08 Sep, 2010 | Posted by: psnotes





WHAT’S THIS ? 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 prove 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 and my family and me are living on a farm in western Wisconsin. I’ll dust off the manuscript and publish it here for the first time. –RE



After the first leg of my voyage through Europe and Africa, I sold my photos and story to the Saturday Evening Post, a popular magazine in 1958. This taught me that maybe I was cut out for a career in photojournalism. -Rohn Engh







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OUR ARRIVAL IN LISBON




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OUR HOSTS, CARLOS AND LAVINIA





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OUR RADIO APPEARANCES




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THE PEOPLE GET TO KNOW US







My Story


# 34



I liked being around Lavinia. There was something “motherly” about her. It’s funny, I don’t mean like she was protective and instructive like those nice and loving mothers you see doing things for their children to keep them on the right path. She was like that I’m sure, like preparing the dressing on my hand every morning, but more like I would’ve like to lay down on the couch with my head on her bosom and just go to sleep hearing the beat of her heart and the soft touch of her fingers as she ran her fingers through my hair and sometimes scratch my head a little bit.

I can’t ever remember my own mother doing that cuz we had five brothers and sisters in our family and my mother, we called her “Muzzie”, never had time for any of that kind of stuff, not even if we fell down and scraped a knee, but I must’ve seen that tenderness kind of thing in a movie or in real life like seeing a mother in a park somewhere in Germany or France or New York City. It’s a scene some great artist ought to paint; I mean a painting that endures, like the Mona Lisa that needs no explanation. It’s just there and you get it.

Oh well, we had excitement going through the apartment this day. We were anticipating going to dinner tonight at a fancy restaurant. All four of us at the invitation of Bartholomew Nuñes, the guy and his wife that stuck the flower on our Vespa, and left a little note in German that all four of us were invited to go to his Garden Restaurant up on the hill overlooking the Lisbon harbor. Carlos said he had heard of the restaurant but they had never been there. Too costly.
When we climbed the hill on our motor scooters, the sun was just going down and the lights of the harbor were starting to become more visible and the Lisbon Bay was getting darker now, every single tiny light in Lisbon out there sparkled like a Christmas ornament. And this is why driving a motor scooter is so pleasurable. Not like in a car. You feel the whole thing. What a show!

And it brought back memories of the excitement to me of back home when I was 8 years old and my friends and me would ride our bikes to the week-long carnival that arrived at the edge of town every summer the second week in August and all the gaudy night lights of the circus were beckoning you to come join the excitement that the little carnival can give you.

We parked our scooters and walked up a series of stairs to reach the front. The Garden Restaurant was perched higher than other buildings on the side of the hill so it must have been a private mansion back in the old days. It had a balustrade all along the front, some umbrellas for outside dining, and waiters moving around.
Senor Nuñes greeted us when the maitre’d told him we had arrived. Remember, their message to us was in German, but they had a Portuguese name, Bartholomeu Nuñes. That was odd. I guess they must have emigrated from Germany to Lisbon before or after WWII or even WWI.
As you can imagine, the Nuñes’ were Teutonic-looking people, and they looked like they enjoyed their occupation of restaurateur, all roly-poly and gracious.

We sat down at a wide round table that gave a nice view of the harbor. Another couple was already seated there, and he turned out to be an instructor at one of the local schools, the Deutsche Schule Lissabon
He was Portuguese and he spoke English and German well.
Senor Nuñes said, “I thought you would enjoy meeting , Professor Olavo Berneque, and his wife, Merlene. He lectures in history and could answer a lot of questions you probably have about Portugal.”
“Are you going to join us, too, Senor Nunes? ” I asked.
“Yes, yes” he said as he motioned to his wife, Marlene, who was just arriving too.
“I see you got our note and little flower,” she smiled.
The Germans like to do that. I mean they liked flowers, the fresh ones. Back in the army in Wuerzburg, in the CIC, I drove around the territory for my interviews in a new ’56 Volkswagen, and it had a tiny vase stuck to the dashboard where it was customary to put some flowers. The VW came from the Army Motor pool and the German mechanic had a flower garden and he supplied all the cars and trucks with a flower or two each day. Almost everyone who had a car in West Germany at that time drove around with a flower in the vase on the dashboard.
The meal was great! I wanted to get something typically local so on the fancy menu I got the grilled sardines with some leitao , roasted piglet, and the local vegetables. Senor Nunes served two port wines, a dry for dinner and sweet port later on. It was really something to think Rudi and I were happy with a half a loaf of bread and some butter, just a week ago over in Spain. Oh, well, feast or famine. We’ll be heading out in a couple of days, so better eat hearty!
We did.
After dinner we sat around drinking the sweet port wine, as Carlos pointed out highlights of the city to us - - Belem Tower, The Hieronymites Monastery, and the Black Horse Square, where we had all met earlier in the week. I took a couple night photos.

Who was the Professor? What was he doing here? I was expecting to have dinner with Carlos and Lavinia to get to know them better.
Well, I should’ve expected it. I mean, Senor Nuñes inviting a third party like the Professor. Heck, I didn’t want a lecture on Portugal,. We could have gotten that from the library or when we got home. Rudi and I were more interested in getting to know people, and seeing the sights. History, and all that could come later.

And besides, I hate it when someone invites you to dinner, and then sure enough, they have another couple sittin’ there to join in. They always say, “And we thought you would also enjoy meeting so-and-so. It always turns out to be like a proving ground or something where you’re expected to listen to these other people and how accomplished they are and all that. And all this when you actually wanted to meet and get to know the original people who invited you.

Oh, well, as it turns out, the “Professor” monopolized the time at the table with his scintillating elucidations about Portugal. As it turns out, it was pretty interesting and no one wanted to interrupt him and change the subject.
It all started when the Professor, waving his arm, said, “Yes, out there at the entrance to the Atlantic Ocean, at the mouth of the harbor, ship after ship in the mid-1400’s arrived filled with slaves from the west coast of Africa.

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01 Sep, 2010 | Posted by: psnotes








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A FLOWER & A NOTE ON OUR VESPA




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LISBON SCIENCE MUSEUM





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OUR HOSTS, CARLOS & LAVINIA




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IN THE CONSULATE'S OFFICE






My Story


# 33





I paused for a moment trying to think of an answer to his question, “Where are you staying in Lisbon?” Lavinia interrupted, “He’s staying at our place. He and his friend are touring the world, and they’re going to stay at our house until his arm and hand heals.”
Lavinia looked at me and winked. There wasn’t much I could say to her. Jeeze!… It meant I didn’t have to sleep in a shed tonight out in some desolate landscape like last week, or I didn’t have to sleep in our tent outside the city in a park somewhere. My hand was swollen and throbbing. It was all red. And now it was extending up my arm. It was tough driving the motor scooter. I was in poor health, even coughing. I don’t do that!

Stay in the comforts of a house? And with a gal like Lavinia who truly was concerned about my hand and arm. It made me feel wonderful. I think she saw it in my expression.

The doctor redressed my arm and gave me two different kinds of medicine to take. He started to give me the bottles and Lavinia intercepted them. “Here, I’ll take those.” She smiled at me like a mother who had just taken her teenage son in for a check-up after a bicycle scrape.

“There’ll be no charge, ” The doctor looked at Lavinia. She had such a beautiful smile I think the doctor was under the same spell with her that I was.
Actually I found out later that the doctor pretended I was Lavinia’s brother and in Portugal at that time health care was free to all families.

“No charge?” I thought to myself. Another bonus! I got the services of a doctor and didn’t have to pay for it. You couldn’t do that in Maryland. I don’t think so. I thanked him, and when we left I turned to Lavinia. “Are you sure it’ll be all right with the both of you for us to stay at your home? We’ve put you to so much trouble as it is.”

“Of course it will be all right; Carlos suggested it to me this morning. It’s no trouble at all.”
What a swell gal she was!


That evening we drove back to Lisbon and to the apartment of Carlos and Lavinia daSilva. They lived in a large apartment building in a residential section downtown. They had a spot where we could keep our scooter right next to theirs in a small garage on the first floor. We walked up three flights of stairs to their apartment. They used the main room of their apartment as a dining room and living room. Next to it was a good-sized bedroom with a double bed, and next to that was a small room with a day bed. A small kitchen and a bathroom were on the other side of a short hallway that divided the apartment. I don’t know why it was designed that way but it seemed to work.
“Now you fellows are going to sleep in a bed!” and Carlos pointed to the bedroom.
“But where are you all going to sleep?” I said.
“Now don’t worry about that. Just make yourselves at home; we’ve had guests before. We can figure it out.” And he showed us where we could find things we might need in the apartment like the john.
Before going to bed we sat around sipping hot chocolate.
` “Do they have a radio station here in Lisbon?” Rudi asked.
“Of course,” Carlos answered, “They have three or four.”
“They also have a television station,” Lavinia said. “It’s only three months old, but a lot of people watch it. Are you going to try to get on television?”
Rudi looked at me.
Lavinia continued, “I bet if you could get the scooter on television here in Lisbon, the motor scooter stores in Lisbon would really be happy. Have you ever been on television?”
“No, but we’ve been on radio in Madrid.” Rudi said.
Carlos said, “And the way you have the scooter all decorated, I bet the television people would be eager to have you. And you could sing your songs. We love music here in Portugal.”
“Would they pay very well?” Rudi asked.
“I wouldn’t know,” Carlos answered, “But I imagine it’d be better pay than the radio.” Carlos had a job in Lisbon that sold tires, Michelin. I guess that’s why he spoke French so well.

“We’ll have to see tomorrow,” I said, taking the guitar out and beginning a song. It pleased Carlos and Lavinia to hear us sing. Although they weren’t musical themselves, they were always requesting a song until the day we left. Lavinia liked one song especially, “Annaliese,” it’s a German folk song, and she had us singing it so much she almost knew all of the German words herself.

The next day we visited the television studio. It was located near the apartment. It was a compound of several small offices and one large studio that at one time might have been a summer theater. In one of the offices we talked with a Senor Vargas, one of the program managers.
“I’m sorry boys, the only program we have that would lend itself to your kind of entertainment is going to be filled up for the next month. Are you going to be here any longer than that?”
“No, we’re only going to stay a few more days until my hand heals,” I said.

“Well, I’m sorry I can’t do anything for you fellows,” he said. “Leave your address and phone with my secretary, and if anything comes up I’ll have her contact you.” And he extended his hand to show that he was busy.

Disheartened… that’s what we were. We had puffed ourselves up so much when we went to the studio, now we looked like a couple of flat tires. I grabbed a chair at an outdoor café as we passed and sat down. I think I dropped a couple of notches in Rudi’s estimation what with my failure to get a singing date at the Lisbon TV station. He didn’t say anything.
We must’ve sat there fifteen minutes without saying anything. “Lisbon is a sailing port for cruise ships isn’t it?” I asked Rudi.

“Yes, I think it is. I’m sure we’d find some German ships down at the harbor.” Rudi said.
Oops...that was not the right thing to say to Rudi. Anytime he saw a German ship, even if it was fifteen miles offshore, he got nostalgic. That was good to see. He could get soft. He knew all the words to all those brooding German songs about love and caring but he was rarely that way in real life. It was like he had different Rules of Life than what he was always singing about. So often, he presented himself as inconsiderate…someone with blinders on, as if the world was a straight road and he was bent on moving forward, the barriers and roadblocks be damned! Even the people.
I found myself continually adapting to his moods and style. I often wondered if he had the ability to see himself as others saw him. We never talked much about that. What would be the purpose? Why should he care? He was who he was. He saw the world the way he saw it and that was that. When he would get back to Wuesterheide, in a year or two, he would be the same person, nothing had changed, and that was good enough for him. He was like one of those impenetrable German tanks in WWII. Solid 3” steel. Bullets and shells bounced off it. And if he were the commander of the tank squadron and opened the hatch and stood up to survey the battle, bullets and shells would bounce off him too.

O.K., so I’m making an assessment of Rudi. On the other hand, I’m like a sponge. I notice more than I should. I’m wide-eyed, and this can be impractical if you’re on a trip like this. I have too many ideas. Like a Jack-of-all trades. I think too much. And that’s what I was doing right now.
“Why do you ask about the harbor?” Rudi said.

“Well, no, I wasn’t thinking about a German ship in the harbor. I was just thinking, maybe we could get a luxury liner and sign up to be the music entertainment on a ship that was going to the United States.”
“And why, mein lieber freund, should you like to do that?” Rudi sat up straight. He always stiffened his spine when he was ready to get into a discussion that didn’t fit the way he saw things.
“I just thought we could probably make some cash, store up some travel money back in the States for our world trip. We could tell a couple magazines what we’re doing, and they’d give us an advance and we’d head on to South America, and hit Africa on our way back. The States you know, is where all the money is, and that’s what we need at the moment.”
Rudi interrupted. “What we need at the moment, Engh, is to stay on course.”
He looked at me with those steely eyes. “We are going to Africa. It says right here!” And he opened my trip diary and flipped to a page with a newspaper photo of us on it. “See?” he poked his finger at the word Africa in the headline of a Spanish newspaper clipping.” He pounded his fist on it. “We’re not going to the United States. What’s wrong with you…?

“Well, how’re we going to make some money in this town?” I asked, admitting that he was right.
“We can always try one of the radio stations,” Rudi suggested.
“Yeah, but they’re already probably booked up just like the TV station. And, anyway, they’re not going to be able to pay like a television station. And besides, the scooter company would probably help us out if we got on television.” I said.

Rudi folded his arms and tilted back on his chair with his patent “I told you so” expression. “Well, what can we do? This is your department, my friend. Now you come up with the answer.”

There wasn’t anything I could say. I had some hair-brained ideas, like the luxury liner return to the States but I didn’t want to blurt them out. I wanted to get it right. I didn’t want to get his usual retort, “You Americans blah blah blah” response.

We had all the time in the world. No place to go. We sat there nursing the glass of water the waiter had brought us. I go out a piece of scrap paper from my saddlebag and started scribbling. Rudi sat back and watched the passing Portuguese women.

The biggest mistake we made was not to give ourselves a big build-up when we visited Senor Vargas at the television station. He probably gets tons of accomplished musicians and singers auditioning for his shows. If he thought we were in demand, he would’ve canceled one their numbers and suggested us.
“I think I got it!” I said to Rudi and explained we could get on TV if we worked it right.
“But how can we give ourselves a big build-up? You can’t just go in there and tell a bunch of lies. They won’t stand for anything like that.”

“We won’t build ourselves up, we’ll let someone else do it - - someone more influential around here than us - - all the newspapers in town!”
“All the newspapers? Now how are you going to do that?” Rudi said doubtfully.
“Every big city we’ve been in has a bunch of newspapers. Not just one. We’ve always just gone to one. The newspaper was always interested in taking our picture and writing a story about us, right?”

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25 Aug, 2010 | Posted by: psnotes








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ROHN TAKES A MID-DAY SIESTA




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RUDI ENTERTAINS FIELD WORKERS




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ROHN BORROWS A SUN HAT





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WE ENTER PORTUGAL AT ELVAS









My Story


# 32




“O.K.” I answered timidly. Rudi had said we ought to try to see how much speed we could get out of the Vespa 150. There was this steep grade coming up on the highway and it would be a good testing ground.
Well, the answer is not something you sit around and debate about. It’s something you’re supposed to answer an automatic “Yes”, like “Wanna another beer?” At least with guys our age. And I guess it’s the same with girls. But our culture allows girls some leeway. I mean girls wouldn’t automatically say “yes” to something daring, usually. At least not the ones I’ve known. But not for guys. It stamps ‘sissy’ on your forehead if you say, “Wait, let’s stop and think about this.” That’s what I would’ve liked to say. Here we were in the middle of open country in Spain, on a lonely highway, not a soul around, except the railroad train we heard now and them somewhere in the valley or mountains we were traveling though. Not a bird or a donkey, could’ve heard me, and I could’ve said anything, and no one would’ve heard me. But Rudi has been putting me in situations like this recently and I guess this was one of them. I’d didn’t want to hear again, “You Americans are all alike.”
He looked at me again. “Let’s try ‘er out!”
But I knew he was asking a question, not telling me. I think he wanted to put some of the blame on me in case we crashed and got all banged up.
“Sure!” I said, like you’re supposed to.
Rudi gave it full gas and we sped down the mountain grade. Now I should mention that in Spain at that time the gasoline service was not always what you would hope it to be, and at the previous gas station we had suspected the attendant of not adding the full amount of oil to the gasoline-oil mixture or even forgetting to add the oil to the mixture. If this happens there is the chance that the piston will not be properly lubricated, and it will freeze in the cylinder chamber. This causes the rear wheel to freeze up.
So there we were, speeding down that hill at 80 miles per hour. I don’t know how fast we were really going. The speedometer only goes up to 50. I remember back in high school my classmate, Marion Baker, had his dad’s car and he and Bob Fletcher and Bobbie Campbell were also in it. We were on our way to a Saturday night dance at a roadhouse outside of Salisbury and Marion got this notion that he ought to see how fast his dad’s new truck could go and he told us “Watch this.” He just got it in his head that he was going to test out his dad’s truck.

I think it was a Studebaker one of those new pickup trucks after WWII. Pretty soon we realized he was giving it a test run like they do in the movies. I was watching the speedometer and it got up to 83. So I know what it feels like to go 83 m.p.h. None of us said a word. But we all left the car knowing we weren’t virgins anymore when it came to going really fast.
About a year after that, Bobby Campbell was doing the same thing with the car he had bought when he got his new job. He was alone, or drunk or something and he ran into a tree in Taylorsville right across from
Betty Anne McAliister’s house, and got killed. Every time I went by that tree I thought about Bobby. I was thinking about him now.
Well, as you’re probably thinking, something’s going to happen with that Vespa motor. It sure as hell happened.
We were going down that hill at eighty miles per hour, the rear wheel of the Vespa suddenly braked, it just didn’t move anymore. It was stuck. I could smell rubber, I think. The scooter began fishtailing. Rudi swerved to the left, and then counter-steered to the right, then when we slid to the left Rudi countered again, correcting the direction of the scooter before it reached the point where we could’ve toppled over and splattered onto the road. I gripped Rudi, shouting wild sounds of encouragement, but expected to go sprawling into the roadbed any moment with our heads bouncing like soccer balls. Neither of us were wearing crash helmets. And I just imagined two crosses being erected alongside that lonely Spanish road the next day.
This all happened in a matter of a few seconds, and if Rudi hadn’t been the quick thinker that he is, we probably would have had just that fate. As it was, he thought to pull in the clutch, which released the drive shaft from the frozen cylinder and allowed us to free-wheel the rest of the way down the hill. The reality of what had happened didn’t strike us ‘til a few moments after it was all over, and we pulled to the side of the road and took a good long rest.
I was the first to talk. “You’ve got to have respect for the machine,” I said after a while, recalling my own accident a few days ago.
“You can’t have respect for any machine!” Rudi scolded me. “If you do, and you start fearing a machine, it’ll sure as hell be the death of you. Machines aren’t responsible. You’ve got to make yourself master of them. The only thing you’ve got to have respect for when you’re driving this scooter is yourself!”
He took the posture of a professor or friendly doctor. He usually raised his jawbone and looked downward at me when he was in his lecturing mode. I didn’t mind feeling like a lowly student. He was right. And, I was alive. That’s what counted. This was one of the several times on our trip we almost met destruction.
I could tell Rudi had also been frightened by the near accident. But he wasn’t going to let the scooter get the best of him. He was right, you have to be the undisputed master of machines; if not, you become their slave. It gave me encouragement to realize this, and it began to dispel my fear that I had been starting to get of driving the scooter.

The next couple of days we mostly spent camping out. It was like we were exhausted trying to talk with the peasants who were poorer than we were and could hardly share a piece of bread with us. We soon passed over the border and were in the country of Portugal. No problem at the border customs. We were finished seeing posters with Franco’s face on it. No Guardias with rifles slung over their shoulders. But we were to find out the political freedom that I’ve been talking about was pretty much missing in Portugal too. Salazar, he was the big boss in this country and he ruled it just as strong as Franco. We knew we had to be on our good behavior here too.
And the people? Well, at least the folks out in the countryside that we encountered seemed to accept us more readily that the Spanish peasants people did. They would cheerfully wave to us in a fashion that indicated they agreed with our way of traveling. One farmer, for example was wheeling a wheelbarrow along the side of the road, took the time to put his wheelbarrow down when he saw us coming, and vigorously waved to us smiling as we passed.
Another man, in a general store, offered us bandages for my swollen hand. That was a surprise. He offered to fill our canteen with water. Nice guy.
And the language. I thought the Spanish we had learned would get us through. No chance. Portuguese was a new language for us entirely, and at farmsteads we had to finger talk most of the way, pointing to pictures or making drawings.
But the really nice thing was that our "lodging system" worked just as well in rural Portugal as it did elsewhere along our way. We would ask for lodging in a stable or barn. Get accepted. Get out our guitars and practice our songs. The children would gather around to listen. And then the adults and elders. And then Rudi and I would hear that favorite sentence, “Supper’s on the table, why don’t you come in and join us?” Later in the evening, the word would spread to neighbors and they would arrive on bicycles or donkeys for an evening of song. Some farmers would bring their own instruments. And all this without even speaking their language. We felt that despite the warnings of others that our “lodging system” would not work when we crossed over into Africa, we sensed it just might.

By the time we reached Lisbon we had decided we like the people of Portugal. It was early evening when we entered the capital and from a distance we could see the city lights flickering in the Lisbon harbor. It looked a lot like a post card for San Francisco.
It was a mid-summer evening, almost sundown, “There’s the city out there!” I shouted to Rudi. “Any place special you’d like to stay tonight?”
“It’s Saturday night! Let’s see if we can’t find some activity going on in town. Maybe there’s a German ship in the harbor.” Rudi was always looking for German ships. I think he considered them floating islands of bock beer, sauerkraut, and a good night’s sleep on a soft mattress. Heck, I didn’t want to spend the weekend on a German ship. We were in a new city. I wanted to see what Lisbon was like.
We were used to driving on lonely country roads in Spain so here we were dodging city traffic and pedestrians. We drove down avenues of statues and gardens and ornamented buildings with glazed tiles, and finally reached the Praca do Comercio, a plaza called “Black Horse Square.” At a stop light we drove up side by side to a young Portuguese man and a girl riding together on a Vespa motor scooter. It was the same kind we had except it was nice and clean. He looked like a young businessman and the way she was snuggled up against him it looked like they were pretty good friends. .
“Where are you going?” the guy shouted in French over the sounds of the city. I guess he recognized us as traveling troubadours. French was the international language at that time in Europe.
“On our way to Africa!” I shouted as Rudi wheeled the scooter closer to them so that we could hear.
“This time of night?” the young girl asked.
“Oh, no. We just arrived in town. We don’t know where we’re going. Just thought we’d look around.”


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18 Aug, 2010 | Posted by: bswenson





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RUDI SINGS FOR THE CROWD



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WE RE-GROUP AFTER THE ACCIDENT



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THEY HAD NEVER SEEN ONE



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THE GLEANERS by JEAN-FRANCOIS MILLET, -1857





My Story


# 31

Monday was our last day in Madrid. Before leaving town, we checked the post office where I found a letter to us from the central Vespa factory headquarters in Genoa, Italy. I had written them when we were in France, reporting that we were touring the world on a Vespa. I thought they might want to publish the news in their trade magazine. They thanked us for the story and even included a letter of introduction for us that we could use in our travels.
“Say, this is a good thing!” I said to Rudi, showing him the letter from the factory. “It asks the Vespa people around the world to give us any aid they can.”
“Well, things look bright again, Mr. Engh!” Rudi always called me Mr. Engh when he was in a especially good humor. The local Vespa factory in Madrid had run our machine through a fine-tuning process and our scooter felt brand new.
“Portugal! Here we come!” I smiled, as I looked down the main boulevard of Madrid, I thought I could see Gibraltar and North Africa off in the distance.

Somewhere beyond the great Toledo Mountain range that stretched out before us on the road to the west was the land of Portugal.

Portugal! Who knows anything about Portugal? We never heard anything about it back in France or Spain. No one asked us, “Are you going to Portugal?” It was almost like Portugal was left out of our history or geography books back in Maryland. It was almost like Portugal wanted to forget that it was once a powerful empire in Europe and in the world for that matter. We were going to the country that had once sent Vasco Da Gama to India, Ferdinand Magellan around the world. Portugal with its grand daughters in South America and Africa, the great commercial giant of the fifteenth century. And don’t forget Brazil. The whole country speaks Portuguese. What kind of language is that going to be for us?

The further we drove from Madrid, the more poverty we met when it was time to ask for a night’s lodging. Some farmers in western Spain, unaccustomed to seeing itinerants or anyone who traveled, like tourist people, simply couldn’t understand why we were asking to sleep in their barn or shed. Often they thought we were thieves, and refused to talk with us. I would show them my Diary and the newspaper articles –but they couldn’t read. The only people who could read were the children who had gone to school and were out in the fields working somewhere.
Other times, when they did give us lodging, they were suspicious until the moment we left. In some cases our music held fascination for them, and they thought to ask us if we’d had a meal. Other times, we would carry half a loaf of bread with us to a farm and ask if they could sell us some cheese or butter. This put us on an economical level lower than they, and they didn’t feel ashamed to invite us in for their evening meal, usually taken in a spare room with a hard mud kitchen floor.
We would sit on wooden stools with the light of a candle in the small adobe room, and share porridge and bread with them, and then retire to a sheltered stable until dawn. They spoke a Spanish dialect that was nothing we had ever heard. The only communication we could have with them was our guitars. Our music was our introduction but also something else we were to learn that we had to depend on when we got over into North Africa and the Arabic people and then later on down into black Africa and that was trust.
Yes, there may be cultural differences everywhere, but trust runs through them all. That’s what we found.
Now I can’t tell you how to look trustworthy. Maybe your mirror can do that for you. Sure, people who we thought deserved our trust have fooled us all. But whatdaheck, you win some and you lose some. The both of us must’ve looked trustworthy. Or we were mighty lucky.

The people we met in the countryside midway between western Spain and eastern Portugal seemed to be an angered people, almost bitter, just about to give up their struggle against nature. There didn’t seem to be much room for fun in their lives.
Since there was no fun to be had with the peasants, I thought of some fun I could have with the animals. We were on the long road to Lisbon, and I had spotted a field of grazing arena bulls. Yes, the kind Alfonzo had faced back in the bullring in Madrid.
We stopped near the wire fence, and I dismounted and took a couple of photographs of the rugged creatures out in the field grazing. Then I got the idea to try my luck at attracting a bull over to me at the fence. There were some field workers across the road and they stopped to see what I was doing.
I tied two of my red kerchiefs together, and stuck them in my back pocket, secretly hiding my red flag from a group of nearby bulls about ten yards away. One was nearby. On ground level with the animal, I could see he was almost as high as a horse and twice as wide! I imagined myself a matador, standing in the path of such a menacing animal that was charging at me and then I would swiftly but gracefully step to one side to let the death-dealing horns of the bull pass within inches of my body. The thought made me weak, and I silently complimented the courage of the matadors who had risked or given their lives for such a unique art.
“You better get outta there!” Rudi shouted. “He might see that red bandana, and that’ll be the end of you.
“Now just keep cool. I want to make an experiment.” I shouted to Rudi. I wanted to experience the feeling of being in the path of an onrushing bull. I was going to make him charge and then I’d run for the protection of the motor scooter.
“Keep that motor going, Rudi!” I yelled over to him. I cautiously drew the red cloth from the back of my pocket and then quickly waved my homemade flag at the nearest bull. He had been staring at me the whole time, and as soon as he saw the motion of my flag, he gave a quick snort and a start. My reflexes jumped to attention much quicker than I had anticipated, and I turned to flee at the same time the bull reacted. But the flash reaction of my brain had not synchronized with my legs, which tangled into a pretzel when I turned to sprint the distance between the scooter and me. I fell flat on my face, and lay there motionless, with my ear close to the ground. I could hear the stampeding hoofs of the charging bull. I imagine the bull crashing the fence, trampling me, and jolting Rudi and the scooter to the other side of the road.
When the charging echo had subsided, I could hear the sound of Rudi’s laughter. I looked up to see him shaking his head and pointing to the bulls, which had all stampeded to the other side of the field, apparently frightened by my red flag!
“C’mon, jump on here,” Rudi shouted. “Before they change their minds and come back after you.”
As we took off, the group of Spanish fieldworkers that had been watching me didn’t move. They just stared at us, especially at me, not daring to laugh, not daring to smile, they just stared.


