Be Inspired ...

"Whom God wants to show real wonders, he sends into the wide world…"
Old German Song

Will we see great marvels? Or will we suffer a clash of cultures and classes?

Siggi and I arrived in Everett, Washington, at four o’clock on a Sunday morning. We had slept only fitfully that night, feeling elation and trepidation. When we got off the train, some of our relatives were waiting for us on the station platform. There were two aunts, two uncles and several cousins and at six feet I towered over them.

“Oh, what big boys!” exclaimed Aunt Houwke.

“Strong enough to shovel my manure,” undoubtedly thought Uncle Fullo.

“Ja, groote boys,” echoed her sister Aunt Helene, mixing Low German with English. Cousin Frauke raised her arm to greet me.

“Wo geiht Di denn?” she asked confidently, how do you do?

“Gaut,” I replied. I did not expect to hear Low German in America and looked her over like a youngster looks at a circus clown because Frauke was much shorter than I.

After introductions and handshakes everyone got into two big, racy cars. I want to be an American. Oh no! Our aunts and uncles don’t look American.

Siggi climbed into Uncle Deepo’s light-blue spaceship-like Mercury, and I was invited into Fullo’s older-looking Chevrolet. We did not say good-bye to each other because we assumed that we both would go to the same destination. After about a half-hour drive, Uncle Fullo made a sharp turn off the county road. Our heavy chrome bumper scraped the pavement as the tires began crunching up the steep gravel drive to his house, while Uncle Deepo’s family continued down the highway. They honked good-bye and Fullo returned their signal; I saw their taillights disappear around the bottom of the hill. There went Siggi, where to or how far, I did not know. I hoped that we would soon be reunited because we had always been very close, had done everything together, and greatly depended on each other. Our souls were fused by our mutual singular experiences.

On the hillside the house was wrapped in darkness. I wanted to explore it, but my adrenaline was spent, and I soon asked to go to bed.

“I’ll show you your room,” suggested Houwke. “Follow me. We built it especially for you. It’s not quite finished yet.”

I felt a twinge of guilt. Somebody built a room just for me? I have kind relatives!

Houwke led me outside to a room in the attached woodshed, where I climbed into bed and fell asleep.

* * *

What is that knocking?

“Ja?”

“Rise and shine!” came from the door, so I immediately and obediently crawled out of bed. It was still dark, and I did not understand why I had to get up so early, especially since I had barely slept that night. In the past I was roused in the dark only when sirens had scared us. Is there a gunfight? A stampeding buffalo herd?

I dressed, looked out of the mirror hoping to see the moonlit mountains and prairies, but instead saw a tired kid straightening his hair, and went back to the house.

“Good morning,” Houwke greeted me with artificial cheer, while handing me a bundle of faded cloth. She herself was in stocking feet and dressed in faded pants and a flannel shirt. I found this really odd because I had never seen a woman wear man’s clothes before. They always had worn dresses or skirts with blouses.

“Here, you can wear this for now.”

I took her present back to my room and changed into my new clothes: a flannel shirt and torn blue pants with a front flap held up with integral suspenders. They belonged to Fullo because its legs were far too short and almost two of me could fit side by side. I wondered why she asked me to wear these rags, because as poor as I had been, I had only seen such ragged clothes on the Luitje family before. Cowboys wear this? In the movies they always wear tall boots ’n big hats.

And it was Sunday.

This clown tiptoed back into the house in his stocking feet, quiet with embarrassment. At this time Houwke was out on the back porch, putting on some rubber boots and asked me to do the same, while pointing to a used pair nearby. I figured that these belonged to Fullo also because they pinched my feet severely.

“Let me show you our cows,” she said gleefully.

"OK."

I wondered why I had to wear rags to look at cows. I thought we needed elegant boots and distinguished hats to ride fast horses. Even though it was dark and raining, Houwke led me down the hill across the highway into a barn where she turned on its lights. I followed her past the stanchions on each side, to the opposite end of the cow barn, where she opened a pair of big doors so the waiting herd of Holsteins could come rushing in. These were black and white on top, plastered with a mixture of mud, and this cannot be described in lesser terms because it would become a very significant part of my life, it would become my life, cowshit, below. As they lined up in the stanchions to feed on the hay and grain that had been laid out for them, we locked in their heads.

Only now did I realize that Siggi and I had traveled this far to milk cows. Wet and significantly dirty cows. We had arrived in the greener pastures of the Evergreen State, but our future did not look rosy any more. I quickly learned that it would be significantly sticky and pervasively green. It would become my significant other; it would be a shotgun wedding because I was forced to be married to it. Fullo would not allow me to bathe or shower.

Perhaps because we live today in the New Age, in a New World Order, a more efficient, more greedy, more anarchistic society, or simply because in sympathetic remembrance of my slavery days, in order to fertilize the fields around us, once or twice each year, someone drives giant manure spreader trucks along the city street by my house, thoughtfully, to more or less plaster and pave it with this significant other, to fertilize it.

Houwke instructed me in the fine art of milking. To do so, I had to bow down between huge, warm, wet bellies and wash a nutrient mixture off the udders, with a rag soaked in a bucket full of hot chlorinated water, which after a few washings transmogrified into appealing manure tea.

My Lake Titicaca, my dream.

After washing a cow, I fastened a rubber belt around its multi-stomach blimp, suspended a vacuum extraction pail from it and sucked four teats into its rubber-lined cups. These massaged out the barnyard by-product, delicious milk. I used two such suction devices that I had to move from cow to cow until they were all empty. Empty of milk. In the meantime Houwke sat on a hard, little stool in between bellies and milked a few of them by hand. I would discover that this was her only hobby: squeeze, squirt, squeeze, squirt, squeeze…

After milking each cow, I removed the milk machine and poured its contents into the open buckets waiting in the middle of the barn. All of the cows aimed their backs to this area. This was significant, because intermittently they took turns decorating these pails and everything else with the color theme of this state. As turbulent as my life had been, I never had to dance around flying nutrients before. Even though I was now a cowboy in the truest sense of the word, in the movies I had never seen them wear boots of rubber and ripped coveralls. I realized that my present reality did not match my long-time fantasy, and that Fullo’s outfit was much more practical here than movie boots and hats. I could not wear such because my hat would pop off when I had to squeeze between bellies, and I might slip and fall with the slick kind of boots.

When the buckets were full, full of milk that is, I carried them, two at a time, up the hill to the milkhouse where I emptied them into big cans, to be picked up by the creamery truck. Then I returned to the barn to continue to service cows until their udders were all clean and empty. After we finished milking, we let them out again, and when I had thought I was finished with the cows, Houwke told me to take all of the milking equipment back to the milkhouse and wash it. When I was done with this, I was to harvest the main product of their farm, in terms of stink, weight and volume, by myself.

She instructed me:

“Clean up the barn. Scoop up the manure and dump it outside that door. There’s a wheelbarrow out there. There’s lime in that big box. Spread it around the barn when you’re done with the manure.”

She pointed out through the big doors and said:

“Also scoop up the cow pies in the loafing shed. It’s pretty dirty. Then spread some wood chips around in there.”

She lead me up to the milkhouse where she continued her instructions:

“Wash the milk equipment. Put two handsful of chlorine powder into the water. To kill germs,” and increase your risk of getting cancer she might have added.

“I will go and make breakfast,” she continued.

“OK,” I mumbled, intermittently and unenthusiastically to her orders.

Schitzma! How did I get into this? I can hardly wait to clean up.

Just a couple of days before, Siggi and I had arrived from another continent. Just a few hours ago we finished crossing a continent. We had been torn from our homeland, tossed around the Atlantic and traveled across America into the unknown. I had no idea for how long we would have to continue to work like this. To protect my soul, my mind focused only on the moment because our future appeared to be grimmer than ever.

What is Siggi doing? Hope he does not have to do this. Don't think about it!

After I finished my chores I went back to the house, instinctively left my boots on the outside porch, and went in. Houwke advised me to wash in the kitchen sink:

“Wash your hands. You must be hungry. I’ll cook you an egg and some oatmeal. The girls are still in bed. They’ll eat later.”

While I was dutifully following her orders, Fullo, sitting at the kitchen table, kept glowering at me. Why is he looking at me like that? What am I doing wrong?

Finally he snarled: “Don’t use so much water. From now on you’ll wash in the tub outside.”

“Ja,” I mumbled obediently, instead of pounding the manure out of him.

I had noticed a pre-cast concrete laundry tub outside the back door as I came in. It would become my personal bathroom during my entire stay here.

