Road Trip

In 1969, the summer after the Soviet Union and its allies suppressed a rebellion in Czechoslovakia, I traveled through Europe with 62 other members of the Harding College Acapella Chorus.

The day we arrived in Vienna, our host asked if we wanted to drive across the border into Czechoslovakia to sing for a secret church in Bratislava and smuggle in nearly 300 Bibles. If caught, we could be detained or arrested. We unanimously agreed.

Early that afternoon, after packing the Bibles in our door panels, we drove to the border where we were stopped by armed guards. On both sides of us, rows and rows of spiraled barbed wire several feet high stretched as far as we could see. Sharp spikes protruded from the ground. Two burned-out, bullet-riddled vehicles, once bound for freedom, rusted in no man’s land.

We remained at the border for several hours, worrying and sweating as the guards examined all 63 passports and questioned our director. As we sat, we dared not talk about the one thing that was uppermost in our minds. The authorities were definitely suspicious, but what were they going to do with all those hungry, tired, American college students? They finally released us, well after dark.

In Bratislava, we parked in a back alley near the unmarked church. At the bottom of a steep flight of stairs, we entered a candlelit basement dominated by a table piled with fruit, flowers, and confections of all sorts. About forty church members, who had been waiting since early in the day, greeted each of us with a kiss and motioned for us to eat. After satisfying our hunger and listening to a short sermon in either Czech or Russian (I certainly could not tell which) we stood to sing—song after song, through tears, ours and theirs.

We sang in Latin, German and English—nothing they could fully understand, but we cried in perfect harmony.