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Super Bowl Sunday….So What?!

Posted on February 7th, 2010 by Retired-Ed in History

I guess I am a heretic. As a red-blooded American male, I should be getting excited about the Super Bowl. I just can’t. Don’t get me wrong; I used to love NFL football. I remember sitting in the basement of my fraternity house watching Super Bowl I. Of course, it wasn’t called the “Super Bowl” back then. It was the NFL-AFL Championship Game. As a rabid Green Bay Packer fan, I delighted in watching the Pack down the Kansas City Chiefs 35-10. The old, reliable quarterback Bart Starr broke the game open with a touchdown pass to Max McGee. Max, a bachelor and man about town, was rumored to be nursing a hangover at game time, but he came through in the clutch. I can remember some great games prior to that. About 8 or 9 years earlier, I remember sitting in my grandparents’ living room and watching the Baltimore Colts play the New York Giants in a championship game in the snow. I think that the Colts won that one under Johnny Unitas. Maybe the Colts will win today (or tomorrow for us here in Europe) under Peyton Manning.

But what happened to me? How come I don’t care any more? Well, I can’t seem to get this idea out of my head: It’s just a football game, not an event of apocalyptic proportion. That Super Bowl I was, believe it or not, played during the daytime! Oh heresy! Although, I can’t remember exactly, but I think that the pre-game show lasted about an hour. And there was no  2-week lead up to hype the game. Yeah, that’s what is my problem. There’s just too much hype. It’s all about money. The owners and the networks want to milk it for all it’s worth. As I recall, the cost of a 60-second commercial in the first game was $100,000 or thereabouts. What is it today? Several million for a 30-second spot? Yes, times have changed.

I can remember watching some memorable games. In 1968, I was watching a game between the New York Jets and the Oakland Raiders. NBC was covering the game (sorry, Drew) and they screwed up royally. With only 65 seconds left in the game, NBC (yes the same NBC that caused the Jay Leno/Conan O’Brien situation) cut away to air the movie “Heidi”. When the show stopped, NY was ahead 32 to 29. But then Oakland scored 2 touchdowns in 9 seconds to win 43-32. To add insult to injury, NBC had a trailer scrawl across the screen with the final score. I think that the switchboard at NBC blew a fuse that night!

One day I watched a game between the Chicago Bears and the Detroit Lions. One Lion player who was not really involved in the play ended up lying on the field. We watched in horror as the trainers came out on the field (as they frequently do) but then began to do CPR on the player. Obviously, something was very wrong. In the end, we all watched a football player die on national television. Ever since that game, the NFL has had paramedics and trauma equipment at the games.

I also remember Tom Dempsey, a player who was born with a deformed foot. He only had half of a foot, and that was the one that he kicked with. In 1970, he kicked a field goal of 63 yards, which at the time was an NFL record. For all I know, it may still be the record. Oh, you should have heard the complaints that he was “cheating” because he didn’t kick with a full foot.

So, you can see that I used to enjoy the games, but I have really lost interest. Maybe it’s because I have lived overseas for the past 36 years. The time difference makes it very difficult to watch games live. For example, the big game today will not start until 12:05 Monday morning for us. I will not stay up. But many of my fellow Yanks over here will. In fact, I will not be surprised if the Army has a late start tomorrow. They might schedule a “training holiday” for Monday morning. We’ll see. In the past, some of our schools had a late start or even had a day off for students while the teachers attended an “in service”. OMG! It isn’t a national holiday, is it?

Should I record the game? Maybe I should, just in case someone in The Who (halftime entertainment) has a heart attack. Those guys are older than I am, or at least they ought to be. They’ve been around since Peyton Manning’s daddy was a college quarterback at Ole Miss, but that’s another story.

So what’s the good news? Hey, it’s February, and spring training is just around the corner. Pitchers and catchers will report in just a few days. The rest of the teams will be right behind them. Opening Day is less than 2 months away. Can’t wait for baseball to start!

Retired-Ed

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How I Helped to Tear Down the Berlin Wall

Posted on November 17th, 2009 by Retired-Ed in History

In the first of this trilogy of posts, I wrote about the history surrounding the opening of East Germany and the Berlin Wall. In my most recent post, I told of my experiences traveling through East Germany to Berlin via Checkpoints Alpha and Bravo. But it was what happened after I entered Berlin that still gives me chills. After reading so many cold war spy novels, entering Berlin seemed like a dream. I had read of people getting shot trying to cross from east to west. I had seen pictures of the famous wall, pristine white on the East Berlin side with a raked “warning track” in front of it. The wall was covered with graffiti on the West Berlin side and, in fact, was an ugly scar on the landscape. The Brandenburg Gate, or Brandenburger Tor in the German language, supposedly sat on the demarcation line. However, it was only tantalizingly close to the line separating east and west. In fact, it was wholly in East Berlin. We could look through the gate, but we couldn’t walk throught i, which had once been the symbolic entrance to the city. Some of the city’s most famous landmarks were in East Berlin, such as Alexanderplatz. This square was the site of the Fernsehturm, or television tower, which was topped by a sphere that was the object of amusement to the westerners who could view it across the demarcation line. The orb was designed by Swedish engineers who may or may not have realized the effect that the sun would have on it. Whenever the sun shone on the tower, its reflection would appear in the shape of a cross, which did not go over well with the atheistic tenets of communism. No matter what the city fathers did to the tower, the cross remained. Westerners referred to it as “the Pope’s revenge“. Seeing it was always worth a good chuckle.

Not that West Berlin was without its own landmarks. I was struck by how green the city was. There seemed to be parks and green belts everywhere. I was not really prepared for that, but it was a welcome surprise. Perhaps the most popular area to Americans was actually a street known as Kufürstendamm or simply “Ku’damm” to the locals. It was a major shopping area and the center of some of the nightlife in West Berlin. Along the broad avenue one would find the Gedächtniskirche, known in English as the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. It suffered bomb damage during World War II, and the damage was left unrepaired as a reminder of the horrors of the war. The church was also the location where one could find many “creatures” (my word) of the two-legged variety after the wall was opened. Some of these low-lifes would slither out from under their rock and congregate at the church in the very early 1990s. Drugs were a problem, and you could find many of their compatriots at one of Berlin’s famous train stations, the Berlin Zoo Bahnhof. (Note to purists regarding some of my links: I KNOW that Wikipedia is unofficial and may contain some inaccurate information. However, many of the locations have webpages in German, and I’m assuming that my readers, for the most part, would prefer to read about these locations in English).

