Hermann Without Crowds
Monday, October 17, 2011
In which the quiet hills of German lands are visited…
Hermann was calling.
Cloud covers of silver; dark blue versions in the west. Cool snap of a morning. And two cars filled with eight passengers split almost exactly according to personality type, McDonald’s for half (Francis was very keen on having breakfast), Starbuck’s for the quarter, air in the tires… and an hour of road.
As Dad, Carrie, Francis, Puck, and Collette took off in the gold Civic, Puck caught snatches of what he could, and made sense in his own mind of what was happening…
“Who’s Rose’s boss? Does he have a lot of cats?”
Dad slipped on some Andy Williams…
“Mama?” Puck said with a look of surprise, “that wasn’t very nice… He said you had no money.”
Quiet German town…
The park was as usual, including pits of sand for Puck to toss, hot cocoa, tea, peanuts, and chocolate bars for those who would.
Next, up into the high hills to the old German cemetery, stacked in tombstones in the range of 170 years, including skulls, crossed bones, and tumbled-down graves. When Linnea prepared to innocently tote off an old white stone brick as a souvenir…
“Put that brick back!” Dad commanded through the car window.
Puck was more on the sly than his aunt…
“Look, Mama,” he said, as they drove down the hill, “I took a graveyard rock.”
Francis, aways eager to razz his nephew…
“There’re ghosts in that rock, Puck. They come with it, free of charge.”
He was not believed.
The two cars waited on the street, Dad and Carrie discussing some business, while Mom tucked inside an antique shop for a box that Rose had been wanting for some time, the sort of one she said came from The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe in which was housed the White Witch’s Turkish Delight. Miraculously, after sitting on the shelf for three or four years after having been rescued from a closing shop in St. Louis, the box was still for sale.
“That would only happen to Rose,” said Carrie shaking her head.
“I’m kind of going to miss looking at it,” the shop man had told Mom when he wrapped it up for her.
At the next antique shop, the town continued its sleepy crawl. Cabinets of the usual sorts of oddities, including a rock that appeared to house a petrified set of teeth that was labeled only as ‘Historic’. Arrowheads. ‘Rare Chinese Jade’. Space-age silver Matchbox car. Pump organ. Glass bottles of unopened Pepsi… why…
Then up to the United Church of Christ, 1919, for a brief look inside the silent sanctuary, followed by its Catholic counterpart back down the hill in stained glass, painted pillars, and hiring campaigns for the priesthood on the cork-board. But not before…
“CAT!”
“He’s hungry!”
“He’s going to fall off the cliff!”
“We should take him home!”
“It’s going to have fleas.”
“Awwww… Dad?”
“No.”
“But it’s gray! Rose would love it. And it has green eyes.”
“I’ve got some meat. Here, let me give him some.”
“Linnea! Put that cat down, now!”
So instead, they purchased sub sandwiches back down at the bottom of the hill and drove over to the train tracks in time for a thundering engine and cars to pass in the cold afternoon, where…
“Oh, that poor little bee.”
Carrie’s rescue project began innocently enough. The tiny thumping creature was lethargic from the cold. She held him in her hand trying to warm him up.
“Carrie, it’s going to sting you.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Yes, it will.”
“Francis, dip a napkin in your Sprite and hand it to me.”
“This is a bad idea…”
While the bee enjoyed himself a succulent feast, working deeper and deeper inside the sugared napkin, a curious grasshopper took it upon himself to join the party and hopped up onto Carrie’s shoulder. He hung out there for awhile until it was time to leave. A curious sight, Carrie wrapped in Dad’s ancient brown puffy coat with metal sheep-engrave buttons, bright red scarf wrapped around her head, and celebrity-style shades, a grasshopper on one shoulder, a bee in the hand.
Surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprisingly, the bee rode the entire way home, enjoying a lunch of orange Tootsie pop, hardly budging a centimeter from the sugary little planet, with even Dad taking an interest in his well-being from time to time.
And Francis took a snooze.
All the way home past the yellow fields, autumn hills, and the low berth of violet-October ribcage that was the sky, lightening flash, and the retro tunes of Barbara Streisand and Barry Manilow…
“Dad. Are you serious about this music?”
“Yes. Very serious.”
Once returned home, Collette started the tea kettle for Puck’s cocoa as thunder rumbled in low, and the skies continued to darken in their respective folds. The rest of the afternoon was quiet as the rain fell. Puck absorbed himself for an hour with Marbleworks in his room. There was another promising exchange of letters between cousins. Texas was coming on Wednesday to Busch Stadium. And the day was cold.