When I arrived in America nearly fifty years ago it became clear to me at once that maybe I’d made a big mistake by coming here. Here I was totally alone, without the safety net of family or friends, no backup of any kind. The people here didn’t speak my language and I didn’t speak theirs. My choices were stark. Turn around and go home with my tail between my legs or tough it out. Thank God for Uncle Sam’s Army. It became my family. It wanted me. Without the Army, I surely would have dissipated and failed utterly.
Today, I am of two minds about my time in the service of my Uncle Sam. On the one hand, it turned the boy fresh off the boat into a man, able to handle himself in pretty much any situation. On the other hand, the military made me do things no civilized human being should have to do. I now believe firmly that they picked me because they knew I was alone, had no one to turn to, complain to. I was just an immigrant, not a citizen, expendable, without the risk of anything coming back later and biting them in the ass. Send the kraut, he doesn’t have an option.
There is no denying that service in Uncle Sam’s army caused unbelievable stress in many of his soldiers. Some of those with whom I served, dealt with their emotional problems by suffering breakdowns, wracked by nightmares and ghosts. Others turned to drugs, which were readily available everywhere. Still others turned into homicidal maniacs or offed themselves in despair. Many suffer to this day.
I indulged in – let’s say – reckless behavior and mostly it involved the use of my old standby, booze. By then, of course, I had graduated from beer. My libation of choice became vodka. Vodka takes the edge of pain, dulls the senses and numbs the mind, kills your inhibitions. Vodka erases all taboos. It's also not detectable on your breath, when you're dealing with your betters. It made me a star in the eyes of those who required my particular skills and who sent me out to do their dirty work. More often than not, vodka caused total embarrassment and the odd time, pain.
I remember an occasion on my tour in Europe at a NATO tank gunnery range in northern Germany run by the Brits. Our division was there as part of annual NATO gunnery practice. My military police company was detailed to keep the peace and maintain order. Our British hosts and counterparts invited us to their sergeants’ mess for drinks one night. The Brits discouraged their soldiers from fraternizing with the locals. Each company had their own bar in their barracks, run by the company sergeant major, where soldiers could buy drinks and sandwiches and relax.
There were four of us who showed up at their mess and in less than two hours we had drunk their whole month’ supply of booze. Keep in mind that pay in the British Army was lousy. They made maybe 10% of what we got paid. They couldn’t keep up with us and ran out of money very quickly. At first they were too polite and then too annoyed to accept our offers to pay for them. In any case, we proceeded to clean off their shelves and cupboards. To add insult to injury, I went in search of a washroom and in my stupor stumbled into one of their billets instead and thinking it was the latrine, opened a sergeant’s wall locker and relieved myself on his neatly squared-away dress uniform and hat in the bottom center of his locker, while singing “I wish I were in Dixie.” Needless to say, our hosts got nasty and tried to throw us out. We objected. One thing led to another and a melee erupted. We wrecked the sergeants’ mess before they finally tossed us out on our butts, bloody and black and blue.
We went back the next day to apologize and pay for the damage. But by then word had got around that one of the bloody Yanks had dishonored their queen by urinating on her emblem worn on the front of their dress head cover. We were not invited in.
A few days later, about 50 of us were in the base movie theater. I forget the name of the movie showing that night, but before the film started, the queen appeared on screen riding a horse and the sound system played “God Save The Queen.” Everyone stood at attention, except the Americans, some because they didn’t know any better, some because they were too drunk to stand and some because they “wouldn’t stand for no goddamn' foreigner.”
My friend, Dwayne Klopfenstein, of Fort Wayne, Indiana, who was on his second bottle of scotch by then, yelled: “Fuck the queen!” and caused a riot. We trashed the theater, but being outnumbered at least 5 to 1, we got our butts kicked. Our division commander offered an official apology for us and we were banned from fraternizing with the Brits for the duration of the exercise.
Dwayne, by the way, slept with a bottle of whiskey under his pillow and couldn’t dress himself in the morning unless he had swig or two first. Without that, he had the shakes so bad that he couldn’t function. He was a lifer and an excellent MP, as long as he had a slug to calm his shakes.
The Army, of course, knew what was going on, but didn’t step in as long as everyone did his job. It was a fact that many senior NCOs had drinking problems. I remember one sergeant in our outfit. His name escapes me now, but he was a cook and he had a retention problem. Every time he got drunk, which was every Saturday night, he shat himself and soiled his uniform. We made sure to avoid Sunday breakfast, if he was on duty in the mess hall, because he wasn’t too concerned with hygiene.
One time, my drunken buddies and I decided to milk a cow on the way home from a country bar in Germany in the early morning hours. We were passing a pasture with a lonely cow in it and I bragged about the fact that I had grown up in the country and knew how to milk a cow. So we stopped the car and jumped over the fence, marched up to the cow and I proceeded to demonstrate my expertise. The only problem was that the cow turned out to be a bull and he did not take kindly to being milked. He saw red at having his pizzle manipulated and kicked me flat on my butt and then took off after the others, chasing them all over the pasture. I was in pain and had trouble getting up. I crawled back to the car as fast as circumstances allowed while the bull was busy with my pals and just made it back before the beast remembered his erstwhile milkmaid and came after me in a rage. I was in pain for a week.
Another time, my buddy, Cpl. Williams, who was the old man’s driver, and I bought a case of Seagram’s Canadian Mist in the Army Class VI store and headed to a pub we used to frequent in a place called Jebenhausen, a small village about 10 miles from our base. We put the whisky bottles on the table and invited the locals to help themselves. The Germans were used to schnapps that burned your throat as it went down and thought this smooth whisky was not very strong and gulped down the bottles as if they were filled with water. Everyone got pretty wasted. One of the locals present was Fritz Flederwisch, the renowned painter of Mercedes cars, who believed cars should be painted any color, as long as it was black. He had stopped in only for a quick beer and was on his way home to deliver a freshly plucked chicken to his wife for dinner. When he remembered his neglected task after a bottle of rye, he decided he’d better get the chicken home. He tied a string around the carcass, stumbled outside into the rain and, cheered on by the patrons of the pub, walked it home, dragging it on his string through the mud all the way to his house on the outskirts of the village. His wife was not very happy with him and beat him about the head and shoulders with the muddy chicken in front of his pals. She also got together with the other women and they put the pub and the “verdammte Amis” – damned Americans – off limits to their men. It cost us a dozen butterball turkeys from the base PX to undo the ladies’ fatwa.
On rue Pasteur, during my tour in Saigon, I routinely swigged back a jar of Stoli before I went out on my close encounter jobs. It calmed my nerves and my conscience and it gave me the ability to act without fear. I associated vodka with success. Instead of being embarrassed by my boozing, it earned me slaps on the back and status. I couldn’t let anyone know how I really felt, so I drank more.
By the time I returned and left Uncle Sam’s employ at age 24, I couldn’t function without my comforter – vodka. This caused real problems at university, both in the classroom, where I was a total failure and in my dormitory. After a night of particularly heavy boozing, I and a couple of other losers decided to turn on the fire hoses on the second floor of the dormitory and flood the place. When the cops showed up, we jumped out of the second story windows. Luckily, we landed in a huge lilac bush and were able to escape. The police couldn't’t prove who had done the deed, but nevertheless I was told not to come back, that university housing would not be available to me. Someone had ratted me out.
I decided it was time to wean myself off booze. Not that I stopped drinking altogether, I still had the odd beer now and then, but I managed to lose the urge for and dependency on hard liquor. I realized that succeeding at university and being drunk most of the time did not compute very well. I have to thank my English Literature professor for that revelation. He convinced me that I had the potential to make it.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Friday, September 26, 2008
Politics on the Edge of Canada
I don’t know what it is about B.C. politics, but politicians out here seem to have a propensity to expose their privates in public. Maybe it’s something in the water or the air or maybe it’s the potent weed they’re growing out here. More likely, there are just more loony-tunes attracted to politics here than in other parts of the country.
Case in point: the other night I went to an all-candidates meeting on Saturna Island. Most of the candidates standing for the upcoming federal election were expected to be there. There were supposed to be five of them. Only four showed up, because Julian West, the nominee for the NDP had resigned that day, because he had brandished his woody at a group of teenage girls some years back. He was outed by a posse of Google sniffers. You can check it out at therunagatesclub.blogspot.com.
When I heard this, I thought it auspicious for the rest of the evening. I was hoping for some excitement, some flash. I was thinking that Briony Penn, the candidate for the Liberal Party, who had ridden a horse bare-breasted down the streets of Vancouver in January 2001 in an anti-logging protest, might pull a similar stunt here. But she disappointed and didn’t even have a wardrobe malfunction. No one thought naked horseback riding at all odd here. And I can see that. Doing a Lady Godiva and startling passers-by with your exposed hooters is not in the same league as “wagging your noodle in public.” (see same blog above)
That night, she only waved “my leader Dion’s white book” about at every opportunity. It annoyed me, because I was expecting a bit of a spectacle and all she could do was to parrot from Stephane Dion’s bleached green book. She had no ideas of her own. She could have done with some acting- and voice-coaching as well. Hectoring your audience may work in the classroom, but here it made her look like the rookie she is. The scene reminded me a bit of the days of Chairman Mao’s Red Book. At least he and his disciples knew what to do with power once they got it. I doubt that either Briony or her leader Dion know what to do, should they get elected. Thankfully, the federal Liberals are tanking in B.C.
Then there was the nut bar from the Canadian Action Party. His name is Jeremy Arney and he is a heavy equipment operator and a transplanted Brit, who believes the U.S. is ready to send its army up here any day to occupy Canada, that the Canadian dollar is about to disappear and Canada is on the verge of vanishing from the map. He’s also convinced that aspirins cause strokes. He didn’t have clue about reality or what the issues were on Saturna. I don’t know what it is with these Brits. They don’t seem to get it. I felt like pointing out to him that the vanguard of the American invasion is already here, because I and a number of others in the room were Americans. But I was too polite; I guess I lived in Canada too long. Maybe he’d think we were all part of the American 5th Column and have us arrested for subversive activities. Doing the Chicken Little thing is not a very good party platform. People at the meeting took him for a clown.
To be honest, there were two level-headed wannabe’s at the head table. One was Gary Lunn, who is the incumbent and a Conservative. He was in a no-win situation, since his and his governing party’s record was there for all to see and the audience proceeded to pick him apart on issues on which he was weak or had failed to act to the satisfaction of some in the audience, while the other three had never done anything and had no record, only promises. The socialist fringe, which has quite a following on Saturna, was well represented in the crowd. They tried very hard to paint him into a corner. He kept his cool and came across as pretty level-headed and, boring as it is, nobody has accused him of exposing himself in public or some other perversion.
