WHAT’S THIS ?

When I was 26, and living in Maryland, USA, I made a wanderlust trip through Europe, Africa, USA, Mexico and Central America that lasted over 35 months, almost three years. That was in 1957-60. When I returned home I began writing a memoir during 1960 and ’61. When I finished, I put it away in a closet and forgot it. I really didn’t forget it. I just didn’t think I should publish it because there were so many episodes and descriptions in there that would prove awkward to people like my relatives and my friends along the way. So I left it all alone. It’s now 2010, almost 40 years later and my family and me are living on a farm in western Wisconsin. I’ll dust off the manuscript and publish it here for the first time. –RE

After the first leg of my voyage through Europe and Africa, I sold my photos and story to the Saturday Evening Post, a popular magazine in 1958. This taught me that maybe I was cut out for a career photojournalism.

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BRINGING IN THE HAY





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RUDI WASHES UP FOR THE DAY AHEAD



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JUST COINCIDENCE?

My Story

9

Rohn Engh

I opened my eyes just before dawn to a thumping feeling between my ears and in the dim light I tried to recount just how I landed in a hayloft in a Dutch barn with horses shuffling down below and pigeons in the ceiling cooing and fluttering from rafter to rafter, flapping their wings and dropping white splatterings, the kind you like to avoid on the sidewalk when you’re taking a stroll in a big city park. One hit me on the ear and I think that’s what woke me up. Shit! I grumbled as I searched for the bandanna that I must’ve lost in the melee from the night before.
And then there was my mouth. Stale beer taste. And my head. The sound of kettledrums were beating in there. I tried to go to sleep. And I did.
When I woke the next time the kettledrums were gone. I could hear someone below with the horses swashing water buckets and feeding them grain.
Rudi was already up, folding his sleeping bag. “You sleep O.K., Engh?” He asked.
I grumbled, “Yeah.”
“Hey you guys! You gonna sleep forever?” The bartender shouted up to us in what the Dutch people call ‘platt deutsch.’ It’s sorta like German with some other dialects mixed in there like Danish and Flemish and even some Creole or whatever that language is that they speak in the back bayous of Louisiana. Anyway, back in Wuerzburg it was the same thing about languages; you really didn’t have straight German to speak if you wanted to talk with the people. Some had a Bavarian accent, especially out in the country, and others in the city had an accent they called hochdeutsch, or somesuch, the kind you heard radio announcers speaking.
It was pretty much the same as when I was growing up on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, out in the country; we all spoke with a different accent than the city people that came down from Baltimore and Washington. I had to be careful when I would talk with ‘city people’ over there in Ocean City when I had my summer job at the hotel during school summer vacation time. I tried to sound like the voices I heard on the radio otherwise they would think of me as a “hick” as city people called us from the Eastern Shore. I guess it was the same with the black people who worked in the kitchen with me when they talked amongst each other but when the boss lady came back with us they would snap up into real English even that I could understand.
Anyway all this got me prepared for my journey. I didn’t mind it. In fact I kinda liked it, learning new foreign words all the time and as I look back on it now, the people I was speaking with appreciated that I was interested enough if their language to try to learn it which meant they knew I appreciated them and their country as well.
“How did you ever get from Hamburg to Calcutta on only ten dollars?” I asked Rudi as I was rolling up my sleeping bag. He was staring at me. Sizing me up, I thought. Here was someone who had accomplished something that I was setting out to do. Could I do it? I already knew my limitations. What did he possess that I didn’t?
“To Calcutta?,” he said, reaching for his guitar and holding it up in the air, “This fellow here. That’s what got me everywhere.”

He tossed it back on the straw. It was covered with scratches and souvenir stickers of countries and cities he’d been through and a few signatures of people he had met. It lay there, as if it were a pet animal, like a dog that tagged along with you wherever you went, as long as you had a morsel of food to toss it now and then.
“By playing on street corners?” I asked. “With a tin cup, asking for money?”
“Hell, no” he said, looking at me as if I were a child.
“How then?” I asked, hoping he had some magic secret.

“Hey! You guys coming down? The bartender shouted up to us.
“Be right there.” We both shouted back.

“Well, happy to see you both had a good sleep,” the bartender brinned at us as we entered the back door of the tavern. He introduced himself as Hermann Van Dohlen.
“You own this tavern,?” Rudi asked.
“It’s all mine,” he said proudly. And then introduced us to his wife, who was in the kitchen preparing breakfast.
“C’mon out here in the back and wash up,” she said, as she poured us each a hot basin of water. “Why are you limping young man?” she looked at me with concern.
“He was playing Tarzan last night in the barn, laughed Rudi.
“It’s all right,” I said, “I only turned my ankle.”
“Boys! Have some breakfast with us,” Herr Van Dohlen shouted from the tavern.
“Thanks, we answered in unison.
“Thank you, for that fine entertainment last night.” He returned.

After breakfast with the Van Dohlens, Rudi and I walked out to the stone steps leading up to the tavern. Horse-drawn wagons paraded by, people on foot, boys on bicycles, men with push carts passed.

