I'm Jack on Three's Company and I hear noises in Janet and Chrissy's room. I creep out of bed in the dark and wander towards their room. I have a Polaroid in my hands and am expecting to get some decent instant photos.
I wait for the right moment, kick the door open, but instead of Janet and Chrissy in a naked, wet embrace I see Mr. Roper.
He's wearing black leather chaps and nothing else (Aiii, my eyes!).
"I've been waiting for you Jack. Maybe you can tell me what to do with this?"
He's holding his plunger (no, not that one, the one from the show...)
-- I awake screaming and clutching the blankets. It was only a dream. It was only a dream. It was only a dream.
Well, my friend Jen was saying that I was getting too political.
I find that since I discovered the Blogosphere I have become addicted. Since I got going with writing Raging Kraut I find that I can't go one day without thinking about my blog. Because of a two-day seminar, I was cut off from the net and it felt like my arm had been hacked off at the elbow...I NEED to be connected. I need to know what is happening out there...
I find my opinions being swayed one way, then another because of other blogs out there. The people who maintain these journals write with such passion and talent that their pages are alive. No, sorry, I should restate that: Their pages are
ALIVE!
I hope to write better. I hope to sound better. I hope to have half the talent I see exhibited on their pages...
- A German Shepherd that is kept in a kennel all the time will bite and try to run away rather than play with you.
- 80 lbs of German Shepherd defeats 80 lbs of 8-year old boy everytime, even without the illegal use of teeth.
- Bleeding and crying after getting stomped by said German Shepherd is not enough to guarantee that you won't get yelled at for letting the dog escape into the blissful freedom of a world without cages and choking dog chains.
- Opa didn't have the same last name as me or dad because he wasn't my real Opa.
- My real Opa died in the war: "You mean he was a Nazi?" This caused one big fight between my parents and my Oma, who had just open-palm slapped a 8-year old across the face, (Technically he was a Nazi, as everyone professed to be at the time "or else they would be hung on meathooks." This was the beginning of the "we weren't at fault, we were just following orders" excuse that many in my family still cling to.)
- My Opa told me I was stupid for watching Hogan's Heroes because of the way it insulted German people - like Hogan's Heroes was the reason German people were treated like shit after the war (I encountered much of the anti-German crap for much of my childhood: usually it was punctuated with a bully's fist. It wasn't right, but I do understand it considering the price paid in WW2...) On second viewing, Hogan's Heroes portrayal of Nazis is rather insulting to those that sacrificed to get rid of Hitler, making them out to be bumbling clods rather than the inhuman monsters that efficiently committed genocide. For a refresher in National Socialism I recommend this.
- My Oma and Opa weren't really as nice as they pretended to be.
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It's funny how the words "Concentration Camp" have come to be only associated with one specific meaning. Auschewitz, Dachau etc. were more correctly "Death Camps": the purpose of which was the liquidation of the undesireables of the Nazi regime - Jews, Gypsies, gays, communists, etc.
There are Concentration Camps in the world today: but they are given names such as Refugee Camps etc. My mother died in 1992 after a long bout with Cancer. I was much younger when she told me this story and she was much younger when she lived it. I can't say how perilous her experience was - I don't think she could either. That is the beauty of youth: kids can bounce back so much quicker from things that would scar an adult terribly...
My mother told me a story once when I'd lost my student ID (at 12 years of age the only thing a student ID was good for was discounted fries at the local McDonald's so naturally I was frantic.)
In 1944, fleeing their homes in Romania from the advancing Russians, my mother Maria, her sister Dora and my Grandfather (whom I'd never met and whose name I don't even know - that's how much my mother hated him! But that's another story...) were heading west. They were stopped by German infantry ("not really German" said my mother. "many were eastern European conscripts. They looked like they didn't like us very much.") At this point, it's discovered that my Grandfather does not have papers for himself or his daughters. Whether he forgot them or had them taken from him earlier my mother didn't know. At this point she has realized that this was the first time she had ever seen her father afraid.
They are sent to a local town hall which is being administered by an SS officer. Several blocks down the street is the train station, where several hundred people are being "escorted" onto trains for the local concentration camps, then eventually heading "east" for "resettlement."
The SS officer hardly looked at the people in front of him. My grandfather protests that he is an Austrian, a citizen of the Reich (true), and that a simple phone call to the next village will clear up who he is and who his daughters are. The SS officer is about to stamp the orders that would take my family to that train - he hesitates for a moment and then looks closer at my Grandfather and his daughters...
[editors note: Now at this point, the Nazi apologist would write a little thing about how this heroic German officer would secretly be doing anything, looking for any way to save the people who come before him, that he was only following orders, was afraid of being shot by his peers if found out etc. etc. BULLSHIT!]
