My Story

10

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ROHN ENTERTAINS A DUTCH FAMILY



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RUDI TUNES HIS GUITAR


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ROHN TRIES ON WOODEN SHOES

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BRUSSELS - THE SCOOTER IS STILL "NEW"



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THEIR ARRIVAL IN BRUSSELS

Who is this guy? What was driving him? I could imagine him in some Prussian shoe factory as an assistant manager with his eye on the manager’s job. Yikes! I wasn’t ever able to get along with those bossy kind of people. He probably saw me as malleable and exquisitely controllable. I also had some money. Would I soon part with it?

Were his ambitions anything like mine? Who cares? I needed help. I was outta my league when it came to traveling the world. I would just as soon stay at home and have the world come to me than have to go out to it. There must be all levels of worldly people. This was a guy at the gut level. Not at the slick, fast lane, material level of high rollers. I had seen enough of that shallow level in all the schools I had gone to, in my U.S. Army job and back at the beach in Ocean City, Maryland.
This guy was a new level for me. I had never associated with this level in my earlier life, now I was thrown in with him by necessity. There was a hole in this trip that I was making. Was he going to be my rescuer?
I would find out. I would ask a bunch of questions.
“Why did you start on this jaunt around the world?” I asked.

“That’s what everyone asks me,” He laughed. “Sometimes I’d say I’m out collecting folks songs. It depends on who’s asking. “When I had that camera that was stolen from me in Calcutta, I used to say I was a photographer and out to write a book. Other times I’d say I was curious and wanted to know what was happening on the other side of the hill.

I told some guys at the Altenhoffen Bar back in my hometown that I was going to build a special bike and go traveling like Hans Helfin. He’s a German guy that traveled all over the world. He was always my hero, ever since I was a kid. He wrote a couple books. Now he’s a millionaire.

“My friends at Wusterheide asked me when I was going to set off and I told them in a year or so, once I got the bike finished.
“They all laughed. In fact, this one guy, Friedrich, got the guys at the bar all to chip in to a kitty and they bet me a thousand marks I’d never circle the globe. My brother in Bremen is holding the money.”

“You’re saying you’re touring the world, just on a bet?” I said.
“Well, that’s not the real reason,” Rudi said, “But is was a good reason to tell the people in Wusterheide, that’s the town where my parents live. It’s a little town near Bremerhaven. No one’s ever heard of Wusterheide. Those people back there never would have understood why I would set out on a bike like that.”

“And you just started out alone?”
“Another guy was going to go along with me but he backed out. His mother didn’t think he should do it.”

I asked, “How ‘bout your parents? What’d they think of all this?”

“They pretty much didn’t care. I’d been working most of the time in the coalmines down near Duesseldorf. And I really didn’t get to be with them much. I’ve got one brother. He’s married. He keeps my parents happy.”
“You worked in the coal mines?”
“Yeah, it was the only way I could make any money. It was really good money. I didn’t get much schooling during the war years. I couldn’t get a decent job around where I lived. ”
“That was the first time he mentioned anything about the war. After all, why would he? Nothing good came out it for him. His country lost. He didn’t have anything to do with it. Why would he talk about it? There was no resentment from him about it, one way or the other.
He changed the subject. “I didn’t feel like going back to grade school. I know a lot of my friends did, but I didn’t feel like sitting in a schoolroom with a lot of 10-year-olds. So I took the job in the mines. I got good pay. Twice as much as anything around Wusterheide. I was an assistant foreman when I left. It worked out O.K. I’d get up at 4 a.m. in the morning and take a two-hour train ride before I got to work.“

“Wow!! That’s 4 hours a day on the train. Did you sleep on the train?”
“Naw, I’m not the type that can sleep on a train or car. I just spent my time thinking about going on this trip.”
And he continued.

“I spent the whole day in the mines. When I came out again it was nighttime. I was so beat. I couldn’t do any more than eat my evening meal and go to bed.
“And by the end of the month I wasn’t getting much ahead what with the cost of the train ride and the room and board that I had to pay my parents. Sundays was my only day off. That’s when I’d spend my time working on my special bicycle. If I ever made it around the world, maybe I’d be able to get a better job than assistant foreman in a coalmine.

