Little Stories

Some time in 1969 or thereabouts, a young army wife had boarded a plane to meet her new husband in Frankfurt, Germany. Her husband had been drafted and had received the very fortunate assignment of the Signal Corps in Germany rather than Vietnam. He'd asked her if she would wait until he came back and having serched her soul she replied quite honesty that she couldn't promise anything because two years was a long time. There was a time when she would have promised to wait without hesitation because she loved him so whole heartedly, but something had happened a couple of years before, and she had been given an insight into the possibility of another young man. That is a little story for another time.

Alright, here I drop the pretense and admit the young woman was me. I was 21 years old. We'd had a worlwind marriage - blood tests, marriage license, justice of the peace, and a honeymoon at the World's Fair in Montreal, Canada.

Among the significant traditional gifts parents gave their almost adult daughters, I had been given a set of Samsonite luggage, creamy oyster white. There was the large suitcase, the medium sized one, and the ittle rectangular toiletries box.

I am an old lady now, and if I had kept to fiction, I could have filled in imaginary details to repace the ones I have forgotten, such as, what time of year was it? I have a vague impression it might have been summer, but I am not sure.

When I boarded the plane (from where? I don't remember) I saw my parents out the small airplane window with my brothers and sisters and my parents were crying. In contrast, I was thrilled! This was the adventure of a lifetime.

At the home of the Justice of the Peace, I had looked into the mirror on the other side of the lace covered dining room table, where we were pledging our vows and I had said to myself, "This is the biggest mistake I have ever made." Already, I had been given a peek into the mental illness that had only just begun to emerge from my young husband's behavior. He was prone to excessive rage, temper tantrums generally triggered by automobile problems or his mother, but generously sprayed across anyone who happened to be present. In those days, it was common for serious young couples to spend a lot of time together. We were together most week nights and every weekend.

But here was offered to me the opportunity to not only visit Europe, but to live there, in the brightly colored posters of Toulous Lautrec. Among the many books I had bought as a young working woman; I had gone to work directy from high school, and I mean directly - I finished high school on a Friday and went to work at W. B. Saunders Publishing Company on Monday. My job provided me with my first discretionary money, and I spent it at the Cherry Hill Mall. In those days, there were book stores, attractively arranged and fairly expensive. There was also, however, at the book store in the Cherry Hill Mall, a rediced price table at the entrance to entice passers-by into the store. On that table I had foun an art book of the paintings of Toulous Lautrec, and from what had apparently been a set, another of the work of Gauguin, and a third of the work of VanGogh.

Now I was on an airplane on my way to visit the birthplaces of these heroes of mine. I felt very grown up and also a bit frightened, not about the flying or the plane, but about going to and being in a foreign place, managing. My fear was mediated by my faith in the practicality and resourcefulness of my young husband. He was brilliant and he could do things like fix cars, read maps, plan trips, and he had been through basic training and officer's candidate school and he was proven and certified to be up to the job, whatever it might be. He had already arranged an apartment for us in a small town called Heilbronn.

Germany was part of the recycling of soldiers to and through Vietnam and back to the United States. There were so many soldiers stationed at the post World War II military bases that the housing was all full and offers were given the option of off-base accomodation which my young husband was more than happy to accept. Some officers wanted their families on base, but Michael was eager to live in the 'real' Germany not the military base one.

I am interested to look back and realie that I wasn't frightened of flying. We had spent a great many of our date nights at the Philadelphia airport dringking coffee and watching planes arrive and take-off. Maybe that was why. Of the flight itself, I remember almost nothings, who sat next to me or what we were served - all that has gone with time. What I remember is the announcement that there was going to be a slight detour in our flight. We were going to land in Thule, Greenland for slight repairs adn then we would resume our flight.

We departed the plane, somehow with our luggage. I remember that clearly because we all made kind of nests and forts out of our luggage. We were all army dependents, families of soldiers, and a few soldiers scattered amongst us. We were held in a vast cavernous hangar. We were there for many hours. No one told us anything. Mothers struggled to tend to sqwaling babies and to corral and control rambunctious toddlers and small children. I remember clearly being relieved that it was just me and I didn't have to cope with children in those hours of waiting in the cold, airplane hanger with no snack bar or any kind of comfort.

At nearly the days end, we were all told to board the plane again and we did, docile as sheep. And we proceeded to Frankfurt Am Man where my young husband awaited me in our new car. He took me to our little apartment on the third floor of a complex of new concrete residences, with its sloped ceilings and feather comforter on the fat little bed, the modern, no European style nonsense furnishings, and my favorite piece of all, a buttery kitchen cupboard with a slide out sifter for baking.

Years later when my family was all together at one of our holidays dragging out our stories, i was retelling this one and my father said, "I ws crying at the airplort because I saw the airplane they put you on was an old World War II plane and I didn't think it was going to make it!" To this day, I am stunned that my father thought my plane was going to go down. And that we had engine trouble and could, actually, have gone down!