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Saving the Story Dad's Car
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My Life Story My Dad had a 1955 black Mercedes with wood dashboard and red leather seats when we lived in Berlin 60-63. We had brought over a pink Chrysler with the fins and all electric features. Although it was a comfortable ride and so big that my brother and I rarely fought for backseat territory, it had a few glitches. We were driving down the Kurfurstendamm and the car decided to short out. All the modern electrical features went haywire. The radio went back and forth the seat went up and down, whatever was electric failed. With the horn blasting and the Germans looking at us like aliens my father threw up the hood and started pulling wires just to get it to stop. We laughed hard about it but the next day my Dad sold it to an Arab who said he needed it to drive all his wives around.
My father also decided to get rid of it because it was too hard to navigate all the little towns in Europe. He loved to travel and dragged us everywhere. After he bought the Mercedes we continued to travel out of Berlin every chance we could. Paris sightseeing, Austria skiing, Denmark, Italy to camp. What a great life. It was on one of these trips out of Berlin after the Wall went up that the Mercedes almost got us into trouble. To leave you had to drive though the checkpoints. As an American we didn't have to stop at all of them. I remember my brother and I sitting on our knees looking out the back window our chins on our hands watching the checkpoint we had just driven through. I remember distinctly as an East German solider whirled around when he saw the German made Mercedes and point his gun right at us. In one movement he brought the gun up when he saw the American plates but not before my brother and I said "I think you better stop Dad". Just an everyday experience for your average brat.
Debbie Thompson Johnson '73
FAJHS '67-'70
Bad Vilbel
Now in Raleigh, NC
PS Just glanced at the Berlin article Yeah he would have shot us....
This is
the kind of wiece I enjoy reading. your teen words are good too as is what you write today. however pieves of time, moments of a life are so interesting. I enjoy smiling.
Thank you
I saved some emails that I wrote hoping to use them as blogs, but i have left that site unsupplied as late. I seem interested in poetry at the moment. Thanks for the read and comments. My children got ahold of some of my teenage poetry and laughed so hard. Some were pretty trite, so I take to heart your kind comments. Plus, I hope I have gleemed the angst, "why oh why," from most of them!
I am so sorry. I just read
I am so sorry. I just read what i wrote and see my editing is horrible! Both times I wanted to write PIECE and PIECES I didn't accomplish it without my fat fingers hitting the wrong keys. I hope you understood what i meant. Teen poetry is always angst filled. It is still pretty good.
I understood
I read textaster. That is my play on the word poetaster. I was not familiar with the word when a friend referred to himself as a poetaster. As he was writing in text his definition it was filled with mistypes that were completely understandable. Poetaster=One who writes inferior poetry Textaster=one who write inferior texts. Not saying yours comments and mispells inferior, but I most certainly understood your intentions. I wish there was spell check on this thing.
Thank you for takig time to comment.