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My Story
39
Note from Rohn: This is the final chapter of “Europe”
the first book of my trilogy, a memoir of my trip through Europe, Africa,
and North and Central America.
All of the previous chapters are located in the Stories archive section
of PhotoStockNOTES.
The second book coming up is called Africa in which
I relate how, with the brilliantly resourceful help of my friend, Rudi
Thurau, I was able to survive what time, nature, people, luck, and the
elements threw at us as we visited the enigmatic Moroccan cities of Tangier,
Casablanca, Adrar, Marrakech, Fez, and Oujda; lived with Bedouins of the
Atlas Mountains; visited the Roman remains of Volubilis; (yes, Roman archeological
remains over in the west side of North Africa, near the Atlantic Ocean,)
and then crossed the border into the Algerian War, and passed through
the rebel fighting with the French Foreign Legion; came down with hepatitis
in the central Sahara desert village of Adrar, got to our Niger riverside
destination of Niamey in Black Africa by hopping a ride with an Arab trucker;
built a raft from palm logs and 50-gallom oil drums from the Niamey airport
warehouse, sailed down the Niger River where I fell while climbing a cliff
to film some monkeys, broke my arm and landed back in the hospital in
Niamey and flew home to Maryland on Christmas eve, 1957 on the $500 the
airport manager lent me.
I look forward to sharing all this with you in my Africa book.
I ask your forbearance for a little while. Probably two months.
Unfortunately I have the task of restoring some of the rain-damaged manuscript
and daily log that I wrote about my Africa trip back in 1960... Fortunately
my negatives were back with my German friend, Hans Bartsch in Wuerzburg,
Germany. The photos are all intact. I’ll share with you a few of
them in this chapter 39, and finally, next week, chapter #40, I’ll
show you (through photos) a preview of what’s to
come in our adventures in Africa for the next section of my trilogy called
Africa. And, oh yes, as you remember, in Portugal we bought an 8mm movie
camera. I’ll being airing that 1957 film of how we crossed the Sahara
and built our raft on the Niger River. - RE
Click on the photo to enlarge
GOODBYE TO EUROPE *
Click on the photo to enlarge
WE LEAVE FROM GIBRALTAR **
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WE GET A 10-DAY ENTERTAINMENT JOB
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MY LOGBOOK DIARY
NOTE: For More Photos See Final Page
Rudi and I had learned that one of the keys to being able to
survive on this world tour was to earn our way by presenting
a short program on a radio station. But what we didn’t know was
that we had been lucky so far. I mean, we had always been paid for our
performance, but there was no universal law that said we had to be
paid.
In Gibraltar it was easy to find a radio station. Most
of them were in English, being Gibraltar and all. I listened when I heard
a radio playing somewhere for the radio call numbers and wrote down several
of them. I asked a passerby where the station was located. We found a
station nearby and spoke with the director about the proposed program
we had in mind. We performed a few examples of the English folksongs we
would sing, and gave him an idea of the storyline we could air for them.
This was new for us since I could speak English to the audience. This
would be a piece of cake.
But there was something involved I didn’t anticipate. In
the past, in Portugal, Spain, and France, the language barrier was actually
to our advantage. Radio program directors found interviewing a foreigner
like us was out of the ordinary. This was fresh and different for their
audience. But for an English-speaking audience, our story was ho-hum.
Plenty of unique travelers come through Gibraltar. “So what else
is new?” was the expression I read on the face of the radio station
manager. This is all hindsight. In Gibraltar I learned my lesson. You
gotta have the right angle.
“Sounds very entertaining fellows, but just one thing – if
you’re expecting any reimbursement for your program, I’m sorry
to say we won’t be able to give it to you.”
We struck out.
Rudi has the superstition that good and bad things always happen in threes.
This day’s events sure did follow his prediction. We decided to
make the program anyways at this radio station; it would be good experience
and good practice for us; but we decided that the next time we went to
a radio station, we would make the program first, and then inquire afterwards
about payment. The directors would be less hesitant not to pay for our
services.
That afternoon we stopped in at an outdoor café.
As we were sitting in the late afternoon sun, we met two American fellows
who had heard our radio program. They were stationed in France with the
U.S. army. They were on two weeks vacation and were interested in talking
with us about our trip.
“Gosh. That’s one thing I’ve always wanted to do”
one of the fellows from Kansas, said. His name was Edgar Tilly.
