A Bus Called Peacemaker
In 1987, a young man named Daniel began to talk about the Grateful Dead scene and how he felt that there were many there who were searching for life. At first we didn’t know what to think about it. Most of us had come from different walks of life, although many of us in the Twelve Tribes communities were part of the ’60s peace movement and had at least a little familiarity with the Grateful Dead. But Daniel was very persistent in his desire to reach out to the Deadheads, so we took on Daniel’s faith.
We found a bus — well, actually two buses. We spent many long days and nights putting the top half of one bus on the bottom of the other, as well as finishing the inside to be a warm place of hospitality. We were so thankful to have a comfortable place for people to come and get to know us. We built a kitchen in the back to make cookies and tea for the new friends we would make.
Then we wrote articles, drew pictures for a special freepaper, and worked many days and nights putting the publication together and printing it. We were almost ready to go. But what would we do there? What would our Master Yahshua do there? Well, of course, He would go and serve — so that’s what we did!
We decided that we would send our first aid people and make ourselves available to those who needed emergency medical care. We also sent musicians, singers and dancers to give people a taste of the life we had together back at home. When everything was ready, we went out, full of excitement and hope. It wasn’t long before we understood Daniel’s heartfelt desire.
For nine years we went out on the Grateful Dead tours, mostly on the East Coast, with our maroon and cream double-decker bus — the Peacemaker. We provided free medical care for those who scraped their knees or stepped on broken glass. We helped people find their friends and were a refuge to those coming down from a bad trip. We sang songs and circle danced with many concertgoers. We laughed with them and cried with them. Many came home with us for a visit. Some fell in love and never left. Many promised to return someday. We never ceased praying for those we met and hoped they would find their way home. As it says on the back of our bus, “We know the way — we’ll bring you home.”
Called to be Peacemakers
The Grateful Dead’s performance in Pittsburgh, PA at the Civic Arena on April 3, 1989 sparked a riot by Deadheads, ultimately leading to the arrest of 500. The bus and members of the Twelve Tribes community were in attendance offering free medical care to the concertgoers. The crowd was rather unfriendly to the police who were trying to keep things under control. The tension rose until someone in the crowd threw a beer bottle at one of the officers, splitting his head open.
At that point the lieutenant and his riot team arrived. The scene was getting more tense and the lieutenant brought his megaphone over to one of the people from the Peacemaker bus and asked him to talk to the crowds to calm them down. Community member “Gladheart” (Dicky Cantrell) spoke up telling everyone to be “peacemakers.” While he was speaking, everyone from the bus came out and started playing music and dancing between the police and the angry crowds. Before long, most of the crowd was happily clapping to the beat and the chief of police and all the officers stood back in awe. The chief of police said truly “You are peacemakers!” and from that day on the name stuck with us.
A View from the Peacemaker
“The sun was setting as the concert began. Shrouded in darkness, the scene took on an ethereal quality. The wall-to-wall vendors on the back lot looked like a Turkish bazaar. Dust kicked up, dogs skipped along, drums beat, sufis danced. Dazed by a combination of the scene and our own altered states, we quickly sought solace inside a magnificent red-and-white-bus owned by the Yahshuas… who have steered towards spirituality over the years. A black man… told me how the Yahshuas help Deadheads in need. He spoke of Deadheads freaking out on acid, and how the Yahshuas were the only people there who knew how to handle such problems. I couldn’t get over the image of the Yahshuas spending hours picking glass out of Deadheads’ feet… Every ten minutes, the Yahshuas lead a circular, hand-holding dance that resembles the Jewish hora. In the group’s publication, someone wrote: “We have found the way. No, not LSD or even legalized pot. We have met the one who does make a difference. You can read about him in the Bible, yes, but we call him by his Hebrew name — Yahshua.” Interesting stuff, but we wanted to get their view on the scene we were watching through their bus window…”
—Steve Bloom, Deadheads, High Times magazine, June 1990.
Building the Peacemaker Bus
"You won't believe the great bus we've found!" This statement began a segment of my life that I had no way to see coming, but want to share with you now that it is well underway.
