Repo Man

Later, on sober reflection, I couldn’t believe that I’d had the nerve to go through with it and keep a straight face in the aftermath. At the time, I didn’t really think about it. I just did it. I’m sure you can understand that young men – and I was young then - do things that a sane person would never consider, that seem improbable and sometimes downright dumb-ass. This incident could easily have ended up in the latter category, but that day my karma was good and all went well.

Let me back up a bit here. I received an excellent and very thorough education at the University of Southeast Asia back in the 60’s. In addition to the many distasteful things I majored in, I also picked up some very useful skills, like adding a little starch when laundering your shorts, because that made them look sharp and square during the endless inspections of your footlocker. Of course, wearing starched shorts was another, less pleasant, matter, particularly in hot and humid climates. In addition to being really uncomfortable, it also speeds the onset of jungle rut. On the upside, starch in your shorts discouraged crabs. They didn’t like it and stayed away. On the other hand, starched shorts do not stave off the clap, which always seemed to accompany the crabs. They had this symbiotic relationship, where if one was in attendance the other wasn’t far behind. Or maybe it was just the place or the company we were keeping. Anyway, this is a subject you don’t want to discuss with your mama. She just wouldn’t understand.

Another useful skill I came away with was the art of spit-shining your boots. For those unfamiliar with this technique, you need cotton balls, black shoe polish, elbow grease and ample gobs of spit. The end result should allow you to see the warts on your pecker reflected in the shine of your boots, as my old drill sergeant used to say. I know. Why would anyone want to see that? It seems sort of unhygienic and there certainly isn’t a need to know. It just was very important at the time.

As well and more to the point of this story, Uncle Sam taught me to fly an airplane. I took to that like my dog to otter scat. I couldn’t get enough of it. I loved it.

The next logical step, of course, was to acquire an airplane and in the 70’s when I lived in Miami, I could finally afford to own one, that is the bank and I could. I my case, it was a 1974 single-engine Piper Cherokee 180. It had about 3,300 TT on the airframe and 1,300 hours on its Lycoming engine SMOH. It cruised at 124 knots and had a range of 510 nautical miles, with a ceiling of 15,700 ft. What made it particularly attractive to me was the short ground roll on take-off (720ft) and landing (600ft) and the low stall speed. You could land and take off on a beach or a field without much of a problem. On the flat topography of Florida and the Bahamas this was a definite plus. I mean, the highest point in South Florida is a place called Shark Pass, elevation 3ft.

To help with the payments, I leased it back to the seller, a flight school at Tamiami General Aviation Airport, southwest of downtown Miami. During the week the flight school used the plane to train future pilots and on weekends I used it to fly all over Florida and the Keys, the Bahamas, the Yucatan or wherever. This arrangement seemed to work pretty well until sometime in late June of 1976. I should have known better than to trust someone else to look after my toy.

A friend of mine at the flight school called to tell me that the company was about to go belly-up and that they planned to declare my plane as part of their assets to satisfy the bank. He said, I’d better get my butt out there and repo my plane, before the bank took over, which was set to happen in the morning. Needless to say, I did just that. I waited ‘til dark, had one of my buddies drive me to Tamiami Airport, untied my plane and flew it out to Homestead General Airport, about a 15 minute flight south along Dixie Highway. Unlike in Canada, in the U.S. you were only required to file a flight plan if you planned to cross the Air Defense Identification Zone (A.D.I.Z.) line off shore, otherwise it was entirely voluntary. The next day I rented a hangar to keep my toy out of sight. No one tried to stop me. Nothing to it. The lesson I learned from this episode was to always and thoroughly do my due diligence.

The next weekend, on June 27- I remember the day, because it is my father’s birthday - late in the afternoon, I was flying back from Chubb Key, a small island south of the Berry chain in the Bahamas. I’d been scuba diving on a sunken DC6, a drug plane that had missed the runway and sank in 80 feet of water. I was about 20 miles off-shore cruising along at 9,500 feet, and had just passed the A.D.I.Z. line, my plane’s engine started to sound rough and after a few minutes suddenly started sputtering and then died on me. I thought that the engine had sounded a bit different from the start, but I had paid no attention to it. I tried to restart it, but no such luck. It was dead. The problem is that unlike with a car, you can’t pull over to the shoulder and fix the problem or call CAA. With a single-engine plane you only have one option – get it down on the ground as safely as possible.

I knew that at that altitude my glide path was about 25 miles, enough to reach land. I radioed Opalocka, the official general aviation Customs Port of Entry and told them that I had had an engine failure and had lost power and was forced to glide in for a landing. The tower said that they had me on radar and cleared me for runway 27 W. They advised that if I couldn’t make Opalocka, I should try Homestead AFB, which was located right next to the shore and much closer.

To be on the safe side, I switched to the military frequency and radioed Homestead AFB tower and informed them of my predicament and asked for permission to land. Permission was refused. It was restricted to military flights only. By that time I was getting pretty low and my choice was to crash land in the mangroves, put down in the water or land at Homestead. I called Homestead AFB tower again and told them I was coming in for a landing; that I had no choice other than to land in the drink. I turned the radio off and barely made it over the perimeter fence and put my plane down on the restricted runway.

By the time I got out of my plane, it was surrounded by several air policemen who told me that I was under arrest and my plane was impounded. They were all over it with their dog. I guess they were looking for drugs and other contraband. They found nothing but my dive gear. They pushed the plane to a parking area next to the end of their north-south runway, confiscated the keys and I was off to the base guard house, where they charged me with criminal trespass and locked me up. After a couple of hours, they allowed me to call my lawyer, who persuaded the APs to let me go, with my plane as bond until they figured out what to do about me. Before we left, I asked them for permission to bring my mechanic down to see what had caused the engine failure.

The next morning, I returned with my mechanic to take a look at the engine under the suspicious eyes of the APs. It didn’t take long to realize that one of the pistons had seized up. We removed it and it was pretty badly corroded. My mechanic told me that he couldn’t fix the problem there; that the engine needed to be in the shop for a major overhaul. On our way out of the base, he did let on that with any luck he could probably fix it that the plane could be flown for a limited distance on three cylinders.

It turned out later that the flight school had used regular gas, instead of aviation fuel. They did this to save a couple of dollars on gas and the plane wasn’t theirs, so who cared. The leaded gas had corroded one of the plane’s four pistons and caused the engine to seize. I would deal with them later. First I had to get my toy back.

I racked my brain for a solution to this dilemma. This was the U.S. Air Force. They had guns and very fast planes and helicopters. I also realized that this was still the military, which on the surface was the picture of efficiency and order, but I had been a member of that same military and I knew that under the surface the right hand often didn’t know what the left hand was doing. This was still the place of the big snafu – situation normal all f…ed up, or so I hoped. Then the answer came to me. The next weekend was the 4th of July and this was the country’s 200th birthday and the Air Force had planned a major celebration at Homestead, including an open house, a fly-by, a big parade, speeches by the brass and local politicians. I figured no one would pay attention to a couple of guys working on an airplane amid all the hubbub all over the base. Most importantly the Air Police would be busy being important at the gate and all the festivities. All eyes would be on the parade.

Long story short, my mechanic and I entered the base with the crowd of visitors and made our way to my plane with a spare set of keys. He did whatever it was that needed to be done to make the engine turn over, gave me the thumbs up and I hopped in and taxied down the taxiway, as if I was simply taking the plane to a new parking area. The engine sounded rough, but it generated power. No one tried to stop me. After about 1,000ft I turned the plane around, trimmed it to take-off configuration, put on full flaps and put the power lever to the wall.

I knew right away that the take-off roll would be quite a bit more than 720ft, but at that point I was committed and didn’t think about failure, only about topping the 8ft high fence at the end of the taxi way. Lift-off speed was 70 knots and it seemed to take forever to get there, but finally about 100ft short of the perimeter fence, the plane lifted and I jerked it over the fence. The engine was coughing and straining pretty hard, but I was able to slowly urge it up to about 100ft above the ground and headed for Homestead General, about 10 minutes north. Again, no one tried to stop me or raise any kind of alarm. Piece of cake.

I landed without a problem, taxied to my hangar, secured the plane, locked the door and went home. The next morning I drove back to the base and asked the APs if it was alright to go and work on my plane. They were ok with that, which meant that they had not noticed that the plane was missing. They even offered me a ride. When we got to the parking area, of course there was no plane. The APs had no idea where it might have disappeared to.

Back at the guard house, it turned out that they had not recorded the plane’s ID number and hadn’t removed the plane’s registration from the plane. As I said before – snafu still reigned. I went into overdrive and put on a pretty good show of anger, disbelief and blame over their incompetence, lack of security and procedure. I threatened lawsuits, negative publicity and damages. It was one of my better performances. My B.A. in Speech & Drama was paying off. They were at a loss as to what possibly could have happened to the aircraft under their very noses. The Officer of the Guard promised to start a search of the base right away and assured me that there would be disciplinary action over the negligent handling of this matter. I told them that my attorney would be in touch later and went home.

I called my lawyer and told him what had happened. He thought it was hilarious. He wanted to sue the Air Force for the value of the plane. We settled on getting the trespass charges dropped in return for our silence on the disappearance of my plane. We told them that my insurance would take care of the loss. The Air Force seemed relieved.

A Fish Story

What if we switched blind people to brooms? Wouldn’t it make the world a much cleaner place? Don’t answer that. It was just a random thought that flashed across my mind, a sign of my German fascination with cleanliness. Or is it a sign of my advancing dementia? It has nothing to do with what I want to talk about. But the idea does seem to have some merit, doesn’t it?

What I really want to tell you about is a fishing trip this past summer off the west coast of Vancouver Island. Fishing seems to be a guy thing, even though my wife has the uncanny knack of reeling in fish after fish, when no one else has any luck at all. Anyway, a bunch of us, 12 in all, got on the ferry to Swartz Bay, convoyed up to Port Renfrew and chartered three fishing boats and off we went looking for salmon and halibut. Our motley group consisted of my friend John and his four sons and one prospective son-in-law, three geezers, including myself, from Old Point Farm, my son, who flew up from Los Angeles to hook a big one, my niece’s husband, Dave, who winged it over from Germany and my cousin Tim, who is not really my cousin and who jetted in from Toronto.

My nephew-in-law is an ex-pat Brit and retired Royal Artillery Sergeant Major. He happily lives in the land of the Hun, but suffers from an acute case of aviophobia and hadn’t been on an airplane in years. He is an avid North Sea cod fisherman. So the prospect of visiting with the colonials and hooking into some sizeable salmon persuaded him to overcome his dread of aviation and get on an airplane. Let me clarify, he does not dread flying as such. He just doesn’t want to be on the same airplane with some loony-tunes mid-eastern terrorist who has picked that particular plane to blow himself and everyone else to kingdom come. Dave has spent time in the military serving in places like Northern Ireland, the former Yugoslavia, Cyprus and the Middle East and he is not fond of crazies, especially not the Muslim kind, looking for frolicking virgins in paradise. In any case, it took some courage for him to fly.

