20 Years--Back in the DDR excerpt

 

This year marks my 20th year as a professional writer. Over the course of 2024, I'll be sharing a few of those offerings you may have missed along the way.

This week was National Fast Food day, which seems like a good time to feature an excerpt from my novel "Back in the DDR"

This chapter features an ode to fast food, through the eyes of a 13-year-old boy. 

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Here Comes The Son

 

Because Debbie had to be back in Munich for the start of her summer school classes, we made the trek from Romania to Munich in one very long day. It was a 13-hour drive. Luckily, this time we didn’t get stuck by any cow-crossings.

I must admit, there was only thing I really missed on this vacation (other than flushing toilets): the title game of the European Championship, West Germany vs. Czechoslovakia. That game happened while we were in Romania, and there were zero televisions in the town. One of Dad’s childhood buddies heard on the radio that West Germany lost to Czechoslovakia in penalty kicks. Uli Hoeneß missed for the Germans.

               Speaking of the radio, I kept asking Dad to find a music radio station, but there was nothing. We did hear a few weird sounding foreign songs, and the ABBA song “Fernando” about a thousand times, but that was it. The event the entire continent seemed to be following was Wimbledon. We heard about it in all the Communist countries during our travels. The Romanian Ilie Nastase had made it all the way to the finals against Bjorn Borg. Mom and Debbie said they wanted to watch that match if possible. It’s going to be on television tomorrow. Debbie’s dorm gets AFN-TV, so we’ll hopefully be able to watch it in English. That wasn’t the case for the women’s final. Chris Evert was facing Yvonne Goolagong during our drive, and we listened to it on the radio…in Serbian. You haven’t lived until you’ve listened to a tennis match on the radio in a foreign language. I’m pretty sure Chris Evert won.

               As we drove into Munich, I made an incredible discovery. I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t see it with my own eyes. There it was in all its glory, the Golden Arches, the Giant M. An actual, real, honest-to-goodness McDonald’s.

               “Dad, dad, dad,” I said, pointing to it. “Pull over, pull over, pull over. They have a McDonald’s here.”

               He laughed, thinking I was joking. I most certainly was not.

               “I haven’t had McDonald’s this whole year!” I said.

               “Your stomach thanks you,” Dad replied.

               “Dad,” I said, getting serious. “You can’t deny me a Big Mac. If you have a heart in your body, you will pull over at this restaurant. Oh my God, I can smell the fries. The fries, Dad! The fries!”

               “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt,” Mom said.

               “The boy is hungry,” Oma agreed. If there was food to be eaten by me, Oma was on board.

               “We can go there later,” Dad said. “First we need to check into our hotel.”

               I made a mental note of the path we took from there. By my estimations, our hotel was about ten blocks away from the best fries in the world. Ten blocks away from a burger with special sauce on a sesame seed bun. Ten blocks away from America.

               While Mom and Oma each checked into their rooms and secured a cot for me in Mom and Dad’s room, Dad drove Debbie back to her dorm, and Opa found a beer garden to have a Paulaner Pils. Meanwhile, I waited impatiently in the lobby. This was ridiculous. Where was the urgency, people? There was a syrupy Coca-Cola waiting to wash down a burger with three pieces of bread. That’s one extra piece of bread! How long was I supposed to stay away from that kind of American culinary vision? After about five minutes, I couldn’t wait any longer. I looked in my wallet. Ten Deutsch Marks. That’s plenty. Off I went. I figured I’d be back before anyone even noticed I was gone.

               I took two turns before I got to Martin-Luther-Strasse, home of what could very well be the only McDonald’s in all of West Germany. As soon as I walked into the lobby, and smelled that heavenly smell, I was transported back in time and place: to Chicago, after one of my soccer games, having a Big Mac as a reward. It tasted just as good here. So did the fries. The only real difference I saw was that they had beer on the menu. I stuck with the Coke.

