It says: A German Thanksgiving
My Thanksgivings are held about 100 yards from the original one in Plymouth due to a friend living right next door the the Plantation. It's close enough to hear the farm animals make their noises. The cow goes “moo!” We even could have wild turkey for dinner as they are numerous as pigeons there. I once saw a line of turkeys walk through his yard and I tried to get up close for a better look when he warned me not to.
“Donnnn't do that!” he says. “That one's a male, the rest are females, it's his harem!”
He tells me turkeys can fly about ten feet up and some yards laterally. Usually to get into low tree branches to escape predators. In other situations they fly at a threat and use their feet as weapons.
“That 20 lb bird will try to land on your head and he'll tear your scalp and eyes up with his talons!”
So I back off. City boy learns a lesson about cute, cuddly, real wild turkeys.
Not that it matters, we won't eat wild nor store bought turkey. Either he buys a mess of Chinese food or I'll pre-order a pile of various BBQ meats, beans and cornbread from Wes's Rib House and take it out there for T Day. Sometimes we do both.
After which, feeling like bloated pigs, we sit in the living room drinking the nicer stuff. I like bringing Grand Marnier and he always has a case of Asbach Urlat Brandy available. So we sip our drinks like snobbish gentry, burping and farting and acting like the swinish men that we really are. There are times when I can be well scrubbed, dressed up nicely and usually get through a finer event w/o picking my nose if I have too. But if with just “the guys,” different story there.
Asbach is a high quality German brandy and he'll special order it out of a local liquor store. It's OK I guess, I'm not a big brandy drinker. Though I am assured by the fact it does not sear your throat as you drink it down as most cheap alcohols will. The stuff is “smooth” as they say. I had asked him why this kind of brandy? Why go though all that effort?
“When I was in Bremmerharven, Germany, just after the war, WW2 mind you.”
“Yeah, I know which one...I'm not an idiot! Germany was a tip off!” I tell him.
He goes on.
“Bremmerharven was one of the major U-Boat ports and the Allies bombed the shit out of it. When we were docked there, most of the city was smashed...square mile after square mile of busted brick and dust.”
“On leave from the ship, you could find some places open for business, even if half the building was busted and burnt. The city was smashed but even so, people still scraped a life out of it still. One place was a great restaurant missing it's north facade and roof, but the family refused to leave, they kept it open as well as they could.”
“And what was great? The US dollar went sooo far in the German economy then! God! I lived like a king there for a while! I could get a four course dinner, dessert, beer all night and a glass of Asbach brandy...my bill came too...$1.25 in US currency! It was THAT lopsided! The owner's eye's bugged out when you paid in US dollars and not Deutschmarks. They wanted the dollars soo bad!”
“Then I get an idea. Since I could speak some German, I ask the owner if he has contacts in the city for the real good liquors, the high quality stuff and I tell him I, and the other officers of the ship, including the captain, were willing to pay him extra, in dollars, if he can get his hands on as much of the stuff he can find.”
He tells me he and the officers stuffed the ward room and other spaces on the ship with case after case of German liquors. brandies, cordials, wines, schnapps and more Jagermeister than you would ever care to drink.
“It cost us nothing...really...compared if we had to buy that stuff in London or Paris.”
I say to him, “And that's where you got the taste for Asbach brandy.”
“Yep, I was a young man then, an ensign, unrestricted surface warfare officer, having the time of my life in post war Germany...spending nothing and getting it all.”
The brandy was a happy memory for him.
**
On a Thanksgiving day in Bremmerharven, the ship's men wanted to do something for the orphans of that city, as there were more than a few of them. B. tells me they had a small PX onboard the ship, selling cigarettes, candies and...ice cream. So the men piled their change together to buy ice cream for all the kids at one of the Catholic orphanages there. They brought them to the ship and herded the kids to the mess hall, along with them was the young son of that restaurant owner who scrounged up all that liquor.
“You should've seen their eyes when we plopped the dishes of ice cream in front of them. They hadn't seen that stuff in years! We then went back and bought out all the candy and bagged it up for them to take home to the orphanage.”
A couple of days later, when the ship was due to leave, the owner of the restaurant comes to the dock with his son and manages to get B. to come down to speak with him.
“Ron, the guy begged me in German and broken English to take his son, to take him to America, get him out of the wasteland that Germany had become. He then started to shove the dollars we gave him for the booze at me. I had to tell him we could not take children on a 'ship of the line,' a warship.”
“God, the guy had tears running down his face, but still, there was no way I could put a German stowaway child onboard. How the hell am I going to explain that? I was the lowest junior officer on board then.”
“That day bugged me for the rest of the trip till we got back to New York you know.”
“That next Thanksgiving, I was stationed in Norfolk, and I decided to mail that Dad four $10 bills. It was a good chunk of money back then, even to us Americans. I had remembered the address of the restaurant luckily.”
“A few months later I get a letter from the Dad, thanking me profusely for it. His son was nine years old then and told me he spent the money on clothing, shoes for his son and other things the family needed.”
I asked, because I suspected, “How many years you do that for?”
“Till the kid was 18, so nine years.”
“What happened to the kid?” I ask.
“He's a optics technician, for Zeiss International last I heard. The kid made it.”
**
Later on I ask, “What were you paying that guy for the brandy then?”
“$10 a case. A lousy eighty-three cents a bottle.” he says.
“I now pay $400 a case. Twelve bottles...it's suits me for a year abouts.”
“You spend $400 on brandy?” I'm surprised because he's a worse skinflint than I am.
“No...I spend $400 on memories and that's worth it to me. Like I said, I was a young man then living like a King and I celebrate it still.”
No comments:
Post a Comment