Houwke served me the oat mush. I sat alone at the table, gazing at the food, forcing myself to take a bite. It tasted like cardboard. Instead of being famished, I felt nauseous. Instead of feeling like a proud, self-reliant American cowboy, I felt like the tattered, stinky Unknown Guellefahrer.

* * *

Later that day Fullo asked me to ride with him back to the city of Everett. As tired as I was, I was curious to get a closer look at America. Along the way we passed a factory with big smokestacks, where the air stank and was pungent with acid. Fullo explained that this was the paper mill where he worked at night and said that as a steamfitter he also fixed things in the adjoining lumber mill.

I studied the surrounding houses. They were different from the ones in Germany where everything was built with masonry and cement.

“What are these houses built with?” I questioned Fullo who lived in a red brick house.

Out of wood.”

“What about the roofs?”

“Those are tar shingles,” he explained.

“Tar shingles!?”

Most of these houses were grimy and needed painting. I was disappointed. Americans were supposed to be rich and these were not, although they owned so many big colorful cars. In town Fullo led me into a huge store where I admired the posters of cowboys with big hats, heavenly girls with big smiles and juicy red lips. Uncle bought me a pair of rubber boots, overalls and a couple of flannel shirts but not the cowboy clothes that I had dreamed about. And I was too shy and too intimidated to ask for some.

Upon returning to the farmhouse, I found Aunt Houwke and my cousins, Frauke and Jolene, in the woodshed outside of my room cheerfully rummaging through the two wooden trunks that Siggi and I had brought with us. Ma had them especially made for our journey, and they contained all of our belongings. I said nothing while they examined each item they removed from our boxes, and I even smiled weakly to accommodate them. I acted as if they were welcome to rob Siggi and me. I did not want to make them feel guilty since I could be stuck under their control forever.

They were in a jovial mood, as if they were opening Christmas presents. Out came a set of old china that had belonged to our grandmother and they claimed it. Little cousin Frauke needed a trunk for her summer camp and was ecstatic when she claimed Siggi’s box for herself. It had survived the long journey undamaged, but the one with my stuff was smashed and almost useless now. It was held together by straps of steel, compliments of the shipping company. Frauke transferred Siggi’s worldly goods into my shattered trunk and asked me to take his to her room, and I complied.

I did not realize at this time that Ma must have known that Siggi and I would be separated, or she would not have packed our stuff in separate boxes. Who decided who goes to which farm? And for what reasons?

* * *

I milked early in the morning and again at night. During the days, I worked around the farm as Fullo assigned me various tasks, which I mostly did by myself since he slept until noon and later drove to his job in the mills. I had no contact with Siggi and assumed that he was also coerced to do much of the same kind of work.

One of my earliest tasks was to clean some old wood-framed windows that Fullo had brought home from work. He handed me some tools with the order to remove the paint that totally covered the small panes. I attacked it with a steel brush and scraper, but the paint refused to come off, mainly because I thought that I had to be careful not to scratch the glass. When it was time to milk that evening, this job was unfinished. The next day Fullo inspected my work, and with a grim expression, he demonstrated how to vigorously remove the paint from the glass.

“This is how you do it. I don’t care if they get scratched. We’ll install them in the new milkhouse. I want the paint off by tomorrow,” Fullo ordered me before he left again for the paper mill.

During dinner that evening I did not speak a word, and a heavy air hung over the house. After eating, I went back out to finish my assignment. I heard Jolene ask Aunt Houwke why I had to work so late and she replied:

“He has to do Strafarbeit, penal work.”

I finished my chore at dusk and went to bed.

* * *

The following Sunday the whole family got ready for church. I did not want to go, and as an atheist Ma had never required us to attend, but during the few times that Siggi and I had been there everyone had worn nice clothes. I was bored with sermons and looked forward to having a couple hours of free time, two hours of personal time a week for myself, when Fullo handed me a suit.

“I bought this suit for you. It cost me twenty-nine dollars and ninety-five cents. I think it will fit you. Put it on and get ready for church.”

I changed into my new salt and pepper sprinkled suit, added more dabwilldooya to my hair, and looked into the mirror. How ugly! My pant legs bubbled out at the knees the first time I sat down and remained that way. Self-consciously I rode in the back seat while my cousins teased me, deepening my consternation. When I should have been excited to be in America, I rarely spoke and only gave terse answers as always.

I followed my relatives into their church and down the center aisle. We were late. Frauke lead the way, followed in single file by her family, and I, the tallest, brought up the rear, studying the procession in front of me. These are my relatives? I’m ashamed to be seen with them. But who am I? Am I their slave?

Feeling hundreds of eyes on me, I fixed my stare on Fullo’s feet trudging ahead of me. Chains far stronger than iron held me to my masters. Burning cities, head carvings and such had forged the first chains in my mind, sensitivity to fright and terror. With their incessant enthusiastic whippings Ma, Aunt Adele and some of my teachers had forged chains of timidity and submissiveness. Then Pa and his lawyers had forged one of intense poverty. Since arriving on the farm, my last chain was being made with links of social isolation, unique body odor and body painting, bowl haircuts, physical dependency, and its concomitant culture shock. Although I didn’t realize it yet, it was mostly the state of my mind that would keep me confined in my new slavery.

I slid down into the pew as far as possible because I did not want to be noticed. The minister droned from the pulpit, and I only understood an occasional word of what he was preaching. Everyone looked proper, and I felt that I was the only one totally out of place. After the sermon, the worshippers gathered outside in front of the church where Houwke proudly introduced me:

“This is our big boy from the Old Country.”

We shook hands.

“How do you like our country?” someone asked me with a big smile.

Instead of spinning cartwheels of joy, I’m in America, I’m a cowboy, I answered, “fine” and shrugged my shoulders. I did not yet know that, henceforth, I had to attend church every Sunday with my masters, but because I balked, they permitted me to stay home during the winter evening services that they attended also.

The symbols of my slavery were subtle, as well as obvious. Houwke had cut Fullo’s hair for decades and did a nice job on his big block. But she always gave me unique bowl cuts that I would be uncomfortable with, to show the world that I was a slave. Nobody but I sported such a cut that also accentuated my customized ear.

Fullo’s cows decorated me with a green color that he would not let me shower off. My décor and my mindset, my quintessence of a perfect slave, was a heavy ball and chain. I could not rid myself of it because I could not saw it off. It forced me to be comfortable with cows and kept me away from people who might be able to help me escape. This slave had no friends. Fullo was a Brahmin, even though he was a boor; I was a slave, even though I was a hero, and I reckoned that with Siggi it was much the same.

* * *

Shortly after we returned from the church to the farm, Uncle Deepo’s family arrived there with Siggi. During this visit, it became evident that he would remain on Deepo’s dairy farm, and I was to stay with Fullo. Our uncles followed the basic military strategy of “divide and conquer” and kept it secret, because there was no discussion about this subject at all. Long ago, others had made decisions about us without our knowledge, and we meekly complied with their wishes.

Years later I would learn of the initial debate about our future from the letters that our parents had written. Ma had already considered sending us to America immediately after World War II, but Siggi and I were never informed about plans that were hatched for us over the years. I realized that we were trapped now and Siggi must have too. We had no money to leave our masters and did not discuss it during this visit or other infrequent contacts with each other.

Our lives had not improved by coming to America, and in many ways they became worse. We lost our freedom completely as well as our Stadtmusik, the music that we so loved to play. We had no friends. Now we had to rise early every morning, seven days a week, to work. To work until we were dead tired at night, without reward, without hope of escape, for the enrichment of others. We did not question them. How could we? We accepted our present predicament again with passivity. This was the only way we knew how to deal with our continued existence of hopelessness, rejection and undeserved punishment.

And now exploitation.

We had been with our father for only brief periods, and during those times he had almost totally ignored us and refused to support us in any way. Not because he hated his children, but because we were a restriction on his hedonistic lifestyle, and because he must have been in total denial about our plight. Our mother’s main purpose had been to fight him in court to get him to live up to his responsibilities. Years after the war, when menial jobs were abundantly available, she refused to buckle under and get one herself. However, she fought for alimony and child support with unrelenting single-mindedness.

Our parents had failed us, and the court system had failed us as well, because it had not upheld the laws. Only the German school system had done its job and had done it well, although it had been difficult for us and had not made our lives easier. And in retrospect, were we not imparted with too much discipline, too many feelings of guilt, thereby adding to our miseries? Our submissiveness caused us to automatically do whatever our elders told us to do, even if it were only for their own gratification. Should we have rebelled a little, Siggi and I? If adults could punish us for not doing our jobs, or even for doing them, why could we not clobber others just for the fun of it?

