On the occasion of my 40-year High School reunion in 2007, I was invited for dinner at the home of an old friend and classmate, Bob Wilkinson, and his wife Mary, who was in the class right behind behind Bob and me. After dinner, Mary left for some family happenings. Bob and I had a long conversation, during which Bob asked me about the summer of 1966, and my trip to Germany as a foreign exchange student that summer. I was happy to tell my story. I had never told the whole story to anyone before that evening. I rattled on for what must have been over an hour, and as I recount the tale now, I can add many details to what I related to Bob that evening.

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My Junior Year in High School was coming to an end In the Spring of 1966 . The warm weather had chased away the harsh winter that had In January seen one of the most powerful blizzards in recent memory - the infamous and tragic Blizzard of 1966. Now in May, winter was finally gone.  My classmate Bob Wilkinson invited me to bring a date and to come along on a hayride. Bob W.and Mary Beth Whitman were a couple then, and Mary knew a girl that Mary thought would be someone that I would like. . She and Mary played violin together in the school orchestra.    Mary introduced us, and I soon asked my new acquaintance to come along with me on the hayride.  She accepted.   Although she was my classmate, I had never really noticed her before. . She was very pretty, very petite, and very cute. Her voice was soft, and her eyes and her smile were warm.

The evening of the hayride we all met out in the farmland to the west of my hometown of Baldwinsville, New York, where a local farmer brought his tractor and a big hay wagon that we all climbed aboard. The farmer drove his tractor and wagon along a rural road, West Sorrell Hill Road, that climbed a gentle slope among the big maple trees overhanging the road. It was a beautiful warm spring evening in the countryside, and as the big orange sun set and twilight came, the couples in the hay wagon grew quiet and cuddled up with each other. I cuddled with my girl and we kissed. . By the time the hay ride ended I was developing a serious crush on this sweet girl.

A new song came on the radio that captured my feelings. It was called "Oh How Happy", by the Shades of Blue. It's almost like a Gospel song. I felt uplifted and joyful.

My mind was busy thinking of ways that I would be near this girl, to talk with her, to hold her. She invited me to meet her family, her Mom and Dad, her sisters and her brother. She was a ballet dancer, and she asked me to come to a dance recital where she was to perform. When I arrived at her home that evening she was in a beautiful dress with her hair done up high to show off her pretty face. Her Mom and sister fussed over her. When she came onstage to dance that evening she was so beautiful. I was falling in love, spinning and falling endlessly. I walked in a daze through each warm Spring day.

Two letters came in the mail. One letter was from the American Field Service (AFS).  It told me that I had been sponsored by a German family to travel to Germany for the summer. I had only a week or so to get ready. By the time I got this letter I had almost forgotten that it was even a possibility.  I found out later I was one of the last students to be picked that year.

The other letter was, from Peter, the oldest child in the German family, who told me of plans he had for our summer.

The American Field Service (AFS) began in World War I as an organization of American volunteers who served as ambulance drivers at the front lines.   After the War the organization changed its mission, hoping to promote international peace and understanding by helping students from many countries participate in an exchange.  In the US the AFS was supported by schools and by their communities, with contributions to help with the costs of transportation.

Link   American Field Service

Months earlier I had been one of a group of classmates to compete to represent my school in the American Field Service foreign exchange program.  I had heard of it for years.  It was a great honor to be selected.   Every year a student from a foreign country came to our high school . The kids who came over to our school were very smart, and they seemed more sophisticated and grown up than our Seniors, especially the European girls. I imagined they were like college girls. Our Senior Class that year had a girl from Sweden.  She was a blonde Viking goddess, a beauty who mesmerized every boy in the school, if I was any judge.

A committee of our teachers invited me and a half-dozen or so of my classmates to participate in the selection process. The final selection was the result of an interview by a panel of adults from the community. They were smiling and friendly. It wasn't like a job interview.  I was comfortable and confident as they asked me a few questions. A woman on the panel asked about by brothers and sisters.  I told her I had seven. She asked me if I knew their birthdays, and I quickly rattled them off from oldest to youngest. David Oct 1. Gary Nov 4. Marilyn Aug 31 Lorraine Oct 29. Pamela Oct 2. Stuart Feb 3. Joanne Jan 22.   Easy. The woman complimented me.   I was thrilled later when I was told I would represent our school. I was told that her birthday question clinched it for me.

When kids came to our school from other countries, they always came for an entire school year, but I wanted the Summer program.  I didn't want to miss my Senior Year.  I had a new girlfriend. 

This was only the first step.  An overseas family had to pick me from thousands of students from all over America if I was to spend the summer with them.  And now, months later,  the letters came in the mail.  I was so happy.

Only a few weeks before getting the letters, when the snow had finally left the ground, I stood in my back yard, facing the western sun, not wanting my family to see me crying.   I was a lonely, heartsick, seventeen year-old boy, just like any other - but today was different.  I had reasons to hope.  I had met a sweet girl.and I was heading for an adventure.

I had to leave so quickly that I would miss some of my final exams. I had to have my photo taken and obtain a passport. I had to be in New York City in only a few days to board the ship that would sail to Europe. I would bring the $175 saved up from several years of delivering newspapers. My Mom lent me her small tweed suitcase to pack my belongings for the trip, the same suitcase she took to to Arizona to marry my Father in 1944.    A few clothes, a set of salt and pepper shakers my Mom gave as a house gift for the family in Germany. My Mom's Kodak camera. The little transistor radio that my Mom had given me three summers earlier. It was the little bonus gift that she had received from the company that had covered our house with aluminum siding.

Buying a 9-volt battery for my little radio was one of my rewards for trudging along on my paper route every day. Now my younger brother Gary would have to take over the paper route while I was gone for the summer.

On the night before I left to travel to Germany, I carried my little radio and its earpiece as I went to see my new sweetheart to say goodbye.  As I walked down Morgan Road, the street where she lived, the radio played a song by Little Anthony and the Imperials - "Going Out of My Head, Over You"   Twilight had darkened and the air was still.  The street light shone through the new maple leaves and on to the lavender lilac bushes in full bloom. The street was filled with the sweet perfume of the lilacs, a perfume that is my favorite of all the flowers. I was intoxicated by the scent and by Little Anthony's song. 

My goodbye kiss is lost to my memory. I was intoxicated with the song, and the lilacs, and with happiness. As a parting gift she gave me her photograph, a studio portrait in a soft tan leather album.  I had to hurry home and be ready to go in a few short hours. I placed the photo in Mom's suitcase.

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My older brother was home from his Junior Year at Saint Bonaventure University in Olean New York, a small college town in the Allegheny Mountains near the Pennsylvania border. I jumped into his black Plymouth Valiant and we set off for New York City. I was tired from restless sleep the night before. I might have dozed off during the hours it took to arrive in New York City.

We planned to arrive the evening before I boarded the ship. We were to stay overnight at the apartment of a college student, Dick Kelly, whom my brother knew from High School and who was attending Fordham University in the Bronx.   Early the next day my brother would drive me down to the docks of Lower West Side Manhattan where the ship was waiting.

Dick welcomed us into the Bronx apartment that he shared with two others.  Dick Kelly's younger sister Laurie was my classmate all the way from First Grade at St. Mary's School until our graduation from the next year, 1967.  Dick had been in the first class to graduate from St. Mary’s school, where I remembered him as a tall, handsome boy, a charismatic star student whom I looked up to, and an altar boy I would see at Church on Sundays.

No sooner had we arrived and had a short conversation with Dick that my brother announced that he and Dick would be leaving for Greenwich Village in Lower Manhattan, to listen to folk music in one of the famous Village coffee houses. My brother explained that because I was only seventeen and not yet of drinking age, I had to stay behind.

I was hugely disappointed. Soon after they left, I ventured out of the apartment and walked along Fordham Road looking for something to do. The radio was playing a song by the Lovin' Spoonful. "Hot Town, Summer in the City, Back of My Neck Getting dirt and Gritty", and as it happened the city that night was very hot and humid.  I had a splitting headache. The sidewalks of New York City seemed 100 feet wide and there were thousands of people, faces everywhere, packed on the street corners.