               I cannot tell you how good it was. I took the Coke with me, figuring I could show it to my family, after I returned to the hotel. I pictured holding it up and saying, “While you people were lollygagging, I was paying tribute to the country of my birth.”

               Unfortunately, I might have been thinking about what I was going to say a little more than I was paying attention where I was walking. It didn’t really hit me that I was lost until I drained the last sip from my coke. I had been walking much longer than I did on the way there. When I crossed a bridge, I knew for certain I was hopelessly lost. I hadn’t even seen a bridge on the way to McDonalds. To make matters worse, I didn’t remember the name of my hotel, or the name of the street.

               I had been in Munich before, so I figured I should just keep on walking until I saw something I recognized, like the main train station, or the University of Maryland campus. After another fifteen minutes of aimless meandering, I came across a big park. I walked through the park and passed the beer garden near the Chinese tower, hoping to see Opa having a beer. No dice. So I kept on walking. I saw signs for the Englisher Garten. Might as well go there.

               Let me tell you something about the Englisher Garten in Munich. It’s in the middle of the city. It’s a big park. And nobody there wears a stitch of clothing. Nude. Totally Nude. Everyone except for me. I’ve never gotten out of a place faster than that. I know it sounds great to see nude people, but trust me, you don’t want to see what I saw. I think it will be burned into my mind forever. Some people really, really, really need to keep their clothes on.

               I had now been gone a good hour, and I knew I was going to be in big trouble. When I got out of the park, I started following the signs to the Altstadt. Knowing Dad, our hotel had to be in the oldest part of town. I walked by a phone booth and noticed a giant phone book hanging from a metal chord. I leafed through the phone book’s hotel section. Nothing sounded familiar. But one of the logos looked familiar. It was a lion, like the lion in the Löwenbrau logo.

               “That’s it!”

               I asked an old woman how to find the hotel, and she told me that I was nowhere near it. She recommended that I get a taxi to take me there. I knew I didn’t really have enough money to pay for a taxi, but I figured the taxi driver didn’t know that, so I flagged down a cream-colored Mercedes Taxi, and gave him the address.

               When we got near the hotel, I heard the “neener-neener” sounds of police vehicles. Something was obviously happening near our hotel. In fact, the cab driver couldn’t get within a block of it. The police had closed down the street.

               “I have to drop you off here,” he said. He clicked off the meter.

               “I don’t have enough money,” I explained. “I was going to go into the hotel and get the rest of the money from my parents.”

               “We can’t get there,” he said. “The police have the street blocked off.”

               “I know. I’m sorry.”

               “How much do you have?” he asked.

               I gave him every last Pfennig in my wallet. It was still well short.

               “It’s illegal to get in a cab, kid,” he told me, “If you don’t have any money.”

               I felt the tears welling up in my eyes. Boy had I screwed this up.

               “Get out,” he said.

               I didn’t need to be told twice. I was on the sidewalk in a second. The cab angrily peeled out.

               Luckily, the sidewalk wasn’t blocked off by police, so I walked past the flashing lights, and headed toward the lobby of the hotel. I was bracing myself for the grounding of all groundings. There was a very good chance I wouldn’t see the sunshine again for the rest of the year.

The police were in the lobby of the hotel. I walked past them and went right to the front desk.

               “Do you know the room number for Helga and Fritz Sieger?” I asked.

               The eyes of the front desk lady nearly bugged out of her head.

               “Officer!” she screamed. She pointed to me, and the German police officer came running over to me. He started speaking into the radio attached to his bullet-proof vest.

               “Yes, he’s here. I have him in custody.”

               What? The cab driver couldn’t have already called the cops.

               “Do you have his parents?” the cop said into his radio.

               “Yes, they are with me. We are on our way back.”

               “I’ll hold him in custody here until you return,” my cop said. “He won’t get away again.”

               Every person in that lobby was staring at me. This was worse than the water balloons hitting the Colonel’s wife. I was in deep doo-doo this time. Nevertheless, despite the unwelcome attention, and the scary bulletproof vests, I held it together. It wasn’t until I saw my mom walk in through the front door that I started to lose it a little bit. She had obviously been crying. Dad looked like a basket case too.

