Whatever Happened to Dagmar?: An Immigrant's Autobiography

By Dagmar (Van Der Meer) Howe

This is the journey of a young European immigrant who was living the American dream—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—until she found herself a prisoner of the social injustice of domestic abuse with a partner who had succumbed to the illness of alcoholism. Wanting to become an artist and a writer, the struggle to regain the freedom of her childhood for herself and her children could have been anyone’s story, because these social issues exist in America today and threaten the liberty of our families and of our goals.

This is the story of love, loyalty, friendship, fears, toil, and tears. A story of setbacks, discouragements, and challenges common to mankind. Without faith in the God of the Bible who brought the Israelites out of bondage, Dagmar may have remained captive in an unacceptable situation that was stealing away the God-given liberty of freedom of choice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9781645316565

Book preview

Chapter 1

The Birth of a Family During Difficult Times

A baby is God’s opinion that the world should go on.

—Carl Sandburg

We came to America because the food shortages were severe in Holland and Germany. We had meat a few times a year and on holidays. One fresh orange or a chocolate bar cut into five pieces were a treat we received only on Christmas. In Europe, at that time, there was no hope; poverty looked like a lifelong sentence. My parents had been scared penniless by the Second World War. While living in Potsdam, Germany, the Russian (enemy) soldiers took their satin sheets, their gold jewelry, crystal glasses, and the one thousand Deutschmark that Mom had tucked in her cedar chest.

They tried to steal my brother too, Mom and Dad’s firstborn; born on July 2, 1944, in the city of Potsdam. The Russian soldiers were snatching German, blond-haired, baby boys to cultivate for their own future armed forces in retaliation for the slaughter of thousands of Russians by the Germans earlier in the war. Mom and Dad had to fight to free Detlef from the arms of the Russian military man. They won his freedom, and some years later, after this incident, my parents won their own freedom by coming to America. Getting ahead of my story, that didn’t happen, however, until after my sister and I were born and the family was completed.

I can only imagine how Mom got baby Detlef out of the arms of the Russian soldier who was already holding him. In my mind’s eye, I can see my not so tall mother stomping on the soldier’s toe or aggressively bopping him across the ear. During our childhood, she had used this discipline very gently, on occasion, to get our attention. In German this is known as an ohr feige (literally translated as a fig across the ear).

My father was not as assertive, and the story was told that he had hesitated to take action. Nevertheless, all the details of this incident are a bit obscure, and much is left to the imagination. Those who knew Mother knew of her unfailing courage and strength and can well imagine a clear picture of how she might have dealt with her opponent. She had the courage to risk a wrong decision instead of making no decision at all. She was so wrapped up in her destiny to reach freedom that she forgot to be afraid.

In Potsdam in 1944, the enemy was ever-present. The Russian soldiers were stationed directly across the river from where Mom had to wash out her baby’s diapers. More often than not, she was in the line of their gunfire. It was a daily battle for survival.

During those war years in Europe, not everyone shared the same enemy. For my parents, it was the Russians; for the Jews, it was the Germans; and for the Germans, it was the British and the Americans. The war was hell, and yet, there were thousands of survivors like my parents. They were forced to migrate to Holland because the enemy was marching into Potsdam, and Father’s employment had just ended.

Holland had tried to remain neutral during that awful war, but the Germans occupied the country and hunted down the Jews. Many were saved by the Dutch underground network, but as we all know, millions lost their lives in Hitler’s holocaust. In Holland, the food shortages were as severe as the cold, damp north wind that blew in from the North Sea. During the winters of 1943 and 1944, trees began to disappear here and there in the parks and along the canals as people cut them down to heat cook stoves and fireplaces.

Supplementing their income, the dairy farmers came into the towns to sell cow manure. Whether this was used for heating or fertilizer is unknown to me. Their sales cries would ring through the towns as they went from door-to-door with their manure carts, poignantly shouting, "Doppeltje vor ein eimer poop (ten cents for a pail of manure). The Dutch youth (especially boys) made light of this type of employment. They would pay the ten cents for the poop," lean the pail inward against the front door of an unsuspecting victim, ring the doorbell, and hotfoot it out of sight or quickly dive behind the nearest bushes. As the front door opened…well…you know the rest of the story.

Both Mom and Dad had lost faith in their war-torn countries. Dad was a Dutch citizen, and the Germans didn’t have enough jobs to go around for their own citizens, much less for those from other nations, so Dad couldn’t find employment in Germany. No German employer was allowed to hire a foreigner.

Mom wasn’t really welcome in Holland because of her German heritage, so thoughts of coming to America sprouted in my parents’ restless minds. But that dream didn’t become reality until May of 1954. I’m getting a little ahead of my story once again. The reality of their present situation still gave them hope because they had a foretaste of paradise during their employment at The Villa Alexander in Potsdam. They had the hope that somewhere else in the world, another utopia existed, but presently, it was not in Germany or Holland.