And Rudi’s secret magic for traveling all the way to India on ten dollars?

As it turns out there was no magic secret. His answer was as old as the ages. Like the circus of ancient days, people love to be entertained and a good way to entertain them was with some kind of musical instrument.
I remembered from last night, he had a beautiful baritone voice. It didn’t always stay in tune, much like his guitar, but he proved that didn’t matter so long as you could offer them “theater.”

He hadn’t thought this all out, I could tell, but what I could tell is that he discovered as a youngster back when he was working in the coal mines, he could strum a chord on his guitar it would get attention and it would change the atmosphere. If he added his singing voice it would raise the level of “theater”.
Soon he was on his way out of the coalmines to travel into the world he had seen only in the movies. He would get to the edge of town on his bicycle and keep going. I sensed he had the same feeling I had, that nothing could hold him back.
I suppose that his friends and family told him too, that he was running away from a promising future and he’d probably fall prey to the evils of the world. I knew he was a lot like me in that we both were stubborn about changing the way our lives were going and wanted to see what else was out there before we settled down.

As I look back, it turned out that when we each started out, neither of us sat down and figured out an action plan or something like that. We didn’t realize there was some kind of magnet out there that was drawing each of us from our standard existence. It turned out that we were doing something right, -something normal, actually.

We both knew that people love to be entertained and escape from their boring normal ordinary existence. It takes their mind off things. Even if it was a good life. Sometimes they don’t even know they’re tired and weary and need to clear out their mind a little bit. They look to find ay to make all those things disappear. Music can do this. Everyone is transported. It’s nice to be able to help people in that way.

The average tourist doesn’t experience this. When music is your language, even religious and cultural differences disappear. You wouldn’t think you could reduce all the ills of the world to this. But on a one-to-one basis you really can. You really, definitely can. I was beginning to realize all this stuff, but you really can. Rudi already knew it.
I asked him, “But how did you get through nine months of travel on ten dollars?”
No one had ever asked him such a question. He thought for a while.
“For one thing,” he said, “When you travel like this, almost like gypsies, you get to be friends with people pretty quick and pretty soon they want to know more about you and what you’re doing in their town and where you’ve been and where you’re going and what you’ve seen. And they want to know about you and your family, -basic things like that. He put his shoes up on one of the wrought iron benches
“Once I’ve told them the places I’ve driven my bicycle, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, places like that, they feel as they know me better.

They like to put themselves in my stories and it’s fun for them. Of course not all of them, but a lot of them. With them you talk about things you wouldn’t normally talk about to the people back home , with people you see every day. And pretty soon they ask if you’ve had a meal, and pretty soon you’re sitting in their home in the kitchen and having a meal, and then it’s getting dark, and they say they have an extra bed and you’re welcome to it – it’s actually their own bed - and they sleep somewhere else, and then before you know it you’re having breakfast with them and they are packing you a lunch to take along with you and giving you a hug and a strong handshake and sometimes a kiss and wishing you a good trip and you’re on your way.”

I was getting to see the whole picture. He didn’t see the world the same way most people did. He saw the world more as prospects or more accurately as candidates for his services.
Now I don’t mean it in a way that he was like a preacher seeing people as his eventual flock but more like a carnival barker who sees people as prospects or like a Madison Avenue ad agency director who truly believes in his product and wants to convince people that they’ll be better off if they react positively to what he is selling them.

As I look back on it now, his technique had a flow to it, almost a rhythm you had to admire, like the car salesman who is the student of human nature, who has learned a formula for dealing with people. Rudi wasn’t going around trying to sell people stuff; it just came to him naturally. I don’t think he would be happy being a salesman. He was just happy having figured out how to get people to react the way he wanted them to. And his method was music.

I myself didn’t have this talent. Rejection was devastating to me. But I needed to sell myself to people if I wanted to learn about them and their way of life. Rudi was going to be the perfect compliment to me on my voyage.
Most people might think of Rudi as being aggressive. But he didn’t see himself that way. If his “family of man” as Edward Steichen called them, is out there waiting his arrival, you don’t spend time on protocol. It was like his family was expecting him. Why stand on ceremony, just go for it.
He bent over to tie his shoes. They were half-boots made out of leather that he had probably bought at an Army surplus store back in Hamburg before he started his journey. They had taken him over deserts and cobblestones. And they had probably been worn ten years earlier by a German soldier somewhere on the Russian front.

My mind wandered like this all the time. I should get away from my habit of trying to figure out how all that I encountered fit into some kind of describable pattern.

I interrupted him, “But the money. You need some money to send a postcard back home. Or for the rainy days when you don’t meet any friendly people that’s hospitable like that.” I said.

“Well, sometimes those people need some repairs around the house, or a farmer needs a fence gate fixed and you tell them you’ve got the time, you’re in no rush to get anywhere, and you can do the job. And then they find another job for you and sometimes you realize you’ve been there several days, and you’ve got to get on your way, and you find they pay you a little extra than what you expected and you may acquire even five or ten dollars. Now you’ve got a little extra cash for those rainy days. It all works out. Not to worry about that.”