I loved walking up and down the Ku’damm and visiting the shops and trendy restaurants. I’m sure that most of you have heard of the Harrod’s Department Store in London. Berlin had its own department store to rival Harrod’s. It was known as the Kaufhaus des Westens, or simply KaDeWe, as it is known to the locals and tourists alike. The translation is rather loose, but assume that it means “the shopping mall of the West”. Its sixth floor food gallery is staggering, with food from all over the world. I have also visited the famous Harrod’s food gallery, and KaDeWe competes admirably with Harrod’s.

Of course, by this time, the wall was becoming a piece of history, but much of it still remained, and I wanted my crack at it. I have mentioned in an earlier post, that my school district had two schools in Berlin that reported to us. Because of the difficulty in getting to West Germany for training, we had made a deal with our staff members there. We would bring the training to them. Otherwise, they would have been required to take the duty train all night from Berlin to Bremerhaven, take the training during the day, and return the following night. It was much more practical for us to go to them. At that time, our agency was implementing a new supply tracking program, and one of the supply clerks from a school in my district had been selected to pilot the program and then provide the training to his counterparts throughout Germany. This young man was in his early 20′s and was a Brit by nationality. His mother lived in the Netherlands, as did he and his wife. He crossed the border every day to work at one of our schools at a NATO air base right on the Dutch-German border. As it happened, his mother had remarried, and her husband was an American soldier stationed in Berlin. This young man and I drove to Berlin in order to provide the training to the school supply clerks, and we used our off-time to explore. This man’s stepfather just happened to be the non-commissioned officer in charge (NCOIC) of the Military Police detachment at Checkpoint Charlie. He was on duty on November 9th, when the gates opened at the “Ossies” (people from East Germany or Ostdeutschland, were frequently called “Ossies” in the West. It was often considered to be a perjorative term, depending on its use. Boy, did he have some stories to tell.

Since my young friend and I wanted our crack at the wall, we made arrangements to meet his stepfather around the dinner hour. We checked out sledge hammers and bolt cutters from the supply room at our Berlin High School and were ready to meet the famous wall. The stepfather’s name was Nate, and he took us to an area of Berlin that was actually more of an appendage to the city than a part of West Berlin. This enclave was known as Steinstuecken, and it was wholly located in East Germany, not abutting against East Berlin. It was administratively a part of West Berlin, so the road connecting it was framed by the Wall on both sides. In short, there was wall everywhere. The link shows a picture of the road leading to the enclave in 1975. Not much had changed in 1990; there was still a lot of wall to pound on. Nate took us to the border and we began our hammering away. We found that the wall on “our side” was covered with graffiti, just as it was in the rest of West Berlin. On the opposite side was the “death zone”, a freshly raked area that I previously referred to as a “warning track”, much like a baseball outfield strip that warns the fielder that he is about to collide with a wall. In this case, the collision might have been with a hail of bullets. We began our destructive efforts with a vengeance. I took part of the pipe that sat atop the wall, as well as the steel flange that held it in place. I cut the reinforcement bars (re-bar) that provided strength to the masonry and removed large sections (well, small enough to still fit in my trunk). I got smaller chunks as well. In all, I had several boxes of the pieces of the wall and its supporting elements. I must have gotten carried away, because at one point, I looked down and saw that I was standing on freshly raked soil. Uh-oh, I thought to myself. I looked up and saw that the wall was a pristine white. I figured that I had just crossed the former border. Now that, in itself, should have been a moot point. There was no border any longer. Just to satisfy my curiosity, I said to the cop that had accompanied us, “Nate, am I in East Germany?” He answered that I indeed was in East Germany. Next question, and most important to me: “Is this area mined?” His answer was, “We think we got them all, but we aren’t certain.”

Was he yanking my chain? I didn’t want to find out the hard way. I carefully retraced my steps, making certain that I stepped only into the footprints that I had left earlier and crossed through the hole in the wall that we had created. Safely back on the West Berlin side of the wall, I breathed a bit easier and wondered if I had a change of underwear in my bag that was in the car. After a few more swipes at the wall, and a few more great stories about duty at Checkpoint Charlie, we returned to our hotel and had a few beers to celebrate our victory over communism that evening.

I can joke about it now, but that was an experience that I will remember for the rest of my life. This completes my trilogy of my experiences surrounding the fall of the Berlin wall. My only subsequent visit to the city was with my family a few weeks later during a school vacation. We had a great time touring the sites and seeing what was left of the famous wall. We also got several good looks at the “national bird” of a reunited Germany. That would be the construction crane. They were everywhere. Although my daughter Allison says that she doesn’t remember this, she made a lot of people chuckle on that trip. The Soviets still had their war memorial in West Berlin. Every day, they would march across to change the guard. While it wasn’t as impressive as the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, it was a definite tourist attraction. The Soviet soldiers would goose-step as they marched to their memorial. Allison decided it would be cool to walk along with them. Here is this little girl, who might have been about 7 at the time,  goose-stepping alongside the very serious Soviet soldiers. Some of them even cracked a smile. I wish I had a picture of that, or if I do have one, I wish I could find it.

If you are planning a trip to Berlin, be sure to visit the various museums relating to the division of the city. They will be very moving and educational. I need to go back very soon. It has been way too long.

Retired-Ed

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Berlin! Getting There Was Half the Fun!

Posted on November 11th, 2009 by Retired-Ed in History

In my last post, I recalled my family’s experience during the fall of The Wall. It has now been more than twenty years since that infamous piece of masonry was dismantled. I still have some pieces of it in shoeboxes in my garage. I also have some reinforcement rods and a metal band that held the pipe in place as it sat atop the wall. More on that later.