They came to Aalsmeer, Holland, on June 15, 1945. Right away, my mother became pregnant, and my father was able to get work. Dad was a trained horticulturist and obtained a position growing roses, orchids, various fruits, and vegetables. He had learned his trade from his own father and from being in this field of work in Holland before the war.

On Saturday, March 30, 1946, at 232 Osteinderweig, our home in Aalsmeer, I entered the world with a full head of long black wavy hair, which soon turned blond, fine, and straight as a stick. It turned into the kind of hair that the Dutch call melkboer honde haar (the milk farmer’s dog’s hair). On this special Saturday, a day of rest for the Jews, my mother had no time to rest. She spent most of that day in heavy labor. We weren’t Jews, of course, but many years later, as life progressed and I studied the Bible, I learned the significance of becoming a spiritual Jew myself.

My parents named me Dagmar, an old German and Danish name meaning glory of the Danes, day glorious, or splendid day. It was indeed a splendid day. Mother and Dad had increased their family. My mother wanted two children; that was a major reason for her marriage to my father.

The Old Dutch brick house in which I was born was set directly behind the houses on the main Osteinderweg. Our street was also called by that same name, even though it was just a dirt road. A sloping dirt driveway took us directly to the front door on the side of the house. There were only two houses on this back street, directly next to each other. Mr. and Mrs. van Dam and their three children lived in the house next to ours. Our house had a Zolder (attic), two upstairs bedrooms, and the kitchen and living area downstairs. The bathroom was outside.

Caught in the outhouse during a powerful Dutch hailstorm at the age of four, I instantly developed outhouse phobia. No one could hear the screaming as the hailstones thundered heavily upon the tin roof of the old wooden bathroom and a few feet away upon the roof of our comfortable home. Crying nonstop until the storm was over, I was held captive.

Most of the terrain of the Netherlands, which has been reclaimed from the sea, is fairly flat. The view directly behind our house consisted of a sea of glass. Red brick chimneys warmly embraced the sparkling glass greenhouses and formed a unique geometric landscape where they rose to meet the grayish blue sky. In the winter, the chimneys smoked, and in the summer, they gave up their habit.

The major portion of the population of Aalsmeer was, and still is, involved with growing and selling flowers and plants. The greenhouses and smokestacks are a necessity, especially in winter. When it’s cold in Holland, the flowers continue to flourish. The world’s most beautiful tulips are produced in many areas of the Netherlands, and in Aalsmeer, this tulip-producing trade started to flourish once again after the war years had ended.

In 1986, I retraced part of my childhood tracks in Aalsmeer and learned that this small town is noted for its world famous flower auctions. Exotic, ordinary, and unusual flowers from all corners of the globe are shipped into this little area of the world for daily auctions. The Schiphol Airport, located on the northeast outskirts of Aalsmeer and just south of Amsterdam, has supported this trade since long before we lived there and continues to do so to this day. The flower auction warehouses stand just south of the airport at a different location but also at the edge of town. In 1986, there were no unemployment lines in Aalsmeer, a town of about 15,000 inhabitants. The flower trade is big business, thus keeping all local residents employed in one way or another.

Aalsmeer has a quaint little downtown with cute little shops, a café or two, the newspaper building, and a variety of other businesses necessary for the town’s survival. There is also a bookstore which, in 1986, was selling Dad’s van der Meer family genealogy bound in a hard-covered red book. Cousin Jan van der Meer was instrumental in doing the family research and getting this information published. This family tree book has become part of my library.

City Hall stands at the south end of Osteinderweg. It houses the town’s birth records. My birth certificate is enclosed in one of their overstuffed record books. A crumbling nonfunctioning windmill rents space not far from downtown. Canals flow parallel to most of the town’s sidewalks or roads, and several ordinary churches stand neatly around various corners of town. The town is clean. Litterbugs are rarely seen.

In 1949, Dad changed jobs and found employment working for KLM Airlines, cleaning commercial planes at the Schiphol Airport. Dad earned a bronze KLM medal for his few years of faithful service. The medal is presently in my brother’s possession. The only medal, I recall, that my Dad ever earned during his lifetime.

In winter, when we were old enough to go sledding, we often propelled ourselves down the frozen waterways of Holland. Sitting on the sled, we’d row down the canals, spiking the ice with the nail picks Dad had made out of two sturdy wooden sticks. When exhaustion set in, Dad, holding the sled rope, would pull us back home.

The year 1950 was eventful. Dad had an operation removing about one fourth of his stomach because he had developed a serious ulcer. The stress of the war had taken its toll. Today, the operation may not have been necessary as it has been discovered that an ulcer is a bacterial infection which can be treated nicely with Pepto-Bismol and some type of antibiotic. The second major event of this year was the birth of a baby sibling.

April twenty-fourth was a cold winter day. Mom called my brother and me into the kitchen. "Detlef, Dagmar, you must get your coats quickly and put on your clumpen," she said, trying to rush us into getting dressed. She handed me a pair of thick woolen socks and my Dutch shoes (clumpen). An old Dutch farmer developed these ingenious shoes to keep the cows from stepping on his toes as he milked them. The clumpen, made of wood, are almost as tough as steel-toed boots. They are extremely warm when worn with woolen socks, and they don’t mildew as leather does in the damp Dutch climate.

