I’m fed up with perfection which assaults you anytime you turn on your TV, starting with the blond vacuous female talking heads and news readers that fill the screen of every channel and pass for news anchors. They all look like clones of Paris Hilton. Every blond hair is in place just so, their make-up is flawless and they’re holding forth on world events. They look mint. Never mind that they are incapable of an original thought and haven’t got a clue what they’re talking about. I’m always hoping that their teleprompter go berserk. Where are the Walter Cronkites, the Peter Jennings, the Chet Huntleys? Where are the warts, the blemishes, the things that make us human? It’s depressing. I’m tempted to reach for the vodka bottle in despair.
I was watching the Olympic opening and closing ceremonies from Beijing and the picture you saw was everyone doing their thing in unison. No one stepped out of line, nobody moved right when everyone else moved left. And those soldiers who hoisted the Chinese flag up the pole. The old Prussian generals must have turned over in their graves in envy. The staging of all the hundreds of sporting events went without one flaw.
I was looking for at least one wardrobe malfunction or some other screw-up. I have to admit, I was poised to see my hopes fulfilled, when one of the Jamaican women sprinters in her enthusiasm at winning almost let one of her nipples peek out from under her skimpy track suit, but no, the camera cut away before my prurient desires could be satisfied. I was hoping for one of those Chinese sky-walkers to come crashing down or at least trip and stumble. But I was foiled. Just more clones. I confess I’m attracted to bedlam.
And what is it about those sports like race walking, rhythmic gymnastics and synchronized swimming and diving? I mean, true, some of these race walkers had pretty agile butt cheeks, but what’s the point of walking when you could reach the finish line much faster by running? I can maybe see the attraction, if you watch these guys from the back, but from the front, they look ridiculous. If I want to see that kind of hip and butt action, I can watch Fashion TV. Those models are just as anemic looking, but they don’t have hairy arms and legs.
And waving a red ribbon through the air or doing the hula-hoop doesn’t strike me as sport. At least they should have used one of those giant foam hands with the extended finger and do some variation of the tomahawk chop while skipping rope and swiveling their hips. I could get into that. And what about those women with the clamp on their noses? That’s a very unattractive accessory. I’m sure Martha Stewart would have some suggestion for them. What’s next for Olympic sports? Juggling, hopscotch, synchronized chess?
I was drawn to the contact sports. I was thinking that boxing, wrestling and all those Asian martial arts would surly generate some havoc. I don’t know what the judges were looking for, but these guys were whaling on each other and no points were ever scored. The outcome seemed orchestrated. The closest they came to anything resembling chaos and the only bright moment for me was the Cuban taekwondo fighter, who finally lost it and did what they all should have done – kick the referee in the head and cold-cock him. That Cuban should have been up on the podium for doing what needed to be done. He’s on my and Fidel’s highlight reel. I cheered for him.
In disgust, I switched to coverage of the Democratic National Convention in Denver. I thought, surely politicians south of the border are not perfect. I was looking for mayhem a la Chicago 1968. But I was thwarted again. True, the various media tried their best to conjure up some perceived controversy with the dames who interpret body language and voice inflection, but that was pretty lame stuff. I was hoping for a brawl or at least some nasty sound bites, some cat fights. What I got was bland political correctness. Yada-yada-yada.
There was Hillary – again with the peach pant suit, which makes her look like she should audition for a clown gig with the Cirque du Soleil – freshly coiffed, with a determined smile pasted on her face and regretful eyes, exhorting her followers to forget about the past and vote for the guy she had derided as a lightweight only weeks earlier. Everyone seemed overjoyed and cheered and waived their blue UNITY and CHANGE signs in unison. There is an Olympic sport in the making – synchronized sign waving. The Chinese would probably win that event too.
Hand me the bottle. I'm in pain.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Why I Stay Away From Cruises
My friends keep telling me how much fun their last cruise was, leisurely travel, fabulous weather, excellent food, luxurious service, exotic ports, interesting sights, fun activities and side trips, new friends. I will not be caught dead on a cruise. I base that assessment on experience.
I took a seven-day cruise once, back in 1959. We left on the 23rd of August, the height of the summer (and hurricane) season. This was before the time of widespread jet travel and ocean liners were the common and preferred mode of travel between Europe and North America. Leisure cruises were not the norm that they are today. I took this cruise on the MS “Berlin,” built in 1925 at Newcastle-on-Tyne, as the Gripsholm for the Swedish American Line, refitted and refurbished in 1954 and sold to North German Lloyd for the North Atlantic run between Bremerhaven and New York, with stops at LeHavre and Southampton. By today’s standards, she was a modest 18,000-ton passenger liner, 590 feet long, 74 feet wide, with a 29 foot draw and a cruising speed of 16 knots. She was able to accommodate 976 passengers, 80 in 1st class, 302 in 2nd and 594 in 3rd class.
My cabin was # 207, bed K, in 3rd class, just above the waterline, among the unwashed. I shared this space with a retired German baker from Chicago, who was returning from his annual pilgrimage to the beer halls of Bavaria, and a red-headed black man from Raleigh, North Carolina, who spoke perfect German with a strong Berlin accent. This was a bit disconcerting to me. I didn’t expect a black man to speak my language as well or better than I did. He had earned a doctorate in philosophy from the Free University in Berlin and was on his way home after two years in Germany. He was apprehensive about going home and tried to explain to me what segregation meant. This was a concept to which I simply could not relate. I had no idea what he was talking about.
Let’s look at the positive aspects of cruising, about which my friends wax so lyrical, one at a time. Let’s take leisurely travel and fabulous weather first. My crossing lasted seven days and was very rough once we left Southampton. The captain chose the northern route to avoid the hurricane zone. It didn’t seem to make a bit of difference. The weather was atrocious. The second day out, we ran into a north Atlantic storm with waves that dwarfed the ship’s superstructure and sent huge walls of water crashing over the bow. Obviously, the deck was off limits. This storm lasted for three days.