I found a movie theater and bought a ticket, but I was only able to find a seat on the third balcony. I had arrived at the very ending of the first feature. It was a Western - Shane, starring Alan Ladd, who was just then saying good bye to the young boy before riding off into the sunset. It was so hot up there in the top balcony of this huge theater. The second feature was Blue Hawaii, starring Elvis Presley. I was only able to sit through the first half hour or so before I abandoned the theater.  Somehow I found my way back through the street crowds and the heat to Dick Kelly's apartment. I fell into sleep before my brother and Dick Kelly returned from their evening in The Village.

The next morning we had a few hours to kill before I had to board the ship, so my brother decided to take me down to Lower Manhattan and back to Greenwich Village. It was a bright Spring morning in Washington Square. As we watched the people, the NYU students and the beatniks, a tall man with a pastel shirt and yellow hair in a puffed up bouffant pompadour hairdo sat on the grass and started kissing another man. On the other side of the street there was a squadron of "dykes on bikes"; short squatty women built like fire hydrants, wearing leathers head to toe, and standing near their beat-up scroungy-looking Harley Davidsons. Greenwich Village. Just part of the avalanche of strange people and images and sounds of New York that buried this small-town boy..

As I look back, I should have been grateful to my older brother for taking the time and spending his money on gas to deliver me to New York City, but he and I had never got along. Did he do it from brotherhood, or from obligation? Resentment had smoldered in me for many years growing up.  I could never tell him about my feelings, my heartache at leaving my girl for the summer, not even about the excitement of traveling across the sea. With my older brother it was always just cut and dried.

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The MS Seven Seas

Now all of it swept away as I boarded The MS Seven Seas. The ship was all painted white. We were told that the ship was old and had once been an aircraft carrier and a troop carrier, but in doing research I found more details  

Link:   The History of the MS Seven Seas

The ship was launched in 1940, built by the Sun Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Company, Chester, PA as a Class C3 cargo vessel. The US Navy acquired the ship almost immediately and renamed it USS Long Island, at first using it as an auxiliary aircraft transport in the WWII Atlantic, capable of carrying approximately 20 aircraft to Europe from US factories. Soon, however, the USS Long Island was transferred into service supporting numerous naval battles in the WWII Pacific, notably Guadalcanal. The Long Island received a Battle Star and special Plaque for meritorious service in the Pacific. After the war the ship was mothballed, and then in 1948 it was purchased by a Swiss company for use as a freighter. Another change of ownership in 1949 saw the ship renamed MS Nelly and sent to Italy for major rebuild and re-purposing to a transport ship for carrying migrants to Australia from many countries, including Germany.  In 1953 the ship was extensively rebuilt, upgraded and converted to First Class and Tourist Class passenger liner service. At this time the ship was finally renamed MS Seven Seas, under which name it continued to operate. (MS = Merchant Ship)

The Statue of Liberty in the distance was the last we saw of America.

We were told that MS Seven Seas was the smallest transatlantic passenger liner in operation. It was capable of 17 knots, which was a little faster than how fast my family's small fishing boat with a 7.5 horsepower Evinrude would go running flat out. At a steady 15 knots, the 3,100 nautical mile trip to Rotterdam harbor would take around 8 days, but our voyage would run slower to allow for us American students to receive crash courses in the language we would be speaking, as well as instructions in culture and etiquette.

There were approximately 1500 American students boarding, and we were herded into groups and organized and instructed on the daily routines that would carry us along for two weeks. I was part of one of the groups of two dozen or so boys and girls headed for Germany. The boys of our group shared a cabin below decks in the aft of the ship where we would sleep in bunk beds and shower in a gang shower nearby. Our cabin was on D Deck, just below the water line.  There was no porthole. At night we heard the sloshing and swishing of waves against the hull. All of the boys on board were stowed aft, and all of the girls on board had cabins forward, from the bow to midship.

Midship held the large dining halls where my group would be seated among the larger group that was rotated with other groups to take our meals. Our meals were served by busy ship stewards who came to our tables with white aprons and large trays from which they placed the food on our plates. We had the same stewards every day. They were kindly, very reserved older gentlemen, quick, efficient, professional. My favorite meal was Tea Time at about 2PM where the stewards would come in with large trays of cakes and strong coffee.

During the day my boys' group was joined by some of the girls who were also on their way to meet German families.  A young German man instructed us in simple German phrases that would help us get along with our new families. A few phrases remain with me to this day. For example "Reich mir bitte das brot," (Please pass the bread). And very importantly "Bitte wechseln Sie dies in Deutches geld" (Please exchange this for German money). We were asked to do our best to speak German as a mark of respect, even though most Germans are taught in school to speak the King's English. We were also cautioned that if we were to encounter American tourists, we were not to rush over to them and act as if we were being rescued back into civilization. We were also advised that we would find no peanut butter in Germany. Over the two weeks of our voyage I learned much from this young man. Even after the passage of many decades, when I recently met a German married couple who were visiting my in-laws, they were surprised and amused at the German phrases I was still able to recall from memory.

I was sailing on a ship filled with beautiful American boys and girls chosen for their optimism and congenial spirit. There was no snobbery or competitiveness, but a lot of joking around and fun. There was a cute girl from California in our study group with reddish blond hair and we flirted and kissed a little one afternoon.  I connected with a boy in our cabin from a small town like mine, from Marietta, Ohio, near the West Virginia border. We became fast friends and shared a lot of conversation. A few of the kids had portable record players from which we heard songs like "Hanky Panky" by Tommy James and "Along Came Mary"  by the Association, songs that were on the charts at the time we embarked. Once at sea there was no radio reception.

One day I took a photo with my Mom's camera of a pretty girl leaning on the ship's rail in the late afternoon sun. Her long hair was lifted by the breeze as she gazed out at the sea's far horizon.  The photo is lost, but I still picture her in my mind.

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After two weeks at sea we approached the European Continent at dusk and under overcast and fog. We entered Rotterdam Harbor through a succession of narrow canals through flatland. Unlike New York City there was no skyline of tall buildings. After a long passage through industrial areas, the gray-green canal waters brought us along the narrow steep-roofed Dutch buildings that are all joined together into one long structure. As the ship docked I could see Dutch merchant marine sailors wearing long bell-bottomed trousers and shoulder-length hair - a fashion that would soon be exported to the United States. Quick farewells among the boys and girls as the ship quickly unloaded us all; and our guides shepherded us to the huge train station where we found our proper platforms.

European trains were very different from American trains. They strictly ran on time. They were part of an extensive international system that carried millions of passengers every day. They were powered by steam locomotives - not diesel-electrics like in America. These locomotives resembled the steam locomotives that operated in America up through the 1940s - except that the European locomotives were gleaming black machines, polished and trimmed in red - things of beauty and pride. The rails were well maintained and smooth, allowing for very fast speeds between cities.

The compartment and passageways were paneled in varnished blond wood, very clean and comfortable. I was told to be sure not to miss my stop because my train would continue non-stop straight to Paris, so I listened intently for the word "Duren" in the announcements. Arriving at my destination in the city of Duren, I left the train, carrying my Mom's little suitcase.

I carried my suitcase up a rise in the road beside the railway station, and at the top of the rise I saw a woman with a teenage boy. It was very late and I was the only boy from my train there, so I had no doubt that they were waiting for me. She greeted me with a big smile and we drove away. It was ten miles or so, 13 kilometers, and we entered their home through the big gate into the courtyard. I was invited into the home of the von Laufenberg family. The house was dark; I sat at a table and was offered a hard bread roll sandwich and a large glass of beer. Then upstairs to my room and sleep after my long journey.

I slept late the next morning and came downstairs. The children had already gone to school. The stairway descended into a large entry hall with entrances to the street and to the courtyard in back. At the base of the staircase wall there was a very large and ancient trunk with a bulging lid like a pirate chest. It had a large, dark, rusty lock and an iron plate that was inscribed 1546, from which I gathered that the Von Laufenberg family had lived here for centuries. On top of the trunk was a fur skin upon which rested a great long gun with a massive gunstock and an octagonal barrel with a bore of over an inch. It was like a small cannon, so heavy that it could only have been used with the barrel supported on a standard of some sort. I had seen medieval drawings of such guns used centuries ago and I guessed that this gun was there to defend the family home.