Now hurry, Mother was saying as she held her heavy belly, the stork is coming now and mustn’t see you here or he won’t stop and deliver your new brother or sister.

She was practically pushing us out the door toward Dad who was standing outside, nervously smoking a cigarette, and talking to a lady who had just arrived at our house.

Your mittens, she continued. Here, take them. It’s snowing today. Can you believe this spring weather, Vater? She addressed Dad and then greeted the midwife who was entering our house.

Vater took the last puff of the homemade cigarette he was smoking. He stepped on the butt, putting it out. He ignored my mother’s comments about the weather and took my hand. We were on our way to someone’s house. I have no recollection of where Dad took us that morning in April, but I do remember thinking and wondering where the stork could possibly find babies on such a terribly stormy, cold, and snowy spring day. I wondered about the lady who came to see Mom. She was a stranger to me.

The wind was blowing snow flurries aimlessly into my eyelashes, but the fresh outside air made me feel good. The snow was stacking up under my wooden shoes, and soon, walking on little snow stilts, I had trouble keeping up with Dad’s long-legged stride. Dad was tall, slender, and lanky. Mom, on the other hand, was very short, barely five feet tall. She loved drinking the rich, creamy Dutch milk. I never realized she was carrying a child in her protruding belly because I was told the stork would soon deliver a baby to our house. Seeing a stork’s nest on an abandoned chimney that day made the story believable.

Storks nest from the end of March and all through April. The nests are made of extremely large piles of twigs and branches and are lined with moss, feathers, grass, and down; soft enough to cradle a baby (not a human, of course, but I didn’t know that).

At the age of forty-two, on April 24, 1950, my mother delivered her third child, an unexpected blessing. My parents named her Alberdina, after Father’s mother, but we called her Lida for short, and later in life, we teased her unmercifully about being a mistake as she was a surprise to my parents. She had the prettiest curly blond baby hair you could ever imagine, and not a person who saw her could refrain from admiring this adorable baby girl. At that time, feeling left out, I would have traded my head of straight milk farmer’s dog’s hair for her charming curls in a minute.

Detlef and I shared a room with our new baby sister since we only had a two-bedroom home. On Sundays, our parents often slept in, but sometimes the juveniles got restless. An extra moment of rest was Mom’s only luxury. Dad’s luxury were his ever-present cigarettes and cigars when he could afford them. He started working when he was thirteen and took up smoking shortly thereafter.

One Sunday morning, I vaulted onto my brother’s bed. Both of us, using the bed for a trampoline, got a bit too rambunctious. The baby woke up. She stood up in the crib and started babbling. Dad didn’t hesitate to come storming into the room.

Dagmar, you get back to your bed right now, Dad, speaking in his native Dutch tongue, raised his voice. His voice was deep, and we respected his authority, so jumping off my brother’s bed, I ran across the room, took one last giant step toward my own bed, and "plop," my right foot landed directly in the middle of the chamber pot. It was full. The pot tipped over as I withdrew my leg and crawled under the sheets with a dripping wet limb.

Baby Lida took a nosedive into the crib mattress, and Detlef pulled the covers over his eyes. Dad lingered in the doorway for a moment longer and then turned to leave. We could hear his bare feet sticking to the cold linoleum floor each time he took a step down the hallway toward his own room. Then silence; he was gone. We peeked out from under the covers, giggling. Lida stood up in her crib and started rhythmically rocking to and fro. She didn’t babble. As my foot was dried off on the corner of the sheet, the yellow puddle on the floor was ignored.

In Holland, Christmas is celebrated on December sixth. The children put their wooden shoes outside the door, and St. Nicholas rides through the town, filling the shoes with goodies. He has a sidekick named Zwarte Pete, a black man considered to be Old St. Nick’s helper. The tale says that Zwarte Pete only picks up the troublemakers and puts them in his burlap sack. He overlooks the good children. My mother knew how to keep us under control; we were all afraid of Zwarte Pete. Dad’s deep voice was also very intimidating.

While living in Holland, our diet consisted of cabbage, potatoes, carrots, and maybe an onion now and then. Butter was available most of the time. Sometimes we had peanut butter, called pindakaas in Dutch. Literally translated, it would mean peanut cheese instead of peanut butter. Milk was plentiful. Dad didn’t like milk, but Mom and Detlef loved it.

In season, we ate our share of green apples. They were sour, but we ate them until they caused a stomachache. For breakfast, we had bread, toasted and sprinkled with schokoladen haagel (cookie decorations that looked like miniature chocolate hail). If we ever ate a banana or drank orange juice, I can’t recall. Most likely, they were unavailable to us. Sometimes there was smoked or pickled herring, which Dad liked, and there was tea served hot between meals. An egg showed up occasionally, and we consumed it without hesitation. We ate a bitter green leafy vegetable which was cooked and fixed with breadcrumbs and butter. It was called endive and belonged to the dandelion family. Dad loved it. In America it’s called escarole; American endive is the green curly lettuce. American kids would turn up their noses at this dish. They wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole.