The cows ignored our superb education and so did everyone else. At this time no one seemed to care that we were becoming ever more literate jet setters. The education that would really have helped us the most, to become independent, we had to learn through prolonged, painful, personal experiences, even on the simplest level. We were ignorant of such things as how to make long-distance telephone calls, and where and how to apply for jobs, or where to find help to obtain such knowledge.

During this Sunday visit there was no discussion about our future; there was only peasant talk: How green is my green, how soggy is my pasture! Siggi and I did not ask why were we imported to America? How long will we be separated? Will we have to do farm work all of our lives? Will we get enough to eat? Will we get time off?

I did not think about why our mother permitted Siggi and me to travel so far from home. We did not question anyone even though we were now of an age when important plans would normally be made. Goals had to be formulated as to our education, training, girls, jobs, etc. None of this even entered my mind because our parents never discussed things like that with us; we were not guided in this kind of thinking. But in Germany we had learned that America was “the land of unlimited opportunities,” so all of this seemed not yet to matter much because there was some hope that somehow our plight might end.

In late afternoon, Deepo’s family returned to their farm to drain their cows again, taking with them Siggi and his shattered trunk. They also scrutinized him for keepsakes and heirlooms and found our grandmother’s ornately-engraved gold watch with its long gold chain that Ma had given him. Now Deepo’s family took it. Many years later, Siggi would ask to get Oma’s gold watch back but was told that it had burned when Deepo’s house had gone up in flames.

* * *

During the next two years, with one exception, the only time when Siggi and I would see each other alone was during the occasional visits between these two families. Every few weeks or months, they took turns visiting on Sunday afternoons. Why I didn’t know because Fullo did not like Deepo. Fullo even told his family that after I was “gone” he would not visit Deepo again. I didn’t know if he meant after I was dead, deported, drafted, enlightened, or how I would be gone.

After their ritual church attendance, one family would drive directly to the other farm and leave again in a few hours, in time to service their demanding cows. It was always the same, and Siggi and I had little contact with each other, or with the rest of the world. Unbelievable as it might sound, I did not even know how to use a telephone, and I was actually afraid of doing so. Besides, Fullo would get mad if someone made long-distance calls from his house, costing him money, so anyone rarely did. Siggi and I had never used a phone before, had no money to pay for such calls, and at the end of our long days we were too tired to write to each other.

* * *

I milked cows twice a day. They lumbered into the barn to their respective stanchions which were identified by names chalked on little blackboards near the ceiling. Evidently these critters could read because they always returned to their own spaces to eat their feed, while I serviced them. Sometimes one of them would step on my foot, refusing to budge, while I tried to extricate myself. They obviously were in collusion, because the harder I pushed their masses apart, the more they pressed me between their bellies, and the more a hoof crushed my foot. Often I had no choice but to wait them out. While waiting, because I did not have French textbooks or Freud’s works with me, I entertained myself by squeezing fat maggots out of the cows’ backs, popping out nine millimeter bullets when these were in season, until the cows released me.

Besides a lot of milk, I became acutely aware that cows also produced a lot of soupy doodoo. After each milking I had to scoop this stuff into a wheelbarrow, roll it up a plank and out of the barn to tip it onto a sloppy big pile. Because my muscles were too weak, my wheelbarrow often tipped prematurely. Then I had to fork or shovel up this same stuff again under the principle, that if at first you don’t succeed, try again. And again. During the winter there would be much more trying than during the summer because these docile beasts spent much more time in the cow nutrient-shedding shed where they often congregated to keep out of the cold and the rain.

Since I always had to be tested for everything that I was forced to do, but did not want to do, I unwittingly took the first part of my Guellefahrer exam when my feet sank deeply into the green, water-soaked pile, and the slop oozed over the top of my knee-high rubber boots. Fortunately I kept my balance by leaning on the fork to extract my feet back out of the test pile, but, alas, without my boots and without one sock.

Driving tractors safely was the second part of my test. When the pastures were not too soggy, I had to grunt my forty-ton cow pie onto a spreader, using a ten-tine hand fork. Sometimes in the rain. Then I pulled this precious load with an old tractor, to spread nutrients over the evergreen pastures to make them evergreener. To get to the far end, it was necessary to drive through a creek. On my first trip, I learned that I could get killed by a very unique method. As the tractor was climbing up the bank on the other side, the spreader got stuck in this stream. I depressed the gas pedal in order to extract it, but instead of causing a forward movement, the “horses” reared up. The front end of the tractor rose toward the sky, and I almost fell backwards out of the seat.

I had no idea that this would happen, and if I had finished exclaiming my cussword, thereby delaying quick depression of the clutch, the tractor would have kept revolving backwards about its rear axle, burying me deeply in the spreader and under the upside-down tractor. Fortunately the uniquely unusual arrangement of the tractor being loaded upside down on the spreader, its big wheels racing above me, sooner or later, would have drawn the attention of astute observers to my uncomfortable squeeze. Hopefully someone would then have screamed, “oh, Schitzma,” and then hurried to my rescue.

Over the years, farm workers, workers usually not included in the nation’s general productivity statistics, unwittingly chose this method to commit suicide. They would be recognized, however, in another kind of statistic.

I passed these highly unusual and difficult tests and graduated summa cum laude. In spite of all this, I still remained mentally somewhat balanced, did not cuss with four-letter words and did not become pickled in nutrient or part of an important statistic. Would Professor Asal have been proud of me?

Even so, I was stuck in slavery.

Siggi stuck in slavery.

Mother stuck in heirlooms.

Father stuck with his devil.

And there was no one in sight to reap Schadenfreude from my Guellefahrer tests, scold me for my profanity, or present me with a diploma. Nor was there anyone to free me from my stinky heroism.

Siggi and I had never been allowed to say “shit” but were now forced to wallow in it. I could not understand why Ma had threatened to whip us if we spoke this word, and then had sent us to another continent to become an integral part of it. She knew about such matters because she had grown up in it. In her father’s farmhouse even the kitchen must have smelled of it. Assuming that Oma had cooked, had she taken deep breaths before meals and schmoozed: “Mmmmm, Mama, your dinner smells. Smells delicious, like fresh country air.”

* * *

About a couple of weeks after I arrived on his farm, Fullo mentioned that I should enroll in high school. This surprised me because I had not thought about it and did not expect it. Our conversation was brief, as always:

“You should attend high school,” Fullo told me.

“Oh, OK,” I agreed.

“I will take you to school to sign up.”

A glimmer of hope, that familiar feeling of uncertainty. With my spare English, will I flunk most courses? Be a monkey in a circus cage?

The next day we drove to Everett High School where he dropped me off. A student who knew German consulted with my counselor to decide what level of education I had reached in order to choose my courses. I enrolled in German to learn English and to earn a good grade as well. And after a few months in America, almost without realizing it, I would think and speak entirely in my new language.

I had had four years of French, one year of which I had to repeat because the teacher ruled that I had flunked it. When my advisor learned of my French fluency, he enrolled me in the last subject that I wanted to suffer again. But I was too shy to say so, even though I thought that if I flunked it now, I’d flunk out of school again. And for the final time. I was now enrolled in a course where I had to understand two foreign languages, French and English, and where no one spoke my native tongue. Even so, I managed to earn an average overall grade.

I discovered that this high school was much easier than the Gymnasium. I had little homework and barely had to study to maintain at least average grades. Furthermore, I could graduate in about two years instead of five. The Gymnasium could even take longer if I would have to repeat a grade. Or I could flunk out entirely.

I began to learn about American culture on my first day in school. When the teacher walked into our homeroom, I automatically rose from my chair to greet him with respect, but I quickly slumped down again when everyone else ignored him. German pupils always rose when greeting or addressing adults. When the teacher dropped an eraser, I retrieved it for him as I had been taught, while all other students ignored him this time as well, but not the monkey. The student sitting across the row from me saluted me with his middle finger and tried to do so unobtrusively. I did not know if he complimented me or insulted me; I had not yet learned the meaning of this gesture. But I could guess: You stand proud like a hero. I automatically rose several more times before I overcame my neurotic habit of showing respect for my elders, or whatever it was that caused me to respond automatically on such occasions.

I also discovered that the students in my new country had fun, much fun. In the schools of my old country the only fun that we had had was that we could gawk at members of the opposite sex with agonizing self-control, draw and paint in art class and go on field trips twice a year. As isolated as I was in my new country, it did not take me long to find that the fun seemed to be endless here. But for my fun I could only attend school assemblies. During one of these, the band played and we all sang that we rocked around the clock. I rocked to great heights, then dropped back into manure when the school day ended.

