Archive for January 2010

27 Jan, 2010 | Posted by: photosource







When I was 26, and living in Maryland, USA, I made a wanderlust trip through Europe, Africa, USA, Mexico and Central America that lasted over 35 months, almost three years. That was in 1957-60. When I returned home I began writing a memoir during 1960 and ’61. When I finished, I put it away in a closet and forgot it. I really didn’t forget it. I just didn’t think I should publish it because there were so many episodes and descriptions in there that would be awkward to people like my relatives and my friends along the way. So I left it all alone. It’s now 2010, almost 40 years later. . I’ll dust off the manuscript and publish it here for the first time. I thought you would like to know how me and my family came to living on a farm here in western Wisconsin -RE








My Story


3




France
Click on photo to enlarge

We sold our trip across Europe and Africa story to the then popular Saturday Evening POST. Rudi is steering our raft on the Niger River. That's me coming out of the water. By the way, the first publisher of the SatEvePost was Benjamin Franklin.




children

Click on photo to enlarge

WUERZBURG,WEST GERMANY, WAS IN THE PROCESS OF REBUILDING IN 1955






homeless man
Click on photo to enlarge

IN POST-WAR WEST GERMANY, IT WAS NOT UNCOMMON TO SEE HOMELESS PEOPLE

-Rohn Engh - - - - - - 1957







It’s funny how like when you get sent to a foreign country, as the U.S. Army sent us to Germany, it’s like a vacation, and you act different than you did back in your hometown. You develop a different character that sometimes you really don’t recognize. You’re not as responsible as when you were at home

So that’s why when you get back home, you know that those characters that were in your unit won’t be the same as you knew them back then, they’ll be a different character, and you’ll be a different character, so I guess that’s why I probably won’t be contacting them, or them me.

But there’s one guy I think I’ll be contacting.

I think he’ll pretty much be the same as when we were in Wuerzburg.
His name was Rick Tolman.. The guys called him, ol’ Rickety Rickshaw Rick.

One day we were eating a snack in the commissary, and Rick said, “Hey, Engh, I got an idea I wanna tell you about at the Gasthaus tonight.”

Rick was a swarthy lady’s man type who grew up in Hoboken. Like a lot of the young men in our CIC unit, he was a recent graduate from an east coast law school. He had failed the bar exam in New Jersey and wasn’t looking forward to another exam and a future lifetime of law practice.
Germany had opened his eyes to the delights and pleasures of freedom of not having to attend college classes
anymore. Girls were his main focus now.

His German speaking skills were not too bad. At least in the area of picking up girls. His favorite maneuver was the ‘bottle of wine’ technique.

“You see, Engh, it’s a lot different in this country,“ he said. “Girls here are always fishing. They want you to marry them and take them back to the states. The nice girls don’t want to look too eager, so you have to figure out an excuse for them to approach you. Otherwise you’d consider them a slut.”

Tolmann’s best technique (he told me) was to go to a grocery store, one of those larger kind, and stroll around with a single bottle of wine in the wheel cart basket. That’s all, just a bottle of wine. Pretty soon a girl would come up and say something like, “Looks like there’s a party tonight!” or, “Are you going to drink that all alone?” Or other stuff like that.

Depending on what the girl looked like, Rick and the girl would end up in his apartment that he rented in Wuerzburg. One time he said he had to buy a second bottle of wine because the young fraulein he picked up had a twin sister who insisted she come along as sort of a chaperone. Well you know what happened there.

So, back to Rick’s idea he wanted to tell me about. I met him after work at the bierstube and he laid it out to me. “We’re going to Monaco this weekend.. You and me.”

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20 Jan, 2010 | Posted by: photosource




When I was 26, and living in Maryland, USA, I made a wanderlust trip through Europe, Africa, USA, Mexico and Central America that lasted over 35 months, almost three years. That was in 1957-60. When I returned home I began writing a memoir during 1960 and ’61. When I finished, I put it away in a closet and forgot it. I really didn’t forget it. I just didn’t think I should publish it because there were so many episodes and descriptions in there that would be awkward to people like my relatives and my friends along the way. So I left it all alone. It’s now 2010, almost 40 years later. . I’ll dust off the manuscript and publish it here for the first time. I thought you would like to know how me and my family came to living on a farm here in western Wisconsin -RE



My Story



mixed marriage
Wuerzburg, Germany 1956 Rohn Engh
IT WAS NOT UNCOMMON TO SEE A MULATTO CHILD
PLAYING IN STREETS WITH FELLOW GERMAN CHILDREN




cathedral door
Wuerzburg, Germany 1957 -Rohn Engh
TWIN GIRLS ATTEMPT TO OPEN THE CATHEDRAL DOOR




2


The photographs you see were developed and printed by my German friend, Hans Bartsch.
All through my journey across Europe and Africa I would send rolls of film from my Rollieflex back to him. I arranged for him to periodically send a batch of finished 8x10’s to my parent’s home, in Ocean City, Maryland.
Here’s how I met Hans Bartsch.
During my Army time in Wuerzburg, I continued my interest in painting. After several months I had accumulated 3 dozen pieces or so. They were in tempera color, sort of abstract with buildings and people. More about my artwork later. I arranged to have an exhibit in a small gallery called the “Turm” in the nearby village of Summerhausen along the river. After the opening, Hans approached me and said he would like to own two of them. I was honored that someone from a foreign country was interested in my work.