It was quite a party that they held in Berlin on Monday past. Angela Merkel, the current chancellor who actually grew up in East Germany, hosted the chiefs of state of the European Union countries, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Hillary Clinton who was representing US President Barack Obama. (a side note here: I just noticed that my spell checker in Word Press recognizes the word “Obama”, but not “Barack”…is that weird or what?) But I digress. To chants of “Gorby! Gorby!” from the crowd, Frau Merkel, the daughter of a Protestant pastor (imagine how tough that must have been in communist East Germany!) thanked Mr. Gorbachev for instituting reforms in the Soviet Union which eventually led to the demise of the hated East German government and the fall of the wall. I believe that Hillary Clinton also spoke to the crowd, but I was in the other room writing my previous blog post, so I didn’t hear everything she said. I would hope, but I seriously doubt, that she mentioned Ronald Reagan saying, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Had Reagan not been a Republican, no doubt she would have given him top billing in her speech. Perhaps she did mention him. I haven’t seen a transcript of her remarks. There are still areas where the wall remains as a reminder of the past. I hope that those monuments remain for a long time.

I visited the wall and absorbed the history of it. It used to give me chills to approach Checkpoint Charlie or what remains of it. In order to tell my story, a little historical background is required. At the end of World War II, Germany was divided. Everyone knows that, right? But it was not divided into two areas; it was divided into four! There was an American zone, a French zone, a British zone, and the Soviet zone. Those four countries made up the Allied Powers that defeated the Nazis and removed them from Europe. The three zones in the western area coalesced into the Federal Republic of Germany. The Soviet sector became the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany. Berlin was likewise divided into those four sectors, and the first three became West Berlin. The Soviet zone became East Berlin. The Allied Powers were granted access to Berlin via certain specified corridors. You might recall from history, or maybe personal recollection if you are old enough, that the Soviets blocked access to Berlin in 1948. That led to the famous Berlin Airlift, which provided rations to the beleaguered citizens of West Berlin. Thankfully, Harry Truman did not dither or dawdle about making a decision about what to do, and Berlin was saved. There are two monuments recognizing the service of those who provided relief to Berlin. They represent an air bridge from the West to the East. One half of the monument is near what is now the Frankfurt International Airport. The other half is at Tempelhof Airport in Berlin. Perhaps in a later post, I can comment about the “Candy Bomber” and how I got to see Col. Gail Halvorsen up close and personal about two years ago. It was a treat!

In 1989, I was assigned to the headquarters of the Bremerhaven District of the Department of Defense Dependents  Schools. As you might imagine, the office was in Bremerhaven, way up north close to the North Sea. Our district had more than 20 schools, and it included the two schools in Berlin. I had to travel to Berlin on a somewhat regular basis. For those of us assigned to Allied Forces, there were only three ways to get to Berlin. You could fly; you could take the duty train; you could drive along “the corridor”. That was it. Although I usually flew to Berlin, on occasion I would drive. That was exciting, and I’ll relate my experience below.

To go to Berlin, one had to have special “orders”. If you were going on official business, you had to have two sets of orders. One was your normal “temporary duty” orders (called “TDY” orders); the other was the really important one. These orders were called “flag orders“, and were so named because your country’s flag was prominently displayed at the top of the order. These orders would get you through the maze of checkpoints that you had to pass through in order to get to your destination.

By the way, when I was assigned to Bremerhaven, we lived in the British sector. That was fun, because the Brits would frequently visit our base to shop, and we would visit their bases to do the same thing. You wouldn’t believe how popular Weber grills were with the British soldiers. We liked to buy jams and cookies (although they were called “biscuits” by the Brits). The French also had their version of a PX. They were called “economats” and Americans liked to buy scarves and perfumes. The Brits called their exchanges “NAAFIs”. The only authorized entry point into East Germany was in the British sector near a city called Helmstedt. Almsost everyone has heard of Checkpoint Charlie, but did you know that there was also a Checkpoint Alpha and a Checkpoint Bravo? Yep. ‘There was. Checkpoint Alpha was at Helmstedt, and it was a required stop for anyone wishing to transit “the corridor” which was actually known as Autobahn 2 in West Berlin. I can’t recall the East German designation for the same road, but the difference in road surface was remarkable.

Here in Europe, as in America, we are used to setting our clocks and watches back one hour as we travel westward and cross a time zone boundary. In this case, we were traveling eastward, but we didn’t set our watches forward; we had to set them back about 50 years! OMG! The contrast was almost palpable. The first interruption on your trip was at the Allied Checkpoint Alpha. You had to go inside and go to your country’s desk which was manned by military police. In a silent commentary on the times, the US and British MPs were sitting next to one another and chatting each other up during the infrequent slow periods. The French were down at the far end, all by themselves. After checking in with the MPs, you were given a “briefing book”, which was a binder about an inch thick full of pictures of the various landmarks that you would see on your journey and specific instructions on where to turn, etc. There were also instructions on your speed, where you could stop and where you couldn’t stop, and to whom you could speak. These were critical! Our authorization to transit to Berlin was ONLY on that one highway. If you left that road, you could be presumed to be a spy, and that would not be conducive to good health. The speed was important as well. East Germany had established a speed limit on the corridor. Those of us in West Germany were used to the Autobahn rarely having a speed limit. If I recall correctly, it was 102 miles from Alpha to Bravo, and you could not make the trip in less than 90 minutes. If you were longer than a certain number of hours (5?), they would send someone from the other end to look for you. These were tense times, and nobody wanted a member of Allied Forces to become an international incident. In addition, we were only allowed to talk with other members of Allied Forces or to Soviet officers. We could not converse with East Germans and especially not with their police or military forces. While we could pull off the road to rest at certain “pull over areas”, we could not stop at the large plazas with fuel stations, restaurants and rest rooms. Yep, you’d better pee before you go, because your only option along the way was behind a tree. In the back of your briefing booklet, there were two banners that you could, if needed, hold up to your window. One was for your fellow Allies. It said that your car was broken down and please send a tow truck from the opposite end. (You were required to stop for all Allies who were in distress.) The other banner was to hold up and show to the VoPos (Volkspolizei or “people’s police”) or to the East German military. If you were stopped by them or if you were in distress and they stopped to inquire what was wrong, you were not permitted to speak to them. We were even told not to roll down our window. Instead, we were to hold up this banner which said, “I demand my rights under the Four Party Agreement to speak with a Soviet officer.” They would call a Soviet officer, and I’m glad that I never had to find out just how long that would take.

