Peace Peddlers

This interview, which was edited for length and clarity, is the first in a three-part series on bike trip for peace that took place in 1982. Jonathan Vogel-Borne and Lauren Mari-Navarro also went on this trip and their interviews and perspectives will be shared in the next two issues of Western Friend.

Caitlin: What is your Quaker affiliation?

Paul: I grew up in Berkeley Meeting. When Strawberry Creek split off, I split with them. I traded my junior membership in Berkeley for an adult membership in Strawberry Creek. I returned six years ago after many years at Adelphi Meeting in Maryland. My Parents joined the Society of Friends a little after I was born in the early ‘60s. They were attracted to the social justice convictions and the lack of dogmatic expectations.

Caitlin: Can you tell me where and when the Peace Peddlers trip happened, what the goals were, and who was involved?

Paul: We were on the road from March until October of 1982. We left San Francisco in the drizzly mist and arrived in D.C. in the drizzly mist. It was a 6,000-mile loop; we zigzagged quite a bit. It took eight months, averaging about 200 miles a week.

By the time we left California for Arizona, we had our itinerary worked out. We stayed at Friends meetings or with peace groups. If we didn’t have a contact, I was designated to find a phone booth, look through the Yellow Pages, and find a church where we could stay on the basement floor.

Caitlin: I was wondering how you did that without cell phones.

Paul: It was a very different world. I got lost several times. We had paper maps, but I did not consult them often enough. I remember leaving towns and just heading east, thinking that was the way to the next town. It doesn’t always work out that way.

Caitlin: What were the goals other than traveling?

Paul: We were looking to talk to people about our hopes for peace and nuclear disarmament. It was a yeasty time for the peace movement because draft registration was reinstated in 1980. Reagan was putting up ballistic missiles in Europe and there were proxy wars in Central America.

Draft registration is what motivated me. I was born in 1960, so in 1980, I was in the first wave of people expected to register. It felt like the government was asking for a blank check to send me wherever they wanted, and I just couldn’t do it. I found myself to be a felon, which surprised me. At the time, I was a sophomore at Sarah Lawrence College. Because student loans were tied to draft registration, that money disappeared.

Caitlin: So, you were no longer able to pay your school fees?

Paul: Right. It was a private liberal arts college, and without loans, I couldn’t make it happen. I didn’t graduate until much later at a public university. One night in my dorm, I thought, “I will bicycle across the country.” It seemed like a way to reconcile why I was suddenly a criminal.

At a Young Friends New Year’s gathering, I announced I was thinking about a bicycle trip across the country and asked if anyone wanted to join. Four of the other five people who eventually went heard that announcement and said yes.

Caitlin: Since there was no active draft at the time, you weren’t consenting to the registration?

Paul: Exactly.

Caitlin: Did you feel spiritually led or supported by the Religious Society of Friends?

Paul: I don’t know if I would differentiate between getting an idea and a spiritual insight. The idea popped into my head and wouldn’t leave. It is amazing for a 22-year-old to have an idea and have it take place on such a big scale. My mother was protective and suggested an internship at the Friends Service Committee or FCNL instead. I had a vision of standing at a Xerox machine removing staples from paper and thought, “Mom, do you really think that’s going to interest me?”

The Society of Friends was very supportive. Most of us got letters of introduction from our Meetings and stayed in the houses of Friends. We raised the $10,000 we needed for the trip. We provided inspiration to people in small meetings in conservative parts of the country. It was an occasion for people to gather for potluck dinners and hear our story.

Caitlin: What was the outcome for you?

Paul: It gave me an outlandish confidence in my ability to make things happen, which has mostly served me well. Also, a sense that it’s possible to take a stand and find an avenue for publicizing it. We were a news story in a lot of small-town newspapers. We talked to many peace groups and school classes.

I remember one class in San Clemente where the teacher was a believer in the military. I wasn’t expecting it but she shredded our spiel. It was such a contrast to most places where we spoke. In many church basements, the pastor was sympathetic but the congregation was not. They were going out on a limb. Sometimes they said, “Come to my house, not the church.” We had very interesting late-night conversations with those pastors.

Caitlin: Do any of those conversations stick out?

Paul: Not the details, but my companion Jonathan could tell you every road we rode on. He once got invited onto the Air Force Base at Colorado Springs to speak to the chaplain.

Bicycles are an invitation to conversation. If you’re in a group of people on bikes with packs, people want to talk. At one point, I put a sign on the back of my bike that said “Disarm US, USSR,” People didn’t talk to me. They thought, “Oh, I know what he’s about.” I took it off after a week or so. I’d rather have the conversations.

Caitlin: You mentioned it gave you a boldness to make things happen. Was there any other influence?

Paul: Just the cumulative impact of hundreds of conversations and dozens of presentations. We had an unspoken agreement that we wouldn’t say the same thing if we were standing in front of a group together. There was a constant churn of how to talk about this stuff. It gave me a lot of confidence to talk to people. I’m an introvert, so this equipped me to step out.

Caitlin: It’s wild to hear about you using paper maps and trusting you’d find a place.

Paul: Finding a place was never really iffy. The thing I wonder about now is going across the middle of the country in the summer with only two water bottles. I just assumed I’d be able to fill my water bottle whenever I needed. That seems more of a leap than where we were going to sleep.

Caitlin: Did you go through the prairie?

Paul: We went from the Bay Area to San Diego, then into Arizona, New Mexico, and up to Colorado. From Denver, we went straight east across Kansas and up into Wisconsin. I was excited to see trees again after six weeks of no trees. Then through Chicago, into Ontario, to Boston, and down the East Coast to D.C.

I was nervous at the border crossing because there were posters asking if you had registered for the draft. It was a little scary