I observed others greatly enjoying themselves, but I was not allowed to do so. I watched boys kiss girls, go steady, and build and race hot rods. Everyone responded to raging hormones while I was forced to suppress mine. They saw movies and went to dances. Everyone seemed to play sports and games, belonged to clubs and wore school sweaters with pins and letters announcing that they were heroes and heroines with intellect, culture and machismo. I could only be an unknown hero and kept this to myself. I kept to myself because I was always plastered with Fullo’s dairy product that nobody seemed to like, and I always had to return immediately to the farm after classes, to dive again into the same.

At the end of our school year all of the students signed each other’s yearbooks. There were none such in the German schools, and I felt that yearbooks were a nice tradition to remember the past. They also seemed to be the culmination of yearlong popularity contests because some of the students had lots of clubs listed with their pictures, and they collected many comments and signatures therein from their friends as well. A Guellefahrer, however, could not be very popular, be very high up the pecking order. But next to my picture in the yearbook my affiliation was listed as “Boy’s Club.” I didn’t even know what kind of club that was, what it did, but I had not joined it. Had somebody lied so I’d feel good? I, a smelly square pig in a dizzyingly social round hole?

* * *

Communal nakedness was foreign to me because there had been no showering facilities in any of our schools in Germany. Showering was not academic in nature and had too few social and health benefits. And since these schools had no lockers either, we always carried our school supplies home everyday, and for our physical education classes we wore our sports clothes under our street clothes which we hung on hooks during these classes. Afterwards we did not shower because everyone, except Siggi and I, bathed at home about once a week, whether they needed to or not. This was probably because water, sewer and energy were very expensive in much of Europe.

In my American high school I also enrolled in physical education and was shocked when the boys completely undressed. When I changed my clothes I turned my naked jewels toward a corner to shield them from view, and I noticed that the other boys strapped on baggies to safeguard theirs. Weak muscles or strong men? Never saw little balls bouncing around the Gymnasium. Wonder what Freud would say about this?

After class everyone showered together. But I could not bring myself to crowd in with naked male bodies, yearned for female bodies, and I did not like the locker room aroma. Therefore I quickly dressed myself. The instructor asked me if I were going to shower or stink like someone who had died running a marathon. I explained to him that I was not allowed to get water into my ear because I suffered a chronic infection and showed him my beautiful scar which did not seem to impress him. Here was my one and only chance to shower each week, and I was too embarrassed to do so.

One of the students came back out of the shower and collapsed on the floor. His entire body was shaking, and I tried not to stare. Maybe he did some kind of ritual, a tribal manhood initiation, such as jungle-bungee-vine diving. His shaking shook me up too; I had a lot to learn and thought that I had made a wise decision not to shower. Oddly, everyone ignored this shaker, and I continued to wonder about the strange customs in America. His shaking also made me nervous since I might also be called upon to become a naked shaker on the hard, cold floor.

Later I learned that this student suffered from grand mal epileptic seizures. He was a quiet boy like I, and had immigrated from Northeastern Europe where he had witnessed terrifying events during the war. This had shorted out his nervous system, and since no one could help him during his seizures, everyone ignored him.

After I dressed again, on my way to another class, I unobtrusively took a breath from under my arms. Keep pits closed during class. Air them out in between.

* * *

It was not long before our class was asked to take something that was called an eye cue test. More American culture? I did not know what an eye cue was. How could I be tested for something that I didn’t know what it was? I was too timid to ask. There were so many things that I did not understand, and I would have to ask incessantly. While I listened to the teacher explain our instructions, I gathered that my brain was to be tested, but my English was not yet proficient enough that I could fully comprehend the examples on the test form. Do my records still show that I’m a complete idiot?

In my old country I had never heard of intelligence tests. IQ tests were built into each essay and each math test, because if you flunked you were dumb and if you passed you were smart. But test results could also be a measure of how badly a pupil’s soul was battered and not how smart he was, and the teachers would probably not know the difference.

* * *

The next time our families visited each other, I found out that Siggi attended Sultan High School. Fortunately he did well and would become so popular that he would be elected student body president during his senior year. But I could never join in any extracurricular activities. I was socially, spiritually, emotionally and physically isolated on the farm far outside the city where we had few neighbors. My slave masters did not encourage me to participate in anything because they knew that this would take time away from my work, and I would need their car and spend their money. I knew that gas was extremely expensive because Fullo always asked the station attendant for “two dollars worth of regular.” This bought about half a tankful and money did not earn interest there. And worst of all, I might get connected to the world, and my masters had to get all they could from me while the getting was good and I would provide.

I was not allowed to use their car for myself, even after I received my driver’s license long after my arrival. The only reason I was finally permitted to get it was to be the chauffeur for Fullo’s daughters. Even though Aunt Houwke had been in the United States for almost thirty years, she had never learned to drive. Cousins Jolene and Wuebkea were too young to drive; Greetje had left home before I arrived here, and Frauke was too short to reach the pedals. Since the girls rarely went anywhere except to school on the bus, I got very little practice driving a car.

Once Frauke and Jolene wanted to attend a high school football game at night and my chief master, my uncle, must have been in a very good mood that day. Since they had no way to get there, they asked me to drive them to the game and then to some friends’ house afterwards.

I was cruising down a dark, lonely highway when Frauke burst out: “Turn right here.” Instantly I reacted, stepped on the brakes and turned right. In our headlights I saw another car stopped at this approach. Our back end swerved around towards our left until we were square with the road. We kept sliding sideways directly toward this car, but an invisible hand stopped us within inches of a collision. I glimpsed the terrified face of the other driver. Then all sphincters must have relaxed again, because we had performed this maneuver with such precision that only my guardian angel could have done it. But I took credit for it. I floored the gas pedal, to gun down the new highway as if it were normal to execute life-highlighting turns. With my greasy pompadour, I was cool, but my passengers, however, were shocked speechless, maybe because they might have suddenly lost some weight.

* * *

Uncle Fullo was built like an oak barrel, somewhat like the ones that everyone buys halves of, to fill with dirt, to grow weeds in, and sometimes flowers. It was also filled with something heavy because the short legs under the cask bowed into an O. On top of this barrel was a round head, securely fastened with a stout neck, which allowed little motion. Once I touched one of the stubby arms that were stuck to each side of this barrel while we were reaching in to repair an old tractor. Oak was hard; therefore I was surprised that it was soft and warm, like humans, and I never resolved the riddle of how something that looked so hard could feel so soft. Is he full o’ himself?

Despite Fullo’s hard and inflexible appearance, he could be an agile orchestrator in the cow barn. His bowed legs gave him an unexpected spring. He proved this when he flew into a rage after a cow whipped her moist, green tail across his face while he was squeezing out her last drop of milk. I didn’t know if she did this intentionally, but she aimed at the right target. Nor did I learn if Fullo ate it, or if he had closed his eyes and mouth during that critical moment, although, gracefully, he did wipe his face with his sleeve.

Somewhat green-faced, he jumped from his stool and yelled at the cow loud enough so that she would understand him. He emphasized his remarks by splitting his wooden stool on her hindquarters. After she had delivered him gallons of milk, numerous calves, mountains of money and manure, this cow was dumbfounded. Energetically she did airs above the ground, while green ammo shot out of her back and an agonizing roar exploded from her front, together with a long tongue and whitish slobber.

The herd produced a quick response. It had practiced this because it knew that this would happen again. Therefore each cow always kept fresh ammunition in her oversized chamber. Milk flow stopped, tails went up, and significantly, moomookakapoopoodoodoo exploded in all directions. Each cow quickly unloaded via a second tail, a transient green one, arching toward the ground. Blobs splashed off the floor, texturing everything, including walls, cows, people and buckets. It was flying everywhere even though there was not even a fan in this barn.

The oak barrel danced, flailing its stub-outs to escalate their tempo. It beat the cows and roared like a bull, confusing them further. Pandemonium rose to an ever-higher crescendo. Cows were bawling, bucking and kicking. Machines were crashing. Milk was spilling. Freshest of products were steaming up the opera barn.

Not enjoying this performance, I quietly stole away, lugging two open and newly decorated buckets filled with seasoned milk up to the milkhouse and emptied them into the shiny new milk tank. After the orchestra was exhausted, I returned to finish drawing white money out of green cows, while they initiated me into the bovine orchestra, The Evergreen Orchestra. During their last opus, final movement, the bovines had aimed at the hairy ends of their tails, to load them with proprietary color, and waited until I had to approach them. Then they vigorously whipped their brushes to paint me green, so I’d fit right in, and not stick out like I did in my Stadtmusik orchestra.

