July 30th, 2010

Karl Albrecht 's Story

Birth Year: 1948




Table of Contents






     


     


     


    Chapter 1: After the War


    I was born in Minden, Germany on a winter night to the name of Karl-Heinz Guenther Albrecht.

    My first recollection is being on my Grandpa’s farm. It was Easter and the family always spends time on the farm on holidays. I must have been about three at the time. I got up early Easter morning to look out the window. I saw Grandma putting something on the grass but when she saw me at the window, she sat on whatever it was that she was putting on the grass. I watched her for a time and all of a sudden she got up. I cried “WOW” and ran to my mother. I said “I know who lays the Easter eggs, It’s Grandma!”


    The European farm house is not like the normal farm house we have here. The house is a living quarters for the animals as well as the farm owner, in that one side of the structure is for the animals, the other for the family. Down the center of the building is where you will find the farm equipment. That floor or ground is paved in cobblestone.


    My Grandma and Grandpa lived on the left side of the structure as you entered the large barn doors. Grandpa’s farm building was different than most, in that on the same side as the living quarters he kept two horses. This was his live stock for pulling the farm equipment. For the most part the horses were almost wild. One weekend we went for a visit and in the living room was a big hole above the couch. The brick wall was taken down by the horses on the other side. Eating was a problem as the flies from the horse stable would get into the living quarters. The only thing I didn’t like about the whole thing was there was a big hole above the couch and who knew if a horses hoof would come by your head.


    I liked my Grandpa a lot! For instance when he would work in his shed fixing farm equipment I would be there with him. We always played this game or at least I think it was a game looking back on it. He would put down a tool that he was using and the next thing you know he would be looking for it. I was only four years old. You can guess where the tool was. It was in my hand.


    He would say “There it is, you have it in your hand.” and we would laugh.


    I think to this day that having the mechanical ability I have came from those early days of working or messing around with Grandpa.


    He had this special dog that would travel everywhere with him almost like a right hand. Grandpa was cutting the fields with the horses up front and the machine had this arm sticking out on one side that would cut the hay. The dog was with him out in the fields and got out in front of that cutting arm and in an instant lost its legs. That dog was the best dog I ever knew. I don’t believe he should have gone that way.


    It was in the fall of that year that we went to a meeting of some sort with all kinds of people there. After the meeting we went to the farm house on this special occasion. I didn’t find out until later what kind of special occasion it was. So when it came time to have dinner no one had put out all the plates. So I went to the cupboard and got out another place setting for my Grandpa. It was at that time they told me that my Grandpa had past away. I didn’t realize how much Grandpa had meant to me until he past. Because for the longest time. I didn’t want to go to the farm house because I knew that special person was gone. So that was the end of my farm living at the age of four.



    Chapter 2: Apartment living



    We lived in an third story apartment I believe it was a 2 bedroom. This apartment was part of a larger complex shaped like a horseshoe. Each building had two entrances. Each entrance had 6 apartments allowing for 12 units in the building. There were actually 3 buildings one facing west, another facing south and the third facing east. This made for a large center grassy common ground, which also had a sand box.


    One afternoon I was in the sand box doing what I usually do, when I heard this noise coming from a third story apartment window, maybe they were having a birthday party. I noticed that they had balloons and I wanted one,


    I called up and said. “Can you send me down a balloon?”


    The noise was so great they did not hear the first time.


    I called again. “Can you send me down a balloon?”


    This time they heard me. A woman stuck her head out the window and said. “Do you want something?”


    I said “Give me a balloon. I want to celebrate too!”


    She said. “Yah.”


    So the first balloon came floating down and I was waiting for it. It seemed like it took forever for it to get into my hands. The first one came to my hands and the moment I touched it, it blew up! They watching me grab the balloon and they saw what had happened. I was sad. I no longer had the balloon. They sent me down another balloon, and of course it took forever to get to me. I finally got it and it also blew up. The people upstairs were surprised that it blew up and wanted to know what I had in my hands. I had a piece of wood off the sand box frame in my hands and I didn’t realize it. They said you are not getting anymore balloons because you are blowing them up on purpose. Thinking back this could have been the beginning of my path of destroying things. Because I was accused of something I didn’t really know about. Destroying things.