On the following day Rudi and I had our first accident. Roads in Spain aren’t the worst we encountered in Europe, but few roads in Spain get much maintenance. They don’t need to. There just aren’t that many cars around.
About a hundred kilometers out of Madrid, on the road to Lisbon, out in the rolling hills of wheat and oats, we came upon a small grade. Traveling at about forty miles-an-hour I sped up over the top as usual, only to find a construction site on the other side. No warning! One half of the road was free, no cars coming, and I could have passed the barrier easily, except for a wandering donkey that was squarely in the middle of the open free passageway. There was no time to put on the brakes, and I elected to bypass him by going over to the side shoulder. The front wheel of the scooter sank into deep gravel and it whipped the scooter and us sideways and shot us back onto the road again. We slid sideways to the pavement making a loud metallic screeching noise and tumbled us about ten yards down the road We finally halted in the center of the macadam road. Like in the pileup of players on a football field, we lay in the debris a few moments and then got up from the entanglement. We didn’t say much. The little donkey made his braying noise as if to say “Whatdahell was that!?”

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11 Aug, 2010 | Posted by: bswenson








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THE MATADOR



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FRANCO




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VISTING THE VESPA FACTORY



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LEARNING THE NOTES







My Story


# 30




I’ve heard it said that even in the worst squalls out at sea with ships battling the waves and men falling overboard that if you were to descend only a few feet below the surface, the fish would be swimming calmly smiling at each other, and wondering what all the fuss was about.
That’s how Rudi and I felt in our time in Spain, whether it was out in the arid desert or the cities. What with the poster of Franco all over the place, and on postage stamps, and flags, we couldn’t help but feel we were being watched. You never knew if you were talking with a sympathizer from the left, or one from the right, or somewhere in between. All we could do was listen. It was usually from young people and students from the universities. I would ask a student to write some kind of protest message to the world in my travel diary that I showed along in our travels, but they wouldn’t do it. They didn’t want the authorities to trace the words back to them.
That always made me feel bad to know I was part of all that kind of thing when I was in the CIC back in Wuerzburg. I was a cog in the political wheel of the U.S. government getting its fingers into the community. I was one of those reporters of activity, a messenger of subterfugion. I don’t know exactly what that word means and it’s probably not in the dictionary but it sounds like a dirty, stinkin’ thing that peoples can get into when they deal with other peoples. Oh well, the experience in Spain opened my eyes to what I didn’t want to do when I got back to the USA. Maybe that’s the price of freedom, I thought to myself.

We really didn’t understand what the political fuss was all about in Spain ‘til we left the country. To the people, we represented the world outside of Spain. The people were curious about us. We were always on display at gatherings and events, at family gatherings and cocktail parties. (We bought some wash ‘n’ hang clothes with our radio money so we could have some “dress up” clothes...) But the conversation was never about politics unless it was in a low whisper. But then, with my faulty Spanish I couldn’t understand most of it anyway. And as far as Rudi, well, as I said before, what else was new? The transition from Nazi politics to Franco politics wasn’t much of a jump. I guess he thought political oppression everywhere was pretty much the same. Something you just lived with, like a wheeze or something. It was just there. You didn’t try to fix it. I couldn’t wait for him to get to America, and to experience the rumors all Europeans had heard that there really is a country with freedom as its base and it was there to enjoy and defend. I began to appreciate the USA more and more, despite all its misgivings like my involvement with its international intelligence systems. Ignorance is bliss, they say, but traveling the world, as we were doing, some of my ignorance was being demolished.
When we talked with the Spanish students, I got the feeling they wanted to be assured that some day they would also be free like they had heard we were in the USA. Few adults ever really discussed politics with us, not only because they could get thrown in jail for doing it, but also because it was too complex for us to understand. We only knew if the familiar Franco poster was hanging on the wall, or one of the uniformed “Guardia Civil” were nearby, their demeanor changed. It was like they were little children and a stern, uncompromising, dictatorial father entered the room. It truly scared me, really, to see that happening in a country of people that looked like people from any other country. And as I say, it made me appreciated our Bill of Rights in the USA.

The next few days we spent in Madrid, looking about the town, going to friends’ homes for parties and dinners.
On Saturday night we were attending a party at an apartment and one of the guests asked, “Why don’t you fellows go see a bullfight tomorrow?
This was something that interested me. Back in France, in Nimes, we had tickets to attend a bullfight but before things really got started for real, the rains came and lasted all afternoon. They cancelled the event.
Have you ever seen one?” He asked.
Rudi answered that he had seen one in a film and didn’t care to go.
“But a film’s not the same as the real thing,” He laughed.
Rudi said, “No, I don’t want to watch one. It’s a slaughter however you see it. You pay to see death. It’s ugly enough without paying to see it.
The guest interrupted, “I think death is very popular among those who don’t have to experience it. Death is the great mystery of our lives. We don’t like to talk about it, but we’re eager to learn anything about it we can. It always makes headlines, and next to sex, it’s the greatest seller of magazines. We Spaniards like to see it first hand. At your American and German boxing matches, I bet if you took those puffy gloves of your prize-fighters, and more boxers started getting slaughtered in your rings, you’d get more attendance at your boxing matches.”
“I can’t buy that,” Rudi returned.
“If they lowered the speed of your stock car races to, say, thirty-five m.p.h., what do you think would happen to the attendance?” He countered.
Another guest interrupted, “ I don’t agree with either of you people. Those people don’t come to see death; they come to see a man defy death. The bull and the man have only one symbolic significance. The spectator vicariously puts himself in the ring with the bull, and enjoys escaping death along with the matador. The noblest thing a man can do in life is defy death.”
Jeeze! They went on and on like this. I grabbed my drink and left to listen to some flamenco guitar that was being played in the kitchen.
The next day Rudi went one way; I went the other. Rudi elected to go to the zoo; I chose the bullfight and got a ticket up in the bleachers for a few cents. I thought at first I’d change it for a more expensive seat, on the shady side, but the man next to me struck up a conversation just about the time I had decided to leave.
Recognizing I wasn’t Spanish, he spoken to me in a combination of Spanish and French and a little English. “You like Spanish wine?”
That was a friendly way to start a conversation, I thought to myself. “Yes,” I answered.
He pulled a leather bota from a basket that carried his lunch and some bicycle tools. “Take a drink!” he offered with a friendly chuckle. He was a weathered guy, probably from the Catalan side of Spain where they spoke a sort-of-a-French dialect. I imagined him in a messy white apron behind a counter in a butcher shop but I don’t know what his profession was. He was around 50 and probably visiting a relative in Madrid, and like me, came alone to the bullfight.
I think it impressed him when I was able to allow the stream of wine to drop squarely in my mouth.
“You like the bull fight?”
“I don’t know. This is my first time,” I said, handing him the bota. He took a drink and then wiped the wine from his mouth with the back of his sleeve.
“You’ve never seen one before?” he grinned at me, the way you do when you’re holding a birthday present for someone behind your back.
“No. Just in the movies.”
“Well, you’re lucky you sat here beside me so’s I can explain to you what’s go to happen.” He seemed over-anxious. Not in the sense that someone lets you know what a movie’s all about before you’ve even seen it, but more so the symbolic significance of what I was about to see.
“Son, you are going to witness man’s defiance of the terrible power of a one-thousand pound bull,” he began in a whisper, almost as if he were telling a ghost-story, and when he came to one-thousand pound bull, his eyes squinted, and he said it with reverence - - as though he were introducing the ghost.
We each took another drink of his wine. The sun was hot. I hoped the affair would start pretty soon. My friend, his name was Pedro, was so intense with his attempt to brief me on the “right way” to look at a bullfight that he leaned uncomfortably close to me. I felt a spray of wine-saliva splatter my right-cheek.
“And you know why you paid those forty pesetas?” he asked in a monotone whisper that droned out like E-sharp major.
I shook my head, and he placed his hand on my wrist, whispering, “To have a human confirm its superiority over the irresponsible force of that mighty one-thousand pound beast. To arrogantly defy death!” and then in a crescendo, his voice gradually raising in pitch, “- - But sometimes we witness the price in blood of a man, too sure of himself, and too overconfident of his lot!” Pedro passed me the wine bag again. I could see there wasn’t much left when I finished my drink. We had drunk nearly a liter.
An orchestra of about five pieces, much too small for the size of the stadium and much too loud for their talent struck up a song. The loudspeaker blasted it out. People had packed the stadium to capacity. The sun was beating down on me. My head felt light. My companion kept talking; I couldn’t understand all of what he was saying. The band suddenly broke into a special song as a long line of men came parading into the arena dressed in the fashion of the 17th century Spanish cavalry. I remembered I had once seen such a procession at the beginning of a circus.

I couldn’t help remembering my companion’s words and wondered if any of those elegantly dressed men were going to be killed that afternoon. There were some horses, too, with things like mattresses that hung down from their sides. Pedro was entranced with the procession. I wanted to ask my friend what these mattresses were, but I was afraid he would begin talking at length again. I decided I wouldn’t ask him any more questions. I would just sit and watch. I would have more fun just gazing in awe at the whole colorful aspect - - it wasn’t like watching a baseball game and needing a scorecard.
The group paraded over to a special booth in the stands and each of the men, in Ivanhoe fashion, paid courtly tribute to a group of celebrities who seemed to be officials for the contest.
Just about that time, Pedro, my companion stiffened up in anticipation and offered me the rest of the wine and told me to watch the east gate of the arena. The band stepped up the music to triple time. Three or four costumed-men with long magenta capes darted about the perimeter of the arena.

Then the blare of a trumpet across the arena loudspeakers.

Suddenly a massive, black, snorting bull with a red flower tacked to its neck shot out from the shadow of the east gate. For a moment it pranced in the dust of the center ring - - slowly observing the figures with capes who were dashing about. It looked like a heavy armor tank slowly revolving its turret, attempting to get a victim in the sights of its canon.
Then, with the agility of a gazelle, it made a start for one of the costumed men who stood motionless in the center of the arena. The others had fled. At first, the man gave no sign of recognition that the bull was charging upon him. I wanted to stand up and shout a warning to him. I was tense. Pedro was tense. The crowd was quiet. Pedro was quiet too. It was like when the batter in a baseball game hit a high, long fly ball that might go over the fence and the outfielder is rushing back to catch it. Even the beer vendors are quiet.
In the path of the onrushing bull and at the last moment, the man out there artfully waved his cape. With crafty agility, he nimbly sidestepped and snapped the cape next to his hip, causing the bull to ridiculously gore the thin air. Pedro and the crowd let out with a frenzied, “Olé!” The man began lightly tripping off sideways across the arena, but the bull wheeled around, spotted him, and thunderously gave chase. The crowd simultaneously roared a warning. The man broke into a run and narrowly escaped the bull’s massive horns by quickly slipping behind a strong wooden backboard barrier. A cloud of dust went up as the bull came to a sliding halt to avoid running headlong into it. The crowd let out a loud sigh of relief and a trickling of laughter.
Before the dust settled, for a brief instant I fancied the costumed man was me. It was April again; I was still back in Wuerzburg, and the bull appeared as the Army Captain in my unit, my parents, and my army buddies who all teamed together to discourage me from going on this motor scooter trip. The strong wooden barrier was me. It was my determination and my curiosity all rolled into this wooden barrier that the bull was trying to bust down. It was my personal conviction that even this monstrous bull was not going to dissuade me. For a moment, like a flash, it really was encouraging to feel that way. But then the next flash that came to me was the thought that maybe something would happen to me that I should’ve avoided that would kill me or mutilate me. I tried not to let me see myself in the next picture: a vision of me walking away from the bull by disappearing into the long dark corridor that goes back into the interior of the stadium. This all happened in a matter of seconds, but as our world trip went on, the scene flashed before me several times when I was offered the opportunity to call it quits. Instead, like the bullfighter I would step back out into the open arena.

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04 Aug, 2010 | Posted by: bswenson





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CAMPSITE FRIENDS



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AT RADIO MADRID




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THE MADRID VESPA FACTORY



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LEARNING THE SPANISH GUITAR






My Story


# 29


There I was. It’s a funny feeling. You’re in a city you’ve never been in before. You’re talking to people you’ve never seen before. You’re wearing clothes you’ve never had on before (except your underwear), and it’s all in a language you hardly understand. And we are sitting there in the vestibule of the national Vespa Club of Spain. We got there an hour early. No one’s around and who should walk in but that bastard, Senor Moreno.

“Well, good evening, my good friends, Rohn and Rudi. I saw the picture of the two of you in the newspaper. Very good, very good, smiling showing his large group of white pearly teeth.
Ugh! I thought myself. That slimy ass-kisser now cuddling up to us. No wonder he’s the manager. He’s brown-nosed his way all the way up to manager of this place.
We’ll, what do we do in a situation like this? Punch him in the nose? Ignore him? Stand up? Sit down. ?
Rudi had it right. He stood up, saluted Moreno and stuck out his hand and shook hands with the slimy guy. I followed suit. I shook hands with the slimy bastard.
I was learning my first important lesson of public relations when on a world tour. If you want to survive, smile, even if it hurts.
I also learned that with hard-nose bastards like Moreno, you have to look tough, almost like you could snap your finger and two gangsters would come up behind him and stick a knife in his back. No kidding. These kinds of guys are all over the world. You never know when you’re going to meet one that’ll be a roadblock for you. And you’re never quite sure who is one and who isn’t. I guess if you exposed yourself enough to them, like we did, you learn to smell ‘em out.
This is particularly hard for me. I didn’t grow up in a dog-eat-dog environment like Rudi did. I’m kind of a softie by description. I’m trusting as hell. This doesn’t work when you’re meeting new people everyday. But whatdahell. I didn’t have any money to lose, or reputation, or girl friend, -all those things men usually try to be macho about. By the way, I looked that word up, macho. It means manly, virile, arrogant. -I’m not like that. And I guess I’m proving, so far anyway, you don’t have to always be that way if you want to travel on a world trip.
Anyway.
Moreno sat down in a plushy chair next to us. He sat closest to Rudi. You can learn a lot from a guy like Moreno. He sized both of us up. He knew Rudi was the less emotional of us and if he played his cards right he could twist things to even telling the president of the club that he, Moreno, was the guy that arranged for the newspaper reporter to interview us at the Vespa Club. The Law of Probability was on his side. No one would suspect that that wasn’t so. Now, mind you, I didn’t realize all this right there on the scene. It’s just that I’m telling you the kind of things I learned on a trip like this. I began to see a pattern in people. And it just wasn’t in one country; it was everywhere, even in black Africa.
I can’t remember what we talked about. My concentration was more on how I could prevent myself from offending Moreno.
Rudi on the other hand acted as though he had met Moreno for the first time and was unaware of the nasty way Moreno treated us the day before. . He was good at that.
Like that guy that tripped Rudi on the way out of the tavern back in Belgium. Rudi lay there for a split second and then started doing push-ups! Just two or three and then turned and stared at the guy doing a couple more push-ups at the same time, with one arm! And that stare! He gave that guy the stare. I saw it. It was like a couple of zaps that Batman or the Green Hornet could produce.
And then again, I’ve learned since then that if it were important to Rudi for getting where he needed to go, Rudi would’ve gotten up off the floor and bought the guy a beer!
I learned also this about Rudi as we traveled on through France. There were no rounded corners about his diplomacy. He always came straight to the point. He did exactly what needed to be done to smooth out some rough corners on our trip.
Yes, he had principles and he had respect for himself, but if he had to stoop to conquer, so to speak, he always chose stooping. It’s not that he didn’t have any pride or that sort of thing. He knew what to do if you want to survive.
Back to our waiting period with Moreno. How do you ‘small talk’ in a language you can’t speak, and with a guy who almost threw you out of the place you are now sitting? I don’t know, maybe I’ll learn that later on in the trip because Señor Ibarra arrived.

“Hello, Muchachos! I see you made it on time!” Señor Ibarra greeted us, as he entered the club a few minutes late. “Let’s have a drink, and then we’ll head on over to the hotel.
“You sure have a nice club.” I commented to him.
“Yes, motor scooters are very popular in Spain. People here don’t have money to buy cars like they do in your country, so they buy scooters. We don’t get much rain, and besides, they’re very economical.”
“Are they manufactured here in Spain?” Rudi asked.
“Yes, and oh, that reminds me. You fellows are invited to visit the Vespa factory day after tomorrow. Take your scooter down with you and they’ll make any necessary repairs.”
“Well, that’s wonderful!” I commented.
In an hour, we were in the lobby of the Emperador, waiting for the elevator to take us to the top floor to the gala banquet room.
Upstairs we found at least a hundred and fifty people mingling, sipping cocktails and talking motor scooter talk. The visiting club was from Valladolid to the north, a city of a hundred thousand or more and a center of the Castile country. Señor Ibarra introduced us to the President of the Valladolid club, and other dignitaries who were present for the affair. For dinner, we had chicken consommé, vegetables of all kinds, and a juicy steak with a fiery Spanish wine sauce. Pretty fancy for two guys who just 48 hours ago were grateful for a bowl of rice.
Near the end of the meal, the president of the gathering rang a little bell, made a few announcements, and then introduced various personages who were sitting at his table, including us.
“Let’s have a song!” someone shouted. They had probably read the story about us in the newspaper that morning. We got out the guitars and sang a few examples of songs we had learned in our travels. When the meal was over, we stood around in little groups for a while, and then retired to an adjacent room where an orchestra had begun to play. Señor Ibarra introduced us to some of his friends.
This all felt like I was back in Baltimore. You attend these kinds of things and your face hurts the next day from all the smiling you had to do. But for your career, it pays off.
“And this is José Bermudez. He’s Spain’s most popular radio comedian.” This guy had the twinkle of a clown in his eyes when he spoke to us - - a small, jovial man in his late forties.
“I sure enjoyed that singing, fellows!” he could speak a little English. “How about coming around to visit me at the radio station tomorrow?” he said, handing us his card. “Would you like to see what a Spanish radio station looks like?”
“Sure,” we both answered and then joined him in a drink at the bar that had been set up. He introduced us to other radio people friends.
Señor Ibarra came by, “Checkin’ up on you two. “You enjoying yourselves, boy?” he asked.
“Yes!” Rudi answered. “This isn’t much like the surroundings of a stable we generally know at this hour.
“Ha!” he laughed. “Which do you like better?”
“Give you one guess!” Rudi said.
At two o’clock the crowd began to thin out. “Let’s go have some coffee,” Señor Ibarra suggested.
Out in the street once again, it seemed that the city was living and moving like a noon rush hour. “Why are all these people in the streets at two in the morning?” I asked Señor Ibarra.
“We have a different day here than you have in America,” he began. “In the summer time, our working day begins at ten in the morning. At two in the afternoon we close our shops, have our midday meal, and take a siesta until four-thirty. The working day is over at eight-thirty p.m., which puts the evening meal at nine o’clock and the beginning of nightlife around eleven. So if you go to a movie, or a dance, or just sit around in a café, you can expect your evening to be over around two o’clock!”
“Why so late?” Rudi asked.
“It’s cool! It’s cool!” Senor Ibarra said. “No one likes the heat of midday in Spain in the summertime.”
Our evening was over at 3:00 a.m. After a coffee and a visit to a few cafes, we wearily bid Señor Ibarra buenas noches.

The next day we visited Señor Bermudez at the Radio Station.
“You boys want to take that tour now?” he asked after we were in his office a few minutes.
“Fine, we answered as we went out into the halls lined with studios and engineering booths. The radio station supplied most of Madrid and affiliate stations with everything entertaining over radio.
“Radio’s an important item in the Spanish home.” Señor Bermudez said, “We don’t have television in Spain,” he said as we passed into one of the engineering booths, where a technician was taping a program of some local singers in the adjoining studio.
“Will that program be played later on?” Rudi asked.
“Several times!” Señor Bermudez answered. “Not only here in Madrid, but in Barcelona, Seville, many places, all over Spain.”
“Are they paid for making that tape?” I asked.
“Sure,” Senor Bermudez said.
As we looked into other studios, getting an idea of the technical operations of the place, I got an idea myself.
Rudi and I had sung before- -why not at Radio Madrid- -especially if they paid for entertainment? I didn’t know how to go about asking Señor Bermudez; I hoped I wouldn’t make any blunders. I simply said, “Rudi and I are professional singers. We’ve sung together in Belgium, Holland, and France. How ‘bout if we make a tape for your station?”
Rudi gave me an evil look. He knew I had never sung over a microphone before, and before today, he had never even seen one.
Señor Bermudez paused for a while and then said, “Well, fellows it sounds like a good idea, but I’ll have to talk it over with my superiors, first. How ‘bout coming by tomorrow at this same time, and I’ll let you know their answer?”
I felt a sigh of relief that he didn’t turn the idea down, and also that he didn’t ask us to go into an empty booth and make a test tape that very moment.
We finished our visit and left the studio to return to camping site. As soon as we got outside, Rudi turned to me boiling mad, “Now what the hell did you go and do that for? You know damn well we’re not professional signers. I wouldn’t know the first thing to do when I got in front of a microphone. You’re not going to make a fool out of me in front of those studio people. After the first song they’ll tell us to come back some other day! No, sir! You can go up there tomorrow but you’re not going to get me to go!
“Now wait a minute!” I said. “This is a chance we might have to make some money.”
Rudi was pretty mad. “It doesn’t matter to me. I’ll go out and sweep streets before you get me to make a fool of myself in front of all Spain!”
“Who’s going to make a fool of himself? We didn’t do anything like that in the Rotterdam tavern, where we met, or in Paris, or in the rest of France did we?”

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27 Jul, 2010 | Posted by: bswenson





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AT THE STATUE OF DON QUIXOTE



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THE PESETA




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THE MADRID NEWSPAPER ARTICLE



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ROSA AND CONSUELA





My Story


# 28



Madrid -- 5K
The sign said.

We had almost arrived back in civilization!
“Feels different, doesn’t it?” I yelled to Rudi as we drove through what might be called the suburbs.
He nodded and managed a smile. I sensed through his goggles he was worried that we might run out of gas. At least now there were human beings around. Even a truck or two, some bicycles and a motor scooter or two.
The Vespa sputtered, faltered, and lost power. I let it coast onto a grassy plot along the street.

“What happened?” I said.

“Nothing a good drink of gasoline won’t fix,” he said, as he peered seriously into the empty tank. It was bone dry as the saying goes.

Rudi continued, “I was hoping we would be able to fill it before this happened. There’s always some sediment in the tank from the dust and grit from the roads here in Spain that can get sucked through the gas line into the carburetor. Then we’d have trouble.
He took hold of the handlebars and steered it back onto the street and started pushing. “What’re you doing?” I asked.

“Which way is Madrid?” He asked.
“That way” I pointed.
“Let’s go, then, start pushing.”

He was right. We couldn’t just sit there and wait for something to happen. We had to attract attention and something would happen.

Trucks and buses and cars and people on bicycles and motor scooters were passing us. Bystanders on the street would stop and watch us pass by. One yelled, “Guitar!” when he spotted the guitar strapped on my sweating back.
After about a mile of this, a Vespa motor scooter swerved in front of us and stopped our progress. Other vehicles swerved around it, honking as they passed. Two girls were on the Vespa. The driver yelled in the traffic, “I saw your American flag on your suitcase. Are you Americans,?”
I pulled over to the side. “Pull up to that parking place and we’ll tell you all about us.”

It turned out the driver, Rosa, and her rider, Consuela, lived nearby. Rosa was a former foreign exchange student (1955) in Milwukee and spoke good English. Both were good-looking Spanish girls in their early twenties.
“Touring the world?” Rosa asked.
Rudi became his charming self again. It always happened when girls were involved.
“And you’re pushing the Vespa around the world,?” Consuela joined in smiling.
“Only to the next gas station.” Rudi said.
“We can help with that!” Consuela said. “My brother works at a gas station down about a kilometer. “We’ll get some for you.”
“Thanks!.” I said.
“Here, take this gas can,” Rudi said.
Rosa drove off with Consuela holding the gas can.
“Hope we didn’t just lose a gas can,” Rudi snickered.
But the girls were back in a few minutes.
We filled the tank with the mixture of gas and oil that our two-cycle motor needed.
“How much do we owe you?” I asked.
“Nothing, nothing, de nada, Rosa said.”
Jeeze, that was close, because we didn’t have one peseta, nothing, to give her.
“I’m just repaying you for all the help you Americans gave me when I was a high school student in Milwaukee, ” Rosa said.
Rudi asked her, “Where’s the camping place in Madrid for tourists? We heard there was a good one on the west side of town.”
“Come!” We’ll show you,” Rosa said. She was a very friendly girl. You ride with me, Rudi, and Consuela can ride with you, Rohn.”
We switched passengers. It was a new world suddenly. Only an hour ago we were out on the arid wastelands of Spain, fighting grit and gravel, trying to protect ourselves from the tortuous Spanish sun, hoping our gasoline would hold out.

Now we were driving down the wide boulevards of Madrid, the regal capital of Spain, past its massive neo-classic administrative buildings, baroque monuments, and spacious gardens. Wow! And as co-travelers we had two lovely senoritas.
I think Rosa was taking the long route to the camping grounds, just to show off her beautiful city to these foreign boys.

There’s something about entering a new town or city on a trip like this world trip. I don’t know about Rudi, but for me, there’s always a feeling of loneliness that comes over me whenever we entered any new town. It’s the unfamiliar faces and strange street names and signs and buildings. So much to learn! But today, with Consuela hugging my waist and other places as we drove along, I felt comfortable, and in good hands, especially her hands.

“Is that the Madrid main Post Office?” I shouted back to Consuela, pointing to a large white granite building.
“Yes,” she said and I rode ahead to Rosa and shouted that I wanted to stop at the Post Office.

“O.K.” she said, as we turned back around.
I was anxious to learn if my articles about our trip had pleased the editors of the Baltimore Sun. If they had, maybe the newspaper had sent a check! And we would be able to eat again! And maybe even take the girls out to lunch!
Rudi entertained the girls on the Post Office steps and I went inside.
Sure enough, a banner of Franco was hanging on the wall behind the clerk, watching his every operation. It must’ve been two yards long. The clerk was issuing a customer a stamp with Franco’s picture on it. It was 2” long.
“Yes, we have one letter for you, young man. That will be a charge of one peseta please.” the clerk said.
“One peseta?” I pleaded. “I don’t even have one centime.” I looked at the return address of the letter; it was from the Sun. A cent and a half, and I didn’t have it to pay for a general delivery letter that might contain a check for twenty-five dollars!
I went over to a group of middle-aged men and asked the first man I saw for the peseta. Maybe it was my expression, or maybe my intensity. He could see I looked like an American and by my faulty Spanish accent was sure. American tourists are always rich, he probably thought. “What’s this all about?” Some kind of trick?? He thought. He looked at his friends, reached in his pocket and parceled out in his hand the equivalent of a peseta in coins and dumped them into my cupped hands.