Dad influenced my taste for certain foods as he taught me to love vegetables, not only because he grew them, but also because he would smack his lips and make comments about how delicious the vegetables were as he was consuming them.

From our years in Aalsmeer, I recollect a scooter ride down our dirt driveway. I suppose the scooter probably belonged to the (van) Dam kids next door with whom we often shared our playtime. Starting at the top of our driveway and heading downhill toward our house, I met with disaster, crashed to the ground, and busted open one of my knees. Scooters weren’t much fun. I also remember that Dad rode a bicycle to work. We didn’t own a car.

My mother, Helene Marie Smolarsky, was born in Silberberg, Germany, on June 11, 1907. Her father’s name was Josef S. Smolarsky. He was from Pless, Poland, and her mother was Klara Hedwig Bassdorf from Silberberg, Germany. Josef Smolarsky was a railroad engineer.

Mom had a very close relationship with her father, and she had developed a deep-seated love for the railway system. Many times, during my childhood, she would periodically relate the adventures and experiences she shared with her dad, like the time they spent together on hikes and climbing mountains. She would boast a bit about how she and her father could see further from the top of the mountains than any of the others who were along.

By 1951, her father had already passed away. He lived from October 23, 1874, to October 25, 1947. Her mother was born on May 4, 1873, and lived until July 27, 1957. I remember meeting her only once as we stopped by to say goodbye when we were on our way to America. She was a beautiful grandmother, and as my mother aged, she could have passed for her own mother’s twin sister. Regretfully, our grandparents were not much of an influence in our lives.

Dad’s family has been traced back to 1732. Most of them stayed in the vicinity of Aalsmeer through the years, and even to this day, one can find the van der Meer name in this town. His father, Christiaan Cornelis van der Meer, was born on April 23, 1864, and died on February 24, 1929, long before I was born. He was a gardener, like my dad. Dad had learned much of his trade from him. Dad was his namesake.

The elder Christiaan was married to my grandmother, Alberdina Vink (whom I never met; she too died before I was born). Her date of birth was November 8, 1863, and she passed away in 1944. Although Alberdina and Christiaan were married long enough to have five children, sometime later into their marriage, they were either separated or divorced, causing Grandpa Christiaan to end up living the last days of his life in what was, at that time, called the poor house. It was designated for older folks with not much income. Probably some type of public housing.

Since my dad was the baby of his family and the last child to leave home, he was still living with his mother at the time of his parents’ breakup. His mother required him to pick up support money from his father at the public housing where he lived. This was embarrassing to him, and he hated this assignment. On one of these chores, he got bit by a big German shepherd. That incident caused Dad to have an even greater aversion to this task. He disliked dogs the rest of his life. He just didn’t trust them.

Dad’s mom lived to be eighty-one years old, and it was said she had a difficult disposition as she aged. There were various health issues that seemed to plague her, yet she wouldn’t take the doctor-recommended medicine. She poured it down the drain and suffered with her ailments until the day she died. I wish I could have met her. Dad was a product of her guidance. He was a good father. He was born in Aalsmeer on June 26, 1909.

Our parents were restless. Holland had not anchored them enough to want to stay. They had been in Holland since June of 1945. In September of 1951, Dad gave up his job, and we moved back to Germany. We settled in Kevelaer in northern Germany on September 20, 1951. I was five years old.

After the move, we spoke Mother’s native tongue of German more often than Dad’s native Dutch, which we had been more accustomed to at the time. By 1951, Detlef had already finished first grade and had learned to write with a pen, which he dipped in an inkwell. In Aalsmeer, I had attended Klooterschool (kindergarten), and in an old photo album of mine, there was a Klooterschool picture of my class standing all lined up. I was the shortest person in the class. The picture would have been a nice addition to include in this autobiography. It was lost during the most difficult years of my life. I will divulge those unfortunate circumstances somewhere in a later chapter.

We didn’t stay in Kevelaer long. Mother disliked the heavy Catholic influence of the town. She had left the Catholic Church when she left home at age nineteen and never wanted to go back. She had seen too much—priests drunk on wine, widows coerced to part with their money, and rumors of baby skeletons found in the cellars of the Catholic monasteries. The skeletons proved to be true as the war years revealed them when the monasteries laid in ruin. These things had shaken the foundation of her faith.

On my 1986 European tour, I visited Kevelaer. The Catholic influence still hung heavily over the town. The town’s shops were filled with religious icons of one type or another—crosses, statues, angels, tokens and such. Many pictures, statues and cards with images of Holy Mother Mary, were selling for a nice hefty profit. These images and icons have surprising origins that may not be as biblical as they seem. The town had its share of churches, many elaborately designed and ornately decorated, and most of them Catholic.

