In Illinois: Festival of the Fed-Up

By Donald Morrison

Dennis Barrett, in camouflage fatigues and walrus mustache, is telling about the first man he killed. "He was running toward me and I got him with 18 bullets right in the chest, brrrrrrrt! So I go over to where he went down, and he's not there. I finally find his body 50 ft. away. Now it seems medically impossible he could have crawled that far with his heart and lungs tore clean out like that. But one thing you have to learn is that people don't die the way they do in John Wayne movies. It's disheartening."

Barrett, now 30 and a policeman, learned that lesson a decade ago in Viet Nam. This morning he is passing it on to about 50 men and women assembled in a rude, tin-roofed shed behind a convincing replica of George Washington's Mount Vernon home, only 20% larger. Barrett is ripe with other combat wisdom: "If you bring [an enemy] down, don't run up to him so he can shoot you back. Give him time to die ... When things break down there's going to be an initial surge of people from the cities. They'll kill you for a can of sardines ... You should band together with a few other families, because you're going to need all the firepower you can get. If you have a nine-or ten-year-old kid, teach him how to shoot ... Get yourself a good guard dog. And if worse comes to worst and you run out of food, you can eat him."

Barrett is teaching a class in "Special Weapons and Tactics," one of the several dozen survival-related courses offered at this fall's Freedom Festival. The weekend gathering is sponsored by the Christian-Patriots Defense League at its 55-acre headquarters on the outskirts of rural Louisville, Ill. (pop. 1,000), four hours and a million rows of corn south of Chicago. The festival has drawn 1,500 men, wom en and children from as far away as Mexico and Oregon. Clad in overalls, pedal pushers, business suits and military uniforms, they seem to represent every age group, income bracket, occupation--but only one race. "You're welcome to join us, as long as you're white," John R. Harrell, founder of the league, said over the phone a few days earlier. "We work with all races, but we don't believe in mixing them. We feel that almost 50% of the world's problems are caused by the mixing of races, which we believe to be totally against the natural makeup of man.

This is a Caucasian meeting only. We'll get together with other races elsewhere."

Harrell, 57, is a white-haired former millionaire (mausoleums, real estate) with a radio preacher's voice and the affable manner of a small-town politician. He founded the league's progenitor, the Christian Conservative Churches of America, two decades ago, between a bout with lymph cancer (he won) and his 1960 campaign to be one of Illinois' U.S. Senators (he lost). Shortly after he built this ersatz Mount Vernon--as a tribute to his beloved George Washington and a home for his family of nine--federal agents battered down the gate with an armored personnel carrier, and arrested him for harboring an alleged Marine deserter.

Harrell spent four years in prison, was cited for failing to file income tax returns since 1953 and says he still owes the Government more than $500,000.

The league's 25,000 members are aggressively Christian, patriotic, mad as hell and resolved not to take it any more. The nation is on the Interstate to ruin, they feel. And, well, who doesn't these days, what with Soviet troops off the shores of Key West, the dollar sinking like the Lusitania, drug pushers in the schools, homosexuals in the pulpit, bureaucrats in just about everything, and goodness and patriotism generally on the run. Yet Harrell's Louisville pilgrims have converted these common gripes into obsessions.

America is not just heading down the primrose path to perdition, they fear; it is already there. "We're going to have a full-scale revolution," says Harrell, his voice rising. "We've got half the world's wealth, and the rest of 'em are coming to take it from us. The black man's angry, the yellow man's angry. Everybody's angry but the white man, and he's asleep.

We've had it too good for too long. We're soft and we're weak. We're going to be chastised. We're going to be invaded and lose two-thirds of our territory, half our population. We're going to see blood and guts strewn all over this country. We'll be lucky if we have two more years."

The beginning of the end may start as a Communist invasion, a collapse of the debased dollar, revolt in the inner city, a fuel shortage or a famine. These folks aim to be ready. They are buying country retreats, stocking them with food and ammunition--and elevating the study of survival to a high art. The weekend festival is a kind of Woodstock for the Armageddon set. In "Emergency Tools and Weapons," Charles Kehrberg of Hillsdale, Mich., explains how to fumigate stored food grains (add dry ice). In "Food: Preparation, Production, Preservation," Ruth Anthony of Kansas City, Kans., talks about subsisting on wild plants (eat only the tender inner leaves of dandelions, the leafy tips of purslane). In "Guns and Reloading," Curt Putnam of Kansas City, Mo., demonstrates the best way of refilling shotgun shell casings.

The students take notes and volunteer hints of their own. ("I use distilled water for drinking; it stores longer"; "We plan to evacuate as a group in our mobile homes, and pull them into a circle for a wagon-train effect.") Jim Miller, 33, an auto service department manager from Boles, Ky., came for the food preservation and weapons courses. He now resolves to do more home canning, and to teach his ten-year-old son how to handle a gun. "He likes the idea, but his mother doesn't," says Miller. Charles Harrison, 31, a scholarly-looking accountant, says that the religious and racial rhetoric at the festival left him cold. But he adds that he and eight other families have bought a farm 150 miles from his St. Louis home, and plan to hole up there after the cataclysm. Says he: "One reason I'm here is to make contacts, build a network of people in Missouri who have a particular skill or some tools so we can barter with them when the money system collapses."

Until then there are still a few debased dollars to be made. Among the preparedness-minded entrepreneurs on hand is Dennis Anderson of Chicago, who represents Long-Life Foods' line of dehydrated applesauce granules and powdered peanut butter. "I don't own any guns and hand grenades, but I believe in having a year's supply of food." Jack Elkins, a nuclear-weapons physicist from Oak Ridge, Term., got so fired up at the June festival that he went home and invented a home oil refinery. It is about the size of a 55-gal. oil drum and, he says, can refine crude oil into gasoline and home heating oil at the rate of 12 gal. of each a day. The cost is slightly higher than retail: "This is not something you'll use to save money, but in an OPEC emergency it's ideal." He offers to custom-build the refineries for about $1,500 (you supply the power source).

The weekend combines politics with survival. Participants work out a 16-point "platform to revitalize America." Among the proposals: U.S. withdrawal from the United Nations, an end to all foreign aid, repudiation of the national debt, abolition of the Federal Reserve System, and repeal of federal and state income tax laws. The delegates listen to a parade of speakers decry Communism, Zionism, U.S. foreign policy, Big Government, and politicians who ignore their constituents.

"Surround these officials," advises Colo nel B.F.M. von Stahl, U.S. Army (ret.).

"Walk in with four or five people and say, 'Are you going to do what the people want or do we have to tip over your desk?' " While Von Stahl explains how to bring treason charges against a Communist-loving official, Courtney Smith, a representative of the conservative Liberty Lobby, sums up the mood of the participants. "They're really mad. I've heard people here actually talk about killing these so-called politicians. They figure they're traitors. Have not the Russians said they will bury us? And yet our Congressmen and Senators vote to aid and abet them. That's treason. They should be hanged-- slowly."

Instructors in fatigues and mufti are still lecturing on the fine points of treason, gun handling and dandelion cook ery. Off to the side, a group of apple-cheeked, grade-school-age girls in ging ham dresses, children of members of the audience, are sitting on swings, singing chorus after chorus of Jesus Loves Me.

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