The advantages of seeing the country with our favorite travel company suit me just fine. The Farmers Union bus has taken my wife and me to many places we wouldn’t have driven to ourselves. On this trip alone we have crossed over the border into Mexico, saw the SpaceX rocket, toured the King Ranch, mourned in the Oklahoma City bomb site, traveled through history on an aircraft carrier, visited Luckenbach, ate fresh fish and barbecue, visited the Texas Ranger museum, plus more.
As we roll along, corny jokes bring a few laughs. For an example, there is the one about our old friend Ole being stopped by a highway patrolman who with Lena took a liking to each other and she ran off with him. Time passes and Ole spots the patrolman coming after him again with his lights and siren going. Ole took off trying to outrun him but it was no use. When stopped the officer asked why he tried to outrun him. Ole answered, “I was afraid you were bringing Lena back.”
And then there was this one. If you want to find out who loves you more, your wife or your dog, put them both in the car trunk for awhile and see who comes out kissing you.
The richest part of a trip isn’t always the destination or the jokes, it’s the people we encounter along the way. Often times a step-on guide accompanies us for a day, and this day a lady named Evelyn came aboard to show us the city of Corpus Christi. One of the stops she took us to was the World War II aircraft carrier, the USS Lexington, which is permanently anchored there. After we had roamed around it some, Evelyn came over to Mary and me and struck up a conversation. I hadn’t noticed any accent in her speech, but we soon discovered she was born and raised in Germany. Maybe the surroundings of this warship brought horrid memories back to her, but something prompted her to start telling us a story of survival in World War II. Whatever the motivation, it was fascinating.
She and her family had been bombed by U.S. airplanes near Munich in February of 1945. At least she thought it was February, saying “I remember it was cold.” She was something like seven or eight years of age, but it doesn’t matter, she was an impressionable young girl who remembers death and destruction. Their house never exploded but they stood watching a house across the street burn to the ground. Later they discovered an unexploded bomb that had come through their roof and lodged in their attic.
Her father found a cart on which they loaded some necessary baggage and and began walking and pulling it into the countryside where they found some people they knew to take them in. There was no food except for a few vegetables, and they went around the countryside begging for an egg or a bit of bread. Unfortunately some wanted to sic their dogs on them and make them go away.
When the war ended, she saw U. S. soldiers marching in, but then they left and Russian soldiers marched in to take their place. She lived there in what became known as East Germany under Russian rule and grew to hate it. Before the wall was built barring flight to the western sector, they looked for a way to escape past armed patrols. They found a man willing to guide them to safety, but here she remembered more heartache. As the small group formed he refused to take one young mother with them because the baby’s cries would give them away. The image burns strongly in Evelyn’s memory of the mother crying and sitting by a tree as she clutched her baby tightly to her on a pillow.
After they walked stealthily through a wooded area, their leader said, “Get down!” Searchlights had been turned on and were scanning the area. She didn’t tell us how they evaded them, but they did make it into West Berlin.
Evelyn married an American soldier when she was 22 years old and we now know she made it to this country. She still has relatives living in what was East Germany, but since they bought into the Soviet line and still celebrate Russian holidays, she has cut her ties with them. I related to her story, probably because she reminded me some of my German grandmother’s story, even her laughter. I think I’ll always remember Evelyn and her story.
No comments:
Post a Comment