Not much remains in my memory of our time in Kevelaer. We celebrated a Dutch/German Christmas that year. We kept it on December twenty-fourth, like the Germans do, but the same figureheads whom we had known in Holland appeared at our house. These were usually friends or relatives of our parents dressed to play the part. Not recognizing them to be acquaintances, I stayed close to Mom when these figures appeared for fear of being put in the black man’s burlap sack.

There was also an incident which startled me out of a sound sleep. Something heavy was pressing down on the foot of my bed as if a person was sitting there. Fear stalled my wish to look over the bed covers. When finally gaining the courage to glance around, nothing but the living room light shining through the crack of the door, which had been left slightly ajar, could be seen. With a fearful racing heart, Mom was summoned for comfort. The incident seemed real. It is still vivid in my memory. Was it a nightmare or had a ghost stopped by?

In 1953, many areas of Germany still lay in ruins, and thousands of people were still homeless, restless, and unsettled. This restlessness was a way of life for the dissatisfied and misplaced postwar people. It had affected my parents as well. We moved again on April 1, 1953, to a place called Pungemuhle in Mandelsloh near Hannover. This was a small German farming community, and Pungemuhle had been a grinding mill in previous years. The landlord’s house, located behind our home, had actually been a mill but was converted into a residential home.

Our house in Mandelsloh stood on a dirt road, mostly surrounded by forest and cow pastures. It was made of red brick and was still under construction. Construction materials were scarce, like most everything else at that time. Construction was at a standstill. The supplies it took to complete the bathroom in our house just weren’t available. The closet-sized bathroom lacked a toilet, tub, and sink. It remained unfinished the whole year that we lived there. We had to bathe in an oval galvanized metal container; the kind used as drinking troughs for farm animals. We took a bath once a week. The oval tub was filled only one time, and hot water was added as it cooled. Lida was blessed; she was usually the first to get clean. Each of us followed in order of age. Dad was last, even though he was two years younger than Mom was.

Our toilet was also a galvanized metal container, better known as a bucket. With the woods surrounding our house and the cow fields directly across the dirt road from our front door, we had plenty of convenient places to empty the contents of the galvanized pail when it got full. Dad got the job, and we kept him busy.

The trees surrounding the area flourished profusely the year that we lodged there. Their foliage became as thick as pea soup, no pun intended! The weeds, it seemed, knew no borders. Wildflowers ran rampant in every direction during the two springs of our stay, and their glory didn’t fade until well into summer.

A small trickling stream ran along the left side of our house as we faced it from the road. It made a semicircle behind our house and ran into the lake 200 yards further back. We spent hours playing along the banks of the stream. Lida, only three years old, was always landing head first in the shallow water. We were repeatedly fishing her out. Mom nicknamed her Plumsey, a German word for clumsiness or awkwardness. I thought the meaning of the word was plopping into the water.

Since our home was located about three miles out of town, Detlef and I had to walk that distance daily to attend our classes. I recall being seven years old and in second grade. Dad accompanied us at first, but once the road was familiar, Detlef and I made the trek alone. We had no car, and there was no school bus to give us a lift. We walked faster in winter.

My class was held in a one-room schoolhouse located behind the post office. Detlef went to another location close by. Fifteen other students shared my schoolroom, including another girl named Dagmar. Our worktable seated two students together on a pew-like seat, and the teacher named us Dagmar I and Dagmar II. There was an outhouse for the necessary moments to relieve our anxiety.

Because we were all still living on the minimum amount of nutritious foods, I suffered with recurring stomachaches, feeling nauseous most of the time. Father was still nursing his own digestive tract from the ulcer incident. It seemed that I was a sympathetic sufferer right along with him. Losing my cookies every night for about two or three weeks in a row prompted Mom to take action. The doctor gave me some iron for anemia, and a weekly radiating sunlamp treatment was prescribed. Maybe that was to kill the worms.

The three of us had a pinworm infestation, causing the itchy bum syndrome. The itching can drive a person up one wall and down the other, especially at night. In addition to the light treatment, we received medication to be dewormed. Parasites are common infestations in children. Sometimes they cause bed-wetting, other times itchy bums, dark circles under the eyes, or teeth grinding—depends on which worm you get, I suppose. Health was hard to maintain because of the food shortages. Since worms are highly contagious, our sheets and towels had to be boiled in hot water and hung out to dry. The workload fell on Mom’s shoulders. A washing machine was unheard of. Mom scrubbed the laundry on a wavy metal washboard.

I took the iron supplement for a long time. Mom would mix our medicine into a mixture of cocoa powder with a little sugar, and milk or cream. It was thick and sweet like chocolate candy. Being a chocolate lover from a young age, I didn’t mind taking the medicine in this manner. We called the mixture ruhr, kakao (pronounced kau, kau).