As for fun activities, they were restricted to trying to stay upright and not to crash down the stairs, as the ship heaved and bucked. Sleeping was impossible, because you had to concentrate on not falling out of bed each time the ship rolled. Entertainment consisted of the John Wayne oater “Rio Bravo.” I saw it six times. The shipboard orchestra tried valiantly, but to no avail. They kept crashing out of their chairs. Dancing was impossible. Some tried, but it turned out to be more of a wrestling match than a dance. The final day of the trip, the ship spent heaved to in thick fog off New York.
I would rate my experience with excellent food and luxurious service as mediocre at best down on the C Deck. I’m sure it probably was better up among the washed and groomed on the top decks. Most of the passengers were seasick the whole time. I and my cabin mates were among the few who were unaffected by this malady. The weather confined everyone but the crew indoors. The old baker and I spent most of our time eating the meals served in the nearly empty 3rd class dining room and at the bar drinking Cognac, which the old man firmly believed prevented seasickness. He seemed to be right.
On several occasions, we snuck up to the 2nd class dining room and helped ourselves to the uneaten meals there. Seasickness was an equal opportunity malaise. The old baker introduced me to lobster and caviar and prime rib. We were in hog heaven. We also tried to get access to the 1st class deck, but it was barred to the unwashed from the lower decks. The ever-watchful stewards on the top deck, who had no sense of humor or equality whatsoever, foiled us. They’d obviously rather throw the uneaten food over the side before allowing the peasants to taste it. Our only satisfaction was that the swells on the top deck were as seasick as most everyone else.
On the morning of the seventh day, the fog finally lifted and the “Berlin” sailed into New York harbor, past the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, and docked at its pier in Hoboken, New Jersey, not exactly an exotic port. I swore to myself that I would never step on another cruise ship again, if I could at all help it.
Alas, this was not to be. I have to tell you about my second experience cruising the North Atlantic. This took place in early December 1962. I admit that December is probably not the best month for a balmy crossing, but I had little choice. This cruise was on the U.S. Military Sea Transport Ship “General Simon B. (for Bolivar) Buckner,” on its regular run again between Bremerhaven and New York, without stops in between. She had been commissioned in January 1945, built by Bethlehem-Alameda Shipyards of Alameda, California, with a 9,676 ton displacement, and had a civilian crew. I was on my way back from service in Europe to a stop-over at historic Fort Hamilton, New York, en route to beautiful downtown Saigon or Ho Chi Minh City, as the natives now call it. And it was even less fun the second time around.
It started out pretty good. When I arrived at the ship’s berth at Columbus Quay in Bremerhaven for embarkation, I was late and nearly missed out on this adventure, due to the fact that my exit immunization record was deemed to be unsatisfactory. I had faked the records to avoid getting the required injections. The medics insisted on giving me all six obligatory shots, before they would let me board and escape their jurisdiction. As a result, I missed all duty assignments on board, because this was a working cruise. All the enlisted personnel had to pull guard and mess duty and the NCOs’ had to supervise those duties.
My lateness and the resulting lack of assigned duties proved to be a major bonus, because the minute we reached the open Atlantic, again on the northern route, we were battered by a fierce winter storm and all doors and hatches were battened down tight. I withdrew to my bunk and consulted my old standby – Cognac. I had planned ahead and carried ten days’ supply in my foot locker. Once again, it worked like magic. It didn’t take long before most in our compartment were seasick. The floor of the troop deck in our quarters, which held 120 men on triple-decker bunks, was soon awash in vomit which slopped back and forth with the motion of the waves and the place stunk to high heaven. There was no ventilation.
It became very difficult to maintain the Army’s standards of cleanliness and organization. The ship was a WWII Liberty ship and the comfort level was basic to begin with. She had seen better days. The ship shuddered, moaned and creaked as it was tossed around by wind and waves. You had the feeling she was going to break up at any time and head for Davy Jones’ locker.
To give you an example of the ship’s amenities, let me give you a tour of the head in our quarters. It was a square open room, divided into sinks along one wall, showers along another and the other two held the toilets. There were no partitions or doors. There was no fresh water, only salt water. The toilets flushed straight into the ocean, which was fine in calm weather, but with a storm raging outside, the waves shot straight up through the pipes and onto the floor. The upside was that you saved on toilet paper, if you could take the water pressure. You had to be able to multi-task. You had to avoid cutting your throat while shaving in a wildly pitching ship, while simultaneously making sure you avoided the shit and vomit ricocheting back and forth between your feet in the sea water, all this while clinging desperately to the sink to avoid falling headlong into the mess on the slick floor. Needless to say, discipline soon flagged on our deck.
The poor slobs, who thought they had caught a break from the funk below by being posted on deck for guard duty, found themselves on duty cold and wet, huddling in the exhaust fumes from the galley to keep warm and were puking their guts out. I have no idea what they were guarding against, since no one dared or was allowed to step out on deck and no one was trying to board this rust bucket.
The mess itself was a challenge too. All food was served in large compartmentalized metal trays. You ate at tables fitted with a two inch high metal rim, designed to catch the food before it splashed on the floor. The storm made it difficult to find your mouth with your fork and everything on your tray tended to end up together in one big pile. There always was someone at your table who lost control of his tray and let it crash into everyone else’s, causing even more chaos. Soon everyone turned green and started hurling. There was the odd fist fight. Those unfortunate ones who got picked for KP had to clean up the mess in addition to scouring pots and pans, trays and utensils in the galley. The air in there got pretty thick and hot and funky. I stayed away from the mess hall and instead I lived on Cognac, white bread and Camel cigarettes for the duration of the storm and survived unscathed.
This cruise lasted ten days and ended on the 20th of December in a blinding snowstorm. I again swore never again. This time I’ve been able to stick to my convictions. I haven’t set foot on a cruise ship since. And I don’t plan to, no matter how rosy the descriptions. I have been to the dark side.
