Abandoned roads - Jos Lammers

Money too was an area of concern. We had too many
expensive houses, including an extremely expensive
villa on the Apollolaan that was always vacant, waiting
for the guru to decide his Dutch followers were devoted
enough for a visit. And too few people grounded enough
to hold a temp job longer than a day or two, and sometimes
much shorter. So also in Rotterdam, The Hague and
Arnhem I started junk collecting services and shops, as
our own form of employment for the ashram residents
that were stumbling around the job market. The formula
was simple and, especially before the recycling business
and with unlimited supply of helping hands, very effective.
On weekdays we delivered flyers neighborhood by
neighborhood, announcing the collection of junk the following
night by the Divine Light Mission for the purpose
of World peace. When we arrived the next day with our
patched up Citroën HY-vans, the bags with clothes, boxes
with crockery and crooked buffets where waiting for us
at the curbs. The rest was pulled out of attics and sheds
when we rang the doorbells. After a couple of hours we
drove back to the ashram, singing (‘For the times they
are a-changing’) with loaded vans. Only once in a blue
moon, somebody would call the police asking if we had
a license (which we didn’t) and where in fact the money
was going (our own organization, in this stage of spreading
world peace). We then had to lay low for one night,
but the result was that the first telephone calls requesting
to pick up the junk that people had assembled, began even
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