“Thank you, sir, if you wait right there I’ll pay you back ten-fold!” and I went over and waited in line at the window again. I got the letter. I nervously tore open the thick envelope. My five installments that I had written for them fell to the floor along with a letter that ended, “- - and furthermore, Mr. Engh, our office does not feel at present that your trip has taken on the flavor of a travelogue necessary to please our readers. We welcome correspondence from you at such time that you feel your trip has progressed to a point where it will appeal to our reader interest.”
There are no back doors to Post Offices worldwide; otherwise I sure would’ve taken one that day. The man from whom I had borrowed the peseta was still waiting for me with his friends.
“I’m sorry, mister; I made a mistake.” I felt like giving him the letter; it was of no more use to me - - besides, he had paid for it. He just looked at me as if I had played a good joke on him. He and his friends turned and walked off without saying a thing, just shaking their heads.

I went outside and took Rudi aside and whispered, “It’s no go, Rudi, they don’t want to buy anything right now. I guess you and I haven’t seen enough of the world.”
“Did they say they like your work?”
“They said it would do.”
“Well, keep trying. ”
“Ah, the hell with it! I’m not going to write for anybody anymore. You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to wire home and tell my folks to send me some emergency money. I’ll stay right here in Madrid at the American Express office and wait for it. This is no way to live. I feel like a dog. And besides, we’re not having the good time like we used to have back in France when everything was going our way.”
“Well, what the hell did you bargain for when you started out on this trip?” Rudi challenged me.
“I didn’t think it was going to end up anything like this!” I said.
“That’s the easy way out, Engh! You’re just yielding to the temptation of writing home for money. Even if it’s your own money. Anybody could do that!”

But I was hoping we could take the girls out to dinner.” Rudi shouted, “No! Engh! We don’t take anyone out to dinner. We’d never survive taking people out to dinner. In a couple of days, you’ll think of something. You always have. Now turn around and smile at the girls. We don’t want to let them know the predicament we’re in.
He slapped his hand on my drooped shoulder. “Let’s see what happens. We’ve got a good thing going here. Two nice girls to show us around the city. What could be better?
My stomach started to growl. I was hungry!
“I feel lucky,” Rudi said.

“O.K.” I said. “There you go! If Rudi feels lucky, everything’s going to go our way!”
I think Rudi was trying to pep me up. I followed his decree. It made me feel good again. I waved at the girls, smiling. They probably thought we were cooking up something to do with then, like a movie or something. With no money, we couldn’t do anything. It was hard to smile.
I felt a little ashamed that I had to show Rudi I was unconfident, even frightened, but hunger does strange things to men, and the thought that I could have the money just for the asking had weakened me. I thought over his proposition, and decided he was right. “You’re right, pal. Let’s try it and see what comes up. I’ll think of something!”
The girls were relieved when I told them everything was fine and tucking the letter into my saddlebag, I told them I received a contract from a travel promotion syndicate in the USA and they were going to publish my travel story when I got back home, even make a movie out of it.
“Do they have a television station here in Madrid?” I asked Rosa.
She shrugged her shoulders
“I know what it is, TV they call it.” Consuela said. “No we don’t have TV. But they have it in France and broadcast it from the Eiffel Tower. But no one has the TV sets here in Spain. They’re expensive. But it’s coming to Portugal. They’re getting it before us!”
Now there was an idea. Maybe they’ll have it set up before we get to Portugal.
We arrived at the Casa de Campo, a large park at the west end of Madrid. “Can we help you set up your tent?” Rosa asked.
“Sure,” I said. “Help us set up our beds.”

We had learned to always accept help from people. It made them feel good that they were part of what we were doing. Their help usually resulted in taking twice as much time to do it. But it was always worth it. Especially if they were two nice girls like Rosa and Consuela. Gosh! It was fun being with them. They were always smiling. They really brightened up our spirits. Especially since they were making our beds for us,- so to speak.

“Gotta go!” Rosa smiled. Consuela agreed.
“When will we see you again?” I asked.
“We know where you live,” Rosa laughed. “Here’s our phone number. We both live together in our own apartment. How long will you be in Madrid.?”

“Don’t know,” Rudi said. “Depends on if we like Madrid.”
“We like it,” I said, looking over at Consuela. “We’ll be here for awhile.
We waved goodbye to the girls and set about finalizing our space at the camping site registration office. We still didn’t have any money. Luckily, you were allowed to leave your passports if you didn’t immediately have the money or didn’t know how long you would be staying. We learned later on the trip that’s not a good idea. The thieves like passports, especially American passports.

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21 Jul, 2010 | Posted by: bswenson






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WE SING FOR OUR SUPPER AT THE CANTINA




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THE “GUARDOS” CHECK US OUT



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GERARDO INVITES US FOR OVERNIGHT




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WE REPAIR A FLAT TIRE




My Story


# 27


It was hot the whole time we were at the Padre’s. Hot, I mean really hot.
No one seemed to have a thermometer in Spain so I really don’t know how hot it was. Maybe 110. At the Padre’s it was a dry hot when we came but when we left, it was a sticky hot. I guess the barometer dropped. I really don’t know what that means. I used to hear my father say that. “It’s going to be hot today,” he would say. “The barometer must’ve dropped.” We didn’t have any air conditioning at our house. In fact, I don’t think any of our neighbors did either, so you just accepted a hot summer on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in those days during the war in the 1940’s.

The windows were all open at the Padre’s to catch any breeze that came through. Every now and then a quiet breeze would cross through where we were sitting. It was such a friendly feeling. You sat there all hot and sweaty and then this breeze would waft across the table and move a piece of paper or a feather sitting there. It’s a really fine natural pleasure to have a breeze like that cool you off momentarily. It didn’t last long. Only a second or two. But you knew there was always going to be another coming through again soon. A friendly breeze. Next to an ice cream cone on a summer day, I think a momentary breeze like that on a hot summer day is one of my finest pleasures.

In Spain, they have that long break at midday they call siesta time. It’s just too hot to work, even to think. The heat of the day in Spain calms down after sundown and the countryside cools off. Even the tiny little bugs that are always flying around getting in your eyes sometimes disappear. Then in the morning, it’s refreshing. Nice and cool.

In other parts of the world, just before the dawn and light blue sky arrive the birds begin to chirp and announce that a hot dusty day is coming again. But you know what? In this part of Spain, up on the plains, there are no songbirds. I guess because there are no trees and bushes or any kind of vegetation where they can live. It’s just a silent early morning except for the clomp, clomp, clomp of a horse-drawn wagon off in the distance.

Shortly after leaving the Padre’s, a wind came up and we were heading into it. . Low rumbling clouds were waiting for us up ahead to the west. We didn’t have goggles so we just squinted our eyes as we moved into it.
”Oh Jeeze!” I thought. We’ve never really had any really big storm on this trip. We’ve been lucky. Please, let’s not have it now. We’re out of money. We’re nearly out of gas. We’re in a part of Spain out here on the plains where hardly anyone lives. This is like traveling from Yuma, Arizona to Albuquerque, New Mexico. I don’t know if there’s a road between those two, but it sounds awfully barren travel.

Anyway, the storm started out with small gusts of wind that every now and then picked up the gravel from the road shoulders and hit us square in the face. It wasn’t the kind of steady wind that blows sheets off a clothesline or women’s hats off into the street. But I wouldn’t want to fly a kite in it.
It was a summer storm. Just like the kind that always brews up anywhere on the planet on a hot summer day, from USA to USSR. One of those hot July dog-day tempests that drops the temperature 10-15 degrees very quickly. It’s the kind that if you’re in your car, riding along on a summer day, windows open and rolled down all the way, your elbow hanging out the side, and then you hear the sound of water pellets splatting the dusty metal roof of your car, making a rifle range sound on top. You quickly roll up your windows.

Out on the plains, tumble-weed-looking things, the kind you see in the Cowboys & Indians movies were flying eastward and low over the fields. If there were trees out there, (but there weren’t any except the new saplings that had been planted for miles along the highway by the Franco people,) they’re be bending in the wind, losing leaves and branches. This was not the kind of storm where you hear the thunder way up high where the eagles fly, it was more the kind where the crackling comes shooting along the low ceiling of clouds, down where the crows fly.
Sometimes this kind of rainstorm passes overtop as though it only wanted to let off a little steam. Other times you unfortunately are in the place where it makes its decision to crank up its ferocity and dump a ton of rain on you or sometimes-even hail.
Well this day, it started with those thick, fat, pellets of rain, threatening to let the dam burst if it wanted to. The dark clouds of this storm were low and moving with gusto overhead. You could almost reach up and touch them. They’re always accompanied by cracks of thunder atop them, as though the lightning man is riding herd right along with them, looking down to see which iron fence post or cow it wants to zap with its blitz of lightning. It’s the kind of storm you want to run for cover.
But where? The horizon was bare. No grove of trees. Nothing.
In the driving wind and rain we came upon a cross roads with a small sign we could see that pointed to Tajuna to the left. “Let’s try down this way!” I yelled to Rudi behind me and turned to drive south. The clouds began breaking up here to the south. Soaking wet, we could see a small town down in a valley and came upon some buildings on the outskirts. It turned out to be a pub/grocery store, a kinda watering hole for local farmers. We went in and several local farmers gave us a stare as we entered the dark place. And then one of them shouted, “Guitar!”
I think if I hadn’t been toting my guitar strapped on my back and we would’ve walked into that place without it, we would’ve been stared at the whole time until we left. That’s the kind of feeling I got in this part of Spain. We didn’t look “normal” to them and immediately they would have been suspicious of us, especially since we didn’t have black hair like typical Spaniards.
To me, it was a shame to see a country with a population that was so suspicious of each other and especially strangers. We didn’t find anything like this in France. Maybe we would’ve if we had been in France ten years earlier when you never knew if your neighbor was a French Resistance fighter, or a secret spy for the Vichy government. As I said before, it’s an ugly feeling to be in a society where neighbor report on neighbor, where friendships can turn into a bad blood. I didn’t know I had it so good back in the ol’ USA. And as I said before, Rudi didn’t seem to notice this feeling of distrust because he had grown up in the Nazi era.

For myself, there’s nothing more terrifying than to be in a room with people and notice that a person thirty feet away is looking at you while writing in a small notebook

“Is it raining outside? You’re all wet!” The store owner greeted us with an amiable smile.
“No, but it his over the hill to the north.” I managed to let him know.
One of the fellows in the corner yelled “Guitar!” again.
“Another asked, “Are you professionals?”
That gave me an idea. I took off my cap, and held it out, and said “Si, senor!”

Rudi winced. I guess he thought I was stepping too low and he didn’t want to be associated with me.
“I returned a glance that said, ”Hey! They sell food here. We can make some money and buy ourselves some lunch.”

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14 Jul, 2010 | Posted by: psn






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ROHN TESTS A MULE NEAR HUERTA



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PEASANT SIESTA



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LONELY ROAD NEAR MINISTRA



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CURIOUS SENORAS





My Story


# 26



The Padre’s house was next to a thick adobe wall that surrounded an old Dominican Church in the center of the village. The little kid ran up to the wrought iron entrance gate and started ringing a small bell that hung from a post. “Hey, that’s enough!” I told the kid, but he kept on, enjoying the license to ring a church bell.

Out of a side door of the church an elderly woman in a shawl and dangling some long prayer beads came up to us on the inside of the gate., “Yes?” she said.

We said we needed to talk to the Padre. With an expression that said, ‘Doesn’t everybody’?, she asked what our purpose was.

Rudi clapped his hands together (in prayer fashion) , raised them to his face and closed his eyes to show that we were looking for a place to sleep. She understood that part of his Spanish and got over to us that the Padre was teaching a class of catechism and wouldn’t be available for another hour or so.

“Should we wait?” we asked ourselves, thinking maybe there was another place in the village where we could find a bed before it got dark.

In time like these, when it came to finding a place to stay for the night, we never flipped a coin; we always relied on Rudi’s instinct. He claimed to have an intuition that could predict the nature of our luck before we set upon a venture. It was really not much more than guessing but I would humor Rudi with letting him have a go at it. Someone had to do the job. When he made a wrong guess, we’d forget about it. It made his percentage of correct answers look better.
“My gut feeling tells me we’ll have luck,” He answered, taking a seat on a wooden bench by the gate. Notice he didn’t say if it was going to be good luck or bad luck.
“I sure hope you’re right this time!” I said, “I’m so hungry I cold eat a horse.”
“Just hold on a little longer, and you’ll reach that middle stage of hunger where you’re not hungry for a while!”
I sat down on the bench by the gate with him and bent into a position that made my stomach smaller. “Ah! There I feel much better,” I groaned.
Rudi laughed, “You Americans just can’t take it!” He said. “You shield yourselves from real things until you’re like machines.”
Well, if he wanted an argument at this time, I was ready for him. “And why not?” I snapped back. “Why be uncomfortable when you already have the means to be comfortable?” I felt some new pains shoot through my abdomen as my stomach shrank smaller.

Rudi was ready to shoot back. “Because when you’re faced with a situation like you’re faced with right now, you cringe and become cowards. You look for some pill to solve the problem. Just like in the war; without all your money and supplies, you would’ve never been able to stand up against us, the Germans, or the Russians for that matter.”

I think Rudi was getting hungry too and wanted to take it out on somebody. He seldom brought up the war.
“What’d you expect us to use? Bows and arrows?” I said. “Who gives a damn how you win a war, just so you win it?”
And then I thought how we won the war against Japan. And then
I felt like shutting up.
“If you’re going to do a thing, do it right.” Rudi said.
“What’s that got do with war? Life isn’t a war!” I returned.
“It isn’t?” he asked.
And then a small middle-aged man in a long black cassock came walking up from the church side door.
We both stood up as he greeted us, “Good evening Padre,” I said. “My friend and I are touring the world on our motor scooter and we’re interested in meeting with a Spanish Padre and thought we’d stop in to see you. I hope you will excuse us if we’ve interrupted your catechism class.”
He understood my primitive Spanish.
“No, that’s quite all right, boys, I have one of my better students taking over the lesson. Won’t you come in for a while?”
We passed through a barren courtyard that looked like it could’ve used some flowers or grass or something. Come to realize it, all of Spain looked like that so far. It was so different from France and the other countries where you had flowers growing everywhere, and hedges and things.

We followed him to a one-story room in the corner of the walled courtyard. “Sit down, please,” he said, pointing to a small wooden table in the center of what appeared to be a dining room. My stomach made a revealing growling noise just as I sat down. I don’t think he heard it, what with the shuffling chairs and all.
“Do you like Spanish wine?” he brought out a large quart jug of church wine from a closet.
“Gracias,” we answered as he poured us each a half a glass of red wine. That was all I needed - - an appetizer!
He spoke some French, a little German, and naturally Spanish, and with that combination supplemented with scribbling pictures, we were able to talk with each other.
The customary poster of Franco was on one of the walls. On other walls were Jesus-pictures and bishop-looking people. And there was a depiction of Mary-mother-of Jesus on the front wall. We sat and talked about our trip; he was interested in learning how other people were living in other places. He was puzzled at first at the idea of an American and a German traveling the world together on a motor scooter. Often we had met people who had never seen nor talked with an American or a German before, but had formed opinions of them through hearsay. Generally these opinions were uncomplimentary, but once we had talked with people they saw for themselves that we had neither horns nor long red forked tails. We didn’t pose as ambassadors or anything like that, but we always left the family or village with a much better impression of Americans and Germans, usually, in most cases, I think.
He told us he had been born in Riaza, a small town to the north of Madrid, and had attended the seminary in Madrid for twelve years. He had come to the little village of Cogolludo and its eight hundred parishioners six years ago, and planned to remain there, the bishop willing, for the rest of his life. I guess he was about 50 years old. His mother, and also his sister and her husband and one daughter lived there with him also at the church in the rooms that bordered the wall of the courtyard. He called them out to meet us.

That was strange, but I guess it was the custom in that part of Spain, bringing your family along with you to live with you at the church. I can see why mothers would encourage a son to become a priest. She would always have the security of knowing she would have a place to live when she got old. She looked about 70. Come to think of it, I don’t remember seeing any homeless women or men lying around the streets in any of the big cities in Spain. I guess Franco had a building somewhere for them or just ‘eliminated’ them like he did his political opponents.
“You play songs on those guitars?” The Padre asked.
“Sure, wanna hear a song?” Rudi asked.
While we were tuning our guitars, a long file of young children passed the front gate, and we figured the catechism class was over. He invited them to listen in.
When we finished the three Spanish folksongs we knew, he had the children sing one of their school songs. It’s always fun to hear little children, boy and girls, sing a song together. It’s like listening to the fresh sound of a mountain stream flowing over some rocks through the woods. It doesn’t matter the language.
Rudi and I clapped and they smiled at our approval. He dismissed them; his mother and the family slipped away in the adjoining doors of the courtyard and we were left alone to talk with the Padre.
“Call me, Padre Juan,” he said, and I’ll call you Rohn and Rudi.
There was no post office in the village, and twice we were interrupted during our conversation while the Padre gave out mail to parishioners. He was the post office. Also, at one point he was called upon to administer first aid to a small child who had taken a fall in the street. The child’s mother had come to the Padre with her boy with a bruised and bleeding elbow. The nearest doctor was twenty-five miles away, and the villagers always turned to the Padre for medical help like this. I wonder what she would’ve done during the civil war going on twenty years ago. Even though times were tough for this village today, under Franco it must’ve really been miserable twenty years ago during the fighting. We often saw decaying wooden homemade crosses sticking in the ground along the highway commemorating somebody who lost their life at that spot.

The local community aided the Padre, too, by giving him a percentage of their grain crop each harvest, which he in turn sold to the merchants of the village or gave to the poor.
Anything that he mentioned that sounded like food made my mouth water. I was distraught with curiosity to know if he was going to invite us to stay for dinner. I tried to make our conversations as interesting as possible. This way he wouldn’t excuse himself to go to dinner. I was desperate for a meal. I think Rudi was too. I had never before seen Rudi make himself so charming. If the Padre wasn’t going to ask us for dinner, I had a plan. I was simply going to tell him we were poor, and ask him if he please would give us some of the grain that he gave away to the poor of his parish. I would eat it raw. Then I thought how silly that would be. It was only one day that I hadn’t had a meal. I had heard of people who had gone two weeks without eating and they lived. Certainly I could last longer than a day. Besides, I didn’t want to show Rudi I was a weakling.
I heard the rustling of pots and pans from somewhere. But I also heard gurgling from my stomach. I’ve got an unusually boisterous stomach when it comes to needing some attention. When I sensed its complaints coming on, I managed to clear my throat or cough a little.

“You have an allergy?” The Padre asked me.

“No, I don’t think so. It’s just that we’ve been sleeping in hay lofts at night time.” I answered. It didn’t hurt anything to give him a hint that we needed a place to sleep for the night.

Wonderful aromas from the kitchen seeped into the courtyard like a lovely woman. It gave me new vigor. I cranked up my conversation with Padre Juan, even more captivating and descriptive about our travels. The aroma from the other room was like receiving a second wind. I imagined the wonderful taste of chicken drumsticks cooked in olive oil and garlic; chopped up onions sprinkled with salt and a little white Spanish wine poured in and a touch of diced green peppers.

I couldn’t speak. I let Rudi do the talking. I sat back and in my head ran a flick of the best Spanish meal we had back when we left Barcelona on our way to Zaragoza and the mayor of the little village had invited us for lunch when we inquired for the road west at his house just before siesta time as his wife was about to put the main meal of the day on the table. He called it ‘arroz con pollo’. The senora served it on top of long grain rice and some diced tomatoes with chopped fresh parsley. We each had a wedge of lemon and were told to squeeze a little on top. “We don’t eat those,” the mayor said as I landed with a bay leaf under my tongue and tried to get it out. I set it on the plate. Rudi somehow found that hilarious.
Then at the tinkling sound of a little bell, the Padre stood up and said, “Won’t you boys join me in a meal?”
Rudi, in his most blasé manner, I mean really, really blasé manner uttered a quiet “Thank you.” It sounded like he almost didn’t want the meal. Like a starving cat that seems to retain its dignity all the way ‘till death, all he said was that “Thank you.”

I could see the Padre wasn’t sure what Rudi meant by his “Thank you.”

Padre Juan even made a gesture that I interpreted momentarily in a panic, to mean, “Well If you don’t want to eat - - wait here; I’ll be back in a half-hour.”
The Padre’s gesture might have been “Fine. Let’s all wash our hands before dinner.” I didn’t know for sure, but I didn’t want him to misinterpret Rudi at such a desperate time. I felt like I was at a poker table. This was no time for reading wrong intentions.
I interrupted him in a loud voice that surprised me, “Oh! Thank you, Padre Juan! That would be wonderful!”

Rudi gave me a wincing stare. I guess I shouldn’t have shown the Padre how much I really wanted something to eat. It was undignified, at least in Rudi’s way of thinking. He was a stickler sometimes, for that sort of decorum things. Once in France I had wanted to change my stained shirt for a clean one. We were in a town square, and he almost flew into a rage when I changed it out on the main street. He wanted me to hide behind a tree or go behind a building or somewhere.

But Rudi’s expression changed quickly. The knowledge of food on the table makes an irritable man human again. We followed Padre Juan to a white-washed kitchen, where his housekeeper, a woman named Silvia, the one who had come out to greet our bell ringing the first time, had prepared a setting for three on an oil-cloth-covered table.

Well, it wasn’t chicken but it was even better! She served huge portions of beef in a broth that had chickpeas, leeks, carrots and bubbles of olive oil floating around the top. It was scalding hot but I dipped chunks of the hard crusted bread into it and it cooled right down. I thought I heard my stomach say, “Thank you! Thank you!” When she offered me another helping, I held up my bowl without trying to look eager and let it linger as long as possible under her big ladle spoon. This strategy turned out to be not necessary at all, because after the stew, there came another course! She brought out a big pot and served us chicken and boiled potatoes covered with a steamy tomato sauce. The Padre poured us each a glass of white wine, and after two helpings of her “cocido,” announced the meal was over by offering us peasant cheese and fruit. Jeeze, was I full!. The skin over my belly was really stretched! I guess I was having a natural reaction. My body was telling me “Go ahead, eat a lot. You might not have another meal in weeks.”
I had never eaten so much in my life. I felt bloated. We sat and talked about our trip and our future plans. It was getting dark, and the Padre found our conversation interesting and lit an oil lamp. “Did you find the people of France much different than the people of Spain?” He asked.

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30 Jun, 2010 | Posted by: psn






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LONELY HIGHWAY



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EXPERT WINETASTER



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LEARNING



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THE WATER WELL





My Story


# 25




As if it were a contest or something, the men made sure our wine glasses were never empty. I remembered one of the warnings I got back in Wuerzburg at the army barracks, about traveling in Spain and meeting up with the ‘locals’, “ if you ever get to Spain, and those guys get you to drinking with them, and they offer you more wine, and you don’t take it…watch out! That makes ‘em mad as hell. They’ll think you’re too good for them, and they’re just liable to take you outside and beat you to death with rocks!”

I hadn’t noticed anything uncomfortable about drinking their wine so far, and I was in no mood to refuse any wine either, the country outdoors was mighty rocky.

I did refuse the cigarettes. Each new person that introduced himself wanted to offer me one. They all returned the same expression, “Everyone smokes, why not you?” I tried to smile it away.

The thick smoke in the room didn’t bother me anymore after a few more glasses of local wine. When I had to take a leak, I just about needed a chainsaw to cut my way through the smoke to the outdoor latrine. Ah! What clean fresh Spanish air! Ah! What bladder relief!

While I was outside I saw someone carrying a guitar that sure looked like Rudi’s. “Hey! That’s mine!” I yelled to the guy while running to him, waving my arm while zipping up my pants.”

I went up to this big 6-foot 4” 300-lb. bruiser who was now going in the front door. He could’ve been a Saturday Night wrestler on local TV or something.

“That’s our guitar!” He stopped and looked down at me, and didn’t say anything - just smiled at me as if I were a flea or something. Then he grumbled and pushed the front door open with his foot and inside raised the guitar high, one-handed over his head, and twirled it around as the room exploded with “Guitar! Guitar”!
Rudi saw that it was his guitar and tried to grab it from the fellow who held on to it a little bit to tease Rudi who was not happy with someone treating his guitar like a play toy. Rudi gave him one of his famous sneers but the guy just turned his back, handed the guitar over to Rudi and began a conversation with some nearby men.

I looked at little Miguel, our new friend, who was still sticking close by. He just shrugged his shoulders, smiled a tipsy smile, and repeated the chant, “Guitar! Guitar!.

As Rudi and I struck up a song, I wondered what other objects from our scooter would be passing around the village. “Maybe I should take a look?” I whispered to Rudi.

“Don’t raise suspicion, “ he said. “We are guests here.”

He was right. Besides, there wouldn’t be much we could do, if we did find anything missing. We sang another Spanish folksong (we knew three), and the crowd half-mumbled the melody along with us. After a few more exchanges of songs and wine glasses, the crowd began thinning out. Salvador, the thin-faced fellow, asked, “You like to dance with girls?” and we were again out in the fresh air.
I glanced over to see the motor scooter was still there, and everything looked like it was still intact. “Do you think I oughta move it into a shed or something?” I asked Miguel.
“Naw! It’s O.K. where it is, no one will borrow it. There’s no one around here that could drive one of those things.”
“I didn’t mean that. I thought maybe someone would steal something!” I said to Miguel.
“Ah, naw…you don’t have to worry about that, either,” Miguel said as we walked down in the direction of a barn. It was a June evening and summer was coming in Spain. We walked down the path in the direction of the music. A large barn was at the bottom of the hill, and an electric light flickering inside outlined couples as they danced by the large doorway. It was a country barn dance.

The music had stopped when we reached the entrance, and senoritas in broad-skirted dresses, some with pretty ruffled flowered material, others in only long dull-colored farm skirts, and young men in generation-old boleros and square beaver hats were returning to the sides of the barn to sit on barrels and log benches or just standing around to drink wine from their botas. Some posters of previous fiestas were pasted on one of the walls. Also a large photo of Franco was pasted next to a ‘no smoking’ sign which looked like it was being ignored by most. I didn’t mean Franco was being ignored because two of his ‘El Guardo Civil’ soldiers (or whatever they’re called) were roaming around the outside with their rifles strapped to their back and one other was inside roaming around.

On a small wooden podium at one end was the music- - two gray-haired men, one was re-tuning a well-weathered guitar, and the other had a mandolin placed between his knees while he lighted an intermission cigarette. Above them was the electric light – it was the only electric light in the barn.

A couple of small vigorously burning thick candles were at the other end. But it was early late spring and there was still a lot of light to go before sundown. The door of the barn was wide open; you could distinguish the faces pretty good.
During the intermission, Salvador, the guy we had met above on the hill at the bar jumped to the podium, and with his hands cupped to his face he shouted to the crowd, “We have a couple of tourists in our village tonight! And they want to play a tune for you!”

The crowd politely applauded. I knew it was too late to refuse Salvador’s invitation. The crowd lingering about the podium patted our backs as we mounted it and gave a repeat performance of the songs we had played up above the hill in the wine hut.
“Olé!” they politely shouted, encouraging us after each song. We even attempted some Rock ‘n’ roll. It was strange stuff for them. They weren’t as enthusiastic, but I guess it was ‘something different’ and they didn’t mind having some imported entertainment at their fiesta. When it was time again for dancing, we thanked the musicians, and jumped to the dirt floor amidst an appreciative crowd all wanting to offer us wine from their botas. Rudi and I were cheerfully pounded on the back after our songs. It’s here where I think I made a mistake by not accepting all the glasses of wine that were offered me. The music started up. We spilled a lot of wine on that dirt floor.