               Mom nearly broke me when she hugged me.

“Oh my God,” she said. “Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord. We thought that you had been kidnapped.”

               “Why would anyone kidnap me?” I asked.

               “Where were you?” Dad asked.

               “I got lost,” I said.

               “Going where?” he asked.

               “Coming back to the hotel,” I said.

               “From where?” he asked.

               I couldn’t make eye contact with him because I knew what he was going to think.

               “McDonald’s,” I said.

               The police officer chuckled.

Mom and Dad did not.

I had disappointed them again.

20 Years: Free Excerpt from "Back in the DDR"

 

This year marks my 20th year as a professional writer. Over the course of 2024, I'll be sharing a few of those offerings you may have missed along the way.

In 2022 I released my third novel, "Back in the D.D.R". It's a spy thriller set during the Cold War, and features a 13-year-old main character named Rudi. Many of the tales in this novel are true stories that happened to me, including this one I'm excerpting today.

This week is the anniversary of Heidelberg American Middle School officially shutting it's doors (August 6, 2013). My dad Eckhard really did design the school, and I really did attend it the year it opened (1976).

The new middle school wasn’t located in Mark Twain Village, of course. It was located in Patrick Henry Village, which is another American community (much bigger) in Schwetzingen, about twenty minutes away by bus. Dad says that more than 10,000 Americans live here, and that sounds about right to me. It’s the biggest military base I’ve ever seen, like a small town. All of the apartment buildings are painted yellowish white, and there are also single-family homes for the higher-ranking officers. PHV has everything you can imagine: a strip mall with a movie theater, bookstore, bowling alley, and snack bar. A grocery store (Commissary) and department store (PX). A large football field with a track around it. An elementary school, a church, a teen club, an NCO club, an Officer’s club, a baseball diamond.

                Today is the grand opening of the brand-new middle school designed by my dad, located at the far West end of PHV. He was invited to be there for the opening ceremony, so for this first day of school I’m riding with him instead of the regular school bus.

                “Are you excited?” he asked me.

                “I don’t know any of the kids,” I pointed out.

                “But it’s a brand-new school!” he said.

                “I’m excited that you designed it,” I said. I meant it too. I was really starting to think this whole engineer thing was a big scam, with mysterious Nazis and East Germans and Communists and Terrorists and CIA spies around every corner. Today he was proving to me that it wasn’t. Dad had been telling me the truth.

                I could tell he was proud. They saved a parking space for us, and Dad pulled the station wagon into the space. A Stars & Stripes photographer snapped a picture of Dad getting out of the car. Apparently, this really was a big deal, although you wouldn’t have known it by looking at the students. Hundreds of kids were roaming around aimlessly. All of them are 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th graders. I haven’t had to wear a school uniform since St. Roberts, but all the boys in this school have an unofficial uniform. We all wear flannel shirts, jeans, and either Adidas or Pumas. My new ones are black Pumas with an orange form-strip. Pretty darn cool. The girls wear jeans too, the kind that flair out at the bottom, and some of them have rhinestones or spangles or something shiny on them. A few of the girls are wearing tube-tops and overalls. Glad Mom isn’t here to comment on that.

                The structure itself is rather unusual. It looks like three different buildings merged together, because each section is a slightly different height. When I asked Dad about that, he was amused.

                “It’s called design,” he said. “Wouldn’t it be boring if it looked like an ordinary school?”

                I couldn’t argue with that logic.

                We were supposed to meet the principal in the gymnasium for the ceremony, but I wasn’t really paying attention to the path we were taking because I was peeking into all of the classrooms as we walked by. It looked much nicer than any other school I had attended. But after about five minutes of walking, I noticed a classroom I had seen before. We were going in circles. That’s when I looked up at Dad. He had a grimace on his face.

                “Something wrong?” I asked him.