It turned out, there were no terrorists on his overnight Berlin Air flight from Düsseldorf, only a group of drunken Austrians in the row behind him, who were off to a holiday in the Yukon. They spent the entire flight drinking and playing hearts, a card game that seems to demand that each trump be played with as forceful a thump as possible of the trays in front of them and, of course, attached to the back of Dave’s seat. They spent the night arguing at the top of their voices with each other and continuously played musical chairs, using Dave’s seatback to rigorously pull themselves up when switching seats. Sleep was impossible. As he tells it, those Austrians were pretty close to getting severely biffed by the time their plane landed in Vancouver. And if you had seen the size of Dave’s wrists, this would not have been an idle threat. But to his credit he restrained himself. It must be that proverbial British restraint. Stiff upper lip and all that. Or maybe it was the fear of being tackled by air marshals and being led off the plane in handcuffs for disturbing the peace.

Dave was fretting about his return flight, because besides the threat of unhinged jihadists, he was afraid those Austrians might be back on his flight as well and he might do damage to them. They were not, but by a stroke of bad luck, there was an unruly Austrian child seated behind him, who vigorously kicked Dave’s seatback for fun during entire flight back to the fatherland. I got to say that I admire Dave’s resistance to violence, because I probably would have lost it and smacked that kid upside the head. I don’t know what it is about Austrians, but ever since Adolf, I look askew at them, expecting them to break into patriotic song, throwing out a stiff-arm salute or claiming to be victims of their erstwhile landsman.

My cousin Tim and I are old hunting buddies from Toronto, going back to the early 80’s. Here is how we got to be cousins. He and I were both in the advertising business there. He still is. Every year in July about 10 or 12 guys from varying advertising and rep shops around Toronto got together for a boy’s weekend at Tonch South on Beausoleil Island in Georgian Bay. We’d motor up to Honey Harbour, rent a boat and towed one or two canoes behind us, loaded to the gunwales with beer – one of our group was the account manager for Labatt’s – and head out to our camping spot in Georgian Bay National Park for a weekend of drinking and carousing in the bush and doing stupid guy stuff.

We shared this spot with numerous Eastern Diamondback rattlesnakes, who considered our campsite their favorite hang-out. The solution to this potentially precarious dilemma was beer. It turned out the rattlers loved Labatt’s as much as we did. We shared our stash with them in the lid of one of our plastic containers. They left us alone as long as their supply was sufficient. I call that elegant solution a case of Canadian ingenuity.

Everyone in the group seemed to have cousins and uncles with cottages scattered around the area. They were always talking about visiting cousin so-and-so or stopping by uncle whatever to try some of his home-made cider or relieve him of his stash of whiskey. This was particularly true of one of our group, a loud-mouthed Lugan named Eugene, who seemed to have a horde of cousins with cottages nearby. It made me feel somewhat of an outsider, since I had no cousins within 5,000 miles of the place. That’s when the McEachren brothers, Tim and Steve, came to my rescue and took pity on me. They decided to adopt me as their honorary cousin. We sealed the adoption with a two-four of Labatt’s Blue. Ever since, I am Cousin Bernie and they Cousin Tim and Cousin Steve. We’ve been friends for close to 30 years.

Oh, yah, the fishing trip. It was great. Everyone maxed out on Halibut, Coho and Springs, except for our boat which was one short. Our captain was not very good at basic arithmetic. He couldn’t count to eight, which was the allowed limit for springs for our party of four fishermen. He insisted on heading back prematurely because he was sure we were over our limit, but when we got back to the dock, we discovered that we had only seven Chinook on board. We decided to spring for an abacus for our captain, if we couldn’t get rid of him next year.

The Coho were at the height of their run and we caught some substantial hatchery-raised ones, including one the captain estimated at 20 lbs. The rule off southern Vancouver Island is that only Coho reared in a hatchery can be kept, wild ones must be released. We released some very respectable wild ones. When I reeled in that 20 pounder I was sure no one else could have hooked into anything bigger, but the captain, in his infinite wisdom, decided to tie up to a floating dock which didn’t have any scales, instead of the main government dock where we could have weighed our fish. One of John’s sons claimed the prize with a weighed 17 ½ lb hatchery Coho.

On the second day the seas got pretty rough. 10 to 15 foot breakers pitched the boat this way and that, hitting each trough between swells with a whack that jarred your spine. And on top of that the salmon wouldn’t bite. Everybody pretty much held his own and didn’t get seasick. Then the captain decided he had to have a smoke and the fumes from his vile cigarettes did in Cousin Tim. A reformed smoker, Tim can’t stand the stench of tobacco. He turned green around the gills, when the captain’s cigarette smoke enveloped him, and hurled over the side of the boat, chumming the waters. And like a miracle the fish started hitting our bait. Of course, we invited Cousin Tim back on the spot for next year. When you’re fishing and you find something that works, you hang on to it

The highlight of our outing was John reeling in a beast of a 43 lb Tyee, which beat anything on the dock. In fact, it was the third largest Chinook caught this summer at Port Renfrew. He crowed about his monster catch all the way back to Saturna. Not that I can fault him, I would have done no less. We all had a great time, despite the weather and the doofus of a captain. Next year we will switch boats. In addition to the captain’s smoking habit and his lack of counting skills, he deprived us of bragging rights at the end of the day. That was unacceptable and was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Three strikes and you’re out.

A Half-Baked Story

Somebody asks me, what I do with myself all day, I’ll say, I’m writing a book, sort of a memoir, an autobiography of the twists and turns my life has taken. I was looking for a name for this book and this is what I came up with: The Autobiography of a Half-Baked American. Now, you and I both know that I am not clever enough to come up with such a grand phrase for my work in progress. To put it as tactful as I can, I stole it from Aravind Adiga, the author of White Tiger, a book that’s an excellent read, by the way. I highly recommend it.

Before that I was toying with Non-Native Son as a title, but I dropped that, because it came across as a bit presumptuous. My opus really isn’t on the same plateau as Richard Wright’s disturbing story of a black man living in utter poverty in Chicago’s South Side in the 1930’s. Think about it: I’m neither black nor utterly poor nor have I ever lived in Chicago. How could I juxtapose my rather meek effort with the tragedy of Bigger Thomas’ life?

People have pointed out to me on occasion that I am not a real American, more an adopted one. I wasn’t born in America. My fellow countrymen, when I discussed this with them, would say, well, sure you are an American, but a naturalized one, which I guess, in their eyes makes me something less than a real citizen, a step below them, more a denizen of second class, of steerage, rather than the promenade deck reserved for native-born Americans. Such a small and insignificant word that “but”, yet it has the power to separate me from my betters.

In Canada, this dilemma doesn’t really exist. Here, if you believe what you read in the West Coast newspapers, the majority of citizens are immigrants, except for those who speak French or come from deepest Ontario or Newfoundland and the aboriginals, of course, but they have been pretty well marginalized. They don’t seem to count here. Citizens here usually identify themselves as hyphenated Canadians, as in French-Canadian or Irish-Canadian or Indo-Canadian or German-Canadian. There seem to be no real Canadians, so no second-class Canadians. That’s logical.

In the USA, even the constitution singles me out for special treatment. I am not eligible to be President. I couldn’t realize every American child’s dream to become the leader of the free world. Not that I ever had such a dream, but all the same. I’ve studied this document and I know that the founding fathers weren’t thinking about me or my man Arnold, when they put that restriction in there. They were trying to keep foreigners, meaning Brits, from sneaking in under the radar and retaking the country again. That makes sense to me. But the fact that I wasn’t born here, singles me out and puts me into a special category, one filled with people to keep an eye on, just in case. People not to be quite trusted for the big job. To be honest, I can live with that stigma.

In the States, when someone asks you: “Where are you from?” I can’t say, I’m from Gypsum, Kansas, Paducah, Kentucky, El Portal, Florida or Intercourse, Utah. I say, “I’m from deepest Bavaria” and they look at me as if I had just stepped off a UFO, because most Americans are not up on their geography and have no idea where deepest Bavaria might be. They only know it can’t be in the lower 48. Before I became a citizen, I was officially categorized as a resident alien. It can be difficult to lose that “alien” moniker. It cost me four years of service with Uncle Sam’s army.

In my mind, I always considered myself a real American. I served my country and did my duty here and in far away places without complaint. I swore an oath to protect the constitution, obey the orders of my commander in chief and keep my mouth shut about some of the more unsavory happenings I witnessed or was part of in Uncle Sam’s service. I pay my taxes without too much bitching. I’ve served on jury duty, voted in every election since 1964. I think I am a good citizen of my adopted country. I am comfortable with who I am.

Yet, I can pick up the vibe that there is something amiss. With most immigrants you can tell right away, because they haven’t mastered the idiosyncrasies and the flow and rhythm of American English. Their pronunciations and their unfamiliarity with the local idiom will give them away. When I arrived here, I decided to disappear into the melting pot and become indistinguishable from the natives. None of that multicultural crap for me. I’ve mastered that hurdle pretty well. When I talk to Canadians, they think I’m from Alberta. When I’m talking to Americans, they’ll regard me with a knowing look and say: “You’re from New Jersey, aren’t you. I can detect a definite Jersey accent buried there somewhere.” That’s funny, because I’ve only driven through Alberta maybe once or twice in my life and I only spent two days in New Jersey ever and I spoke not a word of English then. What’s even funnier is that when I go back to deepest Bavaria and speak what I believe is my mother tongue, the locals there think I’m a foreigner, pretending to be one of them and no amount of persuasion will change their mind.

This makes me a man without roots and that’s not a good thing. Without roots, you have to cast about for other anchors, otherwise you drift and eventually you will sink and perish. It is very important for one’s sanity to belong someplace, to be part of a group, to be from such and such a place. I pulled up my roots when I stepped on that boat 50 years ago and headed for points unfamiliar. Well, Hoboken isn't all that odd. I mean it’s Frank Sinatra’s home town. But it is not mine. Of course, when you’re young, you don’t think about things like that. You are looking forward to the adventure ahead, particularly, if you are coming from a place where you didn’t fit in to begin with, as it was the case with me.

I was a reject who wouldn’t conform to the expected norms in Germany. I asked too many questions, wasn’t satisfied with the answers, pointed out shortcomings and failures and was told by my teachers, that if I continued to rock the boat, my future there would be questionable at best. I drew the consequences and headed for the Promised Land, never once thinking about lost roots. I still think that decision made all those years ago was a good one. I did not feel like a steerage citizen in the military, at university, in business. I was engaged. I excelled. People patted me on the back and told me that I had the "stuff", whatever that means. What’s more, I took my experience in deepest Bavaria to heart and stopped rocking the boat. In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have, but I was driven to get ahead. I didn’t take the time to ask questions. I was too busy chasing after success.