Not too long after that I felt a strong hand on my shoulder. I turned and it was the unshaven 300lb.dark-faced caballero, Big Bad Bernardo, as I had come to call him. I don’t know what his real name is.
He took me by the arm as the music began and shouted,
“Here, a señorita for you, dance!” and he pushed me up against a very timid girl. It turned out to be his 15 yr. old daughter. She was ugly as hell. He shoved us both into the revolving mass of dancers. As we danced counter-clockwise around the barn, I peered through the dancing couples to see him also leading Rudi to a girl. Another ugly-as-hell daughter.

My partner, Florentina, was as serious as a schoolmarm in her crispy-ironed, ruffled dress and coal-black hair all done up with knots at the top and little curlets that hung down over her forehead and ears. She didn’t choose to talk very much; or maybe she couldn’t understand my strange Spanish. We danced what I think was a lively fandango, that seemed more like a physical training exercise than a dance. During a lull in the music, she told me they had a fiesta in the barn every Catholic holiday, and at nighttime young people came by donkey and horse cart from miles around to attend. And that was about all she cared to say.

At the end of the set, I returned her to a long wooden bench where all the single girls were seated. “Gracias,” I thanked her, attempting a bow.
“De Nada,” she answered bashfully with her eyelashes, and quickly retreated to a huddle of whispering senoritas. They giggled, and I returned to the opposite side where young men were seated at several tables and chairs. At one table where I found a seat, the men were passing a basket-covered wine bottle.

“Have a drink!” one of them shouted to me, and I tilted the thick glass bottle to my mouth and grudgingly swallowed a couple mouthfuls.
“Can you drink wine from this bottle?” A young bumpkin in a white shirt with rolled-up sleeves asked me, and he reached to the floor behind him and brought up another, transparent, bottle that looked like a vase with a long stem. He raised the flask high above his head and a long stream of wine passed from the bottle directly to his open mouth. With a snap of his wrist, he ceased the stream and handed the bottle to me, smiling.

“Try it!” he said, wiping the wine from his mouth with the back of his shirtsleeve.
I picked up the bottle cautiously, and then raised it as he had done. The first squirt hit me squarely in the eye, and I brought the flask down, causing a long red stream to travel across my shirt. The other men standing around watching roared in laughter. I laughed with them, as someone lent me a handkerchief to wipe the wine out of my eyes.

“No, like this!” the shirt-sleeved fellow said, picking the bottle up again, “You start close to your mouth, then bring the flask away. And when you get better you can do this” - -and he allowed the wine to fall in the crease between his cheek and his nose, and then directed it higher to his forehead, causing a long stream of red wine to trickle from his forehead down over the side of his nose and into the corner of his mouth! Jeeze… I never saw anything like it.
“Olé! The group of men cried out, just as the musicians started up a lively Spanish dance in triple time. I looked up to see a woman with a pair of castanets and another guitar had been added to the orchestra.

“You dance the bolero?” one of the villagers asked me.
“No, I don’t know anything about it,” I smiled.
“How come you don’t and your partner does?” he said, pointing to Rudi, who had been corralled into dancing again, this time with someone else’s daughter. And much better-looking this time.

“I don’t know!” I said a tremor in my voice as I saw Big Bad Bernardo looking around the barn for me. He had his other dau ghter with him. I slipped into the shadows and he never found me. I saw her dancing with another guy, probably her cousin or someone.

The dancing couples formed a rhythmic, like a long snake as they paraded around in triple time beat to the jumpy heel-clicking music. I saw Rudi struggling to figure out the complicated step, as he whisked by with the tall señorita clinging to his arm. By the time he got the step routine down, the music changed to a slow rhythm and he stumbled by, bent over, watching his feet, as the señorita did the guiding. Like a soldier catching up in step with the others, he skipped and struggled on. Then the music halted a couple beats, and the couples stopped to do a crossover and some graceful turns and spinning. Rudi managed to make this look like a scuffle, and then a track meet when the music suddenly switched back to a triple time, came to a pitch in the finale, and then abruptly ended with the couples offering courtly bows and poses to each other. Rudi was caught a few bars behind in all his confusion and ended up bowing to the wrong señorita. By the time he raised his head, his señorita had already returned to the long wooden bench, a little disgusted with her German partner.

It didn’t seem to bother Rudi, I was watching from my shadowy hiding place. He was one of the first ones on the floor looking for a dancing mate when the music struck up for the next dance. I brought out my sketchbook and began doing quick sketches of the dancing couples.
“Hey! What’re you doing there?” My thin-faced friend, Salvador asked.
“I’m doing some sketches of the dance,” I answered.
“How about doing one of me?” he said, peering at the upside-down sketches as he blocked my view of the dancing figures.
“Sure, Salvador, sit over there!” I said, pointing to and empty chair.
I did a quick sketch of him, thin-faced, sleepy eyes, and gave it to him. “There you are!”
He looked at the sketch a few minutes, gave me a faint smile, and didn’t speak to me the rest of evening. It was about this moment Rudi came up to me and commented, “Have you noticed these people getting less friendly?”
“Yes, I have. Can’t figure it out.” I said.
“None of the girls want to dance anymore.” Rudi grumbled.
As the evening progressed, fewer and fewer people took an interest in us, until finally we found ourselves completely alone. It was an awkward situation. Miguel was nowhere to be seen. Salvador disappeared. Big Bad Bernardo mingled with his buddies and the Guardo Civil soldier. We were being ignored by all.
We didn’t know what we had done wrong, and it was certain no one was going to tell us. Maybe we had done nothing wrong; maybe they just didn’t find us interesting anymore.
The final dance of the evening was over and the peasants began leaving for home in the moonlight on their donkeys, horses, and by foot. I found Miguel, our good ol’ boy from earlier in the afternoon.

“How about that place to sleep, Miguel?”

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23 Jun, 2010 | Posted by: psn






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ENTERTAINING THE LADIES



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HOT DAY IN THE FIELD



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MOTEL FISH MARKET



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WE CROSS INTO SPAIN



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NEWSPAPER IN BARCELONA




My Story


# 24



Since we were more or less traveling the back roads, so far in Spain, we hadn’t run into many people who could speak English, German or French. I remembered a little from my high school Spanish class and together with acting out, like in the parlor game of charades, between Rudi and me we could pretty well get answers or get our point across to ask questions.
I also carried a little pocket dictionary and then when some complicated phrase or technical stuff came up, the little book came in handy. It was fun to see their eyes light up when the little pocket book would solve the mystery of what each of us were trying to get across.

We had only been a short while in Spain, and I noticed the same portrait of a man in every café, grocery store, restaurant, motor garage, and bar. We had stopped for coffee our first morning out from Barcelona and there on the wall again was a sun bleached version of the portrait hanging among the out-dated calendars and soda-pop ads. So I thought I would ask who it is.

“Who’s that?” I asked pointing with my thumb to the poster on the wall. A lone man seated at the same long wooden table in a faded checkered shirt and worn-out striped vest who was drinking coffee from a tin cup looked at me and then slid down the bench until he was just across from me. He was bent over, unshaven and wore one of those berets.
“That’s Franco,” He mumbled, putting his hand on the top of mine and lowering his eyes. “Generalissimo Francisco Franco.”
“Who?”
He said it even quieter this time. “Generalissimo Francisco Franco.”
“He’s the boss here?” I returned his almost-whisper.
“He’s the boss,” He replied, surveying the rest of the room like he was Humphrey Bogart looking to see who was watching our conversation.
“How long has he been the boss?” I asked.
“Since the war,” He answered in a raspy voice, referring to the Spanish Civil War that ended in ’39 about twenty years ago.
“How long will he remain boss?” I continued
“As long as they remain,” He whispered, lifting his index finger slightly from the wooden table and pointed out the door and then looked away quickly.

I twisted and turned to look back across the table to see what he was pointing at. Opposite the tavern there was a vacant lot that had been vac ant when we had arrived, but it was now filled with uniformed soldiers, going through drills and marching exercises. They were sloppy and in many instances didn’t have the same uniform on as the guy next to him.
“That’s the Spanish army?” I asked him.
He nodded, biting his lower lip, and slid back to his former place at the other end of the table, surveying the rest of the room to see if anyone in the small café was watching him as he moved.

When we left the café we watched the soldiers practice an exercise that was apparently designed for a visiting dignitary. As the officer instructing the exercise would pass the line of soldiers at attention, they would quickly fall to one knee, stick their rifle out to arm’s length, and kiss the back of their own left hand, all in the same motion.

The officer was having difficulty in getting them to do it in succession, like dominoes falling. It was funny. Like the kindergarten teacher trying to get kids in line to do some kind of dance routine for the school Easter play. There was always one kid that didn’t do it right, and it wasn’t always the same kid.
Rudi became impatient, “C’mon, let’s hit the road. These guys are never going to get it right!” He had seen better precision from the Nazi army.
We headed north now, away from the sea, into the hot semi-arid Lerida province. On the way north, a uniformed military motorcyclist came upon us from the opposite direction and waved to us. We waved back. In a few more minutes, two more passed, and waved also, a little more vigorously this time. We waved again vigorously. In the next few minutes three of them passed, waving to us frantically to get off the road. They were at the head of a column of eight or ten motorcycles, which escorted a caravan of five long black automobiles. We got off to the side of the road just in time to let Generalissimo Francisco Franco and his dignitaries pass on their way to Barcelona. We didn’t wave this time.

It happened so quick we didn’t realize what just happened. In one of those black limousines was the man who was victorious in the Spanish Civil War that ended back in ’39. That was the war that Ernest Hemingway was writing about and where all the American and Canadian young men and from other countries were volunteering to help out the “reds” fight against the “fascists”. Franco and his rebels were supported by an upcoming dictator, Adolf Hitler. The reds were supported by the Russians.

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16 Jun, 2010 | Posted by: psn






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BEACHCOMBER WOMAN
ALONG MEDITERRANEAN




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LITTLE EDITH
FALLS ASLEEP




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THE COAST IN
SOUTHWEST FRANCE




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THE BARCELONA
FISH MARKET




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WE SLEEP OUT ON
MEDITERRANEAN BEACH




My Story




# 23




 SCENE: Europe/Africa
TIME: Mid-20th Century



“It looks almost like an ocean out there!” I shouted to Rudi as we sped along the southern coastline of France.
I looked, and for a moment thought I saw Africa on the other side. “And one day, we will get to Africa and look back across the Mediterranean and see Europe,” I thought, “Where I am right now.” If we can get to Africa, I will look back to this side, remembering all our good times in France: Toby, the crazy pot party, Lily, the songfest under the bridge, the Paris caves, Mr. Blanchard’s wine, Mr. Rouge’s farm, and others I haven’t mentioned like little Edith. On her parent’s farm as Rudi and I talked with her parents after supper, little 5-year- old, Edith, who fell asleep trying to keep awake past her bedtime to listen to her American and German visitors.

Traveling along the Mediterranean reminded me of Ocean City, Maryland, my home town, where a walk on the beach meant a broad expanse of fine white sand. We found a stretch of it our first night out camping. But another night it was a pebbly beach where I snapped a picture of a lone woman scavenging for whatever the Mediterranean waves would offer her.

Beachcombing is an art, I suppose, all over the world. Whenever a nor’easter with a 40-mile an hour wind passed through our town, those of us kids who were beachcombers would be out on the surfside the next day looking for stuff. One kid had a coin finder, I usually brought along a magnifying glass. We searched the water’s edge for interesting objects that the ocean would give up after a big storm.
During the war some days it was a tacky job because whenever a German U-boat sank an American tanker offshore, oil from the sunken tanker would wash ashore and for about a week the beach would be left with a black coat of seaweed covered with what we called sticky “Tar”. My mother would make us wash our feet with kerosene before we were allowed back in the house. By the way, she was a volunteer during the war for the WCCGAAP, I think they cal led it, the Women’s Civilian Coast Guard Auxiliary Air Patrol. Her job was to sit high up in the pillbox in the sand dunes up the beach north of town from 3pm to 5pm and watch for suspicious activity out on the ocean. There were only 950 people living in Ocean City during the winter time back then, so the U.S. Air Force was grateful for people like Muzzie, that’s what we called her, to go up there and volunteer.

People are still finding stuff along the beach. One time even a body washed up and a coin from a Spanish galleon. There has been debris that washed ashore from sunken German U-boats, crashed airplanes, and exotic seashells from the ocean bottom. One time, and this was when I was younger, I was walking the shore with my mother, I guess I was 9-10 yrs old, I picked something up and Muzzie suddenly screamed right there in public with sunbathers all around and said “Put that down! Drop I! Don’t touch it!” I had thought it was some kind of jellyfish. It looked like a colorless balloon. I wanted to blow it up. It was a condom.

The U.S. Coast Guard concrete pillbox on the sand dunes north of town stayed up there all alone long after the war until land developers realized the real estate potential of the ocean front and Ocean City became a vacation spot for people from Baltimore and Washington. The wheeler-dealers took over and that’s when the town lost it.
Back to France. Rudi and I camped out along the beach that night, and in the morning, headed toward the looming foothills of the Pyrenees off in the distance. Perpignan was a friendly town with the influence of Spain and Arabic-looking people. We probably were following the trail of the Romans to Spain, and the back and forth movement over the centuries of Arabs, Jews, and French who were either making an exodus, conquering something, getting kicked out or just trying to find a place to settled down, and all squeezed between the great mountains on the north and the sea on the south. It left a feisty mix of people and we were feeling it.
We visited the local newspaper office in Perpignan and one of the reporters gave us his advice about going to Spain.
Don’t. “There’s another Hitler over there,” He said.
Well, there was no way we were going to get to Morocco if we didn’t go through Spain. His advice didn’t dissuade us.

On the road again the next day. We entered Spain by La Junquera. At the border, the Spanish customs officers were all dressed in fancy government uniforms, like they were on a movie set. If we both hadn’t been carrying guitars on our motor scooter, I bet they would have dickered with us for a couple hours, what with us looking like a couple of drifters.

Although the landscape of southern France was a gradual change, I felt an almost sudden change in the people. I was expecting strikingly beautiful girls, guitars, castanets and stomping heels, and hopefully not the kind of boot clicking from storm troopers.

Maybe the newspaper reporter back in Perpignan was right.
We drove toward Barcelona, the Spanish port with a history of Roman roads and Gothic architecture. As we sped along the rolling hills lined with stubby cork trees, and olive groves we shouted out our first impressions to each other in the onrushing wind.
“Where’s all the traffic?” Rudi shouted. “This road has no cars on it, no traffic, it’s like an airplane runway!
“Yeah. I’ve only seen a couple military trucks and a tourist!” Civilization ended at the border. I shouted back to him above the wind.
It was weird, it was like the towns and the countryside, someone had sounded an air raid alarm and everyone was in the shelters.
Later we learned there are no air raid shelters, it’s just that it was siesta time in Spain, and from around noon to 2 or 3 o’clock you just don’t try or do anything outside, it’s too h ot.
Each little village we passed through had a village square and a traffic policeman stationed there. Why, I don’t know because there was no traffic. The policeman would stand in all that heat in his round traffic podium and waved when we drove by. Then probably returned to sleep under his large canvas shade umbrella.
Later in the afternoon, along the roadsides and in the little towns, the people waved and shouted with the frenzy of a political rally when they would spot the guitar strapped to the front of our scooter.
“They’re really friendly people!” Rudi shouted up to me.
I shouted back, “Yeah! Look at them wave!” and we both waved back to a group of shouting men who were sitting on a roadside embankment.
It was now the middle of June, and the countryside was getting bleached by the sizzling Spanish sun. Everything seemed defined in tones of black and white.

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09 Jun, 2010 | Posted by: psn







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BULLFIGHT IN THE 2,000 YEAR-OLD
COLISEUM IN NIMES, FRANCE




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ROHN AT THE MEDITERRANEAN WHARF
FOR FISHING TRAWLERS AND FREIGHTERS




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ALGERIAN LONGSHOREMEN IN SETE LOOK
AT RUDI'S POLAROID SHOTS OF THEM





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AN ARCHWAY IN THE COLISEUM IN NIMES






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A VISIT TO THE LOCAL NEWSPAPER







My Story




#22







“What a meal!” I smiled to his wife, Florence, who was clearing off the table as Jean handed us the fruit bowl. I liked to study the smile that comes on a housewife’s face when you compliment her about the meal. She really doesn’t know if I meant it was good or not, so I always watch the expression when I say it. Sometimes her face will be the same expression as if I said, “I think it’s going to rain.”

But other times if she put a lot of work into the meal, like she used some special herb or something, she’ll think you have recognized her particular touch, that sort of thing, and thinks you’re a connoisseur or something, and I can see she really appreciates my comment.
“Well boys, in just a half hour, you’ll be meeting the other club members of Avignon.” Our host, Jean, said.
I think he had some jitteriness like he wondered if it was all going to go well, or maybe it wasn’t appropriate to have a German at the meeting; some of the members were actually fighting Germans a decade ago, or worse, some of them were in the French resistance and killing them through guerilla warfare. And some had relatives killed by the Germans in retribution.

Or maybe Jean was just congratulating himself that he put this whole thing together and people would remember for a long time how he discovered us, the troubadours on a motor scooter. We were the first “Vespa-motorists” to come through town; or maybe he read about us in the Lyon newspaper last week or maybe his club members thought he arranged for us to come down from Paris. France was beginning to get American rock bands. Maybe his members thought we were something like that.
Anyway, he thought it all would be good for business.

And I wondered if the club members would be as enthusiastic about motor scooters as Jean.
They were.
“And Mr. Engh, what if a rhinoceros charges you in Africa? Do you think the Vespa will be fast enough to pull away?” A young teen girl asked.
“Our scooter’s pretty fast! I don’t think he could ca tch us,” I smiled. Another fellow interrupted, “Can you fellows find parts for the scooter in Africa?”
I told them I didn’t know, but that Rudi was a good mechanic, and could probably get us through.

We watched a film about the care and treatment of a motor scooter and got some good pointers from it- - some that were very useful later on. After the film, Jean popped open a few liters of champagne that he had bought as a surprise, in honor of us, and requested Rudi and me to sing a few songs. When we finished the first song, they all got together, there must have been at least twenty-five of them, and they sang a toast to us, and then sang their stirring national anthem, the Marseilles. It was a reminder how much the French love adventure.

When the meeting was winding down, a scrubby fellow, probably in his 60’s, came limping up to me and raising his wine glass said, “Here’s to many adventurous miles head and a life well invested!” We clinked glasses.

He was a former French Foreign Legion soldier who was discharged from Algeria because of injuries. The French had the North African colony for more than a hundred years or so. They were now fighting to keep the colony. Not a popular side to be on. Rudi and I would soon be learning a lot more about that war in a few weeks, since Algeria was our starting off point to head south across the Sahara and into black Africa.

The camaraderie that evening made us feel good to know that at least in Europe, there were always going to be pockets of more scooter enthusiasts that “speak our language.” We sang a few more songs, and then our host, Jean, announced that it was midnight and time to get home. Three girls came over to Rudi and me before we left the meeting and presented us with three corks from the champagne bottles. They had tied a wire around them. Each of them had written their home address on them.
“We’d like you to tie this on your scooter in remembrance of our club,” she said, handing the corks to Rudi.
“And if you do, the corks will bring you good luck!” Another added. That was friendly. I examined the corks and smiled and promised to write them all a post card from South Africa.
As I handed the corks back to Rudi I had a weird feeling that someday, it was going to bring us very good luck.
“Let’s head on home!” Jean shouted, waiting to turn out the lights.
We spent the night at Jean and Florence’s house, and in the morning went around to pick up the motor scooter. “It looks in fine shape.” Rudi said, examining Pierre’s work. “What’s that going to cost us?”
“Not a thing,” Jean laughed, “We’re happy to help you two fellows out. Just wish we could do more!”
“More?” I said, “We never dreamed we’d be treated so well when we passed through this door yesterday!”
We bid Jean and Pierre au revoir and headed toward the ancient Roman city of Nimes where we made a quick stop to make a presentation at the local Lions Club whose members all chipped together to buy us a hotel room and two tickets to the bullfight held the next day in the ancient coliseum at Nimes.

Rain was with us all the way to the coast, where we reached the port city of Sete, on the Mediterranean. We took shelter under the overhang of a bistro when the rain really started blasting at us. Two other men had just run in there too, bumping into us as they arrived. Shaking the rainwater off each other like a quartet of sheep dogs, we felt the comradeship that a rainstorm often puts stranded victims together.

We struck up a conversation. They were German sailors! And guess what? They invited us to accompany them to their freighter in the harbor. They had come into town to buy some cognac and beer. It was Saturday.

“Fine idea!” Rudi said, “I was a month on a freighter coming back from India, and I’d like to visit one again.” When the rain finally stopped we headed down to the harbor where Günter, that was his name, pointed out his freighter. When you’re down at the wharf level and you’re walking between two of them you feel like you’re in new w York City walking between two skyscrapers. It’s humbling to think that these giant iron and steel vessels are the offspring of the 13th century galleon that used to sail the seas battling 20-foot waves 600 years ago. Günter said his was a mid-sized ship but it looked pretty big to me.

“She’s a nice friendly ship,” Günter said. He was middle-aged man, strongly built, and with narrow hips that caused his pants to hang far below his waste line. He had kind of a crooked smile that came up sideways on his face as though he was going to speak secretly out of the side of his mouth. When we arrived at the gangplank, he said, “I think you better go up and meet the Captain first before you come down to visit us.”

I was excited. I’d never been on a freighter before.

One of the sailors went in first when we reached the Captain’s office near the bow of the ship. A brass sign on his door said, “Kapitan H.L. Rohmer.” A working table was in the center of the room and his desk was over on the right-hand side.
My army experience and Rudi’s Germanic nature caused us to stand tall in stiff-spine attention. After the brief talk with the Captain the sailor came out and said, “You can go in.”
“Please to meet you sir, Rudi Thurau.”
“Pleased to meet you sir, Rohn Engh.”

We didn’t do it in a comic-like nature, but it would’ve been entertaining to my friends if they had seen it. It was sort of like meeting the pope or General Eisenhower or somebody.
At his desk, he took off his glasses and uttered a “Glad to have you aboard.” all in German. This was a German ship and German would be spoken here.

“We don’t often have visitors here, but today’s the weekend. You’re welcome aboard.”
I looked out the porthole window and France was outside. We’d been in France for ten days, but suddenly we were in Germany. Every thing on the walls, the language, the men, and the atmosphere –it was all German. German rules prevailed.

The Captain was a Teutonic type, intelligent-looking with white hair, close cropped, almost a brother to Winston Churchill. “So you’re all making a tour of the world?” He spoke from the back of his throat. The tight wrinkle on his forehead kind of followed his conversation.
“Yes, sir, except we’re on a motor scooter,” Rudi said.
“The both of you on one scooter?”
“Yes sir, and it’s working out well,” Rudi returned.
The Captain grimaced, “Well you’ve got a lot of places to go before you’ve seen what I’ve seen. —the Orient, India, the United States, Africa—seen ‘em all!
“Where are you heading from here, sir?” Rudi asked.
He looked at Rudi and then over at me. I guess he wanted to make sure we weren’t spies or something. I guess he could’ve made up any destination.
“From here we go to Casablanca. You going there too?”
“Yes sir, I think we’ll make Casablanca. Might see you there, sir.” Rudi said.
“hmmmph!” was all he answered.
“How ’bout you,” he looked at me. “They said you were an American. Do you speak German?”
“Enough to get by,” I answered him.
He turned to Rudi. “Where you from, son?”
“Right now my home is in Bremerhaven. I was born in “Luneburg.”
“You doing any kind of work on this ‘world tour’?”
Rudi figured that the Captain was looking to find out if we were opportunists, seeing the world at the expense of others. But we were used to that so we had some pretty standard answers, depending on which country we were in and who was asking the question.

“Yes, sir. We get odd jobs here and there. Rohn’s writing articles for an American newspaper (of course they weren’t being sold as yet!) and we sing for our supper, as well. We’re entertainers. We sing for our supper”
“Do you sing, “Rosa Marie?” He challenged us.
“Of course.” Rudi said.
“Well, you’ll both get a good supper, if you sing it for me here. It’s my favorite song.”
We could see he wasn’t as gruff as he made out to be.
We tuned up our guitars and sang his song and a few other north German folk tunes. He looked at his watch and called to the steward when we had finished. “Bring extras for these boys! “
“A German meal?” Rudi asked.
“What else.?” The Captain looked up through bushy eyebrows.
Rudi smiled, “The first one in eight months,” and the two Germans chuckled while three other top members of his crew arrived to join us for the Saturday evening meal.
“Sit down boys! Sit down!” he motioned while his top crewmembers came in for their evening meal. They all looked like the kind of guys you see in those German U-boat movies except for the grease and sweat.
“Malzeit! Rudi said. It’s a German expression, like when you say, “Bon Appetit. Come to think of it, I don’t know exactly what it means, but it’s something to say like, “We’re all going to have a good meal here, and I wish us all a good appetite.” – something like that.

The waiter brought in four big huge bowls. One was sauerkraut, one was some kind of boiled potatoes, and one was filled with chucks of boiled ham. Another was some kind of dumpling mix. We took turns piling the combination on to our plates. And before the steward could return with the salt and pepper I had requested, the Germans were finishing off their meal with beer the Captain had reserved for this kind of event.
“You want to visit the hands down below now, I suppose.” The Captain said, dismissing his staff and picking up his glasses and newspaper.

“Yes, we were just going to suggest that.” Rudi smiled politely.
“Sure enjoyed the meal, Captain!” I said.
He looked up from his newspaper again. He must’ve liked our interruption to his regular routine. “Maybe we’ll meet again in Casablanca!” he said, “You’re welcome to stay the weekend. My first Officer will make sure you’re settled in. But be off the ship by Monday morning.”
We excused ourselves and went below.
Walking below on a freighter is like walking blindfolded. Unless you’re a veteran at it you’re always feeling your way around through funny entrances and passageways. I stumbled over a half-dozen doorsills until I got used to the stepping up and over before going through each doorway.
We found Günter and a group of six seamen celebrating Saturday night with bottles of cognac, beer, American cigarettes and deafening music from a radio, all tucked into a small cabin room designed for two people.
“Hummel, Hummel “ Rudi shouted, a north German expression of questionable decency.
“Moss!” “Moss!” A person from Hamburg always returned. And there were about four of them who shouted it from the little cabin.
“C’mon in here you guys, we’ve been waitin’ for you!” Sure took you a long time to kiss the Captain’s ass!” Günter shouted, a little under the weather from the cognac.

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02 Jun, 2010 | Posted by: psn





My Story




#21





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DOING THEIR OFFICE WORK




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PIERRE CHECKS OUT THE VESPA




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A WELCOME IN LYON




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VAN GOGH'S PAINTING OF THE AMPHITHEATER









When you’re on a trip like this and you’re meeting people who you’re going to depend on for a night or so, and you’ve never seen them before, or they don’t know anyone who knows you, it makes you feel alone, even though there’s people all around you. It gives you a feeling of really being alone, -insecure.

If you could remain with them like for a month or so and get to know them, their quirks and all, you’d get to feel more secure. So with meeting new people all the time like we were doing and starting all over again with the new people all the time, it gives you like a vacant feeling. At least it did for me.

Most people don’t choose to have a life like that. They keep doing what they’re doing, even though they’re not satisfied with their life, -even if it’s deteriorating.

