A Photo Essay without Words
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Chapter 22 of the Peter and Gertrud Klopp Story – Part VII
Career Planning and a Painful Self-Assessment
Art Work Entitled ‘There are many ways’ by my Friend Hans Fricke
My brother Gerry, who lived in Medicine Hat during my service in the West German army, is not exactly known among family members as an avid letter writer. All the more I was surprised to receive a detailed answer from him to my question regarding teacher’s training in Alberta, Canada. Driven by youthful desire for adventure but also by a kind of escapism that was getting stronger with each additional month in the army I wanted to explore a possible teaching career in Canada.
My Brother Gerry and his Wife Martha at Medicine Hat
Equally important for the understanding of my sudden interest in a totally different profession was that my staff sergeant in Koblenz had taken notice of my knowledge of basic electricity and electronics and had given me the task to instruct the new recruits. This went over so well that I was given more and more time off from regular duty to prepare my lessons and teach. So it happened that I discovered a talent, which I thought I did not have. Gerry accurately explained the requirements for entering the teaching profession in Alberta. I had to have my German high school diploma validated, had to give evidence for proficiency in the English language, and had to complete a minimum of two years university training. With this information I was able to do some serious planning for the future. Suddenly a most fortuitous train of thoughts popped up in my mind that greatly increased my longing to go to Canada. Exciting ideas followed in rapid succession: immigration, teachers’ training at the University of Calgary, a teaching career, an income with the prospect of pay increases with more training, getting married to Biene and having a family.
Mother and Daughter-In-Law Martha at her Home in Medicine Hat
I am still thankful to the captain from the basic training period for instilling the desire for good planning in order to achieve a dream The target I aimed for was still years ahead. It was actually a twin target of a rewarding career and life with Biene at my side. To hit the bull’s eye at such a distance would require a great deal of determination and persistence. Would I have those qualities, but most importantly would Biene support me in something – I am ashamed to admit – I had not even mentioned to her yet? So this would be a good time to have a critical look at myself. In my own eyes I had become a mature young man years ahead of my comrades in terms of acquired wisdom and good planning. But when I looked at the erroneous assumptions I had made about the world around me, about Biene and myself, I marvel at the way all my dreams had eventually become a reality.
Firstly, in my letters to Biene I had written about love, but never about marriage. I assumed that my ‘I love you’ would translate into ‘Will you marry me?’
Secondly, what was Biene to make out of my long-winded flowery dissertation on love between a man and woman?
Thirdly, Biene had already been frightened by the painful events leading up to and following the break-up of her engagement with Henk. Now I came and frightened her some more by openly writing about my passion for her without revealing or at least hinting at my genuine intention to marry her.
Fourthly, it was preposterous to assume that just because I was willing to marry her she would want to marry me too. This was truly the mark of an egocentric ass that I was at the time.
Last but not least, twelve months in the army and my comrades’ boastful talk about their amorous adventures should have taught me that being married and making love do not necessarily belong together. How was Biene supposed to know what was on my mind about a topic that had been a taboo throughout our childhood years?
So in summary I had built a dream castle with love, marriage, family and career on the preconceived notion that Biene had read all this and much more between the lines. It was then one of the great miracles of our relationship that no storm tide came rushing in at that particular juncture and made the castle collapse like a deck of cards.
In a postcard Biene briefly assured me that she no longer wanted a mere soul-mate relationship. She wrote that many of the questions and problems that were troubling us would be resolved once we had met again. And indeed we met exactly two years after we had our first encounter at Lake Baldenay. This brought some sunshine into my heart. My brother Adolf contributed a great deal to enhance that joie de vivre, which I felt all the more intensely, whenever I went with him on an excursion in and around the Rhine, Moselle and Lahn valleys.
Chapter 22 of the Peter and Gertrud Klopp Story – Part IV
Light at the End of the Tunnel
Peter Reading Biene’s Letter while Tuning his Electronics Gear
Late Sunday night Private Gauke entered our room after spending the long weekend at his girlfriend’s home. He was so excited about it that he felt justified in waking me up. Even though I was still half asleep I could tell that my friend was beaming with joy. He had good news to tell me. He had met his girlfriend’s parents who were delighted to get acquainted with the young man their daughter had been telling them about so much. He was amazed almost embarrassed how much they knew about him. For them the most important thing was to see their daughter happy. In their eyes he seemed to be the right man for her. My companion would have gone on to share his happiness with me, but when he looked at my sleepy and grumpy face, he stopped. I was annoyed and wondered why he could not have waited with all that chatter till next morning. Then I would have perhaps appreciated his latest romantic tale with a wakeful mind. I made no effort to suppress a loud yawn to indicate that I wished to get back to sleep. However, Gauke had still something else on his mind that was supposed to cheer me up.
Biene quite in Tune with the Fashion of the Sixties
“Peter,” he started again with undiminished exuberance in his voice, ”my sweetheart back home has a wonderful girlfriend who is just like you; she loves poetry, even writes her own verses …”
“I’m not interested,” I interrupted him gruffly.
