My Dad was born in 1934. He once told me that when he was still quite young he could hear tanks rolling past the window at night. When his Dad came back from World War II his mother divorced her husband. Back then this was not as common a thing to be done as it is now. She then proceeded to tell her
children to stop having any contact with him, which my Dad, who was the oldest of 4
siblings, refused to do.
Once the war was over, the mother along with her 4 kids where displaced, they had to leave everything behind when the allied forces took over, and could only bring what they could carry on a hand-drawn cart, so they began their journey on foot. They were met with little compassion and respect by those they encountered along the way, leaving invisible wounds with my Dad. Now they were refugees, poor as dirt, and looked down upon by those they met. (That is the reason why he has compassion now for the refugees that arrive in Germany daily. He sees the human struggling souls).
My grandma with her children left their home, Ratibor, which is now Poland, since the borders were re-drawn after the war. They depended on hand-outs and the kids' schooling was interrupted. My Dad has an eighth-grade education, but he later took long distance classes and became a technical constructor of radios, the first computers, and such. He is very technically inclined, independent, and has learned to survive. After this time of great insecurity, while they were following a stream of other refugees, they were able to settle in a small village where he finished his teen years working, playing soccer with a passion, and living on a shoestring budget. As soon as he was old enough he joined the newly formed, no longer Nazi run German military, the Bundeswehr, where he says he did a lot of growing up and learning to be disciplined. He cherished having learned these qualities there.
After a few years in the military he became a long distance truck driver. He tells me that back then driving trucks was hard work, as they had no power steering, and even shifting gears required effort. He told stories of getting stuck under a bridge once, he misjudged the necessary clearance. The police came and oversaw him letting out some air of his tires to lose height, and so being able to get the necessary clearance. Another time his load was somewhat lengthy, it stuck way out of the back, and when it shifted while he was driving, it began to stick out too far, so he had to find a tree that he could back up against, putting the load where it belonged. He had to be resourceful this way.
During those years, the late fifties, he met my mother who was going to school to become a nurse, and they dated and got married. They had my brother (1961) and me (1965). During those years he worked at a department store called Monopol, in Singen, near Lake Constance, close to the Switzerland border. He was taking the long distance classes then to learn about technology. With those classes finished, he transferred to a company in Konstanz, on the Bodensee/Lake Konstanz, the company was called Telefunken, founded by Siemens. There he had a part in developing one of the first mainframe computers, TR 440. Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia:
Once the war was over, the mother along with her 4 kids where displaced, they had to leave everything behind when the allied forces took over, and could only bring what they could carry on a hand-drawn cart, so they began their journey on foot. They were met with little compassion and respect by those they encountered along the way, leaving invisible wounds with my Dad. Now they were refugees, poor as dirt, and looked down upon by those they met. (That is the reason why he has compassion now for the refugees that arrive in Germany daily. He sees the human struggling souls).
My grandma with her children left their home, Ratibor, which is now Poland, since the borders were re-drawn after the war. They depended on hand-outs and the kids' schooling was interrupted. My Dad has an eighth-grade education, but he later took long distance classes and became a technical constructor of radios, the first computers, and such. He is very technically inclined, independent, and has learned to survive. After this time of great insecurity, while they were following a stream of other refugees, they were able to settle in a small village where he finished his teen years working, playing soccer with a passion, and living on a shoestring budget. As soon as he was old enough he joined the newly formed, no longer Nazi run German military, the Bundeswehr, where he says he did a lot of growing up and learning to be disciplined. He cherished having learned these qualities there.
After a few years in the military he became a long distance truck driver. He tells me that back then driving trucks was hard work, as they had no power steering, and even shifting gears required effort. He told stories of getting stuck under a bridge once, he misjudged the necessary clearance. The police came and oversaw him letting out some air of his tires to lose height, and so being able to get the necessary clearance. Another time his load was somewhat lengthy, it stuck way out of the back, and when it shifted while he was driving, it began to stick out too far, so he had to find a tree that he could back up against, putting the load where it belonged. He had to be resourceful this way.