The other was the chap representing the Greens, Andrew Lewis, another transplanted Brit. This is his third try at getting elected. He came across as pretty coherent and sensible. I say this, even though tree-huggers bring on the urge in me to grab my chainsaw and wreak some havoc. With no one representing the NDP this time around and the Liberals fading fast, he has a chance to get elected this time. On the other hand, I don’t know why anyone would waste their vote on someone who will have no influence whatsoever in Ottawa, should he get there.
All in all, it was a tame and unsatisfactory evening. Nothing even vaguely exotic happened. No perverts burst from the closet. No pyrotechnics erupted. No fisticuffs. No beer mugs flying. No one did a full frontal in support of his or her platform. Boring, boring, boring.
Maybe that’s the Canadian thing.
Case in point: the other night I went to an all-candidates meeting on Saturna Island. Most of the candidates standing for the upcoming federal election were expected to be there. There were supposed to be five of them. Only four showed up, because Julian West, the nominee for the NDP had resigned that day, because he had brandished his woody at a group of teenage girls some years back. He was outed by a posse of Google sniffers. You can check it out at therunagatesclub.blogspot.com.
When I heard this, I thought it auspicious for the rest of the evening. I was hoping for some excitement, some flash. I was thinking that Briony Penn, the candidate for the Liberal Party, who had ridden a horse bare-breasted down the streets of Vancouver in January 2001 in an anti-logging protest, might pull a similar stunt here. But she disappointed and didn’t even have a wardrobe malfunction. No one thought naked horseback riding at all odd here. And I can see that. Doing a Lady Godiva and startling passers-by with your exposed hooters is not in the same league as “wagging your noodle in public.” (see same blog above)
That night, she only waved “my leader Dion’s white book” about at every opportunity. It annoyed me, because I was expecting a bit of a spectacle and all she could do was to parrot from Stephane Dion’s bleached green book. She had no ideas of her own. She could have done with some acting- and voice-coaching as well. Hectoring your audience may work in the classroom, but here it made her look like the rookie she is. The scene reminded me a bit of the days of Chairman Mao’s Red Book. At least he and his disciples knew what to do with power once they got it. I doubt that either Briony or her leader Dion know what to do, should they get elected. Thankfully, the federal Liberals are tanking in B.C.
Then there was the nut bar from the Canadian Action Party. His name is Jeremy Arney and he is a heavy equipment operator and a transplanted Brit, who believes the U.S. is ready to send its army up here any day to occupy Canada, that the Canadian dollar is about to disappear and Canada is on the verge of vanishing from the map. He’s also convinced that aspirins cause strokes. He didn’t have clue about reality or what the issues were on Saturna. I don’t know what it is with these Brits. They don’t seem to get it. I felt like pointing out to him that the vanguard of the American invasion is already here, because I and a number of others in the room were Americans. But I was too polite; I guess I lived in Canada too long. Maybe he’d think we were all part of the American 5th Column and have us arrested for subversive activities. Doing the Chicken Little thing is not a very good party platform. People at the meeting took him for a clown.
To be honest, there were two level-headed wannabe’s at the head table. One was Gary Lunn, who is the incumbent and a Conservative. He was in a no-win situation, since his and his governing party’s record was there for all to see and the audience proceeded to pick him apart on issues on which he was weak or had failed to act to the satisfaction of some in the audience, while the other three had never done anything and had no record, only promises. The socialist fringe, which has quite a following on Saturna, was well represented in the crowd. They tried very hard to paint him into a corner. He kept his cool and came across as pretty level-headed and, boring as it is, nobody has accused him of exposing himself in public or some other perversion.
The other was the chap representing the Greens, Andrew Lewis, another transplanted Brit. This is his third try at getting elected. He came across as pretty coherent and sensible. I say this, even though tree-huggers bring on the urge in me to grab my chainsaw and wreak some havoc. With no one representing the NDP this time around and the Liberals fading fast, he has a chance to get elected this time. On the other hand, I don’t know why anyone would waste their vote on someone who will have no influence whatsoever in Ottawa, should he get there.
All in all, it was a tame and unsatisfactory evening. Nothing even vaguely exotic happened. No perverts burst from the closet. No pyrotechnics erupted. No fisticuffs. No beer mugs flying. No one did a full frontal in support of his or her platform. Boring, boring, boring.
Maybe that’s the Canadian thing.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Are Hunters White Trash?
Hunting is a matter of survival in places like Africa and large parts of Asia. In Europe it is an activity reserved for the elites and those who want to be. In North America, and Australia for that matter, hunters are thought of as rednecks by the urban elite, as blood-thirsty Bambi-killers or, as the anointed liberal fringe sees it, “white trash, who cling to their guns and religion.” I take exception to that. I like to hunt and I may be white trash, though I’ve never lived in a trailer, took the wife and kids to the Redneck Riviera and trashed the beach nor do I go to family reunions to pick up dates and I’ve not seen the inside of a church in years. Yes, I feel comfortable with guns. I was taught to treat your rifle like you would your bride. Yes, I believe beer is one of the basic food groups. No, I’m not a registered Republican and no, my wife’s hairdo does not get tangled in the ceiling fan nor do I have an old Chevy engine suspended from a tree in my front yard.
I believe real hunters are true keepers of the environment and in tune with nature. The problem is that some who call themselves hunters would be better off if they stayed out of the bush. They think it’s macho to go into the woods and blast away at anything that moves. Armed and dangerous. They ignore the rules and ethics of hunting. They are not the norm. My experience has been that sooner or later these guys get what they deserve. I’ve known all kinds and I’d like to introduce you to a few who stand out, my version of the good, the bad and the ugly.
My first exposure to hunting came when I was a child. My father was a professional hunter and he loved the chase. He managed the game and forests of a baron, who owned all the land where we lived in southern Germany. I was six years old, when I first started to accompany him on his hunting excursions.
His hunting parties usually consisted of his employer and several of his blue-blooded friends, plus a number of doctors, lawyers, judges, senior bureaucrats and hangers-on from the surrounding towns and villages, and three or four American Army officers from the nearby garrison. One of the hunters was a fellow named Kramer. He was the baron’s butler. Herr Kramer was from deepest Silesia and his heavy regional accent sounded hilarious to our Franconian ears. I had an ear for languages and could imitate his accent rather well. My father used to call on me to entertain his hunting buddies, pretending being Herr Kramer in his function as the baron’s butler. My father didn’t like him.
Herr Kramer had tried desperately to get a hunting license. To him, this was the ultimate status symbol. To get a hunting license to this day is an expensive and difficult undertaking there. In those days, the cost of a license was the equivalent of a new car and to get one could take up to a year. You needed to take extensive classes and pass written and oral exams on hunting rules, applicable statutes, regulations and rites, game identification, which included every possible mammal or bird from squirrels to seals, from doves and upland birds to the many types of ducks and geese, most of which you’d never encounter in the wild in Germany, plus gun safety and weapon and ammunition identification. The idea was – and still is – to keep the number of hunters to a minimum, namely the upper classes.
My father was the senior hunting examiner for our region. He didn’t believe a butler should be licensed to hunt. He flunked Herr Kramer three times for cause. This meant Herr Kramer had to go through the whole circus and expense three times. But he was nothing if not persistent. He finally complained to the baron, who suggested to my father that he pass him, since Herr Kramer was sure not to hit anything anyway and, what’s more, he was tired of his constant whining. So Herr Kramer became a licensed hunter. He promptly bought himself a chic green hunting uniform, complete with a hat sporting a “Saubart” - the neck hair of a wild boar - and a brand new semi-automatic hunting rifle, and was front and center at every hunt thereafter.
The baron proved to be right. Herr Kramer never downed anything, but he kept coming. To him the most important thing was to be seen as part of the hunting party. Killing anything was totally immaterial. No one wanted to hunt near him, because no sooner had the signal to start the hunt been given, he would let loose with his repeating rifle and wouldn’t stop until he ran out of bullets. He seldom ran out. He always claimed that numerous bucks and wild boar tried to sneak by his stand. He was always sure to have hit something and insisted the dogs look for his downed game. The dogs never found anything. The other hunters called him “full clip.” My father, whose job it was to allocate the hunting stands, usually put him on the one farthest away from any possible action and out of harm’s way. He called him the “Schlesische Hanswurst” - the Silesian buffoon. The pushers made a wide circle around his stand.
Another nimrod was the baron’s estate manager, Friedebald Baerwolf. He had been a professional soldier, what they called a 12-pointer in Germany. After 12 years service, a soldier in the German Army was entitled to a full pension. Herr Baerwolf had been a supply master sergeant who possessed great organizational skills. He could get you anything, if the price was right. The Baerwolfs were refugees from the city of Plauen, in the Soviet Zone of Occupation, not too far from our village, on the other side of the Iron Curtain. He was a stout fellow and had trouble walking for any length of time. He always parked himself on a stand close to the road. As an ex-soldier, he was an excellent shot and rarely missed. He could also drink most men under the table and was the life of the obligatory post-hunt parties, held at the pub on the evening of the hunt.
He acted as the master of ceremonies and usually started off the festivities with a toast to Herr Kramer and his hunting prowess with a pint crock of potato schnapps. That was the end of Herr Kramer, who felt obliged to empty his stein in response to this salute. Then he sat down and slowly slid from his chair under the table, accompanied by the cheers from around the room. At the end of the evening, a couple of my father’s pushers would toss him into a wheelbarrow, push him home and dump him and his rifle at his doorstep. The Americans loved these quaint rituals, even though they didn’t understand a word that was said. The Germans liked their company, because they always insisted on paying everyone’s tab. These parties were the highlight of the village social scene. The food was good. The beer flowed. Everybody was happy. And that was the point of the exercise.
My father was the only one who didn’t drink on those or any other occasions. He’d sworn off booze as part of his compact with his Lutheran God to get his eldest son, my brother, home safe from the war. He believed in keeping his word.
I have hunted on both sides of the pond. On this side, in Canada, I met a man named Danny Buhl, who ran a rustic lodge in the Haliburton Highlands, north of Toronto. I owned a cottage on the same lake and went on some of his moose hunts over the years. He was originally from eastern Germany and he gave himself the title of master of the hunt. He told everyone that he had been an interpreter for General Vlasov, whose Cossacks fought on the side of the Germans against the Bolsheviks during the war. That probably was unlikely, since he was only 14 years old in 1945. Besides, I don’t think he spoke Russian, at least not the Russian I learned in high school. He had an Ontario outfitter’s license, which allowed him to guide hunts in a 5,000 acre area adjacent to Algonquin Park – prime moose country. He liked to boast of his many hunting successes. Some of his German friends who came to hunt with him, called him “Buhl-shitter” behind his back. His moose-kill rate was zero.