                “I could have sworn the gym was this way,” he said. Mr. Rand McNally was somehow lost.

                “Didn’t you design this school?” I asked.

                He was too irritated to answer me.

                “Maybe it’s this way,” he said, more to himself than to me.

                We finally found the gym, and it was packed with kids and teachers. They had a little stage, and asked Dad to come up. The Stars and Stripes photographer was already there, waiting for him. He started snapping shots madly. I grabbed a seat next to another boy on the main floor. He had much longer hair than I did—like something out of the Edgar Winter Group. These are kids of military folks?

                “I’m Johnny,” he said.

                “Rudi,” I replied. We didn’t shake hands. We just nodded at each other.

                “Want to share a bowl at lunch?” he asked.

                “Um,” I said. “I think everybody gets their own bowls.”

                He laughed and slugged me in the arm.

                “Welcome to Heidelberg Middle School,” the principal said into the microphone. “Pretty nice school, isn’t it kids?”

                No response.

                “I said, it’s a pretty nice school, isn’t it kids?” Then he raised his arms up as if to remind the crowd of its important cheering role. We responded with a smattering of applause. Tough crowd. “We have a special guest with us today for the opening ceremony. He and his team were in charge of this project and designed it through the US Army Corp of Engineers. Please, let’s give a big round of applause…that means clapping, kids…to Mr. Fred Sieger!”

                Dad cringed when the principal called him Fred. The folks at his office in Campbell Barracks simply refused to call him Fritz or Friedrich, so they Americanized it. He hated the new name. The photographer got a shot of Dad shaking the principal’s hand, and then got in position to shoot his speech.

                “Hello kids,” Dad said. “I’m proud to be here today for this big day. You will always remember where you were today, when you became the very first class of Heidelberg Middle School Panthers.”

The clapping was a little better than earlier, but not much.

“I know I’ll never forget this day,” Dad said. “It’s a real sense of pride to follow a project like this from beginning to end. But this is even more special for me. I didn’t just design this school for all of you.”

                Oh no, please don’t.

                “My own son is going to be one of the students this year too.”

                No, Dad. No.

                “He’s a little small, but believe it or not, he’s in 8^th grade.”

                I could feel my face turning bright red. I was slinking so low in my seat I was in danger of falling to the ground in front of it.

                “Rudi,” he said, as I knew he would, “Please stand up!”

                When I did, I waved like Queen Elizabeth. I don’t know what made me do that, but I thought that’s what was expected of me. The photographer snapped a photo, mid-wave. I could feel all eyes in the room staring at me, so I quickly reclaimed my seat, and looked straight down at the ground.

                “Dude,” Johnny whispered to me. “Your dad is like a celebrity.”

                I didn’t see, hear, or feel anything else after that. I wanted nothing more in life than to simply blend in with everyone else. That’s clearly not going to happen.

                Again.

20 Years: Free Excerpt from Back in the DDR

 

This year marks my 20th year as a professional writer. Over the course of 2024, I'll be sharing a few of those offerings you may have missed along the way.

This week in 1976, there was a bombing at the IG Farben Building/Complex in Frankfurt, West Germany. In real life, my father was there when this explosion occurred, and for several hours we had no idea if he was OK or not. I incorporated this event into the pages of my coming-of-age novel "Back in the DDR"

That portion of the novel is excerpted here...

When it got dark, and we got the fire going, it was really peaceful out in nature. The fire crackled, the crickets chirped, and the frogs croaked. Major Starkey made dinner for all of us. Hot dogs on sticks have never tasted better.

               At one point David wowed all of us with something from his wallet. The US Mint has just started issuing $2 bills. He passed his around the campfire.

               “Woah, Thomas Jefferson,” I said.

               “OK boys,” the Major said, holding back a yawn after handing David his $2 bill back, “I’m hitting the hay. You can stay up a little later, but I want everyone in the sack by 2200 hours. Got it? The alarm goes off at 0600. Mike and Mark are in charge of putting out the fire.”