The problem with the roots only surfaced once I retired and had time on my hands to reflect about who I was, where I had been and what I had done. My mother used to say: “Busy hands keep the devil at bay.” She was right. I have too much time on my hands on this island on the edge of the world. I’ve been tempted to reach for the vodka bottle, but I think I can resist that siren’s call. Maybe I’ll go and chop some wood or entice a feral goat to slip over the edge of the cliff in front of my house. The eagles and the ravens need to eat too. Or I’ll get back to my desktop and continue writing my half-baked yarn. It’s a great exercise for my diminishing grey cells.

An Unprovoked Attack

You’d think it’d be a fair assumption that you learn to do some things over a lifetime of coping with the surprises the gods spring on you, like walking in a straight line and looking cool, so you don’t stumble or slip and break your bones, like drinking liquor without making a total fool of yourself and falling off your chair in front of all and sundry or like eating in moderation, so that you don’t embarrass your kids by belching or passing wind at the table, particularly if guests are present. I just turned 70 last month and I must say that for the most part that is so, but then come the relapses that remind you that you are far from perfect.

Case in point, the other morning, still wrapped in a corner of the blanket of my uneasy dreams, I got up and stumbled into the bathroom to do my morning ablutions. I should have known something was amiss, when I couldn’t find my glasses, which I usually leave on the night table next to my bed. I must have put them down somewhere else the night before. You don’t know how handy your specs can be in target acquisition, until they go AWOL. As I concentrated on improving my aim, I happened to glance into the mirror and I was shocked by what my diminished vision dished up. What the hell had happened to me? My face was a mess of scratches and clotted blood. My arms were covered with abrasions and cuts and blood. I looked like I had been in a cat fight and come out on the short end of the stick. As consciousness fought for the upper hand, I realized that my body ached all over as well, particularly my new hip and my legs. I was a sorry sight to behold.

It took me a while to get my bearings and then my memory slowly faded into focus. I had been at my neighbor’s for a friendly game of Texas Hold’em poker. There were six of us and we’d smoked some fine Cohibas, consumed a great steak dinner, drank a fair amount of good French wine from my neighbor’s well stocked wine cellar and pretty much solved the world’s problems among us. A good time was had by all. Everything was as well as could be at that point. Around 11, I decided it was time to go home and that’s when things began to come unstuck.

I, of course, refused the offered ride home. After all, a man’s a man and assistance is for the weak, besides I was in total control of all my senses. All I had to do was walk up my neighbor’s driveway, turn left and walk down my driveway. Piece of cake. It was pretty dark out and, of course, I didn’t bring a flashlight. That would have been unmanly, effete even. I could see the edge of the woods on either side of the path quite well and I picked up my pace, thinking about getting home and into bed. I was happy.

And just at that moment, without any warning and totally unprovoked, the trees decided to launch their attack. I should have known. I’d been in such situations before, but I didn’t count on trees being so deceitful. In retrospect, I guess they were exacting retribution for my chain sawing some of them in the past. And they did not give a hoot about the rules of war or the Geneva Convention. You think trees are harmless. They have a certain presence, magnificence even. They are stately and imposing, but you don’t think of them as malevolent, blood thirsty, conniving or evil. Here’s a news flash for you, trees can be a nasty piece of work. Their first move was to hit me in the face and snatch my glasses. Momentarily blinded, I countered by grabbing the closest one in a bear hug and squeezing. But trees can be uncanny. They somehow managed to get my legs entangled in the underbrush and the next thing I know I’m down flat on my face. Now, I’m not a quitter, so I staggered to my feet and as I was trying to get my balance back and go on the attack, one of them lays down behind me and causes me to do a backward salto mortale, to use the old circus parlance of my youth, and I land sprawled on my butt with my legs up in the air.

Now I am mad, but my old platoon sergeant’s reminder about keeping your butt below the horizon blinked on in my mind and I figured it would be best to stay on my hands and knees. By this time the trees have managed to lay down a solid smoke screen and I had no idea where I was. They closed in from all sides as I’m crawling around in circles. I tell you it was not a fair fight, but being German, I don’t believe in surrender. I flailed away at my assailants, but they seemed to be getting the better of me. The salal undergrowth is now joining the fray. I ended up draped over an old Douglas fir stump trying to get my bearings and get away from my crazed attackers. I sensed more than saw a lighter area in front of me and I headed towards it. I figured it’s my driveway. In my eagerness to escape, I stood up. Bad mistake, because the moment I think I have my two feet under me and start to move forward, something smacks me in the head and I went down cold.

It took a while to get the cobwebs out of the way and it wasn't until some 30 minutes later that I finally crawled out of the salal onto my driveway. I swear I will be back with my chainsaw to take revenge for this cowardly attack. The seizure of my specs will not go unpunished. And, on reflection and to hell with the perception of effeteness, the next time I enter the trees’ territory I will have a flashlight. I might even get one of those nerdy strap-on head lamps and there will be a pocket saw in my arsenal. This was the last ambush I’ll stumble into unprotected. Live and learn. Or is it learn and live?

Gluttony and the Good Life during the Time of the Apocalypse

You’re asking, what is this guy talking about - the apocalypse? I’m referring to the five years between 1943 and 1948, a time of total war and total defeat, when the four horsemen – conquest, war, famine and death – reigned supreme where I lived. And yes there was gluttony, even then. Excess is not a phenomenon of good times and abundance only, as you might think when you watch North-American TV these days. It’s not dependent on the circumstances of the day. Gluttons exist even in Spartan times, amid chaos, death and famine.

Voracity doesn’t require fancy gourmet foods, fine china or expensive wines. In fact, the first thing many Germans did after 1948, once they could get their hands on some real money again, was to gorge on food, because they’d gone without for such a long time. Stoutness and consumption of large quantities of food became a sign of status, of middle class well being. I know I mentioned this before, but the world record in dumpling eating my brother holds (42), stems from this period in German history. This was the age before diets, fitness and the whole health craze. I have been known to revel in the odd bit of overindulgence at times, but I wouldn’t consider myself a gourmand. Of course, some people, who had the means to stuff themselves when everyone else was starving, took the ideal of plumpness to the extreme. Let me introduce you to my late godfather, my uncle, Franz.

My uncle, Franz, was married to my mother’s sister, Anna. I take my middle name from him. He worked at SKF (Schwedische Kugellager Fabrik), one of Schweinfurt’s three ball-bearing plants, during the war. These factories ensured that the city was flattened by allied bombs. The heavy air raids between August 1943 and March 1945 – there were a total of seven major ones, with a combined total of 1,113 B-17 bombers -, remarkably, never caused a fatal disruption of the ball-bearing war production. It was simply moved underground. The factories were hit numerous times, but the damage was soon repaired and production continued until the end of the war. Ditto for the railroad switching yards. The city’s two stations were wrecked, but the tracks were quickly restored and service resumed.

SKF was a Swedish company, owned by the Wallenberg family. You may have heard of Raoul Wallenberg. He was a Swedish diplomat who in the last year of the war saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from being shipped to the gas chambers. He was arrested by the Soviets after the fall of Budapest and disappeared into the Gulag, never to be heard from again.

My uncle thought that he was safe from the bombing raids. The Swedes, after all, were neutral. He was a bookkeeper. But during the first major daylight raid on Schweinfurt on August 17, 1943, when 230 American B-17s dumped their bomb-load on the city, including 80 high-explosive direct hits on the city’s ball-bearing plants, he’d been buried in the rubble for two days before he’d been dug out. He’d spent over a month in the hospital. His left hip had been smashed by a chunk of concrete. He now walked with the help of a cane and with a pronounced limp. Hip replacement surgery was not on the agenda in those days of total war and the immediate years after it.

He hated Americans with a passion for the rest of his life. He blamed them for ending his soccer career. It was an imaginary career. He was too fat to play anymore, but he did enjoy going to soccer games and cheering on the local side, so much so that he usually wore out the toes of his shoes from relentlessly kicking the seats in front of him with every attack of his team. His cane and his lame leg now made that difficult. He was a fierce fan and went to every home game of the local team, FC 05 Schweinfurt. He needed a scapegoat for his shortcomings. The Americans were it.

To compensate for his inability to move around unimpeded, he became a great gourmand. He would eat at all hours of the day and night. His favorite respite was rye bread slathered thick with goose fat, seasoned with pepper and hot Hungarian paprika. And he swore by the curative values of green beans and gherkins. He devoured them in large quantities. Maybe his corpulence was predestined, what with a last name of Rahm, which means cream in German. It was a good thing that he and his wife owned a corner grocery store; otherwise his gluttony wouldn’t have been possible.

Food, of course, was strictly rationed during and after the war. My uncle, though, had access to extra coupons, acquired during his daily trips to various suppliers and farmers around the city and the surrounding countryside. I can still see him get into his grey three-wheeler truck. I believe it was called a Tempo, but I’m not sure anymore. What I remember is that I always thought that the truck would tip over onto its side when he heaved his bulk behind the wheel. This truck had one wheel in the front and two in the back. You’d see them everywhere in the years after the war, when gasoline was scarce.

I remember sitting in his living room behind the store and watching him gorge himself, while everybody was pasting ration coupons into coupon books, a nightly chore in those days. He’d jam a bib into the neck of his shirt. It acted like a table supported by his huge gut and held his rations. He had this special little saying he cited in his low-Frankish dialect, while he was stuffing his face. It went “Kloess un Faserli mache de besten Toenli.” A rough translation – “dumplings and beans generate the best tunes.” The beans, gherkins and rye bread, washed down by copious amounts of beer, were a lethal combination which triggered a volatile mixture of foul-smelling gas. He broke wind in tumultuous explosions that rolled like thunder and rocked you back into your chair, but nobody was allowed to comment or applaud, for that matter. His putrid eruptions were ignored. We couldn’t even laugh. My aunt never paused in whatever she was doing, just kept on licking and pasting as if nothing had happened.

My uncle had a very low opinion of me and told me on numerous occasions that I would end up a criminal and would end my days in prison. The reason he felt that way was that I regularly raided the cigarette supply in his store, when I stayed with them for a year after the war to attend high school in the city. He never caught me in the act, but I used to smoke in the upstairs washroom, standing on the commode with the window open and left the butts on the outside sill of the window high up on the wall, never thinking that my aunt would clean outside the window, – she’d have to stand on the toilet to reach it - but she did and, of course, found the evidence. Why I didn’t simply flush them, I don’t remember, but I must have had a good reason to come up with such a stupid solution.

My uncle took care of himself. He lived to the age of 67, when he finally took his clogged arteries to that All-U-Can-Eat buffet in the sky. My aunt, who was equally huge, outlived him by 30 years. She died at age 98.

A Pilgrimage to St. Gangolf's Shrine

Maybe my dislike for guys in long skirts is genetic. My mother sure had little use for men of the cloth. She thought of them as seducers of the gullible. Perhaps that had more to do with the fact that my brother is a Lutheran minister and she was very disappointed in him. Be that as it may, my own distaste for cassocked priests, howling monks, chanting Krishnas, whirling dervishes or grim mullahs of whatever persuasion can be traced back to my early school days in Germany. In grammar school, it was always the Lutheran minister who was quick to smack you on the head with the ruler or to whack the back of your hand with it, if your recital of the 23rd Psalm or of excerpts from Dr. Melanchthon’s catechism were not up to par or if your hymn singing was off key. Those smacks really hurt.