There were maybe ten guys in this hunting party, mostly older Germans. None of them would have been allowed to hunt in Germany. Everybody was ready to go before daylight, except for the Master of the Hunt. Herr Buhl preferred to take his breakfast at 9:00 a.m. No amount of persuasion could change his mind. While we all milled around in the yard eager to get going, he’d be at the breakfast table in his pajamas, savoring his eggs and sausages. No one dared to leave without him. I guess that was a German thing.
Of course, by the time we got into the bush, the moose had settled down for the day and had stopped moving. Herr Buhl’s preferred mode of hunting moose was to assign everyone a stand and then he would ride around in his truck on the various logging trails and look for tracks and chat with hunters from other camps, who were on the move in the bush and who were laughing at him behind his back. They tried to acquaint him with the old Ojibwa saying: “Tracks - moose gone, no tracks – moose come.” He laughed and took them all for rubes. But at the end of the day, they usually had several moose hanging in their camp and we did not.
One of the Germans in that hunting party was named Guenther. I have forgotten his last name. He was a short man, with a big head, a full beard, no neck and a sizeable beer belly hanging over short and very spindly legs. His legs were totally out of proportion to the rest of his body. He always wore pants that buckled below the knees and knee socks. He invariably carried a walking stick that converted into a one-legged leather seat.
One evening we were sitting around in camp talking about hunting raccoon. Guenther let on that he trapped them at his house in the city, then put them in an air-tight box, specially designed and constructed by himself so that it could be hooked to his car’s exhaust pipe, and gassed them. He was proud of his invention and, as a German in particular, didn’t see anything bizarre or unfortunate with this method of killing. The Canadians present shook their head in disbelief, when they heard this German talking proudly about his gas chamber. But he didn’t stop there, but told us he also ate the meat of those gassed raccoons and had the skins tanned and then sewed them into a cozy quilt for his bed.
Another in this hunting party was a German fellow we called “Wolf Lake Willi,” because he rented a trailer on Wolf Lake in our hunting area. His trailer stood next to a groomed bike trail. He had a problem with sharing. To discourage anyone stopping at his place and asking for water or directions, he had mounted a wrecked bicycle over his “No Trespassing” sign. He never had more than one bottle of beer in his fridge, so he didn’t have to offer you one as a courtesy.
One year during our hunt, he lucked into three moose, which made the mistake of passing by his stand. He promptly shot all three, even though he only had a tag for one. This happened around 11 o’clock in the morning. They found two of the moose right away, but the third, a calf, proved elusive, since Willi pointed the search party in the wrong direction. He himself didn’t bother to look for his kill. We came upon the remains accidentally the next day, but by then the wolves had eaten most of it.
Traditionally, the shooter takes care of the basic chores of field dressing the game he kills. Willi, however, was averse to blood and decided instead to go back to the lodge and have lunch. All the Germans decided to vamoose with him and left the two carcasses lying untended in the sun. When my Canadian hunting buddy and one of the less squeamish Germans came upon the dead moose, they were bloated with gas and ready to blow. They gutted and quartered them before the meat spoiled in the heat and got them ready for transport out of the bush. Willi and his pals showed up later in the afternoon in high spirits. He didn’t bother to thank anybody for doing his job for him. Nor did he show any concern about leaving the moose unattended in the field. Needless to say, my friends and I stopped hunting with these clowns.
For nearly twenty years, I have hunted with a group of guys from the Windsor area, in southwestern Ontario. Most of them worked on the line at the Chrysler plant there. You could call them rednecks. We hunted in an area about two hours northwest of Toronto near Walkerton in the Greenock Swamp, one of the last and largest undrained swamps in Ontario. It wasn’t unusual to spot a 10- or 12-point swamp-buck in there. The hunters in this group were mainly Franco-Ontarians, who spoke English with a French syntax, but none of them could speak French anymore. One of them was a fellow named Bobby Lapierre. Bobby was a dry-waller by trade and didn’t think anything of draining a 2/4 of Labatt Blue in an evening. He was an excellent hunter and shot. He lived near the swamp and spent every free hour in the summer scouting for deer and their patterns, building tree-stands and clearing shooting lanes in preparation for opening day on the first Monday in November. He was very proprietary about our hunting area and did not suffer trespassers lightly.
Opening day comes around and Bobby is headed for his favorite deer stand well before daybreak. When he gets there, he finds a fellow from a nearby camp of Portuguese guys from Toronto sitting in his stand. The Portuguese pretended ignorance and refused to leave. Bobby didn’t want to spook the deer unnecessarily and moved on to another stand. That evening, as we were getting ready to head back to camp, Bobby was nowhere to be seen. We waited around ‘til well after dark when he finally appeared. He was limping a bit and explained that he had lost one of his socks in the bush and his boot was chafing his foot. We didn’t ask what had happened to his sock and headed home.
The next day we heard that one of the Portuguese hunters had returned to his stand before daybreak and had settled into his seat, only to find that he had sat in a pile of excrement that someone had thoughtfully left there for him, accompanied by a wool sock in lieu of toilet paper. Needless to say no one thought of trespassing on Bobby’s stand again.
Finally, I want to tell you about a guy from Saturna Island, where I live now. His name is John and he has lived on this island all his life. He invited me to go white tail hunting in the interior of British Columbia, up near the headwaters of the Fraser and Columbia rivers. Beautiful country. We were driving up and down logging roads winding their way along the mountainsides glassing the countryside for deer, when we spotted some grouse working the sides of the road ahead. John stopped the truck, grabbed his .22 rifle and prepared to get out of the cab when his cell phone started ringing. It was his wife. John never lost a beat. He stepped down onto the road and started walking toward the grouse, held the phone to his ear with his left hand and while talking on the telephone, he aimed his rifle with his right hand and shot the grouse. Head shot, of course, because he didn’t want to spoil the edible meat. I was impressed. To him, it was nothing special. Try that trick some time, if you think that’s easy. You’d have to be a multi-tasker extraordinaire.
During the war in Germany, people used to say: “Watch out for those crazy colonials from Canada.” I say, by all means watch them, you might learn something. Hunters are like everyone else. Some are bad, some are good and some are indifferent. To paint them all with the same brush only highlights one’s ignorance and, of course, one’s political leanings. Here’s a question: Is there “black trash”? I’ve not seen it written anywhere. Perhaps that term is too politically incorrect or maybe black guys don’t hunt. But they sure do own guns and they have religion. It’s an enigma.
I believe real hunters are true keepers of the environment and in tune with nature. The problem is that some who call themselves hunters would be better off if they stayed out of the bush. They think it’s macho to go into the woods and blast away at anything that moves. Armed and dangerous. They ignore the rules and ethics of hunting. They are not the norm. My experience has been that sooner or later these guys get what they deserve. I’ve known all kinds and I’d like to introduce you to a few who stand out, my version of the good, the bad and the ugly.
My first exposure to hunting came when I was a child. My father was a professional hunter and he loved the chase. He managed the game and forests of a baron, who owned all the land where we lived in southern Germany. I was six years old, when I first started to accompany him on his hunting excursions.
His hunting parties usually consisted of his employer and several of his blue-blooded friends, plus a number of doctors, lawyers, judges, senior bureaucrats and hangers-on from the surrounding towns and villages, and three or four American Army officers from the nearby garrison. One of the hunters was a fellow named Kramer. He was the baron’s butler. Herr Kramer was from deepest Silesia and his heavy regional accent sounded hilarious to our Franconian ears. I had an ear for languages and could imitate his accent rather well. My father used to call on me to entertain his hunting buddies, pretending being Herr Kramer in his function as the baron’s butler. My father didn’t like him.
Herr Kramer had tried desperately to get a hunting license. To him, this was the ultimate status symbol. To get a hunting license to this day is an expensive and difficult undertaking there. In those days, the cost of a license was the equivalent of a new car and to get one could take up to a year. You needed to take extensive classes and pass written and oral exams on hunting rules, applicable statutes, regulations and rites, game identification, which included every possible mammal or bird from squirrels to seals, from doves and upland birds to the many types of ducks and geese, most of which you’d never encounter in the wild in Germany, plus gun safety and weapon and ammunition identification. The idea was – and still is – to keep the number of hunters to a minimum, namely the upper classes.
My father was the senior hunting examiner for our region. He didn’t believe a butler should be licensed to hunt. He flunked Herr Kramer three times for cause. This meant Herr Kramer had to go through the whole circus and expense three times. But he was nothing if not persistent. He finally complained to the baron, who suggested to my father that he pass him, since Herr Kramer was sure not to hit anything anyway and, what’s more, he was tired of his constant whining. So Herr Kramer became a licensed hunter. He promptly bought himself a chic green hunting uniform, complete with a hat sporting a “Saubart” - the neck hair of a wild boar - and a brand new semi-automatic hunting rifle, and was front and center at every hunt thereafter.
The baron proved to be right. Herr Kramer never downed anything, but he kept coming. To him the most important thing was to be seen as part of the hunting party. Killing anything was totally immaterial. No one wanted to hunt near him, because no sooner had the signal to start the hunt been given, he would let loose with his repeating rifle and wouldn’t stop until he ran out of bullets. He seldom ran out. He always claimed that numerous bucks and wild boar tried to sneak by his stand. He was always sure to have hit something and insisted the dogs look for his downed game. The dogs never found anything. The other hunters called him “full clip.” My father, whose job it was to allocate the hunting stands, usually put him on the one farthest away from any possible action and out of harm’s way. He called him the “Schlesische Hanswurst” - the Silesian buffoon. The pushers made a wide circle around his stand.
Another nimrod was the baron’s estate manager, Friedebald Baerwolf. He had been a professional soldier, what they called a 12-pointer in Germany. After 12 years service, a soldier in the German Army was entitled to a full pension. Herr Baerwolf had been a supply master sergeant who possessed great organizational skills. He could get you anything, if the price was right. The Baerwolfs were refugees from the city of Plauen, in the Soviet Zone of Occupation, not too far from our village, on the other side of the Iron Curtain. He was a stout fellow and had trouble walking for any length of time. He always parked himself on a stand close to the road. As an ex-soldier, he was an excellent shot and rarely missed. He could also drink most men under the table and was the life of the obligatory post-hunt parties, held at the pub on the evening of the hunt.
He acted as the master of ceremonies and usually started off the festivities with a toast to Herr Kramer and his hunting prowess with a pint crock of potato schnapps. That was the end of Herr Kramer, who felt obliged to empty his stein in response to this salute. Then he sat down and slowly slid from his chair under the table, accompanied by the cheers from around the room. At the end of the evening, a couple of my father’s pushers would toss him into a wheelbarrow, push him home and dump him and his rifle at his doorstep. The Americans loved these quaint rituals, even though they didn’t understand a word that was said. The Germans liked their company, because they always insisted on paying everyone’s tab. These parties were the highlight of the village social scene. The food was good. The beer flowed. Everybody was happy. And that was the point of the exercise.