I had just finished working on a 45 foot sailboat in Nova Scotia. After two years of intensive labors with my brothers we had launched "Qesheth" (Hebrew for rainbow) and I was looking forward to some sea trials and a lot of catching up time with the family. But, two weeks before my sixth child was to be born I found myself sailing across the Gulf of Maine with several of my family members and personal possessions on a one way trip back to the States and my next project — to get this "great bus" drivable and ready to go "On Tour."
It didn't take long to discover that our great deal turned out to have a blown engine; only a little bit longer to find out that the trans and differential were in equally poor shape; and a little while longer to realize that cancer was eating up the metal framing. This caused me to give an autopsy report to my friends that our "great old bus" was never to ride again. In an effort to sum up the situation in one sentence, I said, "The only way to get this old bus on the road is to jack it up and slide a bus under it!" Our hopes of going to the Oregon Country Fair and maybe a little West coast touring the following July were quickly fading away with the passing days.
Ayal (a great mechanic and bloodhound when on the trail of a good deal) and I took our "engine" money and hit the road in search of a road-worthy ride with some character. Our first bus described above did have a lot of character but was a long way from being roadworthy. What we came up with after two days of searching the Northeast roast was the deal of the century — a Trailways bus that had been rebuilt and traded in for a new bus shortly after. It was a General Motors motor coach PD4106, with gleaming silver sides, a shiny white stripe and top, and a V-8 diesel. It had everything that we would ask for except — "character."
We were greeted upon arrival back home with two very differing opinions. Opinion 1: 'What a great bus! Now we can go anywhere and not worry about breakdowns." Opinion 2: "What an ugly bus! It's not us! We can't go anywhere in that bus." Both opinions were right on, but what to do about it?
There was not enough time to change anything, or even look for a different bus before the July 4th show at Foxboro in '87. Dylan and the Dead were going to be the introduction of the new bus to the parking lot scene and we weren't going to miss it for anything. We had made some friends with the fans and we wanted to be there with them, so our very middle class-looking Greyhound pulled int the lot "as is." We had a great time with pell pie that we'd seen at other shows and more that we were meeting every day. We played music and danced (in spite of the boulder collection they called a campsite) and tried to stay alive in the midst of an arsenal display that I'm sure rivals what went on in Baghdad. About 3 AM I discovered a great place to sleep in a bottle rocket attack - I crawled into the baggage compartment with a foam and dropped the metal doors down and slept like a babe in a cradle - safe from "whheeeeeeeeew BANG" (as my little boy describes it).
The tour went on without us. We had to get home and try to do something with our bus before the West coast trip later in the month. After some serious thought (and more serious discussion) we decided that we wouldn't take our "Gospel Quartet"- looking bus to the Country Fair. So after an intensive week, with several of U8 working long hours, we fixed up a school bus that would make the odyssey in reasonable reliability and comfort (if there is such a thing with eight adults and eleven children on a bus in a desert inJuly!). Through a tremendous display of love and unity, the Oregon trip was made with total spiritual harmony and only minor mechanical disharmony. Many new friends were found at the Country Fair and a two-month stay in the area made many more.
Meanwhile back at the pond (Island Pond that is), the opinion ping-pong was again going full steam ahead, and I was the ball. 'What a great reliable bus," "It's not us," "old bus has character... It's a hole to pour money into."
Let me explain a little about our life together. We live a life of love and unity. It's our love that causes us to lay down our lives for one another, even give up our opinions, and this is how we are able to have unity. We must be in unity or we don't have anything to talk to people about. What good is a bus at all if we aren't in total unity. That's why it was so strange that we were in disunity about the bus (of all the crazy things to be in disunity about); it was to be the very thing that could take us out to share our lives with people.
Faith is the basis of our love. We have experienced love, been touched by it, received it from others when we had almost given up on its existence, and this has caused us to have faith in a loving Creator. We have devoted our lives to come to know this "loving source" and through loving and being loved we have come to know some of His character.
Redeeming what is ready for the junk pile has been a lesson for us from the physical realm of what is going on in my friends and me spiritually. Again and again we have found ourSelves in the place of taking a house, a car, a boat, or even a school that was by all reasonable estimates 'beyond hope'; pouring in more materials, money, sweat, and love than anyone would think it was worth; and ending up with something that money can't touch. It's a labor of love that produces an example of redemption. For what purpose? So that we can see our Creator's love for us, and so that we can have hope in our restoration and redemption.