“I didn’t go further than the eighth grade in school, and in Germany you can’t get a decent job unless you’ve got the papers to show you’ve been trained in some school. When I return to Wusterheide, I’ll show them a lot of things I’ve learned. Then they’ll listen to me. When I get back, I’ll write a few books about my experiences, like Hans Hilfen, and become a millionaire like Hans Hilfen,” he smiled to himself. “What would the people of Wusterheide think of me then? “

This was helpful to me. On this trip I had been struggling with my problem of being “the outsider”. Of being the ‘intruder’ in people’s lives. With Rudi, it seemed no problem at all. I think it was a case of he saw other people much differently than I did. People could have been a series of paper dolls for all he cared. His main interest in people was he could entertain them and earn a meal. His real drive to see the world was to be able to say one day he had seen it. I could be a part of that for him. He could see there was something about me that could help him accomplish that. He knew if he stuck with me and put up with me, it would lead to his goal. And I felt the same about him.

Back in Wusterheide, he told all his friends at the Gasthaus he would be back in four years. Nine months had passed already. Even though he had his bike stolen, he wasn’t going to quit now.

It excited me to think we were teaming together. At last I would have a companion. I might not agree with his European way of looking at things, and visa versa. I saw this would be part of the learning process for each of us. The combination would make my observing things much sharper. At least that’s how I saw it.

If he were really able to get into homes as he said he had, my problem of being unable to approach people would be solved. With a companion, I would have to lose some of the freedom I was having before, but I would never experience as much loneliness.

Besides our talents in music, the only sameness I could see in Rudi was we both had a desire to become someone; he to achieve public recognition; I to achieve self-recognition. This was a strange combination of personalities to be seated on a motor scooter headed off to see the world. I wondered how we would fare.

When it came to material things like big cars and big houses and nice clothes and jewelry and things like that, Rudi was really my opposite. I didn’t much care for those things. He was traveling the world to eventually get those things that I was in the process of giving up. I wondered how I would deal with that.

Herr Van Dohlen saw us packing the Vespa. “
“You guys want something to eat before you take off?”
“Thank you!” We answered.
“By the way,” I said. “Where’s a place in Rotterdam I could buy a camera?”
He stopped a moment and said, “Say, I just decided to sell my Rolleicord. It’s practically like new. I can give you a good price.”

The Rolleicord was the poor sister of the Rolleiflex, the camera I lost. But it was better that no camera.
I took a look. It had a leather casing that looked like it had come right out of the store window. For all I know it might have been the trophy from a card game in the tavern. He said he’d give it to me for $25. I didn’t know much about cameras at that time, but it was shiny and new so I took a gamble and bought it.

I still had my unused rolls of film. Back in Wuerzburg, I wondered if Hans Bartsch would see the difference when he was printing my negs. Maybe I wouldn’t have to tell him how dumb I was to lose my camera. I figured I’d wait to see what Hans thought of the quality of the photos from Holland from this point on.

We headed west. The country of Belgium was our aim. The Vespa drove oddly at first with the weight of another person on the back. But I soon got used to it. It was a new pleasure to be able to chat with someone and to point out interesting things on the landscape. I soon learned Rudi was not much interested in scenery. He saw it as a backdrop. His interest was mileage and road signs. Getting somewhere new each day. He saw that as success. Like back in the coalmines, more tonnage, to him, was accomplishment.

But it didn’t bother me. We sped along the flat Dutch highway lined with tall, stately white birch trees. The neatly trimmed countryside rolled endlessly until it reached the distant earthline where Holland faded into the horizon.

It made me feel good to have Rudi coming along with me, or should I say, me with him. Our chance meeting had saved me from inquiring about passage home to Maryland on a freighter. His outright optimism gave me inspiration. I felt the strange notion that a ‘guide’ had been sent to me, a conductor one who was to deliver me from the frustration of not being able to rise above my inability to escape the depths of loneliness. But I didn’t dare show any signs of any kind of weakness that I couldn’t keep up or do my share of the job. I knew I could do it. As the afternoon wore on, I caught myself happily smiling.

Near evening, as the cooler ocean breeze began blowing across the Netherlands from the north, Rudi yelled over the roar of the motor, “Time to have that big meal!”
“Where? I shouted, puzzled that I didn’t see any towns in the distance.
“Take your pick!” and he pointed to two farms off on the right.
“Do you know these people?” I yelled back over the roar of the motor.
“No! Of course not. But we will soon. “That one looks better.” He pressed on my shoulder to slow down.
“How do you know? I yelled back.
“Just trust me.” He shouted in my ear.