Ours was not a madrassah, but the Taliban would have felt right at home as far as the discipline was concerned. I learned early to stay out of their reach. I lived in the Rhoen Mountains on the eastern edge of the state of Hessen in Germany near Fulda and close to the erstwhile Iron Curtain. This was a very Catholic region, once ruled by the prince bishop of Fulda. We were one of the very few Lutheran families in the area. It was the home of St. Boniface, the patron saint of Fulda. St. Boniface was an English monk from Exeter named Wynfrid, who had come to convert the heathen Germanic tribes to Christianity some twelve hundred and fifty years ago. He was the one who anointed Pepin the Short as king of the Franks in 751, confirming the union of the church with the monarchy and apparently making it acceptable that being a midget was no barrier to becoming king. On a mission to Friesland on the coast of the North Sea, the Friesians whacked him for his efforts in 754. He is buried in the Benedictine abbey in Fulda.

The people in this area were very devout Catholics and on Sundays I used to sneak into their church to watch the show. I was intrigued by the seductive show the priest put on, the aroma of the smoke wafting about, the spritzing of the holy water, the Latin liturgy. But I had to be careful, because if the priest spotted me, he’d have me turfed out, because I was a heretic in his eyes and not allowed inside the church. In retrospect, that probably was a good thing. I might have gotten hooked by their spiel.

The highlight of the religious calendar in that region was May 11th, the name day of St. Gangolf, the patron saint of tanners, cobblers, children and horses. Every year on that day, the locals made a pilgrimage to a small chapel, built in 1493 and dedicated to this saint on the top of the Milseburg, an extinct volcano which rose behind my house. I used to watch the procession, led by their priest in flowing white robes, followed by altar boys, also in white robes, carrying crosses, buckets of holy water and strange smelling smoking pots, which they swung back and forth, praying and singing, make their way past our house and up the steep path to the top of the mountain to the St. Gangolf chapel. He had been an 8th century Burgundian knight and owner of an abbey in the employ of Pepin. He was murdered by his wife’s lover, a priest. His relics are kept in a church in the Franconian city of Bamberg. Some of the real fervent pilgrims did the ascent on their knees. That must have really hurt because the path was steep and rough and strewn with rocks. They didn't believe in knee pads.

This pilgrimage up the mountain was a fine show and I would have loved to join them, but my friend Richard, one of the altar boys, told me that was impossible, because I was a heretic. He wasn’t too sure what that meant, but he was certain I was one, because his priest had told him I was a Lutheran and thus condemned to purgatory. Not to be totally left out, I used to stalk the procession from the bushes on either side of the path, making my way up the mountain parallel to the line of believers on my secret hunting trails, cursing my misfortune of being a pagan. I would lay in wait in some thicket and pepper the priest with my pea-shooter. I hated that curate for making me a heathen and not letting me be part of the show.

I was a pretty good shot and didn’t miss often. To make it count, I aimed for the back of his head and neck, which soon looked like he had come down with a case of German measles. The priest had no idea who was tormenting him. The altar boys, who marched right behind him, started sniggering and laughing, when they saw what was happening. The priest was fuming and glanced around to try to spot the miscreant who was harassing him, but couldn’t really do anything because he was leading the procession and the prayers. He endured. Maybe he identified with St. Boniface and his martyrdom at the hands of those pagan Friesians.

When the procession got to the top of the mountain, everyone tried to crowd in behind the priest and the altar boys into the little church, which stood beneath three massive stone crosses on the summit of the mountain. But it held no more than maybe 25 people and most of the crowd had to stand outside and try to listen to what the priest had to say. There were no loudspeakers, so it was hard to hear what went on inside. Soon the men started to drift off towards a stone hut a few feet lower down the mountain, a pub and way station for mountain climbers and hikers. They served food and liquor there. Beer and schnapps flowed. The smell of sausages and sauerkraut wafted across the mountaintop and I felt even lonelier and excluded. To be seen in the pub was out of the question. Everyone would soon figure out who had tormented their priest on the way up.

By the time the service was over, most of the men and older boys were fairly drunk. The priest joined them for beer and sausages. He could hold his own when it came to booze. Quite soon, though, the more pious women insisted that they started back down the mountain. The descent was not an orderly procession like the ascent. The men stumbled and fell and it was a miracle no one tumbled down the steep ravines and crevasses next to the path and killed himself. That had never happened, as far as I know. Some of the villagers did sport bandages and limped pretty badly the next day.

I paralleled their descent in the bushes above their path and I wished that I could have been a part of their show, particularly the beer and sausage part. The priest, who was feeling no pain after his stop at the pub, nevertheless was nervous and kept looking around for his erstwhile tormentor. I would have loved to make his day for him, but I was out of peas. He should have paid more attention to where he was going, because he slipped and crashed down into the rubble and boulders below the path. The men scrambled down after him and dragged him back up to the path. He looked pretty banged up and his robes were ripped, but he was able to walk. He was yelling and gesticulating wildly, cussing and swearing that he would soon find the devil responsible for his misery and he set off into the bushes to look for the culprit. I high-tailed it out of there and made my way home.

My friend Richard told me the next day that their pilgrimage had kind of disintegrated into a scramble through the bushes, with the priest leading the way and invoking the assistance of St. Gangolf to help catch the devil who had caused him to crash down the ravine. My friend thought that it was the liquor not the devil that was at fault. I didn’t enlighten him.

A Year to Remember

No, I’m not talking about a great year for Cahors wines or a memorable vintage from the local vineyard. I’m referring to the fact that the year 2009 holds some significance for me. It marks the anniversaries of three important way stations in my life and the reasons for some major partying to come. Let me explain.

First and most surprising of all from my vantage point, I turn 70 years old in June of this year. I’m joining the ranks of the geezers. Sorry, Ian, no offense. Who’d‘ve thought it possible? In my book, that’s a pretty good achievement for a guy who was told by a gypsy fortuneteller that he would not see 30 and as a callow youth was pretty much a wastrel and did things of which his Mama vehemently disapproved. I know I have been looking over my shoulder for the past 40 years to see if anyone was gaining on me, to paraphrase Satchel Paige. My friends thought I was paranoid, but I think my caution kept me alive. I guess the moral of this story is, don’t buy into the spiel of people who claim to know what’s in store for you down the road. You will live longer.

Secondly, this September marks the 50th anniversary of my arrival on the shores of the great state of New Jersey and my introduction to the nasty business of war. I was, of course, familiar with war, having lived through one as a child. But I was a passive participant then, trying to duck the bullets and bombs raining down from the sky. What I’m talking about here, is becoming an active contributor to death and mayhem. I’m not going to get into that now. One: because you cannot personalize war, if you want to stay sane and two: because I put that episode of my life into deep freeze and out of my consciousness. As “they” say, it’s better to let sleeping dogs lie.

Had I known then that New Jersey is more or less the armpit of America and not a beacon of Yankee ingenuity, I probably wouldn’t have been so excited about stepping on the docks of Hoboken, the North American port of entry for the German Hapag-Lloyd shipping line. Other than being the birthplace of Frank Sinatra and Willem de Kooning, there seems not much else that speaks for this city and evokes fond memories. No, I take that back, Hoboken is also the city were the zipper was invented, in case that little tidbit slipped your mind. But to give the place its due, I only stayed for a couple of hours. In any case, it was an inauspicious beginning to my life in the land of the free.

I thought I’d share with you how it was that I ended up in what’s known as “the city with a bar on every corner” and on the same day entered the employ of Uncle Sam.

When I was a teenager, all I ever wanted was to come to America, the land of plenty. My father despaired of me, my teachers shook their heads in disappointment, but I didn’t care. I wanted to live in what I perceived as paradise, the land of rock ‘n’ roll, jazz and white bread. I had no idea how to make this happen, but when you’re young, you don’t worry about details. You simply dream and hope for the best, if you can think that far ahead.

I had known an American Army officer who had come to my father’s house in Germany to hunt ever since shortly after the end of the war. His name was Robert Lofton. He spoke German very well and I often guided him on his hunts over the years. By the time I told him about my dream to go to America, he was a colonel and he worked in military intelligence. I know you think that that is an oxymoron and my experience since then tends to support that argument, but this guy was alright and what’s more, he was a man of his word, more or less.

This colonel explained to me that to be allowed to immigrate to the U.S., you needed a sponsor, a person or organization that would be responsible for you in case you became a burden to the state. He also told me that if I was serious about going to America, he would see to it that I would have a sponsor. He said the US Army would be glad to have me. In return for greasing my path, all I had to do is give them a minimum of four years of my life and, hopefully, more. He was sure that with my background, I would fit in without a problem. The fact that I could not speak English didn’t bother him. “The Army wants your body,” he said. “They’ll make you understand what they want.” He turned out to be right.

I didn’t realize that this four-year commitment was a bit of a trick proposal, because the official enlistment term in the US Army is for three years; so four years meant a minimum of two tours or six years. You couldn’t re-enlist for just one year. I was able to overcome that dilemma eventually, but it cost me dearly. I’ll deal with that in a later installment of this saga.

Back to my friend, the colonel. The next weekend, the colonel invited me to the officers’ mess at Ledward Barracks in Schweinfurt for dinner. This was the headquarters of the 3rd Infantry Division. When I showed up, he introduced me to a group of four Americans, all in civilian clothes, all very polite. Everyone spoke German. We talked about hunting and hunting customs here and in the U.S., my family background, political leanings, had a nice dinner, drank whiskey. The colonel talked about his long friendship with my father. He sang my praises as a hunter and stalker and related how I’d hidden his downed bucks in the early days and made him look like a fool. Everyone laughed. Good joke. I was sure that I was being appraised, assessed, graded. At the end of the evening, the colonel drove me home and told me that I was on my way, that he had major plans for me. I said nothing. I had the feeling that I’d just passed some kind of test.

A week later, he introduced me to a young Specialist 4th Class, a chaplain’s assistant, who proposed to sponsor me for immigration to the U.S. This soldier’s name was Peter Barnaby and he was from somewhere in Ohio. He spoke German well, but seemed to be very nervous. He assured me that he’d be very happy to take care of all the red tape to get things moving along. I asked him why he would do such a thing, particularly, since he didn’t know me, had, in fact, never met me before. “Don’t worry about that, son,” the colonel interjected, “I’ll explain everything to you in due time. Leave the details to me.” I never saw the kid again, but my immigration papers arrived from the American embassy in Frankfurt a month later.

The colonel later told me that the Specialist was in love with and wanted to marry a German girl from Schweinfurt. The problem was that her father had been a high profile Nazi official, a Kreisleiter – county leader – in Schweinfurt, who had been jailed as a war criminal by the Americans after the war. The Army frowned on their relationship and refused them permission to marry. The colonel arranged for that permission to materialize, in return for the soldier’s agreement to sponsor me.