My father was the only one who didn’t drink on those or any other occasions. He’d sworn off booze as part of his compact with his Lutheran God to get his eldest son, my brother, home safe from the war. He believed in keeping his word.
I have hunted on both sides of the pond. On this side, in Canada, I met a man named Danny Buhl, who ran a rustic lodge in the Haliburton Highlands, north of Toronto. I owned a cottage on the same lake and went on some of his moose hunts over the years. He was originally from eastern Germany and he gave himself the title of master of the hunt. He told everyone that he had been an interpreter for General Vlasov, whose Cossacks fought on the side of the Germans against the Bolsheviks during the war. That probably was unlikely, since he was only 14 years old in 1945. Besides, I don’t think he spoke Russian, at least not the Russian I learned in high school. He had an Ontario outfitter’s license, which allowed him to guide hunts in a 5,000 acre area adjacent to Algonquin Park – prime moose country. He liked to boast of his many hunting successes. Some of his German friends who came to hunt with him, called him “Buhl-shitter” behind his back. His moose-kill rate was zero.
There were maybe ten guys in this hunting party, mostly older Germans. None of them would have been allowed to hunt in Germany. Everybody was ready to go before daylight, except for the Master of the Hunt. Herr Buhl preferred to take his breakfast at 9:00 a.m. No amount of persuasion could change his mind. While we all milled around in the yard eager to get going, he’d be at the breakfast table in his pajamas, savoring his eggs and sausages. No one dared to leave without him. I guess that was a German thing.
Of course, by the time we got into the bush, the moose had settled down for the day and had stopped moving. Herr Buhl’s preferred mode of hunting moose was to assign everyone a stand and then he would ride around in his truck on the various logging trails and look for tracks and chat with hunters from other camps, who were on the move in the bush and who were laughing at him behind his back. They tried to acquaint him with the old Ojibwa saying: “Tracks - moose gone, no tracks – moose come.” He laughed and took them all for rubes. But at the end of the day, they usually had several moose hanging in their camp and we did not.
One of the Germans in that hunting party was named Guenther. I have forgotten his last name. He was a short man, with a big head, a full beard, no neck and a sizeable beer belly hanging over short and very spindly legs. His legs were totally out of proportion to the rest of his body. He always wore pants that buckled below the knees and knee socks. He invariably carried a walking stick that converted into a one-legged leather seat.
One evening we were sitting around in camp talking about hunting raccoon. Guenther let on that he trapped them at his house in the city, then put them in an air-tight box, specially designed and constructed by himself so that it could be hooked to his car’s exhaust pipe, and gassed them. He was proud of his invention and, as a German in particular, didn’t see anything bizarre or unfortunate with this method of killing. The Canadians present shook their head in disbelief, when they heard this German talking proudly about his gas chamber. But he didn’t stop there, but told us he also ate the meat of those gassed raccoons and had the skins tanned and then sewed them into a cozy quilt for his bed.
Another in this hunting party was a German fellow we called “Wolf Lake Willi,” because he rented a trailer on Wolf Lake in our hunting area. His trailer stood next to a groomed bike trail. He had a problem with sharing. To discourage anyone stopping at his place and asking for water or directions, he had mounted a wrecked bicycle over his “No Trespassing” sign. He never had more than one bottle of beer in his fridge, so he didn’t have to offer you one as a courtesy.
One year during our hunt, he lucked into three moose, which made the mistake of passing by his stand. He promptly shot all three, even though he only had a tag for one. This happened around 11 o’clock in the morning. They found two of the moose right away, but the third, a calf, proved elusive, since Willi pointed the search party in the wrong direction. He himself didn’t bother to look for his kill. We came upon the remains accidentally the next day, but by then the wolves had eaten most of it.
Traditionally, the shooter takes care of the basic chores of field dressing the game he kills. Willi, however, was averse to blood and decided instead to go back to the lodge and have lunch. All the Germans decided to vamoose with him and left the two carcasses lying untended in the sun. When my Canadian hunting buddy and one of the less squeamish Germans came upon the dead moose, they were bloated with gas and ready to blow. They gutted and quartered them before the meat spoiled in the heat and got them ready for transport out of the bush. Willi and his pals showed up later in the afternoon in high spirits. He didn’t bother to thank anybody for doing his job for him. Nor did he show any concern about leaving the moose unattended in the field. Needless to say, my friends and I stopped hunting with these clowns.
For nearly twenty years, I have hunted with a group of guys from the Windsor area, in southwestern Ontario. Most of them worked on the line at the Chrysler plant there. You could call them rednecks. We hunted in an area about two hours northwest of Toronto near Walkerton in the Greenock Swamp, one of the last and largest undrained swamps in Ontario. It wasn’t unusual to spot a 10- or 12-point swamp-buck in there. The hunters in this group were mainly Franco-Ontarians, who spoke English with a French syntax, but none of them could speak French anymore. One of them was a fellow named Bobby Lapierre. Bobby was a dry-waller by trade and didn’t think anything of draining a 2/4 of Labatt Blue in an evening. He was an excellent hunter and shot. He lived near the swamp and spent every free hour in the summer scouting for deer and their patterns, building tree-stands and clearing shooting lanes in preparation for opening day on the first Monday in November. He was very proprietary about our hunting area and did not suffer trespassers lightly.
Opening day comes around and Bobby is headed for his favorite deer stand well before daybreak. When he gets there, he finds a fellow from a nearby camp of Portuguese guys from Toronto sitting in his stand. The Portuguese pretended ignorance and refused to leave. Bobby didn’t want to spook the deer unnecessarily and moved on to another stand. That evening, as we were getting ready to head back to camp, Bobby was nowhere to be seen. We waited around ‘til well after dark when he finally appeared. He was limping a bit and explained that he had lost one of his socks in the bush and his boot was chafing his foot. We didn’t ask what had happened to his sock and headed home.
The next day we heard that one of the Portuguese hunters had returned to his stand before daybreak and had settled into his seat, only to find that he had sat in a pile of excrement that someone had thoughtfully left there for him, accompanied by a wool sock in lieu of toilet paper. Needless to say no one thought of trespassing on Bobby’s stand again.
Finally, I want to tell you about a guy from Saturna Island, where I live now. His name is John and he has lived on this island all his life. He invited me to go white tail hunting in the interior of British Columbia, up near the headwaters of the Fraser and Columbia rivers. Beautiful country. We were driving up and down logging roads winding their way along the mountainsides glassing the countryside for deer, when we spotted some grouse working the sides of the road ahead. John stopped the truck, grabbed his .22 rifle and prepared to get out of the cab when his cell phone started ringing. It was his wife. John never lost a beat. He stepped down onto the road and started walking toward the grouse, held the phone to his ear with his left hand and while talking on the telephone, he aimed his rifle with his right hand and shot the grouse. Head shot, of course, because he didn’t want to spoil the edible meat. I was impressed. To him, it was nothing special. Try that trick some time, if you think that’s easy. You’d have to be a multi-tasker extraordinaire.
During the war in Germany, people used to say: “Watch out for those crazy colonials from Canada.” I say, by all means watch them, you might learn something. Hunters are like everyone else. Some are bad, some are good and some are indifferent. To paint them all with the same brush only highlights one’s ignorance and, of course, one’s political leanings. Here’s a question: Is there “black trash”? I’ve not seen it written anywhere. Perhaps that term is too politically incorrect or maybe black guys don’t hunt. But they sure do own guns and they have religion. It’s an enigma.
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Ruminations of a Bored Mind
I am sitting on my deck and I’m looking out over Plumper Sound, sail boats in the breeze, seagulls squawking. The wasps must feel the imminent arrival of cooler weather and the end of their days, because they are getting stupid. A bald eagle perches in the dead top of a fir tree by the cliff below, scanning the water for prey. I have one ear perked for the bleating of the goats on their regular trek through the meadow below my house and the other tuned to B.B. King riffing on his guitar on my CD player. I’m sipping on a cool wheat beer, sucking on a stogy and working on my tan. The world looks good, as if it was made just for me. I’m thinking you got it made, boy.
And then that little but very persistent voice in the back of my head mouthes off, telling me: “What do you mean life is good? You’re bored out of your mind. You should be thinking about a change, some excitement, some mayhem.” I have to agree. My mother used to say that busy fingers kept the mind at ease. My mind is not at ease. Since I sold my business and retired here, I have pretty much done nothing of consequence.
That was not how I spent my life before retirement. I was one of those guys driven to earn. For the last 20 years of my working life I was a media salesman, selling TV advertising and that is really a job for the young and energetic. To be successful in that business, you had to hustle. I’ve never been idle for long in my life, ‘til now.
At one time or another before I settled on the advertising business, I’ve held down some strange jobs in my life. I worked as an obituary writer with a major metropolitan newspaper, the jump-off point for most newspaper flacks back in the day before the internet, with great aspirations for my bi-line on page one above the fold. I lasted six months, lured away by money and the enticement of writing sentiments for Hallmark Cards. That move turned out to be major mistake. Once you’ve been through the grinder of Hallmark’s OK Committee, which vetted every word written and every design before it saw the light of publication, you knew that this was not going to be a lifetime career. I’ve been a waiter (albeit only for three days, before the restaurant’s owner suggested that it’d be a good thing if I looked for more suitable employment).
Have you ever run the Money Machine at the Dade County Fair in Florida, with a gun-toting state trooper keeping an eye on you and all that cash? Or staged a Julio Iglesias concert? I have and I don’t recommend either as a career choice. I’ve worked as check-canceller at a bank (again for a brief period due to my unsuitability to rote), an assembly-line quality control inspector at a ball-bearing plant, a grain elevator repairman, a faculty club house boy, a whorehouse bouncer (a job that paid very little, but at least offered some collateral benefits), a house painter, grain-truck driver, construction worker and as a pilot for a funeral home in South Florida. (Don’t ask. You really don’t want to know what possible use a funeral parlor had for a pilot.) And I whiled away considerable time in the employ of my Uncle Sam, upholding the law and wreaking havoc. I almost forgot, I also was a Fuller Brush salesman once. Remember them?
The early experiences in my life, the war and its aftermath, taught me that life is iffy. All my life, I looked over my shoulder to see if anyone had a bead on me, was gaining on me, as Satchel Paige so deftly put it. It taught me to never let down my guard, to stay focused. And that seems to be the problem, because now that I am comfortable, I have let down my guard and I feel lost. During my indenture to Uncle Sam, I reached for the vodka bottle to shut up my conscience. I set great trust in its calming qualities. But now that doesn’t work anymore. Overexposure, I guess. My old handler in Uncle Sam’s service, who was from deepest Arkansas, used to say: ”When in doubt, kill the sumbitch.” But that was then, this is now.