During those years, the late fifties, he met my mother who was going to school to become a nurse, and they dated and got married. They had my brother (1961) and me (1965). During those years he worked at a department store called Monopol, in Singen, near Lake Constance, close to the Switzerland border. He was taking the long distance classes then to learn about technology. With those classes finished, he transferred to a company in Konstanz, on the Bodensee/Lake Konstanz, the company was called Telefunken, founded by Siemens. There he had a part in developing one of the first mainframe computers, TR 440. Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia:
The mainframe computer TR
4 was developed at Telefunken in Backnang, and the TR 440de model was
developed at Telefunken in Konstanz, including the first ball-based
mouse named Rollkugel in 1968. The computers were in use at many German
university computing centres from the 1970s to around 1985. The development and
manufacture of large computers was separated in 1974 to the Konstanz Computer
Company (CGK). The production of mini- and process computers was integrated
into the automatic control engineering division of AEG.
He still has newspaper clippings about that computer. His supervisor was the son of a
Nazi war criminal called Eichmann. There was made a movie and a documentary, many
documentaries actually, about this man, whose son was now building computers. Eichmann escaped to Argentina after the war where he lived under a different name. Life will always be stranger than fiction, and so it happened that another one of his sons started to date the
daughter of the only surviving Jew in his family. His whole family had been killed back in Europe and largely responsible
was that man, Eichmann. This Jew had also immigrated to Argentina, where he remarried and rebuilt his life. When his daughter dated that man’s son, he recognized
him. He told his daughter about the deaths this man was responsible for. She did the hardest thing she ever did in her life,
I’m sure, and turned him in to Mossad, the Israeli secret service. The Service flew in
at night and captured him and put him to trial. He was hanged in 1962.
So due to my Dad working at Telefunken, I had the privilege to grow up
in a tiny German village near the Switzerland border. We often went to shop in
Switzerland where the groceries were cheaper. There were limits on luxury items like coffee and cigarettes. My older brother would
often ride his bike through the woods, crossing the border. On the way home he would smuggle cigarettes. My Dad
didn’t mind. We also later on smuggled illegal materials
into socialist Germany, where most of my mom’s family had stayed, while my mom left the area – she left when
the curtain fell, she left by train. She didn’t get off the train at the
station she was supposed to get off at then, but I digress. There is so much to
tell.
So my Dad was a smoker then. Unbeknownst to anyone during this time, due to Asperger’s, now called Autistic Spectrum Disorder, my Dad was not a man to socialize with his neighbors much, but they did bring him their radios and TV’s to fix, which he did, up in the attic where he had his little, highly organized shop, where he would work and solder, where he kept many little parts in small drawers…..he would work, cigarette dangling from his mouth, pet parakeet on his shoulder. On the weekends sometimes his brother drove the bus for my Dad's soccer team. I tagged along.
So my Dad was a smoker then. Unbeknownst to anyone during this time, due to Asperger’s, now called Autistic Spectrum Disorder, my Dad was not a man to socialize with his neighbors much, but they did bring him their radios and TV’s to fix, which he did, up in the attic where he had his little, highly organized shop, where he would work and solder, where he kept many little parts in small drawers…..he would work, cigarette dangling from his mouth, pet parakeet on his shoulder. On the weekends sometimes his brother drove the bus for my Dad's soccer team. I tagged along.
We took vacations to Italy, the four of us in a Volkswagen
Beetle, no air conditioning. We went in a borrowed Mercedes to then-Yugoslavia,
where we stayed not in a hotel, but in a home on the Mediterranean oceanside
with the locals, we had to go to the bathroom next door at the restaurant, a
primitive bathroom, in an unfinished house, where people were very poor. My parents had brought a little boat that you could pump air into
and enjoyed rowing around the little bay. I remember the spiders, they were
huge, I was so scared of them. The beach was rocky, nothing but big rocks, the
spiders hiding underneath. Nevertheless they were wonderful vacations that led to life long memories. We dried star fish and looked at
sea cucumbers as we rowed in that little boat. The sunsets were spectacular. During our travels, which later on included both the French Atlantic coast and the Cote d'Azur, we never once so a hotel from the inside. We always stayed with the locals.