I took a seven-day cruise once, back in 1959. We left on the 23rd of August, the height of the summer (and hurricane) season. This was before the time of widespread jet travel and ocean liners were the common and preferred mode of travel between Europe and North America. Leisure cruises were not the norm that they are today. I took this cruise on the MS “Berlin,” built in 1925 at Newcastle-on-Tyne, as the Gripsholm for the Swedish American Line, refitted and refurbished in 1954 and sold to North German Lloyd for the North Atlantic run between Bremerhaven and New York, with stops at LeHavre and Southampton. By today’s standards, she was a modest 18,000-ton passenger liner, 590 feet long, 74 feet wide, with a 29 foot draw and a cruising speed of 16 knots. She was able to accommodate 976 passengers, 80 in 1st class, 302 in 2nd and 594 in 3rd class.
My cabin was # 207, bed K, in 3rd class, just above the waterline, among the unwashed. I shared this space with a retired German baker from Chicago, who was returning from his annual pilgrimage to the beer halls of Bavaria, and a red-headed black man from Raleigh, North Carolina, who spoke perfect German with a strong Berlin accent. This was a bit disconcerting to me. I didn’t expect a black man to speak my language as well or better than I did. He had earned a doctorate in philosophy from the Free University in Berlin and was on his way home after two years in Germany. He was apprehensive about going home and tried to explain to me what segregation meant. This was a concept to which I simply could not relate. I had no idea what he was talking about.
Let’s look at the positive aspects of cruising, about which my friends wax so lyrical, one at a time. Let’s take leisurely travel and fabulous weather first. My crossing lasted seven days and was very rough once we left Southampton. The captain chose the northern route to avoid the hurricane zone. It didn’t seem to make a bit of difference. The weather was atrocious. The second day out, we ran into a north Atlantic storm with waves that dwarfed the ship’s superstructure and sent huge walls of water crashing over the bow. Obviously, the deck was off limits. This storm lasted for three days.
As for fun activities, they were restricted to trying to stay upright and not to crash down the stairs, as the ship heaved and bucked. Sleeping was impossible, because you had to concentrate on not falling out of bed each time the ship rolled. Entertainment consisted of the John Wayne oater “Rio Bravo.” I saw it six times. The shipboard orchestra tried valiantly, but to no avail. They kept crashing out of their chairs. Dancing was impossible. Some tried, but it turned out to be more of a wrestling match than a dance. The final day of the trip, the ship spent heaved to in thick fog off New York.
I would rate my experience with excellent food and luxurious service as mediocre at best down on the C Deck. I’m sure it probably was better up among the washed and groomed on the top decks. Most of the passengers were seasick the whole time. I and my cabin mates were among the few who were unaffected by this malady. The weather confined everyone but the crew indoors. The old baker and I spent most of our time eating the meals served in the nearly empty 3rd class dining room and at the bar drinking Cognac, which the old man firmly believed prevented seasickness. He seemed to be right.
On several occasions, we snuck up to the 2nd class dining room and helped ourselves to the uneaten meals there. Seasickness was an equal opportunity malaise. The old baker introduced me to lobster and caviar and prime rib. We were in hog heaven. We also tried to get access to the 1st class deck, but it was barred to the unwashed from the lower decks. The ever-watchful stewards on the top deck, who had no sense of humor or equality whatsoever, foiled us. They’d obviously rather throw the uneaten food over the side before allowing the peasants to taste it. Our only satisfaction was that the swells on the top deck were as seasick as most everyone else.
On the morning of the seventh day, the fog finally lifted and the “Berlin” sailed into New York harbor, past the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, and docked at its pier in Hoboken, New Jersey, not exactly an exotic port. I swore to myself that I would never step on another cruise ship again, if I could at all help it.
Alas, this was not to be. I have to tell you about my second experience cruising the North Atlantic. This took place in early December 1962. I admit that December is probably not the best month for a balmy crossing, but I had little choice. This cruise was on the U.S. Military Sea Transport Ship “General Simon B. (for Bolivar) Buckner,” on its regular run again between Bremerhaven and New York, without stops in between. She had been commissioned in January 1945, built by Bethlehem-Alameda Shipyards of Alameda, California, with a 9,676 ton displacement, and had a civilian crew. I was on my way back from service in Europe to a stop-over at historic Fort Hamilton, New York, en route to beautiful downtown Saigon or Ho Chi Minh City, as the natives now call it. And it was even less fun the second time around.
It started out pretty good. When I arrived at the ship’s berth at Columbus Quay in Bremerhaven for embarkation, I was late and nearly missed out on this adventure, due to the fact that my exit immunization record was deemed to be unsatisfactory. I had faked the records to avoid getting the required injections. The medics insisted on giving me all six obligatory shots, before they would let me board and escape their jurisdiction. As a result, I missed all duty assignments on board, because this was a working cruise. All the enlisted personnel had to pull guard and mess duty and the NCOs’ had to supervise those duties.
My lateness and the resulting lack of assigned duties proved to be a major bonus, because the minute we reached the open Atlantic, again on the northern route, we were battered by a fierce winter storm and all doors and hatches were battened down tight. I withdrew to my bunk and consulted my old standby – Cognac. I had planned ahead and carried ten days’ supply in my foot locker. Once again, it worked like magic. It didn’t take long before most in our compartment were seasick. The floor of the troop deck in our quarters, which held 120 men on triple-decker bunks, was soon awash in vomit which slopped back and forth with the motion of the waves and the place stunk to high heaven. There was no ventilation.
It became very difficult to maintain the Army’s standards of cleanliness and organization. The ship was a WWII Liberty ship and the comfort level was basic to begin with. She had seen better days. The ship shuddered, moaned and creaked as it was tossed around by wind and waves. You had the feeling she was going to break up at any time and head for Davy Jones’ locker.
To give you an example of the ship’s amenities, let me give you a tour of the head in our quarters. It was a square open room, divided into sinks along one wall, showers along another and the other two held the toilets. There were no partitions or doors. There was no fresh water, only salt water. The toilets flushed straight into the ocean, which was fine in calm weather, but with a storm raging outside, the waves shot straight up through the pipes and onto the floor. The upside was that you saved on toilet paper, if you could take the water pressure. You had to be able to multi-task. You had to avoid cutting your throat while shaving in a wildly pitching ship, while simultaneously making sure you avoided the shit and vomit ricocheting back and forth between your feet in the sea water, all this while clinging desperately to the sink to avoid falling headlong into the mess on the slick floor. Needless to say, discipline soon flagged on our deck.