The von Laufenberg home was a compound of perhaps two acres encircled by a tall brick wall and entered only through the massive wooden double gate. The residence fronted on the street and the back door opened to the paved courtyard, around which were arranged the barns and other farm buildings, everything built of brick. Behind the barns there were the gardens and a large orchard. This arrangement was completely different from an American farm, inasmuch as the farm buildings were in the middle of town, and the farm fields were outside of town. It was an arrangement dating back to Feudal times. The Von Laufenberg farm had grain fields which were reached by driving tractors and equipment past the outskirts of town.

The main house residence was all brick and stone and dark wood. There was little decoration of any kind. No wallpaper, photos, paintings or art work. The courtyard side of the house comprised the dining room and the large kitchen. The street side contained a parlor, which was never used, and a formal dining room, used for Sunday tea time.  The bedrooms were upstairs, where the bathroom was also located.    In Germany the bathroom is called the "WC" (pronounced vay-say), adopted from the British WC for "Water Closet".  In Germany "WC" was a sly joke on Winston Churchill, the inimitable foe of WWII Germany.

As the children arrived home from school I met them. Peter, the eldest at 16, had met me at the train station. He was tall and very pale-skinned, with coarse sandy hair and icy blue eyes. He spoke with a pronounced lisp and seemed slightly effeminate. I was to stay in Peter's bedroom.  I hoped that he would not resent me taking his room, but I already had a feeling that he did, and understandably so.

Anneliese, 15, was next in age. A robust, buxom girl, tall, broad-shouldered, brown hair in a sort of pageboy style, with a big smile. Her mother's cheeks were bright red, but Anneliese's cheeks were a softer color, rose, like she was wearing a little blush. Her eyes were somewhat lighter than her mother's darker eyes. 

Next in line was Georg, perhaps 13, but Georg was not at home now. He was off in boarding school and I would only meet him later. The youngest child was Maria, 11. Maria had delicate features, slender and fine-boned, with porcelain complexion, whereas her older sister Anneliese was a copy of her mother with her cheerful smile, laughing eyes and open personality. Peter and Maria were quieter, more tentative, more secretive.

The family had a live-in cook/housekeeper named Brunhilde (of all things). Brunhilde was tall with reddish blonde hair. Like Mrs. von L. and Anneliese, she had broad shoulders, wide hips, strong legs and a cheerful disposition. Brunhilde didn't take meals with the family. She was engaged to be married, yet during my entire stay I never saw her fiancé, nor did she seem to go dating.

Uncle Ferdi lived in the side house on the other side of the entry gate. A small, frail, mysterious man, he did not take meals with us. He only appeared a very few times, once to generously offer me the use of one of his very expensive Leica cameras, which I politely declined, as they were very complicated and I was afraid I would break something. I could not decide whether he was Mrs. von Laufenberg's brother, or her brother-in-law, but I leaned toward him being her own brother.

The von Laufenberg Family. 
Back row.  Anneliese, Frau von Laufenberg, cousin, Peter (hidden).
Next row - Maria, Georg, Aunt, Brunhilde, Uncle Ferdi
Front - boy cousin, girl cousin

  

Our supper that afternoon would typify the evening meal. Dark rye bread, hard crusted dinner rolls, butter, even darker rye bread, with rough milled cracked seeds, very thinly sliced, and held together with dark molasses. Soft boiled eggs and various types of wurst - sausage. White sausage like American Bockwurst, and purple blutwurst - blood sausage with little chunks of white fat. Occasionally we had sliced tongue. I don't recall ever having things like a roast beef or a ham. Everything was sausages. So many varieties, all delicious.  Cooked purple cabbage. Boiled small potatoes. These staple foods more or less constituted every meal. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. I was very happy with all of it.

I was particularly fond of kuchen - the German cakes that Brunhilde baked for us. Occasionally on a Sunday we would gather for tea time in the formal dining room. Coffee with kuchen. These were not fine Parisian pastries. Typically German, their cakes are substantial, full-bodied, satisfying. We also had potato pancakes filled with plums that I had picked. I loved them.

I immediately adopted the German style of handling tableware. Fork in the left hand, knife in the right. Hands held palms down. Food is pushed onto the back of the fork tines with the knife. Food is not scooped up with the fork. Fork and knife remain held in hand. There is no picking up and setting down.

It's a very efficient way of eating. If they had something like peas they would mash them in with potatoes so they would stick together on the fork.

I gave Mrs. von Laufenberg the salt-and-pepper set that my Mom had sent along for a house gift, and they were promptly set in a glass-windowed cabinet in the dining room. Germans don't use salt-and-pepper shakers at the table. They don't use pepper at all, and table salt, if it's used at all, is kept in a little salt cellar from which a pinch is taken. I was somewhat embarrassed that my house gift was not something they would use.  But how was my Mom to know?

At evening meals the family all sat at the dining room table and there was much conversation about the events of the day. Unfortunately I was able to understand almost none of it, but it was fun to watch and listen.  Mrs. von L.  encouraged the conversation, which was punctuated by laughter, especially between Mother and Anneliese, who laughed and smiled easily and openly. Burping was not uncommon, and there was no embarrassment. Occasionally Anneliese would stretch her arms out and pull back her shoulders, lifting up her chest. She was delightfully natural and un-self conscious. No one checked to see if I was looking, thank goodness.

The children's father had passed away at least ten years before.  I never heard them speak of him, except to tell me that he had been a prisoner of war in WWII and had been held in a prison camp in Arizona, from which I have deduced that he must have been an officer. The Americans would not have bothered sending an enlisted man to Arizona. He must have been captured by the Americans at some point during the last year of the war, during the long offensive from D-Day to the end. There were no photos of him that I could see. I vaguely recall that we visited his grave once at the church cemetery in the village.

The village church was a very modest brick building, very old.  Inside I was struck by the sight of a prominent statue of a martyr or saint, standing in agony with several bloody wooden spears run through his body, all in full color.   It was quite gruesome. Most times we attended church in a chapel up at the air base. Church was even more somber here than back home in Baldwinsville, and because it was in German, I didn't understand much of it, although I did memorize the Our Father in German. "Vater Unser, wehr ist in Himmel, geheiliget Deine Name. . .".   

One bonus of being in Germany was that I didn't have to go to Confession. Come to think of it, I don't recall any of the family going to Confession, whereas at home it was a weekly torture.   I didn't know the German names of the Seven Deadly Sins, except murder - Mord, which I picked up from TV.  As a matter of habit, I continued to go through the motions- up, down, stand, kneel, sit, and I maintained my normal level of guilt.   The German choreography differed only slightly.  

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After my first day the children went back to school. German schools run nearly the whole year, with only a short break of two week or so at the end of August, which was nearly two months away. I unpacked my suitcase in Peter's room. The bed was curved, almost like a hammock, so it was only comfortable sleeping on my back. The bed covering was a thick goose down featherbed that was very warm and soft.  I took out the soft leather album with my girl's photograph, opened it, and propped it on the bedroom table so that I could see her as I fell asleep.  I was sure they must have found it strange that I had her photo.  Country teens in Germany didn't have girlfriends. 

Left to myself, I began to explore the farm compound and all the buildings. The big barn on the left held the hay and the grain. The small barn on the right had the pigs and the little piglets, which they call farkels. What a funny name for the cute little pink piglets squealing and scampering with curly little tails .  They had a dog named Wolfie, a black German Shepherd who lived in a pen built into the corner of the big barn.  On each side of the barn corner there was a window opening in the brick wall with iron bars to keep Wolfie in, like a jail cell.  He was a guard dog, not a pet.  He barked, like all Shepherds do, but he did not growl at me.  I saw him outside his pen maybe once or twice.

I tried to find ways to be useful, and it happened that the plums were ready for picking, so I took a long ladder and a bucket and began to pick the sweet red plums. I dropped some on the ground and immediately the pigs gathered around the base of the ladder to gobble them up, and they kept jostling the ladder. I was afraid they would knock me off the ladder, so I climbed down the ladder and kicked them away, but they came right back.

One of the hired hands, a man in his 20s, joined me picking one day and he asked me "Wie alt bist du"? He had to ask a few times before I figured out that he was saying - "How old are you", at which point I answered "Siebzehn jahre" - Seventeen years.. That was pretty much the extent of the conversation, but it was enough to establish a friendly connection.