Early one morning I followed Dad across the road to watch the farmer milk the cows in the pasture. The farmer, sitting on a little stool, got up to let me try the art of milking. It took quite some doing to squeeze even the tiniest drop of milk out of the appendage. The rubbery udder in my little hands was an utter disaster. The farmer promptly took his job back and asked if I would bend down close to the milk pail and open my mouth real wide. I obeyed immediately. He squirted the warm, smelly cow’s milk straight into my wide-open mouth without spilling a drop on the ground. The gross taste of sweating cow fur almost knocked my tongue down my throat as the warm river of liquid chalk landed in my gut turning my innards upside down for the rest of the day.

The German winters seemed more unkind than those we experienced in Holland, thus giving way to more arctic conditions. We used the lake behind our house for sledding, using our nail-spiked sticks to propel us. One afternoon, in the middle of the frozen lake, the ice under my sled fractured and exploded into a powerful rupture. Jumping off the sled, I bolted like lightning back to the shore. My brave father had to retrieve it as I was willing to leave it out on the ice until spring.

Around this time, I recall that Mom sent me to the landlady’s house with her green metal cylindrical metric measuring cup to borrow some sugar. Turning the doorknob to the lady’s back door, I found it unlocked and stepped into the house. There in the middle of the kitchen sat the missus in her galvanized metal bathtub, stark naked, taking a bath. Oops! I hightailed it home. Mom got her sugar later that day and took me along to apologize for invading the lady’s privacy by failing to knock.

During the summer months, Dad would fish for eels in the same lake where the earsplitting ice crack occurred. Sometimes we would stand along the bank and watch him hook the eels and toss them head over heel to the shore. A thick slimy eel struck the back of my head and left its muddy skid mark in my nice clean hair as it slid down my back. After that incident, never again was I enticed to be an observer of Dad’s eel-fishing sport.

The eels filled in for the meat we were lacking. For me, eating eel was in the same category as drinking milk, usually choking to get it down. One dish we had weekly was called stampot. It was made out of mashed potatoes, mashed carrots, part of an onion, and one or two snippets of roast beef. The meat fragments in the stampot looked like strands of long rubber bands; Mother knew how to stretch a meal. This dish was soothing on cold winter nights, especially with fresh warm butter oozing over the top.

In spring, we all helped pick freshly sprouted dandelion greens which grew in the cow pasture. They were cooked and served as a vegetable or they were made into a nice green salad. Sometimes Dad made some dandelion wine out of the yellow flowers. Edible things found in the forest were additional blessings on our table. Picking mushrooms was a family affair. Our parents knew the difference between those edible mushrooms and the killers. That knowledge no longer rents space in my head. Perhaps it never did; nevertheless, we ate the mushrooms.

We gathered berries in season, got milk and butter from the farmer, and drank teas made from leaves or flowers of certain familiar trees such as linden or weeds like chamomile. Occasionally, a pound of sugar, a few slices of blood sausage for sandwiches, a speck of speck (bacon), some apples, a pear, prune butter, and some bread was bought from a market in Mandelsloh. We savored the fruit as we received only one-fifth of the whole. A chocolate bar was like gold. We usually received one at Christmas from an aunt or our grandmother. Our care packages from these relatives usually contained some little memento, an orange or two, and always a bar of dark, bittersweet chocolate.

We owned a portable kerosene cook stove. It was made of gray baked enamel. The base is the holding tank for the fuel. The three-slotted wick unit rests on top of the base. It had three cloth wicks fed through the slots. There were an equal number of knobs to turn the wicks up or down in order to adjust the cooking flame. The unit’s main frame fit over the wick part and contained a little round window through which the dancing blue flame could be viewed. A metal grate on which to set a cooking pot rested on top of the main frame. This portable cooker had shared our lives’ adventures, and it presently rests in my front closet.

As far as kids go, none of us were much of a discipline problem at that time, although Mom later said that America spoiled us and that we became harder to control. We lived three miles from the town of Mandelsloh and had no playmates to contribute to our corruption. Mom had numerous little rhyming sayings that she repeated over and over again until we got the message.

In short order, we had them memorized. Her most famous ones were: "Narren hande beschmieren tish und wande. That translates into A fools hands destroy tables and walls." Thus, we never learned the art of graffiti.

We were not allowed to drag our feet about getting a job done either. Mom would say "Morgen, morgen, nur nicht heute, sagen alle faule leute! The English version: Tomorrow, tomorrow, not today, that’s what lazy people say. And if we had to go to the bathroom while we were having dinner, she would be irritated and say, Von tishe zu wische." From the dinner table to bathroom duty just wasn’t the proper order in which things were done. We Germans had self-control and went after the meal.

Mom was a very creative disciplinarian. She threatened to snap us with the piss lappen if we got out of line. Although it was never used, we got an occasional threatening glimpse of this rag, which we later understood to be the menstrual rag. Just the threats alone stopped us from unruly behavior. The reprimand which worked best was her European guttural ach sounds. She would emit Ah, Ah, Ach from deep in her throat, causing us to draw back from any disorderly actions we were about to commit. Nothing made it past Mother’s Ah, Ah, Ah, Ach’s.

