Hello again from Luquillo! As I plummet head long toward my 90^th Birthday four months hence, I sense that it’s time for a pleasant story, since there are so many dreadful stories that appear each day in the news. Let’s hope this small story encourages you to smile.

FOR THE BENZIN ONLY

In December 1964 my family (wife Eileen, son Michael age 5, daughter Lisa age 3½) had embarked in our recently acquired Volkswagen Variant automobile, along the A-5 Autobahn which followed the Rhine River Valley from Frankfurt to Basel Switzerland. About halfway through our journey we stopped at a gasthaus in Heidelberg to have lunch. As we were seated by the plump, ruddy faced waitress, clad in lederhosen, we considered the fare imprinted on a much-used menu.

My son Michael soon spotted something called Wiener schnitzel halfway down the menu. I looked at him enquiringly and asked if he knew what that was. When he nodded, I approved his judgement and motioned to our waitress to make the order. When the food arrived and we began eating, I noticed Michael viewing his plate skeptically and asked him “What was the matter?”. He replied, “This doesn’t look like hotdogs to me dad”. Thinking that this was one of life’s lessons, I informed him that this was thinly sliced calf meat covered with a pleasant sauce and encouraged him to try it. After a few gulps, his beatific smile showed me that we had struck gastronomic pay dirt. We finished, paid for our meal and thanked our waitress for treating us so kindly. We retrieved our car from the parking lot and set off on a short but rewarding tour of the ancient city of Heidelberg.

As the snow began to fall, we were back on the A-5 headed to Basel on the Swiss border, hoping to arrive before nightfall. By late that afternoon, as we were getting close to the border, I noticed that we were almost out of gas. We got off the Autobahn near a tiny German village a few kilometers from the Swiss border and soon found a filling station. It had a single, old-fashioned gasoline pump in front of a smallish garage with a tidy, thatch-roof house next to it. An old man came out of the house as we pulled-up to the pump and I turned-off the engine. As I asked him to fill the tank. It began to snow even more heavily, and the temperature dropped considerably — seeing the children bundled-up in their blankets, he said “Please come into my house — my wife has hot cocoa and freshly baked cookies to warm you”. We gratefully accepted his kind offer and were soon seated around the old couple’s kitchen table, enjoying cocoa, cookies and especially the crackling fire in the grate. When it came time to leave, we thanked the old couple (their names were Kurt and Liesl) for their kindness and trooped back to the car — only to find that I had locked the keys inside!  Whereupon Liesl hustled my family back inside the house, while Kurt and I considered the problem of retrieving the ‘schlissels’ (keys)…

After some deep thought, Kurt suggested that he could carefully grind-off the head of the long rivet holding the hinge that worked the tiny ‘wind-wing’ frame on the driver’s side, remove the tiny window, and reach inside to retrieve the keys from the ignition. The process took the better part of an hour as he cautiously ground off the head of the rivet, removed the wind-wing, reached in and retrieved the keys, and then completed the job by fabricating a new rivet out of an old piece of brass stock he found in his garage, and then re-attaching the tiny window…

When the job was finished, and I reached for my wallet to pay Kurt for the gasoline and especially for his skilled work, he stopped me and said “For the Benzin (gasoline) only – there is no charge for the rest” — when I objected, he said “Please oblige me — during the last war I was seriously wounded and then captured by American soldiers. I was eventually sent by ship, along with other prisoners, to a POW camp near Milwaukee, in the American ‘province’ of Wisconsin — I was treated with compassion and respect — doctors healed my wounds and I spent a few months in your country before the war ended and I was repatriated — I always look for a chance to repay the kindness I was shown in some small way to the few Americans I chance to encounter”. I could not refuse his heartfelt plea, so I paid him for the gas and thanked him abundantly for his labor and especially for his hospitality. When Liesl brought my family out to the car, I noticed that Mike and Lisa each had small paper packages clutched in their hands. Sensing my curiosity, Liesl said “Some cookies and candies that will tide them over until supper time”. We thanked her for her kindness, and after we had all hugged, we jumped back into the car and waved goodbye as we drove away and found our way back to the Autobahn heading for Basel…

I prized that tiny brass rivet — never giving a thought to replacing it because it served to remind me of Kurt and Liesl and their thoughtfulness…