On another day I found two other farmhands, older men, in the big barn filling burlap sacks with grain, and I offered to help. The sacks held around 75 lbs of grain. They were very heavy. I pulled the top of the sack open and held it up so the men could fill the sack with grain. The older man looked at the other and said "Schwer" (strong). Later in the summer the same older field hand was in the fields outside of town operating a large harvesting machine. Mrs. von Laufenberg sent me out on the bicycle to bring the man his lunch - along with a bottle of schnapps. He said Danke (Thanks).  I replied Bitte (You're welcome)

One day a stout young boy of ten years or so came into the compound pushing a wooden wheelbarrow, upon which were stacked bread, eggs, milk, and what I found interesting, Bier.    I did not drink much beer in Germany, but the couple of times that I did, I really liked it.  The Germans did not invent beer, but they perfected it.

Later in the summer the hay came in and I helped Peter pitch wagonloads of hay up into the barn loft. It's backbreaking, heavy work. After working all afternoon I began to have difficulty breathing. I could never help with the hay on my uncle's farm because of my severe allergy to hay, and that day it gripped my lungs. I struggled to the bedroom in a panic. I was afraid to fall asleep. My breathing was so constricted that I kept myself awake all night forcing air in and out of my lungs.

There wasn't enough work I could help with, and Mrs. von L, did not intend to use me as a full-time farm hand, so with the kids in school and the days left to myself I soon found Peter's bicycle in the shed and began exploring with it. His bike was like an American Schwinn, a heavy framed three-speed with big tires and with the gears in the hub of the rear wheel. It wasn't a lightweight multi-speed derailleur with multiple exposed sprockets, which was lucky for me because those bikes are very finicky and the gears and control cables require constant adjusting.  I've never had any luck with them.  I was busy enough fixing the occasional flat tire.

One of the first things I did with the bicycle was to pedal it all the way to the city of Duren - 13 kilometers (8 miles) away. It was like riding from my home town of Baldwinsville to Syracuse NY, the closest big city, and quite an undertaking. I went to Duren to purchase an inexpensive 35mm film camera. My mother's camera used a size of film that wasn't much used in Europe. 35mm was the standard film size in Europe and in the world outside of the US, where it would eventually become the standard. The camera I purchased was an inexpensive range finder type.. It wasn't an SLR (Single Lens Reflex, where you actually look through the lens to focus) It didn't have a light meter. With my new camera and the the bicycle I could travel around and explore.

Directly across the street from the family compound was a large wooded park, where there was a castle that stood a few hundred feet away from the house. It looked like this castle may once have had a moat. There was a small guard tower. The castle architecture appeared to be from the Middle Ages, and might have been contemporary with the chest and the gun in the Von Laufenberg home - perhaps the 1500s.   On the corner of the park nearest the house was a large sculpture with a dark base that held a carving of light reddish stone in the shape of a torch flame. It was a memorial to the soldiers of WWII. The sculpture would soon be dedicated in a parade and a ceremony that I watched from the bedroom window. The sculptor himself was living in the castle where he had spent several years.

Long after, I have learned more about the Castle across the street.

Link:  Norvenich Castle

Behind the castle and the park, the land began to rise toward the forested bluffs to the North of the village. This forest was where I began my bicycle explorations, using the paved trails that ran through it. The bluffs led up to a plateau. I pedaled to the top of the bluffs and further on, and dismounting, I found a long, low mound on the ground. I learned that the mound was a foundation - all that remained of an ancient Roman fortress that had been built long ago. Where it had once overseen the valley plains below, the remains of this fort were now deep in the forest, overgrown and hidden.

Brick by brick the villagers had over the centuries carried the bricks to build the town of Norvenich below - constructing the church and many of the houses of the village - likely including the von Laufenberg home. I was beginning to develop a profound sense of the history of the place where I stood, and that of the German nation.

My ancestors had come to North America three centuries earlier, but each day now I saw things and people from multiples of that distance of time, where great sweeps of invasion and warfare and horrors and rebuilding had come and gone.  Those here had survived and stayed, whereas I come from those who had traveled away from all of it. Nevertheless i still carry a piece of it in me.

This Roman fortress was close to the northeastern extent of the Roman Empire, the Rhine River  .It is archaeologically insignificant, a rudimentary early outpost.  There are other, more extensive and interesting Roman ruins in the area that date to the time of the Emperor Caligula and the death of Jesus Christ..  

As I bicycled through the dark forested slopes of the bluffs I noticed shadowy depressions and hollows. These were bunkers and bomb craters - all that remained from the time that this place had been a WWII battleground.  On another outings I came across another castle, a fortress.  Castles were sprinkled all over the countryside.. 

I had a brief encounter with the German Polizei as I returned from one of my outings and took a shortcut along the pathway through the Norvenich castle park.  I heard the familiar European police siren, and turned around to see an olive drab Volkswagen Beetle from which a police officer jumped.  He lectured me sternly.   Riding a bike on the sidwalk is Verboten.  I replied "Ich bin Amerikaner",  so I got off with a warning. 

As the days passed I explored further on, and found the boundary fence of an airfield that was currently in use by the German Air Force. There were signs warning me to keep out. I was facing the takeoff end of the runway, but I was only close enough to barely see the runway through the trees, hoping to see one of the fighter planes take off. This was a fighter base. I would often hear the fighters roaring and screaming over the town as they approached the airbase to land. These were F-104 Starfighter aircraft that the US had given to the German government.

The Lockheed F-104 was built for speed. A very fast plane that had extremely short wings, and elevator fins at the top of the rudder. The aircraft had limited maneuverability as a result, and was very tricky and dangerous to fly. They had to fly fast, or they would drop like a rock out of the sky. The Germans called it a "widow maker", and 115 German pilots were killed flying them. Its usefulness was limited to being able to very quickly get from the far western side of West Germany to the East German border in order to counter an attack from the Soviet Union. The US Air Force didn't use F-104s - they were an unsuccessful product that got foisted off on the German Luftwaffe.

The screaming noise I heard at night came from panels in the fuselage which were pushed open to create drag when the pilot needed to slow down for landing. These "air brakes" were necessary because the short wings didn't have sufficient area of flaps to slow the plane. The F-104 had to land at high speed and drag a parachute behind to slow the plane on landing.

One day I rode the bike past a long deep gash in the earth out in the plains past the runway, where an F-104 had crashed on takeoff and gouged a deep trench.

Link: Why Germany hated the F104

Later in the summer the base held an air show which featured a near-collision between a helicopter and a radio-controlled toy airplane being demonstrated. Close call. Through the summer at various times a large convoy of military vehicles would rumble past the house. The Cold War was a dark cloud over this country.

__________

Peter's had a very expensive Telefunken reel-to-reel tape deck in his room, but the only music tapes he had were marches, including some well-known marches of the American composer John Phillip Souza - the Washington Post March, Stars and Stripes Forever. Most of his tapes were German military marches unfamiliar to me. I found his taste in music oddly limited. Peter's cousin, on the other hand, was quite familiar with the latest rock and roll music from Britain and the States, as I learned on the two visits that we had with the cousins during the summer. "Monday, Monday", were the only lyrics his cousin could sing along with the Mamas and Papas.

Peter's cousin wore Lederhosen, as all young boys did. Lederhosen wore like iron. The children all wore leather sandals and long socks. They didn't wear sneakers like I had. Their sandals were practically like shoes in that there was very little that wasn't covered. Older boys like Peter and the men wore woolen pants, and the girls had woolen skirts, and people wore woolen sweater vests over their shirts and blouses. Workmen commonly wore a woolen sport jacket.  Wool is warm and durable, and doesn't get dirty as quickly as cotton. I never noticed them doing much laundry.

The woolen clothing came in very handy, as the weather that summer was very chilly and overcast. I was freezing all the time. It didn't seem like they heated the house. There was a very small water heater mounted on the bathroom wall, about the size of my small suitcase. They turned on the hot water once a week, on Saturday, and I was able to take a spit bath with hot water. My complexion got worse that summer. Washing with cold water didn't help.