               “Yes sir,” they both replied.

               Major Starkey disappeared inside the tent. The five of us exhaled. From that point on, everything we said was whispered.

               “Are you guys going to crap in that hole?” I asked.

               Mark and Mike both gave the thumbs-down sign. Dwayne and David whispered some variation of “not a chance in hell.”

               “Dwayne,” Mark whispered. “Do you still have those cans of food?”

               Dwayne nodded. Mark’s voice got even quieter.

               “Do you want to see something really cool?”

               “Sure.”

               “Go get one of your cans and bring it out here,” Mark said.

               Dwayne tiptoed back to the non-Starkey tent and rustled around inside for a few moments. When he came back out, he was carrying one of the cans of beans. He handed it to Mark, who threw it directly into the fire.

               “What are you doing?” David whispered.

               “Just keep an eye on that can,” Mark whispered. “It’s going to get hotter and hotter. The pressure inside the can is going to keep on building because there is no way for the ingredients to escape. You know what will happen?”

               David smiled. He was following along. “It will explode.”

               Matching evil grins on Mark’s and Mike’s faces confirmed his theory.

               We watched the can turn black and expand for a few minutes.

               “Let’s get behind the tents,” Mike said. “Just in case the explosion sends metal shrapnel through the air.”

               I felt like we were in a war zone as we hunkered down behind the non-Starkey tent. We could hear the can making weird noises. It felt like the time was near. Another few clinking noises of the metal expanding. And then it happened.

               Kabloom!

               Baked beans flew through the air. We heard some of them splash into the river, and we saw some of them splatter the nearby trees. It was glorious.

               Unfortunately, it was also loud.

               Major Starkey came out of the Starkey tent dressed only in his white underpants.

               “What the hell are you boys doing out here?” he demanded. He lifted his right foot in the air and stared at it. “What the hell did I just step in?”

               “Baked beans,” Mark replied.

               “God bless it,” he said. “How many times have I asked you boys not to blow up the provisions!”

               “Sorry dad.”

               “To bed, all of you.”

               When I nestled into my sleeping bag that night, I had a big smile on my face. We have three more nights, and Dwayne has three more cans.

Wonder what the Spaghetti-Os will sound like.