My aunt knew the family of that girl well. Their name was Hoffmann. They lived only a couple of blocks from my aunt’s house and had been shopping at her corner grocery store since the end of the war. “During the Nazi time, those people were too grand for us,” my aunt told me. “They lived in a huge villa on Adolf-Hitler-Strasse, which they had confiscated from a Jew. They were much too important then to shop in my little store. They were living the high life then. Nothing but the best for Frau Hoffmann,” she said. “But after the war, the Amis kicked them out of their mansion and turned it into some kind of a club.” My aunt didn’t like the Hoffmanns. It’s funny how things in life sometimes work out. The Hoffman’s daughter became my ticket to America.

I was excited when I stepped off the MS “Berlin” in the early morning hours of a fine September day in 1959. Here I was in the land of my dreams. I didn’t know what to expect and, to be honest, I didn’t care. I thought I could smell the adventures that lay ahead, but what I probably inhaled were the rank odors of the polluted waters of the Hudson River, an environment totally alien to me. Until I boarded my ship seven days earlier, the closest I’d been to the ocean was the equivalent of an eight-hour train ride away.

After I’d cleared customs, I was met by a Lt. Connor, who was expecting me and who spoke fairly flawless German. He drove me to the U.S. Army Recruiting Station in Trenton, where he told me that the Army did things by the book and that I had to pass an aptitude test, to see if I was mentally fit to join the military. He explained that this was a necessary step for anyone wanting to join. We went into his office and he administered the US Army Aptitude Test. This test was designed to weed out the undesirables and retards. It was a multiple-choice test, consisting of two parts, basic math and mechanical questions, followed by essay and language skills questions. I had no problem with the first part, but had absolutely no clue about the second. Of course, I flunked the test. The lieutenant knew that I couldn’t speak English and would fail the test. He explained to me that he had to follow the rules and then he gave me a sheet with the correct answers, told me to memorize them and handed me a Greyhound bus ticket to Morrisville, a small town a few miles down US 1, just across the Delaware River in Pennsylvania. He explained that the Army Recruiting Sergeant in Morrisville would expect me later that afternoon and would give me the test again. Everything would be alright.

True enough, when I presented myself in Morrisville, I was handed the very same test I’d flunked earlier. Only this time I aced it. Along with a dozen other volunteers, I took the oath to uphold and defend the constitution of the United States of America or rather, I mumbled along because I had no idea what was going on, was given a folder that contained my file and train tickets to Columbus, Georgia, and Ft. Benning to start my basic infantry training. No one seemed to care that I was not a citizen, didn’t have a clue what the oath I had just taken was all about and, in fact, couldn’t understand a word that was said to me. I wonder if in this case ignorance was bliss. Well, it was too late for second thoughts. As far as the Army was concerned a fresh body was a fresh body, everything else was a detail.

All this happened on the day I stepped off the boat, my big day. So here I am 50 years later and I have to tell you, I don’t regret any of it. I did ok here. It turned out that Americans, and Canadians for that matter, are pretty good people. What impressed me most was that no one wanted to see my papers qualifying me for a particular job. And, of course, I didn’t have any. All they wanted to see was if I could do the job, the rest, which in Europe is the most important, was but a detail here, a bagatelle. True, your father’s name is equally important here as it was in the old country. How else did George W. get into Yale? But unlike in Europe, here there are alternatives, if your old man doesn’t have enough clout. I was able to immerse myself in the melting pot and prosper. The thing about dreams is that one: they are free, two: no one can take them away from you, so you might as well dream big, and three: if you single-mindedly apply yourself to the task at hand, with a little luck, dreams can and will become reality.

This brings me to the final important marker for 2009. This August, my wife and I will have been married to each other for 30 years. You’re right, I should have put this event at the top of my list, but apparently I’m a glutton for punishment. So, here’s my problem. On the day of my 30th wedding anniversary I’m booked to go fishing for salmon off the west coast of Vancouver Island with my son and a group of my friends. There’s going to be 12 guys on three boats trying to hook a big one. The conversation will be about fishing and guy stuff, not wedded bliss. I know I’m in the dog house, but I’m thinking perhaps there is a way to at least salvage a tie. I haven’t come up with a plan yet. Maybe I could try the advice one of my neighbors here gave me, who explained that any problem can be made to go away by whipping out your checkbook. I don’t know. Somehow I have the feeling this would not work here, given the circumstances.

Of course, the obvious solution would be to cancel the fishing adventure, but that would signify a total lack of subtlety on my part. Exit strategies used to be my strong point in an earlier life, but I seem to be stumped. I guess my mind is not as agile as it used to be. Help me out here. If you have any brilliant ideas, share them with me, otherwise the outlook for calm waters come August may be dim.

Nut Bars and Loony Tunes

Have you ever wondered what it is about end-of-the-road spots, that they seem to attract a disproportionate share of the lunatic fringe? I’m talking about places like Key West or Provincetown or deepest Idaho, communities where the road ends, where you have to stop and can’t run any farther and where your warped imagination can take root and find like-minded adherents. They seem to be full of folks who are convinced the end of the world is near. They draw conspiracy buffs of every hue; people who see the big bad wolf of some government or another behind every negative headline. People who hear voices, who refuse to go to the dentist for fear they will end up with a radio receiver in their choppers, who are convinced that their telephone is bugged by the CIA; men, as well as women, I suppose, who live totally off the grid, because they are afraid the agents of darkness are lurking everywhere and are ready to pounce on them, if they raise their heads above the horizon. Some act as if they are in the Witness Protection Program. They see enemies behind every telephone pole. Mum’s the word with them.

I live in such a place. This is an island in the Georgia Straits, about a 20-minute seaplane ride or a two-hour ferry trip southwest of Vancouver in British Columbia. It’s a beautiful, small and unspoiled island, about 38 square miles in size. Half of it is part of the Gulf Islands National Park. Some 350 permanent residents call it home, give or take a few. This total goes up substantially in the summer due to cottagers and visitors, who come to enjoy the natural beauty of the place. The island is called Saturna.

Among the people who live here are quite a few Americans, like myself, and ex-Americans, mainly people who fled the Vietnam-era draft and found this remote island welcoming. Most settled to earn a living as tradesmen and blended into the local society. Some of them came wrapped in the security blanket of a trust fund and didn’t have to work too hard to make a living here. Some are outright fruitcakes. I should be familiar with this set-up, since I spent a lot of time in Key West and observed that scene up close or maybe I am the fruit cake and they are the real deal. Who knows?

It’s tough to stay sane on this island. The nut bars and loony tunes have taken hold here. To give you an example, there are some who are convinced that many influential Jews in Germany were high-ranking members of the SS and in cahoots with Hitler. According to their theory, it was the Zionists on both sides who pulled the strings and who pushed the war for their own profit, that Hitler was but a puppet.

There are quite a few islanders who believe that the CIA, together with the Mossad, was behind the 9/11 attack, that it was done to justify the war on terror to benefit the military-industrial complex, whatever that is. Some of them believe that their enemies, whoever they are, are all around them and spying on them. They have pretty much isolated themselves from the rest of the community. Perhaps they enjoy living outside society. They did it once, why not twice.

There are some on this island, who believe that the world will come to a cataclysmic end
around December 21, 2012, when the Mayan Long Count Calendar comes to a close. They are preparing for Armageddon. I’m planning a big party that day, an end-of-the-world bash. Bring your own poison.

I haven’t run across any religious nuts here yet, but maybe they are just keeping a low profile. I wouldn’t be at all surprised, though, if they were getting the Kool-Aid ready.

When you’re talking to some people here, it’s important that you know whether they are on their meds and in control of themselves or whether they are hallucinating. The political views of many of them teeter on the extreme left wing of the spectrum. Many of them seem very unhappy folks, who feel the need to change the world to conform to their view on things.

You might say that this is not all that different from where you live. The difference is that if you live in the city, the few knobs here and there disappear in the crowd. They are not in your face day after day with their paranoia, as they are here in this small community.

On top of that, this island is divided pretty much down the middle into two mutually exclusive groups, the “us” and “them” camps. Depending on which side you are on, the “us” faction are the good guys and the “them” bloc are the devil incarnate. They avoid social contact with each other, don’t go to the others’ functions and don’t talk to each other, unless absolutely necessary. Both camps are the source of wild rumors, whispers and innuendos about each other.

On one side of this imaginary fault line are many of those who settled here in the 1970s, mainly Americans on the run from the draft. Many of them are against change, because any change will disrupt paradise as they define it. They have forgotten that their arrival on this island caused major disruption. They consider those who settled here after them as interlopers and fat cats, who’re trying to ruin paradise. Most of the unhinged fall into this category.

On the other side of the chasm are many whose families have lived here since the 1940s and 50s and those who came here in the last 15 to 20 years. Some of the former are major landowners here, whose parents came and worked the land, made it habitable and who eked out a living from farming and logging. Some of the latter are well-off retirees, who’ve built themselves summer homes along the rugged shores of this island. Because they don’t reside here year-around, they are often referred to as tourists, in other words people who don’t contribute anything substantial to life on this island, just pollute the place and cause congestion on the island’s few roads and strain scarce facilities. Others are perceived as the filthy rich or as one woman here put it, “the fascists on the hill.”

I don’t know where she got that idea, but I have not met any fascists on this island, ok, maybe one, and I would know one if I saw one. I grew up among them. I also don’t know what filthy rich is anymore. Most of the seemingly really well-off I knew in my previous life were mortgaged to the hilt and beyond. Their life resembled a Potemkin village, a fake façade that any hiccup in the economy could knock over. So who are these “rich” people on this island? They are mostly people who have worked very hard all their lives and have retired here to enjoy some of the fruits of their labors.

At least in places like Key West, the unstable fringe provides the color. Every evening at sunset on Mallory Square, there are guys with iguanas draped around their necks, fire eaters, wire acts, fortune tellers, vendors of exotic cookies and herbs, jugglers, bare-chested couples chained together by their nipples or noses, acrobats and raving madmen who preach about fire and brimstone. In other words, they are the entertainment that keeps the tourists coming, when the brilliant sunsets get monotonous. Not so on Saturna. Here the crazed are anything but entertaining. In fact, they are tedious as hell. They are suspicious of their own shadow and their paranoia only lets them open up among the like-minded and behind closed doors. They are no fun at all.

I’m looking for inspiration to get the nutters to contribute to the entertainment, to create a buzz about Saturna. Any ideas?

Humor In The Good Old Days

I came across a photograph of my grandfather the other day. It was one of those sepia prints and it shows him sitting in a straight-backed chair, sporting a white moustache and a van Dyke. He doesn’t smile and he looks like a man with whom one wouldn’t want to trifle. I never knew my father’s father. He died at age 72 the year before I was born. He was a forester and game warden like his father before him and he had a reputation as a man who could shoot straight, drink hard and didn’t suffer fools lightly. He managed the forests of the largest landowner in the area for the sum of 100 gold marks a year. According to my father, that was a fabulous salary in the years before World War I. The locals considered him a rich man.