I turned into the tree-lined lane of the quaint stone farmhouse with a thick thatched roof and several outbuildings and a barn. “I hope you know what you’re doing!” I said as we put-putted up into the farmyard. I had seen pictures of these farmsteads like in a Millet painting in the encyclopedia back home but never imagined I’d be seeing them up close like this.

I didn’t know if I would’ve driven up into any farmyard yard on my own like this where I imagined the owner would come out with a shot gun like I heard stories on the Eastern Shore where I grew up where some ol’ chicken farmer that lived way back in the boondocks that didn’t trust any vehicle that came up in his driveway and he’d fire a warning shot up in the air just to establish what’s what. Those chicken farmers were still living in the 19th century just like these people were so I wasn’t sure if we were doing the right thing.

But events were going so fast, I didn’t have a chance to reconsider. We arrived We were there and a stocky Dutch farmer, probably the owner, was standing in the farmyard. He had heard us coming. He didn’t have a shotgun but he did have a pitchfork he was leaning on as he was watching us. He looked like he had just come in from working in the field. His tanned workmen’s face was aged far beyond his youthful years. Dark green eyes followed us as we parked the motor scooter, probably the first that had ever driven up into his farmyard. I saw some other eyes of two little children peeking from behind an empty hay wagon across the yard.

“Hello!” Rudi greeted him as I turned off the motor. It startled me to see the wide grin and smile that came out of Rudi. To this point I had not seen such an affable smile on Rudi’s face. Not even at the songfest the night before. His face was usually frozen into a stern expression.
The farmer reacted tentatively with a slight smile. The two children ran up from behind the hay wagon. The little girl grabbed her father’s hand that wasn’t leaning on his pitchfork; the little boy grabbed his coattail and looked up at us. Neither of them spoke. The farmer’s pale green eyes glanced over at me. He continued leaning on his pitchfork.

As I set the scooter in the parked position, Rudi got off the scooter
and said in the local dialect of platt deutsch, “How do you do, - my name’s Rudi Thurau.” And he extended his hand to say hello.
“Renseller” the man said and shook hands with Rudi, finally letting loose with his grip on the hoe.
“And this is my American friend, “Rohn Engh” said Rudi and the farmer showed a sign of interest at the idea of an American visiting his farm. The last time he probably saw an American was a decade, or so, ago when tanks and foot soldiers passed along his highway on route to the Rhine. He was probably 35 yrs old at the time. He had known the experience, like all farmers along this highway through Holland of the English Spitfires strafing German patrols as they moved into Holland. And he had also seen American Mustangs strafe German foot soldiers and tanks as they retreated back across the Rhine into Deutschland. His father, before him, had seen the same in World War I.

“Pleased to meet you,” I smiled.
“Likewise,” And we shook hands.
“We’ve had some nice weather this week.” Rudi began with his small talk.
“Yep, but it’s still cold and chilly at night and we could use a little more rain,” came the universal reply.
“How far is the Belgian border from here? Rudi inquired.

“About twenty kilometers,” the farmer answered as I heard the screen door slam and saw his housewife coming our way drying her hands on a dishtowel. She took the children’s’ hands.
“You from Belgium?” The farmer asked
“No, I’m German,” Rudi replied.
His wife stepped back with her two children.
“Oh,” the farmer replied, - an “oh” that meant he didn’t want anything more to do with Rudi.

I figured I better change the subject quickly. “You’ve got a nice charming farm here,” I looked over at the barn and the outbuildings. He smiled and diverting the conversation to me, “You look like you’re packed up to ride on a long trip.”

“Yes, we are,” I said in the little Dutch that I knew. I didn’t want to bring Rudi into the conversation.
“It must take a lot of money to travel like that,” he asked, continuing the conversation with me.
“Oh, no,” I replied, entirely new at speaking in situations like this. “We don’t have much money at all.”
“Where do you sleep night?” He asked me.
I stumbled for words. “Well,”
--and looked at Rudi, “—that’s what we came to talk to you about.”