I could tell Rudi wasn’t out to see and learn the same things I was, but he was out to do the same things. That was what I needed. It would be a good combination if we could take this journey together. He was aggressive.
That was something I didn’t have. I mean aggressive in the sense if he had a particular goal that day, he was going to do it or get it done. I wondered if this was his regular character or if it was something he had developed to be able to survive on his trip. I think it came naturally to him.
Rudi continued, “If people enjoy your company they like to do things for you . You can repay them with song. They didn’t have TV or record players or transistor radios, It’s live entertainment in their home. It had never come into their homes before. It is a memorable experience for them that they’ll never forget.”

I broke in, “It gives you a chance to see how people are living from the inside. It’s not like they knew you were coming and prepared for your visit.”
“Naaw,” he said. “ I haven’t stayed in a hotel on the whole trip. You can’t learn anything about the world staying in hotels,” he said.
“I guess so,” I said. “Bellboys in Paris are no different than those in Cairo.”
Last night, I had suggested we make the trip together. I wondered. Could he put up with me? ..and me with him? Was he a guy just wandering around because he had nothing better to do? Did he have any purpose in life? Was he on a mission to find himself? What was he doing, riding a bicycle all the way to India- and farther if he hadn’t gotten it stolen from him?. But then, again, he could’ve bought another bike or stolen one himself and continued on. Or was he giving up his trip and coming back to Europe, satisfied he’d had enough? Those were things I was wondering about.

Rudi, it seemed, was the kind of person that reveals his whole life, past, present and future to the stranger at first meeting. But only like on a job resume. The resume tells you all you need to know for the purpose it’s intended for. It stops there. I learned all the specifics of what he had done but nothing of what he had observed. But what did that matter, I thought?
Yes, maybe this would make the ideal combination. The wanderer and the wonderer making a trip together. Maybe we could compliment each other? A couple of opposites. I would have ideas. He would make sure they got done. Sounded promising.

He reached in his saddlebag and pulled out a can. “This is butter,” he said, holding up the small can for me to read the label. “It comes all the way from Goa, in Portuguese India, where I was last month. An Army Captain gave it to me as a going away present! Do you like pumpernickel?” He asked, bringing out a hunting knife.
“Sure do.”
“Good. Then we’re going to have a treat.” He cut thick slices of the black bread. We each spread them with the unsalted butter and continued our conversation.

“Well, we’re set for a real expedition!” Rudi continued, munching on his bread. “You with your brand new motor scooter and me with my supply of bread and butter.”

“Would you really like to team up?” I asked earnestly.

“We could try and see if it works out.” He answered.” We both have guitars and we both look like we have practically the same road ahead of us. But I don’t have much to contribute…”

I interrupted him. “But your experience is invaluable.”
“Yeah, I’ve learned a lot in the last nine months. I’m ready to go again. I told the folks back home I was going to see the world. If I returned home right now, they’d all laugh at me. As far as money goes, I only have three dollars. But you can see from all the places I’ve been, we won’t need much money.

That sounded wonderful to me and I immediately thought of my camera. “I had some bad luck the other day. I lost my camera. If you really don’t think we’ll need much money, I’d like to buy another one. I plan on writing about my journey when I get back to Baltimore.”

I could see by his reaction that it didn’t matter one way or the other to Rudi. Having lived in post-war Germany all his life, publicity about his journey was far from what he considered important. Having a warm meal and a place to sleep was what mattered.

But Rudi said, “Right! First chance we get, we’ll stop in a camera store and see what kind of bargain we c’n get.”
“How ‘bout visas?” I asked.

“I wasn’t able to apply for Africa ‘til I got my passport back in Germany. But then it was too late. I’m thinking of going to the American Consulate and apply in Paris.”

“Don’t worry about it. Rudi chortled. “If you’re right on the border of the country you want to get into, you can usually get them immediately. If it doesn’t go your way, well, welcome to a new experience! This whole trip has been nothing but new experiences for me. I never let things like visas worry me.
That was relief to me. I hoped it was true. I had imagined being delayed in Europe ‘til my visa came through.
“By the way, do you speak French.?” Rudi asked.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Good! That means we’ve got three languages between us. I can speak Dutch and German. That’s it. You’re going to have to teach me English.
That looked like a challenge. I could speak French, what with my six months of training at the Army Language School in Monterey. But translating French into German all the time! Would I ever get a chance to speak English?
He cut off another chunk of pumpernickel. “Where have you been sleeping at night?”
“Usually at camping parks.”
“What?!” They cost money don’t they?”
“Yes,” I answered. About 25 cents a night.
“We’ll have to change that!” He laughed. “You just wait to see where we’ll sleep tonight.”
“Where’s that?” He had me thinking.
“I don’t know but it’s not going to cost any money you can bet on that. And besides were going to get a big meal and sleep in a regular bed! I bet you haven’t done that for awhile.”
This was like Christmas. It didn’t sound legal. I didn’t say anything. I thought I’d just wait and see. I didn’t know how long Rudi and I would remain together, but I was being entertained by his initiative in the meantime.

NEXT:

THE NEW WAY