CHAPTER 5. LIFE AT HARD LABOR—REFUSAL TO PAY INCOME TAX 75
monk myself. Two miles further along a dirt road I came to a parish church surrounded by trees. Going down a deep hollow I saw a fine stone building over the hill. I had lived in desert country but had never seen a mirage.
As I walked closer the building disappeared, for it was a mirage. It was much further on hidden in the blinding snow that I came upon the monastery. Brother Joachim, a native Irishman, red-bearded and smiling, greeted me. Supper was ready, and he personally served me and two other guests. The Trappists do not eat meat or eggs but serve them to guests. Their vegetarianism is practiced as a penance, and not because of any especial regard for animals or health. Several other visitors were at the table, none of whom agreed with the Christian anarchist ideas of the CW. The brothers thought that the lesser of two evils should be taken instead of the ultimate good but they were not unduly insistent on the matter. Soon I met Brother Edmund, a graduate of the agricultural college at Las Cruces, N.M. After supper I attended Benediction. We all retired early, as the brothers get up at 2.00 a.m. and pray until breakfast at 8.00 and then are assigned their labor on the farm. After breakfast I attended high mass in the beautiful chapel. Visitors are partitioned off by locked gates from the brothers. Those in the choir put on white robes instead of the brown habit. They have a vow of silence. They sleep in one room somewhat like voting booths with canvas partitions. They sleep with their robes on. There were 57 monks at the time I was there. In 1849 Bishop Loras of Dubuque offered the brothers 500 acres of land and the monastery was founded that year. The present Abbot is Alfred Beston. I left at 2.00 p.m. the next day. Brother Joachim accompanied me for a few steps outside in the bitter cold and wished me peace and God-speed on my journey. In this world of speed and strife, of atomic bombs and commercial fraud, it was refreshing to rest in the quiet of this peaceful monastery.
That evening it was terribly cold. One man gave me a ride who was a captain in the air force in World War I. As airplanes went overhead he cursed and said he would never ride in one again; it was all he could do to drive a car; he had a farm and did not want to get far from the land.
I saw the red lights of a radio station ahead and it seemed that I never got any closer as I walked and walked. Finally I came to a filling station and learned that there was but one restaurant in the town half a mile away. I entered, wearily dropped my pack by the stove, and ordered bean soup—double order. A sturdy youth picked up my pack and asked if I carried this on bean soup. "Seems as if I have to, as there is not much left for a vegetarian to eat." Just then the village butcher came in and the youth said: "Mike, if everyone was like this fellow you would have no job." "What you mean, no job?" asked Mike. The youth nodded to me and I explained that I had walked 18 miles and was not extra-tired; that I did not eat meat because I did not like to kill animals and did not want anyone to kill them for me. But I was not in town long enough to hurt his business. Mike was a simple minded fellow from the old country and took all this very seriously, so he answered: "Every day I kill cow and pig; people ask me to kill mad dog and their too many cats, but I never kill one sheep for he look me in the eye and I cannot do it. Someone else has to kill the sheep."