The poor slobs, who thought they had caught a break from the funk below by being posted on deck for guard duty, found themselves on duty cold and wet, huddling in the exhaust fumes from the galley to keep warm and were puking their guts out. I have no idea what they were guarding against, since no one dared or was allowed to step out on deck and no one was trying to board this rust bucket.
The mess itself was a challenge too. All food was served in large compartmentalized metal trays. You ate at tables fitted with a two inch high metal rim, designed to catch the food before it splashed on the floor. The storm made it difficult to find your mouth with your fork and everything on your tray tended to end up together in one big pile. There always was someone at your table who lost control of his tray and let it crash into everyone else’s, causing even more chaos. Soon everyone turned green and started hurling. There was the odd fist fight. Those unfortunate ones who got picked for KP had to clean up the mess in addition to scouring pots and pans, trays and utensils in the galley. The air in there got pretty thick and hot and funky. I stayed away from the mess hall and instead I lived on Cognac, white bread and Camel cigarettes for the duration of the storm and survived unscathed.
This cruise lasted ten days and ended on the 20th of December in a blinding snowstorm. I again swore never again. This time I’ve been able to stick to my convictions. I haven’t set foot on a cruise ship since. And I don’t plan to, no matter how rosy the descriptions. I have been to the dark side.
Friday, August 22, 2008
My First Car
Most guys remember every detail of their first car. It’s right up there with the first time you got to second base with your girlfriend. It’s a huge step. It means you’ve left childhood behind and you’re now operating on a more exalted level. The old bicycle that used to get you around, sits forgotten in the garage. You knew you were grown up, even if your parents tried to put a damper on your enthusiasm with their cautionary tales of speeding and drinking and driving. I can see my first car as clearly as if it were parked in my driveway today..
With most guys in North America my age, this momentous event happened the day they turned 16. And without fail, it involved an American car, usually an Impala or Bonneville or a Mustang. Nobody drove a Japanese make then and European cars were out of reach for most kids. I was a late bloomer. When I joined the US Army at age 20, I didn’t know how to drive. My father was always chauffeured everywhere and there was no need to learn how to drive. When I got posted to a Military Police Company in Germany, I spent my first four months overseas riding around the German countryside with a staff captain from 4th Armored Division Headquarters, talking to the mayors of the various villages through which we had driven our tank division on the way to Grafenwoehr, a vast military training area east of Nuremburg, which had been used for maneuvers since the Kaiser’s time.
Because I spoke German, it was my job to negotiate payment of damages caused by our passage through their lovely villages. They all seemed to be in need of new roads, bridges and fences. If the price of potatoes or rye or sugar beets was below expectations, our tanks seemed to be the answer to their prayers. The US Army paid top dollar for damages, much better than what they could get selling their crops on the open market. Our division’s tank drivers must have had the worst driving record in the Army, if you looked at the supposed havoc they left behind in the many villages on route to the maneuvers.
My captain, who was the official Maneuver Damage Control Officer, didn’t speak German, so it became my job to negotiate. Besides, he liked Bavarian beer too much to care. I did pretty well. The Germans didn’t mind paying me a commission for my efforts to get them just compensation for the damages they claimed. The Army didn’t care either, because at the end of the day the German government covered the cost of the US Army’s presence in Germany in those days.
After three months of this duty, I had earned enough to get my hands on a 1954 Mercedes 300d. The Germans called this car the “Adenauer,” because this was the car their chancellor rode around in. It demanded respect.
This car was a real pimpmobile for that time. I was a four-door sedan with rosewood paneling all around, cloth curtains, which could be opened and closed electrically, on all the windows and, best of all, fully reclining front seats that turned the interior of this car into a very comfortable bed. The car was black with a beige cloth interior and weighed close to two tons. It was built on a pre-war chassis and had a modern 3-liter straight-6 engine that produced 175 horses. It had a standard 4-speed manual transmission, with the gear shift lever mounted on the steering column.
This is significant, because if you shifted gears too vigorously the lever would come off in your hand and you were stuck in whatever gear you happened to be driving in at the time. If you were in fourth gear when the gear shift lever disconnected, it became very difficult to slow the car down. It had no power brakes. You’d think the emergency brake would come in handy at a time like that. But it was dicey as well. It was activated by means of a handle connected to a rather dainty chain under the dashboard. This chain had a tendency to snap, if you jerked the brake handle too forcefully.
The car also was equipped with a supercharger that could be engaged manually once you were in fourth gear and past 100 kph. It pushed the car’s top speed to over 180 kph and reduced its fuel efficiency to less than 8 miles per gallon. This meant you had to travel main roads only, since there were no filling stations on country roads. Keep in mind, in those days there were no speed limits on German roads. One of this car’s other interesting features was a hydraulic load leveling suspension, operated by a switch on the dash, which allowed you to raise or lower the car’s rear end, depending on what load you had in the back. It was a beauty. The only problem was that I didn’t have a driver’s license and didn’t know how to drive stick. As well, the car didn’t have valid plates. I couldn’t register it. For that you needed a valid driver’s license.
To remedy that, I got my roommate, who was the old man’s driver, to teach me. We took my car onto the back roads around our garrison and I learned how to drive or, to put it more truthfully, to terrorize the dogs, geese, chickens and people in the many small villages around the city. To obscure the fact that the car lacked registration, I packed mud over the expired date stamp on the plates. No need to worry about police, because as a member of the MPs, I was immune from arrest by the Germans.