On your first visit to Checkpoint Alpha, the driver of the vehicle had to watch a video of what to expect and what the procedures would be. And, yes, there were lots of procedures to follow! Because not everyone was on official business, there was a lounge for those accompanying the driver along with a play area for the children. After completing the video and after gathering your briefing book and all of your belongings and after that very important last visit to the latrine, you were on your way….for about 100 yards. You would get into your car, called a POV in military parlance (privately owned vehicle), and drive along this  narrow one-lane path until you came to a barrier. That barrier was always in the down position every time I visited. Depending on the mood of Mr. Gorbachev that day, or the mood of the local commander, it might stay down for quite a while. Eventually, the young Soviet sentinel would do his duty and raise the barrier so you could drive through until the next barrier. The rear barrier would then be lowered and you were stuck until they decided to let you go. It seemed like it was always a 19-year old, pimply-faced Russian soldier in an ill-fitting uniform that would approach the car and salute me. I was required (even though I was a civilian) to return the salute. He would take my flag orders and go inside his little guard shack for a while. Eventually, he would return, having placed various rubber stamps and stickers on my flag orders. He would then point to a nearby building and indicate that I was to go inside. Before I did, however, we had to exchange salutes once more. Upon entering the Soviet Checkpoint Alpha (or whatever they called it), we would go to what appeared to be a bank teller’s window covered by one-way glass. We would surrender our flag orders and (gasp!) our passport, hoping that we’d see them once again. The room was filled with propaganda materials from the USSR. I can’t recall, but there may have been live microphones in that room as well. We’d just stand around and commiserate with one another until our name was called. You can imagine how those names would be mangled by the eastern Europeans trying to pronounce our decidedly non-Russian surnames. Our papers would slide back out of the little slot along with a departing word that sounded a whole lot like “buzz off”. Of course, we couldn’t see the person behind the glass. It was just a disembodied voice. Finally! Well, almost. We returned to our cars and again saluted the sentry. He would raise the barrier (when he was good and ready) and we were good to go along the corridor. For me, the trips were uneventful. Only once did I see another Allied vehicle in any kind of distress, and they were being “helped” by a Soviet soldier. I reported this at the other end, as required.

When you finished the trip along the corridor, you came first to the Soviet Checkpoint Bravo. The procedures were reversed at that end. However, and it was almost comical, you could count on the Soviet guard to motion you to come forward just a little bit more. That way, he was out of view of his superiors in the guard shack. He would then offer to trade uniform items or other memorabilia with you. The first guy wanted my wrist watch. I said no, but we finally decided on a ball point pen for some some Soviet sports medal. All of this was verboten, of course, but I venture that almost everyone took part. Hell, I’m convinced that if I had had enough money, I could have gotten an entire Russian uniform complete with weapon. That would have been just a bit over the line, however.

After exiting the Soviet Checkpoint Bravo, one would drive to the Allied Checkpoint Bravo, where things always went fast. You would turn in your briefing book and report if anything out of the ordinary had happened during your trip. There was also a blessed restroom in the checkpoint building. After that, you were free to travel throughout all of West Berlin and to East Berlin with the proper paperwork. Perhaps I’ll report on my stays in Berlin in a subsequent post.

Until then, tschüss, from a unified Germany.

Retired-Ed

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The Fall of the Wall…Plus Twenty Years

Posted on November 9th, 2009 by Retired-Ed in History

As I write this, there is a huge celebration going on in Berlin. I was watching on German television, but I was surprised that it was only carried on one of the minor channels and not one of the major networks. Oh well; it was exciting nevertheless. Many heads of state were there, as was Hillary Clinton, representing the United States. At first, I wondered why our President was not in attendance, but then I realized that he has a somber duty tomorrow. He will be attending a memorial service at Fort Hood in Texas. He needs to be there in Texas. But this post is about Berlin.

I can’t believe it has been twenty years since the fall of the wall. I remember it well. I had arrived in Germany about a month earlier. My family had only been with me for a few days. They were visiting our family in America and arrived in Germany a couple of weeks after I did. We knew that things were happening in the East. Refugees were escaping from the East through Hungary and other areas. Imagine our surprise, however, when we saw on television that the DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik) or East German government had collapsed. The television then switched to scenes of jubilant German citizens dancing on top of the infamous Berlin Wall.

I can remember when it was built in 1961. Actually, I was attending summer school that summer. I was between my freshman and sophomore years of high school and was taking a typing class during the summer. My friends and I were walking home from class, and someone had a transistor radio (they were a bit of a novelty back then) with us. We heard a news report that the Soviets had constructed a wall between East and West Berlin, in effect imprisoning the citizens of East Berlin. I had no idea at that time that I would visit the divided city 28 years later.

Back to 1989, the Wall had opened, and people were pouring across. Quite by happenstance, my family and I had made plans for the weekend to visit the Harz mountains. Wendy was about 13 at the time, and Allison was 6 years old. We lived in a hotel, since we had not secured housing yet. Our car had not arrived  from Korea, our previous assignment, so we had rented a car to tour Germany on the weekend. It happens that the Harz mountains are near the border between West and East Germany. It was so exciting! Every overpass had huge signs welcoming the East Germans who were coming across. You can’t believe how much stuff could be packed into a Trabi! A Trabi is the infamous East German Trabant, a car that took years to arrive and was make mostly of fiberglass. Those cars were so tiny, and I think they held whatever the people wanted to bring with them to freedom, along with the entire family. It was exciting, yet sad. It was their first taste of freedom in over forty years. People were waving from the overpasses. Flags were waving. Hugs were exchanged. I get nostalgic just thinking about that weekend.

A few weeks later, I visited Berlin. I even got turned away at Checkpoint Charlie (and Checkpoint Charlie will be in the next post) because I had an official US government stamp in my passport that I had used in Korea and Japan. Interestingly enough, the very next night, Checkpoint Charlie closed for good, and I was able to enter East Berlin. Some friends took me to an opera in the Stadts Oper (City Opera House) to see Die Fledermaus. Very enjoyable. I had purchased some black market Ostmarks (East German Marks) the night before (shh! don’t tell anyone), but I didn’t need to use them, so I still have them as souvenirs.

