My dad spent most of his adulthood working as a chemical lab manager, but long before that, he earned his degree in Journalism from New York University. And, people, oh, the way he writes. Sometimes he randomly lobs things like this at me via email.
He spent some time in Germany while he was in the Air Force. Here he corrects me on my naivete concerning the German countryside.
Adders in the hedgerows? No, no, no. Quite wrong. Far off the mark. In fact, it’s pathetic, really. No hedgerows, you see. Surprised to see a woman of your sophistication so badly caught out. Well, keep trying. You’ll get it eventually. Just remember: No hedgerows in Germany. What’s that? Oh, don’t mention it. Always glad to help.
When I looked out the big living room window in Rehweiler, I could see the middle ages and the last war. On the hillside slope opposite was a ruined pillbox, part of what Hitler called the West Wall. It faced the equally useless Maginot Line, and although it never did anything, it was so dreaded by the French that they begged enough explosives from the true combatant nations to go through that region blowing up all the now-abandoned forts and gun sites. This one was was surrounded by a copse of brushy trees by then, and it bore a decaying steel sign: Grave danger de MORT! Sure, François. It did cover 2 km of the road well, and nothing could have passed without blowing that pillbox first.
An older artifact up there was the strips of land still apparent — different colors depending on the crop grown and its stage of development — ranging far up the hill to where the woods began, strips that corresponded exactly to the tracts always laid out on medieval estates! This was exciting to see, so old and dark-ages spooky. A peasant then got his narrow strip in perpetuity, as long as he paid his yearly rent to the lord. He walked out in the mornings along the same track used now. The ancient farmers were forever trying to encroach on their neighbor’s bit and plant some barley over there and extend the holdings for free. They’d sneak out at night and move the boundary marker stones. Apparently the always got caught. The annual local courts seemingly had such cases scheduled.
In the the 1960’s, those same medieval land-rights had visibly survived in about the same shape, although they may have grown together and coalesced into bigger strips in modern times. Farmers now went up the hill on small tractors, but some still drove horses out to tend their strip. Their barns and animals were still kept in town, for this was the old-time land of bad-ass robber knights, never-ending religious war, and the ogres of the Brothers Grimm. Once it had trouble with wolves. Everything outside of the unfortified but still relatively defensible village turned into Indian Country after dark, right up into the 19th century. That danger did not abate for so many centuries that they huddled together for warmth and never branched out into farmsteads.
One old Rehweiler lady of the witchy crone type (hunched back, black and blue dress, given to making twig brooms and sweeping snow compulsively) used to drive her team up the hill; she had a small Jersey-looking dairy cow yoked beside a little donkey. It was considered an eccentric rig; people came out to watch. The three of them harrowed all afternoon with maniac energy, using an iron-spiked drag that came right out of Martin Luther’s back shed.
Closer by, in the bottom of the valley along the little river, was the railroad. It came down from Kreis Kirn, where the basalt paving stones are quarried and cut. Big trainloads of those are so heavy that the only thing capable of pulling them was several gigantic Baldwin steam locomotives sent under the Marshall Plan, because they were still useful but growing obsolete in the US. Twenty years after the war, those Baldwins were still hauling millions of tonnes of paving stone, shrieking like hell through town and leaving a ribbon of water vapor behind that on cold days looked dense enough to cut into sections and sell.
I never know what to say to him when he sends me things like this, because my inner lit geek is too busy rolling over and fangirling. I’ve long suspected him of being a beatnik, but I think he might be embarrassed if I asked.
So basically I want to write like my dad. One day I hope it might even show.