He looks at my Grandfather and laughs:
"Well, my friend, let us make that call. This train is almost full and tomorrow there will be another. If we don't know who you are by then..." he let the implication die off there.
I've seen pictures from the time. Many families probably have these pictures as well, but they don't show them publicly because of the reaction they will produce. My grandfather was wearing a rather stupid-looking Hitler mustache, which was probably the only thing that prevented him from being automatically loaded up on that train and sent to whatever fate awaited.
So I'm on the platform at 8:30am yesterday to take the Go Train in to work yesterday. I figured it would be smarter than trying to drive with all the other losers who still have summer tires on their cars considering the 10 inches of snow that has fallen overnight.
I'm on the cellphone with my boss, informing her that I'll be about an hour late and mention that the Go Transit line out of Milton is an hour late and 3 trains behind (had nothing to do with the Lakeshore line, but I didn't know that at the time.)
This guy in a business suit is trying to not listen in but I catch him looking at me. He's tall, thin and slightly strange looking - kinda like Kramer from Seinfeld minus the interesting hair. In my brain I've already labelled him KRAMER-LITE
"Excuse me," he says. "Did you say that the train is an hour late?"
"No." I say. "The Milton line is an hour behind."
"Oh." He looked relieved. "I usually take the 8:05, but the snow put me behind." He goes on to talk at length about the train, the conductor's wisecracks and how everyone who takes the 8:05 has a real sense of community...
I'm getting tired of this conversation. I decide to say one or two sentences, then move down the platform to where I normally board the first passenger car.
"I was here on time, but there wasn't any parking." says I. "So I took my car home, then walked the twenty minutes to get here."
"Well, there's other lots around here to park."
"I didn't feel like leaving my car to be buried by a snowplow." There. Nice final sentence. If I can just move before he starts talking again...
The guy then feels the need to explain all the different parking lots close by. Dammit. He's hijacked the conversation...I'm looking at my watch, annoyed at someone giving me advice that I didn't ask for at a point when the advice does me no good...
I interrupt. "Well I didn't feel like driving considering that no one in this town knows how to drive in the snow." I start to walk away...
"You know what the problem is?" he says conspiratorially leaning in, looking both ways, like he's about to tell me the meaning of life.
I can guess what's coming.
"It's all the darkies and ragheads that have never seen snow that cause all the accidents. These people are everywhere!"
Why do all the racist fucks always want to talk to me when I'm standing around waiting somewhere? I think to myself as I turn wordlessly away from him. I have no idea what the look on my face is, but it can't be nice as Kramer-lite looks disappointed.
Guess he was expecting me to pile in when some witty racist shit-speak of my own. Either that or he was trying to pick me up...
When I was younger I used to argue with these assholes, some of whom were related to me by blood. (I'd be embarassed if everyone didn't have an Archie Bunker somewhere on the family tree.)
Then when I got older I'd ignore them, as they were old (at least in my family they were...) and they would die soon, and anyways they would put up such a wall of ignorance that no amount of arguing or reason could sway them. They'd always end the conversation with how because I was so much younger than they were, I didn't know what I was talking about. Then I'd get it from my parents for "not respecting my elders."
I figured that if we waited long enough, eventually everyone would come around without the pervasive influence of the racists that have come before us.
Now I'm getting the urge to fight them again because THEY ARE NOT DYING FAST ENOUGH! And, even scarier, they're finding replacements. The only thing stopping me is that old parable about getting covered in mud when you fight with pigs. But my patience is wearing.
Yes, these racist goat-fuckers are everywhere...
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A friend phoned last night and said that for a class she had to write 500 words about an immigrant's experiences in Canada. I will write far more than 500 words...
The only other thing that I will say before the story begins is that throughout the twentieth century the Americans have been liberators. Despite current mistaken opinions to the contrary, the Americans have not been interested in Empire-building. Germany and Japan were conquered, yet rebuilt for the Germans and for the Japanese: if the result of World War 2 had been reversed, would Britain be rebuilt for the British? In this day and age it would do us well to remember this fact...
Eastern Germany 1945
My father Kurt, not yet 16 years of age had spent a lot of the war being sick. Living rough, he developed pneumonia, but because the quality of medical care during the war had deteriorated substantially he was put in the typhoid wing of what was left of the local hospital. Guess what he developed next? When he recovered, it was his turn to help the old farmer who had tended to him in the ward while he was delerious.