The next night, I had an opportunity to get some pieces of the Wall. I still have quite few, even though I have given many to friends. The Fall of the Wall changed the course of European history, and I feel that I was there! Quite a thrill for me.

In my next post, I’ll describe my various trips to Berlin on business and one with my family. And daughter Allison, do you remember goose stepping with the Soviet soldiers who were marching to their war memorial? They got a big kick out of that.

Until next time….

Tchüss

Retired-Ed

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Traveling in the Slow Lane…Revisited

Posted on October 22nd, 2009 by Retired-Ed in History

A couple of weeks back, I began to write  about life when I was growing up. Blame it on my kids. They asked me to do it. Maybe they’d like to know what it was like to live in one place while growing up. In this post, I’ll use the metaphor in the title of the post as the basis for some real experiences, not just metaphorical ones. I’ll tell you about transportation when I was a child.

Of course, I wasn’t born way back in the 19th century when horses and buggies were the main means of transportation, but believe it or not, I saw some of those still being used when I was a child. I should note that they were a rarity and objects of some interest whenever we’d see something like that. Everyday transportation was by cars for most people. My dad had purchased a 1939 Buick Special new from the dealer back in 1939. He still was driving it when I was born seven years later. Although the picture on the right is not of our car, it does show what that type of car looked like. It’s hard to tell in this picture, but cars of that era featured “running boards” , which would run along the side of the car, just below the doors. You could stand on them while climbing into the car. The car shown is a two-door, but I seem to recollect that our car was a four-door, but I could be mistaken about that. Note the headlights being separate enclosed units and not an integral  part of the car’s body. Automatic transmissions were a real novelty when I was a child, and we didn’t have one until I was in perhaps the third or fourth grade. The transmissions were manual, with a shift lever on the column to move from first to second to third gear. No “four on the floor” in passenger cars as I recall. That was reserved for farm vehicles and my uncle’s pick-up truck with its massive shift lever was always a source of wonder for me. Of course, we didn’t have air conditioning or even seat belts. Seat belts didn’t become popular until I was in high school and weren’t mandatory until even later than that. You would open the windows by “rolling” them up or down, using a crank on the door panel. Each front window also featured a vent which could be “cracked open” to get more air flow or to allow cigarette smoke to blow out of the car. We used to joke that our cars had the famous “4-55″ model air conditioners. That’s “Four windows down at 55 miles per hour”. Oh yeah, we were regular comedians.

My mom and dad drove that  car until the clutch gave out about a block from our house. I can remember my mom crying when that happened. I was very young and didn’t know what was going on, except the car wouldn’t go anywhere. When it was discovered that it was not cost-effective to repair the car, my dad bought a 1946 Buick. Like the previous car, it had eight cylinders and a standard transmission. All cars of the day had carburetors, and fuel injection systems were not heard of, at least not in our experience. And something else…they were huge compared to today’s cars.

Later, we had a 1950 Buick (are you seeing a pattern here?), a 1954 Buick, a 1956 Buick (I learned to drive on this car), a 1960 Buick (a behemoth with gigantic fins in the rear). After I left home for college, I seem to remember that they had a 1964 Buick and later a 1968 Buick. By then, I had my own cars, and yes, I even owned a couple of Buicks. All of the latter cars that we had were automatic transmission vehicles. I remember my mom saying to my dad when he brought that 1950 car home for a test ride, “Oh, it’s got one of those things.” Now what could that mean? It seems that “one of those things” referred to an automatic transmission. My mom had learned to drive a stick and always had driven a stick but something new really bothered her. As an aside, both of my daughters learned how to drive a stick. I wonder if either of them could do so now if they had to. I’m betting that Allison could probably do it with a little practice. Wendy’s participation in that exercise would be a stretch.

A lot of things that we take for granted today were not available in those older model cars. For example, when turn signals first came out, it was a source of interest to us as to just how they worked. My mother opined that they must be foot-operated. Can you believe windshield wipers that were not electric? Yep, they were run from the vacuum of the engine. So they were “variable speed” before anyone new about variable speed. The problem was that the driver didn’t pick the speed. It was determined by whether you were accelerating or idling the engine.

And how about the roads? In the midwest, the lexicon of the day included the term “hard road”, at least among my parents’ generation. I’m sure that that dates back to their farm upbringing when most of the roads were dirt and became impassable after a rain. My mother used to tell stories about how she would carpool to work in the city (during the Second World War many women went to work in factories to make up for the lack of male workers who had gone off to war). I guess that a former governor named Len Small had been the one to pave many of the roads. Because of the expense, the phrase of the day was “God damn Len Small.” My mom used to laugh about the driver of the car that she rode to work in. Whenever they would pull off of the dirt road, with its ruts and potholes, onto the hard road, the driver would say, “God bless Len Small”.

Most of our highways were two-lane, but some four-lane roads provided some quick transportation between some cities. Many of these roads were named as well  as numbered. For example, there was the Lincoln Highway that spanned the country from east to west. My university was situated along the Lincoln Highway (by then it was called US 30) and I could hear the big trucks rolling by all night while in my dorm room. There was the Dixie Highway which was also famous. Perhaps the most famous highway of all ran through my town. That would be US 66, the subject of a television show called “Route 66″. Eventually, those highways were replaced by “super highways” called “Interstates”.

OK, dear readers, here is a pop quiz for you. Can anyone tell me where the Interstate Highway System construction was begun? If you are related to me, you aren’t eligible to answer, because you already know the answer. Perhaps one of my three other readers will know. The Interstate Highway System actually was conceived by Adolph Hitler, but he didn’t know it at the time. General Eisenhower, later President Eisenhower, remembered traveling across country on the Lincoln Highway as a young officer. Later, as a commander in the European Theater during the War, he saw the benefit of the German Autobahn system which was built to move military vehicles around Europe. They still do that, by the way. As a point of interest, I was hospitalized back in 1992 for retinal surgery in a German hospital. One of my fellow patients was a gentleman in his 70s who had been an engineer and helped construct the Autobahn (all German nouns are capitalized, by the way) for Herr Hitler. He had some very interesting stories to tell.