Many times people would say to us, “Oh! You guys got it good! You’ve got the perfect deal. Always traveling. Meeting new people. It must be fun!”

Not so. “I’d like to say back to them, “No, you are the ones that got it good. You are secure with your life, your friends, your relatives and friends of friends. You’re doing it right. You don’t have this strange curiosity to want to know how the world works, how other people are doing things, making on with life.”
And those people would like to say back to me, “You don’t know what my life is like, what I’m struggling with, what the future looks like for me. I’m scared.”

Yes, a trip like this is a roller coaster. It’s uncomfortable. You come to a new farm, a new village, and new people. It’s all strange to you. And it’s strange too, for the people you meet. The only thing that’s consistent is the people –they’re human just like you. That’s about the only thing that’s the same. So you have that to begin with. And you go from there.

The nice thing about all this for a curious guy like me is I can borrow. I can see what people are doing in their life and if it rings true, I can incorporate it into my own life right now and in the future. And I can also see what really dumb things people are doing, I can ignore them, and if I’m doing them myself I see how dumb it looks. These things I witness are gifts for me that help me eliminate some of the loneliness I feel on this trip. Makes it worthwhile.

Oh well, so far, I have already absorbed fragments of ideas ab out getting on with life. During gray periods when nothing was happening I was saying to myself, “Something big is going to happen. Maybe some revelation, some kind of an epiphany, something that will point me in the right direction, and it’s going to all snap into place. I’m going to see the world in a new and different way.”

Well it did happen down in the south of France. It was in Arles, in Provence, along the Rhone River, down near the coast, the Mediterranean. It was the place where VanGogh made a lot of his paintings. It was an area where the Romans, back before Christianity had come along, had established themselves as a powerhouse. They brought new ideas to the peasants and tribes in the area. The place became a trading post on the route from Rome to Spain.

Things were humming, the Romans even built an amphitheater in Arles and of course they could do that with all the slave labor they got from their conquests.
The amphitheater was almost as big as the coliseum in Rome that you see in the tourist brochures.

You can imagine all the excitement that building brought to the town, or I guess in those days you could call it a city, maybe about 20,000 people. And Arles must’ve had everything that you can expect in a city that size: the royalty, the military, the clergy, the fast lane people, the barons, the slaves, the homeless, the arts, and all that.

And then it fell all apart around the fifth century. I mean when the Roman Empire fell, everything fell. Of course, it was gradual. Like everything that falls apart, you don’t know it’s happening ‘til someone taps on your shoulder and tells you so. The vandals, the barbarians came in and tore up everything. Busted up the statues. They left a few towers and pagan shrines that still stand today.
Since there was no longer any progress going on, no schools, no commerce, the city of Arles shrunk back down to a village again. Prosperity vanished and was replaced by the tribes quarreling amongst each other and with other tribes. These vandals couldn’t destroy everything of course. They let the wooden seats in the amphitheater fall apart and rot and eventually the townspeople appropriated much of the marble and stone from the amphitheater to build their own nearby lean-tos and shelters and temples. The magnificent times were gone.

I remember in college, they called it the Dark Ages. Everything shrank to rubble and stench. The town must’ve looked like a dirty ol’ ashtray.

But the human spirit was still there, and can’t be squelched, as they say.

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25 May, 2010 | Posted by: psn





Party
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RUDI'S HARMONICA



News
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FARM IN CRAVANT




Cafe
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SUNDAY DINNER



Cafe
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NEWSPAPER





My Story




# 20




Waking up in the morning is such a routine. Like breathing. At least it was for me before this journey of mine. Back in Wuerzburg in the Army waking up meant no matter what time you went to bed, you always woke up the same time, and the same sound –reveille… played on a scratchy record down the hall somewhere. And back at prep school at Mercersburg – the 6:00 a.m. carillon bells gong, gong, gonging away at the chapel across the quadrangle, and back in Baltimore at art school –an abrasive-sounding alarm clock I inherited from my brother.

Prisoners, they probably wish they didn’t have to wake up. Or men who work at jobs they hate. They wish they could lie in bed all day. Everyone has to wake up. I can’t think of anyone that doesn’t have to do it. Wake up. Well, maybe some rich people or royalty. People like that. They can sleep all day if they want to. Or insomniacs that can’t sleep. And also, I’ve heard of people that never go to sleep. They don’t have to go through the routine of waking up.

It used to be I didn’t like waking up – or maybe it was I didn’t like someone or something waking me up. But now, on this trip, I was beginning to like waking up. Maybe it was the aroma of clover that greeted me outside our tent on a grassy knoll in eastern France, or maybe it was the sound of a rooster and his cackling hens outside a barn window.

I could elect to lie there and listen or maybe fall back to sleep or I could get up and take a walk before everyone else was stirring. Usually I would get up and get dressed and start walking around wherever I was. Like in a city or village or farm or something. I would creep out and start looking around. That time of the morning if you saw someone on the street they didn’t have the energy to stare at you or ask questions, they were just as sleepy as you were, so I had the village or whatever all to myself just to look around without the distraction of people.
I think as I look back on it now, one of the reasons I didn’t go back to sleep was because it wasn’t easy. Rudi snored. I mean he really snored. I guess it was because of his broken nose. I guess he had his sinuses all banged up when he smashed his nose when the vegetable truck he was riding in back in Wuesterheide went into the ditch when that Mustang or Spitfire strafed those people.

Boy! Could he snore!
Anyway…
In the morning, both of us wo ke up with the rest of the farm animals that were sniffing and snorting in the barn. Marie knocked on the door, “C’mon boys, time for some breakfast!”
We went in and Madame Rouge was preparing the usual French farm breakfast, a roll and a cup of coffee. That was 5:30 a.m., but later in the morning, at 10:00 a.m. we got a more substantial meal, two rolls and a cup of coffee.

“Got a lot of work for you guys today,” Monsieur Rogue greeted us. Either of you fellows know anything about chickens?”
“Sure, I do!” I popped up; “We used to have them when we lived out in the country when I was little.” I thought he was going to ask me to go out and feed the chickens or something.
“Good. See that crate over there?” I looked to where he was pointing in the yard. There must have been at least a dozen chickens in a big crate. “I want you to cut off their necks and have them cleaned and dressed by the time Madame Rouge and I return from town!” I took a gulp, as he handed me a meat ax.

I’m a great friend of animals, and I find it hard to swat a fly or step on a cricket. I looked at Rudi, and he just grinned at the predicament I was in. By this time, he’d gotten to know me enough that unless it was for our survival, I didn’t have it in me to go off and volunteer to kill something unless the situation called for it. As Monsieur Rouge went into a shed, Rudi leaned over and whispered , “Better take care of your job Engh, or he’ll think you’re a coward!” and he poked me in the ribs.
“Rudi! I gotta job for you; come with me!”
“Yes, sir!” Rudi shouted, snapping to attention. He followed Monsieur Rouge, turning and looking back at me smiling as he swung his arm in a whirling motion as though he were chopping off a giant chicken’s head. “Watch out! They got long teeth!” he shouted back.
Marie showed me the chopping block; it was a blood-stained tree stump. I turned to the task at hand, and scratching my head, wondered what kind of mess I was going to make of these twelve chickens. Luckily, I had watched my older brother, Lynn, decapitate chickens when I was younger. I opened the crate and grabbed one of the chickens, but dammit! --two others popped out before I could get the top closed again. I ran around the farmyard holding the one chicken in my arm like a football, and tried to catch the other two. Marie laughed. Dodging, ducking, sliding and running was going to be in vain. She came to the rescue, and in a matter of a few seconds had the two chickens cornered, and returned them to the cage. With her arms folded, and a teasing smile on her face, she came over to examine my guillotine operations. I couldn’t let her down, and recalled as best I could how my brother, Lynn, had done it. It was either the chicken, or me.
I grabbed the poor squawking animal by the two legs. I put it fluttering on Monsieur Rouge’s tree stump, said some kind of pagan prayer, and with one swift accurate blow, brought the ax down on the chicken’s neck. Blood splattered everywhere. In only a few short seconds the poor creature was running about the farmyard without a head, spouting a geyser of blood. The head lay there on the stump, blinking its eye, like it was winking at me.
Marie giggled at the sight of the chicken frantically bumping into fences and barn doors in search of its head. I tried to catch the body to settle it down, but Marie yelled, “Let it alone; you’ll get yourself all bloody! It’ll soon run out of gas!”
There were eleven more to go, so I rolled up my sleeves and went about the job, hoping that my stomach would last the ordeal. I won’t tell you about the near misses. By the time I had finished the last chicken, Marie had the de-feathering machine running. It was a power-driven wheel with pieces of rubber from old tires attached to it that whirled around, beating most of the feathers off the birds. Marie showed me where to cut them open for cleaning. Like a dedicated surgeon I removed the insides, sorted them out, and then plugged the chickens up again with the edible giblets.

Right before the midday meal Rudi returned, covered with what looked like mud. “You get a good job?” I shouted to him as he headed for the back of the house where they had an outside shower stall.
“You know what a honey wagon is?” He yelled over to me in a disgusted tone. I remembered the big long wooden barrel-shaped horse-drawn wagons in Germany, full of a mixture of rainwater and manure that the farmers used as a rich fertilizer in early planting season. I nodded to him.

“The spout broke off it while I was laying under it, fixing the rear wheel!”
I laughed and asked him if he needed any soap as he was heading to the outside shower stall. “Yes, and bring me some dry clothes!”
Marie had heard the conversation and yelled out the kitchen window, “You want some perfume too, Rudi?”

He just threw his arms up to the heavens and disappeared into the shower stall. I delivered his clean clothing and Marie volunteered to wash the remaining clothing, in fact, all of our clothing that needed it. We were leaving the farm in the morning.

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19 May, 2010 | Posted by: psn





RAIN
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WAITING FOR THE RAIN TO STOP



RAFT
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A SMALL CREEK AND A RAFT



newspaper
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THE HOMETOWN NEWSPAPER IS INTERESTED



train
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ONE WAY PASSAGE TO GREECE FOR RUDI





My Story




# 19





“Well, it all began when I left Yugoslavia and passed through a No Man’s Land to the Greek border.
Rudi crossed his leg, sat back and gripped the arms of a thick wooden chair in the kitchen, preparing to tell his story. He curled his two hands together in a motion that looked like he was rounding a ball of dough or something. Rudi was in his element when he was telling of his exploits. It wasn’t like a casual conversation; it was more like a lecture.

I guess he inherited this lecture style from his grade school teacher, and she interpreted this lecture style from the town’s burgermeister, who’s example was the emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II who the townspeople all listened to on the radio or saw when they went to the movies on a Saturday afternoon in the 1930’s that included the current newsreel from the propaganda office in Berlin.
And that was a podium style where, without a microphone, speaking softly to your audience was not acceptable. It was much like in the movies of the early thirties when actors had just graduated from the theater world of the stage. To be heard, the actor would project loud enough so that the person in the back row could be heard. When you watch the old-time movies you can track the progression and see it took ‘em about ten years of Hollywood films before they could shake off that stiff way of acting and take advantage of the new audio technology.

It’s funny now to watch those old movies but that’s the way it was when Rudi would relate anything about his bicycle trip. That’s the way it sounded and people listening got a kick out of Rudi’s style. He was a real actor and he loved it. Rudi could’ve made a good character actor back in the early days of the movies in Germany except for his broken nose. They didn’t have plastic surgery back then except for the wealthy. But it didn’t seem to matter to him and his love life certainly wasn’t at a disadvantage.

You could say he was at a disadvantage when he was talking with an audience that didn’t speak German, but he would make up for it with words in French and English, even if he didn’t fully speak French or English he made up his own language that you pretty well knew what he was talking about. If he got stuck with a word or phrase he couldn’t express, he would turn to me and I would translate from his German into French or Spanish, where we happened to be. Sometimes I knew what he was talking about but I could tell a lot of people didn’t understand some of what he was saying but I didn’t want to interrupt the flow of the whole drama. The rest of the show was too good to interrupt him.

To make it easier for you, I’ll kind of ‘translate’ it for you here.

Rudi continued, “At the Greek border office, there was this fat man with a big black curling waxed moustache and he asked me how much money I had with me to enter his country. I told him I was on a world tour, and I didn’t need much money, and he said, “Do you have twenty-five dollars?” Of course I had to reply that I didn’t, so he took my passport and wrote a big “void until with sufficient funds” across my visa for Greece.

“I asked what I could do then, and he said it didn’t matter to him, just so that I would clear out of his office. So I went back to the Yugoslav border, planning to go back to Yugoslavia and try to raise the twenty-five dollars. The officials there said, “Sorry young man, since you’ve already exited our country, your visa to get back in is invalid. You can’t enter here until you get another one, and you’ll have to go back into Greece to do that.” I told them they wouldn’t let me into Greece, and like they treat all problems like this at the borders he said, “I’m sorry, that’s your problem, not mine!” And he went on about shuffling some papers on his desk to appear busy so I would leave. I left, and there I was, in No Man’s Land, with no place to go.
“How did you ever get out?” Marie asked anxiously.
“At first there was nothing to do but put up my tent, right there in the middle of No Man’s Land.”
“How big an area was that?” Monsieur Rouge asked.
“It was about two miles wide, and extended as far as the Greek-Yugoslav border extended, I guess.”
“And what happened, Rudi?” Marie asked again impatiently.
“The first day, I got pretty hungry, sitting there in front of my tent, watching the cars and trucks pass, trying to think of some way I could get over the border. A passing farmer gave me some potatoes from his wagon. While I was talking to the farmer a car stopped on the morning of the second day. I saw it had a German license plate; he must have seen my German flag hanging from the back of my bike. And he hollered to me, “What’re you up to?” I told him how I was stuck, and we got into a long conversation; and when he left he handed me a ten-dollar USA note and told me he hoped it would help me out. I thanked him and wondered how may weeks it would be ‘til another nice person like that came along.
“With nothing else to do one early morning, I went walking in the nearby mountainside and in the deep woods went down to a creek at the bottom. By my compass, it was flowing south towards Greece. I got to thinking that this might be the answer, so I began finding dead saplings and dry fallen small timber on the ground and with Tarzan type vines and my hunting knife I hitched them all together and by nightfall I had a nice flat raft built big enough to put me and my bicycle on. I tested it out with a steering pole several times the next day. It worked. I loaded up my bike and other belongings.

The next evening I set sail just at sunset and headed south hoping to land somewhere in Greece. The little creek moved slowly and by the light of the stars I could maneuver around any boulders in the creek. If I got stuck in shallow areas, I got out and pushed. All I had to do was crouch low on my raft and hope I would land somewhere in Greece.
“The lights of the Greek military border post was shining out from behind the trees along the bank, and in the dark night I saw silhouettes of soldiers with rifles hung from their backs patrolling the edge of the river with flashlights. I crouched lower, and just hoped the current wouldn’t sweep me close to them . They’d yell, ‘stop or we’ll shoot,' and I wouldn’t have been able to stop, and I can’t speak any Greek, and it would’ve been helluva predicament.”
“What happened Rudi, what happened?” Marie interrupted.
“Well, I passed quietly by, and none of the soldiers saw or heard me. I guess they didn’t expect anyone to be daring as to try and slip under their noses like that. And then I started to think how lucky I was, because I had heard stories of how the Greeks badly treat smugglers and illegal border crossers, and sometimes put them in jail for years when they’re caught, and torture them if they think they’re part of a spy ring, or smuggler’s ring. Or something.

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12 May, 2010 | Posted by: psn





Party
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PROUD MOTHER AND DAUGHTER



News
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THE HEAD CHEF AT CORDON BLEU



Cafe
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OUR CLIPPINGS ARE OUR PASSPORT





My Story




# 18












From my history books in high school I always thought France was this big ‘ol gigantic country. There was so much goin’ on there – Napoleon and all… I thought it would take Rudi and me forever to cross it on a motor scooter.

And then in art school, they were always talking about France and how important it was to the Arts and you couldn’t go anywhere in the world without seeing some important painting or some important place where some French artist was born- that kinda stuff.

But when I was in the Army over in Wuerzburg I hardly heard of France except to hear how lousy the French people were to American tourists and you better not go there. They’ll just snub you and speak under their breath to their friends when they’re looking at you. But I didn’t find any of that so far, even when I had a German guy with me -- and that could’ve ignited a big mess but it didn’t.
Back in Paris, Toby told me he didn’t get any of that. But he said he watched American tourists with their arrogant nature and some of the tourists certainly deserved their poor reputation. They always thought Toby was a Frenchman because he spoke French pretty good. If they spoke to him, and it was usually in a loud voice and poor manners, he just shrugged his shoulders and said “No parley the English” and walked off.

Toby said the last couple of generations of French had been in two wars and had not got much to show for it except losing a lot of their male population. It was like if you brought up the subject of war with them, they always brought up Napoleon and how he almost got the countries of Europe into a United Europe kind of unity thing and that would have been good for everyone, Toby thought.
But we never talked up the subject of war. It would be a ticket to get thrown out of the bistro, or the farmhouse. We didn’t want that. So we never talked about it. It was a subject that really stings with the French and I don’t blame them. Back in art school we used to say, “The French are not fighters, they’re lovers.”
Now, how big is France? I read in a pamphlet at the American Express office in Paris that said France is 211,000 square miles. Texas is 269,000 square miles and California is 164,000 square miles in size. So France is somewhere in between the two of them as far as size goes.

The people at the American Express office had given us a good map of France. Rudi was studying it. He was trying to find the village of Cravant. When he was traveling through France before on his bicycle on his way to India, he spent three days with a farm family outside of Cravant.
r
“They’ll be happy to see us, “ Rudi was confident. “They’ll be surprised too because they made me promise I’d come back again. When I said, ‘Au revoir’ they reminded me that the words mean “—here’s to the return! –“

The weather was cloudy. As we got closer to where we were going, we saw a road sign that said, “Cravant 75 km” There were so many little towns mentioned on the sign posts in France, you almost had to stop and read each one to find which way to go. We had good weather most of the way. Just as we caught sight of the farm homestead, it began to rain. It felt cold. The family’s name was “Rouge”.
The rain was really coming down, and since we were only about five minutes away, there was no use taking shelter. It was getting downright cold! We pulled off the highway and drove up their lane in a teaming downpour of rain. When we arrived at the farmyard, it was a mass of bubbling puddles and scattering rain-soaked chickens. The sound of our scooter must’ve frightened them. People running with rain capes spread over their heads hunched over as if from the weight of the beating rain, were running about the farmyard closing windows and shooing animals into the barn. The darkening sky was shifting the time of day far into late evening and it looked as if the rain was going to set in for the rest of the day.

One teenage girl peeked from beneath the rain cloak draped over her head and shouted, “Heavens! Come into the kitchen quickly before you’re soaked to the skin!”
In the kitchen, she recognized Rudi. “Rudi ...!. You’ve come back!” she shouted, almost jumping like a child. She shouted to a heavy-set woman just coming into the kitchen door draped in rain protection that looked like a table cloth, “Madam Rouge”!! Madame Rouge”!! It’s Rudi! He’s come back. Rudi’s here!”
“Rudi, you ol’ rascal!” she shouted, hanging her rain tarp on a hook on the kitchen wall. “How are you? You ol’ darling.” And she threw her heavy arms around him while he kissed her wet forehead. I could see there was fun in store for the weekend.
“This is Rohn Engh,” my American friend, “he said introducing me to Madame Rouge and the young girl, Marie, a pink-cheeked, Irish-looking girl who asked Rudi, “Do you still have my sun glasses? Remember the ones I gave you when you left, and told you to bring them back to me someday?” Do you still have them, Rudi?” she asked him –very excitedly. He smiled, reached into his travel pouch and brought out a pair of sunglasses that he often wore.
“You mean these?” placing them over her eyes.

“You did, you did!” You brought them back. She shouted bounding around the room, wearing the sunglasses.
“Enough of this foolishness you two!” Madame Rouge said, “Take off those wet shoes, boys and sit here by the stove before you catch your death of cold.” She threw some more kindling into the wood stove.

Can I wear the sunglasses as long as you’re here, Rudi?” Marie asked while we were taking off our shoes.
“Of course you can. But they’re my glasses now. So don’t scratch them or anything!”
Madame Rouge told us to put our motor scooter in a dry shed and when we came back she handed us each a cup. “Now take this hot cup of wine and tell me about yourself Rudi. What’ve you been doing all this time? You look good. You’re not as skinny as when I saw you last, all wiry and bony.” She tied her apron again and said, “I’m fixing supper.”
Down here in this south central part of France, we were getting into the real wine growing part of France and the wine tasted great, even warm like this. I’d never tasted warm wine. I later learned that skiers up in the Alps always drank it this way. They mix a few spices with it like cinnamon and nutmeg I think. They called it ‘grog.’

?? ?Do you like it?” She asked us. I smiled. Rudi nodded his head. That was the funny thing about Rudi. He didn’t have all the manners that I was used to back in Maryland and all the schools I used to go to. You’d think he would be more courteous to people when they gave him something like a hot cup of wine. I used to think for Rudi this was some kind of arrogance or something. But it wasn’t. It was just the way he was brought up, and probably most of the people in Wuesterheide after the war. Or maybe even before the war.
I looked at it this way.
O.K. if I weren’t brought up to say “Thank You” and “Please” after every encounter with people, I’d probably act the same as Rudi. I know there were people in my high school class who were like that. They didn’t mean anything by it. They were people that lived way back in the stix on a farm and had to walk a mile or so just to get the school bus. They didn’t have electric lights on the farm, or any machinery, just horses, and didn’t have a telephone or fridge or even a radio because they didn’t have any electricity. And because the war was going or, they didn’t get anything like that ‘til ‘46 or ’47. Another interesting thing, in the spring at planting time, they didn’t come to school. They had to help out at the farm. It was the same way in the fall at harvest time. They didn’t come to school until all the harvest was done. Their parents just didn’t allow them to attend school when there was work to be done. And they turned out to be pretty bashful people. I know my friend Dave Pearl who had a car, drove to their house one time for some reason, I think the guy was on our baseball team, and when he got there, the little children in the family, I think there were three, all hid behind trees until their older brother who was in our class told them it was O.K. to come out. But they didn’t. They stayed there ‘til Dave left.

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05 May, 2010 | Posted by: psn





My Story




#17










TOBY AT WORK



WHAT’S THIS ? 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 prove 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 and my family and me are living on a farm in western Wisconsin. I’ll dust off the manuscript and publish it here for the first time. –RE



After the first leg of my voyage through Europe and Africa, I sold my photos and story to the Saturday Evening Post, a popular magazine in 1958. This taught me that maybe I was cut out for a career in photojournalism.







#17







A FAREWELL TO PARIS

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A FAREWELL TO PARIS



MONTMARTRE
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MONTMARTRE




ROHN PLAYS A TUNE
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ROHN PLAYS A TUNE



TOBY AT WORK

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TOBY AT WORK



Toby and Rudi were asleep when I returned to the studio. I tiptoed in and hit the sack immediately. When I woke up Toby was washing up and Rudi was gathering our belongings, preparing for our goodbye to Paris. I went out to bring back some baguettes for breakfast. By the time I got back, Rudi had rounded up just about everything of ours for the trip. As you can imagine, we had collected a lot of stuff in Paris- but we couldn’t take them with us. No room on the scooter! A couple of things I mailed to my parents. I think Rudi sent some stuff to Wuesterheide.

“What did you say the name of your girl friend was?” Toby asked Rudi as we munched on the baguettes and cheese.
“I didn’t “ Rudi said.
“Well what is it?” I said.
“Why do you want to know?” Rudi answered.
That was strange, I thought. It’s not that Toby or me were going to steal the girl away
from him.
“Well, if you don’t want to tell us, that? ??s O.K. too” Toby said.
Rudi grudgingly got his wallet and pulled out a picture of a girl, a nice-looking French girl.
“Her name is Genevieve,” He said.

I was beginning to see that some things were very personal with Rudi and he just didn’t think they deserved to be talked about in public. Maybe back in Germany he left a girl behind and he felt he was being insincere. Or maybe a guy’s love life wasn’t proper to talk about back in Wuesterheide. During the trip I learned later that his love life wasn’t the only thing he chose not to talk about.
I’m pretty good at getting information out of people. Rudi didn’t have to be forced to ‘spill all’ -- but he wasn’t someone to jibber jabber all the time. That would be annoying. And he wasn’t anyone for just shootin’ the breeze, that sort of thing.
I didn’t press the point, and Toby didn’t care anyway. Rudi started whistling. I guess it was a way of his saying that the case was closed.

Toby got the point too and said, “Well, I must say, you guys have spent a worthwhile three days in Paris! Most tourists spend a couple of weeks and half a bankroll and don’t experience a fraction of what you guys have.”

“Rudi acknowledged Toby’s comment with a slight smile as he put our sleeping bags under one arm and his suitcase under the other. I was learning that a slight smile from Rudi meant approval.

“Here, let me help you with that stuff.” Toby accompanied us down to the patio where we loaded up the scooter. “I’m going to miss you guys,” He said kicking the rear tire of the Vespa.
“We’ll see each other again,” I said confidently.
“See you later, Toby, and thank you!” Rudi said as he shook hands with him.
Toby was still waving when I looked back.

We headed out into the lively Paris afternoon, this crazy Paris that was saying, “Don’t go!” and then on the other hand, “Get the hell outta here!” We had tasted Paris and wondered if we would ever return. It didn’t matter. The world was waiting for us; we knew it. There was more on the platter to enjoy, and we were anticipating it.

In a half hour, we were breathing gulps of the French countryside air as the skyline of Paris behind us disappeared out of sight. Next, -- the skylines of Lyon! Barcelona! ! Madrid! Lisbon! Tangier! Casablanca! --- they all awaited us.


The landscape of rural France stretched out. It looked much like the land between Belgium and Paris -- rolling hills, well-kept farms, honey wagons (manure spreaders) horse drawn wagons full of hay, narrow tree-lined roads, vineyards on hillsides facing south. We were headed south toward the Mediterranean shoreline, and then west to Spain and Portugal. Our music supported us but also other things like washing restaurant windows, painting signs, sketching portraits, working on farms.

We did anything that would get us into homes of people and getting to know them. Well, I did anyway. Rudi was more interested in dinner and a dry bed at night and performing his songs. He was really good at singing his songs. Back in Paris, one of Toby’ friends had invited us to visit a music academy for singers. Rudi could’ve given any of those students at the music academy a run for their money. Rudi was really an untrained opera singer at heart. He had the right voice. It just needed some polish.

On the other hand I was the opposite in many ways. I enjoyed singing harmony to Rudi’s songs if it meant it would allow us to introduce ourselves to the people. Sure, music is universal. Never fails. We figured that out. And I think we would have been only half as successful on our trip if we didn’t have our guitars.

We never knew what we were going to get into when we stopped at a farm in early evening before the sun went down. Ever ybody’s a stranger until you get to know them. Even the roughest-looking peasants wouldn’t shoot at a couple of foreign strangers who had nothing more than guitars as their weapons.

I told that to an American guy in Paris and he said, “Wait a minute. That may be true in Europe but what are you gonna do in Morocco with the A-Rabs or in Black Africa? They might have never seen a guitar before and they might think it’s a club or something and come at you with sabers and stuff.”

Well, he had me there. I had no answer to that. But he was on of those guys you meet all the time on a trip like this. They want to discourage you. They don’t mean anything by it, they’re just envious. They’re just mad as hell that they see some guy doing something they wish they could be doing. They start building up scary scenarios and possible tragic evens for you. Sometimes it makes me mad, but then if I put myself in their place, say back in Baltimore. I wouldn’t be surprised that I’d do the same thing myself. I’d be so jealous.

