February 08th, 2012

Karl Albrecht 's Memories

 

What I remember of my parents




My Father had a tale he could tell. I came home from Lincoln Junior High School, that was just down the alley from the first house we ever bought. It was an 1898 Victorian house. As I was walking up the alley way I saw two people hammering on the back of the barn. Getting closer I found my dad and his friend who had been teaching him how to drive this old car that he had just bought. I never understood how he got the car home in the first place. It was bought down town and we lived about 8-9 blocks from that area. I asked him why he was hammering the back of the barn up? My dad said that Frank was teaching me how to park the car. But instead of me hitting the brake I hit the gas and went right through the back of the barn and the whole wall collapsed. I sure was lucky that Frank could move pretty good or else he would have been part of the wall that was brought to the ground. This barn was as old as the house. So it would have been tough to tell the difference. It took them a bit of time but they got it all put back together. They did a good job. It was just like it had been before the catastrophe struck. My dad never talked about his childhood so I donít have much to add to his life. He never wanted to be like his dad. But I remember my grandfather had a roll top desk that he loved and later in life, my father got one of his very own. It seemed that he mimicked his father in some ways. As his father was a business owner and my dad could never meet up to the expectations of my grandfather. My dad would look at a hammer and get a hurt thumb. I didnít turn out that way. My father was not a mechanical person at all. My mother was the mechanical one in the family. He could never figure out how to work the clutch and the throttle on the riding lawn mower. It was my mom that drove the riding lawn mower and he would work the edges with the push mower.

What I remember of my grandparents

Grand Parents My fathers parents were farmers. They used horses on the farm that were more wild than domestic. They used them to work the fields. They could get more work out of them then they could a domestic horse. They loved the holidays because it was a break from all the hard work. These days became a family gathering and all the relatives would show up at the house/barn. Both sets of grandparents did stay together as a family. My mothers father worked on the railroad in Germany. He died one day working on the engine. He got his arm caught in the linkage or mechanism between the connecting arms of the wheels and he was killed bouncing down the tracks with the train. My fathers father was the farmer and he died of natural causes maybe in his late fifties. My dads mom lived a very long life. After her husband died she moved off the farm and moved into the town of Bremen living in an apartment on the fifth floor and getting by on Social Security. The last few years of her life she lived with her daughter in Wilhelmshaven up on the north sea. She passed away about the age of 93.