Sometimes I wonder, if my father, who’s been dead for over 30 years, is watching me, judging my every move, as he did when I lived in his house. My father had high hopes for me and I disappointed him deeply when I sailed for America. Would he approve of what I’ve done since?
I have started and run businesses and I was pretty good at schmoozing. I never was very good at sitting on my butt and idling. But none of the activities I’ve participated in, turn my crank anymore. I just can’t see myself being involved in any of that again. Been there, done that. So what should I turn my attention to?
I’m thinking about all the things I haven’t tried. Maybe I should try the undertaking business, a trade with a secure future or start an oyster farm. Maybe write my memoirs or become a highwayman. Your money or your life. But the thing is, what you do doesn’t matter. What you do and how you live in your head are two totally different things. My mind flashes back and drags up bogeymen that I have kept locked away, I thought securely and forever. Boredom does that to you. All the dead, friends and those who were not, lined up like body bags on a faraway tarmac. So many. There’s only one lesson to be drawn from that picture and that is I survived. Get over it.
So, here’s my plan: I’m going fishing.
And then that little but very persistent voice in the back of my head mouthes off, telling me: “What do you mean life is good? You’re bored out of your mind. You should be thinking about a change, some excitement, some mayhem.” I have to agree. My mother used to say that busy fingers kept the mind at ease. My mind is not at ease. Since I sold my business and retired here, I have pretty much done nothing of consequence.
That was not how I spent my life before retirement. I was one of those guys driven to earn. For the last 20 years of my working life I was a media salesman, selling TV advertising and that is really a job for the young and energetic. To be successful in that business, you had to hustle. I’ve never been idle for long in my life, ‘til now.
At one time or another before I settled on the advertising business, I’ve held down some strange jobs in my life. I worked as an obituary writer with a major metropolitan newspaper, the jump-off point for most newspaper flacks back in the day before the internet, with great aspirations for my bi-line on page one above the fold. I lasted six months, lured away by money and the enticement of writing sentiments for Hallmark Cards. That move turned out to be major mistake. Once you’ve been through the grinder of Hallmark’s OK Committee, which vetted every word written and every design before it saw the light of publication, you knew that this was not going to be a lifetime career. I’ve been a waiter (albeit only for three days, before the restaurant’s owner suggested that it’d be a good thing if I looked for more suitable employment).
Have you ever run the Money Machine at the Dade County Fair in Florida, with a gun-toting state trooper keeping an eye on you and all that cash? Or staged a Julio Iglesias concert? I have and I don’t recommend either as a career choice. I’ve worked as check-canceller at a bank (again for a brief period due to my unsuitability to rote), an assembly-line quality control inspector at a ball-bearing plant, a grain elevator repairman, a faculty club house boy, a whorehouse bouncer (a job that paid very little, but at least offered some collateral benefits), a house painter, grain-truck driver, construction worker and as a pilot for a funeral home in South Florida. (Don’t ask. You really don’t want to know what possible use a funeral parlor had for a pilot.) And I whiled away considerable time in the employ of my Uncle Sam, upholding the law and wreaking havoc. I almost forgot, I also was a Fuller Brush salesman once. Remember them?
The early experiences in my life, the war and its aftermath, taught me that life is iffy. All my life, I looked over my shoulder to see if anyone had a bead on me, was gaining on me, as Satchel Paige so deftly put it. It taught me to never let down my guard, to stay focused. And that seems to be the problem, because now that I am comfortable, I have let down my guard and I feel lost. During my indenture to Uncle Sam, I reached for the vodka bottle to shut up my conscience. I set great trust in its calming qualities. But now that doesn’t work anymore. Overexposure, I guess. My old handler in Uncle Sam’s service, who was from deepest Arkansas, used to say: ”When in doubt, kill the sumbitch.” But that was then, this is now.
Sometimes I wonder, if my father, who’s been dead for over 30 years, is watching me, judging my every move, as he did when I lived in his house. My father had high hopes for me and I disappointed him deeply when I sailed for America. Would he approve of what I’ve done since?
I have started and run businesses and I was pretty good at schmoozing. I never was very good at sitting on my butt and idling. But none of the activities I’ve participated in, turn my crank anymore. I just can’t see myself being involved in any of that again. Been there, done that. So what should I turn my attention to?
I’m thinking about all the things I haven’t tried. Maybe I should try the undertaking business, a trade with a secure future or start an oyster farm. Maybe write my memoirs or become a highwayman. Your money or your life. But the thing is, what you do doesn’t matter. What you do and how you live in your head are two totally different things. My mind flashes back and drags up bogeymen that I have kept locked away, I thought securely and forever. Boredom does that to you. All the dead, friends and those who were not, lined up like body bags on a faraway tarmac. So many. There’s only one lesson to be drawn from that picture and that is I survived. Get over it.
So, here’s my plan: I’m going fishing.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Give Me A Wardrobe Malfunction, Please
I’m fed up with perfection which assaults you anytime you turn on your TV, starting with the blond vacuous female talking heads and news readers that fill the screen of every channel and pass for news anchors. They all look like clones of Paris Hilton. Every blond hair is in place just so, their make-up is flawless and they’re holding forth on world events. They look mint. Never mind that they are incapable of an original thought and haven’t got a clue what they’re talking about. I’m always hoping that their teleprompter go berserk. Where are the Walter Cronkites, the Peter Jennings, the Chet Huntleys? Where are the warts, the blemishes, the things that make us human? It’s depressing. I’m tempted to reach for the vodka bottle in despair.
I was watching the Olympic opening and closing ceremonies from Beijing and the picture you saw was everyone doing their thing in unison. No one stepped out of line, nobody moved right when everyone else moved left. And those soldiers who hoisted the Chinese flag up the pole. The old Prussian generals must have turned over in their graves in envy. The staging of all the hundreds of sporting events went without one flaw.
I was looking for at least one wardrobe malfunction or some other screw-up. I have to admit, I was poised to see my hopes fulfilled, when one of the Jamaican women sprinters in her enthusiasm at winning almost let one of her nipples peek out from under her skimpy track suit, but no, the camera cut away before my prurient desires could be satisfied. I was hoping for one of those Chinese sky-walkers to come crashing down or at least trip and stumble. But I was foiled. Just more clones. I confess I’m attracted to bedlam.
And what is it about those sports like race walking, rhythmic gymnastics and synchronized swimming and diving? I mean, true, some of these race walkers had pretty agile butt cheeks, but what’s the point of walking when you could reach the finish line much faster by running? I can maybe see the attraction, if you watch these guys from the back, but from the front, they look ridiculous. If I want to see that kind of hip and butt action, I can watch Fashion TV. Those models are just as anemic looking, but they don’t have hairy arms and legs.
And waving a red ribbon through the air or doing the hula-hoop doesn’t strike me as sport. At least they should have used one of those giant foam hands with the extended finger and do some variation of the tomahawk chop while skipping rope and swiveling their hips. I could get into that. And what about those women with the clamp on their noses? That’s a very unattractive accessory. I’m sure Martha Stewart would have some suggestion for them. What’s next for Olympic sports? Juggling, hopscotch, synchronized chess?
I was drawn to the contact sports. I was thinking that boxing, wrestling and all those Asian martial arts would surly generate some havoc. I don’t know what the judges were looking for, but these guys were whaling on each other and no points were ever scored. The outcome seemed orchestrated. The closest they came to anything resembling chaos and the only bright moment for me was the Cuban taekwondo fighter, who finally lost it and did what they all should have done – kick the referee in the head and cold-cock him. That Cuban should have been up on the podium for doing what needed to be done. He’s on my and Fidel’s highlight reel. I cheered for him.
In disgust, I switched to coverage of the Democratic National Convention in Denver. I thought, surely politicians south of the border are not perfect. I was looking for mayhem a la Chicago 1968. But I was thwarted again. True, the various media tried their best to conjure up some perceived controversy with the dames who interpret body language and voice inflection, but that was pretty lame stuff. I was hoping for a brawl or at least some nasty sound bites, some cat fights. What I got was bland political correctness. Yada-yada-yada.
There was Hillary – again with the peach pant suit, which makes her look like she should audition for a clown gig with the Cirque du Soleil – freshly coiffed, with a determined smile pasted on her face and regretful eyes, exhorting her followers to forget about the past and vote for the guy she had derided as a lightweight only weeks earlier. Everyone seemed overjoyed and cheered and waived their blue UNITY and CHANGE signs in unison. There is an Olympic sport in the making – synchronized sign waving. The Chinese would probably win that event too.
Hand me the bottle. I'm in pain.
I was watching the Olympic opening and closing ceremonies from Beijing and the picture you saw was everyone doing their thing in unison. No one stepped out of line, nobody moved right when everyone else moved left. And those soldiers who hoisted the Chinese flag up the pole. The old Prussian generals must have turned over in their graves in envy. The staging of all the hundreds of sporting events went without one flaw.
I was looking for at least one wardrobe malfunction or some other screw-up. I have to admit, I was poised to see my hopes fulfilled, when one of the Jamaican women sprinters in her enthusiasm at winning almost let one of her nipples peek out from under her skimpy track suit, but no, the camera cut away before my prurient desires could be satisfied. I was hoping for one of those Chinese sky-walkers to come crashing down or at least trip and stumble. But I was foiled. Just more clones. I confess I’m attracted to bedlam.
And what is it about those sports like race walking, rhythmic gymnastics and synchronized swimming and diving? I mean, true, some of these race walkers had pretty agile butt cheeks, but what’s the point of walking when you could reach the finish line much faster by running? I can maybe see the attraction, if you watch these guys from the back, but from the front, they look ridiculous. If I want to see that kind of hip and butt action, I can watch Fashion TV. Those models are just as anemic looking, but they don’t have hairy arms and legs.
And waving a red ribbon through the air or doing the hula-hoop doesn’t strike me as sport. At least they should have used one of those giant foam hands with the extended finger and do some variation of the tomahawk chop while skipping rope and swiveling their hips. I could get into that. And what about those women with the clamp on their noses? That’s a very unattractive accessory. I’m sure Martha Stewart would have some suggestion for them. What’s next for Olympic sports? Juggling, hopscotch, synchronized chess?
I was drawn to the contact sports. I was thinking that boxing, wrestling and all those Asian martial arts would surly generate some havoc. I don’t know what the judges were looking for, but these guys were whaling on each other and no points were ever scored. The outcome seemed orchestrated. The closest they came to anything resembling chaos and the only bright moment for me was the Cuban taekwondo fighter, who finally lost it and did what they all should have done – kick the referee in the head and cold-cock him. That Cuban should have been up on the podium for doing what needed to be done. He’s on my and Fidel’s highlight reel. I cheered for him.