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28 Apr, 2010 | Posted by: psn







News
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TOBY MAKES PHOTO OF ROHN




Party
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AT JAZZ PLACE




Cafe
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MOULINROUGE




Cafe
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DERELICT IN BOIS de BOULOGNE



My Story




# 16







Toby returned to work on his painting in the early evening. He kept his colors in beer bottles, the kind that has a ceramic top on them and a little rubber washer and then a wire contraption that let’s you snap it shut real tight so the tempera color inside doesn’t dry up. When he was ready to start his painting he would pour a dab of each of the five colors into five glasses like a martini glass or Manhattan glass and mix his colors on a board beside him. “I like this tempera,” Toby said. “Oils are too messy. It’s hard to clean the brushes. And they’re smelly. And it takes too long to dry. Tempera dries fast. You can paint right over top of it if you don’t like how the color turns out. ”
Toby was a meticulous guy and his paintings were kinda like that too, all detailed and correct. I didn’t tell him about my painting exhibition back in Sommerhausen when I was still in the Army. Like Rudi says, “Play dumb, you can’t learn anything when you’re talking.”

Toby was a real good salesman. One thing I learned was that he took all of his paintings down by the river (he had fifteen completed) and stood them up alongside the bridge. “I always go to the same location every time, so if any of the tourists are in Paris for more than a week, they might come back a second time to the same spot to see if I’m there. I’ve sold two of them that way. One guy and his wife from Indiana, and a young girl and her mother from San Francisco.” Toby said.

He really didn’t need the money, so he aimed high with his price, like $250, (about 38,000 1957 francs francs) but he’d always come down $10 when they started to haggle.

“I didn’t want to lose respect so I never came lower than ten dollars,” Toby said.

So, it was early evening and Toby had returned to his work on the painting.
I left him alone to go out wandering in the streets. The outdoor cafes were closing down and with them went that wonderful fragrance. You could tell by the fragrance if a breeze was blowing through Paris if there was an outdoor café coming up in your walk by the coffee aroma. If you’re walking in the early morning, you could tell that with the bakeries too in Paris and they have a lot of ma ‘n’ pa Patiseries and Boulangeries because the French love those ‘just out of the oven’ long loaf baggetts. And you can also smell the chocolateries and the cosmetic shop. They all run together sometime which makes a groove in your memories of Paris.

It was dusk and I strolled along the Seine for a while. It was like strolling along the surf in my hometown back in Ocean City, Maryland. I’d wave to a beach patrol guy up in his high tower watch chair, or I’d wave to his girl friend sunning on a beach towel below, or I’d wave to whoever I wanted to and the girl would wave back, sometimes.

This was different. How’re you going to wave to strangers in Paris when you take a stroll? They’d probably think you were a creep or something. I felt lonely as I passed among couples stretched out along the sloping banks of the Seine. It was just before sundown and with a setting sun off to the west, it all reflected the skyline of Paris in the river. It was growing dark and I walked until the reflections disappeared into the dark of night.
I wondered what Rudi was doing at this time. He no doubt was with that girl, probably a German girl. Who knows? When girls are involved anything could happen. I thought about it. What if I were to be left alone in Paris? I didn’t like the thought. He’ll come back, I thought. If nothing else, all of his belongings were all back at Toby’s. This’ll be a test.

It was dark down by the river. I headed up for a section of Paris called Pigalle, the quick-fun, quarter of Paris, like Coney Island. I stepped down into a bar called, “The Three Brothers,” and took a seat between two strangers at an empty bar stool. There were five people sitting at a table near the bar. I watched their happy conversation. One attractive dark-skinned girl kept catching my eye. When the jukebox began to play, her friends left the table to dance and I went over to her.
“Dance?”
“O.K.” she smiled.
As I embraced her, I felt her warm body snuggle against mine. And I decided she was interested in more than dancing with me. As the song lingered on, she danced with increased passion and as I talked with her I felt the firmness of her tapering torso and rounded limbs.
“My name’s Rohn, what’s yours?”
“Lullalia,” she said, drawing back suddenly to look at me with black enchanting eyes, and a coquettish smile.”
“Where do you come from?” I said, holding her at a distance, enjoying her gypsy beauty.
“I’m from Budapest, and I’ve been in Paris one year,” she said, drawing me in to her as the music was ending.
She joined me at the bar after dancing, and we spent two beers convincing each other what nice people we were. “I like you very much, Rohn” she said drawing little figures on the back of my hand that lay on her thigh. “Let’s go home.”
“Hone? But what will your parents say?” I said a little confused.
“They live too far away she said modestly, cocking her head and looking up at me blushing. I don’t mean that kind of home, ” She smiled, squeezing my hand.
I figured out which home she meant. I paid the bartender and we left.
We turned the corner by the bar and walked up the narrow street toward a lamplight. When we reached the light there was another light over a door to a small hotel that read “Hotel Dubois”.
We started walking up the stairs and Lullalia stopped. “Wait, you stay here…” she whispered, “They’ll never believe we’re man and wife.”

That was O.K. with me because I know back in Ocean City, it was against the law for hotel keepers to allow a man and woman who weren’t actually married to sleep in the same room in a hotel. I think the fine was $300. Pretty high! And they would set a court trial for you too.
“Well then, let me order the room,” I whispered back in a raspy voice.
“No, no, with your accent, they’ll charge you twice as much, she giggled”
“What’s it going to cost?” I said.
?? ?Not more than a 3000 francs,” she whispered.
That was fair enough but I only had a 5,000-franc note with me and gave it to her and she turned to go up the stairs.
“Wait,” I said. “I grabbed her waist with both hands and drew her in to me. I kissed her wildly. I drew my hand across her tight ass and then ran it up to her breast and with a soft feel said, “See you soon my beauty!” She went tripping up the steps, her black hair bouncing along with her excited steps.
Gad! I thought to myself, as she stopped and looked back at me and winked before she opened the front door. “How did I luck into this gypsy gal, so pretty and SO Paris!
I could see her trim figure disappear in silhouette as she opened the door and the light of the hotel entryway rushed out. It closed. And I waited.
And that was the last time I ever saw Lullalia.

I waited a few more minutes outside, and then, realizing what had happened to me I ran up the steps and thrust myself into the doorway to find a solemn set of crusty old men playing cards in the miniature lobby. A gray-haired desk clerk peered over the rim of his glasses when my entrance disturbed his newspaper reading. I started to ask him, “Did you see a girl..….?” And I thought how silly I would sound. I turned and left.

I walked and walked, sometimes laughing out loud at how easily I had been fooled, and then I howled, thinking of losing the 5,000 francs. I wondered what Rudi would have to say.
Well, I felt like getting drunk. What happened is I didn’t go out and get drunk. No. I did one better than that. Here’s what happened next. But let me give you a preview. It was still early evening. It wasn’t even midnight.

It began when I tried to find some good music. I still had some francs left. I wanted to find a place where I could curl up in a ball and listen to some good jazz.
If you know the music of Charlie Parker you know how it puts you in a trance if you’re not careful. That’s what I was looking for at this moment.
Let me backtrack.
During the late 40’s I had a high school girlfriend who had a record player and we used to play “Bird” and Dizzy Gillespie and all the top be-bop greats when her parents were gone for the weekend or on a trip. Parents in those days always dismissed anything new in music as evil and from the devil.
I guess this wickedness hung on with me because when I saw the signboard “The Mystique,” above the entryway to a Parisian jazz club down some stone basement steps into a cellar area, I was drawn by the sound inside. A lot of smoke greeted me at the door. It was easy to find a table in a corner; the late night crowd probably hadn’t arrived yet.
New music style takes a long time, sometimes, to get from one country to the next and while Rock ‘n’ Roll was just now getting established in the USA, be-bop was just getting going in Paris.
I was half finished with my red wine as the group came back from their break. They tinkered around with tuning and adjusting their equipment and lighting. There were five of them.
The boys were not bad, especially the alto sax kid. He had probably bought every record Charlie Parker ever put out. He was on a mission to do Charlie Parker one better. You could see some flashes of brilliance every now and then in his music. It was fresh and good-hearted music with a sense of warmth. The kid had talent.
And that’s what I hate to see in many brilliant musicians, they lead such an unhealthy life, drugs and all but they’re on to powerful statements, the kind you want to die for. You don’t have to understand it; you only have to receive it. They can open up a peephole and let you see things like the meaning of life and all that. And this kid could do it.
I wondered if he would ever make it past 30. He was probably an American,
I ordered an other glass of wine. A French girl with a red flower in her hair sat down in the chair next to me. I continued listening to the group, especially the sax player. She could see I was in some deep concentration and reached over and touched the back of my hand. When I didn’t respond, she got up and left.

What I mean with jazz is, and I mean good jazz, not the textbook stuff, when it all comes together it hits me. This guy on the alto sax had it all together. When music is right it flows right to me and through me and around me. Tonight, it was all because of him. I can’t really explain it anymore than like when you see some girl and you’re immediately in love. No questions. No numbers. You’re just in love. And in the case with music there’s no explanation needed. Nothing to figure out. You just sit there, have another glass of wine and be transported.

Like anything else that’s creative, you see it, or you hear it, or you watch it, or you read it and you’re gone. You don’t question it. You quietly absorb it. You don’t analyze it, like you don’t listen to see if it’s in tune, or harmony or spacing or if it’s out of rhythm, those mechanical things; it’s almost like you’re hearing it without letting it come through your ears. I know this is true because I’ve been in places where there’s good music and my date will ask me a question and bam! She asks it again and pretty soon she’s talking to some other guy at the table next to me because I’m in a daze of some kind. I know I’m not the only one like this cause other guys have told me they get entranced like that when they’re reading a good book and they miss the bus stop or the train station where they were supposed to get off. And that’s the nice thing about good art because it truly does have the gift to transport you away from a life that’s getting tough or probably not very exciting.

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21 Apr, 2010 | Posted by: psn






News
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TOBY AT WORK




Party
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JAZZ CELLAR




Cafe
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MUSICIANS AT WORK





My Story


#15






I was looking for the Paris that you see on posters or hear about in movies. It’s hard to get a handle on what Paris is.

Paris, and this is just my impression, and I’m not an authority. I feel Paris thinks it’s a bright and glistening new-world machine of fashion turned into business politics and the arts turned into politics and culinary ambitions turned into politics and all of this protected by guards parading around in shiny badges and important-looking funny hats and uniforms.

At other times, and it depends on the weather, Paris sometimes thinks it’s like a seaport city where sailors come in and trample all over town seeking out its pleasures and sexual delights and then leave the next morning without saying thank you.

At other times, I think Paris thinks it’s a college town with all the social intrigue you get with a bunch of intellectuals slippingly trying to get a hand grip on a level with each other slightly above the level of us student types. Us students are like children, recognize something’s wrong up there in the tower but we’re more interested in seeking out fun rather up than trying to solve the dilemma at headquarters.

Whew! I wanted none of those intellectual doings and maneuvers. Go-with-the-flow I always say.

Paris is also a self-conscious small town that’s flits by as you try to grasp it in one thought. That’s the thought I arrived in Paris with. It’s a small town, always looking at itself in a pocket mirror, always guarding and protecting its image of itself. A lot of people migrate to Paris because they want to be associated with this image that Paris has of itself.

I prefer this .

It’s light and gay as the song says. It’s a city where the moon is always shining, and it’s a full moon, too.
Maybe the description of Paris that the trolley car man for the tourist company gives, is the best one.

Rudi and I were bystanders in all of this.
Of course, me being a product of the art school background , I was looking at Paris in an artsy way. Rudi, well I don’t know. I hadn’t known Rudi long enough to figure out what he thought about all of this.

Although I knew the German language well enough to get along on a social level, I didn’t know German on a level to discuss inner meaning levels and that sort of thing. Plus I don’t know if Rudi ever got down to that level of discussion. He was someone to keep the level of conversation more like on replacing a part on the Vespa or keeping feelers out on where we could get our next meal. But that was O.K. ‘cause I think if we started disagreeing on some esoteric subject, we just might end up in a fistfight or so mething and the whole trip would get miserable. So this was O.K. with me. “Let sleeping dogs lie,” I always said. I wasn’t looking for companionship or affection, I was looking to see the world and get things straightened out in my own head of just what my part in the whole universe scheme of things was.

When we arrived in town, we both knew Paris would like us. We represented the free spirit that the French people love. Unlike in Belgium and Holland where the country folk we met up with thought we were breaking some sort of rule, or unspoken code, or breaking some actual law by traveling the way we were. The Parisians wondered why more people weren’t doing it.

So, we were welcome in Paris. The guitars on our back, the beards, the precisely packed motor scooter ready for adventure, it all invited a welcome from people. It also helped that the newspaper announced we were in town. At bistros, a drink would arrive at our table from someone across the room with a “thumbs up” sending us a smile. Even the ticket vendor at the Ferris wheel slipped us a ‘free pass’ reserved for celebrities. It all was heady stuff, but we both knew it had to be handled with a delicate touch. And we both knew that when we left Paris and headed south, it would be a new ball game.

Toby worked on his oil painting at nighttime so he excused himself and suggested we go out to see Paris at night. We quickly learned the ‘Paris at night’ that you hear about and read about is elusive. In other words the popularity of the favorite spots are continually changing. Parisians make it a game in trying to escape the tourists.
We followed the winding back alleys of Saint-Germain-des-Pres in search of Gertrude Stein or Henry Miller’s 1929 Paris. Well, this was 1957, would it be any different?

In one cellar and out again. Typical Parisian nightlife, where are you? We thought we had found it when we heard strains of Dixieland music coming from a cellar called the “Huchette”. We went down in there to find a mass of university students wildly dancing to something that sounded like New Orleans jazz performed by Parisian musicians. It brought a smile to my face and brought clear to me why French people smile when they see American art students trying to paint another picture of Monmarte or the Eiffel tower the way we Americans smile when we hear foreign musicians trying play jazz. The effort is there but something is always missing.

We turned around and left just as a tour group from American Express tour Office was entering with its crowd of customers on a ‘visit to typical Parisian night spots’ as we left.
Down a side street, and beside the church of Saint-Germain-de la Pres, we heard the soft harmony of a male voice singing an American folk song. The music came from inside a thick Tudor door that had an Elizabethan sign hanging above: “L’Abbaye”.

Inside it was actually two guys entertaining, --one a Negro the other a White. They were seated at a small, spotlighted stage in the corner. They were both American, but sang folk songs in several languages according to the brochure in the entryway of the oak-paneled 18th century-looking hall. When the song was finished, as if by instruction, the crowd showed their approval not by applause but by snapping their fingers.
To me, there was something curious about the lockstep fashion of the audience snapping their fingers like that. First of all, how do you get the initial audience of the evening to snap their fingers? Do you put up a sign in French, “No applause please, snap fingers only.” Or what if they don’t read French? Or what if they’re from Texas? Can you get cowboys to do that?
And besides, how ‘bout me? I can’t snap my fingers, left-handed or right. I never learned how. That would mean I could never show my appreciation for anything that required applause if this finge r snapping thing spread world-wide!
I wondered what Rudi thought of the finger snapping. I couldn’t help feeling that Rudi, growing up in Nazi Germany as a youngster was very familiar following a code that came from somewhere above. You don’t question it. You just do it.
The fellows were good singers. But we left when the waiter informed us drinks were 350 francs a go. That’s about a dollar. The fellows were good, but not that good.

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14 Apr, 2010 | Posted by: psn




News
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THE ANNOUNCEMENT




Party
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THE CAFE




Cafe
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PARISIANS







My Story




14









Two fellows and the girl with pig tail lingered with Toby over in one of the corners of the room. It was late, and I wondered when they were going to leave so we could turn out that light in the ceiling. They started mumbling among themselves, and occasionally looked over at us. I felt uneasy. I don’t like that when people you don’t know or you just met start talking just low enough that you can’t quite make out what they’re saying. .
“You cats ever smoke any pot? The one guy said.
“Wass?” Rudi said.
“Grass, man!… weeds!”… Like marijuana ! “He walked over to us, shouting, but in a loud whisper, as though he thought the police were next door or something.
Rudi saw the rolled up weed in his hand. “Ah! You mean kiffen.” Rudi said. "Ich bleib weg von dem Zeug. Ich versuchte es einmal in Indien. "
“What???”
“He means he knows what it is. He tried it in India. But it’s too expensive for him.”
“But this is free!” The fellow said loudly in a throaty whisper as though shouting would make things understandable.

So far on the trip, Rudi and I had not talked about drugs or alcohol because neither of us seemed to need anything like that in the way of priority. We both seemed to look at it the same way; it was a luxury, if you could call it that, which we couldn’t afford. It costs money, and it was that way on the trip, too Drugs and booze were O.K. but they were so expensive. It’s not that either of us had some moral thing against it. It wasn’t one of those “avoiding temptations” problem kind of things That’s not to say we avoided it entirely. And one of those times was coming up.
Toby’s friend, he was a French guy, moved closer to us. “We’d like you to join us. I came into a good supple today.”
Toby came over, “You ever smoke any marijuana, Rohn?”
“Sure,” I said, surprising myself with my answer. I tried to appear nonchalant. But you know what? I don’t even smoke cigarettes. I guess, with the answer I gave him, I didn’t want to appear non-friendly. I was looking for approval. After all Toby was our host. He was letting us stay overnight at his place. My “too expensive” argument wouldn’t hold up. .
Back in art school in Maryland there was plenty of pot smoking. And if you didn’t smoke pot you were usually an outcast, not “part of the gang”, so to speak. But there was one student that avoided pot altogether. He was one of those life-of-the-party fellows but he didn’t touch it, so he was my example to follow and he wasn’t ostracized or anything. I don’t know what his reason was but mine was a practical reason; cigarettes, pot, it was just not i n my budget, what little budget I had I put it to a beer now and then.

Paint brushes, oils, and other art materials took every cent I had. Besides I was on a scholarship, and losing that because of breaking the house rules would have not pleased my mother who had encouraged me to follow a career in art.
So here I was, in Paris, with an invitation to a pot party. To get wild. To be the Bohemian. But you know something? All that was secondary to me. I realized the voyage Rudi and I were on was already a “high” for me and I’m sure if Rudi thought about it too, it was a high for him too. We were on a mission. Why should I put this trip at risk? Rudi probably had similar decisions on his trip to Calcutta and survived by not getting engaged in dizzy activities that could end the whole thing.
With this attitude, we probably came across as prudes. But it didn’t matter. On our trip we were always “leaving the next day”.
Did I refuse Toby’s invitation? No. I accepted. So did Rudi.

After several sucking ins of the burning smoke, I began to sink into a sleep-like mode. There have been many descriptions and odes to smoking marijuana so I don’t need to repeat them here. With me, and I hear it affects all people in different ways, it was an experience of watching myself fall asleep, but at the same time, struggling to keep from falling asleep, or waking my self up. It was like I was driving on a busy two-lane highway knowing that if I continued to fall asleep I could cause the car to go to the right and go into a ditch and roll over, or I could veer off to the left into oncoming traffic. So it was a constant struggling to keep awake, a tension, the whole experience this time.
Toby and his friends were sitting on the floor in a corner. I bid them “Bonne nuit…” The sun was just coming up. I stood by the fifth floor open window, looking over a quiet Paris skyline where touches of sunlight were glancing off a nearby church steeple. The sky to the east was pale blue with tinges of pink along the bottom. The silhouettes of a couple of birds heading south glided off in the distance. And nearby, the silence was broken by a pigeon that fluttered and landed on a nearby ledge.

The pot was working its ways. I was secretly appreciating the newness of the day, a horizon of morning cleanliness from my Paris overlook.

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07 Apr, 2010 | Posted by: psn






Vespa
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PARIS PARTY



Vespa
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ARTISTE FRIEND



Vespa
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CAFE IN PARIS



Vespa
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AT THE WESTERN UNION






My Story




13

The address said “Toby’s, 88 Rue Jacob, St. Germain-de-Pres.
I checked our guidebook. “That’s across the river. On the left bank, it says here.” I said. “Let’s try to make it. You want to?” I turned to Rudi.
Rudi answered, but not in a convincing way. “Ja, Engh, if you want to.”
I could see he wasn’t exactly thrilled by my suggestion, and I suspect it was because this guy, Toby, this “artiste” was not the element he had run into on his way to India on his bicycle, and certainly not the social strata he encountered among the hard-working coal miners in Duesseldorf. I think he would have rather spent the time checking out the tire pressure or the wheel alignment on the Vespa. Rudi wasn’t anti-social, it’s not that, it’s just that in the life he knew in Germany, it was a social environment that was very class divided.

He was aware of the carefree life that college students enjoyed in Europe. He had seen it in the movies. And he’d seen it in his travels through the mid-east and he’d seen these class divisions in India. He didn’t fit in. So he migrated more to the lower classes in the cities and the peasants in the countryside.

To get anywhere in the upper level job market in Germany you had to have an abitur – a high school diploma, and he had never gotten past the 8th grade. Back in Wuesterheide he was destined to become what his father did for a living, and what his grandfather was –a dirt farmer.
“You’ll like these guys and girls,” I said. But how did I know? I just said it anyway. I’ve never known anyone who didn’t ever graduate from high school. We all gravitate to our position in life, I guess. I realized then when I saw Rudi’s hesitation that he felt he would be out-classed at the party, just like I felt the strange feeling back in Holland and Belgium that I was outclassed -but this time it was by working people, the people who lived in housing projects or toiled in the fields.
This would be Rudi’s chance. He was being thrown into the fire of “upward class mobility” we used to say back in Maryland. It would be interesting to see how he would handle these exchange students.

Most of them would be American “beats” who had come to Paris to study. Those people are the dropouts, the young people who choose not to go along with society, at least, and the way they saw society was headed.

We did some more grocery shopping and spent some time ‘til late evening in the Bois de Boulonge, a big park in Paris. Rudi got a chance to straighten a minor problem on the Vespa’s steering mechanism. We weren’t really supposed to be doing motor scooter repairing in there and a gendarme came by and told us so but he let us stay when Rudi showed him the newspaper article.
When it started to drizzle we got under the protection of the chestnut trees in the park. Someone told us the aroma from the sweet smelling scent from the wet chestnut trees in the rain was really strong, like the aroma in a cigar store, but I’m not sure if that smell didn’t come from the fast women that were roaming the park for customers. Two of them were intrigued by our scooter voyage and each helped by shielding us from the rain with their umbrellas. We gave them each an apple from our grocery bag. Charming ladies!
On to Toby’s place. Rue Jacob was more an alley than a street. We rang the bell downstairs in the dimly lit vestibule. A concierge came to the door and squinted at us. “They’re in Number 5,” she said, “staring at our beards. She pointed at a window three stories up. It was closed but we could see shadows of people moving against the tan window shade.
We passed through a dark patio and entered into an even darker doorway that led to a narrow stairwell that creaked as we climbed. At the fifth floor we heard voices coming from behind a green door that had at one time a number 5 tacked to it. We paused for a moment and listened to the commotion. A late night party sound, like the fraternity house party from college days. I thought about turning around and leaving. I knocked on the door. No one answered. I heard the sound of a harmonica above the crowd noise and a guitar. Again, no one answered. We tried the door. It was unlocked. So we went in.
Two people had been sitting on the floor near the door. “C’mon on in” a girl shouted over the noise and she and her friend made room for us. “The more the merrier!” She said in English in an English-sounding accent.

Every one was so engrossed in their own personal conversations, no one noticed us. The room was about the size of a 2-car garage. People were scattered about. So much you could hardly see where the floor was. There was no furniture available to sit down so we walked over to a corner. No one looked up. No one paid attention to us. They all kept talking.

All of us were swallowed in a thick cloud of gray cigarette smoke. We stood there for a moment, wondering if we should stay. I don’t think anyone would have noticed if we would've walked back out.

Figures reclining on floor mats, cushions, and boxes. It looked like a frantic auction, with each person there the auctioneer. Girls with long uncombed straight hair. No cosmetics. Tight dark leotards. Men wore striped t-shirts or corduroy pants. Some with berets. I think those were the "artistes."

Most of them had beards some had goatees. The atmosphere was electric but it wasn’t happy. Serious, depressing looking expressions flashed about the room.

Posters, calendars landscapes, and sketches covered fading wallpaper that covered a cracked wall in need of repair. Some of the sketches were done right on the wallpaper. The room did have two windows, but there’s little chance that the renter saw any sunlight. Daytime was the time to catch up on sleep from the night before.

Toby came over and greeted us once he recognized us from earlier in the day. He had a wine bottle in his hand and two cups.
“You made it!” he said. “Cool!”

Toby waved over to a thin guy pouring the last drip of wine from a bottle. “Kurt, come over here.” Toby said.

Kurt was a tall, skinny, gaunt-looking American student studying in Paris, well-shaven and with a shock of black hair that was combed forward to meet his bushy eyebrows. He had been talking with a petite local French girl with short black hair. I figured she was either a dancer or an actress.
“Are you going to recite tonight?” Toby asked Kurt.
Kurt looked down at the girl who had wandered over after him. Before she answered, the room quieted down. A blond bearded guy opened a window and with a Clint Eastwood movie poster began chasing clouds of smoke out of the room into the Paris sky.

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31 Mar, 2010 | Posted by: psn





My Story


12



Vespa
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SINGING FOR SUPPER



Vespa
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THE STAFF AT THE NEWSPAPPER



Vespa
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ROHN'S SKETCH OF PARIS



Vespa
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LOUIS SCHWARTZ CHRISTIAN DIOR




I remember back in Wuerzburg, I told Rick “If I make it to Paris, that’ll be good enough for me. You can put on my gravestone, ‘I made it to Paris.’”. But of course, what I probably meant was I wanted to leave Paris with memories like Hemingway or Fitzgerald and those guys –smiling.
I had seen enough movies about Paris that I felt it like a second home. As a former art student like I was, it was a goal for many of us students to feel that way. And you know something, Hitler used to be an art student also and he must’ve felt that way too. Maybe that was his reason for not burning Paris when he had the chance when his German army left Paris when the Allied Forces landed in France. It’s funny how art connects us all.


The French language is not easy to learn. Well, I shouldn’t say that because as soon as we crossed the border, I saw kids running around, 5 and 6 years old, speaking French fluently. At the Army Language School back in Monterey, California, six French persons (one was a lady) who were from six different parts of France taught us recruits so that we didn’t come away from the six-month Army Language School course with a regional accent of some kind. One thing they didn’t tell us is that the French people will be talking to you twice as fast as normal people do.

Before arriving in Paris, I got along O.K. with my “school French” as we traveled the countryside where the farm people were gracious enough to speak slowly to me to help me get my meaning across. Often they would speak loudly also, almost to the point of shouting, because their only experience with a person who couldn’t quite understand them was because they were hard of hearing.

But I found in Paris the city people had little patience with me and would simply walk away in the middle of a sentence when I was asking directions or some other question. Of course, what irritated me at first with this is they didn’t know I had spent six months learning their language and it was their fault they didn’t understand their own language. But I eventually came to understand with the French people that the way I was speaking their language, the rhythm and the accent, is an insult to them and that I was butchering their hallowed language to a point where they didn’t like to listen to me speaking it.

I had seen movies and heard about a lot of the places on our map that showed us the place to make our grand entrance. It was the railro ad station, the Gare D’Orsay. From there you can see the Seine with all its bookstalls and fishermen and touring boats, Notre Dame where the hunchback resided, The Gardens of Tuileries, the Place de la Concord, the Louvre where Mona Lisa awaits us. The Eiffel Tower was nearby too, and the Arc de Triomphe where we spun around counter-clockwise, just to see if we could escape the circling traffic and get out alive without a crash. We did and found ourselves on the upper end of the Champs Elysees, that’s the famous wide street with all the fancy shoppes and bistros and anything that has to do with world business including the fashion industry.