    Growing up in the 50’s shortly after the war in Germany was pretty hard, in that food was expensive. Living quarters where hard to come by and in general times where not the greatest they could have been. But when you are poor and you have family and relations around you, you don’t recognize that you are poor. The times you have with family are the best times because you don’t really need any money.


    Butter was a hard thing to get a hold of and very expensive. One day my mother had come home with some real butter. You know the kind in sticks that come four to a package. I came home from school and found my sister sitting underneath the kitchen table with one stick of butter in her hand eating it like a banana. It was half gone. I think this is the first time that I ever saw my mother be totally upset at my sister.


    It was nice for a change to see my sister getting what she deserved. From the time I was two years old she wanted me to play with her but I couldn’t, I was only 2 years old. Once she bit my fingers and disjointed the ends. It was my two pinky fingers that she got and they are now crooked. So now she is getting what she deserves. She was the trouble maker not me.


    I do remember a time when I needed to be punished. I can’t remember what I was did but I landed in the bathroom for a time out. My mother knew when I got quiet I was doing something. When I got put in the bathroom I was making a lot of noise by kicking on the door and banging this and banging that, and then I stopped. I had found something much more entertaining to do in the bathroom. My mother and aunt came into the bathroom and found I had taken the toilet apart. I never got a time out in the bathroom again!

    My aunt came to my house one day and said she was going shopping and wanted to know if I could go too. We went to this real fancy shopping house and she told me to stay with her or as close as possible. Well I didn’t like hanging with the women seeing as how I was my own man at the age of 5. She had bought something and wanted to know where I was. She found me and discovered that I had dismantled a glass display case. I had removed 4-5 shelves with screws, nuts and bolts. I had as a young boy a German erector set. I thought this was a fancy German erector set so you dismantle it. The shop keeper told my aunt don’t bring him in any more.


    My aunt and I came home and said. “ I’m never taking him to any store that has things he can dismantle!”


    I always thought that my aunt and I were close. After this I think I might have been wrong.


    My mother usually didn’t have enough time to pick up all the things she needed for the household. She told me I should go to the store and pickup some bread. She told me not to do anything with the bread because we were going to eat it that night. We couldn’t take it out and use it like a Frisbee because that is what I would usually do with it. We were going to eat it that night. I went to the store and picked up the bread and when she saw me coming home with the bread she was appalled. I was swinging the bread over my head as I was a helicopter that day. The bread got in the house and normally it was about 18 inches long. It was now 6inches in length. I achieved a goal without knowing it, of not having to go to the store anymore.


    Christmas time was wonderful and frightening at the same time. Santa Claus of Germany was basically an enforcer that kept the kids in line. He was dressed in a long coat down to his knees similar to what we have here just more ominous looking. The coat was red of course. In one hand he would have a bunch of willow branches and over his shoulder he would have his bag of goodies.


    It was getting close to Christmas time and we were unruly, and my mother went into the bathroom and opened the window which was real close to the kitchen window and stuck a Santa Claus face in the Kitchen window. When we saw that we were good as gold.


    Right after that my mother came in and saw that we were quieted down and asked, “Did something happen?”


    We were hysterical at that moment and we told our mom that Santa Claus came to see us. So now you should be good the rest of the time.


    Now the wondrous part was on Christmas Eve when our dad took us to the Catholic Church for mass and when we came home there was tree up with lights and the whole house had been decorated as if something wonderful was going to happen. The tree had actual candles on it, we had a wreath on the front door and we only had single pane windows so we did not have to decorate them with frosting nature took care of that. Plus the tree had some kind of silver wrapping around it and the decorations were green and red. After looking at all this there was knock at the door and my dad opened it. When we saw who was at the other side of the door we ran screaming and hiding. Problem was there was no place to go. The person that was the infamous Santa Claus took the bag off his shoulder, took the bag, threw it into the living room and slammed the door. In Germany we always opened the gifts on Christmas Eve. One of those years I did get a mechanical crane that I really liked.