 

~~~

 

In the middle of the night I heard the first drops. There’s nothing quite like the sound of rain falling on a canvas tent. It has a way of sharpening the senses. I rustled Dwayne awake.

               “It’s raining,” I said.

               “I hear it,” he replied.

               “Tomorrow’s going to suck,” I said.

               “I know,” he replied.

               We awoke a few hours later to a torrential downpour. The plan had been to wake up at 0600, make breakfast, pack up, and resume our canoe trip. This didn’t sound like a good plan anymore. The non-Starkeys were not water-proofed, and we had no idea what to do.

               “Boys are you awake?” Major Starkey called from the next tent.

               “Yes sir,” David replied.

               “Is the water coming into your tent yet?” the Major asked.

               I didn’t see any, and didn’t feel any, so I responded in the negative.

               “OK, good,” he said. “My boys and I will take down our tent, pack up our stuff, load up the canoe, and then we’ll help you with your stuff. In the meantime, pack up your backpacks.”

               “Maybe we should just stay here until the rain stops,” I suggested.

               “Negative,” Major Starkey replied. “The river is rising, and we’ll be underwater in a few hours if we don’t keep on moving.”

               “I guess they’ve never heard of levees here,” Dwayne muttered.

               I had heard that word once before, but never really considered what it was. I only knew that Don McLean drove his Chevy to the levee and the levee was dry. Dwayne explained the whole levee concept to me. Growing up in Louisiana along the Mississippi, he knew all about the embankments along the river that helped prevent flooding. It did seem strange that there weren’t any along the Lahn River, but then again, this area has been around for centuries. They must not need them.

               By the time we got into the canoe, we were soaked to the bone. So was all of our stuff. David’s scout shirt clung to him like it was his skin. Dwayne’s corduroy pants were no longer beige. I was slightly less wet because I had shelled out the extra $1.50 for the Boy Scout baseball cap. It was keeping the rain out of my eyes. Meanwhile, the Starkeys were wearing rain ponchos over their scout uniforms and seemed unfazed by the situation.

               In the morning Major Starkey was still trying to pretend like it was fun to canoe in a rising river that moved much faster than yesterday. By lunchtime he was looking at his wet map, trying to figure out which town was going to be our stopping point. He decided we would stop in Limburg and try to find a hotel. The tents were not usable under the circumstances.

               The rain was still coming down, but we saw the town in the distance. A beautiful castle or cathedral was beckoning us. Major Starkey had done his research.

               “That’s the Limburger Dom,” he told us. “If you’re ever lucky enough to get a 1000 DM bill, it’s on the back. I visited this town when we first moved here. Great museums. The old town is from the medieval times. Some parts of the castle are almost a thousand years old.”

               “Is there where Limburger cheese comes from?” David asked. I was thinking the same thing. The Little Rascals were always talking about how disgusting Limburger cheese is.

               “I don’t think so,” Major Starkey replied. “There’s a Limburg in Holland too. The Netherlands has more of a cheese culture.”

               We found a place near the bridge to dock our canoe and made our way into the town.

               “I stayed in a hotel near here,” Major Starkey told us.

               He trudged the five boys through the cobblestone streets, and we entered the lobby of a hotel in the shadow of the Limburger Dom. The hotel was opulent. We were not.

               “May I help you?” the lady at the desk asked the Major in English. I guess it was pretty obvious that we were Americans.

               He explained our situation to the lady, asked if we could have two rooms for the night, if they had driers for the non-Starkeys to dry the rest of our clothes, and if they had robes we could wear while the clothes were being dried. After getting answers in the affirmative, he looked me in the eye.

               “What’s the Boy Scout motto?” He asked.

               “Be Prepared,” I answered.

               “Were you prepared?” he asked me and Dwayne.

               “No sir,” we replied.

               “Were you prepared?” he asked David.

               “No sir,” David replied.

               “I’m charging your parents for this room,” the Major said, “and any costs incurred laundering your stuff.”

               “Yes sir,” we replied.

               Mike and Mark were smirking behind his back. They were clearly enjoying this.

 

~~~

 

Our room had two single beds pushed together to make it into a bigger bed, with two huge feather comforters. This was going to be much more comfortable than the floor of the tent last night, even if the three of us had to figure out a way to fit into the bed and share the blankets.

               The view from our hotel window was really interesting. We could see portions of the medieval wall that used to surround the town, and the quaint half-timber buildings on the other side of the wall, plus the red and white St. George’s Cathedral. On a sunny day, the view probably took your breath away. Today, it was gray and rainy and foggy. It was like being on the set of Young Frankenstein.

               The robes they gave us were way too big, especially for Dwayne and me. David almost looked normal, so he volunteered to go back into the lobby and see if he could find anything interesting for us to do while we waited for our clothes. When he came back to the room, his face was pale. He was holding a newspaper in his hand.

               “The IG Farben building has been bombed,” he said.

               “What’s that?” Dwayne asked.

               “That’s where our dads work,” I said.

               “You can read German, right?” David asked as he handed me the paper. “What does this article say?”

               I translated as I read it.

               “Two time-bombs exploded at US Army headquarters in Frankfurt, formerly known as the IG Farben building. At least seventeen people are wounded, a few of them critically. The victims are American Army officers and civilians, who were dining at the Officers Club within the complex.”

               “That’s where our dads eat lunch every day,” David said.

               “Oh my God,” Dwayne said. “What time of day did this happen?”

               I skimmed the text looking for an answer. I didn’t like what I found.

               “Noon.”

               “Oh my God,” Dwayne said again.

               David was quiet. Tears were forming in his eyes behind his thick glasses. I kept on reading, hoping for good news.