After the cows were completely empty, the oaken maestro disappeared and left me behind to continue my dirty work. Later I released the orchestra and commenced with the obligatory scooping from this vigorous pooping. Yet afterwards, significantly, I was still not allowed to bathe or shower.

* * *

Since Fullo worked in the mill at night, he mostly rehearsed his orchestra on weekends. Besides having a hot temper, was he also the stingiest man on earth? I had heard him reprimand little Frauke for wasting money buying a toothbrush. A toothbrush was a waste, while spitting out teeth later in life was not. Halitosis would not matter. Even though Fullo owned a farm and several houses, I believe all mortgage-free, he bathed only once or twice a year, and then in someone else’s water. This was also the frequency of my bathing and the freshness of my water. Since I was a shy, obedient slave, and Fullo had scolded me for trying to wash off cow smell before eating, I bathed only when I was told to bathe.

One day, while sitting in class I discovered unadulterated cowsh, oops, pardonnez moi, Ma, engrais de vache on the back of my bare arm. I would have bored into a funky dung pile to escape embarrassment had there been one. Nauseated, without saying a word, I swayed out to the restroom instead, where I dropped to the floor and hung my head into the toilet to barf. Strangely, after I took a few deep breaths, I recovered. I washed the orchestra’s color from my arm and returned to the classroom but was too shy and ashamed to tell our teacher:

“Hey, Teach, s‘cuse me for leaving class. Was sick. Had to refresh myself in the toilet.”

I was seated directly in front of him, to better hear him, and I still remember him saying:

“In America people shower every day.”

At this time I did not know why he said that because my masters rarely bathed and they were in America. I did not realize that he was talking to, and about, me because he was looking at the ceiling when he said that.

There was one teacher who suspected that I wanted to escape from something or someone and offered me help. Is it my color, my silence, my fertilizer smell? Can he see my soul? As always I sat near his desk. Mr. Wickstrom mentioned that he could employ me to work for him in his greenhouse. I just mumbled that I could not and did not explain that I would not be allowed to do so, and that I would have no means to get there.

Since it dawned on me that people might notice that I radiated a unique aura, I decided to leave the barn five minutes earlier in the mornings so I could purify myself. I became so pure that Fullo scolded me for leaving his barn too early. He wanted me to remain a dung beetle and did not allow me enough time to wash myself, so, under duress, I graciously gave him back my daily five minutes. In the mornings I had only about half an hour to hurry from the barn to the house, wash my face, hands and arms, change clothes, eat and walk to the school bus. It was no wonder that my empathetic cousins gave me deodorant and after-shave lotion for Christmas, with appropriate comments. Even so, Frauke’s favorite color was green, and I will never understand this. Maybe she still liked it because she had never spent time in the opera barn during or after a performance.

Cousin Greetje, Fullo’s oldest daughter, came to stay with us during her vacation. Her boyfriend, Jack, on furlough from the Navy, also visited for a day or two. Since Fullo was not home Jack had the courage to take a shower. While he was whistling in the water, Houwke admonished him through the bathroom door:

“Don’t use so much water.”

“What?” Jack said from the shower.

Houwke did not repeat her request. Because of a potential scolding from Fullo, the meter could have been running in her head, one cup, two cups, three cents, four cents,…

Although Jack probably could not believe her command, or had not understood it, he did turn off the shower.

* * *

Thanksgiving was unusually cold, below freezing. In the morning, Aunt Houwke, Frauke and Jolene were beginning to prepare turkey dinner while Fullo and I humored his cows. He was ecstatic about his night off from the mill; I was not ecstatic about my day off from school.

I returned from the milkhouse to the barn with two empty buckets and placed them inside the door. I put my cracked, freezing hands into my pockets and walked to the other end of the barn to check a milk sucker machine. Uncle Fullo sat on a stool between two cows, pressing an ear against a belly, as if to listen to the rumble of its stomachs. His short arms were straining to reach the money spigots below, squeezing out the remaining drops of money after a machine had finished milking them. Was he the only dairyman in the world with this habit?

Evidently there was too little money coming out of this cow, Beulah, because when he saw me, his face flushed, and he jumped off his stool, dropping his bucket.

“Why are you standing there with your hands in your pockets?”

Crack! An oaken fist hammered my delicate skull bone. Stars flashed through the opera. Again I was startled that the barrel could move so fast. Did it hit me instead of Beulah because I could not blast moomookakapoopoodoodoo all over the barn?

“I wasn’t standing. My hands are freezing,” I stuttered with a trembling voice as I raced out of the barn toward the house. But this chicken did not cackle.

“Fullo hit me. I’m leaving,” I announced there.

I wanted to call Siggi and ask him to run away with me from our masters, but I was still afraid to speak on a telephone because I couldn’t look this plastic gadget in the eyes. My cousins, afraid of losing their slave, started bawling, did not help me, and talked me into staying. It was easy to do because I knew of nowhere else to go.

That afternoon the whole family sat down for Thanksgiving dinner. Uncle Fullo solemnly tore a page from the calendar hanging on the wall behind him and read its lengthy religious lesson for that day. Then everyone, including me, bowed his head and gave thanks to the Lord for his blessings. Am I his blessing? Or are we cursed, Siggi and I?

* * *

Our slavery on the dairy farms continued for more than two years, seven days a week, three hundred sixty-five days a year, minus one day for me, when I was allowed to have some time for myself, to stay in bed and barf in privacy. I didn’t know how many days Siggi was allowed to have, to have privacy. But I was grateful for this day, for we were in the prime of our lives and intellectually curious. We were of the age during which one washes thousands of teats and grunts around mountains and rivers of cow products. This was especially appealing during the Pacific Northwest rain that could drizzle from September into July, when cow bellies were caked with mud and dung, and their active paintbrushes also.

During the winter months, the low temperatures and chlorinated wash water split open some of the teats of the critters like overcooked wieners. These same causes, as well as my often-wet hands and cold metal equipment likewise unzipped my fingers. At times I could see my white bones and barely hold a pencil. When I told Houwke that I was ready to scream, she instructed me to “put on some bag balm.” Therefore I embalmed my hands liberally with udder grease, and this helped heal them somewhat, even without stitches.

Milk cartons claimed that the milk came from contented cows and was grade A, but they did not stroke the egos of the milkers. They gave no credits such as “Painfully Harvested by Ami,” or “Tenderly squeezed out by Siggi,” and I didn’t think that Fullo’s cows were contented, at least not during his presence. One day when I was milking alone, I had a chance to test this theory. Blackie was a very nervous cow, and the only way she could be milked was by chaining her back legs together. I did not do so, and while talking tenderly to her, telling her that Fullo chained and milked me also, I attached the milk machine to her udder. Even though her eyes got big at the start, she never blasted me with her green ammo and her hooves.

* * *

Fullo and I were in the barn. Again. I checked the udder of a cow to see if it were empty. It was hard, rock hard, and there was little milk in the machine even though it had been milking her for a long time. I asked my mentor:

“Why won’t the milk come out of this cow?”

Fullo came over, lovingly stroked her bag, yanked and pulled a teat, forcing out a stringy chunk.

“She has mastitis,” he concluded. “I’ll milk her by hand.”

He yanked her teats vigorously and when he was finished, he placed the resulting product by the entrance. It was always my job to carry the milk buckets up to the milkhouse.

“What shall I do with this milk?” I asked him later.

“Pour it into the tank.”

“But isn’t it unhealthy?” I ventured.

“Waste not, want not,” the ancient wisdom came back.

His greed prevented him from discarding infected milk. I followed his order and emptied this strepto-bacteria-loaded milk into the funnel bowl that had a paper filter wedged over its coarse bottom screen through which the milk drained into the tank. Then I returned to the barn, and when I came back later, the funnel was still full of this concoction. Mastitis chunks and hair clogged its filter. Unwittingly I became an accessory to an immoral deed. I returned to the barn to inform my master:

“The filter is plugged. What shall I do now?”

“I’ll show you.”

He came up to the milk house, wrapped his stubby arm around the filter bowl to lift it, and expertly rapped its side with a piece of iron, hoping to dislodge the crud in it. I watched him beat it ever more vigorously, until I thought that he hit his pocketbook, although not his thumb, when the filter broke loose, emptying unmentionable additives into the milk tank. Since I was a pessimist, I stayed out of his reach. I was convinced that more than two hundred gallons of organic bone-builder were now ruined and he would take it out on me. But I was wrong. This was no problem for Fullo, even though he also was a pessimist. Optimistically he put a new filter into the bowl and scooped it through the milk tank to recover the stuff that was peacefully drifting in the pure-white milk. Afterwards he added a handful of chlorine powder and some water for good measure, thus converting engrais de vache, water and poison into money. May I serve you?