One day I was invited to go to Peter's Middle school. For some reason they put me in a different classroom from Peter's class, with younger students a grade behind him. The teacher asked me to come to the front of the classroom and tell the students something about myself. I drew a map of the US with chalk on the blackboard.  Then I drew an outsized map of New York State. I drew a star for my home town of Baldwinsville, and explained in my limited German about where I lived in the US. Throughout these proceedings the boys and girls began at first to giggle, and then to break out in open laughter. By the time I was finished here was a riot going on. The classroom was out of control and I had a hard time keeping a straight face myself. After school some of the boys dragged me along with them to a nearby bar, whereupon the ringleader ordered himself a beer. The policy seemed to be that if you were bold enough to step up to the bar and order a beer, they'd give you one. I didn't have a beer that afternoon .

I wasn't invited to return to the school.

Anneliese and Maria went to a different school, a girls-only Catholic school. They wore uniforms, like the ones we wore at St Mary's School. One afternoon Mrs. von Laufenberg asked me to help Anneliese with her French lessons. I went up to Anneliese's bedroom and sat beside her at her desk and read from her lesson book, which was going over the French words for parts of the body. Les Yeux - the eyes. La bouche - the mouth.  Le visage - the face. Les jambes - the arms. As I helped Anneliese I was also learning the German words - die Augen, der Mund, das Gesicht, die Armen.  Sitting next to Anneliese I thought how sweet and how innocent she was, trying to learn her French words.

We carried on with these afternoon lessons a few times.  Looking back, I wonder, what was her mother thinking? A 17-year old boy alone with her 15 year-old daughter in her bedroom unchaperoned?  How much the world has changed.  That was a different world, an innocent and naive world where children could be safe and unafraid.  

There were other occasions where innocence and naivete surprised me.   .

Later, one day I was with Anneliese and Brunhilde in the kitchen.  They were kidding around with me, Brunhilde perhaps flirting just a bit.  The two of them started to chase me. and I ran into the parlor and closed the door on them to get away, but the two strong girls were able to push the heavy oak door and lift the door off its hinges. The fun was over. The three of us lifted the door back on its hinges.   What if they had caught me?

Mrs. von Laufenberg took me one day on a trip to the city of Cologne (Koln) - the city on the Rhine River that was founded by the Romans in 40 AD. As we drove I saw the twin spires of the Cathedral off in the distance.  When we arrived in the city we visited a young man in his thirties. He was from France and he and I were able to converse. I had taken French in High School for three years, so I was able to get along fairly well with him in French. Mrs. von Laufenberg also spoke French, especially when she really wanted to get through to me. This part of Germany had once long ago been part of France. . All these border lands had been fought over and traded back and forth through centuries of warfare, so it was not uncommon for Germans in this area to speak French.

Mrs. von L. had overheard my conversation with the French man, and afterward she corrected me.  She was surprised by my mention of a bicycle trip, a trip that Peter had proposed in his introductory letter that I received back in May.. Mrs von L. explained that this trip was not to be.  Returning to Norvenich; I was a lttle disappointed, but not much.  The idea wasn't very practical in the first place.

A couple of young boys came by a few times, one time together with a girl of the same age. As we walked along; I tried to speak to them in German, and they laughed and laughed at my mistakes. I laughed, too. They were good little boys and girls, curious about this American who called himself "Dick", which in German means "fat", which caused them to laugh even more.

The two boys would come by again, and we would kick the soccer ball back and forth. I watched them play one-on-one soccer in a hay wagon, with each end being a goal.  It was not uncomon for boys to wear on their clothing little cloth badges with embroidered symbols of their city, or their country, and so on.  These badges were called Wappen (Coat of Arms) , and I still have some in my small collection of souvenirs from Germany.

Apart from the language and the clothing, the German kinder that I met were just like the kids I grew up with on Barbara Lane.   Playful, cheerful, good-hearted, generous, mischievous, clever, guileless.  A joy to be around.

The children had a little nonsense ditty in French and German -
Le boef, der Ox                                   The bull
La vache, die Kuh                              The cow
Fermez la porte, die Tur mach zu.   Close the door

__________

Soccer was a national obsession, and it happened that this summer the World Championship was between Germany and England. The names of the German stars were on everyone's lips. Hans Beckenbauer. The finals matches caused the streets to be deserted. Oddly enough, Peter did not play soccer, but Fussball was universal among his young classmates.  Although I had played soccer for three years in High School, here I was barely able to keep up with 12 or 13-year olds.

One afternoon I was briefly involved in a game between 17-year-olds like myself, and I quickly sidelined myself to spare myself from being utterly humiliated. Even the 12-year-olds could keep a soccer ball bouncing from their feet to their knees to their head almost indefinitely without the ball touching the ground.

One afternoon the two boys and I were bouncing the ball back and forth in the courtyard of the family compound, and we were kicking the ball high in the air. One of my kicks sent the ball high and off to one side, and it smashed through a window on the face of the small right-hand barn - the barn where the little piglets were kept.

Mrs. von Laufenberg came quickly from the house. The broken window faced a small grain bin inside the barn which held the food for the little piglets. She flew into action, grabbing a screen with which we sifted the grain to remove any and all of the broken glass. She then directed me to a local building site, where it happened that there was a glazier, a glass worker, who was building windows for a house under construction. I had taken the measurements of the window, and the glazer cut me a matching piece of glass, which I purchased from him along with enough glazing putty to repair the window. Back at the barn I carefully cleaned out the window frame, set the glass, and set the putty to complete the repair.

I had learned how to make these repairs as a result of an incident at home where I shot an arrow from my bow, which missed the target and continued on to break through a standing stack of my Dad's storm windows.

_________

A small package came for me in the mail. It was an audio tape on a small reel. I threaded the tape onto Peter's tape deck and began listening. I was greeted by friends from school. My classmate Bill Welser had arranged for the tape recording. Bob Wilkinson and Mary Beth Whitman and my new girl spoke to me on the recording. They told me about happenings that summer in my home town, and gave me words of friendship and encouragement. I was washed over with emotion and gratitude that my friends were thinking about me so far away, and were hoping that I was OK.   I became terribly homesick, at the same time the recording lifted my spirits. I recorded a response to my friends and put it in the mail.

Through the summer I waited impatiently for letters from my sweetheart. Sometimes weeks went by. I grew increasingly homesick and eager for relief from feeling all alone.  Late that summer I received a private letter from another girl. She confided in me about her feelings of confusion about how to avoid hurt feelings and how to deal with competing attentions from two different boys.  It was my first experience of being asked for older-brotherly advice.  I had occasionally seen this girl for years, even before I was in High School.  From the very beginning I knew she was beyond my reach.  I was flattered to be taken into her confidence, that she enough of me to confide in me, but I felt like I was the last person to come to for advice of the heart.   To such a sweet girl  I could only offer encouragement and support, and sharing that I knew what longing was.  

 _________

It happened that Peter had in his room an Atlas of the United States.  . I spent a good bit of time studying our geography, and imagining where I might travel, and places where I might someday find a home. As I studied the maps, I remember that I was intrigied by two places - Oregon, and Sacramento, California.

_________

Music was another connection to home. I had my little transistor radio with me in Peter's room, and at night I listened with my ear plugged in, just as I had done at home at night, where I listened to radio stations WOLF and WNDR, the rock and roll radio of Syracuse, NY. Syracuse had the best disc jockeys around, guys like Dandy Dan Leonard, Bud Ballou and others. American Bandstand’s Dick Clark had graduated from Syracuse University's' Radio & TV department.

Here in Germany my radio was able to pick up the Pirate Radio Stations of England. They were called Pirate Stations because they operated outside of British government control, so they were not hemmed in by the rules of British government-owned BBC radio and TV. They were also not subject to British limits on transmitting power. They broadcast from ships outside Britain's territorial waters. The ship's big engines generated 50,000 watts of power - as much as the most powerful US stations, like WABC in New York City.  The Pirate Stations brought rock & roll deep into Europe, including countries behind the Iron Curtain. .

Radio London, Radio Caroline, and Radio Luxembourg brought me the height of the British Invasion. It was the summer that the Beatles released their Revolver album - accepted by many as the band's masterpiece, more highly rated than even Sgt. Pepper's, which followed a year later. All summer I listened to Eleanor Rigby, Rain, and Paperback Writer, as well as songs that didn't get much or any airplay on US radio, like She Said, She Said, Got To Get You Into My Life, and Yellow Submarine.