I soon mastered the complexities of the clutch and was fortunate enough not to hit anything or anybody. I did find out that once the supercharger was engaged, it became very hard to slow this beast down. The brakes didn’t grab very well. The car also didn’t have power steering. It required maximum effort to muscle it around corners. Parking was a real struggle. Driving this car was not for the faint-hearted. But I persevered and after four weeks of scattering chickens and dogs and the odd group of panicked Germans, I went to our motor pool and took the Army’s driving test. The test vehicle was a deuce- and-a-half truck. To shift gears in this monster required you to double clutch. I passed.
To me that Benz was a means to an end. To the Germans it was a symbol of respect. This was the top of the line. It was a symbol of the 1950’s in Germany. You couldn’t tell from the outside that it was six years old and had 150,000 kilometers on its odometer. Only people with real money or influence could afford to drive a car such as this. The fact that I was only a Private in the US Army became irrelevant. In the eyes of the locals I was somebody to be reckoned with. It immediately improved my odds with the local ladies. They loved to ride in it and be seen in it. They invited me to their homes, introduced me to their parents, who were not adverse to the perceived importance of that Mercedes parked in front of their door. The reclining seats turned out to be real handy and a major bonus.
About a month after I got my driver’s license, I was driving with a German fellow, whose daughter I was dating at the time and who was the mayor of Jebenhausen, a small village about 10 km from base, on the main highway between Ulm and Goeppingen. I had the supercharger engaged and was doing about 160, when I came over the top of a hill and up behind a slow-moving produce truck with oncoming traffic. I tried to down-shift and brake hard, but not in time to avoid crashing into the back of the truck. Its trailer hitch buried itself in my radiator. Screeching metal and hissing steam, but we came to a stop. Nobody was hurt. The car’s engine was still ticking over. We both got out. There wasn’t a scratch on the truck. My grill and radiator were a mess. I got back into the car, put it in reverse and floored it. The car broke lose, the grill didn’t. The radiator was pretty much a total loss.
After a brief conversation with the mayor, the truck continued on its way and the two of us walked up to the closest farmhouse about half a mile down the road, where we asked the farmer, if he could give us a tow to Jebenhausen, where there was supposed to be an excellent garage. The farmer thought he could. Going back to base was out of the question, because an accident meant the automatic suspension of your driving privileges. The farmer hitched up two oxen and led them to our car, where he hooked a chain around the front bumper and proceeded slowly down the road with the sorry looking Mercedes in tow.
We were a sight to behold. In any case we made it to the garage, where soon half the town showed up to gawk. The mechanic told me it would take a couple of weeks to get the parts, but that he could fix it and make it look good as new. Then he introduced me to his brother. His name was Fritz Flederwisch and he was a house painter. He told me that he would be happy to re-paint my car and make it look like new. I asked him to paint the car fire-engine red, while he was at it. He thought I was out of my mind and told me that he would paint it any color I wanted as long as it was black. Only black would do. End of story.
I didn’t feel like arguing with him about the positive qualities of other colors, particularly their attraction to women. But I did mention to him that I needed to show some change in the look of the car, otherwise no one on base would believe me that I had a paint job done and they would start to ask questions and then my accident would come to light and my drivers license would be in jeopardy. It would mean the end of our beautiful relationship and all those maneuver-damage payments. Mr. Flederwisch pondered this dilemma for a long while and then he said that he could see white as an alternative to black, but that was as far astray as he was willing to go. So white it was going to be.
After this momentous decision we all proceeded to the Golden Hind pub and got drunk on Baerwurz, a nasty licorice-flavored concoction made from the roots of various herbs that was supposed to be good for you and tasted god-awful.
Three weeks later, I had my car back. It looked weird, gleaming white with a beige interior. I’m sure I owned the only white Mercedes Benz in Germany. Nobody on the base was any the wiser, but the Germans all stared wherever I went with that car. I couldn’t hide. They had never seen a white Mercedes before. It just wasn’t done. That is, ‘til they saw my GI license plate. Then they nodded. They understood – a crazed Ami. That explained everything. The ladies didn’t seem to mind.
With most guys in North America my age, this momentous event happened the day they turned 16. And without fail, it involved an American car, usually an Impala or Bonneville or a Mustang. Nobody drove a Japanese make then and European cars were out of reach for most kids. I was a late bloomer. When I joined the US Army at age 20, I didn’t know how to drive. My father was always chauffeured everywhere and there was no need to learn how to drive. When I got posted to a Military Police Company in Germany, I spent my first four months overseas riding around the German countryside with a staff captain from 4th Armored Division Headquarters, talking to the mayors of the various villages through which we had driven our tank division on the way to Grafenwoehr, a vast military training area east of Nuremburg, which had been used for maneuvers since the Kaiser’s time.
Because I spoke German, it was my job to negotiate payment of damages caused by our passage through their lovely villages. They all seemed to be in need of new roads, bridges and fences. If the price of potatoes or rye or sugar beets was below expectations, our tanks seemed to be the answer to their prayers. The US Army paid top dollar for damages, much better than what they could get selling their crops on the open market. Our division’s tank drivers must have had the worst driving record in the Army, if you looked at the supposed havoc they left behind in the many villages on route to the maneuvers.
My captain, who was the official Maneuver Damage Control Officer, didn’t speak German, so it became my job to negotiate. Besides, he liked Bavarian beer too much to care. I did pretty well. The Germans didn’t mind paying me a commission for my efforts to get them just compensation for the damages they claimed. The Army didn’t care either, because at the end of the day the German government covered the cost of the US Army’s presence in Germany in those days.
After three months of this duty, I had earned enough to get my hands on a 1954 Mercedes 300d. The Germans called this car the “Adenauer,” because this was the car their chancellor rode around in. It demanded respect.
This car was a real pimpmobile for that time. I was a four-door sedan with rosewood paneling all around, cloth curtains, which could be opened and closed electrically, on all the windows and, best of all, fully reclining front seats that turned the interior of this car into a very comfortable bed. The car was black with a beige cloth interior and weighed close to two tons. It was built on a pre-war chassis and had a modern 3-liter straight-6 engine that produced 175 horses. It had a standard 4-speed manual transmission, with the gear shift lever mounted on the steering column.
