Past Perfect Participles, conclusion

All good things must come to an end, and so did Germany…at least for me. In the spring of 1966, my

I got to ride around Darmstadt, Germany in one just like this.
Then it disappeared, and I never saw it again.

parents told me that we were going “home.” Home? What did that mean? We were already home. We’d always been home. What other home could there be? Didn’t I have cousins just a few hours away in England? Hadn’t we visited them just the year before? And hadn’t my grandmother come for a visit last Christmas? And what about the Herr and Frau Zesch? The old couple we used to go see all of the time? Weren’t they my family? Well, seems they weren’t. They were just a nice, old German couple who befriended us. And the only place I’d ever known in my brief life was not home. No, home lay thousands of miles away, on the other side of the ocean, in a place called the United States of America. And that’s where we were bound. So, in May of `66, movers came and packed up all of our stuff, including our two cars (my dad had a BMW, and my mom had an MGA), and there we sat in an empty apartment. Soon we were on a train to Le Havre, France. Then there was a night in a little chateau-cum-hotel, and breakfast the next morning overlooking a sunny garden. Lots of hustle and bustle followed, and then we were boarding a ship – a really big ship. We sailed back from Germany on the SS United States, one of the largest and fastest ocean liners ever built. It was also one of the last to make the Atlantic crossing. A few years later, it would be decommissioned. Seemed most people preferred flying to Europe. Boats were too slow. Twilight of an era, and I was there.

In 1966, she was the biggest and fastest ship on the seas.
That was the last time I was ever on a ship.

Don’t remember much about the ship. Cabin, dining room, boring kids party, that sort of stuff. I was terrified of the swimming pool. That much I do remember. I was sure that this “pool” was nothing more than a hole in the bottom of the boat, and if I let go of the side, I’d sink right down out of the ship. Superman couldn’t have gripped the edge of that pool any harder than I did. And then we were off the ship and driving and driving, late into the night. Somewhere in the darkness, we pulled up to an ancient farmhouse. Noise and light inside. And there was my grandmother who had come to visit us two Christmases ago. Imagine that. The next morning, I awoke in a large, sagging brass bed up in the attic, the smell of coffee and bacon wafting up from the kitchen below, muffled conversations downstairs. I was home, so I was told. Over the next few weeks, there was a lot more driving and a lot more unfamiliar faces. I met all of my aunts and uncles and cousins on my mom’s side in and around Little Valley, NY. Then we drove down to Pike County, MS, to see my dad’s family. Not so much of a welcome there. Seems my old man had had the nerve to marry a damn Yankee, and we were none too well loved in that quarter of the world. I missed my real home. Finally, we went to my dad’s next assignment – NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, MD. We lived in base housing, and I started first grade in the fall, and my life as an American began, and my life as a European was done. AND EVERYTHING CHANGED.

And I cannot stress that last line strongly enough. Absolutely EVERYTHING in my life changed. My

Detroit burned in `67

mom got a job, and at 6 years old I became a latchkey kid. School was no longer fun. Everything was dirty compared with Germany. Litter and pollution everywhere. Much of Maryland was a cesspool back then. Everyone at home was unhappy. Everyone was angry. Everything seemed to be my fault. I was in trouble all of the time. They sold the MG and the BMW. My brother and I didn’t go to see Roy Rogers movies on Saturday mornings anymore. There were no more parties at our house, no more all night canasta games. No one ever came to see us. There were no more late night dinners at gast hauses. There were no more gast hauses. No more square dancing, no more bingo games, no more bowling. No more castles. And the abuse began: the name calling, the insults, the humiliation, the beatings. I shrank beneath the chronic angers that seemed to fill every corner of our house. And the world around me seemed to be exploding too, burning up on TV every night. The war in Viet Nam and anti-war riots in DC, the Detroit City Riot, RFK’s assassination, MLK Jr.’s assassination, the DC riots that followed that, the Manson murders, Kent State shootings, and on and on.  When I was seven, one man beat another man’s head in with a hammer in front of our house. Death on our doorstep. The world had come crashing up against our front door, with all of the ugliness and sordidness that it had to throw at us,

And DC burned the next summer after Martin Luther King, Jr,
was assassinated.

and my parents scarcely seemed to care. What happened? I cannot even begin to tell you, because no one ever tried to tell me. It was as if, in crossing that ocean, we had passed from a world of light and happiness into a world of darkness and misery, as though something in the very air of this country was inherently foul and it had contaminated everyone who breathed it, including my entire family. Or maybe the problems had always been there, but had been hidden beneath the novelty of living in Europe, festering under the surface, waiting for an excuse to burst out. And the world? I guess it had always been burning away, but I had never noticed the flames until we came back to the States. While we lived in Germany, we were happy and connected to a community and involved in everything that was going on, and I was shielded from the worst of the world, and Stateside we were none of those things ever again. It was a rude awakening.

Postscript:

I did get to go back to Europe a few years ago. Went to Toulouse, France, for work (http://benrhodes.blogspot.com/2005/03/home-is-where-heart-is.html). It felt like visiting home after a long, long absence. It wasn't Germany. It was 40 years later. Still, it was somehow enough.