Revolver was a turning point at which the Beatles stopped touring and immersed themselves in the capabilities of the recording studio. Revolver was the pinnacle of Beatles' musicianship, notably George Harrison's guitar and Ringo Starr's drumming. Within a short time American bands copied their sound. The Pirate stations provided pure joy - with a British accent.

Back in April the Rolling Stones had released the album Aftermath, and it was still getting airplay with "Lady Jane" and "Paint It Black" but the song that stuck with me was one I never heard on US radio after my return - "Out Of Time". I was still singing pieces of it after my return to the States, and my friend Dave Winchester quizzed me about what I was humming. He came back after listening to the song.  My stret cred bumped up a notch.. "Out Of Time" remains one of my all-time favorite Stones songs.

Another song that stuck with me from the Pirate Stations was "Hey Joe", an original by The Leaves released in 1966,. The song was later covered on Jimi Hendrix's first album, released in May 1967, just before Dave W. and I graduated High School. He grabbed me and said, "You have to hear this", whereupon I became a Hendrix fanatic

My girlfriend told me in a letter about a song playing that summer that made her think of me. "See You In September", by The Happenings. I was happy that she was thinking of me in the future tense.

Music was a high point of my time in Germany. The radio, and the music of children laughing.

____________

In the latter part of the summer Mrs. von Laufenberg generously brought me along with the children on several sightseeing tours.  Mrs. von L. drove a white Mercedes diesel sedan.    The stories about the Autobahn are all true.   The roads are impeccable, the driving speeds are outrageous, and when we drove on twisty Black Forest roads, she made the tires howl.  

Cologne (Koln)

Only 25 miles from the village where I was living, our first tour was the great Cathedral of Cologne (Koln). Koln is one of the finest examples of Gothic architecture. It took 500 years to build, beginning in 1248 and continuing into the 1800s. It is the tallest twin-spired church in the world, with the largest facade in the world.  It's the largest Gothic Church in Northern Europe, and Germany's most visited place.

Link:  Cologne Cathedral

Our tour guide showed us the gigantic pipe organ, which he explained if played at full volume would break the enormous stained-glass windows. There was a gold model of the cathedral in a glass case, and many relics - bones of martyrs and saints. We climbed some of the 500 stones steps up the bell tower spires. The stone steps were heavily worn down from the hundreds of thousands of visitors who had climbed them over the centuries.

At the time of my visit, the original light-colored stone from which it was built had been stained almost black from the soot of the railway depot next door, a huge barn that was a hub for railways radiating in all directions.

During WWII American bombers flattened this railway depot and almost the entire surrounding city of Cologne, but they were very careful to avoid hitting the Cathedral, which is practically across the street from the depot seen at the left of the church. Nevertheless a few stray bombs did some damage and blew out windows, but repairs to the Cathedral were quickly made after the war ended.   This photo was taken only 20 years before my visit. The devastation from American bombing is total.  You can see the collapsed bridge across the Rhine River, having been destroyed by the retreating German Army. 

Cologne is the center of the farming and industrial region of the Rhine River plains in west central Germany. Cologne also gave its name to Eau de Cologne (Kolnisch Wasser), which was invented by an Italian perfume maker who moved to Cologne in the 1700s. 4711 Eau de Cologne has been produced for over two centuries. It was originally used by royalty and the nobility for washing. Unlike perfume, Kolnisch Wasser is lightly scented.. As the inventor described it
“My scent is like an Italian spring morning after the rain, orange, grapefruit, lemon, bergamot, cedar, lime, and the flowers and herbs of my home.”
I purchased one of its distinctive green and gold bottles as a souvenir gift for my girl.

Aachen (Aix La Chapelle)

The French name for Aachen is Aix la Chapelle. Aachen is located at the intersection of three national boundaries - Netherlands to the north, Belgium to the west, and Germany. Aachen was the capital city of the reign of Charlemagne, the first great king of France, from AD 768, and who conquered the region and united most of Western Europe

Aachen Cathedral is a hodgepodge of architectural styles joined together.
The Cathedral has various additions to the main structure,  which were added at various times during dozens of renovations and modifications made through the centuries. My impression of the Cathedral was that it is a clunky looking thing from the outside

.

Inside the Cathedral we found the throne of Charlemagne. I was unprepared for how simple it is. It's just a box made out of slabs of marble, and in the dark church it had lights focused on it which made it glow in golden light. I thought Charlemagne must have thrown furs on it to make it comfortable.

Cologne, Aachen, Duren and Norvenich are nearly on a straight line from the beaches of Normandy to Berlin, directly in the path of the advancing American Army in the late Winter and early Spring of 1945. The first US Army bridge crossing of the Rhine River was at Remagen, only 40 miles from Norvenich.   These cities (except Norvenich) had all been leveled by American bombers, and then pushed through by US soldiers. The bunkers and artillery craters I had seen in the forest were from these battles.

I was told at the beginning of my visit that Duren had been completely destroyed, and I was amazed by the beautiful new city that had been rebuilt in 20 years.

Heidelberg Castle.

Late in the summer on our trip to the Black Forest we stopped at Heidelberg, the site of Heidelberg University, Germany's oldest university, one of the world's oldest surviving universities, with 33 Nobel Prize Winners.

We visited Heidelberg Castle, a sprawling structure with a mix of architectural types - Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque.

The first thing I noticed was the huge round tower that had half its 5-foot-thick walls blown open by cannon fire.   At Heidelberg I put into practice what our German instructor on the ship had said about avoiding interactions with American tourists. There were several at the castle that day. They seemed very excited.

Inside the castle we saw richly decorated rooms in Baroque style with intricate vaulted ceilings.

We were brought to the wine cellar where we saw what was described as the world’s largest wine barrel. The nobles of the castle collected taxes from the surrounding lands - and the people paid their taxes in the form of wine. This great barrel holds about 5,000 gallons of wine.

Baden-Baden and the Black Forest

At the northern end of the Black Forest are the hot springs where the Romans built baths that they named for the Emperor Marcus Aurelius who bathed there to ease his arthritis during the time of his wars against the Barbarians. Over the centuries Baden-baden became a popular resort. We passed through Baden-Baden on our way.to the Black Forest

The Black Forest is aptly named. It is the deepest, darkest forest I have ever encountered; Only the massive trunks are visible before they rise into the impenetrable canopy. Black Forest is in the foothills of the German Alps, and it's not located in Bavaria as I thought, but in the Southwest corner of Germany, close to the border with France. This is dairy farm country, and what I found fascinating were the enormous houses with thatched roofs, where the lowest level is sometimes used as a barn in which the cows are kept, instead of having separate barn , which takes advantage of the animals' body warmth to heat the living quarters above.

Black Forest Cuckoo clocks were everywhere of course in all the shops and taverns. Clocks of all sizes, some as big as grandfather clocks, of dark stained wood, intricately carved.

We took rooms in a Guest House, which is like a family-style hotel. In the afternoon we had lunch in a restaurant, where I was sternly rebuked by Mrs. von Laufenberg.  At lunch I found the sausage distasteful, and I stuck my tongue out with a "Bleah". I never saw Mrs. von L lose her temper this badly. Apparently, sticking out one's tongue was a horrible breach of manners. I felt deeply humiliated.

Burping at the family dinner table - OK.   Sticking one's tongue out - not so much.   Noted.

To make matters worse, I had been suffering all summer off and on with a bronchial infection, made worse by a record-breaking damp and chilly summer. I complained of not feeling well, at which Mrs. Von L responded in a tone of exasperation

"Immer krank". Always sick.

I suspect that Mrs. von Laufenberg was at the end of her rope with me. I had neglected to bring my passport, which came to  light when she told us we were going to visit Strasbourg, France.. She was very upset.  I was not aware we were going to Strasbourg.   I missed school they day they told us to carry your passport at all times in Europe,. 

