I get settled I don’t want anything more to do with money. What do I need with money?” ask DeGruchy. “If I need money all I have to do is call my children.

“I check in with them every other day by telephone. I only intend to spend about six hours a day in the water and I don’t usually get started until 10 o’clock in the morning. If I need money, I’ll call them and get it. They can have what’s left over when I’m settled.”

So it’s bound for Alabama with a kayak paddle on his knee for Raoul DeGruchy—free spirit, loner, hobo, would-be hermit, and, according to the IRS, tax evader.

He has stopped his own work-a-day world and gotten off, looking for a new Walden’s Pond in the undeveloped hinterland in the Alabama wilderness highlands. He may go hungry but he’ll have peace of mind.

In excellent health (he seldom missed a day’s work in all those years), he leaves behind those 16-bour days and five-to-six-hour sleeps at night, working alongside his wife but never able to get out of the hole financially.

And, at 10 a.m. Friday, Aug. 15, he shoves his kayak out from Lawrenceburg levee and paddles under bellowing gray emissions from IAM smokestacks, symbols of the society he has abandoned, and heads downstream.

He’s a small, bespectaled bearded, balding man of 50, clad only in shorts and a crash helmet, a suntan spreading from his shining dome down to the tops of his sneaker-clad feet, but the strokes are strong and regular.

With a final flash of sunlight off his wet paddle, he disappears beyond the point and heads toward a personal utopian dream somewhere in the wilderness.

[[s-h-stewart-hedger-good-bye-irs-2.jpg][RAOUL DEGRUCHY LOADS KAYAK BEFORE DEPARTING LAWRENCEBURG<br>...With $3 Or $4 in His Pocket And 50 Pounds of Equipment<br>STAFF [Hedger] PHOTO]]

[[s-h-stewart-hedger-good-bye-irs-1.jpg][TRAVELING LIGHT’S A MUST WITH A KAYAK<br>...Heading For A Nirvana In The Wilderness<br>STAFF [Hedger] PHOTO]]

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