Well, Ike wanted to duplicate the feat in the USA and got Congress to pass the Interstate  and Defense Highway Act of 1956. Defense? You bet. That’s how Ike got Congress to go along. He tied it to the defense of our country based on his experiences in Germany. These new super highways required some driving skills that most people did not yet possess. There was a massive public relations program to instruct people in how to drive on the new interstate highways. I can recall that these public interest spots on tv featured a young boy, maybe 13 or 14, asking his dad how to drive on the new highways. Each one started off with “Say Dad….” and then there was a question about a particular situation. For example, the dad would remind us that we should not miss our exit because you couldn’t back up on the interstate and the next exit might not be for miles. Another spot told us how to pull off to the side of the road if our car broke down. We were told to raise our hood or tie a white handkerchief to the door handle. We couldn’t do that these days because door handles on cars are integrated in the doors. Not so in the mid-50s, giving rise to the famous urban legend about the artificial hand found on the door handle after a night on Lovers’ Lane. Check it out on snopes.com if you are interested in that one. Or just ask anyone over 50. We’ve all heard that one.

Well, that’s my recollection of automobile travel in the 1950s. Maybe I can cover trains and planes in a later post.

Tchüss (that’s “bye-bye” in the German colloquial)

Retired-Ed

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Still in the Slow Lane

Posted on October 8th, 2009 by Retired-Ed in History

Well, readers, after my last post, a few people asked for me stories about the “olden days”. Both of my daughters seem to think that I have more stories to tell. One fellow blogger, Sue, decided to also write about her childhood experiences, but I learned that she is much younger than I thought she was. Sue, do you really want us to believe that you are doddering when you are still a youngster? I think we’ll let her slide, because she can add a Canadian perspective to the mix, but I doubt if it’s much different than a US perspective.

Well, to get to some of the suggestions. Allison wanted to know about nuclear attack drills. What a hoot they were. As I look back, I am incredulous. Did anyone really believe that we could survive a gound-zero nuclear attack by doing what they were telling us to do? What I will relate is a composite and not specifically what I had to do in school. For one thing, we had to watch these crappy 16mm movies that were supposed to instruct us on what to do in the event of an attack. If you heard the sirens, you were to take cover in a basement or other “safer” location. If you saw a white flash that was “brighter than anything you have ever seen before”, you were to dive into a ditch, ravine, or any other low-lying location in order to avoid the worst of the blast. Can you believe that? My goodness, none of us would last for a microsecond if we were that close to a nuclear detonation.

The Cold War had everyone scared witless. Supposedly, we might have had as much as 30 minute warning before getting fried. I suppose someone could try to break into his neighbor’s fallout shelter. Yes, some people actually built them, but I didn’t know anyone personally who had done so. You were told to stock them with food for so many days. The idea was to stay underground until the fallout danger had passed (yeah, like in about 40 years!), and then it would be safe to come out and see what remained of your city. Like NOTHING! We actually bought into that stuff. School drills had us going into the hallway and covering our head with our hands. Some of the wiser kids were saying to put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye, and that was probably the right idea. I can remember OPAL, which stood for Operation Alert, and occurred somewhere around 1957 or 58. All the schools in town were in on the exercise and when the air raid sirens went off, we all filed into the hallway and practiced what we were supposed to do. It made the town fathers SO proud. Looking back, I just shake my head.

I was also asked about summer vacations. One of my daughters suggested that we didn’t get to go to Paris or Berlin. Smarty pants (herself) got to do those things, so she’s just rubbing it in. Well, my dad worked in a factory and got two weeks vacation every year. The whole factory shut down and people traveled all over. I can remember summer trips to Colorado, Chicago, Lake Superior, the Smoky Mountains, New York City, Washington, DC and other locations. The rest of the summer was spent riding bicycles, swimming, going to movies (which cost 75 cents, by the way….90 cents for adults), playing baseball and just goofing off in general. I had a blast every summer.

So many things that we take for granted today were either unheard of back then or just coming on the market. For example, the dial telephone was standard. Touch-tone dialing didn’t get to my location until I was in college in the middle ’60s. A long-distance call was made by dialing “0″ for the operator. Yes, someone actually answered. You would tell her that you wanted to place a long-distance call (station to station or person to person) to some other location. It might have been across the country or 10 miles down the road. It made no difference; you still had to go through the operator. When we got direct dialing, it was really something! We couldn’t believe how many digits you had to dial to make a call. When the touch-tone system came in, not everyone had it at first. I think I made my first touch-tone call on a pay phone downtown. It was a real treat, and I was probably 18 or 19 at the time! I can remember once in college when one of my friends wanted to call his girlfriend on her birthday. He was in Indiana, and she was in Africa for some reason (I can’t remember why she was there). He had to pump $12 in quarters into the pay phone in the dorm lobby for 3 minutes. Now we talk to the States from Europe for less than 1.5 cents per minute. Yes, times really change.

I got a few comments about the laundry after my last post. That was the honest-to-God truth. Most people didn’t have automatic washers or dryers. We had “solar-powered” dryers. Heh-heh. The clothes were hung on the line, and people really did check out just how white your whites looked while hanging on the line. In another post, I’ll explain how the wringer washing machine worked. Which was very modern compared to what my grandmother did with a washboard and lye soap. She also cooked over a wood-burning stove. Yes, we thought we were so modern then. I guess everything is relative.

Retired-Ed

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Life in the Slow Lane

Posted on October 6th, 2009 by Retired-Ed in History

In a recent post, I bemoaned the fact that my life has become so dull that I don’t have anything to write about. My daughter Wendy commented that I didn’t need to have anything happen. Some of her favorite posts in my blog, she said, were of when I was growing up. Maybe that’s because she grew up thousands of miles away from her extended family, and even lived on a different continent from them. She didn’t get to hear a whole lot of stories from her grandparents and other family members. At least she got to spend some summers in the home where I grew up.