In disgust, I switched to coverage of the Democratic National Convention in Denver. I thought, surely politicians south of the border are not perfect. I was looking for mayhem a la Chicago 1968. But I was thwarted again. True, the various media tried their best to conjure up some perceived controversy with the dames who interpret body language and voice inflection, but that was pretty lame stuff. I was hoping for a brawl or at least some nasty sound bites, some cat fights. What I got was bland political correctness. Yada-yada-yada.
There was Hillary – again with the peach pant suit, which makes her look like she should audition for a clown gig with the Cirque du Soleil – freshly coiffed, with a determined smile pasted on her face and regretful eyes, exhorting her followers to forget about the past and vote for the guy she had derided as a lightweight only weeks earlier. Everyone seemed overjoyed and cheered and waived their blue UNITY and CHANGE signs in unison. There is an Olympic sport in the making – synchronized sign waving. The Chinese would probably win that event too.
Hand me the bottle. I'm in pain.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Why I Stay Away From Cruises
My friends keep telling me how much fun their last cruise was, leisurely travel, fabulous weather, excellent food, luxurious service, exotic ports, interesting sights, fun activities and side trips, new friends. I will not be caught dead on a cruise. I base that assessment on experience.
I took a seven-day cruise once, back in 1959. We left on the 23rd of August, the height of the summer (and hurricane) season. This was before the time of widespread jet travel and ocean liners were the common and preferred mode of travel between Europe and North America. Leisure cruises were not the norm that they are today. I took this cruise on the MS “Berlin,” built in 1925 at Newcastle-on-Tyne, as the Gripsholm for the Swedish American Line, refitted and refurbished in 1954 and sold to North German Lloyd for the North Atlantic run between Bremerhaven and New York, with stops at LeHavre and Southampton. By today’s standards, she was a modest 18,000-ton passenger liner, 590 feet long, 74 feet wide, with a 29 foot draw and a cruising speed of 16 knots. She was able to accommodate 976 passengers, 80 in 1st class, 302 in 2nd and 594 in 3rd class.
My cabin was # 207, bed K, in 3rd class, just above the waterline, among the unwashed. I shared this space with a retired German baker from Chicago, who was returning from his annual pilgrimage to the beer halls of Bavaria, and a red-headed black man from Raleigh, North Carolina, who spoke perfect German with a strong Berlin accent. This was a bit disconcerting to me. I didn’t expect a black man to speak my language as well or better than I did. He had earned a doctorate in philosophy from the Free University in Berlin and was on his way home after two years in Germany. He was apprehensive about going home and tried to explain to me what segregation meant. This was a concept to which I simply could not relate. I had no idea what he was talking about.
Let’s look at the positive aspects of cruising, about which my friends wax so lyrical, one at a time. Let’s take leisurely travel and fabulous weather first. My crossing lasted seven days and was very rough once we left Southampton. The captain chose the northern route to avoid the hurricane zone. It didn’t seem to make a bit of difference. The weather was atrocious. The second day out, we ran into a north Atlantic storm with waves that dwarfed the ship’s superstructure and sent huge walls of water crashing over the bow. Obviously, the deck was off limits. This storm lasted for three days.
As for fun activities, they were restricted to trying to stay upright and not to crash down the stairs, as the ship heaved and bucked. Sleeping was impossible, because you had to concentrate on not falling out of bed each time the ship rolled. Entertainment consisted of the John Wayne oater “Rio Bravo.” I saw it six times. The shipboard orchestra tried valiantly, but to no avail. They kept crashing out of their chairs. Dancing was impossible. Some tried, but it turned out to be more of a wrestling match than a dance. The final day of the trip, the ship spent heaved to in thick fog off New York.
I would rate my experience with excellent food and luxurious service as mediocre at best down on the C Deck. I’m sure it probably was better up among the washed and groomed on the top decks. Most of the passengers were seasick the whole time. I and my cabin mates were among the few who were unaffected by this malady. The weather confined everyone but the crew indoors. The old baker and I spent most of our time eating the meals served in the nearly empty 3rd class dining room and at the bar drinking Cognac, which the old man firmly believed prevented seasickness. He seemed to be right.
On several occasions, we snuck up to the 2nd class dining room and helped ourselves to the uneaten meals there. Seasickness was an equal opportunity malaise. The old baker introduced me to lobster and caviar and prime rib. We were in hog heaven. We also tried to get access to the 1st class deck, but it was barred to the unwashed from the lower decks. The ever-watchful stewards on the top deck, who had no sense of humor or equality whatsoever, foiled us. They’d obviously rather throw the uneaten food over the side before allowing the peasants to taste it. Our only satisfaction was that the swells on the top deck were as seasick as most everyone else.
On the morning of the seventh day, the fog finally lifted and the “Berlin” sailed into New York harbor, past the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, and docked at its pier in Hoboken, New Jersey, not exactly an exotic port. I swore to myself that I would never step on another cruise ship again, if I could at all help it.
Alas, this was not to be. I have to tell you about my second experience cruising the North Atlantic. This took place in early December 1962. I admit that December is probably not the best month for a balmy crossing, but I had little choice. This cruise was on the U.S. Military Sea Transport Ship “General Simon B. (for Bolivar) Buckner,” on its regular run again between Bremerhaven and New York, without stops in between. She had been commissioned in January 1945, built by Bethlehem-Alameda Shipyards of Alameda, California, with a 9,676 ton displacement, and had a civilian crew. I was on my way back from service in Europe to a stop-over at historic Fort Hamilton, New York, en route to beautiful downtown Saigon or Ho Chi Minh City, as the natives now call it. And it was even less fun the second time around.
It started out pretty good. When I arrived at the ship’s berth at Columbus Quay in Bremerhaven for embarkation, I was late and nearly missed out on this adventure, due to the fact that my exit immunization record was deemed to be unsatisfactory. I had faked the records to avoid getting the required injections. The medics insisted on giving me all six obligatory shots, before they would let me board and escape their jurisdiction. As a result, I missed all duty assignments on board, because this was a working cruise. All the enlisted personnel had to pull guard and mess duty and the NCOs’ had to supervise those duties.
My lateness and the resulting lack of assigned duties proved to be a major bonus, because the minute we reached the open Atlantic, again on the northern route, we were battered by a fierce winter storm and all doors and hatches were battened down tight. I withdrew to my bunk and consulted my old standby – Cognac. I had planned ahead and carried ten days’ supply in my foot locker. Once again, it worked like magic. It didn’t take long before most in our compartment were seasick. The floor of the troop deck in our quarters, which held 120 men on triple-decker bunks, was soon awash in vomit which slopped back and forth with the motion of the waves and the place stunk to high heaven. There was no ventilation.
It became very difficult to maintain the Army’s standards of cleanliness and organization. The ship was a WWII Liberty ship and the comfort level was basic to begin with. She had seen better days. The ship shuddered, moaned and creaked as it was tossed around by wind and waves. You had the feeling she was going to break up at any time and head for Davy Jones’ locker.
To give you an example of the ship’s amenities, let me give you a tour of the head in our quarters. It was a square open room, divided into sinks along one wall, showers along another and the other two held the toilets. There were no partitions or doors. There was no fresh water, only salt water. The toilets flushed straight into the ocean, which was fine in calm weather, but with a storm raging outside, the waves shot straight up through the pipes and onto the floor. The upside was that you saved on toilet paper, if you could take the water pressure. You had to be able to multi-task. You had to avoid cutting your throat while shaving in a wildly pitching ship, while simultaneously making sure you avoided the shit and vomit ricocheting back and forth between your feet in the sea water, all this while clinging desperately to the sink to avoid falling headlong into the mess on the slick floor. Needless to say, discipline soon flagged on our deck.
The poor slobs, who thought they had caught a break from the funk below by being posted on deck for guard duty, found themselves on duty cold and wet, huddling in the exhaust fumes from the galley to keep warm and were puking their guts out. I have no idea what they were guarding against, since no one dared or was allowed to step out on deck and no one was trying to board this rust bucket.
The mess itself was a challenge too. All food was served in large compartmentalized metal trays. You ate at tables fitted with a two inch high metal rim, designed to catch the food before it splashed on the floor. The storm made it difficult to find your mouth with your fork and everything on your tray tended to end up together in one big pile. There always was someone at your table who lost control of his tray and let it crash into everyone else’s, causing even more chaos. Soon everyone turned green and started hurling. There was the odd fist fight. Those unfortunate ones who got picked for KP had to clean up the mess in addition to scouring pots and pans, trays and utensils in the galley. The air in there got pretty thick and hot and funky. I stayed away from the mess hall and instead I lived on Cognac, white bread and Camel cigarettes for the duration of the storm and survived unscathed.
This cruise lasted ten days and ended on the 20th of December in a blinding snowstorm. I again swore never again. This time I’ve been able to stick to my convictions. I haven’t set foot on a cruise ship since. And I don’t plan to, no matter how rosy the descriptions. I have been to the dark side.
I took a seven-day cruise once, back in 1959. We left on the 23rd of August, the height of the summer (and hurricane) season. This was before the time of widespread jet travel and ocean liners were the common and preferred mode of travel between Europe and North America. Leisure cruises were not the norm that they are today. I took this cruise on the MS “Berlin,” built in 1925 at Newcastle-on-Tyne, as the Gripsholm for the Swedish American Line, refitted and refurbished in 1954 and sold to North German Lloyd for the North Atlantic run between Bremerhaven and New York, with stops at LeHavre and Southampton. By today’s standards, she was a modest 18,000-ton passenger liner, 590 feet long, 74 feet wide, with a 29 foot draw and a cruising speed of 16 knots. She was able to accommodate 976 passengers, 80 in 1st class, 302 in 2nd and 594 in 3rd class.
My cabin was # 207, bed K, in 3rd class, just above the waterline, among the unwashed. I shared this space with a retired German baker from Chicago, who was returning from his annual pilgrimage to the beer halls of Bavaria, and a red-headed black man from Raleigh, North Carolina, who spoke perfect German with a strong Berlin accent. This was a bit disconcerting to me. I didn’t expect a black man to speak my language as well or better than I did. He had earned a doctorate in philosophy from the Free University in Berlin and was on his way home after two years in Germany. He was apprehensive about going home and tried to explain to me what segregation meant. This was a concept to which I simply could not relate. I had no idea what he was talking about.
Let’s look at the positive aspects of cruising, about which my friends wax so lyrical, one at a time. Let’s take leisurely travel and fabulous weather first. My crossing lasted seven days and was very rough once we left Southampton. The captain chose the northern route to avoid the hurricane zone. It didn’t seem to make a bit of difference. The weather was atrocious. The second day out, we ran into a north Atlantic storm with waves that dwarfed the ship’s superstructure and sent huge walls of water crashing over the bow. Obviously, the deck was off limits. This storm lasted for three days.