In the photograph he didn’t look like a man with a sense of humor. Nevertheless, my father insisted that he did have one, of sorts. You be the judge. My father told me the story of the hunting guest my grandfather’s employer asked him to guide on a deer hunt. He was a banker from Frankfurt and the baron owed him a favor. Either the patron indicated to my grandfather to get rid of this banker or my grandfather didn’t think much of this city slicker and decided to short-circuit his hunting adventure. Anyway, the reasons for what followed remain unclear. What is clear is that the banker had an unforgettable hunting adventure.

Here’s what happened. Apparently in the years around the turn of the last century French eucalyptus lozenges were a very popular cough medicine. They were sold in small flat tins. These bonbons, as they were called, were oval and about ½ of an inch long, brown-green in color and bore an uncanny resemblance to weathered deer droppings. Unless you looked closely, these cough drops were indistinguishable from the real thing. You pretty much had to touch and handle them to know one from the other.

The evening before he was supposed to take this banker hunting, my grandfather sent his gamekeeper out into the woods on the trail they were to take the next morning. It led through some birch and willow thickets, home to a number of old does, who had frequented this particular grove for years. These are not the deer we see here. These were roebucks, much smaller than North American deer and found throughout central Europe. They topped maybe 60 pounds, if that. They are about the size of key deer found on Pine Key in the Florida Keys. They’d left their droppings along this path in large and small piles, wherever they’d bedded down. The gamekeeper added two each of the French cough drops to the edge of the first two piles about a hundred yards apart and marked their locations with sticks laid out in an X, so that he could find them again the next day.

Early the next morning, my grandfather and his gamekeeper led the banker into the bush to stalk deer. When they got close to the first marked pile of deer scat, the gamekeeper, who was in the lead, faked a coughing fit, uttered a quiet curse, bent down, picked up the first two cough drops and slipped them into his mouth. When he saw this, the banker’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. He turned to my grandfather, who brought up the rear, and burst out excitedly: “Did you see that?”
“What?” my grandfather asked quietly.
“He’s eating deer shit!”
“Yes,” my grandfather answered, “he wants to cure his cough.”
“With deer shit? Good God, man, I never heard of such a thing in all my life. That’s disgusting. I can’t believe what I saw.”
“What,” my grandfather asked surprised, “you don’t know about this remedy, sir? Three or four-day-old deer shit is one of the oldest and best cough remedies in the world. Everyone around here knows that it’s the best tuberculosis-doctor.”
“Ah, you’re pulling my leg! That man’s only pretending,” parried the banker.
“Anton,” called my grandfather in answer, “our guest doesn’t believe that you chew a little deer shit as an antidote for your cough. He knows nothing about the curative qualities of this natural cough medicine!”
The gamekeeper turned around without a word and stuck out his green tongue, complete with two throat lozenges attached. The banker was dumbfounded. He sputtered and muttered under his breath and couldn’t calm himself. He had never seen anything like it. In the meantime, they were approaching the second pile. To reassure the banker, my grandfather bent down right in front of his hunting guest, also picked up what seemed to be two droppings and put them into his mouth as if it was the most commonplace thing to do.

The banker could not contain himself any longer. He spat in all directions and hollered: “I don’t believe what I’m seeing! They are really chewing and sucking on deer shit!”
My grandfather told him to calm himself and to keep quiet or they’d spook the deer. The banker continued to shake his head in disbelief. They had to show him their tongues again before he was finally convinced. No more was said and they continued the hunt.

The next morning, my grandfather went to pick up the banker, who had spent the night at a hunting cabin in the woods, with the gamekeeper in attendance to take care of his needs. When he got to the cabin, the gamekeeper opened the door and said:”Thank God you’re here, boss. Something terrible has happened. Your banker is lying inside and is in the throes of death! He won’t last another ten minutes!”
“Why? What’s his problem?” my grandfather asked in a loud voice.
“His gall bladder must have spilled over! He’s writhing in agony like a worm; he’s groaning and has green foam coming out of his mouth! You don’t know how glad I am to see you,” the gamekeeper unburdened himself.

They entered the cabin. The banker lay squirming and whimpering on his bed. “What’s going on? What is wrong with you?” my grandfather asked, pretending pity, in a quavering tone.
“I’m spilling over! I’m puking my guts out! I can’t hold it front or back! My navel is coming out of my mouth. God damned deer shit! I’ll never suck any again!” moaned the banker in agony.
“You poor man! How many did you take?” inquired my grandfather.
“About six or seven, I think. They must have been a bit too fresh,” he groaned.
“How could you take so many at once and un-aged ones at that? That’s a regular horse cure! No wonder your body protests,” my grandfather reproached. “Here drink some coffee. I’m sure you’ll feel better in a bit. We’ll leave you alone for half an hour.”

They needed the half hour as much as the banker, as they exploded with laughter once they got back outside. An hour later the banker emerged, dim-eyed and bent over, ready to hit the latrine. Without a word he packed his gear and made his way to the railroad station. They were rid of him for good.

They later learned that the banker claimed to his friends that the deer shit had cured his tapeworm. I guess those were the good old days.

No Exit?

It must be the endless weeks of rain and fog and cold on this coast. Or maybe it’s just that we’ve grown into geezers and see everything through the screen of our disappointments. What happened? Where’s the vitality of our youth? It used to be when you woke up in the morning you were excited about the day ahead. Stuff had to be done. People needed to be seen. It felt good to be alive. We looked forward to the day’s action. But then a slow- down started, a kind of malaise set in. First this expressed itself physically. The aches and pains, which we used to be able to ignore, took longer and longer to disappear. Some stuck around for ever, it seemed. Your back, your shoulders, your knees began to hurt. Your hands didn’t seem to be as steady as they used to be. Your skin got thinner and you bled every time you came even close to a sharp object. Then your mind began to decelerate. Your short term memory faded and you can’t remember anything, have to write everything down. With me, it’s gotten so bad that in the middle of a telephone conversation I suddenly realize that I haven’t got a clue to whom I’m talking. It’s embarrassing.

And it’s not just the tedium of physical decline that gets you down; it’s the knowledge of waking up in the morning and being unable to think of anything at all ahead to brighten your day, to get you excited, to put some lead in your pencil. You’ve been there, done that and it’s just going to be another humdrum day. You’ve simply lost interest in what lies ahead. You’ve turned into a bore.

Bleakness seems to engulf everything. It’s depressing to live with the realization that your hair has turned grey, your muscle strength has begun to desert you, your eyesight isn’t what it used to be. We’ve grown accustomed to living with our ceramic hips. You learn to be careful about how you use your body. No more high impact action. No more running. No more jumping or lifting heavy loads. You worry about falling and breaking your bones. And if you do, as I have done, the healing process is prolonged and miserable. And speaking of lead in your pencil, my pencil has been leadless for years. You know you’re in trouble, when you don’t even miss it any more.

Even food is no longer a source of enjoyment, because you’ve weaned yourself off all the good stuff that’s supposedly bad for you. Come on, tofu burgers, chicken sausages or veggie dogs? That stuff makes you gag, but it’s good for you, they say. For me this is particularly galling. Gone are the raw bacon sandwiches. The savory taste of blood sausages is a dim memory. No more sow belly, pig maws or tripe or all the other good eats that used to make me salivate. I miss Bavarian haute cuisine. What used to get me drooling sometimes in my dreams was the prospect of a real Bavarian breakfast – Weisswurst (white veal sausage), fresh Radi (fiery hot horse radish) and a Mass (liter) of Weiss-Bier (wheat beer). Can’t you just taste it? Alas, I abstain.

I’ve given up all the things that used to make life enjoyable, because my betters told me they were bad for me. I stopped taking chances. I quit smoking. I’ve given up brawling. I don’t imbibe to excess anymore. The vodka bottle stands untouched in my cupboard. I no longer covet my neighbor’s or anyone else’s wife, for that matter. I’ve learned to rein in and control my impulses, to smile and back off instead of losing my cool. I’ve become domesticated and insipid.

‘Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?’

There’s a larger rut. It’s all around us, in our schools, our courts, society in general. The place is falling apart, but everyone pretends nothing is wrong. T.S. Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock had it right when he lamented: ‘In the room the women come and go talking about Michelangelo.’ The idle chatter of the demimonde, of the wannabe cognoscenti, who surround us, bore me. They put on a front of living happily in their manors, but in reality they only co-habit the same space. They exist in a parallel universe. They pass each other occasionally, like two ships in the night, with the odd bilious remark cutting through the darkness. One spends his or her days in one part of the house, on the computer or with whatever else occupies their time; the other hangs out in a different room doing whatever. They walk their dog together and silently wonder where they took the wrong turn. The feeling is not unlike being in Sartre’s version of hell, there to torture one another, by probing the other’s sins and unpleasant memories. They pick at each other’s scabs. No one takes responsibility for their actions. “L’enfer, c’est les autres.”

All that loss and in exchange for what? Serenity? Respectability? Longevity? I’m convinced we’d gladly exchange all that in a heartbeat for not having to worry about our damn blood pressure, drooping hemorrhoids or cholesterol level, to be young once more, to experience the adrenalin rush of danger, of being in love, of being a winner. Alas, that’s not going to happen. We clearly suffer from existential angst.

Where do they find the cheerful seniors in those commercials pitching Viagra and Cialis and God knows what else? Maybe they live on another planet. What’s there to be happy about, if you have to ingest chemicals to get your what’s-its functioning again?

Obliging souls keep trying to sign me up with some geezer organization that arranges “fun” trips for “golden agers”, as they like to style themselves. I can just see myself joining a group of sprightly old ladies in their serviceable shoes, sturdy walking canes and their drug-induced liveliness on some eco-tour or museum trip and listening to their blather about making the world a better place. I’d probably end up in some foreign dungeon for strangling one of them in desperation. There is no hope for dinosaurs. People say you can change, you can adapt. All it takes is will power. Fiddle sticks.

I don’t know, maybe the jihadist have it right – go out in a blaze of glory. Forget about the mirage of paradise and virgins. I’ll stick with the maggots. They are real. I used to be pretty good at blowing things up. I have the commendations to prove it. But, God, that makes a mess. I’ve grown into a tidy person in my dotage. So what to do. To be or not to be that is the question.

Is there an exit? Do I have the guts to step through the door? Can I handle the heat on the other side of that door which Sartre’s protagonists feared? Do I dare? Maybe I’ll test the waters by firing up and enjoying a fat Cohiba and uncorking a good 20-year old port, that’s been wasting away in my liquor cabinet. After all, does it really matter if you die from cancer of the lung or liver or from a bullet through your eye or a heart attack? Perhaps warmer climes are the answer. I wonder if they have lead in Hawaii or Mexico. I never found any on my previous visits, but I also didn’t look very hard, didn’t realize I needed some.