We also took trips to socialist Germany, it was a strict
undertaking, you could not venture from your planned route, you had to register
when you arrived, you could not bring anything deemed too Western like music or
books, everything was inspected. You had to use their currency and spend a set
amount per day, I still have a Lasagna pan and a pot I purchased in socialist
Germany. I loved visiting my relatives there. My cousin had a pet rooster that followed her indoors. She
loved the pop band Abba, and we smuggled some Abba records for her into the
country.
I learned to swim at the public pool in Switzerland, my Dad
taught me to swim. I am so glad I grew up in that small village, away from the
hectic cities, riding my bike, picking flowers by the creek, playing soccer
in the field with the boys, roller skating, helping my friend bring the cows in
at night, bringing back the milk from the farm.
But now Telefunken had been restructured and my Dad had to find work, and he found it a two hour drive north in Stuttgart, where the first Mercedes Benz was built, and also where Porsche resides. He took a job overseeing two large houses on the Koenigstrasse, the main shopping street in Stuttgart to this day. He was responsible for opening up in the mornings and maintaining the buildings, closing at night. His job duties included the maintenance of the large air conditioning systems, the outside elevator to clean the facades of the buildings (we had quite an outlook from up there), the inside elevators, a surprising amount of technology to take care of. Air France had an office there, the Norwegian Embassy and part of the Kultusministerium, the educational arm of the government of southwest Germany. There was a fashion boutique and a large audio/video retailer, a shoe store, many renters he had to deal with. For at least 6 months he left on Sunday night for the week, to return on Saturday. My mom and I used to walk down the road towards where he would arrive there those Saturday afternoons. When the probation period was over and he permanently settled into the job, we moved to a town near Stuttgart. It was a very big change for me, from the tiny village at eleven years old to the comparatively large town.
This was the job my Dad would retire from. A few years before his retirement, while at work, he was pushing down on a trash bag that contained a used drug needle, left behind by an addict using the entrance hallway to the building to shoot up in privacy. My Dad contracted Hepatitis from that injury and became very sick. He was in the hospital for months and was unable to walk me down the aisle when I got married. I left our wedding celebration with my brand new husband to see him at the hospital and take pictures. He recovered only slowly. During that hospital stay he found an appreciation for classical music that he has kept ever since.
But now Telefunken had been restructured and my Dad had to find work, and he found it a two hour drive north in Stuttgart, where the first Mercedes Benz was built, and also where Porsche resides. He took a job overseeing two large houses on the Koenigstrasse, the main shopping street in Stuttgart to this day. He was responsible for opening up in the mornings and maintaining the buildings, closing at night. His job duties included the maintenance of the large air conditioning systems, the outside elevator to clean the facades of the buildings (we had quite an outlook from up there), the inside elevators, a surprising amount of technology to take care of. Air France had an office there, the Norwegian Embassy and part of the Kultusministerium, the educational arm of the government of southwest Germany. There was a fashion boutique and a large audio/video retailer, a shoe store, many renters he had to deal with. For at least 6 months he left on Sunday night for the week, to return on Saturday. My mom and I used to walk down the road towards where he would arrive there those Saturday afternoons. When the probation period was over and he permanently settled into the job, we moved to a town near Stuttgart. It was a very big change for me, from the tiny village at eleven years old to the comparatively large town.
This was the job my Dad would retire from. A few years before his retirement, while at work, he was pushing down on a trash bag that contained a used drug needle, left behind by an addict using the entrance hallway to the building to shoot up in privacy. My Dad contracted Hepatitis from that injury and became very sick. He was in the hospital for months and was unable to walk me down the aisle when I got married. I left our wedding celebration with my brand new husband to see him at the hospital and take pictures. He recovered only slowly. During that hospital stay he found an appreciation for classical music that he has kept ever since.
We moved in 1976, and he still lives in the same apartment now.
He never believed in a God, but instead he has a huge respect for life and the universe.