This is significant, because if you shifted gears too vigorously the lever would come off in your hand and you were stuck in whatever gear you happened to be driving in at the time. If you were in fourth gear when the gear shift lever disconnected, it became very difficult to slow the car down. It had no power brakes. You’d think the emergency brake would come in handy at a time like that. But it was dicey as well. It was activated by means of a handle connected to a rather dainty chain under the dashboard. This chain had a tendency to snap, if you jerked the brake handle too forcefully.
The car also was equipped with a supercharger that could be engaged manually once you were in fourth gear and past 100 kph. It pushed the car’s top speed to over 180 kph and reduced its fuel efficiency to less than 8 miles per gallon. This meant you had to travel main roads only, since there were no filling stations on country roads. Keep in mind, in those days there were no speed limits on German roads. One of this car’s other interesting features was a hydraulic load leveling suspension, operated by a switch on the dash, which allowed you to raise or lower the car’s rear end, depending on what load you had in the back. It was a beauty. The only problem was that I didn’t have a driver’s license and didn’t know how to drive stick. As well, the car didn’t have valid plates. I couldn’t register it. For that you needed a valid driver’s license.
To remedy that, I got my roommate, who was the old man’s driver, to teach me. We took my car onto the back roads around our garrison and I learned how to drive or, to put it more truthfully, to terrorize the dogs, geese, chickens and people in the many small villages around the city. To obscure the fact that the car lacked registration, I packed mud over the expired date stamp on the plates. No need to worry about police, because as a member of the MPs, I was immune from arrest by the Germans.
I soon mastered the complexities of the clutch and was fortunate enough not to hit anything or anybody. I did find out that once the supercharger was engaged, it became very hard to slow this beast down. The brakes didn’t grab very well. The car also didn’t have power steering. It required maximum effort to muscle it around corners. Parking was a real struggle. Driving this car was not for the faint-hearted. But I persevered and after four weeks of scattering chickens and dogs and the odd group of panicked Germans, I went to our motor pool and took the Army’s driving test. The test vehicle was a deuce- and-a-half truck. To shift gears in this monster required you to double clutch. I passed.
To me that Benz was a means to an end. To the Germans it was a symbol of respect. This was the top of the line. It was a symbol of the 1950’s in Germany. You couldn’t tell from the outside that it was six years old and had 150,000 kilometers on its odometer. Only people with real money or influence could afford to drive a car such as this. The fact that I was only a Private in the US Army became irrelevant. In the eyes of the locals I was somebody to be reckoned with. It immediately improved my odds with the local ladies. They loved to ride in it and be seen in it. They invited me to their homes, introduced me to their parents, who were not adverse to the perceived importance of that Mercedes parked in front of their door. The reclining seats turned out to be real handy and a major bonus.
About a month after I got my driver’s license, I was driving with a German fellow, whose daughter I was dating at the time and who was the mayor of Jebenhausen, a small village about 10 km from base, on the main highway between Ulm and Goeppingen. I had the supercharger engaged and was doing about 160, when I came over the top of a hill and up behind a slow-moving produce truck with oncoming traffic. I tried to down-shift and brake hard, but not in time to avoid crashing into the back of the truck. Its trailer hitch buried itself in my radiator. Screeching metal and hissing steam, but we came to a stop. Nobody was hurt. The car’s engine was still ticking over. We both got out. There wasn’t a scratch on the truck. My grill and radiator were a mess. I got back into the car, put it in reverse and floored it. The car broke lose, the grill didn’t. The radiator was pretty much a total loss.
After a brief conversation with the mayor, the truck continued on its way and the two of us walked up to the closest farmhouse about half a mile down the road, where we asked the farmer, if he could give us a tow to Jebenhausen, where there was supposed to be an excellent garage. The farmer thought he could. Going back to base was out of the question, because an accident meant the automatic suspension of your driving privileges. The farmer hitched up two oxen and led them to our car, where he hooked a chain around the front bumper and proceeded slowly down the road with the sorry looking Mercedes in tow.
We were a sight to behold. In any case we made it to the garage, where soon half the town showed up to gawk. The mechanic told me it would take a couple of weeks to get the parts, but that he could fix it and make it look good as new. Then he introduced me to his brother. His name was Fritz Flederwisch and he was a house painter. He told me that he would be happy to re-paint my car and make it look like new. I asked him to paint the car fire-engine red, while he was at it. He thought I was out of my mind and told me that he would paint it any color I wanted as long as it was black. Only black would do. End of story.
I didn’t feel like arguing with him about the positive qualities of other colors, particularly their attraction to women. But I did mention to him that I needed to show some change in the look of the car, otherwise no one on base would believe me that I had a paint job done and they would start to ask questions and then my accident would come to light and my drivers license would be in jeopardy. It would mean the end of our beautiful relationship and all those maneuver-damage payments. Mr. Flederwisch pondered this dilemma for a long while and then he said that he could see white as an alternative to black, but that was as far astray as he was willing to go. So white it was going to be.
After this momentous decision we all proceeded to the Golden Hind pub and got drunk on Baerwurz, a nasty licorice-flavored concoction made from the roots of various herbs that was supposed to be good for you and tasted god-awful.
Three weeks later, I had my car back. It looked weird, gleaming white with a beige interior. I’m sure I owned the only white Mercedes Benz in Germany. Nobody on the base was any the wiser, but the Germans all stared wherever I went with that car. I couldn’t hide. They had never seen a white Mercedes before. It just wasn’t done. That is, ‘til they saw my GI license plate. Then they nodded. They understood – a crazed Ami. That explained everything. The ladies didn’t seem to mind.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
What's Up With The Lack Of Peasants Here?
Some call hunting a vile blood sport and think it should be banned. I think that’s an ignorant argument, which shows that those opposed to hunting haven’t spent much time in the woods and they’ve probably never been hungry. I wonder, as they are chowing down on their New York sirloin, what they think happens in a slaughterhouse. Perhaps they should visit one sometimes, if they think hunting is barbaric.
