Over the course of ten years, Pete Jordan had but one goal — to become a dishwasher in all 50 states. Growing up in a working-class household in San Francisco, Jordan used dishwashing as a vehicle to see the country and, eventually, the world. Since dishwashing was an easy gig to take on — and even easier to lose — Jordan used the flexibility and anonymity of the occupation to make a living while traveling according to his own whims. Along the way, he published a popular series of zines simply called Dishwasher, which found an admiring audience and earned him the moniker of "Dishwasher Pete." His status as a contemporary folk legend scored him an appearance on Letterman, regular contributions to This American Life, and now, a memoir of his adventures entitled Dishwasher: One Man's Quest to Wash Dishes in All 50 States. Jordan, who currently resides in Amsterdam, spoke with Boldtype's Kai Hsing about his inspirations, his beginnings in zine culture, and his future plans.

Boldtype: Your book in some ways mirrors the quintessential American road trip/travel story. How do you see that fitting into the tradition, if at all?

Pete Jordan: Well, I know a lot of reviewers like to throw out On the Road, which I can't avoid, but when I read that book I was already 19, and wanting to get out of San Francisco and travel a lot. And so that was one more log on the fire that fueled me wanting to travel. I actually find it kind of odd when bookstores shelve Dishwasher in the travel section, because I was not consciously trying to write it as a travel book — more of a dishwashing book, or, if anything, a coming-of-age book.

BT: In the beginning, your primary goal with dishwashing was to travel. What were some of the major things that made you want to do that?

PJ: Growing up here in the city and not traveling at all, I was just curious — reading a lot of maps, buying a lot of maps, reading National Geographic. Not the physical geography, but the cultural geography of different cities or different states always interested me. For more than ten years, I was propelled by riding on that high of seeing new places and going to new towns, and walking around to see what made those places unique — and becoming sad that so many places were becoming less and less unique; the Wal-Martization of the country. In a way I almost felt like I was in a rush against that homogenization of America.

BT: Do you think the same kind of traveling and publishing you did then would be possible now?

PJ: I don't see why not. It's interesting for me that when I would write about it in a little zine, eventually I couldn't keep up with it because it got to be like 10,000 copies of each issue. But if I would start up today, I probably would just be doing a blog or something — but I don't know if I would have really enjoyed that. I like the way my communication worked with my readers, because my mail would go to a post office box in Portland, and every three weeks, bundled up by a friend and mailed to me. And then I would sit down and devote a full day to just opening mail, reading it, responding to it, and sending the zine or whatever they were asking for to them. And then doing that again in three weeks; but in that three-week period in between, not thinking at all about my communication. My readers would get used to me taking weeks to respond. I think they got a kick out of it because I handwrote a letter to every single person who wrote to me. When they wrote to me, they didn't know where in the country I was, so they would get this handwritten letter with a postmark from Montana or Florida or wherever I was. I think it was a big kick to them.

BT: How has zine culture changed since you started?

PJ: Well, I know with the rise of websites and blogs that it's easy to presume that zines would disappear. When I was at Quimby's [in Chicago] I had someone remark to me that there are more zines now then there were ten years ago, when zines were supposedly at their height. I was just amazed by that, because in Amsterdam, there's not really any zine culture or zine scene. So for me, having been in Amsterdam for the last five years, going to Chicago and seeing rack after rack of zines, I was amazed.

BT: Do you think any other type of work except dishwashing would have enabled you to do the things you did?

PJ: Well, dishwashing was the one that worked the best for me — people were so desperate for dishwashers that they'd hire at any time. And you could start right away, and it didn't matter what your résumé said. It oftentimes paid by the day or by the week, and they paid in cash. Also, for me, it made it interesting because there were so many opportunities, like working on an oil rig, or at a summer camp, or a fish cannery, or on a dinner train.

BT: How did the way that you viewed the work you were doing change from the beginning to the end? At the end of the book, you're left trying to figure out what to do next.

PJ: Well, at the beginning it was a matter of, if I was going to do menial labor, then I didn't want to do something where I had to think. If you're a waiter, or work at a counter or something, you have to interact with people, you have to remember their orders, you have to count change. I felt like I would sell my manual labor, but I was not going to sell my brain labor. So I was content to do things manually but still leave my brain to write as I often did during that time. I would recount things in my head and work out story ideas while I was washing dishes. But you're right, after a number of years, I started to see that a lifetime of that wasn't going to be very rewarding. I did eventually want to use my brain to make this world a better place. So I went back to school and went that route, studying urban planning, becoming an urban planner with the idea that I would be an advocate for cyclists and pedestrians.

BT: Do you ever have any regrets about not making it to all 50 states, or about the whole journey you took?

PJ: I thought the quest would be finished someday, so I passed up a lot of opportunities to knock states off. I was not the most systematic person about getting it done. I could see somebody challenging my quest someday and finishing it in two years or something because they would do it much more systematically. I saw the quest as so open-ended that if I didn't do it this time, I'd do it next time I was in town. Also, I hated working in general — though it was my quest to work in 50 states, at the same time, I wasn't really enjoying working. But I bet someday there will be someone who does it. Maybe not this year or next year, but maybe in 20 years some kid is going to pick up the book and say, "That guy didn't do it, but I'm going to do it." I wouldn't be surprised. And I root them on.

BT: So what's the next step of your journey now?

PJ: Well, now it's all very different than the life recounted in the book. Living in Europe and learning a different language, and learning a different trade; writing, being married and having a child, I'm finding it hard to even just leave Amsterdam. I'm feeling very settled.

-Kai Hsing