“I can’t pay for them,” he said, “but I’m a photographer and I’d be willing to come to your studio to make a portrait of you in trade for these two paintings.” He pointed out an 11x14 and a 14 x 28.

Hans was a rugged-looking man, about 5’10”, brown hair and could have easily been recruited for a German Army poster.

I took him up on his barter offer. I didn’t have a studio, so I arranged to accomplish the session at his place. Over the following months I got to know Hans pretty well. His English was not too bad and my fluency in German was improving. I hadn’t taken any courses in photography back at Maryland Institute. It sparked my interest in this art form. I asked if I could watch him in his darkroom.
“Sure,” He said. “I’m going to make a professional photographer out of you. Then you’ll always have money to support your artwork.”

I bought my first camera and began taking photos during off-duty time and eventually began paying him for the use of his darkroom to print and develop my pictures.
Another thing that sparked my interest in visiting Hans was his darkroom assistant, Maria, a freshman at a local college who worked for him after classes and weekends. She spoke few
English words. She was slim, and full-breasted. She had blue eyes but with the red light of the darkroom they appeared purple.
Working close together in the confines of a darkroom meant that eventually we would brush against one another, giggle at our mistake, and while reaching for the tongs, touch each other. It was a secret of ours. Outside the darkroom, she was a different person. Very business-like. If I asked her out for coffee later she would respond, “Nein, ich habe zu meinem classes an der Schule gehen.” I walked her to the street car.

Then one time I saw her downtown and invited her to coffee. I learned she wanted to become a photographer and be a correspondent for international newspapers. She was living with her mother in a nearby apartment. Her father had been killed near the end of the war. The two personalities she presented to me soon merged into one loving person when eventually our physical relationship was brought to fruition in the darkroom one weekend when Hans was away on assignment.

In the spring I had a two-week’s leave coming to me and I decided to spend it in France to practice the French I had learned back in Army Language School in California.
I asked Maria to come with me. She let me know she didn’t think her mother would approve.
“It’s time for me to meet your mother.”

Wuerzburg had been nearly demolished during the war. Across the street from her mother’s apartment was a half shelled-out building. Some vagrants were living in one of the downstairs room. In Maria’s building, the second-floor stairs creaked as I went up. An unlighted chandelier was hanging lopsided at the top of the hallway.

Maria’s mother was sitting in a rocking chair next to a pre-war kitchen stove. Her words came out in a stern fashion. She didn’t speak English. “My daughter cannot go to France. I will not allow it. The French hate us. We’ve had two wars with them. My husband’s father was killed in the first war with them. They are despicable. They will kill my daughter if they found out she is German. She didn’t mention her husband lost his life in the recent war. She spoke quietly, not in a vengeful way. Just matter of fact.

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12 Jan, 2010 | Posted by: photosource



by Rohn Engh


When I was 26, and living in Maryland, USA, I made a wanderlust trip through Europe, Africa, USA, Mexico and Central America that lasted over 35 months, almost three years. That was in 1957-60. When I returned home I began writing a memoir during 1960 and ’61. When I finished, I put it away in a closet and forgot it. I really didn’t forget it. I just didn’t think I should publish it because there were so many episodes and descriptions in there that would be awkward to people like my relatives and my friends along the way. So I left it all alone. It’s now 2010, almost 40 years later. . I’ll dust off the manuscript and publish it here for the first time. I thought you would like to know how me and my family came to living on a farm in western Wisconsin -RE







My Story


1

Afton, Minnesota, USA 1960. When I was young, I used to get pretty ugly thoughts. I mean they weren’t violent or sadistic or anything like that. They were more like brief bad dreams that popped into my head. Not important, just bothersome. They were confusing me, just like the sentence I wrote above. How can something be pretty ugly?

Well, anyway, here goes. This story starts when I was in the U.S. Army, stationed in Wuerzburg, Germany. It was 10 years after WWII. I thought when I went over there in 1955 that the experience of going to Europe would clean out my brain and turn me around in the right direction. Maybe I would be able to understand how a nation could condone the mass murder of millions. That question really bothered me.