“Peter, don’t get me wrong. You need to break out of your doom and gloom. I invite you to come with and spend the weekend at my parents’. We could go out together and meet …”, I interrupted him again raising my voice just a notch higher to make it clear that I had had enough of his idle talk.
“Well, suit yourself”, he replied. All I wanted is to advise you to keep your options open. It is not a good idea to have just one egg in your basket. In case it breaks, you know.”
Poor Gauke, he tried so hard. He was a nice chap and a good friend. He was truly trying to help. I was stubborn or insanely in love, or both. It took me a long time that night before I managed to catch a few winks of sleep.
Biene (Gertrud)
In the second week of February, just when I had given up ever receiving a message from Biene again, her letter arrived, which I expected to be the final farewell letter. Instead it contained a bombshell. I read with relative calm that her engagement with Henk had been broken off. Her dream about a life together with him had been shattered through unfortunate events and circumstances, which she was unable to describe except to say that Henk had loved her so much that she for a while believed to love him too. However, what led up to the actual break-up, she left unsaid setting in motion an avalanche of speculations on my part. In vain I tried to penetrate the veil that shrouded the circumstances that she was alluding to. Had Henk revealed an aspect of his character that made her shudder? Had he been too aggressive and demanded of her too much, too soon? Many more questions were racing through my head, for which I found no answer, creating a jumble of mixed emotions. If she had given me a few concrete details no matter how shocking, I would eventually have accepted with love and understanding her tragic experiences. As I continued reading I noticed how much she was troubled by my plans to emigrate to Canada.
“How can we possibly meet again, when you are so far away,” she asked, “and disappoint each other? Do you really believe ‘disappoint’? I cannot imagine it; but I would not be afraid to see you again.” At that moment my heart beat a little faster. The horizon began to brighten up with the rays of hope and eager anticipation. Unfortunately, like a bolt out of the blue, without any merciful transition, Biene continued, “Imagine this, my pen pal from Morocco intends to come this summer to get to know me and Germany. Will he be like I imagined him to be? My parents don’t agree with the idea; for they fear we could fall in love with each other.” I felt that the tenuous thread that so far had held us somehow together was ready to snap. What prevented this from happening was a mental trick that moved my mind to a distant vantage point from which I looked down upon the bizarre soap-opera-like comedy show below. The Moroccan pen pal had miraculously risen from the dead and imbued with renewed zest for life was eager to see her, to meet her, to get to know her, while her poor parents having just been saved from one disaster were heading into the next. I could not help but internally smile and laugh. My friend Gauke would be laughing too, He was absolutely right in his urgent plea to let go of her and also in his opinion to have more options than one. In an ironic twist it was Biene, who obviously had more than one egg in her basket. One broke, but she had two or more eggs left to break. I tried to probe into the possible reasons as to why in this particular moment she would tell me this. Was she trying to goad me into action? Her concluding sentence seemed to confirm my speculation, “Sometimes, even though you wouldn’t like it, I would really like to see you again.” A new seed had been planted. It was now up to me to water it, to nourish it, to make it grow in the fertile soil of reality. To accomplish it, a rendezvous with Biene was the key and time was of the essence. To blaze a trail to the doorsteps of her heart, I made some unusual preparations.
Summer 2016 – Part III
Making Room for the New House
Our Old House before the Demolition
It all started with a threat, a very serious threat indeed. I still remember the day, when our son Michael dropped in for a quick visit and announced with an authoritative voice, “One day, as soon as I am rich enough to do it, I will come with a giant bulldozer, push your old house into the lake, and have a new one built for you.”
The metal roof of the mobile home is already taken down.
Of course, at that time, we took his announcement as one of his typical jokes, which revealed in one way or another his hidden criticism of our dilapidated dwelling.
Levi is taking down the timber piece by piece.
In spite of the modern appearance on the outside, our house had many problems. Too late I had realized that we needed eaves troughs. The water running off the roof penetrated the poorly vented crawling space. The floor joists began to rot. Hard to believe but true, mushrooms grew in great profusion out of the rotting wood and dispersed their harmful spores into our living space. Then roof specialists came into town and offered to the gullible residents of Fauquier Professional services. They replaced our cedar-shingled roof with a convenient metal cover. The only problem was that the ‘specialists’ failed to put tar paper under the tin, the annoying consequence of which was that ice was building up under the cold metal and would melt during the milder days causing water to drip right through the ceiling. To prevent any further damage I placed a fan into the attic and let run all winter to draw out the warm humid air. I could go on and on to describe how the house began to lean, such that following the laws of gravity marbles, even pencils and pens would be rolling off the table, or worse how over the past forty years pests both large and small established permanent residence in and under the house, mice, ants including the much feared carpenter ants, pack rats, raccoons, even skunks, just to name a few of our uninvited visitors.
Now it’s time to dismantle Biene’s beloved sunroom.
