The Last Word

...While the rest of society was in revolution, they formed a gospel quartet, Viv and Glenda in beehive hairdos, the men wearing the kind of polyester suits seen today only on small town potato-chip salesmen...

...Another time, they sang at a Michael Wilkerson Is a visiting writer at the University of Wisconsin...

...I'd say, 'Man, half the reason you're in this joint is because this country wastes so much of its money on war...

...His son Dietrich had been badly hurt in a car accident, he said...

...Now it's all come full circle: My brother works an insane number of hours a week for a huge advertising agency in Chicago, and I'm teaching primarily children of the affluent how to write essays and short stories, Pm constantly amazed at how much money it takes to maintain my not-too-extravagant life in the city, while the Breedens-get by some years on $6,000—with only one of the four adults working at a paying job...

...The first time I visited, I was greeted by a large rooster, two dogs, and about a dozen cats, some of which slept on my head that night in the "guest room," which turned out to be the barn loft...

...They played nuclear bluegrass gospel, utilizing the kinds of harmonies never transmitted on MTV or even on the Nashville Network...

...But the Breedens are different: They're the most committed peace activists I've ever met...

...They manage an enormous garden, canning as many as 150 quarts of tomatoes in a day...

...Once they were featured in the newspaper for conducting a vigil at Crane Naval Base, where they gave out disarmament literature and surplus zucchini from their garden...

...THE LAST WORD r Michael Wilkerson Nuclear Bluegrass When I firsi met Darrell, Vivian, Bill, and Glenda Breeden, I thought they were the kind of country people who always sat in the back rows of my classes in high school, who never even thought about college, who spent most of their spare time fixing old cars and going to Future Homemakers of America meetings...

...Bill called, passing through Wisconsin on a truck-driving run...

...Just when I was beginning to wonder whether the peace movement was nothing but a collection of ultra-educated academic types like myself, along came the Breedens, orchestrating a dramatic eight-day march that connected Moscow and Washington—that is, Moscow, Indiana, and Washington, Indiana...

...They had their period of conformity and conservatism, back in the late 1960s, but now they are traveling a more difficult, more rewarding route, V...

...We hear you.*" The Breedens live on a small farm, thirty miles out of town, which they occupy rent-free in exchange for maintenance and improvements...

...I thought of how we had all lived in Terre Haute at the same time...

...1 told them I thought we were all in there for basically the same reason, and they said...

...I keep thinking there's some kind of mistake down at the office," he told them...

...The Government's just starving you.' And I guess they might have beaten up somebody who didn't talk about both peace and justice...

...Coming from southern Indiana and growing up in a rural area south of Terre Haute, I'd met hundreds of these people: they're my cousins and uncles and aunts...

...They don't have enough time for all the peace work they want to do...

...He"d never disconnected an occupied house...

...Usually there's no medical insurance...

...On one of my visits, Viv got out some old photo albums that took the Breedens back a decade and more...

...not "Amen," transforming the staid, citified mumble into seven or eight syllables of unmitigated ecstasy...

...We decided we'd just talk to these folks in prison," Bill recalls...

...That's all that matters...

...The utility man couldn't believe they wanted the electricity off...

...But their lives are not without struggle...

...His voice sounded heavy and strained, the usual serenity missing...

...He told of their most recent arrest—for singing and praying in the Capitol rotunda...

...The strangeness was enhanced by the candles and the kerosene lamps...

...We're going to have to fill the jails," Bill said at one point, sounding completely enthralled at the idea...

...Too much energy has to go into survival, Glenda complained recently...

...When the two groups of marchers joined in Blooming-ton, the Breedens listened to the speech-making of a few peace movement leaders and then took the stage—armed with guitars, tambourines, and a string bass Viv plucked and thumped like a gut-bucket...

...The Breedens were invoking that same ecstasy, using music to show that peace work—difficult and frustrating as it can be— has a humorous side and a spiritual underpinning that goes far beyond counting warheads, lobbying Congress, and signing petitions...

...Their lyrics ranged from catchy meditations on power ("White men...

...While I was buying my first Peter Max poster, they plodded on in their predictable Hoosier lives, impervious to the trends of the time...

...The day they had the utility company out to disconnect the electricity, they threw a huge party, inviting their pre-peace-movement motorcycle friends, neighbors, and activists from Bloomington...

...A few more orders trickled in for copies of their nuclear gospel cassette, but not enough for another production...

...rich men, sitting in their ivory towers") to leftism with a nutly face ("I'd rather be shoveling shit on the farm than shoveling shit in the White House...

...But there wasn't, and the champagne came out when the lights died...

...The family vehicles are old and unreliable...

...The trip would be his last for a while: his boss was threatening to fire him because of his long hair...

...The kids go without new clothes and are taught at home by whoever's not working...

...monthly meeting of the Freeze group and interspersed stories of their travels with their songs...

...Cop comes up to us and says, 'What are you boys doing?' We're just praying, officer, I said, and he says, LWell, I'm gonna have to run you in.' " The Breedens didn't have the $100 to pay their fine, and they declined a friend's offer to give them the money...

...A few weeks ago...

...Madison...

...Apparently, Reagan wants kids to pray in school, but it's illegal to pray for peace in the Capitol," he said...

...It was the sort of music that's usually heard in crackerbox churches with gold spangles on the ceiling, where the worshipers constantly holler "A-aa-yaa-uh-aa-men...

...It's important to me, and to a lot of people who know them, that the Breedens continue to make it...

...While they were traveling the church circuit, preaching and singing for Jesus, my older brother and I were first experimenting with long hair, Jimi Hendrix albums, and black lights...

...He sighed and said, "I don't know what's going to happen to us, but all Pm sure of is that we'll be free...