(From Dieburg, Germany
to Amsterdam
The 545th
Ordnance Company, in Munster by Dieburg , Germany
Two
policemen were riding down a narrow cobblestone street on horses, I stood
alongside a building watching them, while also glancing at the several other
folks standing inside a building, sipping on different kinds of wine from
lightly filled glasses, my two twin boys, noticing this, started to stare
likewise, then looked at one another and Cody looked at me as if to ask, ‘Dad,
what are they doing?’ He didn’t say that but if I could read his mind and his
expression, it is what he would have said, had he found the words to say it.
“See them drinking in there,” I said,
pointing my finger near the glass window, “they’re tasting wine to see if it is
a good or bad wine, wine is a strong drink, not like milk, and awful tasting
too” then I made an ugly face, at random, to demonstrate what I was inferring,
kind of like drawing them a dramatic picture that made them laugh.
We had just left the center of
Amsterdam, where statues of lions were—the boys were amazed at the lions, even
climbed on them, as I had to carried them like two sacks of potatoes off of the
ledge of the statues, and down to earth—lest they get hurt, and thereafter, we
ended up wandering the streets, like gypsies.
A young American hippie near the statues
asked me, “Sir…yaw want to buy some pot?” and I never answered him, just kept
on walking.
Cody looked at me as if to say: “What
did he want?” he couldn’t form the words of course, but I said, “Bad guy,
trying to sell me something that will make me sick.”
Cody, the older of the twins by
nineteen-minutes was hanging onto one of my arms while Shawn was hanging onto
the other as we crossed the cannel bridges, as we continued on our journey
throughout the city—our so called exploration of the cannel city.
It was my first time in Amsterdam, I
didn’t bring much luggage, we’d only stay one night, it was November, and there
was a real chill in the air, and it was now late, 11: 00 p.m. I hadn’t done any planning, I was bored with
my military life, and abruptly decided to take a side trip, and it was a weekend,
so I grabbed the two boys and went on up to Amsterdam on a train, just like
that. Now we needed to find a place to stay: the boys were falling to sleep as
we walked. I found a midnight hotel, and I asked the custodian about a night’s
rent, and he wanted to charge me full price, but we argued it out to half
price—looking at the boys and how tired they were: plus the night was half
over.
After being invited to sit down in the
fireside room—the custodian having offered me a beer, Shawn sat on my lap, Cody
to my side, and we talked some, they spoke English well. It was a small hotel,
with a hot fire in the hearth, and I ordered myself a second beer, and the boys
each a sandwich. Some invisible arm was put on my shoulder, said, “You play the
guitar?” Then all of a sudden there was a guitar, and I strummed some songs
out, and we all sang cheerfully: as Shawn and Cody were both chewing away on
their ham and cheese sandwiches, trying to stay awake.
The fact now was, we’d be really tired tomorrow, but the train ran back
to Germany almost hourly so I felt if I overslept, no problem, I’d catch a
later train out of Amsterdam—have breakfast here at the hotel, or on the train
itself. So, light-headed, I sat with my boys, the fire crackling, warm heat
soaking through our bodies, the light
from the hearth was like sparkling firecrackers, and I could have hugged those
three fellows for inviting me over to the hearth—and the one lady. We did make
it to bed, a little later.
Written down in draft
form: 2002; rewritten in 2004, and
revised 6-2012
To its now shorter
version; the longer version was three times this length.