Seperated from his mother, his father killed in France 3 years earlier, he had spent most of the war alone working on a farm. The old farmer who had taken him in spent his time brewing moonshine for bribes should any soldiers happen by: first the Wehrmacht (German Army regulars), then the Red Army troopers who had occupied the land on their march towards Hitler's bunker in Berlin.
The scenario was always the same.
Kurt is told to hide. Young able-bodied youths are being shipped East when found. Many will never return.
The farmer waits in his kitchen with a newly-filled bottles on the kitchen table. The soldiers arrive and make noises about searching the farm. Maybe one or two soldiers actually make a half-hearted effort of poking into the surrounding barn and immediate fields: the farmer tells my father that these are usually the soldiers that have pissed-off the leader of the troopers somehow - they are not allowed to drink this time and are sullen. They sometimes break things and are disciplined by the troop leader. He doesn't want to jeapordize his alcohol supply. He knows that he could take the bottles by force: but if he's nice to the farmer he knows that he will get the better blends and a larger quantity every week than if his men ransack the place. Golden goose eggs indeed...
Germans, Russians - the soldiers get drunk just the same no matter what language they speak...The farmer expects that soon he will have to deal with American soldiers, for of course the Americans will push the Russians back. They just have to. The Americans and Britons cannot let Communism spread over all of Eastern Europe. The allies will have a falling-out and the Russians will be pushed back to the Urals...It made perfect sense to everyone in Eastern Germany occupied by the Red Army. They just have to wait. Even when at war, the Germans knew that America shared their distaste of Communism. It was only a matter of time.
When Kurt returns from the fields in the breaking dawn the soldiers have left and the farmer's face is grim: "You'll have to leave." he says to my father.
"What have I done wrong?" Kurt asks, fear gripping him now. Though hard, this life was better than most, better than lots of homeless youngsters wandering the countryside with no food, family or possessions.
"The Americans are not coming." spits the farmer. "The war will end soon. The Russians will stay and they shall have my farm. They will take my land, but allow me to work on it for next to nothing - all for the glory of Mother Russia!" My father has told me that the farmer looked more grim and resigned to this than anything else: as if he knew that the Americans would turn on their allies was a story the villagers were telling themselves to give themselves hope.
"The soldiers said this?" my father asks.
"No they didn't have to...I had family in Russia. I know what Communists do. It's too late for me to start over. But you: you're young and you can make it to the West. The Russians and Americans will meet in Berlin and then they will carve us up as so much veal. The Soviets will get their share: they suffered in the war too much to not make us suffer afterward."
The farmer looks at my father. "Come let's bake some bread for your trip."
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We have had three wonderful married years together in addition to the three years that we knew each other previously, and every day I find that every supposedly wrong step that we have taken has brought us closer together.
If we had listened to our friends instead of listening to our hearts, all of those stupid games that couples play would've ended our relationship very quickly. The time, the distance, the second-guessing...Everyone thinks that they KNOW the right moves as if there's some stupid playbook and all you need to do is call the right play to succeed.
Love can be hard, but it can also be easy, so very easy, when you are on the right road. If it's the right road, you just know it.
And we know that we are on the right road.
For my wife: It was very easy to love you. The road will always be ours.
Main Entry: sau·er·kraut
Pronunciation: 'sau(-&)r-"kraut
Function: noun
Etymology: German, from sauer sour + Kraut greens
Date: 1617
: cabbage cut fine and fermented in a brine made of its own juice with salt
Main Entry: kraut
Pronunciation: 'kraut
Function: noun
Etymology: German, cabbage, from Old High German krut
Date: 1855
1 : SAUERKRAUT
2 often capitalized, usually disparaging : GERMAN
If only it were that simple. Much like Gollum in Lord of the Rings who both loved and hated his "precious" ring, I both hate and love sauerkraut. Like many first-generation Canadians born of European parents, I had "ethnic" (in my case, German) food stuffed down my throat from as early as I could remember. I would come home from school and see that giant pot steaming away knowing --KNOWING!! -- that I'd be eating that stuff for at least two weeks...
And now after writing this I find I'm incredibly hungry.
[Rue] on 01/24/07 11:09 : With bated breath I await your return to blogging. [go]
[Rue] on 01/24/07 11:09 : With bated breath I await your return to blogging. [go]
[Rue] on 01/24/07 11:09 : With bated breath I await your return to blogging. [go]
[Rue] on 01/24/07 11:09 : With bated breath I await your return to blogging. [go]
[Rue] on 01/24/07 11:09 : With bated breath I await your return to blogging. [go]
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-- One of the Original Red Ensigns carried by the Penticton 1st Volunteers. It was present at Vimy Ridge when our little Dominion stood up and became a nation worth fighting for...