The creamery tested each shipment of milk for bacteria, butterfat and proprietary additions.

The butter wrappers said: “Color Added Seasonally.”

Since I have color-confused vision, I could not be sure which color was added, although I had positively concluded after wearing, inspecting and testing it under myriad conditions, that one cow product was green. My masters also harvested milk for their own consumption, which I also drank, au naturel, unpasteurized, including their proprietary additives. I absorbed so many of these, as well as those from the chlorinated manure teas, that I developed a corrosive humor that would be with me for the rest of my life. And that’s why I think I’m “full of it.” Full o’ Schitzma.

* * *

Because I worked hard I lost weight. My ribs protruded and I was hungry all the time, and at six feet, I weighed one hundred-fifty pounds. Once after a dinner, Aunt Houwke asked Jolene to finish some peas that she declined. When Houwke offered them to me, I wanted to devour them but Jolene said, “I’ll eat them because I don’t want him to have them.” That was OK, for unbeknownst to my masters, I robbed them to supplement my daily bread. I ate the grain of their cows, as well as the linseed and milk replacer for their calves. Evidence indicated that rodents were stealing from these sources as well. Fortunately, Siggi, however, was occasionally able to eat day-old baked goods that the bakery threw out by the barrelful, and which Uncle Deepo fed to his cows.

I figured that Siggi’s daily routine was much the same as mine. He was not allowed to eat all he needed either, although he was still growing. When he came in from the barn in the mornings, he found his breakfast bowl already filled, thoughtfully, with corn flakes and milk that often was mushy before Siggi would get there to eat it. Usually everyone else had already eaten and the table would have been cleared. Siggi ate alone and could not refill his bowl, and like I, he was too shy to help himself from the refrigerator or cupboard. We worked without pay and were too timid to ask for seconds, because for so many, many years people had trained us too well to be humble and subservient.

Siggi was not allowed a single day off either and was treated almost as royally as I. Recently he told me that he once had asked Uncle Deepo if he could get a vacation.

“May I have a few days off?” Siggi had asked him.

“Why? Where do you want to go?” Deepo became worried.

“I just want some time to read in my room.”

Siggi told me that thereupon Deepo had sighed with great relief.

He had asked a hypothetical question because he was never allowed one free day, not even one Sunday. Even so, our masters told us that it was a sin to work on Sundays. Fullo’s rear window sticker even displayed: “Stop Shopping On Sundays.” Is it sinful to make your slaves work that day?

Our family, that is Fullo’s tribe, did take one extensive vacation in two years. Some Saturday morning, shortly after Fullo had bought a new, used car, we prepared for our trip by milking and shoveling out the barn. Then we all got into his car and drove to Yakima on the other side of the Cascade Mountains to return again to do our evening chores.

During our prolonged, relaxing five-hour vacation we never set foot in a restaurant because this might cost money. I believe that Fullo in his fifty-some years had never been in a restaurant. Oak barrels do not go to such places. Even so, I enjoyed my vacation with him because in my humble opinion he was enticingly crude, amazingly narrow-minded and brilliantly ignorant.

* * *

Siggi did have a big change in his farm routine. During his last summer in high school, Maxo, the same Maxo who never even had to say, “Here kiddy, here kiddy,” to entice us to come to America, used him on his tideland to help build a dike around several hundred acres. For this work Maxo bought him a forty-nine Ford for about two hundred dollars. This provided Siggi with mobility, a big step toward freedom. I did not find this out until weeks or months afterwards when he visited me one evening and we drove to a movie. The next day my cousins informed me that we had sinned. Long ago their church had received a memo, a revelation from God, classifying watching movies as a sin. We’re sorry, forgive us.

Siggi earned at least a car for his work during that summer and made good use of it when Maxo became mad at him. He parked in a secluded spot by a river and slept in it one night. But the next morning he humbly returned into Maxo’s arms because he did not want to go back to his underpaid in-the-manure position at Deepo’s and needed to retain a shelter. Like so much about our family I would not learn about this episode until much later.

Siggi’s visit was one of the few times that I was able to get away from my masters and do something enjoyable during my dirtiest two-year absence from life. At two other times some of my classmates would pick me up and rescue me for an afternoon. One of them was Pete who had had the epileptic seizure in the locker room. He lent me some gear, and we went fishing together in a small lake near Everett. While there, he tumbled to the ground with a seizure. I did not know how to help him, so I just had to let him shake, but I worried. After he finished shaking, he rose again, acted as if nothing had happened and did not talk about his illness.

Early on, before I had a driver’s license, two other classmates, Bob and Richard, who were in the German class with me, had picked me up and taken me to the home of one of them. There we listened to records, ate hamburgers and talked until evening when they drove me back to the farm after dark. Richard asked me if I wanted to drive his car, and I wasn’t sure if I would be able to. I managed to get into the first and second gears and tried to grind into third unsuccessfully. Since I did not have enough confidence to drive much faster anyway, I continued in second. I gripped the steering wheel and stared at the pavement ahead in our headlights. Our conversation seized because we concentrated so hard on keeping me from driving off the road or grinding up the transmission. Unfortunately I was able to return unscathed because otherwise I might have had a nice vacation resting in a hospital for awhile. I remembered that my clinic stay in Basel had been a great relief from my wonderful home life.

The only other fun occasion that could have been a lot more fun if I had been less soiled, and less shy, was when Frauke paired me with her girlfriend for a hayride. Thus I met Vera, whose black eyes were on fire when she looked at me. I could feel my eyes return her fire and little Frauke encouraged me:

“Kiss her. Come on, Ami, kiss her.”

I wanted much more. But again I employed super-human self-control to prevent a long-term relationship. Or embarrassment. I needed to know if Vera would swoon from my intense and tender embrace or from my barnyard chemical makeup. My everlasting aura kept me from girls and fortified my shyness. I’ll save my fire until after a shower. After I normalize my brain about such matters.

* * *

In my English class I was required to present an oral book report. I searched in the school library for a suitable one to read, one that I might enjoy, and selected The Wall by John Hersey. But when the deadline for the report neared, I had only read part of it. Nervously I informed my teacher that because I had to work before and after school, I would not be able to finish it. I also read slowly because I was still learning English, and therefore he allowed me to report on only part of it. So far I had rarely spoken in class, then only under great duress and stress, had never presented oral reports, and now wondered if my German teachers would have allowed me to not complete an assignment and still give me a passing grade.

When I picked this novel I had no idea about its contents. It was written in the form of a diary but with a number of people contributing their experiences to the daily entries. I read many pages before the main subject came into focus, and I could not believe how this story developed because I had not yet learned of it. It was about the Nazis rounding up Jews in the Warsaw ghetto and hauling them off to concentration camps. This was too painful for me to believe.

I always had had stage fright. Now this imported, stinking, insignificant slave stood before his intensely staring victors, trembling, sweating and mumbling with a thick accent, stuttering about the evil deeds of his people. I will never know what I said, nor if anyone heard me or understood me, because I was in another world, in a terrifying world.

Since I had few useful thoughts and didn’t know how to fry my brain, I continued to thirst for gratifying knowledge. I found another book, Einstein’s Universe, and checked it out. I read it mostly on the school bus and during our vacation trip to Yakima. Boy, must I have confused others! They had never seen a stinky guy try to tap into a genius’ insights before. Although I did not understand some of his theories, they fascinated me greatly, and I thought maybe I could become an astronomer searching for a relatively gentler life on another planet.

I also loved history. I had learned about the ancient Greeks, Romans, early Germanic history, peoples’ migrations, barbaric invasions and crusades. I always felt that the history books were sterilized, with great importance being placed on learning names, dates and places. “Tiny the Great,” “Giant the Magnificent,” “Philosopher the Conqueror.” Too often the biggest killers, the invaders and conquerors seemed to have been the ones to be remembered in our history books. When I had left Germany, my history classes had taken me to or through the European Middle Ages. I knew nothing about modern history, the most violent times ever, other than what we had personally experienced during World War II and its aftermath. I knew nothing of its eco-political causes. Germans did not dwell on this time period, their painful past, and I could sense this from their silence.

In my profuse readings in Germany I had rarely, if ever, come across the word “Nazi” and there seemed to have been a great information vacuum about this regime. Its literature and icons had been destroyed after the war, but as a toddler I had heard the word Nazi mentioned in conversations by adults. Allies and Nazis were something they had talked about in serious discussions that I did not understand.