As for fun activities, they were restricted to trying to stay upright and not to crash down the stairs, as the ship heaved and bucked. Sleeping was impossible, because you had to concentrate on not falling out of bed each time the ship rolled. Entertainment consisted of the John Wayne oater “Rio Bravo.” I saw it six times. The shipboard orchestra tried valiantly, but to no avail. They kept crashing out of their chairs. Dancing was impossible. Some tried, but it turned out to be more of a wrestling match than a dance. The final day of the trip, the ship spent heaved to in thick fog off New York.
I would rate my experience with excellent food and luxurious service as mediocre at best down on the C Deck. I’m sure it probably was better up among the washed and groomed on the top decks. Most of the passengers were seasick the whole time. I and my cabin mates were among the few who were unaffected by this malady. The weather confined everyone but the crew indoors. The old baker and I spent most of our time eating the meals served in the nearly empty 3rd class dining room and at the bar drinking Cognac, which the old man firmly believed prevented seasickness. He seemed to be right.
On several occasions, we snuck up to the 2nd class dining room and helped ourselves to the uneaten meals there. Seasickness was an equal opportunity malaise. The old baker introduced me to lobster and caviar and prime rib. We were in hog heaven. We also tried to get access to the 1st class deck, but it was barred to the unwashed from the lower decks. The ever-watchful stewards on the top deck, who had no sense of humor or equality whatsoever, foiled us. They’d obviously rather throw the uneaten food over the side before allowing the peasants to taste it. Our only satisfaction was that the swells on the top deck were as seasick as most everyone else.
On the morning of the seventh day, the fog finally lifted and the “Berlin” sailed into New York harbor, past the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, and docked at its pier in Hoboken, New Jersey, not exactly an exotic port. I swore to myself that I would never step on another cruise ship again, if I could at all help it.
Alas, this was not to be. I have to tell you about my second experience cruising the North Atlantic. This took place in early December 1962. I admit that December is probably not the best month for a balmy crossing, but I had little choice. This cruise was on the U.S. Military Sea Transport Ship “General Simon B. (for Bolivar) Buckner,” on its regular run again between Bremerhaven and New York, without stops in between. She had been commissioned in January 1945, built by Bethlehem-Alameda Shipyards of Alameda, California, with a 9,676 ton displacement, and had a civilian crew. I was on my way back from service in Europe to a stop-over at historic Fort Hamilton, New York, en route to beautiful downtown Saigon or Ho Chi Minh City, as the natives now call it. And it was even less fun the second time around.
It started out pretty good. When I arrived at the ship’s berth at Columbus Quay in Bremerhaven for embarkation, I was late and nearly missed out on this adventure, due to the fact that my exit immunization record was deemed to be unsatisfactory. I had faked the records to avoid getting the required injections. The medics insisted on giving me all six obligatory shots, before they would let me board and escape their jurisdiction. As a result, I missed all duty assignments on board, because this was a working cruise. All the enlisted personnel had to pull guard and mess duty and the NCOs’ had to supervise those duties.
My lateness and the resulting lack of assigned duties proved to be a major bonus, because the minute we reached the open Atlantic, again on the northern route, we were battered by a fierce winter storm and all doors and hatches were battened down tight. I withdrew to my bunk and consulted my old standby – Cognac. I had planned ahead and carried ten days’ supply in my foot locker. Once again, it worked like magic. It didn’t take long before most in our compartment were seasick. The floor of the troop deck in our quarters, which held 120 men on triple-decker bunks, was soon awash in vomit which slopped back and forth with the motion of the waves and the place stunk to high heaven. There was no ventilation.
It became very difficult to maintain the Army’s standards of cleanliness and organization. The ship was a WWII Liberty ship and the comfort level was basic to begin with. She had seen better days. The ship shuddered, moaned and creaked as it was tossed around by wind and waves. You had the feeling she was going to break up at any time and head for Davy Jones’ locker.
To give you an example of the ship’s amenities, let me give you a tour of the head in our quarters. It was a square open room, divided into sinks along one wall, showers along another and the other two held the toilets. There were no partitions or doors. There was no fresh water, only salt water. The toilets flushed straight into the ocean, which was fine in calm weather, but with a storm raging outside, the waves shot straight up through the pipes and onto the floor. The upside was that you saved on toilet paper, if you could take the water pressure. You had to be able to multi-task. You had to avoid cutting your throat while shaving in a wildly pitching ship, while simultaneously making sure you avoided the shit and vomit ricocheting back and forth between your feet in the sea water, all this while clinging desperately to the sink to avoid falling headlong into the mess on the slick floor. Needless to say, discipline soon flagged on our deck.
The poor slobs, who thought they had caught a break from the funk below by being posted on deck for guard duty, found themselves on duty cold and wet, huddling in the exhaust fumes from the galley to keep warm and were puking their guts out. I have no idea what they were guarding against, since no one dared or was allowed to step out on deck and no one was trying to board this rust bucket.
The mess itself was a challenge too. All food was served in large compartmentalized metal trays. You ate at tables fitted with a two inch high metal rim, designed to catch the food before it splashed on the floor. The storm made it difficult to find your mouth with your fork and everything on your tray tended to end up together in one big pile. There always was someone at your table who lost control of his tray and let it crash into everyone else’s, causing even more chaos. Soon everyone turned green and started hurling. There was the odd fist fight. Those unfortunate ones who got picked for KP had to clean up the mess in addition to scouring pots and pans, trays and utensils in the galley. The air in there got pretty thick and hot and funky. I stayed away from the mess hall and instead I lived on Cognac, white bread and Camel cigarettes for the duration of the storm and survived unscathed.
This cruise lasted ten days and ended on the 20th of December in a blinding snowstorm. I again swore never again. This time I’ve been able to stick to my convictions. I haven’t set foot on a cruise ship since. And I don’t plan to, no matter how rosy the descriptions. I have been to the dark side.
Friday, August 22, 2008
My First Car
Most guys remember every detail of their first car. It’s right up there with the first time you got to second base with your girlfriend. It’s a huge step. It means you’ve left childhood behind and you’re now operating on a more exalted level. The old bicycle that used to get you around, sits forgotten in the garage. You knew you were grown up, even if your parents tried to put a damper on your enthusiasm with their cautionary tales of speeding and drinking and driving. I can see my first car as clearly as if it were parked in my driveway today..
With most guys in North America my age, this momentous event happened the day they turned 16. And without fail, it involved an American car, usually an Impala or Bonneville or a Mustang. Nobody drove a Japanese make then and European cars were out of reach for most kids. I was a late bloomer. When I joined the US Army at age 20, I didn’t know how to drive. My father was always chauffeured everywhere and there was no need to learn how to drive. When I got posted to a Military Police Company in Germany, I spent my first four months overseas riding around the German countryside with a staff captain from 4th Armored Division Headquarters, talking to the mayors of the various villages through which we had driven our tank division on the way to Grafenwoehr, a vast military training area east of Nuremburg, which had been used for maneuvers since the Kaiser’s time.
Because I spoke German, it was my job to negotiate payment of damages caused by our passage through their lovely villages. They all seemed to be in need of new roads, bridges and fences. If the price of potatoes or rye or sugar beets was below expectations, our tanks seemed to be the answer to their prayers. The US Army paid top dollar for damages, much better than what they could get selling their crops on the open market. Our division’s tank drivers must have had the worst driving record in the Army, if you looked at the supposed havoc they left behind in the many villages on route to the maneuvers.
My captain, who was the official Maneuver Damage Control Officer, didn’t speak German, so it became my job to negotiate. Besides, he liked Bavarian beer too much to care. I did pretty well. The Germans didn’t mind paying me a commission for my efforts to get them just compensation for the damages they claimed. The Army didn’t care either, because at the end of the day the German government covered the cost of the US Army’s presence in Germany in those days.
After three months of this duty, I had earned enough to get my hands on a 1954 Mercedes 300d. The Germans called this car the “Adenauer,” because this was the car their chancellor rode around in. It demanded respect.
This car was a real pimpmobile for that time. I was a four-door sedan with rosewood paneling all around, cloth curtains, which could be opened and closed electrically, on all the windows and, best of all, fully reclining front seats that turned the interior of this car into a very comfortable bed. The car was black with a beige cloth interior and weighed close to two tons. It was built on a pre-war chassis and had a modern 3-liter straight-6 engine that produced 175 horses. It had a standard 4-speed manual transmission, with the gear shift lever mounted on the steering column.
This is significant, because if you shifted gears too vigorously the lever would come off in your hand and you were stuck in whatever gear you happened to be driving in at the time. If you were in fourth gear when the gear shift lever disconnected, it became very difficult to slow the car down. It had no power brakes. You’d think the emergency brake would come in handy at a time like that. But it was dicey as well. It was activated by means of a handle connected to a rather dainty chain under the dashboard. This chain had a tendency to snap, if you jerked the brake handle too forcefully.
The car also was equipped with a supercharger that could be engaged manually once you were in fourth gear and past 100 kph. It pushed the car’s top speed to over 180 kph and reduced its fuel efficiency to less than 8 miles per gallon. This meant you had to travel main roads only, since there were no filling stations on country roads. Keep in mind, in those days there were no speed limits on German roads. One of this car’s other interesting features was a hydraulic load leveling suspension, operated by a switch on the dash, which allowed you to raise or lower the car’s rear end, depending on what load you had in the back. It was a beauty. The only problem was that I didn’t have a driver’s license and didn’t know how to drive stick. As well, the car didn’t have valid plates. I couldn’t register it. For that you needed a valid driver’s license.
To remedy that, I got my roommate, who was the old man’s driver, to teach me. We took my car onto the back roads around our garrison and I learned how to drive or, to put it more truthfully, to terrorize the dogs, geese, chickens and people in the many small villages around the city. To obscure the fact that the car lacked registration, I packed mud over the expired date stamp on the plates. No need to worry about police, because as a member of the MPs, I was immune from arrest by the Germans.
I soon mastered the complexities of the clutch and was fortunate enough not to hit anything or anybody. I did find out that once the supercharger was engaged, it became very hard to slow this beast down. The brakes didn’t grab very well. The car also didn’t have power steering. It required maximum effort to muscle it around corners. Parking was a real struggle. Driving this car was not for the faint-hearted. But I persevered and after four weeks of scattering chickens and dogs and the odd group of panicked Germans, I went to our motor pool and took the Army’s driving test. The test vehicle was a deuce- and-a-half truck. To shift gears in this monster required you to double clutch. I passed.
To me that Benz was a means to an end. To the Germans it was a symbol of respect. This was the top of the line. It was a symbol of the 1950’s in Germany. You couldn’t tell from the outside that it was six years old and had 150,000 kilometers on its odometer. Only people with real money or influence could afford to drive a car such as this. The fact that I was only a Private in the US Army became irrelevant. In the eyes of the locals I was somebody to be reckoned with. It immediately improved my odds with the local ladies. They loved to ride in it and be seen in it. They invited me to their homes, introduced me to their parents, who were not adverse to the perceived importance of that Mercedes parked in front of their door. The reclining seats turned out to be real handy and a major bonus.