Rudi interrupted quickly. “What he means is we’d like to know if we might sleep in your barn tonight. We have sleeping bags and neither of us smokes.
Herr Renseller pulled out a small knife and began cleaning his fingernails. His penetrating eyes stared at Rudi and then back to me and then over at the Vespa. And then over to his wife.

He waited a long time before he said, “I think we have some room for you boys.” He was looking straight at me as though I was in charge of the whole thing. “Follow me,” and he headed towards the barn.
Rudi winked at me as I followed Herr Renseller with Rudi trailing behind.

Now that was a switch. Me, the captain of this whole thing. I was pushed in charge. In the barn, with his pitchfork he pulled down a bunch of hay from the loft above and rearranged it in a corner.
“There,” he said quietly, “You can get a good night’s sleep here.

No doubt, during the war, he had done the same for English soldiers separated for their units or German soldiers escaping advancing American battalions.
We thanked him and he returned to his wife and children and probably assured them we were not escaped criminals or fugitives of some kind.
I looked at the bed of straw and wondered if this was what Rudi had meant when he said I would be ‘sleeping in a warm bed tonight’. Rudi wheeled the Vespa over to the barn door and we began unpacking.

“You did good, Engh” Rudi said and began opening his sleeping bag and laying it out in the deep straw. “Now we want to practice some songs,” he said, starting to tune his guitar.

Later, I was to see, there was a reason for this.
We got out our guitars and started singing together songs we both knew, Rudi on the melody and me on the harmony. In a short while we saw the little boy peeking through a space in the barn door. His sister was standing behind him. And a hired worker we had seen in the fields looked in and opened the barn door wider. They all came in as we shifted to a new song. After each new song they applauded.
Herr Renseller was walking by and curious about the concert going on in his barn, dropped in to listen. He even applauded. We continued.

The sun was going down, getting darker and it was getting cooler. Mr. Renseller said, “Let’s not have this concert out in this barn, fellows. Let’s all go in the house.”
Once in the farmhouse, we found ourselves in a massive wood-beamed kitchen. Frau Renseller was just putting the final touches to a big pot of stew simmering on the wood fire stove. Herr Renseller introduced us to his mother, Frau Anneliese who sat in a rocking chair near a large fireplace that had glowing coals in it from early in the day. She seemed to be a quiet person and smiled back to us.

“Sitzen Sie sich!” Frau Renseller ordered us to sit down with them for the evening meal at their generations-old long thick wooden table. She waved her kettle spoon directing Rudi to sit on the left side and me on the right side of Herr Renseller who sat at the head of the table as little Damian and Sabrina and their grandmother, Frau Anneliese and Stefan, the hired hand, took their regular places.

Rudi and I went for second helpings of the steaming stew of chunks of ham and vegetables laced with local condiments that added a flavor I didn’t recognized. The children looked healthy so I didn’t question what I was eating. Rudi ate anything I soon learned.

Near the end of the meal when Frau Renseller was passing around the generous slices of cheese, I saw Herr Renseller whispering to Stefan. It later turned out he was dispatched to invite the neighbor farm families to come listen to the two troubadours that arrived late afternoon, one an American and one German who were staying overnight at the Renseller farm. One of the farmers’ daughters had been an exchange student last year in the USA and spoke excellent English and translated when we got stuck in the conversations. Herr Renseller passed around a jug of wine and a neighbor brought some of their own product.

Most of the conversations centered on big American cars and the wonder of TV, and of course, we played some Elvis Presley tunes. It was nearing midnight and Herr Renseller said in Dutch, “"Een uur slaap voor middernacht is de moeite waard twee uur na." I asked Frieda, the exchange student, what it meant. She said,” It’s an old Dutch proverb. It means, “One hour’s sleep before midnight is worth two hours after.”

The language difference didn’t turn out to be the big problem I thought it might be on this trip. Usually we could figure things out between us, or by drawing sketches, or acting charade movements or finding a dictionary in the household. Sometimes the grade school children in family knew enough English for me to translate it to Rudi or visa versa.

Bedtime came along, and Frau Renseller came over to us and said, “How would you boys like to sleep in a feather bed tonight?” We gave the answer with a big smile. Rudi stood up swiftly and celebrated this reward to us by booming out in song his favorite rendition of “In Muenchen Steht Das Hof Brau Haus.” And the room joined in singing the familiar toast. .
She took us into another part of the farmhouse. It was lighted only by the flickering oil lamp she was carrying. And in front of us I spotted a large double bed with a fluffy feather tick for a mattress. In no time we were fast asleep.