France 1956
(To view larger image, click on picture)
I was 26. My hometown buddies back in Maryland had all graduated from college and had jobs, the kind where you wear a suit and tie. I was still a student. I had just graduated from art school in Baltimore.

During the two years I was over there in Germany, I got to meet and talk with foreigners who invited me into their lives. And how could I do that -?

You probably thought I was one of those G.I.'s that arrives at a foreign Army base and stays for a year or two and then returns to their home without even venturing downtown.

Well, it so happens that before going to Europe, I took a test and the U.S. Army sent me to French Language School for 6 months in Monterey, California. But I didn’t end up in France. Through some kind of bureaucratic SNAFU, the Army sent me to German Language School in Oberammergau, up in the Alps.

I got pretty good at speaking both languages, especially since the Army gave me the job of interviewing people from East Germany and Russia and other places who were in refugee camps from WWII. These people were trying to immigrate to the USA.

It also turned out that my Army tests said I would be eligible to sign up for the CIC (Counter Intelligence Corps) and they sent me off to another school. My job was to make background interviews and inspect records of certain refugees to determine if they were good guys or bad guys. With the cold war brewing, we didn’t want any communists slipping into the USA.

But funny thing, my superior officer in charge of our section,Capt. Henderson, looked the other way if a refugee happened to be a former Nazi. Turns out, the U.S. government considered the Nazis good guys. They were enemies of the communists, so that was a plus for
us Americans. Crazy, isn’t it. ? And later on, when I returned to the USA, I saw Japanese cars everywhere on the highways. I guess the Japanese won that battle too.

And even funnier, the U.S. Army was letting me, a country boy from the Eastern Shore of Maryland do the selection of these refugees. So, as far as going overseas and hoping to clear my brain about the world I lived in –the U.S. Army confused me even more. . .

But as I say, some of the people I met outside the army barracks, in my excursions to interview refugees at the camp, I had the good chance to enter into a different world that I had not known back on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. On one of those occasions I met a Gypsy, Alonzo, who was originally from Romania. He could speak German. We would have coffee together when I made my visits to the displaced persons camp.

He spoke softly. He was in his 50’s and would recount his life back in Romania. And he told me about the time he and his brother were nearly caught by German SS troopers during the war. The gypsies were the next largest group, after the Jews, who died in concentration camps at the hands of the Nazis.

Alonzo taught me how to play the guitar and a few of his folk songs. He also taught me a method he used to quickly “replace unwanted thoughts” in his head. This was something that was attractive to me and it came in handy on my trip. Especially when I got into Africa. Later on I’ll explain how his method works. It’s good I sensed there would be more to learn from foreigners who lived in a different culture than me.

As it turned out there was a lot more to learn. -from Arabs, Africans, Americans, Mexicans, Guatemalans, and even from my traveling companion, Rudi Thurau, a German fellow troubadour from Hamburg, Germany.



Wuerzburg, Germany 1956 (To view larger image, click on picture)


NEXT WEEK: Saying Farewell to my German Friends.


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06 Jan, 2010 | Posted by: photosource

My post in last week’s PhotoStockNOTES (see Reminisces) brought out a lot of questions and curiosity.

A raft down the Niger River in Africa? Crossing the Sahara Desert on an Italian motor scooter? Guitar-ing my way across Europe with a German troubadour?


Check out our new "Stories" section (it's below) .


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06 Jan, 2010 | Posted by: photosource



A Story


A raft down the Niger River in Africa? Crossing the Sahara Desert on an Italian motor scooter? Guitar-ing my way across Europe with a German troubadour?

My post in last week’s PhotoStockNOTES (see Reminisces) brought out a lot of questions and curiosity. For example, “Did you start your voyage in France?”
Yes, I was stationed in the U.S. Army in Weurzburg, Germany and took my discharge there, and started out.

The most frequently asked question: “Did you take any pictures?”
Although I wasn’t an editorial stock photographer at the time, I did carry a 2 ¼
X 2 ¼ Roleiflex and got enough good pictures to publish 12 of them in the Saturday Evening POST, December 21, 1958, a popular newsstand magazine back then.

The guy coming out of the water is me, and the other is my friend, Rudi Thurau from Hamburg, Germany. He is testing the rudders of our homemade raft on the Niger River, in West Africa.

In 1959-'60, I wrote recollections about my trip through Europe and Africa - about 380 pages. When I was finished, I put my manuscript up on a shelf and got to the business of keeping promises to my family.

Now in this new year, 2010, I have resolved to dust off those fading pages where they were put aside in our granary here at the farm. Except for nibbling by squirrels over the years, most of the pages are in tact.

As I review the pages now, I realize they were written by a wild, (by my mother’s standards) sometimes observant, 26-year-old in the late 1950's.

Next week, I’ll begin sharing those pages and photos with you.
–re

Below is one of the pictures.
http://www.photosource.com/france.html

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