About a month after I got my driver’s license, I was driving with a German fellow, whose daughter I was dating at the time and who was the mayor of Jebenhausen, a small village about 10 km from base, on the main highway between Ulm and Goeppingen. I had the supercharger engaged and was doing about 160, when I came over the top of a hill and up behind a slow-moving produce truck with oncoming traffic. I tried to down-shift and brake hard, but not in time to avoid crashing into the back of the truck. Its trailer hitch buried itself in my radiator. Screeching metal and hissing steam, but we came to a stop. Nobody was hurt. The car’s engine was still ticking over. We both got out. There wasn’t a scratch on the truck. My grill and radiator were a mess. I got back into the car, put it in reverse and floored it. The car broke lose, the grill didn’t. The radiator was pretty much a total loss.
After a brief conversation with the mayor, the truck continued on its way and the two of us walked up to the closest farmhouse about half a mile down the road, where we asked the farmer, if he could give us a tow to Jebenhausen, where there was supposed to be an excellent garage. The farmer thought he could. Going back to base was out of the question, because an accident meant the automatic suspension of your driving privileges. The farmer hitched up two oxen and led them to our car, where he hooked a chain around the front bumper and proceeded slowly down the road with the sorry looking Mercedes in tow.
We were a sight to behold. In any case we made it to the garage, where soon half the town showed up to gawk. The mechanic told me it would take a couple of weeks to get the parts, but that he could fix it and make it look good as new. Then he introduced me to his brother. His name was Fritz Flederwisch and he was a house painter. He told me that he would be happy to re-paint my car and make it look like new. I asked him to paint the car fire-engine red, while he was at it. He thought I was out of my mind and told me that he would paint it any color I wanted as long as it was black. Only black would do. End of story.
I didn’t feel like arguing with him about the positive qualities of other colors, particularly their attraction to women. But I did mention to him that I needed to show some change in the look of the car, otherwise no one on base would believe me that I had a paint job done and they would start to ask questions and then my accident would come to light and my drivers license would be in jeopardy. It would mean the end of our beautiful relationship and all those maneuver-damage payments. Mr. Flederwisch pondered this dilemma for a long while and then he said that he could see white as an alternative to black, but that was as far astray as he was willing to go. So white it was going to be.
After this momentous decision we all proceeded to the Golden Hind pub and got drunk on Baerwurz, a nasty licorice-flavored concoction made from the roots of various herbs that was supposed to be good for you and tasted god-awful.
Three weeks later, I had my car back. It looked weird, gleaming white with a beige interior. I’m sure I owned the only white Mercedes Benz in Germany. Nobody on the base was any the wiser, but the Germans all stared wherever I went with that car. I couldn’t hide. They had never seen a white Mercedes before. It just wasn’t done. That is, ‘til they saw my GI license plate. Then they nodded. They understood – a crazed Ami. That explained everything. The ladies didn’t seem to mind.
With most guys in North America my age, this momentous event happened the day they turned 16. And without fail, it involved an American car, usually an Impala or Bonneville or a Mustang. Nobody drove a Japanese make then and European cars were out of reach for most kids. I was a late bloomer. When I joined the US Army at age 20, I didn’t know how to drive. My father was always chauffeured everywhere and there was no need to learn how to drive. When I got posted to a Military Police Company in Germany, I spent my first four months overseas riding around the German countryside with a staff captain from 4th Armored Division Headquarters, talking to the mayors of the various villages through which we had driven our tank division on the way to Grafenwoehr, a vast military training area east of Nuremburg, which had been used for maneuvers since the Kaiser’s time.
Because I spoke German, it was my job to negotiate payment of damages caused by our passage through their lovely villages. They all seemed to be in need of new roads, bridges and fences. If the price of potatoes or rye or sugar beets was below expectations, our tanks seemed to be the answer to their prayers. The US Army paid top dollar for damages, much better than what they could get selling their crops on the open market. Our division’s tank drivers must have had the worst driving record in the Army, if you looked at the supposed havoc they left behind in the many villages on route to the maneuvers.
My captain, who was the official Maneuver Damage Control Officer, didn’t speak German, so it became my job to negotiate. Besides, he liked Bavarian beer too much to care. I did pretty well. The Germans didn’t mind paying me a commission for my efforts to get them just compensation for the damages they claimed. The Army didn’t care either, because at the end of the day the German government covered the cost of the US Army’s presence in Germany in those days.
After three months of this duty, I had earned enough to get my hands on a 1954 Mercedes 300d. The Germans called this car the “Adenauer,” because this was the car their chancellor rode around in. It demanded respect.
This car was a real pimpmobile for that time. I was a four-door sedan with rosewood paneling all around, cloth curtains, which could be opened and closed electrically, on all the windows and, best of all, fully reclining front seats that turned the interior of this car into a very comfortable bed. The car was black with a beige cloth interior and weighed close to two tons. It was built on a pre-war chassis and had a modern 3-liter straight-6 engine that produced 175 horses. It had a standard 4-speed manual transmission, with the gear shift lever mounted on the steering column.
This is significant, because if you shifted gears too vigorously the lever would come off in your hand and you were stuck in whatever gear you happened to be driving in at the time. If you were in fourth gear when the gear shift lever disconnected, it became very difficult to slow the car down. It had no power brakes. You’d think the emergency brake would come in handy at a time like that. But it was dicey as well. It was activated by means of a handle connected to a rather dainty chain under the dashboard. This chain had a tendency to snap, if you jerked the brake handle too forcefully.
The car also was equipped with a supercharger that could be engaged manually once you were in fourth gear and past 100 kph. It pushed the car’s top speed to over 180 kph and reduced its fuel efficiency to less than 8 miles per gallon. This meant you had to travel main roads only, since there were no filling stations on country roads. Keep in mind, in those days there were no speed limits on German roads. One of this car’s other interesting features was a hydraulic load leveling suspension, operated by a switch on the dash, which allowed you to raise or lower the car’s rear end, depending on what load you had in the back. It was a beauty. The only problem was that I didn’t have a driver’s license and didn’t know how to drive stick. As well, the car didn’t have valid plates. I couldn’t register it. For that you needed a valid driver’s license.
To remedy that, I got my roommate, who was the old man’s driver, to teach me. We took my car onto the back roads around our garrison and I learned how to drive or, to put it more truthfully, to terrorize the dogs, geese, chickens and people in the many small villages around the city. To obscure the fact that the car lacked registration, I packed mud over the expired date stamp on the plates. No need to worry about police, because as a member of the MPs, I was immune from arrest by the Germans.
I soon mastered the complexities of the clutch and was fortunate enough not to hit anything or anybody. I did find out that once the supercharger was engaged, it became very hard to slow this beast down. The brakes didn’t grab very well. The car also didn’t have power steering. It required maximum effort to muscle it around corners. Parking was a real struggle. Driving this car was not for the faint-hearted. But I persevered and after four weeks of scattering chickens and dogs and the odd group of panicked Germans, I went to our motor pool and took the Army’s driving test. The test vehicle was a deuce- and-a-half truck. To shift gears in this monster required you to double clutch. I passed.
To me that Benz was a means to an end. To the Germans it was a symbol of respect. This was the top of the line. It was a symbol of the 1950’s in Germany. You couldn’t tell from the outside that it was six years old and had 150,000 kilometers on its odometer. Only people with real money or influence could afford to drive a car such as this. The fact that I was only a Private in the US Army became irrelevant. In the eyes of the locals I was somebody to be reckoned with. It immediately improved my odds with the local ladies. They loved to ride in it and be seen in it. They invited me to their homes, introduced me to their parents, who were not adverse to the perceived importance of that Mercedes parked in front of their door. The reclining seats turned out to be real handy and a major bonus.
About a month after I got my driver’s license, I was driving with a German fellow, whose daughter I was dating at the time and who was the mayor of Jebenhausen, a small village about 10 km from base, on the main highway between Ulm and Goeppingen. I had the supercharger engaged and was doing about 160, when I came over the top of a hill and up behind a slow-moving produce truck with oncoming traffic. I tried to down-shift and brake hard, but not in time to avoid crashing into the back of the truck. Its trailer hitch buried itself in my radiator. Screeching metal and hissing steam, but we came to a stop. Nobody was hurt. The car’s engine was still ticking over. We both got out. There wasn’t a scratch on the truck. My grill and radiator were a mess. I got back into the car, put it in reverse and floored it. The car broke lose, the grill didn’t. The radiator was pretty much a total loss.
After a brief conversation with the mayor, the truck continued on its way and the two of us walked up to the closest farmhouse about half a mile down the road, where we asked the farmer, if he could give us a tow to Jebenhausen, where there was supposed to be an excellent garage. The farmer thought he could. Going back to base was out of the question, because an accident meant the automatic suspension of your driving privileges. The farmer hitched up two oxen and led them to our car, where he hooked a chain around the front bumper and proceeded slowly down the road with the sorry looking Mercedes in tow.
We were a sight to behold. In any case we made it to the garage, where soon half the town showed up to gawk. The mechanic told me it would take a couple of weeks to get the parts, but that he could fix it and make it look good as new. Then he introduced me to his brother. His name was Fritz Flederwisch and he was a house painter. He told me that he would be happy to re-paint my car and make it look like new. I asked him to paint the car fire-engine red, while he was at it. He thought I was out of my mind and told me that he would paint it any color I wanted as long as it was black. Only black would do. End of story.
I didn’t feel like arguing with him about the positive qualities of other colors, particularly their attraction to women. But I did mention to him that I needed to show some change in the look of the car, otherwise no one on base would believe me that I had a paint job done and they would start to ask questions and then my accident would come to light and my drivers license would be in jeopardy. It would mean the end of our beautiful relationship and all those maneuver-damage payments. Mr. Flederwisch pondered this dilemma for a long while and then he said that he could see white as an alternative to black, but that was as far astray as he was willing to go. So white it was going to be.
After this momentous decision we all proceeded to the Golden Hind pub and got drunk on Baerwurz, a nasty licorice-flavored concoction made from the roots of various herbs that was supposed to be good for you and tasted god-awful.
Three weeks later, I had my car back. It looked weird, gleaming white with a beige interior. I’m sure I owned the only white Mercedes Benz in Germany. Nobody on the base was any the wiser, but the Germans all stared wherever I went with that car. I couldn’t hide. They had never seen a white Mercedes before. It just wasn’t done. That is, ‘til they saw my GI license plate. Then they nodded. They understood – a crazed Ami. That explained everything. The ladies didn’t seem to mind.
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