Good ol’ Lindbergh in 1927 chose Paris to fly into on his flight across the Atlantic and got some very good reception from the French people.

So why not us?

Up to this point, Rudi had more or less taken a tourist type of approach to his own travels to India. He was happy to see there was more dimension available to him with the way I was handling a new aspect of the trip that he hadn’t thought about yet.

That is, rather than just being spectators on our trip, we could get a better understanding of the people and the country we found ourselves in if we could become more three-dimensional to the people through a newspaper article about us.

I didn’t exactly know what I was doing, but he was happy to see me do the job and if it worked, we could both smile. If it didn’t, whatdaheck, we’d just move on.

Up to this point, Rudi had been the take over guy. And I was happy to be a part of the trip. But now I could see I had a contribution to make and Rudi was satisfied about that. I think our time in Paris bonded our relationship a little better and we became real partners.

My first thought in Paris was to find a popular newspaper in town and find their address. A cheap way to find out is to look on park benches, empty café tables, and in trash cans (we couldn’t afford to buy even a newspaper).

Our secret ticket at the big newspaper office in Paris was to flash the newspaper photo and article the Brussels newspaper had printed. But I learned something else and that is in the big cities, like Paris, they always have competition from another newspaper in town. In other words we didn’t have to go into a newspaper office, hat in hand, wishin’ they would do a story on us, like they were doing us a favor or something. Instead we would go in there like we were doing them a favor. After all, interesting feature articles like us sells newspapers for them.

Another thing I learned is, and if you ever take a trip like this, this is important, is to be sure to carry along a journal, sort of like a scrapbook where you paste in handwritten notes from well-wishers and fans along the way, and photos from people who would take them out of their wallet and paste them in my scrapbook.. All the way from Wuerzburg I had constructed ten or fifteen pages already. I kept these diary pages hooked together with two metal rings and people could flip through the pages and look at both sides.

At the Dutch, Belgian, and French border crossing, I asked the officials to rubber stamp the book’s current page with their country’s rubber stamp. This is especially useful because it gives you kind of an “official” look to your trip. Especially if a policeman stopped you somewhere just to acquire what these two guys on a Vespa were all about.

Now, back at the newspaper office, you have to remember all these people in newspaper offices like to get a “scoop” And what we learned was when we went into the first big newspaper, La Figaro, the feature editor was off to lunch and the receptionist gave me the editor’s business card and told us he would be back at 2pm. Well, we didn’t want to wait around and went to another newspaper offi ce and it happened to be the most prominent newspaper in Paris, Le Monde, like the New York Times in the USA.

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23 Mar, 2010 | Posted by: psn





My Story



11








Vespa
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ROHN TRIES OUT A BELGIAN LAWNMOWER




Vespa
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ALMOST THERE




Vespa
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ON A BRUSSELS STREET

Destination: On our way through Belgium now heading towards Brussels and then on to Paris!

Was my new companion, Rudi, working out O.K.?

I would say, yes. So far.

I’m not one for being an assistant to anyone. I find it uneasy to follow. But, you can’t know everything, so you have to depend on others to help you get to where you’re going. I mean, following is O.K. when someone is showing you directions on how to body surf or row a canoe. But if I already know how to row a canoe, I want to be the one to decide where the canoe is going to go.

In our case, it was apparent to me that I better pay attention to Rudi when he was talking about the inner workings of the Vespa or how to roll a sleeping bag to best protect it from the rain. I could see I’d have to take a backseat when it came to matters of day-to-day decisions on how to keep our vehicle –tires, lights, carburetor, in working order.

On the other hand, Rudi could see he would have to temper his Prussian eagerness if my ideas about this journey we were making would help him towards his goal of making a name for himself.

All in all, I still found myself smiling, even chuckling and ready to push forward. In Belgium, we wound through rolling hills and farm country. For lunch, we stopped under a large oak tree and brought out Frau Reseller’s ham and cheese sandwiches and fruit.

Mighty tasty, “ I said, leaning back against the thick trunk and watching some clouds roll in from the west. Looks like we .re going to lose our sunny day,” I said to Rudi.

“Hey, Rudi, “ I said. “What do your parents think about you traveling around the world”?

He settled back against one side of the tree. “They didn’t have much to say about it when I left except that my mother couldn’t understand why I would leave my good paying job in the coalmines.

“I’ve always done just about whatever I wanted to do with my life. That’s how I was raised; so they’re to blame if what I’m doing now is wrong.”

“My father didn’t object too much, it was really my mother. She’s the boss in the family. Whatever she says goes. My father doesn’t have much to say. She started making a lot of noise when she saw I was really serious about leaving. She made some threats she’s never going to let me in the house again if I ever tried to come back. “
Has she ever written to you?”
“What? She write me?” He laughed at the idea. “She’s never written a letter in her life. Let alone to me.” Besides, she doesn’t care enough about me to bother. We hardly got along well enough to talk, let along to write.”

“And how ‘bout your father?? ??
“I get along with him O.K. He never says much though.”
“He’s a quiet person.
It’s my mother who does all the talkin’…”
“And your brother?” I asked.

“We hit it off O.K.” I hear from him about once a month. He writes to me at General Delivery in the bigger cities I expect to be in. I always tell him what sites are up ahead on my route. He lets the folks know. He let’s me know what’s happening around Wusterheide.
“Don’t you get homesick?”
“For what, home? This is my home.” He said, patting his hand against the strong roots of the tree. “You never get homesick for places you’d like to forget.”

It was clear Rudi wasn’t out to see the world on a bet. This might have compelled him to begin, but once he had begun, he had seen there were places in the world to set down stakes in than Wusterheide. Only a miracle could allow him to return there now. As the trip progress we spoke less of Wusterheide and even less of his parents.
Rudi was just under 6 ft. and no fat anywhere. He was as sturdy and well built as a panther. He was the kind of guy you might read about who could pick up the front end of a Volkswagen when necessary. He came from the north of Germany and had that typical Teutonic arrogance you generally associate with the Prussian military. Although his name, Thurau, was a Teutonic name, he told me his father’s ancestors had been emigrants from France. Through six generations, Rudi had inherited nothing you would associate with Frenchmen.

His hairline was beginning to recede and this together with the wrinkles under his pale blue eyes made him look older than his 24 years. But who knows? Maybe he was older or maybe his work in the coalmines had taken its toll. And he really was only 24.

He was a showman. Rudi was like the announcer guy in a vaudeville show that comes to town once a year. In our case in Ocean City when the winter population had dwindled down to 250 people we always looked forward to something similar when the minstrel show would come to town, usually in February, and it was put on in the school gymnasium.

The routine was the impresario asked for local volunteers to be a part of the show and people you never suspected would volunteer and go to the ‘try outs’. You were always surprised that some of the most quiet people in our county, would volunteer and do such a good job dancing and singing but you never were quite sure who was who on stage because in a minstrel all the performers had black cream smeared all over their face except a big circle around the eyes where the white could shine through. The impresario had a man who was the interlocutor, as they called him, and all the jokes and skits bounced off him.
The local volunteers have two days to learn their lines and then they held the minstrel for two days. They always had a packed house. Every relative of the volunteers for twenty miles around came to the performance. Some of them came for both shows.

Rudi was the kind of guy that could’ve been a good interlocutor. But he couldn’t have been the impresario; he had no interest in organizing an event. That’s where we made a good team. He the interlocutor and me the impresario.
Rudi had two noticeable features, a prominent broken nose and a jaw that says ‘this guy has great determination.’


“How’d you ever get that broken nose?" I asked.
He settled back against the tree and looked off into the countryside.
“It happened during the war,” he answered and then paused. “I was ten years old and me and a teenager friend were riding in the back of a neighbor’s van. We were carrying some furniture to Bremen. And out of nowhere, an American fighter plane appeared out from behind a hill and was down on us before we had a chance to pull off the road for cover.
We weren’t a caravan of trucks or anything, but he began firing at us. I guess he thought we were transporting ammunition to Bremen or something. Bullets ripped through the front window of the truck and we went spinning off the side of the road and down into the ditch. In the back of the van, the bullets missed my friend and me. He had been sleeping on one of the couches and I was in a chair back there. He came out of the crash O.K. but I was caught in the middle of all the furniture that was in the van as it rolled over several times. Chairs, metal tables were churning around in there like a tornado. The van came to a halt, upside down, at the bottom of the ditch. The truck driver was dead, shot in the face. I was badly shaken up but all I suffered was a nosebleed. Or that’s what I thought.

“Could you get any help?”

“Not for a while. The plane came back one more time and strafed us one more time just to make sure we weren’t carrying explosives. If we were, the whole van probably would’ve blown up. I know that had happened to a military truck along the same road a week before.”

“But when he left, could you get help?”

“I was too little to know what to do. Finally a vegetable truck came along and then a police vehicle and the police took us back to Wusterheide.

“And your nose, was it bleeding all this time?

“I don’t remember except the scolding I got from my mother when I got home. My father took me to a clinic in the village. At that time there weren’t any doctors. That was back in ’44 and the town doctor, Doctor Heinrich had been sent to the Russian front. Most of the nurses were sent to work in military hospitals in the area. The one nurse that remained gave my nose an injection, bandaged it up and told me to come back in a month. I never did go back. I took the bandage off myself later on, so what you see is what I saw..“

“Did Dr. Heinrich ever come back to Wusterheide?” I asked.
“No. He was captured by the Russians,” we heard. “They said he was in Siberia. Someone said he died there. ”

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17 Mar, 2010 | Posted by: psn






My Story


10




ROHN ENTERAINS A DUTCH FAMILY
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ROHN ENTERTAINS A DUTCH FAMILY




RUDI ENTERTAINS A BIRD VISITOR
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RUDI TUNES HIS GUITAR




ROHN TRIES ON WOODEN SHOES
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ROHN TRIES ON WOODEN SHOES




BRUSSELS - THE SCOOTER IS STILL
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BRUSSELS - THE SCOOTER IS STILL "NEW"




THEIR ARRIVAL IN BRUSSELS
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THEIR ARRIVAL IN BRUSSELS


Who is this guy? What was driving him? I could imagine him in some Prussian shoe factory as an assistant manager with his eye on the manager’s job. Yikes! I wasn’t ever able to get along with those bossy kind of people. He probably saw me as malleable and exquisitely controllable. I also had some money. Would I soon part with it?

Were his ambitions anything like mine? Who cares? I needed help. I was outta my league when it came to traveling the world. I would just as soon stay at home and have the world come to me than have to go out to it. There must be all levels of worldly people. This was a guy at the gut level. Not at the slick, fast lane, material level of high rollers. I had seen enough of that shallow level in all the schools I had gone to, in my U.S. Army job and back at the beach in Ocean City, Maryland.
This guy was a new level for me. I had never associated with this level in my earlier life, now I was thrown in with him by necessity. There was a hole in this trip that I was making. Was he going to be my rescuer?
I would find out. I would ask a bunch of questions.
“Why did you start on this jaunt around the world?” I asked.

“That’s what everyone asks me,” He laughed. “Sometimes I’d say I’m out collecting folks songs. It depends on who’s asking. “When I had that camera that was stolen from me in Calcutta, I used to say I was a photographer and out to write a book. Other times I’d say I was curious and wanted to know what was happening on the other side of the hill.

I told some guys at the Altenhoffen Bar back in my hometown that I was going to build a special bike and go traveling like Hans Helfin. He’s a German guy that traveled all over the world. He was always my hero, ever since I was a kid. He wrote a couple books. Now he’s a millionaire.

“My friends at Wusterheide asked me when I was going to set off and I told them in a year or so, once I got the bike finished.
“They all laughed. In fact, this one guy, Friedrich, got the guys at the bar all to chip in to a kitty and they bet me a thousand marks I’d never circle the globe. My brother in Bremen is holding the money.”

“You’re saying you’re touring the world, just on a bet?” I said.
“Well, that’s not the real reason,” Rudi said, “But is was a good reason to tell the people in Wusterheide, that’s the town where my parents live. It’s a little town near Bremerhaven. No one’s ever heard of Wusterheide. Those people back there never would have understood why I would set out on a bike like that.”

“And you just started out alone?”
“Another guy was going to go along with me but he backed out. His mother didn’t think he should do it.”

I asked, “How ‘bout your parents? What’d they think of all this?”

“They pretty much didn’t care. I’d been working most of the time in the coalmines down near Duesseldorf. And I really didn’t get to be with them much. I’ve got one brother. He’s married. He keeps my parents happy.”
“You worked in the coal mines?”
“Yeah, it was the only way I could make any money. It was really good money. I didn’t get much schooling during the war years. I couldn’t get a decent job around where I lived. ”
“That was the first time he mentioned anything about the war. After all, why would he? Nothing good came out it for him. His country lost. He didn’t have anything to do with it. Why would he talk about it? There was no resentment from him about it, one way or the other.
He changed the subject. “I didn’t feel like going back to grade school. I know a lot of my friends did, but I didn’t feel like sitting in a schoolroom with a lot of 10-year-olds. So I took the job in the mines. I got good pay. Twice as much as anything around Wusterheide. I was an assistant foreman when I left. It worked out O.K. I’d get up at 4 a.m. in the morning and take a two-hour train ride before I got to work.“

“Wow!! That’s 4 hours a day on the train. Did you sleep on the train?”
“Naw, I’m not the type that can sleep on a train or car. I just spent my time thinking about going on this trip.”
And he continued.

“I spent the whole day in the mines. When I came out again it was nighttime. I was so beat. I couldn’t do any more than eat my evening meal and go to bed.
“And by the end of the month I wasn’t getting much ahead what with the cost of the train ride and the room and board that I had to pay my parents. Sundays was my only day off. That’s when I’d spend my time working on my special bicycle. If I ever made it around the world, maybe I’d be able to get a better job than assistant foreman in a coalmine.

“I didn’t go further than the eighth grade in school, and in Germany you can’t get a decent job unless you’ve got the papers to show you’ve been trained in some school. When I return to Wusterheide, I’ll show them a lot of things I’ve learned. Then they’ll listen to me. When I get back, I’ll write a few books about my experiences, like Hans Hilfen, and become a millionaire like Hans Hilfen,” he smiled to himself. “What would the people of Wusterheide think of me then? “

This was helpful to me. On this trip I had been struggling with my problem of being “the outsider”. Of being the ‘intruder’ in people’s lives. With Rudi, it seemed no problem at all. I think it was a case of he saw other people much differently than I did. People could have been a series of paper dolls for all he cared. His main interest in people was he could entertain them and earn a meal. His real drive to see the world was to be able to say one day he had seen it. I could be a part of that for him. He could see there was something about me that could help him accomplish that. He knew if he stuck with me and put up with me, it would lead to his goal. And I felt the same about him.
< br /> Back in Wusterheide, he told all his friends at the Gasthaus he would be back in four years. Nine months had passed already. Even though he had his bike stolen, he wasn’t going to quit now.

It excited me to think we were teaming together. At last I would have a companion. I might not agree with his European way of looking at things, and visa versa. I saw this would be part of the learning process for each of us. The combination would make my observing things much sharper. At least that’s how I saw it.

If he were really able to get into homes as he said he had, my problem of being unable to approach people would be solved. With a companion, I would have to lose some of the freedom I was having before, but I would never experience as much loneliness.

Besides our talents in music, the only sameness I could see in Rudi was we both had a desire to become someone; he to achieve public recognition; I to achieve self-recognition. This was a strange combination of personalities to be seated on a motor scooter headed off to see the world. I wondered how we would fare.

When it came to material things like big cars and big houses and nice clothes and jewelry and things like that, Rudi was really my opposite. I didn’t much care for those things. He was traveling the world to eventually get those things that I was in the process of giving up. I wondered how I would deal with that.

Herr Van Dohlen saw us packing the Vespa. “
“You guys want something to eat before you take off?”
“Thank you!” We answered.
“By the way,” I said. “Where’s a place in Rotterdam I could buy a camera?”
He stopped a moment and said, “Say, I just decided to sell my Rolleicord. It’s practically like new. I can give you a good price.”

The Rolleicord was the poor sister of the Rolleiflex, the camera I lost. But it was better that no camera.
I took a look. It had a leather casing that looked like it had come right out of the store window. For all I know it might have been the trophy from a card game in the tavern. He said he’d give it to me for $25. I didn’t know much about cameras at that time, but it was shiny and new so I took a gamble and bought it.

I still had my unused rolls of film. Back in Wuerzburg, I wondered if Hans Bartsch would see the difference when he was printing my negs. Maybe I wouldn’t have to tell him how dumb I was to lose my camera. I figured I’d wait to see what Hans thought of the quality of the photos from Holland from this point on.

We headed west. The country of Belgium was our aim. The Vespa drove oddly at first with the weight of another person on the back. But I soon got used to it. It was a new pleasure to be able to chat with someone and to point out interesting things on the landscape. I soon learned Rudi was not much interested in scenery. He saw it as a backdrop. His interest was mileage and road signs. Getting somewhere new each day. He saw that as success. Like back in the coalmines, more tonnage, to him, was accomplishment.

But it didn’t bother me. We sped along the flat Dutch highway lined with tall, stately white birch trees. The neatly trimmed countryside rolled endlessly until it reached the distant earthline where Holland faded into the horizon.

It made me feel good to have Rudi coming along with me, or should I say, me with him. Our chance meeting had saved me from inquiring about passage home to Maryland on a freighter. His outright optimism gave me inspiration. I felt the strange notion that a ‘guide’ had been sent to me, a conductor one who was to deliver me from the frustration of not being able to rise above my inability to escape the depths of loneliness. But I didn’t dare show any signs of any kind of weakness that I couldn’t keep up or do my share of the job. I knew I could d o it. As the afternoon wore on, I caught myself happily smiling.


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10 Mar, 2010 | Posted by: psn




WHAT’S THIS ?


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 prove 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 and my family and me are living on a farm in western Wisconsin. I’ll dust off the manuscript and publish it here for the first time. –RE



After the first leg of my voyage through Europe and Africa, I sold my photos and story to the Saturday Evening Post, a popular magazine in 1958. This taught me that maybe I was cut out for a career in photojournalism.



Sahara on motor scooter
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French Sudan
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Rohn climbs to his loft at bedtime
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BRINGING IN THE HAY
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BRINGING IN THE HAY



RUDI WASHES UP FOR THE DAY AHEAD
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RUDI WASHES UP FOR THE DAY AHEAD



Enghien
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JUST COINCIDENCE?




My Story



9


Rohn Engh




I opened my eyes just before dawn to a thumping feeling between my ears and in the dim light I tried to recount just how I landed in a hayloft in a Dutch barn with horses shuffling down below and pigeons in the ceiling cooing and fluttering from rafter to rafter, flapping their wings and dropping white splatterings, the kind you like to avoid on the sidewalk when you’re taking a stroll in a big city park. One hit me on the ear and I think that’s what woke me up. Shit! I grumbled as I searched for the bandanna that I must’ve lost in the melee from the night before.
And then there was my mouth. Stale beer taste. And my head. The sound of kettledrums were beating in there. I tried to go to sleep. And I did.
When I woke the next time the kettledrums were gone. I could hear someone below with the horses swashing water buckets and feeding them grain.
Rudi was already up, folding his sleeping bag. “You sleep O.K., Engh?” He asked.
I grumbled, “Yeah.”
“Hey you guys! You gonna sleep forever?” The bartender shouted up to us in what the Dutch people call ‘platt deutsch.’ It’s sorta like German with some other dialects mixed in there like Danish and Flemish and even some Creole or whatever that language is that they speak in the back bayous of Louisiana. Anyway, back in Wuerzburg it was the same thing about languages; you really didn’t have straight German to speak if you wanted to talk with the people. Some had a Bavarian accent, especially out in the country, and others in the city had an accent they called hochdeutsch, or somesuch, the kind you heard radio announcers speaking.
It was pretty much the same as when I was growing up on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, out in the country; we all spoke with a different accent than the city people that came down from Baltimore and Washington. I had to be careful when I would talk with ‘city people’ over there in Ocean City when I had my summer job at the hotel during school summer vacation time. I tried to sound like the voices I heard on the radio otherwise they would think of me as a “hick” as city people called us from the Eastern Shore. I guess it was the same with the black people who worked in the kitchen with me when they talked amongst each other but when the boss lady came back with us they would snap up into real English even that I could understand.
Anyway all this got me prepared for my journey. I didn’t mind it. In fact I kinda liked it, learning new foreign words all the time and as I look back on it now, the people I was speaking with appreciated that I was interested enough if their language to try to learn it which meant they knew I appreciated them and their country as well.
“How did you ever get from Hamburg to Calcutta on only ten dollars?” I asked Rudi as I was rolling up my sleeping bag. He was staring at me. Sizing me up, I thought. Here was someone who had accomplished something that I was setting out to do. Could I do it? I already knew my limitations. What did he possess that I didn’t?
“To Calcutta?,” he said, reaching for his guitar and holding it up in the air, “This fellow here. That’s what got me everywhere.”

Enghien
He tossed it back on the straw. It was covered with scratches and souvenir stickers of countries and cities he’d been through and a few signatures of people he had met. It lay there, as if it were a pet animal, like a dog that tagged along with you wherever you went, as long as you had a morsel of food to toss it now and then.
“By playing on street corners?” I asked. “With a tin cup, asking for money?”
“Hell, no” he said, looking at me as if I were a child.
“How then?” I asked, hoping he had some magic secret.

“Hey! You guys coming down? The bartender shouted up to us.
“Be right there.” We both shouted back.

“Well, happy to see you both had a good sleep,” the bartender brinned at us as we entered the back door of the tavern. He introduced himself as Hermann Van Dohlen.
“You own this tavern,?” Rudi asked.
“It’s all mine,” he said proudly. And then introduced us to his wife, who was in the kitchen preparing breakfast.
“C’mon out here in the back and wash up,” she said, as she poured us each a hot basin of water. “Why are you limping young man?” she looked at me with concern.
“He was playing Tarzan last night in the barn, laughed Rudi.
“It’s all right,” I said, “I only turned my ankle.”
“Boys! Have some breakfast with us,” Herr Van Dohlen shouted from the tavern.
“Thanks, we answered in unison.
“Thank you, for that fine entertainment last night.” He returned.

After breakfast with the Van Dohlens, Rudi and I walked out to the stone steps leading up to the tavern. Horse-drawn wagons paraded by, people on foot, boys on bicycles, men with push carts passed.

And Rudi’s secret magic for traveling all the way to India on ten dollars?

As it turns out there was no magic secret. His answer was as old as the ages. Like the circus of ancient days, people love to be entertained and a good way to entertain them was with some kind of musical instrument.
I remembered from last night, he had a beautiful baritone voice. It didn’t always stay in tune, much like his guitar, but he proved that didn’t matter so long as you could offer them “theater.”

He hadn’t thought this all out, I could tell, but what I could tell is that he discovered as a youngster back when he was working in the coal mines, he could strum a chord on his guitar it would get attention and it would change the atmosphere. If he added his singing voice it would raise the level of “theater”.
Soon he was on his way out of the coalmines to travel into the world he had seen only in the movies. He would get to the edge of town on his bicycle and keep going. I sensed he had the same feeling I had, that nothing could hold him back.
I suppose that his friends and family told him too, that he was running away from a promising future and he’d probably fall prey to the evils of the world. I knew he was a lot like me in that we both were stubborn about changing the way our lives were going and wanted to see what else was out there before we settled down.

As I look back, it turned out that when we each started out, neither of us sat down and figured out an action plan or something like that. We didn’t realize there was some kind of magnet out there that was drawing each of us from our standard existence. It turned out that we were doing something right, -something normal, actually.

We both knew that people love to be entertained and escape from their boring normal ordinary existence. It takes their mind off things. Even if it was a good life. Sometimes they don’t even know they’re tired and weary and need to clear out their mind a little bit. They look to find ay to make all those things disappear. Music can do this. Everyone is transported. It’s nice to be able to help people in that way.

The average tourist doesn’t experience this. When music is your language, even religious and cultural differences disappear. You wouldn’t think you could reduce all the ills of the world to this. But on a one-to-one basis you really can. You really, definitely can. I was beginning to realize all this stuff, but you really can. Rudi already knew it.
I asked him, “But how did you get through nine months of travel on ten dollars?”
No one had ever asked him such a question. He thought for a while.
“For one thing,” he said, “When you travel like this, almost like gypsies, you get to be friends with people pretty quick and pretty soon they want to know more about you and what you’re doing in their town and where you’ve been and where you’re going and what you’ve seen. And they want to know about you and your family, -basic things like that. He put his shoes up on one of the wrought iron benches
“Once I’ve told them the places I’ve driven my bicycle, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, places like that, they feel as they know me better.

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03 Mar, 2010 | Posted by: psn





WHAT’S THIS?

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 back then 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 a photographer and his family came to living on a farm here in western Wisconsin –RE



My Story




8


Sea Gulls keep watch over the canals
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SEA GULLS KEEP WATCH OVER THE CANALS - 1957



Rohn climbs to his loft at bedtime
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ROHN CLIMBS TO HIS LOFT AT BEDTIME - 1957



Horses on a cold morning
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HORSES ON A COLD MORNING - 1957



ROHN AND NEW FRIEND RUDI THURAU
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ROHN AND NEW FRIEND RUDI THURAU - 1957


I didn’t sleep well. I blamed it on the sounds outside my tent. Like someone walking around. Or some animal out there scraping around the bratwurst sandwich leftovers from the weekend picnickers or something.

As I lay there, I thought about what the future had in store for me. Had the predictions been right? Was losing my camera only a beginning of the catastrophes that were awaiting me? It was true that my financial situation wasn’t holding out as I had expected. The thought of contacting my parents and asking them to send me money passed my mind. No, I would be humiliated. I couldn’t do that. It would be a “We told you so!” situation .

Loneliness had crept into my trip and was playing an important role. I yearned for companionship but the thought of finding a partner for a venture like this was out of the question. My guitar had gotten me as far as I had hoped. So much for hope. Alone, by myself, I wasn’t able to strike up the courage to sing to the public as Rick and I had done back in Wuerzburg.

I had heard about Rotterdam and how it was a large seaport with ships going everywhere, even to the USA. The thought crossed my mind that when I reached Rotterdam, I could hitch a ride on a freighter back to the USA.

But really, as I think back now, I really think my problem that night was waking up in the morning to the unwelcome thought of being the outsider. As if ‘the world’ was zipping up my tent and saying “Don’t come out. You don’t belong here. Go back to your own kind. We don’t want intruders.”

Here I was, going to enter a country new to me, Holland, sometime today where I didn’t even speak the language.

I fell asleep leaving all my decisions to the following day.

I awoke at dawn and peeked out of my tent at the long morning mist stretching out over the still-frosted countryside. Like the man taking his final walk at the penitentiary, I packed up my Vespa, shivering from the cool morning or the thought of the day’s decision that lay ahead of me.
Oh well, as good ol’ Harry Truman used to say, “If you can’t take the heat, get outta the kitchen!”

On my way to the Dutch border, I found myself in a new predicament. My highway led on up the Rhine through countryside of picture postcard villages, the kind you see on travel brochures.

I stopped to make a sketch of a farmstead along the way. Hey! Wait! Where’s my camera bag ? I kept it tied with a bungee cord between my feet on the Vespa so to have it at the ready for pictures. It wasn’t there. My Rollieflex was gone!

I rummaged through my suitcase. Maybe I had packed it away there. It wasn’t there.

Then I thought of an idea. I remember that I heard a thumping sound on the cobblestone road in the village I had just passed through. It could have been the sound of my camera. I rushed back, and asked townspeople if they had seen my camera.