I heard a knock on our door and awoke to see our room flooded with sunlight. “Time for breakfast!”
I nudged Rudi who snapped to attention immediately.
t is worth two afterafter.

“Did you boys hear the roosters crowing outside this morning? Herr Renseller asked as we sat down beside him to a breakfast of eggs, rye bread, fried potatoes, bacon and fresh warm milk.

“Where you going today?” Frau Renseller asked as she filled our milk glasses again.
“Into Belgium,” I answered, and the words tingled inside me. We were now off to Belgium! My trip had begun to roll out!
After breakfast, Herr Renseller showed us around his farm. “And over there I’ve got wheat, ‘ He pointed to a field in the east. “That’s Stefan my hired hand plowing, getting ready for seeding. “
Do you have any motor-driven machinery on your farm?” I asked as we looked at his implements in the shed.

“Wish we did,” he answered. “But our fields are small here. Not big like in your country. Machines wouldn’t pay for themselves. Holland’s a small country and we’ve got no room to expand. If I had two sons the problem would be even greater. I would divide the land between the two of them. My neighbor is thinking of getting out of farming. We might be able to work something out if I could buy his land.

We returned to the house and began preparing our scooter for the road. Frau Reseller came out from the house with a large sack. “Here boys, I’ve packed a lunch for you. “
“Nice of you! I said, accepting the bag.
“It was nice of your U.S. Army liberating our country,” I said. avoiding Rudi’s eyes.

I nodded but I couldn’t help feeling it was a small thing to say. Rudi didn’t have anything more to do with the German occupation of her country than I had to do with the liberation of it. In Belgium, we were to feel the resentment against the Germans even stronger.
I didn’t recognize this would be a problem and didn’t take it into consideration when I had chosen to sign on with Rudi as a travel partner.

Oh, well, maybe we would get lucky and pick the right farm for sleeping tonight. The Renseller family all turned out to wish us farewell. Frau Reseller, dishtowel still in hand and children at her waist side said, “ Elk afscheid is de geboorte van een herinnering."

Rudi with his platt deutsch and Herr Renseller with his knowledge of German and me with my English figured out it meant the old Dutch proverb, “Every goodbye is the birth of a memory.”

We bid our farewell memories to the Rensellers and were off once again on the Dutch highway headed west. At the Belgian border the Customs people wanted to charge us for bringing two guitars into their country but we sang them a couple of songs and melted them away, and then crossed over into their country.
At a tavern a few miles into Belgium we met with some real hostility and some near-fisticuffs. We managed to head ‘em off at the pass but it stirred me to realize we should call ourselves not as a German guy traveling with an American guy but an American traveling with a German. People would then be hearing the word ‘American’ first not ‘German’ and not be so ready to start World War II all over again.

Also, at a stop for gasoline I saw a Belgian guy putting up a poster for a circus that was coming to town and I got an idea. I never suspected my training at college at Maryland Institute of Design in Baltimore would come in handy on this trip. I was enrolled in a minor course called “Advertising Design” and loved it. How did we use it in Brussels, the first major city we hit?

I realized that when you’re in a situation that you’re not familiar with and people aren’t familiar with you, the best way to announce yourself and explain what you’re doing in town in our case is not to put up posters but to announce it in a newspaper. Journalists are always looking for story ideas and we were a natural for them. European newspapers in post-war Europe were healthy again. I could tell by their variety and abundance at the newsstands. This would be a situation where everybody would win.

I borrowed a trick from these circus and carnival advance guys who go into a town ahead of time and put up flyers and posters about the event. We didn’t have a circus or anything like that but we did have, what they call in the publicity business, a “hook.”

Our unique hook was that we were on a world tour –and the reader’s interest would be that we were both an American and German together. To the public, that represented a positive aspect. Sort of a “Good Will” thing. Plus all newspapers of any size would publish a picture of our motor scooter and us. People would begin talking about us and we would get invited not only into farms but city homes as well.

Well, before I tell you about how I enticed Rudi to come with me into a major city newspaper office and ask for the production head of the news department, I’ll tell you of our rude welcome to Belgium and how we nearly lost it all to some ruffians.

NEXT:

ON TO PARIS