Not so for her sister Allison (formerly known in this blog as “Child A”, which was a terribly-kept secret). Allison is almost seven years younger than her sister and was very young (six years old) when my father died. I’m not certain when my mother moved out of the house and into an assisted-living facility, but Allison couldn’t have been much more than ten years old or so. So both of my kids know only a little about life back in the 40s and 50s in a small city in the Midwest (Springfield, Illinois).

I was born during the Truman administration and really “grew up” during Ike’s term in office. I was 14 when JFK was elected, to give you some time perspective. And, yes, I got to shake JFK’s hand, as well as Nixon’s, in separate caravans during their election campaign. I also stood along the street when Ike went by in a parade. I was  close enough to touch him, but didn’t. Times have certainly changed!

As I said, I lived in a small city. Although it is a state capital, Springfield has never been a “metropolis”, and that may be part of its charm. It’s in the middle of miles and miles of cornfields and only advertised 83110 population on the signs leading into the city during my formative years. Now, the population is said to exceed 116,000. Still no Boston, Indianapolis, or Atlanta, but is much more like Jefferson City, MO or some other small capital city. Life was much simpler.

I can remember riding on a city bus to and from kindergarten at my parochial school in the downtown area. Nobody thought a thing about a 5-year old kid riding the bus. My dog Skippy would walk up to the corner to meet the bus when I came home. I don’t even remember being scared. We only had one car, but I think that my dad carpooled with someone when I was a bit older and my mom took me to school. At least I seem to remember something like that. When I started third grade, we moved to a brand new school (still in use) and I could walk if I wanted to, but my mom frequently picked me up.

As a young student, I wore clothes that my mother had sewn. I guess we were poor, but I didn’t realize that at the time. We did without a lot, but again, I didn’t think anything of it. For example, my parents didn’t get an air conditioner until I was in college, and even then it was only a window unit in my bedroom. I have pictures of myself in overalls and/or pants with suspenders. It seems that I was too skinny to have a belt hold up my pants. Or maybe we all wore suspenders back then. Those clothes were washed in a wringer washer and hung on a line to dry. Woe be unto some unsuspecting neighbor who burned trash or leaves (yes, you could do that then) in the alley on laundry day. Women were judged on their cleanliness by how white their linens looked on the line. “She is so clean,” was an expression that you’d hear often. She might have been a closet drunk or an embezzler, but if the wash was white, she was OK.

I can remember playing baseball in our “vacant lot” next to our house. Every few years, some poor kid would break one of our windows with a foul ball. Once, a girl took a swing at a ball and fell down with a broken leg. My parents didn’t get sued; yes, times have changed. We could stay out until after dark, especially if we were catching lightning bugs or trying to catch bats. It’s amazing what gullible kids would believe. Some of the older kids had us believing that if you wrapped a cinder (do today’s kids even know what a cinder is?) in newspaper and then threw it up in the air, a bat could swoop by and catch it and fall to the earth. We did this for several summers. Gosh, I didn’t even know what a bat looked like. When a bird (any bird) would fly by and we would throw our “bat catcher” up into the air, some other kid would tell us that it was just a “chimney sweep”. What the hell that was is beyond me. On the other hand, when we (wife, kids, and I) lived in north Germany, we’d have real chimney sweeps come to our house, dressed in top hat and tails, to clean out the fireplace chimney and the heating system. They rode bicycles. That was something my kids might actually remember, since they were old enough at that point.

We could ride out bikes anywhere in the city, and our moms wouldn’t care as long as we got home on time. We’d play games in parking lots and right on the street, and nobody freaked out. Sometimes we’d ride our bikes to school, but never to junior high or high school. That would not have been cool. It was just expected that we’d get to school OK. Nobody was concerned about kidnapping or terrorism. Nowadays, when I was a school administrator…not that long ago, we had to purchase special telephone programs to phone parents when kids were late or not at school by a certain time. I could write another whole post on that subject, but I think I’ll wait.

Speaking of phones, we could have phones in one color: black, and they must have weighed seven or eight pounds. On the plus side, if it broke, the phone company would come out and fix it, and you didn’t have to buy the phone first. The first color phones and smaller phones were such a novelty that they got lots of advertising on tv shows. Remember the “Princess” phones? And speaking of television, we didn’t even get one until I was 9 years old and in the fourth grade. Other neighborhood families had theirs earlier. We used to go across the street to an older widow’s house to watch the Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday nights. Every time an airplane would fly overhead, the signal would go haywire. As I write this, the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York is in the news, but for a very different reason.

I could go on and on about growing up in the 50′s: a-bomb drills, Mickey Mouse Club on television, the Edsel, Fidel Castro and Nikita Khrushchev, and on and on. Maybe this post will trigger some memories of yours and you’d like to comment. Please do.

Retired-Ed

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I Wonder Which One it Was

Posted on September 23rd, 2009 by Retired-Ed in History

I read a news story yesterday that was reported in several outlets about how President Obama is spending the night at New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel’s presidential suite. It’s a 4-bedroom room suite  that goes for $7000 per night! Wow! I was already planning my blog post which would read “Your Tax Dollars at Work” and would bash Obama’s ease at spending our tax money when I read on. The article states, “Every US president since Herbert Hoover has either stayed at or lived in the Waldorf Astoria.” (emphasis added).

I have to admit my age. I’ve been around on this earth since the Truman administration. (Give ‘em hell, Harry!….a good Missouri boy), and I can’t remember any president who actually lived in a New York City hotel. I need help on this one, readers. I know that the Trumans lived in Blair House while the White House was being remodeled. President Truman almost was assassinated there when some misguided Puerto Rican nationalists stormed Blair House and shot and killed a Secret Service agent. One of the two attackers was also killed.

Ike lived in the White House and vacationed at his Gettysburg farm. Kennedy probably had several “safe houses” around the country when Jackie was gone, but he spent his public vacations at Hyannis Port. Johnson had his ranch along the Pedernales River in Texas. I don’t recall him ever living in New York City. Nixon had his “Western White House” in San Clemente; but he may have been the one who lived in a NYC hotel. I can’t recall where Ford spent his time away from the White House. It was probably back home in Michigan, but I just can’t recall.