A short time after my arrival in Germany Mrs. von Laufenberg told me that the reason that she had decided to bring someone over was to be a friend to her oldest son Peter.  I was a failure at being a friend for Peter. I tried to be pleasant, but from our first interactions my radar picked up wariness.  Peter had a chip on his shoulder. He was a misfit who seemed to resent my presence. Every conversation with him became a competition in which I would be informed that Germany had it first, Germany's was better. We played chess once, I beat him.  We played ping-pong once, I beat him.  He looked down his nose at me. He tried to pick a fist fight with me.    All the while I was biting my tongue.   The summer passed with very little conversation between us.

At the end of our trip to the Black Forest we were joined by the children's Uncle and Aunt and cousins at Tittisee, which is a lake resort at the Southern end of the Black Forest. At the shore of the lake everyone stripped off their clothes and put on bathing suits while standing behind a raised blanket held up by two people. I hadn't brought a bathing suit, and just as well, because there was no way I was swimming in the ice cold lake.   The uncle wore a Speedo,. which I found rather shocking.   

Earlier in the summer we had visited this uncle's home, whom I am fairly certain was the brother of the children's father.  He was blond, average height, lean and wiry.   He was a hunter.  Antlers from some sort of mountain goat hung on the wall.  At supper he upbraided his son for chewing on his fingers. He barked at the boy "Das ist keine butterbrot". (Your fingers are not a sandwich!), but I could tell from his son's reaction that his Dad wasn't a tyrant.

Our Black Forest trip was over, and we returned to Norvenich. It was nearing the end of the summer. At home Mrs. von L. told me that their harvest had not been good "The corns were not good". The cold and rain had made the grain musty.  Our trip had been a considerable sacrifice for her.

I was invited to a lovely afternoon party in Cologne, organized by the people of the American Field Service, where sophisticated and stylish German girls from the city sipped beer mixed with Coca-Cola. They paid no attention to me, so it was easy to find an out-of-the-way place from which I could watch the pretty girls with their stylish clothes and hair and their lyrical German pronunciation.   People think German is a coarse sounding lanuage, but they need to hear a pretty German girl speaking it.  It's a lovely language, very precise, and a bit more logical than the English which comes in part from it.  English did make one improvement, which was to abandon the gender of nouns, where objects are either masculine, feminine or neuter.   In German you have to memorize whether a thing is der, die, or das, instead of just "the".

One day a visitor came calling, the same young man who had been our instructor on the ship. He brought me to a park and told me that he knew that I had been having a hard time of things that summer.   He was sympathetic, supportive, not judgemental .  I wasn't beng scolded.  He encouraged me to hang in there; that I would soon be going home.   It was a relief to hear from someone that things were not all my fault.    Sending inexperienced teenagers thousands of miles from home to a completely strange place - alone - there are bound to be some bumpy stretches..    

With only a few weeks left for my trip, school was out, and Georg returned from boarding school. Almost immediately the whole family packed into the Mercedes and headed to the airport.  It turned out that now that school was over, Georg and Anneliese were flying to Ohio, where Mrs.von L. had relatives. I was stunned speechless as I watched the Lufthansa jet take off. What could I say?  Georg and Anneliese were my favorites. Now I was completely alone.

Mrs. von L. gave me some money and sent me to the barber shop. I had let my hair grow all summer. I wanted to look like the Beatles and my hair was getting long. I told the barber "Ein halb centimetre" (a quarter-inch). He did exactly what I asked. When I returned from the barber shop Mrs. von L's tone was again exasperation. Germans were particularly disgusted by the long hair of the Dutch and English boys.

I was an embarrassment, I had been a frustration, but I was neither ungrateful, resentful, nor repentant. As a mildly rebellious American teenager, I offended their German sense of Korrektheit - correctness. There is no rebellion; there is no acting out; there is no questioning authority.

The third and final tape recording arrived from America, and I was desperate to hear my friends' voices again. I threaded the tape onto Peter's tape deck, but something was wrong. It was jammed. I took a screwdriver to it, but was unable to fix it, and I think I made things worse. When Peter found out his machine was broken, he was furious. He forbade me to touch it.  I was so angry that in defiance I ran down to the shed and grabbed his bicycle. I started riding to Duren, 8 miles away, passing through a village paved with cobblestones which were still slick from an overnight rain. I pedaled as fast as I could, and directly on reaching Duren I purchased a small battery-powered tape recorder for about $20 American. . It was the last of the money I had brought with me on the trip. Upon returning, I listened to the recording, but unlike the first tapes I was too upset to appreciate it.

________________

The day came to leave the von Laufenberg family and begin my journey home. I stood in the courtyard with my little suitcase and I said goodbye to Peter. Maria stood away, looking down at the ground. She was sad that I was leaving.   I had tender feelings for the little girl.   Mrs. von Laufenberg drove me to the train depot and gave me a sandwich made with the familiar hard crusted roll. With one last smile from her I climbed onto the train.

The train stopped at Hanover, a northern town, where I was picked up by a pleasant young married German couple to stay for the night. The next day we drove to Bremen, further north. The mayor of Bremen gave a reception that day for all the returning students who had spent the summer in Germany. It was a bright, sunny day, and the reception was held in Bremen's city hall, a large beautiful German Renaissance building. The room was lit with sunshine, there were long tables filled with the American boys and girls, and German boys and girls brought to celebrate with us. I sat directly across from a German boy. The mayor gave a happy speech, and after a small lunch the waiters in their smart black uniforms with linens draped over their arms brought bottles of wine. It was Mosel wine - crisp, light, dry and slightly sweet, like champagne but without the bubbles.

The German boy sitting across from me looked me in the eye and raised his glass, as if it were a challenge. Each time we finished our glass, the waiter was right there to fill it up again. I don't know how many glasses I drank, but for the first time I was drunk. At the conclusion of the ceremonies we Americans stumbled out onto the streets of Bremen, laughing like idiots. It was a gorgeous sunny afternoon. We were gathered up into waiting buses and taken directly to the port of Bremen, where we boarded our waiting ship, the Seven Seas.

The next morning we set sail for America, with a stop first at Southampton, England, to pick up the British kids who were coming to spend a school year in the US. Our ship did not dock at port. We waited off shore, and I could see the English coast, with lush forests that came down to the sea, and broad green meadows sloping down. A smaller boat brought the British kids on board, and we proceeded to cross the Atlantic for America.

The Hurricane

On the first day out the weather became cloudy, and out on deck I watched as a huge black ship, the Queen Mary, passed us like we were standing still and disappeared over the horizon. On the second day the waves grew taller in the afternoon. A bunch of kids were out on the top deck at the bow watching the big waves.  I was watching them from the upper lounge windows, when suddenly a wave crashed over the bow rail and sprayed everyone. The order came to clear the decks and get inside.

That evening an impromptu jazz band made up of student musicians played music in the same lounge. I was sitting and flirting with two pretty English girls. One was very slender, the other was buxom. I loved listening to their British accent and we laughed and joked.  Suddenly a huge unseen wave hit the ship at an angle. The ship rolled. The band, their instruments, our table, and the girls were picked up as if by a giant hand and thrown across the room. We were stopped by the wall in a jumble of people and furniture.

The order came down to find our quarters and remain in them. We picked ourselves up and headed for our rooms.

That night the ship altered course slightly to port to meet the oncoming swells straight on. The ship was pitching at bow and stern so much that in order to stay in my bunk I had to brace my feet and stiffen my legs against the bunk frame that held the upper bunk . On the downward pitch I was standing straight up on the bunk frame. On the upward pitch I slid backward toward the pillow, but the bed kept me from sliding too far. The shirts swung back and forth on their hangers . The waves pounded the ship's hull. This went on all night long.

We were in a Hurricane. It was Hurricane Faith, a monster that started near Africa, and after glancing off the West Indies, headed up off the East Coast of the US before angling up through the North Atlantic, crossing between Iceland and Scotland, to the top of Norway and Sweden, and all the way to Russia. By the time we encountered Hurricane Faith the winds were most likely downgraded to gale force or tropical storm, 50 to 70 knots, but we had no information about these things. We weren't told the storm's name. The swells were topping 50 feet, enough to capsize the ship if we were unlucky enough to encounter them crossways. I was afraid for the girls up in the bow section. They were getting the worst of it. We boys were quartered aft of midships, which didn't pitch nearly as much as the bow or the stern..