Let’s get this straight, hunting is not a sport. If you want sport, try skeet or trap shooting. Hunting is about putting food on the table. If you can’t eat it, don’t shoot it, unless it’s a fox or coyote skulking around your chicken coop. Then, by all means, let ‘em have it. Hunting is pretty much the same the world over. The only major difference I’ve found is that there is a total absence of peasants in North America. I don’t know why this is so. I was brought up to believe that for a successful hunt, you needed peasants. And the peasants needed the money this job paid.
The closest thing to peasants I’ve seen here are migrant workers. But they never seem to be around when you need them. Maybe this is a matter of timing. Hunting season is usually in late fall and by then the itinerant workers have returned home. Maybe there’s a lack of trust and they’re not comfortable with a bunch of white guys blasting away at anything that moves in the bush. Or it may be a language problem, a lack of understanding. I’m stumped.
The job of the peasants was to push whatever game there was before them through the bush towards the hunters, by whistling and yelling and beating on trees with sticks. The hunters were posted on the edge of the woods blocking egress. The trick was to shoot the rabbits and stags and, sometimes, wild boar, without hitting the peasants. My father, who organized countless hunts in Germany over the years, never lost a peasant to gunfire or any other hunting mishap. In Germany, a hunting party consisted of hunters and peasants. The peasants got paid for this job and got to partake of the feast served on the evening of the hunt in the local pub, paid for by the hunters. You never had a hunting drive without peasants.
I tried to persuade my friends here to try this system of division of labor, but they felt it wouldn’t work here due to the total dearth of peasants and they also brought up the issue of liability. Peasants seem to be a European phenomenon and I never heard of a peasant suing. That was just not done.
Here, half the hunters act as pushers, while the other half blocks. Unlike in Europe, the pushers here carry guns and can blast away at game in the bush. This can lead to disoriented wildlife running in all directions rather than straight at the blockers and bullets flying everywhere. You have to be careful out there. To me that’s an inefficient use of manpower and it can be hazardous to your health.
During and after the war we pretty much lived off what we grew in our garden and what my father brought home from his hunting excursions. You have to keep in mind that our money was worthless and the store shelves were empty. If you wanted to eat, you had to go out and find food. Nevertheless, we lived fairly well. Our routine changed for a while after the end of the war, because Germans weren’t allowed to possess firearms. The Americans would shoot you on sight, if they caught you with a gun. This meant that my father couldn’t hunt anymore. My father went by the rules and if the rules prohibited him from hunting, so be it.
My older brother, Willi, had no such scruples. He was 19 and a veteran of three years of war. Starting in the summer of 1945, once he was back on his feet from his ordeal as a POW of the Americans, he went out every night to hunt – or to poach, if you want to put a fine point to his activities. He hunted at night, because it was safe, since the Americans didn’t come out after dark. They stayed in their barracks and waited for daylight, before they ventured out into the countryside. My brother supplied our house with meat, usually venison or rabbit, sometimes wild boar and the odd time a calf that he claimed was a stray that had crossed the border from the East. We lived within walking distance of the border between the American and Soviet zones of occupation.
The American occupiers also liked to hunt. Several army officers came to my father’s place in the fall of 1945 and asked him to organize a hunt for them. He, of course, didn’t have any choice in the matter. Their interpreter explained to him that accommodating the Americans could be advantageous for us. My father obliged. Organized hunting is much the same everywhere. There was lots of game, including deer, and the Americans shot a number of them or at least they thought they did. They were sure of it. Yet the downed deer could never be located.
What happened was that my father had instructed my brother and me to find whatever the Americans shot and spirit it away, so it would end up later on our table. This could get hairy sometimes, what with bullets whizzing about and the necessity to remain invisible. It helped that the Americans were leery of crawling around the bush. They saw crazed Nazis behind every tree. We were pretty good at this job. We hid the game under water, in fox and badger dens, in old tree stands. Even my father’s dogs couldn’t find them, but that’s not saying much, because those dogs only listened to my father. The Americans were vexed. They couldn’t understand what was happening with their downed game. Maybe they knew what was going on, but they couldn’t prove anything. They just kept coming back and trying. We gave them an “A” for effort.
Finally, after several weeks of this, their interpreter suggested that their success rate might improve, if the Germans had weapons and were allowed to hunt with them. Of course that was highly illegal at the time, but the interpreter, who had been a police constable and was a friend of my father’s, assured them that my father was trustworthy and wouldn’t rat them out to the MPs. Their desire to bag a stag prevailed. The next time they came, they showed up with boxes full of food, real coffee, chocolate and American cigarettes, all goodies we hadn’t seen in years and more valuable than cash. They also brought Army-issue M-1 carbines for my father and his friends and invited them to hunt along with them. My father wasn’t too impressed by a carbine, but it had a 30-round magazine to compensate for its lack of accuracy. He gave them credit for trying. As of that day, the Americans’ hunting success improved dramatically. No more missing deer.
Besides the hunting, they liked the hunting customs and the parties that followed in the evening, where hunters and peasants would get together in the local pub for ragout of rabbit with dumplings, washed down with lots of beer. The Americans always picked up the tab. Until my father’s changed status from observer to participant, the ragout for the Americans consisted of what we called “Dach-hasen,” literally roof rabbits – cats. Everyone was in on the joke, except, of course, the Americans. They loved it all, nevertheless. This continued until my father was allowed to carry a rifle and to hunt again. After that, the local cats were once again safe from persecution and it was rabbits for everyone.
The Americans were impressed with the German hunting traditions, like the bugle calls before and after the hunt, the green hunting uniforms and hats with their whipping stag beards, the discipline of the shooters and the pushers and the camaraderie at post-hunt get-togethers. Keep in mind that this all happened at a time when fraternization with Germans was strictly forbidden by order of General Eisenhower. These guys were taking major chances. They continued to come to our house for years to hunt. One of them, a colonel in Military Intelligence – an oxymoron, if ever there is one, I later found out – became my friend and later sponsored my move to the U.S. He thought I had potential and I was too impressed to question his motives.
.