Sometime during our time in Mandelsloh, I must have learned to ride a bicycle. Since I didn’t own one and can’t recall where the borrowed bike came from, only a memory of riding to town on a bike is etched in the walls of my brain. On one particularly nice day, I was pedaling alongside of Mom as she walked the three-mile distance to town. Along the way, one section of the roadside narrowed, so she walked ahead of me. Trying desperately to crawl at a snail’s pace behind her, something took my attention. In an instant I had run into the back of Mom’s right leg and left a hefty tread mark deep in her skin. She was bleeding. I had not intended to hurt her, but was brought to tears as I accepted her scolding.

In time, the wound healed; still, she was left with a large bronze-colored rubber burn scar deep in the back of her leg. After that unfortunate incident, I was not able to convince her that I needed a bike of my own. Detlef managed to own a used bike later in time, and my parents bought one for Lida when she entered junior high school, but riding a borrowed bike continued to be my fate. Owning a bike became the desire of my heart well into my adult life.

Once, during our summer in Mandelsloh, Detlef and Dad made a hay tent. The hay showed up in our backyard, and why it was there, I can’t tell you, but there was enough fresh hay to build a tent over the clothesline. The tent was sturdy and good enough for a nighttime campout.

The reins of our parents’ discipline were not pulled too tightly. We were allowed to roam the neighborhood, the woods, the cow fields, and near the lake and stream behind our home. Early one morning toward the end of summer, before the fog had lifted, Detlef wanted to go exploring in the surrounding woods. As there was nothing better to do, I tagged along. Lida, probably whining to go, was sent along too, even though we argued that we didn’t want a little three-and-a-half-year-old sister on our tails. We had walked quite a distance into the woods when Detlef suddenly acted alarmed and commanded, Run! Looking around for an explanation, I caught a glimpse of a man hastening toward us.

He’s got a knife, Detlef added under his breath as we ran toward an open meadow which was quickly coming into view. With each of us holding one of Lida’s hands, her short little legs never really touched the pine needle carpet of the woods. She was carried, legs dangling in the air, being dragged through the forest. Not daring to look over my shoulder, the incident was terrifying, even without ever seeing the knife my brother had mentioned. His words had alarmed me spineless. A man was running after us, and we didn’t know why.

Once we reached the open field, we had to crawl under the barbed wire. It tore my shirt, and Lida got stuck. We quickly got her clothes lose and continued across the grass. Running through the open meadow was easier because there were no pine trees to dodge. The man was advancing rapidly. He was on our heels. We were almost home, but we still had one more obstacle to overcome.

The stream behind our house wasn’t very deep, but Lida’s legs were too short to jump across it. Detlef had already jumped to safety and hadn’t stopped. He had vanished in front of my eyes before I could open my mouth to retrieve him. Bewildered by the fact that my brother was gone and Lida and I had not made it over the stream yet, I let go of her hand and, in my anguish, stood frozen in my tracks, thinking, Why did Detlef desert us, just when we needed him most?

The man, only a few feet from Lida, was gaining ground. I jumped across the stream, turned around, reached over the water to pull Lida to safety, but Lida resisted and started to cry. Grabbing her hand firmly and pulling her toward me, her stocky little legs were dragged into the shallow water, saturating her shoes and socks. The man caught up with us and lifted Lida out of the stream and into his arms. The moisture from her soggy shoes dripped all over the front of his shirt, soaking him. In my angst, I wanted to vanish like my brother, but couldn’t, knowing Lida was in my care. The responsibility of bringing her home safely rested squarely on my trembling shoulders.

Feet planted firmly on the ground, I beseeched him, Please, Uncle. I begged in my German tongue. In my senseless condition, I adopted the strange man into our family right on the spot. For lack of a better name, he became Uncle.

Oh, please, please, Uncle. Please let my sister go. Tears now rolled down my cheeks. They were hot.

Lida was also sobbing.

What do you want? I asked.

The guy didn’t answer, but he laughed cynically. When the fellow saw my father approaching, he put Lida down, and we didn’t waste even a moment before hurrying home. As we were leaving, I overheard my father’s deep voice scolding the stranger and asking him to get away from the area.

Detlef was home when I arrived. Feeling like an old wrung out dishrag, my strength had evaporated with no energy left to bother asking Detlef why he had deserted us. Years later, he told me he had gone to fetch Dad who was working nearby. Whether he really did summon Dad or whether Dad had arrived on the scene just in time on his own remains a mystery to me unto this day. I had a hard time believing my brother’s story, and from my viewpoint, at that crucial moment on the banks of that murky stream, he had forsaken us.

Later that afternoon, Detlef and I were sitting on the redbrick steps of our front porch.

What do you think he wanted? I quizzed.

To scare us, he replied.

You mean terrify us, I mumbled, but why would anyone want to scare a couple of little kids? I was puzzled. None of it made any sense at all.

He’s a Nazi, Detlef answered.

The year was 1953, and the war in Europe had been over for about eight years, yet some of the effects still lingered on. Besides the poor economic conditions, there were also a few ex-Nazis still around whose minds had been permanently altered by that unfortunate conflict.