               “Violence was expected when Ulrike Meinhof died in prison under mysterious circumstances. The Red Army Faction had bombed this facility two years earlier, claiming that it housed the CIA, and that it was instrumental in the war crimes of Vietnam. Interior Minister Werner Maihmfee said that ‘pseudo-political motivations are once again assumed’ and that three people are in police custody. None of the victims have been named. Twelve of the seventeen are in the hospital, and three of them are in intensive care.”

               David went straight to the phone and picked it up.

               “Major Starkey said ‘no phone calls’” I pointed out.

               David didn’t listen. He dialed his home number and waited. And waited. Seven rings.

               “Nobody is answering,” he said. I could see the panic starting to form in his eyes.

               “Let me call my house,” I said, grabbing the phone from his hand. I dialed my home number and waited. And waited. Five rings. No answer. Six rings. No answer.

               “Oh my God,” I said.

               I gently placed the receiver on the phone.

               “Do you know your dad’s work number?” Dwayne asked both of us.

               Neither of us did.

20 Years--Free Excerpt from "Back in the DDR"

 

This year marks my 20th year as a professional writer. Over the course of 2024, I'll be sharing a few of those offerings you may have missed along the way.

This week I'm featuring a free excerpt from my novel Back in the DDR. Many real life events are recounted in the book, including the death of German terrorist Ulrike Meinhof of the Red Army Brigade. She was found hanged in her prison cell this week (May 9) in 1976.

This excerpt shows how that event was woven into the novel. It takes place the evening after the main character (and narrator) Rudi accidentally hit a Colonel's wife with a water balloon thrown off a third floor balcony...

Dwayne headed back to his apartment, and David and I went to our building. It had been six hours since the splash-down. I shook David’s hand outside his apartment before the walk up the potentially dangerous two flights of stairs above.

                “Good luck,” David said.

                “If anything happens to me,” I said, “I just wanted to thank you for all you’ve taught me.”

                David put his hand on my shoulder. He couldn’t form the words to say his final goodbye. When his apartment door closed, I was all alone.

                I tiptoed past the scary Southern lady’s apartment and was relieved that she didn’t hear me. I took a deep breath outside our apartment door. It was now or never.

                When the door opened, I saw Dad sitting on his blue recliner. He was smoking a cigarette and reading the newspaper. He didn’t even look up. I could hear Mom in the kitchen, getting dinner ready. The table was already set. I closed the door behind me and tried to walk to my room as casually as possible. Mom saw me first.

                “Oh there you are,” she said. “Where have you been?”

                “Um,” I sputtered. “They have a piano at the teen club.” A totally true, if completely unrelated, statement.

                “Wash up for dinner,” she said.

                Dad didn’t say a word. He seemed entranced by the story he was reading in the paper. I could only see the front-page headline: “Ulrike Meinhof Hangs Herself in Prison”

                The three of us sat at our usual spots at the dining room table. Dad at the head of the table, mom to his left, and me on his right. Dinner smelled tremendous. One of mom’s specialties, Rouladen. Dad closed his eyes and said the blessing.

                “Dear Lord,” he said, “thank you for this wonderful food, and the incredible culinary talents you sent me through this beautiful woman Helga.”

                Mom smiled.

                “And Lord,” he continued, “I know you probably didn’t call for Ulrike Meinhof to join you in the kingdom of heaven, but if for some reason you have a communist terrorist section up there, please re-educate them about the world before I come to join you, so I won’t have to listen to their radical nonsense for eternity. Amen.”

                All three of us did the sign of the cross.

                “Oh,” Dad said, “one more thing. Lord, please give some peace to the crazy woman who lives below us. May she walk out the front door of our building for the rest of her time here without getting hit by another water balloon, and please forgive whoever hit her with that water balloon today, for he or she probably didn’t do it on purpose. Amen.”

                “Amen,” Mom said.

                I was afraid to speak.

                I cut through my Rouladen, and carefully snuck a glance at Dad’s face.

                He was grinning.