Let’s get this straight, hunting is not a sport. If you want sport, try skeet or trap shooting. Hunting is about putting food on the table. If you can’t eat it, don’t shoot it, unless it’s a fox or coyote skulking around your chicken coop. Then, by all means, let ‘em have it. Hunting is pretty much the same the world over. The only major difference I’ve found is that there is a total absence of peasants in North America. I don’t know why this is so. I was brought up to believe that for a successful hunt, you needed peasants. And the peasants needed the money this job paid.
The closest thing to peasants I’ve seen here are migrant workers. But they never seem to be around when you need them. Maybe this is a matter of timing. Hunting season is usually in late fall and by then the itinerant workers have returned home. Maybe there’s a lack of trust and they’re not comfortable with a bunch of white guys blasting away at anything that moves in the bush. Or it may be a language problem, a lack of understanding. I’m stumped.
The job of the peasants was to push whatever game there was before them through the bush towards the hunters, by whistling and yelling and beating on trees with sticks. The hunters were posted on the edge of the woods blocking egress. The trick was to shoot the rabbits and stags and, sometimes, wild boar, without hitting the peasants. My father, who organized countless hunts in Germany over the years, never lost a peasant to gunfire or any other hunting mishap. In Germany, a hunting party consisted of hunters and peasants. The peasants got paid for this job and got to partake of the feast served on the evening of the hunt in the local pub, paid for by the hunters. You never had a hunting drive without peasants.
I tried to persuade my friends here to try this system of division of labor, but they felt it wouldn’t work here due to the total dearth of peasants and they also brought up the issue of liability. Peasants seem to be a European phenomenon and I never heard of a peasant suing. That was just not done.
Here, half the hunters act as pushers, while the other half blocks. Unlike in Europe, the pushers here carry guns and can blast away at game in the bush. This can lead to disoriented wildlife running in all directions rather than straight at the blockers and bullets flying everywhere. You have to be careful out there. To me that’s an inefficient use of manpower and it can be hazardous to your health.
During and after the war we pretty much lived off what we grew in our garden and what my father brought home from his hunting excursions. You have to keep in mind that our money was worthless and the store shelves were empty. If you wanted to eat, you had to go out and find food. Nevertheless, we lived fairly well. Our routine changed for a while after the end of the war, because Germans weren’t allowed to possess firearms. The Americans would shoot you on sight, if they caught you with a gun. This meant that my father couldn’t hunt anymore. My father went by the rules and if the rules prohibited him from hunting, so be it.
My older brother, Willi, had no such scruples. He was 19 and a veteran of three years of war. Starting in the summer of 1945, once he was back on his feet from his ordeal as a POW of the Americans, he went out every night to hunt – or to poach, if you want to put a fine point to his activities. He hunted at night, because it was safe, since the Americans didn’t come out after dark. They stayed in their barracks and waited for daylight, before they ventured out into the countryside. My brother supplied our house with meat, usually venison or rabbit, sometimes wild boar and the odd time a calf that he claimed was a stray that had crossed the border from the East. We lived within walking distance of the border between the American and Soviet zones of occupation.
The American occupiers also liked to hunt. Several army officers came to my father’s place in the fall of 1945 and asked him to organize a hunt for them. He, of course, didn’t have any choice in the matter. Their interpreter explained to him that accommodating the Americans could be advantageous for us. My father obliged. Organized hunting is much the same everywhere. There was lots of game, including deer, and the Americans shot a number of them or at least they thought they did. They were sure of it. Yet the downed deer could never be located.
What happened was that my father had instructed my brother and me to find whatever the Americans shot and spirit it away, so it would end up later on our table. This could get hairy sometimes, what with bullets whizzing about and the necessity to remain invisible. It helped that the Americans were leery of crawling around the bush. They saw crazed Nazis behind every tree. We were pretty good at this job. We hid the game under water, in fox and badger dens, in old tree stands. Even my father’s dogs couldn’t find them, but that’s not saying much, because those dogs only listened to my father. The Americans were vexed. They couldn’t understand what was happening with their downed game. Maybe they knew what was going on, but they couldn’t prove anything. They just kept coming back and trying. We gave them an “A” for effort.
Finally, after several weeks of this, their interpreter suggested that their success rate might improve, if the Germans had weapons and were allowed to hunt with them. Of course that was highly illegal at the time, but the interpreter, who had been a police constable and was a friend of my father’s, assured them that my father was trustworthy and wouldn’t rat them out to the MPs. Their desire to bag a stag prevailed. The next time they came, they showed up with boxes full of food, real coffee, chocolate and American cigarettes, all goodies we hadn’t seen in years and more valuable than cash. They also brought Army-issue M-1 carbines for my father and his friends and invited them to hunt along with them. My father wasn’t too impressed by a carbine, but it had a 30-round magazine to compensate for its lack of accuracy. He gave them credit for trying. As of that day, the Americans’ hunting success improved dramatically. No more missing deer.
Besides the hunting, they liked the hunting customs and the parties that followed in the evening, where hunters and peasants would get together in the local pub for ragout of rabbit with dumplings, washed down with lots of beer. The Americans always picked up the tab. Until my father’s changed status from observer to participant, the ragout for the Americans consisted of what we called “Dach-hasen,” literally roof rabbits – cats. Everyone was in on the joke, except, of course, the Americans. They loved it all, nevertheless. This continued until my father was allowed to carry a rifle and to hunt again. After that, the local cats were once again safe from persecution and it was rabbits for everyone.
The Americans were impressed with the German hunting traditions, like the bugle calls before and after the hunt, the green hunting uniforms and hats with their whipping stag beards, the discipline of the shooters and the pushers and the camaraderie at post-hunt get-togethers. Keep in mind that this all happened at a time when fraternization with Germans was strictly forbidden by order of General Eisenhower. These guys were taking major chances. They continued to come to our house for years to hunt. One of them, a colonel in Military Intelligence – an oxymoron, if ever there is one, I later found out – became my friend and later sponsored my move to the U.S. He thought I had potential and I was too impressed to question his motives.
.
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