    We did not find out until later, I mean years later, who it was. I turned out to be our uncle and he was as frightened at us running around and screaming as we were of his outfit.


     



    Chapter 3: School days in Germany



    I was only in Germany’s school system for 3-4 months. But they were memorable.


    Being that I was my own person I didn’t like the idea of going to a place that would teach me how to be more me. So from the beginning I had trouble in school. I had a teacher that was like Abe Lincoln. He was tall and skinny and had a mean look about him. His name was Liechtenhite and he wheeled a nasty long ruler. In fact this was the time that teaching was by the stick not by the word.


    One day I decided that I would piss everybody off and I lifted my desk top. Well when you lift one you lift them all. Because there were 6 people sitting at one desk with a long board in front of you. And naturally all the books went flying. Well, like usual I had to stand in the corner with this stupid cone thing on my head, for about an hour.


    It seems that I was always getting in trouble for I knew the boiler room of the school house very well. It was no problem in the summer time because I swung on the pipes. I had my own personal jungle gym. But in the winter time the pipes were hot so I didn’t know what to do but sit and cook in this room with pipes.


    One day in the winter as we were going into the school house the bell had rung of course. I told this kid that he could drag his tongue on the metal railing and you would see an ice patch going up. But when he got to the top of the metal railing his tongue had frozen at the top and as all the people were going by all the people were bumping him until finally it got ripped loose. OH BOY! More boiler room time.


    In the evening time after school I would walk home past this long stone fence. It was about 6 feet tall. On the other side was an apple orchard. Several of the boys and I would climb the fence and steal the apples as we were going home. I don’t remember if we ever got in trouble for stealing. But those apples were gooood!


     



    Chapter 4: The Crossing



     


    In September of that school year I came home and Dad had some good news. At least it was good news for me. He had been working on going to America for a couple of years and finally had all the paperwork come through. He had booked a passage on a ship for the whole family to came to New York. The first thing that came to my mind was, Great! I don’t have to go to school here any more.


    After he told us, we packed for a month or so. My mother was a seamstress, and she had her favorite sewing machine that she had to pack up in a wooden crate, plus all the other house hold belongings. I have that machine in my house today.


    The day finally came that we were to go to the ship. All the people who were going to take passage on the ship had to be there 5 days before boarding. My Dad had a job on the ship. At that time I don’t know what it was but he was gone most of the time. On the 5th day my dad came to us at the staging area and gave me instructions on where to go on the ship. But being that I was only 7 and this was a big ship I could not remember what he really had told me. I usually didn’t listen to my Dad because I was my own man. So I walked up the plank and didn’t know which way to go, right or left. I walked left and then there were so many people there I was lost. So right in the middle of the walkway, I started crying and making a commotion. After about 3-4 minutes of this my Dad came because he was part of the boarding crew. He showed me where we were going to bunk. It turns out that we were on a troop transport ship [Pic]. The women were put in the bow of the ship or front half and the men aft. The middle of the ship was used for eating, laundry, showering and recreation.




    The bow of the ship which was the worst part of the ship because it went up and down more than the center or aft. This portion smelled the worst, because people got sicker there than anywhere else. As my Dad was working on the ship I had to spend time with my sister and Mother. In the front of the ship they also had a recreation area. My sister and I would play together with pickup sticks or what ever we could find to play with. I remember this guy came up to us and pointed to a machine in the corner of the room which happened to be a pop machine. I had never seen one before. He put in some money and pulled out a pop. It happened to be Coca Cola. This occurred at a time when the sea was really rough. The ship was going up and down 15-20 feet or more at a time. I drank the coke the man gave me. The drink had carbonation which I had never had before. As a result all the coke came out through my nose. To this day and it’s been quite a few years, I still can’t stand Coke!


    On the seventh day out on an eleven day boat ride off in the distance we saw this arm and head sticking out of the water. The closer we got we could see it was the Statue of Liberty. We knew at that point that the long endured up and down motion was to come to an end. People were taking pictures of the Statue of Liberty in sequence. As we neared New York you could see the statue getting taller.