We stayed in our rooms for the better part of three days. The passageways and staircases were lined with barf bags. I have never been seasick, and I was determined not to be. On the third day I was exploring at the top of a staircase on the starboard side with another adventurous boy. At the top of the stairs was a doorway to the side deck, and there stood a grizzled old sailor with white whiskers, who motioned for the two of us to come outside with him. He told us that he had been a shipyard worker in WWII; building Hitler’s  U-boats in the shipyard at Bremerhaven, close to the port from which we had embarked.

We stood on the side deck and looked forward at the advancing waves, which looked like blue mountain ranges coming at us, one after another. The sky and the waves sparkled brilliant blue in the sun, and the tops of the waves broke white with foam that the wind caught and sprayed toward the ship. On each downward pitch the ship appeared to be headed straight to the center of the earth. It was an illusion, but I wondered how we didn't just keep driving down to the bottom. On the upward pitch we saw nothing forward but sky. Passing over the crest of the wave, the ship's propeller came out of the water, and the stern would rumble and shake violently. Then down again. It was the thrill of a lifetime. Just the three of us on the deck, riding the sea-worn ship straight into the oncoming mountains of blue water.

When the old sailor of the Kriegsmarine motioned us onto the deck, he was telling me I was doing OK.  We were fearless, free.  An old sailor and two boys sharing an adventure.  I had come all this way for this moment.    

After three days the storm passed. We were again free to roam the ship. We had no classes on the return, and so we had the whole day to goof off and swap stories. I went up to the bridge, and the pilot house, where there was a large map of the Atlantic Ocean - North America on the left, Europe on the right. There was a line with red pins stuck on the map showing our course and our position at the same hour each day. There were four red pins nearly on top of each other. During the hurricane we barely made any headway. Fortunately for us the ship's engine room had been rebuilt the year before after a fire.

The storm passed and we were about halfway home, and my thoughts were racing ahead, making the days fly by. A few boys pulled a silly stunt, a panty raid. and they hung the girls’ underthings on a clothesline in the upper lounge. One by one the underwear disappeared from the line, leaving behind only one very padded bra.    I felt badly for its owner.   I sat at the bar and sipped on a ginger beer, which is not at all like our ginger ale, and the bartender showed me an astonishing card trick. I took my shirts to the ship's laundry, which was located below at the stern - in steerage, which is where the poorest voyagers are typically lodged. In this case steerage was the laundry. The room was pitch black except for a single light bulb. The Asian men took my shirts and I retrieved them the next day without any conversation.  I never encountered them elsewhere on the ship..

A day or two after the storm passed we saw Her Majesty's Ship Queen Mary returning to England, having passed us going and coming, even after being docked in New York Harbor for seveeral days.     I would see the Queen Mary again 12 years later, when she was permanently anchored in San Pedro Harbor in California, South of Los Angeles, and being used as a floating tourist attraction.

Another day of sailing and we would arrive at New York Harbor. We were East of Newfoundland. It was a bright sunny day, and somebody's radio picked up a stateside radio station. The radio was playing "Last Train to Clarksville" by the Monkees. I was so happy to hear it for the first time. “Sloop John B” by the Beach Boys, also played, singing about sailing. “See You In September” was still on the charts at #3. Everyone was happy and excited to be close to home.

One of the boys in the cabin across the way had brought alcohol back with him, and he coaxed one of the British girls into his cabin. The cabin steward found them in the room, and reported it, as was his duty. When we arrived in New York the poor girl was sent home to London straight away. I was angry at that boy for taking advantage of the girl..

____________

The next day we arrived at NY and said our hurried goodbyes. Many of us would still have a long journey across the US, but I was being picked up by my Mom and Dad who had driven to New York from Baldwinsville. . I would be home in a few hours. When I saw my Mom and Dad I was shocked by how much older and grayer they looked. There was little conversation on the drive . . My mother had been having a very difficult time of things for some time now. She had terrible back pain and depression.  The doctors were still in the Dark Ages when it came to treatment for depression. My father was very troubled. Things between me and him were perched on a razor's edge.

I was anxious to return to school and show off my Beatles haircut to my friends, but no sooner had we exited the Thruway than he stopped in the village of Liverpool on the way home and marched me into a barber shop, where I got scalped. I was furious, but I kept my mouth shut.   There was no use talking to him.

We arrived at our house.  It was if I had just got back from visiting a neighbor. I returned to doing my paper route for spending money. The trip had used up all my savings.  My great adventure was at an end. 

I immediately started Senior Year in High School.  A decade later a movie came out called The Deer Hunter.   In that movie Robert deNiro played a soldier in a scene, sitting alone in a bar in his hometown on leave from Viet Nam.  He silently watched his hometown friends goofing around in their safe little world,  knowing that his friends could not comprehend the things he had experienced

That's how I felt. I was carrying around so many emotions, memories, and images, and now I was lost in the commotion of school and family life. I ran into my girlfriend at school, and right away I knew it was different.  I expected a joyful reunion but I felt let down.  I had to dial it back. Over the summer she had dated a guy named Joe.  I got the impression he was kind of a punk.    She told me it had been nothing serious, but that didn't make the pit in my stomach feel any less hollow.

At school I started to turn things around.  I made new friends, I reached out, and I had a ball my Senior Year. The Presbyterian Church invited me to speak to a gathering one evening about my trip, and I put together a side show with the pictures I had taken.   I hadn't rehearsed any kind of speech; I just showed the slides and told little stories about them. The audience was very good to me.  My stories made the church members laugh a lot. It made me very happy to tell the church gathering about my adventure. To this day i'm very grateful to have been given the opportunity to speak to the Presbyterian Church in Baldwinsville.

That Senior Year I also participated in fundraisers at various schools to ask for donations to send more students abroad..  At these fundraisers I sometimes gave a short speech, and I met a lot of nice people, which was fun.   I was disappointed that my own High School never asked me to give any kind of presentation.  The community and the kids in school had donated time and money to help me go to Germany. I felt like I owed them something for it.

______  End Notes _________

I am always grateful to my friends who thought of me during my trip and took the time to send news from home, and I am grateful to my schoolmates, the community, the von Laufenberg Family, and the American Field Service for making it possible for me to have had this adventure so many years ago.

AFS relies entirely on volunteers.  Please donate to AFS at this link

- Upon arrival in New York Harbor, the MS Seven Seas was inspected, decommissioned, and immediately removed from further passenger service, most likely due to the damage sustained from Hurricane Faith. The ship was taken to Rotterdam Harbor, where it was used as floating dormitory.  Our voyage was the last time that AFS foreign exchange students would travel by sea to Europe. I was sad to hear this, because the students who followed me would miss out on a great adventure at sea.

- Shortly after our Senior Year began, Bill Welser and his Dad fixed up an old tube radio and gave it to me. I now had a real radio in my bedroom, but I still kept my little transistor radio and took it with me to college the following year.

- Bob Wilkinson and Mary Beth Whitman were married a few years after High School, and have celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. I won't forget the evening I spent with Bob and Mary Wilkinson some forty years after my trip.

- Dick Kelly and I never crossed paths at Fordham University, where I entered in Autumn of 1967.  Not long after he graduated from Fordham, Dick drowned while attempting to rescue some boaters during a severe summer storm on Lake Ontario.   

I can't say how many times my girlfriend broke up with me over the next few years, but I finally understood that I was like a new pair of shoes that fit a little too tight. I didn't suit her. Sometimes that's the way love goes.

________________

These are my true recollections. In several places I have added details, for example, facts about the ship, about buildings, as well as some photos, from my research.  

AFS Group Germany Summer 1966

Soundtrack Link

Oh How Happy (You have Made Me) - Shades of Blue Going Out of My Head Over You - Little Anthony Hot Town, Summer in the City - The Lovin Spoonful Hanky Panky - Tommy James/Shondells Along Came Mary -  The Association Monday, Monday - The Mamas & Papas Eleanor Rigby - The Beatles Rain - The Beatles She Said, She Said - The Beatles Yellow Submarine - The Beatles Out Of Time - The Rolling Stones Hey Joe - The Leaves See You In September- The Happenings Last Train to Clarksville - The Monkees Sloop John B - The Beach Boys

Mom's Suitcase, which she carried to Arizona to marry Dad in 1944