We had never had a bus before, but why would restoring it be any different? Of course! The bus should, of all things, be an example of redemption, of being saved from the scrap heap, of unity. It would be the very vehicle to take us far and wide to share the love that we had been touched with, to touch others, to freely give what had been given to us freely, to express why we are grateful! The reason why I had been in the middle, the 'ping-pong ball," was dawning on me. Reason was the reason! I have a reasoning side that needs whittling way down so that my underdeveloped faith can grow. My role in this bus episode was engineered for me by a loving Father to cause me to trust more and have faith.
My personal turmoil was becoming unbearable. My previous appraisal, which now seemed almost flippant, carne flooding back to me as I tearfully related my dilemma of being Mr. Pong to a friend. "The only way to get this old bus on the road is to jack it up and slide a bus under it!" "We can do it," I said "I hate the disunity I've caused (by rejecting the old bus as hopeless). We can jack up the old bus and slide the new bus under it! We'll have the character of the old 'caterpillar' and the reliability of the 'gospel quartet bus.'
A couple of months later the "cocoon" was prepared (a 100 year old barn was bisected to fit a bus) and the "caterpillar" went in for the metamorphosis. The next three months was a labor of self-sacrificing love by some truly spiritual men who spent 16 to 20 hours a day in a practically unheated barn in northern Vermont in January, February, and March. This left very little time for their families, very little time for sleep, and no time for themselves, which, truly, I cannot come close to describing here in a way that would give justice to what they were willing to do for the sake of their brothers and for the sake of those whom they hadn't even met. Those who would, through their efforts, experience the love that I described earlier. The truth is that they did it for you. Without knowing you, these men received faith that there were people whose lives were in great need, some in obvious need and others in less obvious need, but all equally in need of redemption, and restoration, and a place to experience love and express love.
They created a vehicle to demonstrate redemption in a physical way, to carry a demonstration of a life of love, and to bring a message of hope to you. If you receive this lifeline of hope, then come to the "Triple Decker Bus. It's in the parking lot. It's there for you. If I'm on it I'd love to tell you more about my life and hear all about yours. If I'm not on it there will be many others with open hearts and arms ready to share the love that they've been given, and ready to receive the love that you yearn to give. We'll bring you home.
P. S.: Peacemaker II
In 2005, for the second time we set out to merge two buses into one. Turning a 1955 GMC Scenicruiser and a 1949 General American Aerocoach into a modern day, fully functional motor home at first mention may not sound all that difficult. But if you cut the buses up into many pieces, extend the overall length to 42´6˝ long and 13´6˝ high that puts a little twist on things. Then throw in a Detroit series 60 engine and an automatic transmission from totally different vehicles. That’s enough to turn it into an epic 2½-year project. The 1955 Scenicruiser was cut in half horizontally right above the wheels using the chassis as the running part of the bus. The 1949 Aerocoach was mainly used for its shapely old architectural pieces. The split windshields, rounded corners and curved overhead windows are not found in modern style buses. So when you see this bus running down the road, it’s enough to make you turn your head and wonder at the care that obviously went into making it.
The Twelve Tribes communities have had a bus similar to this on the road since 1987. That bus, the original Peacemaker, is made up of a 1961 GMC motor coach and parts from a 1950 Aerocoach. It has been well over 500,000 miles since its conversion in 1987. It is now on its third paint job, third transmission, third engine and countless sets of tires. Even now, we are preparing to bring it back into our “bus barn” for a complete freshening.
When you step foot on the original Peacemaker bus, it is different from anything you have ever seen before. From the aromatic cedar that lines the ceiling and walls, to the warm rich leathers that add a pleasant touch here and there. Many specialty woods such as cherry, ash, black walnut, curly maple, and mahogany make it unique. The inside is much like a wooden sailing vessel, but with a cozy living room feel with high ceilings, long beautifully upholstered benches, and warm, rich, handmade stained glass copper lamps. This bus has been used as a means of transportation for large groups of community members. Over the years, it has also been seen at many concerts and other venues providing free medical care by Peacemaker Medical EMTs.
The Peacemaker II bus carries on the legacy of the original Peacemaker. Already, it has embarked on West Coast & East Coast tours and criss-crossed the country several times. If you see it parked somewhere, please come on board. As the sign says, “Welcome! Please Come In!”