    When we finally got into the harbor it seemed like it took a long time to get all the people off the ship. For a small kid it seemed like a day. But it in fact could have been only 2 hours. There were two ramps to the pier. We were taken into this large building. No it was not Elis Island. But another building because Elis Island was closed by this time. I remember my Dad having trouble knowing what was going on because none of us spoke English. But he knew more than the rest of us and we made it through. 




     


    Chapter 5: West Young Man



     


    The next day we took a train to go to Fort Collins Colorado. We were on the train and the guy seated across from us said to my sister and I, “If you watch out the window you will see Indians.”


    I was thinking it was Indians from India. So I was looking for camels, until he explained to us of the American Indian. So for 3 days we were both glued to the window looking for Indians. This was exactly what he had intended to have us glued or pacified as apposed to rambunctious. We arrived at the Fort Collins Depot there a woman waiting for us to take us to our house away from the city. But first we had to get some food. So we went to the local food store. She grabbed a shopping cart and started going down the isles throwing things in the cart as she did so. Dad was watching what she was throwing in there and watched her toss in a can of corn. He picked up the corn and got upset and started yelling at my mother. The woman spoke a little bit of German so she understood what was going on.


    Dad was saying, “corn is for cattle she is trying to make us out to be a cow.” The woman was listening to what dad was saying and explained what this corn was. She told dad that this is sweet corn not feed corn. We didn’t have sweet corn in Germany or know anything about sweet corn, which calmed dad down a bit. He threw the can back in the basket and we went buying some more. By the time we got to the house Dad wanted to know what this corn was all about because it had been working on his mind. We opened up the can boiled it up and tried it. It was not to bad in fact you could almost live on this. Dad became a real connoisseur of sweet corn. In fact he liked it straight off the cob rather than out of the can.

    The Church knew a farmer east of the country club or south east of Ft. Collins which is farm country. The farmer had about 10,000 acres (it seemed that big when I was eight) so he needed a lot of hands which meant he had a number of migrating worker houses.


    The farmer put the family up in one of the migrating worker houses. It was a two bedroom with a living room kitchen and dining room. It was really run down. The first thing that my mother saw was this round green table that had leaves that would fold down on the sides. She looked underneath it and there must have been about 20 years of bubble gum stuck to the bottom of the leaves so you could not fold them down. She spent 4 or 5 hours scraping the gum off the bottom and making these barf sounds at the same time. After the table was cleaned to her liking she started cleaning the rest of the house that took a good week.


    The first week of being at the migration workers house we had to go to school and we wound up at one of these old time, I guess country school would be the best way to describe it. It was a one room school house that handled all the different grade levels. That meant my sister was in the same room as I. Over in Germany my sister and I got along great but when we got over here something went terribly wrong and I hated her and she hated me. Maybe it was the naked showers!


    Since there was only two bedrooms in the house my mother and father had one and my sister and I had the other which was another problem in that she liked to read at night and I did not, as I was younger. Well, she kept the light on all the time as I was trying to sleep. Looking back on it now I think she might have been afraid of the dark.


    One weekend I remember I was off from school and dad was working on the farm. I jumped in the back of the pickup and another person was driving. My dad was the passenger. I was in the back of the truck. They were moving away from the place I knew really well and I didn’t want to go as far as they were going so I think we were doing maybe 30-35 miles per hour and I jumped out of the back of the pickup. I landed in the ditch or bounced in the ditch more like it and woke up to see this big rock about the size of my head right beside my ear. It was at that time I started thinking that maybe I should not have jumped out because no one would have known I was even there. It would have been some time before they found me. I got up and limped home. I think it was probably a good half mile. When you are seven years old that is some distance when you are out in the middle of no where.


    Chapter 6: Unusual Memories



    My mother passed away on a Friday at Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, CO.


    She was in the new house about 3 days before she passed away. About a week and a half later when she was gone we had most of the family gathering in the new house after the funeral. I was standing in the bedroom just passed the staircase on the lower level of the bi-level house when I felt this presence. So I turned around and I couldn’t see anything but I knew someone was there.


    I said “You have done a good job you can go now.”


    After that I never felt that same feeling again. So apparently my mother did move on after she heard what I had said. That’s it.