Let us return to Michael, who earlier this year turned his ‘threat’ into reality. Of course, he refrained from dumping our home sweet home into the Arrow Lake. Instead, we needed to dismantle the house – actually two homes, the original building and a double wide mobile home attached the former. To dispose of the doublewide in an environmentally friendly way turned out to be easy. I simply sold it on Facebook and had the new owner agree to remove it at his own expense.
The sunroom is no more.
The buyer’s helper did a fantastic job of salvaging the tin, the rafters and practically the entire roof over the mobile home. So I approached and offered him all parts of the old house, windows, kitchen counter, water tank, toilet, and even the ancient purple bathtub in exchange for removing and recycling the entire roof with all its timber and insulation. He even took off the vinyl siding most of it undamaged from the walls and will use the material for the house he is planning to build in the near future.
The metal roof of the old house is gone.
What a way to recycle and to reuse stuff that would have otherwise landed in a landfill!
Only the walls are still standing.
To be continued …
Summer 2016 – Part II
Action-packed Visit by our Son Richard and our Grandchildren Mateo, Azure and Emeline
Klopp Family Chart I – IV & V
Richard and his Children Spending Happy Hours at the Beach
A week after our family reunion on Galiano Island (see previous post) Richard and his children dropped in for a month-long visit. There were many joyful moments, such as horsing around with the grandchildren on our yard and at the beach, picking beans with Azure, appreciating and praising Mateo’s daily progress weeding in the garden, playing board games like Agricola and Settlers of Catan, watching Richard’s creative works of statue building, chatting with our visitors from Montreal, just to name a few of the highlights.
Opa pulling his Granddaughters across our Yard
Richard and Emeline Relaxing in Mateo’s Hammock
One of many of Richard’s Creations at the Beach
All dressed up for the Nakusp Medieval Days
Splashing Contest with Biene at Taite Creek
Azure and Emeline Eating a Snack on our Deck
Mateo teaching his Sister Azure a Board Game
Yet, there were also stressful times caused by the unfortunate timing of the visit that coincided with the impending demolition of our home, which had given us warmth and shelter for the past 40 years. I had to focus on moving furniture into make-shift shelters, and on planning and preparing for the new modular home, which our son Michael had ordered to be built for our golden years.
Biene swimming at an Island Beach
When things were at times too hectic and chaotic with the daily household routines, I often took my wife for a canoe ride so we could relax for a couple of hours at a lonely beach of a small island near the Needles ferry terminal.
Chapter 22 of the P. and G. Klopp Story – Part I
From Darkness into Light
Immature love says: ‘I love you because I need you.’ Mature love says ‘I need you because I love you.’
Erich Fromm
Filing a Complaint
Beautiful Feldafing at Lake Starnberg – Photo Credit: bergfex.com
Soon after my return to Maxhof, Gauke and I received the order to report to the commanding officer. I wondered what could be so important that we would be sent away from our very first driving lesson in the New Year. The young clerk in uniform behind the massive office counter told us that the captain was expecting us in his office. With a heavy heart we entered. After the perfunctory military salute the captain asked us to take a seat. I had the ominous feeling that we might have unknowingly broken some rules resulting in a disciplinary issue that the sergeant at the driving school could not handle himself. Without giving any explanation the officer informed us that we would be transferred back to our unit in Koblenz as of April 1st. We were stunned. But when the officer asked us whether we had any questions, Gauke inquired, “Why are we being sent back, if the purpose of the transfer was to have us trained as certified truck drivers?”
Villa Waldberta Feldafing – Photo Credit: wikipedia.org
The officer was a little taken aback, as soldiers are only allowed to ask questions, but not to question orders. But he must have realized that in this case we were entitled to know. For he said, “Soldiers that were transferred to my unit were supposed to be already fully trained as truck drivers. That was my request. Instead THEY send you! Dismissed!” From the furious tone of his voice, with which he pronounced ‘they’, it seemed to me that he was not angry at us, but at the system that cheated him out of two valuable truck drivers. Because of this ridiculous transfer I had not only lost out on the officer’s training program, but now I would also be deprived of the golden opportunity of getting my driver’s license. But what bothered my sense of justice the most was that we had been lied to, that the promise to provide driving lessons in January had been broken. In a violent outburst of angry words I released my frustration in a ten-page letter to Mother, which she acknowledged in a postcard expressing her hope that I had been able to calm down. In her motherly wisdom she had also destroyed the letter because of its incriminating content that she did not want anyone else to read.
Portrait of my mother – Erika Klopp
Gauke and I had a good talk over a mug of beer in one of the local pubs and discussed what our next move should be to address the unfairness of our transfers. I suggested grieving the matter at the next higher authority. Gauke agreed and encouraged me to write the letter of complaint, since with all my novel-writing I should have the better writing skills. Then we ordered another beer to drink to what sounded to us as a good decision. Within less than a week our grievance to the major in charge of the signal corps was in the mail.
The Peter and Gertrud Klopp Family 