Momentarily, we sat in silence, looking down the dirt road as twilight altered the color of the road’s reddish sand and made it look more like yellow cornmeal. We could hear the sound of a creaky old bike coming down the wide dusty path. Our eyes caught sight of the figure. As it got closer, a second wave of fear struck my heart. The weirdo who had chased us in the woods was slowly approaching. As I got up to go inside, Detlef threw his arm against my chest to keep me from leaving. The man stopped in the middle of the sandy road directly in front of our quaint little house.

He spoke to Detlef. Was that house over there an old mill once? he asked, pointing to our landlord’s house behind ours.

Yes, my brother answered rather mechanically with no sign of anxiety or distress in his eyes.

Fearful and anxious, I was ready to enter the front door at a moment’s notice if the situation got threatening. I remained mute.

Oh, that’s all I wanted to know, he added as he mounted his squeaky bike and zigzagged down the road, never to be seen by any of us ever again.

It was weeks before we wanted to set foot in the woods again, at least not without grownups along. Frankly, we were never able to figure out why the stranger had chased us. Detlef’s theory was plausible. We had heard stories of people who had lost the best part of their sanity during the previous holocaust years. During the war, some German soldiers were desperate for food and had resorted to eating soap; the kind of soap that was sold in round blue tins. The creamy brown soap looked like thick paste and was called schmier seife in our language. The tar-colored prune butter that we spread on our toast had a similar consistency. The soldiers spread the soap on their bread, and after consuming a few of these meals, it seemed to be the cause of them losing their senses as their brains were gradually becoming more and more washed. It gives the term brainwashed a whole new meaning.

Looking back on the events of the past, I have often wished that Mom and Dad had written their own life stories. They frequently told us many interesting and frightening tales about the things they had to endure during the years of conflict in Europe. Both of them had lived through two of the worst wars in history—World Wars I and II. So many parts of their sorrowful experiences wandered silently inside the passageways of their minds and never escaped those maze-like corridors.

As I mentioned earlier in this chapter, Detlef was born right in the middle of those war-torn years, and Mother had to fight to keep her baby. The Russians wanted to steal him. After that incident, however, for the rest of her life, Mom was fearless, not afraid of anyone or anything. She had developed a rare form of courage. This was frequently self-evident during my growing up years.

The Russian soldiers did succeed in stealing the 1,000 Deutschmarks that Mom had hidden in her hope chest under her linens, money her father had given her as a wedding gift when she got married to Dad on January 5, 1943, in Wunschelburg in Schlesien, Germany. Several days before they got robbed, one of their neighbors asked to borrow some money, but Mom wouldn’t part with a cent of her valuable treasure, knowing how desperately she might need it for her own family during the hard times that were already upon them. It was three days after the neighbor’s request that the Russians ransacked their home and stole all the money.

This incident taught Mom a valuable lesson which she periodically related to us at a later time. Always be willing to lend money to somebody if you can do it, because you never know what tomorrow will bring, Mom often reflected in her heavy German brogue. If I had extended the loan to my neighbor before the Russians looted the house, the money would have been safe in my neighbor’s hand and she would have paid me back. Even if I had loaned her only a portion of the thousand, I would still have that portion. I ended up with nothing.

She had learned a lesson that is as old as the Bible itself, because in Proverbs 3:28, the Amplified Bible teaches Do not say to your neighbor, go and come again; and tomorrow I will give it—when you have it with you. In my own life as I reached adulthood, I learned that this principle is a great stepping-stone to our own happiness. Whenever we are able to extend help or generosity to others, it brings inner joy that can’t be contained. Sometimes people will take advantage of your open-handedness, this can be painful, but in the long run, if you follow the principle of giving, blessings will come your way, and a life filled with happiness is sure to follow.

Even though my parents had suffered many losses during the war, they came to be richly blessed soon afterward by gaining the family that Mom so humbly desired. In addition to a family, she also deeply desired a better life in a better place for her newly born children. With her strong, adventurous personality, it soon happened. She was the driving force behind my dad and actually behind all of us for that matter.

Chapter 2

Coming to America

One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.

—Andre Gobe

While we were living in Mandelsloh, my parents spoke more often of leaving Germany. The Florist Exchange, a magazine which Dad subscribed to, contained a classified section which included ads from employers in America, South America, Africa, and other foreign places. Most were interested in hiring experienced Dutch horticulturists.

Mom urged Dad to respond to several of these advertisements. Since South Africa had a large Dutch community around Johannesburg, Dad responded to one notice that could have taken us in that direction. He also responded to an ad from an American flower wholesaler. The return response from Africa failed to deliver the means whereby we would have been able to travel to that location. When he received a favorable reply from C. J. Van Bourgondien, Inc., Wholesale Cut Flower Growers in Babylon, Long Island, New York, both my parents were ecstatic. Even though I can’t recall the details, I’m sure it was a dandelion wine occasion.

Official documents had to be in order before we