“Me, too!” Roger Morse said, a fellow from Milwaukee. “But
I got a gal back home, and I know she wouldn’t want to hear of it.”
“My girl didn’t want to hear of it either,” Rudi said,
“But seeing the world trip was more important to me, I took off
anyway. You’ll always be able to find a girl, but you’re only
young once!”
Well, that was the first I heard that Rudi had a girl back home.
You’d think he would’ve mentioned her. Or showed me a picture
that he carried with him. He never got any mail from any girls that I
know of. That was a curious thing about Rudi. He guarded his private life
and his private thoughts. He didn’t open up. At least not so far.
If the trip ended here in Gibraltar and someone back home asked me, “Well,
what was Rudi like?” I wouldn’t be able to answer them. If
they asked, “Was he easy to get along with?” I would be able
to answer that question. I would simply say, “Yes.”
But descriptions of people take more that one sentence. It was a paradox.
Here I had been with Rudi since last May 1957 after I got my discharge
from the army. I still didn’t know him. And now it was July. It
seemed the longer I was with him, the less I seemed to know much about
him other than what I first learned when we met in Rotterdam. It wasn’t
that he didn’t want to let me in; it’s just that I didn’t
care to knock on the door and ask to come in.
I think a lot of marriages are that way. People get together and get
married because they find someone who they need to compliment a certain
part of their life that is missing, so it feels good that they found them
and they get together, and they get married and live a long time together
and have children, and they fulfill what they were missing in their lives
and then when it’s fulfilled after ten or twenty years, they forget
what it was that they were missing. But they’re left with children
and a mortgage and memories of the struggle to keep everything glued together.
Their lives become a chore of everyday existence, coping with what happened
today and anticipating what’s going to happen tomorrow. You can
see it on their faces. When I think back of the people we met on the trip
this far, I see the same pattern whether it’s the gypsies in Portugal
or the husbands and wives on French farms. I wondered if I would see the
same pattern with the Arabs in North Africa or the families in black Africa.
But back to Rudi. You’d think I’d know more
about him. I mean like his inner feelings and all. He just wasn’t
the kinda guy that could lie out on a warm July evening and look up at
the sky and all those stars twinkling and share his thoughts about the
universe with me. I don’t mean that I expect him, or even a girl
friend to look up at the dark black shy with all those white holes in
it and marvel about the mystery and all, but after almost three months
you’d think the subject would come up.
Well, I can’t complain. Rudi was really a whiz-bang
when it came to mechanical things. He could fix anything. And he was curious
about how things worked, whether it was a telephone or an ocean freighter.
But he kept his curiosity all to himself. I’ve told you before how
fortunate I was to have a guy with me along on a trip like this. I was
just plain lucky to have met up with him. But for the life of me, I can’t
figure out this guy. Maybe when we get to Africa, things will be different.
We sat around the café that evening. And a few other Americans
who were touring Europe joined our table. After supper, they asked us
to play a few tunes on our guitars. As the evening progressed, the café
owner treated us to more beer to show us his appreciation for the entertainment.
When the evening was over, he came over to us and asked, “How long
you chaps going to be around?”
“Who knows?” I answered, “We’re looking for some
way we can earn some money to cross over to Tangier. Know any place where
we can get a job?”
“You got one right here, boys!”
“What?” Rudi exclaimed.
“Sure, if you can attract crowds into my beer garden like you did
tonight, you’re on the payroll!”
“We’ll stand on our heads if you want us to!” Rudi smiled.
“No, nothing spectacular. Just a few songs. And if you want to earn
your meals, I can use you around the dining room in the daytime, waiting
on tables. You ever had any experience at that?”
“Sure!” Rudi said. And I wondered where.
“Fine, come in tomorrow at 10:00 in the morning, and we’ll
try you out for a couple weeks.
“A couple of weeks?” Rudi said, and I gave him a little kick
under the table.
“Sure, and if you work out, you can work even longer,” the
owner said smiling, hoping he would please us.
Rudi received the message of my toe, and he didn’t
question the owner any more. We bid him goodnight. “Seeya at ten,”
he said.
When we got outside, I explained to Rudi that we should stay at least
a week, so that we’d have enough money to pay for the ferry and
some left over for Morocco.