Now my world history teacher dropped the final WW II bomb on me, twelve or thirteen years after its official end:

“The Nazis sent millions of innocent people into concentration camps. And killed them systematically.”

After this class, in spite of my pain and shyness, I approached this teacher and told him that I did not know anything about concentration camps. So he showed me a photo of a mass grave filled with emaciated bodies. My heart stopped and my soul convulsed.

“This is what the Nazis did?”

“Yes,” he said.

The teacher recognized my agony, closed his book, and said that he had to go to another class. I stuffed another painful memory into my brimming memory hole, to be locked away with all the others. At this time I did not wonder about what roles any of our relatives might have played in the Nazi schemes because I knew very little about either one of them. Everyone I ever met was mum about this subject, as if it had never existed. Even my American relatives never brought it up. Only many years later would I learn a little about how Pa had felt about Nazis from an undated letter that he had written to Ma shortly after the war:

“…When I hear from my fellow man about everything that is happening, it stirs within me my innermost feelings of deep thanks toward our God. He has kept us all healthy, saved our belongings, and not the least kept me away from the early Nazi influence.”

“Always and always, I have through innermost convictions recognized completely and correctly, with a direct prophetic talent, the entire Nazi methods, and therefore we are now not entirely severed from business and economy. Thank God and be happy together with me, be really affectionate and nice towards the boys, who are our greatest happiness of all.

“When I listen to the war crimes trials in Nuremberg and read in the newspapers about it, the redness of shame, anger and hate rise to my face to be a German, who for twelve years had to live with the craziest of all sadistic systems in the world. It is indescribable how these gangsters reigned and murdered…”

To protect my soul from other people’s interest in me, I automatically tried to keep unpleasant thoughts from my conscious mind. It was their behavior and actions towards me that prevented me from focusing on the very creativity that could help me do well in school, and now, learn how to obtain freedom. Had I been able to think objectively, had I allowed myself to use my mind to search for useful knowledge, or to be counseled by someone who cared, I might have been able to improve our situation, Siggi’s and mine. But I had not learned this because our parents had taught us little and, furthermore, it was their war and attitudes that always had put a damper on my thinking.

* * *

During summer our workload increased greatly. As always, we started our days early in the morning with a kicking contest, man versus cow, and finished each day the same way. In between we fixed fences, made hay, delivered calves, de-horned them if they dared to grow frontal spikes, and removed balls to create neutral sex. Fullo and I chased his crop of bull calves into the barn and tied them to a post. While teetering on a milkstool, he twisted haywire around the scrotums of the critters. One of them became too wired and kicked the scrotum of his master. The pain that I felt for the poor critter neutralized what Schadenfreude I might have savored of what it did to my uncle. Birds of a feather, in this case the scrotumwreckers, do flock together.

After these bulls went haywire, fresh little steers gingerly tiptoed out of the barn and for days contemplated changes in their nature.

“Doesn’t that hurt? What will happen to their equipment?” I questioned my uncle.

“Oh, they’ll just fall off,” he answered casually.

The masculine fall-offs arrived a week or two later when my canine friend, Sheppy, brought home some hard, black and shriveled pouches, reminding me that I always had to protect my own.

Like I, the cows were keen judges of character, and because of such treatment they did not like Fullo. In his presence they produced more green stuff and less white stuff, and I wondered if they could do this because they had control valves and sensors to adjust their systems to respond to his presence. But nobody liked Fullo less than Fullo, and his only purpose seemed to be to growl at everything that moved and to accumulate wealth.

Dairy cows are bred annually so they produce calves and more importantly, money. Presumably, breeding is pleasurable for the cow, the bull and especially for the farmer because it re-invigorates the flow of money into his bank account. That is if the bull didn’t kill him first. Holstein bulls are huge and infamously aggressive. One spring day Fullo had one such delivered to his farm. Bully weighed more than two thousand pounds, excluding the ring and twenty feet of chain fastened to his nose. Thus equipped, he could raise this fad, body piercing, to a higher level to gross out the squeamish. He was allowed to run loose with the cows, dragging his chain with him wherever he went, whatever he did, but he was not allowed in the barn. He’d break out the floor to the haymow above with his big head when he tenderly thumped his cows.

When Bully finished his necessary duties after a few months, Fullo casually said to me:

“Take the bull back to Jones’ farm.”

“I am scared to,” I courageously mumbled to my uncle.

“You old grandmother,” he growled back.

Always remembering his oaken fist, his intermittent reinforcement to properly guide me, I had no choice but to return this stalwart bull by myself to a farm several miles down the highway. Stalwart Fullo told me that he had something else to do in the meantime. I went into the pasture, sneaked up to the bull from behind and grabbed the end of his chain that was dragging on the ground. Casually whistling, I led him through the gate onto the highway, like walking a dog. The bull plodded along obediently until we came to the other side of the barn when Bully’s harem came running to the fence, singing in chorus. They ogled us with big eyes, and their ears propped forward, while they were shouting moo, moo, and mooooh. Since I did not understand their language I could only guess what they bellowed at us.

They must have asked Bully to return because he pulled me in their direction, presumably to do some sniffing, to check for open cows. I pulled vigorously on his chain in the opposite direction, to cool his desire, while looking for a safe place to get out of his way, when he realized that there might still be an open cow. I gathered that there must have been because he began to dig dirt out of the ground, while snorting spit and blowing his trumpet.

For his attack on me. And not on some open cow.

Quickly I wrapped his, or was it one of my chains, around a power pole and cowered behind it while he attacked it with his massive head. I feared for my life as Bully became madder by the minute. Enraged, he kept pushing his head against the pole while I tried to hide behind it. I was afraid that if I stayed there much longer, we might get hitched. A frightened slave might be hitched, together with an angry bull, to a pole that carried power. And there was no one in sight to witness this union, to shoot the bull, to save me, or to record yet another act of my reluctant heroism on film.

Siggi had told me that Deepo’s bull had ripped his nose to get free from his troublesome chain. He did not like to be enslaved either. This could happen now and help Bully succeed in his revenge. Therefore, I carefully unwound the chain, and dragging it, I ran as fast as I could down the road with Bully in pursuit. The Holstein party in the pasture pranced, danced and cheered him on, giving him additional courage to invigorate his escape with me to our freedom.

I felt his chain slacken, his snorting draw closer.

My heart was pumping, my lungs were heaving.

As I ran out of breath, I jumped aside the instant before his head would have connected with my already abused behind. His mass moved past my ass and suddenly my chances for survival greatly improved. Blind with rage, he did not turn around to charge me but continued down the highway, dragging me along. Afraid of uncle, I desperately clung to his chain but could not keep up his pace. I was flying now. Bully tried to give me lift, the way I had run to lift my kites on wind-still days.

Since I was now out of immediate danger of becoming Suelze, ground up bones, meat and gristle, my fear was replaced by rage. Rage directed at Uncle Barrel and not at his twin, Bully. I let go of his chain, not to be jerked around any longer. Bully kept on running toward freedom, dragging the chain between his legs. Relieved and exhausted I kept walking, while the bull disappeared around a bend in the road, and timed as if he had been watching us, Fullo drove up in his pickup.

“Where’s the bull?” he asked grimly.

Breathlessly, I just pointed while he squealed away, leaving me to follow on foot. Uncle Barrel must have caught up with Uncle Bully, opened the gate to Jones’ pasture and guided him to it with his pickup. When I met up with him, Fullo reminded me again: “You old grandmother,” and I remember it well.

A chicken honored a torero as grandmother. Can I get a certificate of achievement for this?

* * *

Besides farm work, I had to perform other tasks such as painting Fullo’s houses and slaughtering his cows. I detested painting and I detested killing. I hated painting, mainly because I had to use solvent-based, oil-lead paints, and Fullo gave me few instructions or proper equipment to paint professionally. I assumed that one just slopped the paint onto the walls, doors and frames as fast as possible to reduce ones exposure to fumes that gave me headaches. The paint was too thick and did not want to stick; I could not get it into the corners. After adding thinner, it was too runny and flowed down my arms when painting up high and dripped on the floor when painting low. Skinflint did not buy me rubber gloves and the paint would not wash off my hands or spills. I had to clean up with solvents. If I ever get ill from taking in lead, solvents, chlorine, rodent and bovine doodoo, should I award Fullo a certificate of achievement?

As I said, I hated killing, but every year Uncle butchered one of his cows and graciously permitted me to help him, so I could quench my thirst for blood. When that day arrived, after milking and breakfast, Uncle and I returned to the barn to slaughter the designated cow, whose udder was almost dragging on the ground, plum worn out. He released this docile creature from her stanchion.