No one had any news for me. I went to the police, the Burgermeister, the firehouse. No one had seen it. At the fire department, the chief said that articles were often turned in to him. He said I could wait around if I wanted to. But it might be a month before someone turned my camera in. –Or never. It was a losing battle. My camera was gone.
And the roll of film that was in there. I would have no roll of film to send back for developing and printing to my friend Hans Bartsch back in Wuerzburg. I thanked the fire chief for his trouble and left.

I looked in my wallet. I had $168.00 to last for my world tour. Could I afford a new camera? It would cut my resources in half. How could I continue my journey on $84? No, I couldn’t, I decided.

So, if you’re going to take a journey like this, Rule number One, keep your camera in a safe place. And while I think about it, Rule number Two is “Keep your passport in a safe place.” Like don’t even let a police officer take it from you. That was told to me even before I left Wuerzburg. They didn’t tell me about the camera. They probably figured, at least, I was smart enough to know that.

A little further up the road I came upon the German-Holland border. The Customs officers at the Dutch border were amused by my sign on the side of the Vespa, “WORLD TOUR”.

They crowded around with interest.
“ How far have you been, son?” One of them asked, looking at the sign.
“I started in Wuerzburg, West Germany,” I said, a little ashamed of the speedometer, which read only 249 miles.

They had seen many a traveler come through on all kinds of vehicles -bicycle, motorcycle, on foot, motorbike, with aspirations of touring the country, or Europe, or the world. But most hadn’t lasted more than a tankful of gas. I wondered if that might happen to me. They stood alert and saluted me with a smile as I passed into their country.



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23 Feb, 2010 | Posted by: psn




My Story




7


Dutch farmer
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FARM WIFE NEAR DUTCH BORDER - 1957


Germany sketch
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MY LAST SKETCH IN GERMANY - 1957



Germany sketch
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BRATWURST SELLER - 1957



Germany sketch
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RAIN TALK - 1957


On the outskirts of town that afternoon, I pulled my Vespa into an inviting grassy knoll on the edge of the river. A couple of big trees were on either side. A campfire was still smoldering inbetween. The campers had thrown some water on it. I set up my pup tent and sleeping bag. I would spend the night here.
Across the Rhine River’s width, giant redstone castles of the 15th century lay aging in the hillside greenery. Boy! What a sight! Just like the post cards. I decided to make a sketch of the scene.

The warm May sun beat down on me as I worked on the sketch. There was activity on the river. A touring ship filled with sightseers was sailing by. People waved to me. The tourists probably couldn’t see I was sketching the scenery. Some waved to me. Young boys were rowing boats near the shoreline. They waved to me.

I was finding out that my sketchbook and my guitar were passports of friendship for me as I traveled. The guitar seemed to say, “We have something in common –music.” And the sketchbook said, “You like my village, or churches, or bridges enough that you choose to sketch it.” That was pretty good. It was like having these two companions along with me too. I didn’t look like a vagrant or a highway robber or something to someone.

Now that’s a nice thing. So if you’re planning on taking a vagabond trip, there’s two secrets for you. Take a guitar and a sketchbook along, even if you don’t know how to use them!

The highway down the hill from my knoll was buzzing with tiny European cars breezing along with open windows loaded with picnickers. As they zipped by some of the passengers could see me atop the knoll. Some waved to me.
I put down my sketchbook and relaxed in the pleasant surroundings. I found myself in a zone I had come to recognize. The whole world seemed happy, and most of all, me! So far, my trip was going well. I was sorta numb. Was this freedom? I felt suspended in an atmosphere I had not known. Flashes of memories came back to me of the last day of school in 5th grade where all of us went through that thick heavy oak front door of Lincoln Grammar into the bright June outdoors realizing we had the whole summer ahead of us. It belonged to us. Freedom always seems like something you once had, not something you were presently experiencing. Well, I was experiencing it.
I sat on the green plot at the edge of the Rhine, basking in my thoughts. Not only the summer stretched out before me as all mine, but my whole life. I had no wristwatch. N o calendar, no To-Do list, no agenda. There were no more schedules, bells, loud noises, key chains, clocks, telephones. Time didn’t matter. I was free to do anything in whatever direction I chose.

There would be no disturbing knocks at the door of my life. That mirror on the edge of my shoulder examining my every moment, was missing, something had shattered it. This was great. Those warnings from my friends in Wuerzburg were just fading words. I had cancelled my career and headed off with the wind.
Was this my reward? I thought to myself. For some fleeting moments I was experiencing that elusive feeling of freedom. Would I capture this again on my trip?

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16 Feb, 2010 | Posted by: psn




My Story



Vespa
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ALONG THE RHINE - 1957



Germany
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BROTHERS NEAR RUDESHEIM - 1957

Germany
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ROHN IN THE HAYLOFT - 1957

Germany
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TWINS


6


I was confused when I woke up. Where was I? No scratchy 78 rpm record player blasting reveille outside my window. No sounds of guys walking or rushing to the john down the hall. No guys in the lavatory bumping elbows brushing teeth, slippery tile floors, urinals, smelly excretions from guys falling asleep on the toilet, bad beer breath from the night before, no moaning and bitching about hangovers. No guys asking if they could borrow your razor, guys shouting back and forth about “the gal I saw you with” and “did you ding her.?”. No rushing to Roll Call out in the quadrangle to get there in time to get a few brownie points from the assembly Captain. I forget his name.
Today it felt like Sunday. No rush. I could turn over and get back to sleep. But I didn’t.

I rubbed my eyes and looked around at this guy’s bedroom. A university student.

A cross hung on the wall above the bed. It wasn’t a Maltese Cross it was a Christian cross. Another was across the room by the dresser. They must be Catholic or Lutheran. Probably Catholic in this part of Germany.
It’s funny, at my unit in Wuerzburg, guys didn’t really know anything about the Germans. They didn’t even know the language except “Wo ist der Bahnhof?” or something like that. Most of them were hostile to Germans. The Staff Sergeant, who was a “lifer” in the Army now 20 years told me once. “I didn’t see them as people, I was just shooting at uniforms.”

Back at Wuerzburg, the guys probably would have ostracized me if they learned I spent the night in a German guy’s bed.

I looked around some more. A picture of his girl friend on the bureau, or was it a cousin, or his mother before the war? Pretty girl. A picture of a guy in uniform. His brother, maybe? They didn’t mention him. I didn’t want to ask. And I won’t.

Back in Wuerzburg in the taverns and park benches, I had my fill of conversations about killed and gone friends and relatives. I had a habit of digging down into people’s lives, asking questions. I’m sure that’s why I was eager to learn the German language when the Army sent me to Oberammergau to learn it.

I wanted to talk to the people. I’m sure I would’ve failed German if I ‘d taken German in high school, just like I failed Spanish. I admire people who can learn things for no other reason that just to learn them. Like Latin or Greek.
I don’t know if the Germans resented me always asking questions. I couldn’t help it. It just came out. My curiosity, I mean. I guess that’s why I didn’t mind my Army job. I had a license to ask questions. As far as the answers, I don’t know how much of it was true. I guess they told me what they figured I wanted to hear.

The conversations were always the same. They never defended their involvement in the war, they didn’t know anything about Jews in concentration camps, and the High Command only broadcast the good stuff like their victories in Poland and Russia. And how the people cheered and welcomed the German Army into Austria. This idea of radio and movies telling people what they wanted to hear must've been exciting. Going to the movies back them, I mean like in the early 40's and they would have The News before the movie started. No one was late for that. Everyone was hushed and seated. and they would see resulted of when German submarines were blasting boats out of the water, and sailors were floating in the oily fires. Or a shell wolud blast a Russian tank. That was better than the movie itself.
When you walked out of the movie in broad daylight itself and saw a German soldier in uniform, you'd probably want to go up to him and hug him, or be eager to send your own son, when he was 16 or 17, to the recruitment station to sign up. It must've all been so exciting.

When the tide turned, the people were in the dark except for propaganda. That must’ve been tough. The radio played music instead of showing the losses in Russia or North Africa or other places depending on when you were listening.

How would you like spending ten to fifteen months listening to stuff on the radio like, "Good morning folks, Heil Hitler! We are losing this war. The British and American air raids are breaking our morale.”

Your reaction to the radio reports would be “My family and me might be killed tomorrow.”

But then the commentator would say something like, “But there’s still hope. Our German ingenuity will overcome. We are in the final stages of developing what’s called a jet engine airplane that will easily destroy those English and American bombers and fighter planes, plus we are developing a bomb that could wipe out London in one minute.”

I guess the people were so war-weary that they would’ve believed anything, -even the idea that one bomb could destroy a whole city. But the funny thing about it was the Nazi broadcaster would have been telling the truth because the German scientists were working on an atom bomb and they just about had it completed before the war ended. Now that would have been something. Let's not think about that,

We can get used to just about anything, it seems, doesn't it? And if we can’t, then we resort to denial, which saves us from an unpleasant existence.

During my two years in Wuerzburg, from the Germans, I never saw or heard spoken the mention of Adolph Hitler, Joseph Goebbles, Heinrich Himmler, or Herman Goering. Except Hans, in his darkroom when I would be in there working with him and Maria wasn't there. He would use the darkroom to tell me deep down what his feeling were. He couldn't express them during the war and he couldn't express them after the war, so the darkroom was the only place to express them, and to an American, me.

As I lay there in my early morning wake-up trance, I dismissed the whole subject. I transitioned into how nice it was for these people to invite me into their home and to spend the night in their son's bedroom. What a beautiful day outside! I let my mind switch into the road ahead for me that day.


The aroma of frying eggs, sauerkraut and pork and potatoes came whafting up the stairwell. Herr Werner was just coming out of the bathroom. “Gruess Gott” he shouted. “Hast du gut geshlafen?” “Sehr gut,” I smiled as we shook hands.
“Where are you off to this morning?”, Frau Werner asked as she gave me another helping of sauerkraut. This was not a breakfast, this was a send-off supper.

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09 Feb, 2010 | Posted by: psn






Vespa
Click on photo to enlarge
NEAR KITZINGEN WEST GERMANY - 1957



GermanyClick on photo to enlarge
ROHN’S SKETCH OF SUMMERHAUSEN - 1957


GermanyClick on photo to enlarge
CEMETARY IN OBERAMMERGAU - 1957


Germany
ROHN AT AGE 26 WUERZBURG - 1957



My Story


5




At 5:00 a.m. on the morning of May 20th 1957, the wake up shrill of a well-scratched reveille record pierced the PA system in the hallway of our barracks. I lifted the blind, looked out and saw fog everywhere. “Jeeze”, I said.

I don’t know if I was saying the “Jeeze” to the fog out there or just that I gotta do it. I gotta follow through and just get on that motor scooter today and head west.

But if I didn’t follow through, what would I tell all the people that tried to convince me not to go on this trip?

Sleeping wasn’t easy during last night. Several times my thoughts turned to just forgetting the whole thing. I could do that. Several times in the last week as my discharge date came up I thought about just dropping the whole idea.

I could sell my Vespa in downtown Wuerzburg and buy a plane ticket back to the states. I could spend a few more days with Maria, or a few more weeks or the whole summer, or a lifetime with her. She wasn’t there to see me off. I cut things off. I told her not to be there.
“No, no, don’t do this, forget the trip. Dump it. It’ll make you feel better” was what I heard in my head. And it wasn’t the people who surrounded me talking, it was I saying it.
But I looked at all my travel belongings. I had prepared the night before to strap on to my Vespa. And thought about all the official papers I had filled out and the goodbyes I had made. It would be easy to appear on Maria’s doorstep. But the sun was now coming up and by the time it was setting on May 20th 1957, I had to be somewhere, and it couldn’t be in the barracks of the 8212th AAI Unit.

Rick caught up with me on the way to the mess hall for breakfast. He grabbed my shoulder and squeezed. “This is it,” he said. “Freedom!” he shouted.

I tried to muster a smile. I guess I did for his sake. He was happy for me.
I was scared. What had I done? Why had I chosen to take this trip?
Was Lieutenant Kohler right? Was I running away from something?
I had told him, “No, I’m breaking away. I’m not running away.”
At breakfast, I had no appetite.
Sergeant Adams came by our table in the mess hall, stood over me and tossed a brown enveloped near my plate. “There it is, Engh, your discharge papers. Lieutenant Kohler says to shoot a tiger for him in Africa.”
“I mumbled as I looked at the envelope, “ They don’t have any tigers in Africa.”
“Well, don’t shoot yourself in the foot!” He said, walking away smiling, something I rarely saw from h im.
“He’s just jealous,” Rick said.

Back at the barracks, Rick helped me pack the motor scooter. I had shipped all of my non-trip belongings back to Maryland. All that remained were the essentials for my trip: my guitar, my pup tent, my Rollieflex, a map and the “civvies” I had chosen to wear on my journey.

What with the fog hanging over the gray cement-block buildings around the quadrangle and the sun starting to break through the heavy mist and the silver color of my sparkling new Vespa, it all gave a silvery tinge to my departure.

Rick grabbed me by the neck, shook me a little, and didn’t say anything as he shook his head. “Good luck!”

I whistled to Rick who was walking back to the quadrangle where everyone was assembling for roll call. He turned, gave a “thumbs up” gesture, turned and continued on. .

I was alone. I was on my own.

I started up the Vespa, swallowed, and headed west.

I left all the doubts about canceling the trip behind. I was on my way. The horizon awaited me. I didn’t feel good about all this. “So this was ‘freedom’?” I said to myself.
My first day on the road was a frightening one. An accident near the end of the day nearly ended the trip on the first day.
The road out of Wuerzburg winds around the sloping vineyards that border the city to the west and twists and turns through a series of hills and valleys toward the nearby river city of Frankfort/Main.
I hadn’t really had much experience driving the Vespa. On highways. I drove at cautious speeds, much to the irritation of fast moving Germans cars and Army trucks. It was a cold morning and heavy winds swept across the countryside. I had attached a windshield to the Vespa. The winds would sometimes catch me from the back and other times sweep in from the right, causing me to veer onto the opposite lane (in Germany, people drive in the right lane like in the USA).
Then suddenly the wind would shift and catch sideways in the windshield. The wind would treat it like a sail, and would send the scooter sweeping at sudden angles off the road or into the oncoming lane.
I had to concentrate every moment in preparation for the next gust of wind. The newness of driving a motor scooter was uncomfortable enough, but the sudden jolts from the wind made steering not so pleasant.
That first day, I made a distance of only 80 miles. It took me six hours. Other motorcyclists and motor scooters passed me. Some of them waved to me and were probably surprised at not seeing a grandmother driving the Vespa. It wasn’t just a couple of times the thought entered my head that when I got to Frankfurt, I could drive into the Vespa distributorship, sell my machine, and buy an airline ticket to Baltimore.

Sometimes I would stop in a village or alongside the roadway to watch the passing traffic and the people bustling on their way to work or doing their everyday chores. If I caught someone’s eye, I would nod my head and say, “Gruess Gott.’ Which was the normal way of saying hello to a stranger in this part of West Germany. My brand spanking new Vespa was a clue to them that I must be just starting out. Some would actually stop and ask where I was off to and if I was an American and all that. Then they would head off on their daily routine or whatever they had to do that day.

Well, I didn’t have anything to do that day except move westward or just stay set or whatever I wanted to do. It’s then that I think an overwhelming feeling of independence overcame me. I wasn’t beholden to anybody. Not Colonel Henderson, not Lieutenant Kohler, not to my parents, not to anybody. I can’t remember ever feeling this way.

I was to feel that way a lot on the road ahead. The sun was my clock and the leaves would be my calendar. But independen ce has its price I was to learn too.
I had $192.50 in my pocket in USA cash. I didn’t exchange it for the local currency. The Germans liked U.S. dollars even more than their own deutschmarks. I suspected everyone in Europe would be glad to accept the dollar.
Late in the afternoon, I learned my first lesson for the beginner on a motor scooter. Pay attention to the road. As I was nearing the village of Dettingen, I came up on a steep grade that ended in a beautiful view, actually a panoramic view, of a wide valley with little farms and quilted vegetable patches, I locked into the immensity of the scene and didn’t notice that the road made a sharp winding curve around the mountain.
I felt the scooter wheels hit the gravel that bordered the road. It was too late to avoid an accident. I guided the scooter so that it slid sideways into a guardrail that protected the road from a cliff.

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03 Feb, 2010 | Posted by: psn




GermanyClick on photo to enlarge
West Germany Woman at stove 1957 -Rohn Engh

Munich, West Germany 1956Click on photo to enlarge
MAN ASLEEP - HOFBRAU HOUSE -- Rohn Engh

Frankfurt, West German
Click on photo to enlarge
Couple at Gasthaus 1957 --Rohn Engh


4

My Story




Saying Goodbye to Army Life



I was thinking the other day what a good stage the army-life was for me over there in West Germany.
Yes, a good stage, like in the theater. I mean in the sense of Shakespeare’s famous theme about the ‘world’s only a stage’, and his other famous subject, ‘the difference between seeming and being.’

Back in my high school days, the students came from mostly families that were chicken farmers there on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. During the summer vacation time, over at the beach in Ocean City, about five miles inland where we lived, I spent most of my summer time at the ocean, at the beach and on the boardwalk with people from big cities like Baltimore and Washington, and even New York. I worked at summer beach jobs, so I got a lot of chance to talk with all kinds of people, of all ages, girls, boys.

Sometimes a high school friend of mine would come walking down the boardwalk and he would wave to me on the beach and I would pretend not to see him. I would be with one of those Philadelphia girls from some suburban family and I didn’t want her to see the kind of friends I had. I know now that was wrong, making those prejudgments. One of them went on to be a prominent doctor in a Washington hospital.

And you know something? I found that Shakespeare was right, at least for me. There are two levels of seeming and being in people. Whether it was the big city people I got to know in the summertime or the locals during the rest of the year. It became clear that if I wanted to get on in life, wherever I ended up, I’d have to deal with this ‘seeming and being’ thing.

That’s why I welcomed the idea of joining the Army when I was drafted during the Korean War. It would give me a different ‘stage’ to learn from. And later on, when I decided to take my Army discharge over in Europe, I guess it was one of the prime reasons I wasn’t ready to return home to the USA. I say “guess” because I didn’t say to myself something like, “I’m curious, as long as I’m here in Europe, I’m going to go out and learn about other people.” But that’s the way it turned out. And by the way, at first, I was only intending to travel to Europe. Other circumstances that I’ll tell you about later caused me to go farther into Africa.
But back to my farewell to the U.S. Army.
Whenever I see a recruiting poster for the U.S. Army, I think of the army as a massive contraption that sucks in young men and spits out two flavors: robots and mavericks. My impression is probably all wrong because I served in a peacetime Army in Germany.

You’re probably thinking “You didn’t serve in the Army you served in a peace-keeping corporation You didn’t serve in a crackerjack combat unit like the guy s over there in Korea are doing.”
You’d be right. And, worse you could say I let a lot of Nazis into the USA. And a lot of others things I was doing in my CIC job was listening in on a lot of German citizen’s phone calls and reading their mail.
We also had these new secret agent gimmicks like pounding a spy nail into a hotel wall and listening in on the conversation in the next room or photographing them with a long telephoto camera from across the street. We had won the war and were occupying West Germany, so we could act like victors. It’s not like we made them slaves or anything like that. Like in Roman times.

I was getting unhappy with the Army. In my army career I was playing their game and turning into a robot and didn’t like what I was doing. It was only Rick who encouraged my idea of traveling Europe with my guitar and singing for my supper. He even entertained the idea of coming along with me. That idea lasted about two minutes.

But I could understand. And I could understand my parent’s response when I wrote to them. “Think of your career. You’ve invested 4 years of art education!” They also knew that I had a job waiting for me at BBD&O in Baltimore with a big salary.
No one, at 8212th AAI Unit Wuerzburg except Rick thought it a wise move for me.
“You’re wasting your life,” one advised.

“You’ll be killed on the highways,” someone said.
A sergeant warned me, “Life on the outside is mean. You’ve had a free bed and a warm meal whenever you wanted it. You’ll soon learn what’s best.” The word was getting around.
Colonel Rice, my commanding officer, ordered more to report to his office on Monday morning. He was a man of middle age and had already seen twenty-some army years. Gosh, he was loud. There was nothing tender about his cadence-calling voice that shot in spurts from his wiry frame.

He looked at me with green piercing eyes from his seated position, as I stood rigid before him in the center of his carpeted office. “At ease Engh”, he barked, shuffling through some papers.
“Well, Engh, what’s the meaning of this request I have here? What’s this, you want an overseas discharge? What do you plan to do over here, -get a job? he roared. He enjoyed shouting this conversation so that office people in the adjacent office could hear. . He stared at me and then sat back in his big ol’ executive chair and folded his arms to wait for my answer with an expression that said, “You’re wasting my time. Hurry up.”

I wasn’t excepting all this. I just thought all I had to do was sign some kind of paper and that was it.
I wished for a slight moment that I had never requested an overseas discharge.
I gathered up some courage and answered, “Sir, I plan to travel the world.”
There was a long pause, of course. In the next door office there was silence over there. I thought I heard some tittering laughter. “Well, Engh, that’s very nice,” he continued, “I’m sure we’d all like to travel the world. You must be a very rich person.”
“No, sir. I’m not.
“Well, “ he shot back, “How much money do you have for this world trip?”
“Sir, I have six hundred and forty eight dollars.” I answered as officially as I could. Of course I couldn’t tell I sill had to buy the Vespa, sleeping bag, and pup tent, and $400 of that had to go to the motor scooter agency.
The sum impressed him and he questioned, “And how long do you think you could get on with that amount of money?”
“I have no idea, sir.”
I saw by his quick change of expression this wasn’t a very proper answer.
“You realize Engh, that the U.S. Army cannot afford to discharge people overseas who will become a burden to the government .He was getting close to the reason for calling me into the office. “Unless I can be assured that you will be financially responsible in your traveling, I can see no way that I can sign your release for an overseas discharge,” He paused for awhile and then asked, “What initial provisions are you going to need for this trip?”
I had hoped he was not going to ask that question. “I figured I’d need a sleeping bag, a pup tent, a guitar, a knapsack, and a motor scooter.”

He looked at me, holding back a smile, or even bellowing laughter. He reached for a notepad and them slid it away. He rested his chin on his clasped hands with his arms planted in a solid triangle on his desk this had turned into something humorous for him. On the other hand he probably entertained the idea that he might be dealing with a “nut” case.
“You’re not traveling by train and staying in hotels?” He brought the notepad back over and started making notes.
“No” I said.
“Well then what does a sleeping bag cost,” He began.
“Fifteen dollars, sir.”
“And a guitar?” he questioned without looking up from his desk.
There was silence in the next office.
“And knapsack??” He was taping his pencil against the notepad.
“Five dollars and fifty cents, sir.”
“And a motor scooter?” he said. He was smug now.
“Four hundred dollars, sir,” I said so low I could hear it in my head but I wasn’t sure he heard it.
He didn’t.
“What? He bellowed out, looking up from his scribbling.
I repeated it.
His eyes shot back at me like one of his automatic weapons. Then he returned to total up the figures I gave him.

“That comes to four hundred and fifty five dollars and fifty cents, Engh! You mean to tell me you’re leaving here with, “ and he swiftly subtracted, “one hundred and ninety-two dollars and fifty cents?”
My throat was dry. I couldn’t answer him.
He sat back in his chair and stared at me. “I think you had better look at this a little more seriously, Engh. I’ve taken more that than that on a weekend visit to Italy.”
He shot back again, “You think this trip over from a practical viewpoint. If you ask me, forget about the whole thing. Let’s consider you receiving your discharge in Baltimore. Then you can take whatever trip you want to take.”
I saluted.
I turned to leave his office and he added, “I heard reports that your friend Tolman might be traveling with you. If this is correct, tell him he can expect to take his discharge in Philadelphia.”
“He’s decided not to go on the trip, sir.” I said.

Colonel Rice answered only with an unfriendly grin and I left.
Those were dark days back in February 1957. I had only a month to convince the colonel that I could support myself. More problems began coming up.

I contacted the British and French consulate in Frankfort and learned it was impossible to apply for a visa for the African colonies unless I had a passport. That was a problem. U.S. Army regulations said military personnel could not be issued a passport until after their discharge. Since it took three or four months for an African visa to come through, it meant a long delay in Europe before I could head off on my trip.

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27 Jan, 2010 | Posted by: psn







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: psn




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: psn



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: psn

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: psn



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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29 Dec, 2009 | Posted by: psn






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December 29th 2009

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Reminiscences:

It's A Small World

by Rohn Engh

The world is getting smaller, and this story proves it.

In 1957, my wife, Jeri, who was on her way to attend her junior year of college at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, landed in London on the ocean liner the Queen Elizabeth. American students on board were greeted by British students who had volunteered to help the "Yanks" with their baggage and connecting trains to other parts of the British Isles.

Peter Johnston, a University of London student, introduced himself to Jeri, showed her London, and got her on the train to St. Andrews. They struck up a pen pal friendship. Thirty years later, when we visited him and his French wife, Clementine, in their home in Central England, I learned that Peter was a commercial pilot during the 60s and had flown out of the African town, Niamey, on the Niger River.

Niamey, then French West Africa, was familiar to me. A young German friend, Rudi Thurau, and I put in to the river port in 1957 after building a raft out of palm trees and gasoline drums and hooking it up to our motor scooter. Our trip ended halfway down river when I fell from a cliff while photographing, suffering a broken arm and internal injuries. I was released from the Niamey hospital shortly before Christmas, and wired my parents for passage to fly home.

When my parent's money was delayed, I got anxious and audacious. I approached the head of Texaco Petroleum in Niamey, a Mr. Locatelli, explaining my situation in French and asked to borrow $500. "I'd ike to be home for Christmas," I said.

We were strangers, but Monsieur Locatelli had heard about our attempt to raft down the Niger River, and how it had ended in a near-fatal accident. He was pensive for a long time, then pulled out his desk drawer and wrote out a check for the equivalent of $500 in French West African Francs. I bought my ticket to the USA.

On December 23rd, the money finally arrived from my parents. I paid Mr. Locatelli back, thanked him heartily and spent Christmas 1957 with my family in my home town, Ocean City, Maryland.

The following December 28th 1958, the Saturday Evening Post published 12 photos and my story of that ill-fated trip across the Sahara desert and down the Niger River.

Jeri, on her Christmas/New Year's vacation from her senior year in college, read the article, wrote to me. We arranged to meet and were married a year later!

But the story doesn't end there.

This past holiday, Peter Johnston and his wife, Clementine visited our farm from their current home on the west coast of France. It's a fishing village called Quimper.

Peter brought up the story about the fellow from Niamey who lent me $500. "Let me tell you something strange, "Peter said. "While visiting our local physician in Quimper, I just learned recently that my doctor, here in France, grew up in Niamey, West Africa."

"That's a coincidence," I said.

"I asked him what his father did in Niamey and he said he was the head of Texaco,", Peter said. "I asked him if his father ever mentioned the young adventurers who came through Niamey on their palm log raft hooked up to a motor scooter. "

'Sure did,' he said. 'That story is a legend in Niamey. And I often wondered if it were true...that my dad loaned a complete stranger from a foreign country $500. My father was no one to throw money away. I could never figure it out. He has since passed away, but always told that story around Christmas. I often wondered what happened to that American.'
"Well, guess what," Peter said to the physician. "My wife, Clementine and I are flying off tomorrow to visit Rohn and his wife, Jeri, in Wisconsin, USA. We'll wish him a Merry Christmas for you!"

I guess this really is a small world, huh?


(To view larger image, click on picture)

Rohn Engh, is publisher of PhotoStockNOTES. www.photosource.com





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