“Well, we’ll see how it goes.” Rudi said. “But
the sooner we leave this country, the better I’ll like it!”
he said as we headed for our campsite at the beach.
The next morning we reported to work on time, and the job went well.
I even visited the radio station and let the manager know that we got
a job at the café and listeners could here us every evening at
the café.
I could have booted Rudi again for saying we had waited on tables, because
I had the job of explaining to him what to do, and correcting him, when
the owner wasn’t looking. Luckily, I had remembered much from my
table-waiting experience at Mercersburg Academy where I was what was called
a “working boy.” In exchange for being a server, I received
free tuition at the prep school.
As it turned out, the first few days we pleased everybody with our songs,
but Rudi’s table waiting began to confuse some of the British clientele.
Finally, on the third day, the owner called me aside.
“Say, Engh, about your German friend. I suppose
they do things much differently in Germany, but kindly ask him not to
ask if they are “full” when they finish their meal.
Where Rudi comes from the expression “Ich bin satt” means
“I have enjoyed the meal.” The word ‘satt’ means
full.
The owner continued. “And also, does he have any other shoes to
wear besides those clod-hoppers?” I was about to apologize when
the headwaiter interrupted us and began whispering with the owner. From
behind, I could see the owner’s ears were getting red; he dismissed
the headwaiter and turned to me. “That does it, Engh! Your friend
has just spilled soup on the neck of one of our best customers! Not a
little soup. .a lot of soup!”
He was burning mad. “I’m sorry to hear that, sir.”
“I’m sorry, too. And Mrs. Doughty is sorry,
too. Yes, I’m sorry, Engh. I simply cannot let that young man wait
on tables.”
“But perhaps he could work back here, sir, washing dishes or peeling
potatoes. We really need the money bad,” I pleaded.
“Now you understand, it’s not that I don’t like the
young man. He’s an o.k. fella, and he sings beautifully. But I just
can’t have him moving around between tables at the risk of offending
my customers.”
He thought for a moment then added, “Well, all right then. I can
use him in the kitchen and to run errands. Tell him to come back here;
I want to speak to him.”
I went out and got Rudi, who was wiping the excess pea soup from the floor,
and serenading his victim with a folksong ditty while he mopped up.
“Everything’s o.k. Rohn, don’t get mad; I’ve straightened
everything out with the lady.” Rudi said. The lady had gone to the
rest room to change her blouse.
“Everything’s not o.k. with the boss.” I told Rudi.
“He wants to talk to you.’ And I tried to keep a straight
face, knowing the owner was staring through the kitchen window at us as
Rudi wiped up traces of the soup still left on the chair.
Rudi went back and talked with him, and when he came out of the kitchen
door again, he no longer had his waiter jacket on.
“Psst, where are you going?” I whispered to him as he hurried
through the dining room with his head held high in the air.
“On an errand!” he said, and quickly passed through to the
front garden terrace.
We remained ten days in all at the restaurant, gathering
a crowd each night with our songs, and earning our meals in the daytime
with our other talents. On our last day, Mr. Manchester, the owner, presented
us with an envelope that contained fifty-five dollars. “Don’t
spend it all in one continent!” With that much money and the tip
money from our songs and waiting on tables, we were well-heeled to enter
Africa.
The next day we loaded our scooter on the eight o’clock ferry, and
paid the purser his fourteen dollars.
“Hope you boys have a Carnet for that thing!” he said, looking
at us warily.
“We have everything we’ll need!” I said. ‘Everything’
in this case was hope.
The boat whistle blasted of at 8:00 a.m. sharp, the engines began rumbling
below, the water started churning against the loading dock, the boat began
bouncing in its own wake, the whistle blasted one more time, and we
shoved off for Africa.
NEXT:
Dear Readers. I hope you liked the first book of my trilogy: Europe.
All of the previous chapters are located in the Stories archive section
of PhotoStockNOTES.
As I mentioned in the opening of this chapter, I’ll be taking a
break from writing about my Africa trip to repair the rain damage to my
1960 manuscript that was stored away in the granary building here at our
farm here in Wisconsin.
I’ve assembled some photos below from our Africa trip
and next week I’ll print another collection of Africa photos as
I gather them from locations here and there.
So, see you next week for a final installment (#40) of this section of
my trilogy.
-Rohn
SOME PREVIEW PHOTOS OF AFRICA
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