“Hold her head still. I’ll hit her,” he told me.

I hugged her head tightly. Poor little cow.

“Whack,” Fullo clenched his teeth and hit her on the head, the way he had practiced this on me. But now he used a sledgehammer. I let go. I had never killed anything bigger than a fish, thinking that fish did not have feelings. This cow, Beulah, groaned as her tongue came out and her eyes rolled in their sockets. Beulah had feelings the same as I. But she now also had a headache, while I was getting queasy. She staggered but did not fall. Fullo humanely gave her another blow to further compress her brain. She dropped. We dragged her head to the nutrient gutter, where Fullo slit her throat with a sharp knife, to drain out Beulah’s life.

When they could have been making blood sausage, the girls were home baking.

If I hadn’t been as dense as everyone told me I was, I would have become bloodthirsty at this point. We hoisted Beulah up with a chain to hang her in her favorite yoga position, head down, in order to drain her completely and to lift her from the pristine lime-covered concrete floor. With a very sharp knife my master sliced open Beulah’s largest organ, her hide, from top to bottom, down the middle of her belly. He gave me a knife also and ordered me to help undress her. He skinned down her left and I came down on her right. When we got to the bottom, Beulah looked very naked. Fullo expertly removed her head and gracefully heaved it out of the barn door with a grunt. Before long, my best friend, Sheppy, came running, and rudely dragged it around a corner.

We cut Beulah into quarters and carried out her hide and guts. I could give these parts a decent burial sometime later. At one time we would have eaten some of them, but now times were better. For now we left Beulah’s quarters hanging in the barn in the company of flies, until Fullo took them to a butcher on his way to the mill, to have her cut into smaller pieces to be wrapped, frozen, cooked and eaten.

* * *

Besides Sheppy, I did have one other friend, but did not want her to be my friend. She was a heifer that I had stolen from her mother out of the pasture right after she was born. Strangely her mother had not liked this and chased me off. After many attempts I was able to grab her still slimy calf, sling it around my neck and run as fast as I could to get to the safety of the barn. By the time I got there, her mother became confused or could not find us, and this calf bonded to me instead. Specifically, to my back.

This is what we should have done also, Siggi and I, when we were still slimy. We should have grabbed our father and never let go.

This friendly calf followed me everywhere and whenever she saw me she came prancing with joy. To get my attention she pushed her head into my back and continued doing this for months whenever we met. One day, when she had grown much bigger than I, as I was walking through the pasture, she came up from behind, and I was unaware of her. She rose on her hind legs and placed her front feet on my shoulders, hopping along behind me. Line-dancing through the pasture.

Since I feared that the whole herd might learn to participate in this, I had to convince this heifer that I was not her mother. I line-danced her into the barn, bribed her with grain, and put her head into a stanchion and locked her in. Then I cut off her horns with a big surgical tool designed specifically for this purpose. Since I was no surgeon, I cut too close to her head and a fine stream of blood spurted from each wound. I felt sorry that I did this, but she left me alone after our bloody experience.

The lesson then is, nip undesirable fads in the bud before they get out of control, unless, of course, you have the uncontrollable urge to squeeze some blood out of such turnips.

* * *

Beef was not enough. Fullo also asked me to butcher chickens, some of the most innocent of all creatures. I was to butcher about six of them for freezing. Of course he assumed that I knew how to do them in because you didn’t need to tell a “grandmother” how to kill chickens. I laid one down on a board, stretched out her neck with my left hand and chopped with my right. I had read books but not about this, and I was not a skilled mountain man and worried about my hand. Fullo must have too because he advised me that my technique was dangerous. Am I insured?

“Hold her by her legs, upside down,” was his advice for my next victims.

“What if she moves her head?” I questioned.

Her wings fluttering vigorously, I clutched my victim’s yellow twigs, inverted her, and let her head rest on the surgery table. This calmed or scared her into complete limpness. One little round eye stared up into my eyes. Blink. You don’t know what a quick wink from a little round eye can do to a six-foot man. I blinked. Chop. I missed her neck; I missed her head, chopped off her comb and before I noticed this, threw her away. Like the first hen, I expected her to bounce around and drain her blood. She did not do this but ran around the yard instead with all of her former friends chasing her, the rooster and I as well.

Each wanted her blood. Like some people, they also knew that “you have to get them while they’re down.” With pain and guilt I raced around with the flock trying to catch my crownless victim. Flapping wings, screeching and cackling confused us all, and I could not catch her. This was an emergency. This hen and I were in pain, and the other chickens were bloodthirsty. I picked an apple from a tree and aimed for her eye. The apple knocked her over, she twitched and shook, then did not move anymore. This relieved me greatly, and I laid her back on the operating table to sever her head.

Next.

I chopped off the remaining heads by the mountain man method, regardless of insurance. Then I dipped them all into hot water, plucked them, and with the help of my aunt, further prepared them for the freezer.

* * *

As my high school graduation drew closer, I saw no options for our future. I was completely penniless and had only the clothes on my back. Since I had no car and lived out in the soggy country, I was unable to look for a job to escape my slavery, and there was not a single person in the world to help me. I felt as if Siggi and I were destined to spend the rest of our lives in the deepest of dairy doodoo. I had little social contact, even with our relatives, our masters. I had spoken little in the past and spoke even less now. Ma wrote to them after we had arrived here that:

“Ami and Siggi, especially Ami, have chronic silence, exactly the opposite from me… He would be a good Catholic father to take confessions, he is as quiet as a grave.”

I was unaware about jobs and job training in America. I felt that it might be similar to Germany, where everyone followed one of two rigid systems of development, from school to apprenticeship, to journeyman status. Ma had chosen the other path for us, to attend a Gymnasium, to be followed by a university. In either case, along the way there were always rigid examinations, and I had no idea that in America anyone could easily get menial jobs and without much training or tests. Had I known this, I would have soon left the farm and never returned.

* * *

One day I meekly announced to my masters that I wanted to take the grade prediction test that was offered toward the end of my last school year. It was required in order to gain admission to Washington’s colleges. Even though I had no chance to attend one, and even though tests petrified me, my guardian angel decided that I should take it. It was to be administered on a Saturday, a day without school buses.

Coincidentally, Aunt Houwke and her daughters wanted to attend a church party on the night before this test and demanded that I drive them there. I courageously declined because I always retired early so I could get up early to play with the cows. I wanted to be rested, especially now, so I would do well on this test. But after some harassment, I consented to go if we could return by ten o’clock that night, and they agreed to this.

Ten o’clock came and went, and they showed no intentions of going home. Enraged, I went to the car, started it, squealed two-hundred fifty horses out of the parking lot and through the city as fast as they could run.

As a perfect slave I didn’t think of it.

Without booze or any other kind of external stimuli, my supportive relatives lingered past midnight and were the last ones to leave the party. Did they stretch time intentionally to tire me out, or just decide to become party animals because they had never had such an exhilarating sensation? During the two years I was with them, they almost never left the farm in the evening, probably because it would cost money, except that on rare occasions the girls had stayed overnight at a friend’s house. When I drove home that night, I was more worried than mad, and my passengers probably knew this because no one spoke a word. Were their thoughts the same as mine: “Mission accomplished”?

The next morning, while I was hurrying from the barn back to the house, Houwke shouted after me:

“Don’t think you can have the car after you drove on two wheels last night.”

I said nothing.

She had not said this at midnight because I had driven within the speed limit. Teary-eyed, I kept on walking without looking back. At the house I washed off any visible body paint, changed clothes and walked to town. I would be late and was tired, hungry, stinky and depressed. Fortunately a classmate, Bob, who was also heading for this examination, stopped and offered me a ride. I did not tell him about my predicament because I kept my problems to myself. He was very friendly, and I did not know if he could smell me, or smell my dilemma.

* * *

I did not think that I did well on this test, and my scores confirmed it. They foretold that I would fail college English and do poorly in other subjects as well. The day I received my scores in the mail, I went down to the barn as Frauke waddled up to the house.

She yelled down at me across the highway, “How are your test scores?”

“Not very good,” I replied glumly.

A smile lit her face.

“Now you can’t get into college, ha ha, ha,” she cockily returned. Those were her actual words, and as Dave Barry says, “I am not making this up.” But like so many before her, she would be wrong about my abilities and my future and happily thought that now she could keep her servant forever. Or she could have been wallowing in Schadenfreude. I could not foresee my future either, but when you’re only a Guellefahrer slave…

* * *

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