Of Work, Boredom and Demons

When my GI Bill money finally came through, I had already gotten my undergraduate degree. I took the money and enrolled in night classes at the University of Missouri at Kansas City Law School. I was a married man now. I had a day job as well, in the promotion department of Hallmark Cards. I edited a weekly in-house newsletter and contributed to a monthly magazine, Cards, which was distributed to all Hallmark Card dealers in the US and Canada. I wrote how-to articles on laying out display windows, attracting new customers to stores, displaying merchandise in the store to maximize sales and I did occasional features on Hallmark Card artists and new products like paper dresses, pop-up greeting cards and paper designs. The job was more boring than watching paint dry. But it paid the then princely sum of $12,000 a year. My wife was a designer in their art department.

I should have had a clue about the place, when in my second week there a crew of five white-suited storm troopers carried out one of the design artists in a strait jacket after he’d gone berserk in his cubicle, had ripped all his clothes off and had set about to trash the joint, tossing ink wells and paint pots against the walls. He also tried to crash through the floor-to-ceiling glass walls surrounding the ninth floor, but had only succeeded in bouncing off the reinforced glass and knocking himself out. Everyone just stood by silently and watched. No one lifted a finger. No one discussed the incident afterwards. It was as if it had never happened.

My boss, a fellow named Gus Johnson and in his late forties, showed up one day after I had suffered through several months of tedium, wearing a flashy, double-breasted navy-blue zoot-suit with wide white vertical stripes over a light blue silk shirt with French cuffs and a flowery Ascot. It was an extraordinary statement to show up in such a suit, because the Hallmark Cards white-collar uniform was a plain black suit, white shirt and a narrow subdued tie. Nothing else was acceptable.

No one looked at him or paid any attention to him. He strolled through the department, stopping a various cubicles to shoot his cuffs or adjust his tie, trying to show off his new suit in the best light. When he didn’t get a reaction, he retreated to this office and soon reappeared in shirtsleeves. At Hallmark that was considered out of uniform and cause for reprimand. Again no reaction. The tie went next. He flung it over his shoulder into the aisle between the open waist-high cubicles. Soon the shirt followed, than the shoes, socks, trousers and, finally, his yellow polka-dotted boxer shorts. He was now stark naked. Still no one reacted. Everyone pretended it was business as usual, discussed his or her assignment with him, asked about his kids, talked about the weather.

I made the mistake of asking him, if he wanted to try one of the new A-line paper dresses that had just been added to the Hallmark line and of which I had several samples hanging in my cubicle. He looked at me as if I had just stepped off a UFO, turned beet-red and commenced to scream at me: “How dare you speak to me like that? Why would I want to wear one of your paper rags? I am wearing a brand new Zegna suit.” I tried to point out that he was bare-assed naked, but he would have none of it. “You are toast here,” he yelled and stormed down the hall toward the corner office of the VP Marketing to finalize my demise. But nothing happened.

We never saw him again. And again, no one talked about Mr. Johnson’s bizarre flame-out. I decided it was time to look for other employment.

My wife’s father had been a crooner on the radio in Kansas City in the 30’s and 40’s. He’d had his own show. He knew the General Manager of one of the city’s radio stations, who was a friend and a fellow member of the Kansas City Country Club. Membership to this club was restricted to white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Jews, Catholics and other exotics, never mind blacks, didn’t need to apply. Anyway, he got me an interview and I talked myself into a job in the station’s promotion department. Money-wise it was a lateral move, but at least I could relate to the people working there. They seemed normal.

Mike McCurdy was my new boss. He always wore a jaunty bow tie, spoke softly and drank gin like a fish water. He liked dry Martinis. His Martinis were made up of a generous helping of Bombay Gin, what my brother would have called a three-finger shot, followed by a close pass past the glass with an open bottle of vermouth. He believed that the vermouth fumes gave his drink that special je-ne-sais-quoi. He never appeared drunk, but I know that five of those gin-only Martinis had to have an effect. Mike never showed it. Only his speech became even softer and slower.

When he had to fly, he always carried a large thermos filled with gin. He feared flying above all. By departure time he had to be pushed onto the plane in a wheelchair. He explained to the stewardess that he had a lower intestinal problem which sometimes weakened his system, but that he would be ok, since he carried his prescribed medicinal fluids with him in his thermos.

The station carried the games of the AFL’s Kansas City Chiefs. Those were the Hank Stram glory days, when the Chiefs won Super Bowl III. I got to know most of the players. I helped them cut commercials and promos at the station, guys like Len Dawson, Buck Buchanan, Ernie Ladd, Otis Taylor, Fred “The Hammer” Williamson, Mike Garrett, Jan Stenerud and Fred Arbanas, a one-eyed wide receiver.

My job was to write copy for station promos, retail ads and to schedule placement of radio spots. I did voice-overs and handled special sales events for the retail sales guys. There were no women in this or any other sales department in town then, nor were there any other minorities selling advertising in those days before affirmative action. I also made sure that my boss made it back to the station after his five-Martini lunches. He had a tendency to wander when he got loaded and needed tending.

About six months into this job, I decided to quit smoking. By then I had a 2- to 3-pack-a-day habit. Pall Mall non-filters were my brand of choice and they began to affect my health. I was 29 years old and could not climb a flight of stairs without huffing and hacking my lungs out. I decided to quit cold turkey and I did. Everyone was impressed. The problem was that I compensated for the Nicotine-urge with stuffing my face with chocolate. I blimped up to 230 pounds.

My wife suggested amphetamines – speed – to help me lose weight. She knew a doctor who prescribed them freely as part of a weight-loss program. They worked in getting my weight back down to 190, but they made me totally paranoid and brought to the surface all my suppressed memories, which I had banished from my conscience as a matter of survival. My nights were wracked by nightmares.

The faces of the dead I had left behind in my years in the employ of Uncle Sam swam up out the mists of my drugged and paranoid mind. Dismembered body parts and scenes of destruction flashed before my eyes. It all came flooding back. I thought I had buried my nightmares deep enough to be rid of them forever. I was wrong.

I went to work in the mornings totally exhausted, tense. I was a bundle of nerves. I didn’t eat and reverted to my old stand-by – vodka – to take the edge off. I was a mess. My job performance suffered. I skipped Law School classes regularly and ultimately had to resign. My home life suffered. Finally, one of my co-workers suggested I join a gym and work out. I took his advice. I put a stop to the speed, the vodka and the chocolate binging and began to feel better. I worked out every day. My body improved. Sleep returned and I re-buried my nightmares. I also increased my neck size to 17 inches and noticed that most of the serious guys in the gym were taking steroids. They kept after me to try some of their concoctions, which helped them bulk up and give their muscles definition. They looked great, but I had had it with chemicals in my system and refused. I quit the gym and took up golf.

I Don't See A Reason For Belgium

I know, you’re thinking what’s the big deal about Belgium. They seem like nice enough people. They haven’t hurt anybody, except maybe the Congolese. Call me a bigot, but I have my reasons for being blinkered about them. Let me try to lay out for you where I am coming from (and damn the dangling participle).

When I was a kid, we had a parlor game, called: Can you name one famous Belgian whose name isn’t Leopold? Of course, you can’t, because they don’t exist. Perhaps there is a list of famous Belgians somewhere. I never saw it and wouldn’t know where to find it. I don’t think I am going to search for it either.

Belgians aren’t a people like say the Brits, the French or even the Poles. They don’t identify themselves as Belgians, but as either Flemish or Walloon. Most Belgians are Flemings, protestant and speak Dutch. They are settled in Flanders, in the northern part of the country. The rest are French-speaking Walloons and Catholic and they populate the area bordering France. Only around Brussels do they mix to any extent. Another 10% are German, who live in the east along the German border and they all hate each other. It is an extremely dull place. The only reason that there is a country called Belgium is religion and European power politics.

Here’s a brief history lesson: The region known as the Southern Netherlands was ruled by the Catholic Spanish and Austrian Hapsburgs. In 1795 the French Republic invaded and annexed what is now known as Belgium. After Napoleon’s defeat in 1815 it became part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands as a buffer against French aggression and was ruled by a protestant Dutch king. In 1830, aided by the French, the Catholics staged a revolution against protestant domination and the place became independent under the first Leopold, a German from the house of Saxe-Coburg, which is still in charge there today. Today, the French don’t understand why anyone would want to annex Belgium.

If you ask a Belgian the question about famous Belgians, he or she will at first get very upset at being asked such a condescending question and then, after calming down, will name The Singing Nun, Hercule Poirot, Jean Claude Van Damme, Tin Tin and a number of other names you’ll never have heard of. It’s tough to be known for the reputed nutritional values of Brussels sprouts, Belgian waffles, chocolate and beer. And keep in mind that Tin Tin’s first adventure took him to the Soviet Union (Knifje in de Sovietunie, 1929). Are the communists behind Belgium’s existence? And the Swiss would heatedly contest the notion that Belgian chocolate is any good. Ditto for the Bavarians and Belgian beer. Belgians are the European version of Newfies. They are the butt of jokes. They are thought of as unsophisticated rubes, a bit dim witted and phlegmatic, sort of like their beer – heavy.

If you ask a Frenchman his opinion of the Belgians, he’ll shrug and point out to you that you can’t expect much from people who favor horsemeat as their national repast. He’ll add that eating horse dulls your senses, because, as everyone knows, Belgian horses are plough horses, huge, heavy and hairy.

I know a little bit about Belgians, besides the fact that I grew up next door to them. My oldest son married one. I had made the mistake of inviting him on a tour of the beer halls of Bavaria, when he graduated from university. I had ignored the fact that he was not a connoisseur of outstanding beer. On our first stop in a small city along the Rhine, we invited ourselves to a stranger’s wedding reception. We had to drink many toasts to the bride and groom and all the relatives in attendance. I had a very good time. My son got sick, threw up and plugged up the toilet, flooding the joint. He was embarrassed and didn’t believe me when I tried to tell him that this was nothing out of the ordinary. Instead of hair of the dog, he decided to head south to Venice to soak up some culture. There he met this Belgian girl, who was camping on the steps of the Venice railroad station. And being a naïve American from Kansas City, he fell for her. I can’t blame her for trying to escape the tedium that is Belgium.

I tried to warn him off, endeavored to point out some of the Belgian shortcomings, but to no avail. He didn’t want to understand my peculiar predilection. He didn’t see the point about being rude to Belgians.

But my bias runs deeper than ethnicity. Consider this: Belgian women don’t shave their underarms or anywhere else, for that matter. Well, it’s not really a Belgian-only thing. Lots of European women don’t, but among Belgians it seems a pervasive custom. Now I know that some guys think that bushy pits are an olfactory Garden of Eden. I can relate to that. I have a very sensitive nose and can appreciate a fragrant whiff of funk firing up my brain’s pleasure centers, but it can get overwhelming. For example, if you’re in a car with a hairy woman, the wafting bouquet of smells can get pretty funky. I’m speaking from experience here. It’s an odd thing, but women with furry pits always seem to also have a thing about not opening the car’s windows, lest they catch a draft. They seem inured to stink. To be honest, before I arrived in North America, b.o. never bothered me, but it sure does now. Would you call that cultural assimilation or delayed bias? I blame the Belgians.