Carter went to Plains, GA for his R&R away from the White House. Reagan went to California, while Bush 41 went to Kennebunkport or Texas. Clinton spent his time in the Oval Office with interns. Did he have a home away from the White House? I can’t remember him going to Hope, AR for his vacation. I think he visited with celebrities like golfer Greg Norman at their homes. I don’t remember him actually living in NY until Hillary decided that she wanted to be a senator from that state.

Bush 43 went to his ranch in Crawford, TX, so that brings us to Obama, and he hasn’t been in office long enough to have “lived in” the Waldorf Astoria. So who the heck was it? My guess is that it must have been FDR. It could have been Hoover, but my money is on FDR.

Does anyone know the answer to this question? I’d really like to find out.

Retired-Ed

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I’ve been Scooped….by Wikipedia

Posted on September 2nd, 2009 by Retired-Ed in History

I had planned to write a historical post today, but that won’t happen the way that I had planned. A little background music please….

OK, here is the background. I was born and raised in Springfield, Illinois, in the Land of Lincoln. I was in high school in the early 1960′s, which coincided with the Civil War Centennial. In fact, my chemistry teacher, Mr. Carroll C. Hall, was the chair of the Civil War Centennial commission in Springfield. He was quite interesting in himself. He taught for $1.00 per year because he was a director (and perhaps the chairman) of the Horace Mann Insurance Co. He taught for the love of it and not (obviously) for the money. He was a heck of a chemistry teacher, too. Anyway, during that time, as you might imagine, our city was focused on all things related to Lincoln.

About that time, a story came out in a national magazine. I remember reading it, but I wasn’t sure if was Time, the Saturday Evening Post, or Life. Actually, it could have been something else altogether, but I do remember reading a story about the last living person to see Abraham Lincoln. When I Googled the phrase “the last living person to see Abraham Lincoln”, I was surprised to see so many hits. I went to the Wikipedia site and my recollection was confirmed, but then shot down.

Here’s the story in a nutshell. After Lincoln was murdered, his casket was borne by rail to Springfield. The train retraced the route that Mr. Lincoln had taken on his way to Washington to be inaugurated four years earlier. It was a sad time for the nation and must have been particularly sad for the citizens of Springfield. The only home that Lincoln ever owned was there (and still is), and his wife Mary Todd Lincoln came from there. As an aside, Lincoln’s girlfriend from his time in New Salem, Ann Rutledge, lies in a grave just a hundred yards or so from my parents’ graves in the cemetery in Petersburg, Illinois.

When Mr. Lincoln’s body was laid to rest, it was in a temporary facility. A more permanent tomb was constructed and the body was placed in it. In 1876, some graverobbers attempted to steal the body and hold it for ransom. They were foiled because one of the gang was with the Secret Service, or so one story goes. The determination was then made that a more permanent monument should be constructed. This one is the famous one that you have probably seen or at least seen pictures of. The final resting place was not established until 1901 because of various concerns. In 1901, the decision was made to encase the vault holding his remains in concrete. A “Guard of Honor” (the same men who were around in 1865 for the original burial) was present for the re-burial. At that time, the men decided, against the wishes of Robert Lincoln, the sole surviving relative, to open the casket one final time to make absolutely certain that Mr. Lincoln’s remains were in the casket. One of the men present brought his young son along. The boy, Fleetwood Lindley, was about 13 at the time. The casket was opened, and the men peered inside and determined, once and for all, that it was Abraham Lincoln who was lying in the casket. The casket was then sealed and Mr. Lincoln’s body was encased in concrete.

Mr. Fleetwood Lindley was still alive when the article was written. He died in 1963. However, Wikepedia points out that Mr. Lindley was not the last person to see Mr. Lincoln’s body. (Yes, I know that Wikipedia is unoffical and contains unverified information). The last person to see his body was a Leon P. Hopkins, a plumber, who had opened the lead-lined coffin so that Mr. Lincoln’s head and shoulders could be seen. He then re-sealed the coffin and was thus the last person to view the remains.

Since Mr. Hopkins was also the plumber who had sealed the coffin in 1865, it is very unlikely that he would have been alive still in the 1960′s, which makes the claim that Mr. Lindley was the last living person to see Abraham Lincoln correct. And that’s your history lesson for the day.

But wait, there’s more. Just a bit of Lincoln trivia for you. I mentioned Robert Lincoln, Abe’s son. Robert Lincoln holds a place in trivia lore as well. He is the only person to have been present at the assassination of three presidents. He was present when his father was shot. Later, he was present when James A. Garfield was assassinated. In 1901, he was serving in the administration of William McKinley and, as bad luck would have it, he was present when McKinley was shot. So there you have it. Two doses of trivia in one post. Just keep Robert Lincoln away from me!

Retired-Ed

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1968 Revisited

Posted on May 9th, 2009 by Retired-Ed in History

For many of us in the vanguard of the Baby Boom, 1968 was a watershed year. It marked the year when many of us graduated from college. It also marked the year when the social upheaval in America reached its peak. Many of our high school classmates died in Viet Nam, and we watched cities burning on television following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. I remember vividly being awakened in my fraternity house by one of the guys who said, “Kennedy is dead.” My first reaction was to get on his case for waking me up to give me news that was five years old. Unbelievably, he meant Robert F. Kennedy. My second reaction was, “Not again.” So much more happened that year. Many thought that the Class of 1968 would change the world. There were so many of us as the first wave of the baby boomers hit the work force. Did we make a difference? I guess we’ll have to leave  it to the historians to determine that one.

No “boomer” should ignore our advocacy organization, the AARP. If you are already a member, perhaps you get their online newsletters. The current issue features a link to their excellent reprise of 1968. You can find it here.  The site also offers a pop quiz about 1968. I did NOT ace that quiz. If you’d like to learn more about the AARP or to join the organization, you can visit the AARP website here. They offer discounts, cruises, travel opportunities, insurance and many other benefits to those of us who have reached that point in our lives where we are eligible for membership. For my fellow educators, they also offer membership in the NRTA, which used to be the National Retired Teachers Association. Check them out,  and do look at their review of 1968. It’s really very good.


Retired-Ed

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