Like many Europeans, especially those from deepest Bavaria, Belgians also seem to have an adverse relationship with their orthodontists or, more likely, none at all. They have terrible looking teeth. Maybe they don’t have orthodontists in Belgium. I have never seen anyone there sporting braces. The combination of buck-toothed choppers, shaggy armpits and funky odors has put me off Belgian women. I imagine Belgian men are no different, though I haven’t had any personal relations with any.

Perhaps Belgians have redeeming features, but their country doesn’t serve a purpose. They are lousy at war. They are not good at peace either. They are unable to agree on anything among themselves, including forming a government. The various ethnic factions simply hate each other. The specter of the country’s break-up is never far from the surface. Call me jaundiced, if you must; but I say: Who cares?

Lessons Learned from Love, Beer and Brawling

I was 16 when I fell in love for the first time. Her name was Lorelei Kuehn. She and her family lived in a huge apartment in the Plassenburg, the medieval fortress overlooking my high school in Kulmbach, in the northeastern corner of Bavaria. Her father was a portrait painter and a bomb victim from Berlin and a died-in-the-wool Nazi. All his kids had Germanic names that started with the letter L. Her brothers’ names were Lohengrin, Leberecht and Liebhart. Lorelei was blond and she was hot. I was besotted with her. She flirted with everyone. I couldn’t really compete with some of my classmates. Most came from well-to-do families and they were city kids. I was a country bumpkin who was only a mediocre student and on top of that I had broken the code by asking uncomfortable questions about the recent past and my teachers’ involvement with the Nazis. Many had been ardent believers and had a difficult time reconciling current realities with their past. Questions about recent history were not welcome. In short, I was not one of the gang.

Lorelei allowed me to become her personal bag wallah. She let me carry her books from the Lyceum, the girls’ high school across town next to the city park, through the center of the old city with its cobblestone streets and ancient framework houses and up the steep approach road to the castle. I am sure all the other kids in my class were snickering about me behind my back. I never got past first base with her. I was too innocent and timid. I didn’t believe all the dirt my friend, Helmut, told me about her. My infatuation with her lasted a year, before I grew tired of her. She told me I was not advancement material. Her ambition was to become a translator in the Foreign Office in Bonn. She obviously had plans for bigger and better things. I don’t know whether she ever reached her goal. I lost track of her.

The result of my unrequited crush on Lorelei was that I shut myself off from further pain and stayed away from girls for the duration. I shut down emotionally or, rather, I channeled my feelings into aggressive behavior. Here I was, 17 years old, a frustrated virgin, determined not to get hurt again by opening up to another person. Not a very bright decision, but 17-year-olds are not known for thinking things through. At least not this one. In case you’re wondering, I did not lose my virginity until I was 21 years old and that momentous event took place in a cathouse in Phenix City, Alabama. More on that at some other time.

To compensate, I developed a taste for beer, basically because that’s all I could afford at the time, and for brawling. Keep in mind that in that part of the country beer was considered one of the basic food groups, part of the grain family. After all, it was made from barley or wheat. You’ll find it in the lunch buckets of most workers for consumption in the office or on the work site or in the factory in Bavaria. It is normal.

In those days, a bottle of beer cost the equivalent of two bits. But one of my classmates was the scion of the Reichel brewing family, who owned one of the four major breweries in Kulmbach, which called itself the "Beer Capital of the World." Through him we gained access to what was called “green” beer, beer that hadn’t fully fermented and thus had not been inventoried yet. This brew was quite turbid and had bits of all sorts of matter floating in it. It also had a tendency to clean out your system. We didn’t care. We called this condition “der schnelle Fritz” – the speedy Fritz. The refugees among us called it “der flotte Otto” – the nimble Otto. Fritz, Otto – the result was the same.

Sometimes when I was flush with cash, I invested in a bottle of “Kulminator Eis Bock”, a strong local beer with a 13% alcohol content. It came in a short stubby brown bottle and had an almost cloyingly sweet taste. One bottle was all you needed to put you out of your misery.

Fridays after school was beer day, when we’d meet Karl Reichel behind his brewery and he’d let us have however many bottles we could handle. There usually were five or six of us. I remember riding my bike home after those sessions, a 15 km trip, and being so out of it that I crashed into the ditch and passed out, waking up soaking wet and freezing in the dark. The offshoot of those occasions was that my mother, who always waited up for me, berated me when I got home and threatened to slap me about severely.

If I didn’t fall off my bike on the road home, I usually was able to get the booze out of my system by the time I reached my house. The road, a two-lane highway, was fairly level for the first 13 klicks, but the last two were a real bugger. The two-lane road turned into a gravel country lane and became steep and twisty. You had to stand on your pedals the whole way. This was in the days when 3-speed bikes were the latest. They gave you a real workout. Getting off and pushing the bike was not an option. It was a sign of weakness and all the kids’d be on your case.

Sometimes I took the train for the first 12 km and rode my bike the last stretch from the depot up the mountain to my house. In winter I skied down the mountain to the railroad station in the morning and back up in the afternoon. It made for strong legs and healthy lungs.

To make matters worse, I joined a fraternity, R.A.V. Absolvia, were the raison d’être was the consumption of large quantities of beer, which had to be drunk standing up, from a tall five-liter glass boot without spilling a drop while the rest of the gang sang Latin student drinking songs. "Gaudeamus igitur juvenes dum sumus" (let us rejoice therefore while we are young) was our favorite. You had to hold the glass boot with the toe down or it would create an air bubble when you reached the foot and your face would be sloshed in beer. After a couple of these, it was hard to tell whether the boot pointed up or down. The older members of the group, the “Philisters,” were university students and, even though it was outlawed, some of them secretly practiced dueling with sabers. It was a sign of esteem and honor to sport a dueling scar. Fortunately, I never advanced up the ranks that far.

The offshoot of my frequent encounters with beer was not always oblivion. More times then not I got into fights and usually got my butt kicked. I’d come home with bloody knuckles and bruises and gashes on my face and torn clothes. And my mother would berate me.

Saturday night was usually fight night in the beer halls my friends and I frequented. The slightest perceived insult or affront could result in a wild melee with chairs and beer steins flying and blood and vomit everywhere. The favorite trick was to smash your stein on the table’s edge, so it broke from the handle and to start whaling away. This ceramic or glass handle was our version of a knuckleduster. It was very effective and persuasive. Drinking and brawling went hand in glove. That’s what you did in a small town for entertainment. Everyone participated, including the ladies. No one ever got injured seriously. I think my mother enjoyed applying her iodine tinctures and tonics to my cuts and bruises, listening to my howls.

I had joined the local soccer club, which played in the lowest level of the county league and game day, Sunday, was the highlight of the town’s social scene. The day usually started with church services at 10, followed by a gathering of the players, their families and followers at the Goldene Rose pub. Fortified by several liters of beer each, this mob then moved to the soccer pitch. By game time at 2 o’clock, the home crowd and the visitors, who had invigorated themselves at the town’s other pub, “zur Linde”- to the Lime Tree – were in fine form, with insults flying and the odd scuffle breaking out.

Visitors never showed their faces at the Goldene Rose. That was the rule. Even though they came from nearby villages, they were considered foreigners, to be distrusted. You had to keep an eye on them. It didn’t matter which side won the game. Whatever the outcome, it was the poor referee’s fault. The fans of the losing side would chase him with sticks, walking canes and umbrellas, rocks, anything that was handy to zur Linde, where he had to change into his civvies and where his moped was parked. Sometimes he’d have to lay low for hours before it was safe for him to mount his moped and head home.

After one particularly galling loss of the home team, the three Braunersreuter brothers, all star players on our team, and some of their friends waylaid the referee on his way home, beat the hell out of him and tossed him into the creek that paralleled the road, for good measure. He filed charges and half the town had to appear in court as witnesses against the Braunersreuters, but all the witnesses turned out to have been blind, no one had seen anything and the charges were dismissed. The league, however, declared our home field off limits and we had to play all our games away for a year. We lost every match. One of the reasons was that the opposing teams and their fans didn’t have to worry about retaliation when they visited our village. But we kept score and when the suspension was finally lifted, it was payback time with a vengeance, but not on the soccer pitch. We didn’t want to get suspended again

It was a tradition that on the evening of the game there was a dance at the zur Linde for players and fans of both teams. These Sunday night dances were considered neutral territory. Disputes were settled outside. As long as none of the foreigners, that is the visitors from the next village over, tried to make out with any of the local girls, things remained fairly civilized.

The dance following the first game after the lifting of the home-field suspension made the front page of the local weekly newspaper, the Stadtsteinacher Nachrichten. The visiting team that Sunday was the F.C. Tannenwirtshaus, a village about three miles up the road. Most of the inhabitants of this town were either named Turbanisch or Buss and were the descendants of gypsies who were force-settled there after the Napoleonic Wars. They were basically tinkers, poachers and fruit and vegetable traders, whose gaily-painted trucks could be seen all over northeastern Bavaria buying and selling local produce.

One of the visiting players, a fellow named Bartl (short for Bartholomew) Buss, worked for my father as custodian of his fish farm, located in Tannenwirtshaus. He had learned somehow that there was going to be trouble after the game. He instructed his teammates and fans to bring ax handles and to hide them behind the zur Linde for use that evening.

The Braunersreuters expected nothing less and had directed their youngest brother, Albin, who at 15 was so short that he could easily have passed for a midget, to hide in the bushes behind the pub to keep an eye on the guests’ activities and to report back to the Goldene Rose with his findings. Needless to say, the home side appropriated the ax handles while the visitors were dancing inside. Everyone waited in the shadows outside for the show to begin. When all was set, Guenther Schwappacher, the mayor’s son, tossed two stink bombs onto the dance floor, emptying the hall in no time. We set upon the hapless dancers with our borrowed ax handles and beat the crap out of them. Several ended up in the hospital with broken bones and other lesser injuries.

The upshot was a major trial with 43 defendants from both villages and with jail sentences and fines handed out to the combatants. This time there were plenty of witnesses pointing the finger at each other. Revenge was sworn. It was the beginning of a vendetta that lasted for years, maybe not as deadly as those in Sicily or the Balkans, but certainly as deeply felt.

I learned a valuable lesson from this incident, several actually. One, never step into harm’s way sloshed, two, always have a solid exit strategy and three, you got to have deniability, in case there are repercussions. It’s not enough to have a sound plan of attack; you also need a way out, if things go sour, to stay below the horizon in the aftermath and you need an alibi. And you need a clear mind to see what’s going on around you. I didn’t have any of the above in the incident following the opening of the soccer season. I was arrested along with everybody else and it was only my father’s standing and influence, which got me out of this mess. He was not very happy with me. My mother, of course, berated me to no end.

The other lessons I came away with from this incident were never to trust somebody else to look out for your best interests and it’s best not to have any partners, who can later rat you out to save their own skin. Of course, the downside of this is that you can’t blame anybody else for your blunders.