Titanic Post

When they get up to my age bracket, I will go under one condition: I want my old job back as electrician on the Sikorsky H-34.

REUTERS - The U.S. Army, aiming to make its recruiting goals amid the Iraq war, raised its maximum enlistment age by another two years on Wednesday, while the Army Reserve predicted it will miss its recruiting target for a second straight year. People can now volunteer to serve in the active-duty Army or the part-time Army Reserve and National Guard up to their 42nd birthday . . . It marked the second time this year the Army has boosted the maximum age for new volunteers, raising the ceiling from age 35 to 40 in January before now adding two more years.

7 July 2004:
Yesterday I strolled through Frankfurt and Sachsenhausen letting memories guide me through the streets. Starting in Sachsenhausen, across the Main River from Frankfurt, I walked by Karin’s old apartment building, where memories seemed the strongest. Karin and I had been very close for about four years. I rang her door-bell, but no one answered [we did get a chance to meet several days later.] I went by the old bicycle shop, I forgot its name, where I used to buy tire patches and handlebar tape. The shop was no longer there, a victim of larger, more efficient business practices. At home in New Mexico, I have an old black and white photo I made of the inside of the shop. The owner let me photograph the shop where sales and repairs were all performed in one dark and cluttered small room. I think he still had parts for bikes from the Kaiser Wilhelms era. (more…)

Christmas and New Years have past into the past leaving me as usual with an empty space in my chest. Christmas day I spent with my ex-wife, our daughter and her friend along with her daughter. It was nice. New Years I was alone. Normally I don’t mind being alone, in fact I enjoy it most of the time. This must then be the leftovers from childhood or some other time when I had covered all traces, so’s I wouldn’t be tempted to deal with it later.

You know how it is, when you see something so beautiful it makes your heart ache. Or, you get a whiff of air that smells good, or you see a raven banking against the sky and it calls to you as it soars off into the distance. These are moments of great intensity and you probably feel compelled to share them with someone. At least I do. These ‘peak experiences’ seem more intense when shared. Knowing with whom you would like to share, but not being able to, gives the chest an even more intense, sweet, and slightly painful sensation. It is an odd combination, but one that sharpens all the senses.

New Years Eve, I sat on the deck watching the mountains glow in the setting sun, drinking a glass of cheap Spanish bubbly, wishing that I was not alone and knowing who I wanted there with me, realizing that if you know who you want to share these things with, you also know who you are in love with. I remembered my resolution to not worry about things I can’t change and to accept and to appreciate what is. I also remembered Mama Ruby’s old saying: “Two things money can’t buy are home grown tomatoes and true love. I have no idea how that fits in here.

My most memorable Christmas was 1976 in Frankfurt. I had just returned from Vienna from a short visit traveling with Bill who had just separated from his wife. I was also in the throes of ending my eleven year marriage.

Late Christmas Eve, our train pulled in to the Frankfurt main train station and Bill offered me a flop at the BOQ where he was staying. The next morning he left early to spend the holiday with his two boys under the supervision of his estranged wife, Ruth. His apartment was on the second floor of the BOQ, the telephone was in the hall outside, the door was locked from the outside, and I couldn’t get out.

A jar of old Peanut Butter, half a loaf of Wonder Bread, and a jar of moldy grape jelly was the only edibles I could find. A tape player with Dylan’s ‘Freewheelin’ was the only diversion from my incarceration. Bill didn’t return until three-thirty that afternoon.

Christmas in Germany is a very special time. With traditions going back hundreds of years, it has retained most of it’s original meaning. It is still, even in secular Germany, a celebration of the birth of Jesus and a time to reflect on his message. Candles are lit to celebrate each Sunday of Advent. There are many Christmas parties to attend. Christmas markets offer little Quetschenmaenschen (traditional figures made out of dried plumbs and toothpicks.) They (the markets) are filled with the smells of Gluewein (spiced wine) and roasting chestnuts and the sounds of feet crunching in the snow. I doubt that anyone there could even think of criticizing how one person greets another. In German department stores, no one greets you at all, unless they really want to. I kinda like that. I had rather be sincerely ignored than insincerely greeted.

Now, Jesus is a marketing tool to get the citizens to participate in their only real and useful role as consumers. We seem all too willing to oblige and every year, it makes me want to puke anew!

The best job I ever had was as a trainer at the Frankfurt Airport Company in Germany. Since returning to New Mexico, I have had mostly low waged menial work. All were satisfying in one regard or another, but none gave me that glow I was looking for. The job I had before the one at Frankfurt was also good in the beginning, but began to deteriorate when in 1968 the CEO and founder of Pan Am resigned. He was replaced by “real” managers: MBAs who immediately began to make the company “financially fit.” The new CEO was promptly voted a million dollar bonus by the board of directors. Chicken feed today, but at the time, it was an obscene about of money.

This job was in Nueremburg, which has a small domestic airport. We serviced the area with DC-6s shuttling between Berlin and our airport. “We” being the hundred odd souls maning the airport. I had never seen anything like it. Everyone seemed to be friendly and helpful. This was what I needed since I was still struggling with the language and the culture. Being a small airport everyone knew each other, when someone had a problem, people from airport administration, catering, customs, BP, the aeroclubs, or the airlines would come together to help. If some had to move or renovate their apartment, someone was always there. KLM had their annual “Herring Party” (but that’s another story.) I had never seen working people come together like that. I was deeply moved and very happy to be there.

“Time is money!” the new MBA’s reminded us. The corporate character of Pan Am gradually took on a new persona, so I, who felt I was witnessing the demise of the true workers paradise, left for greener pastures.

The Frankfurt Airport had about six thousand employees and used five pillars to explain its company philosophy: Make money, Take excellent care of our customers, Take care of the environment, Insure the well-being and development of all our employees, and Be the best functioning airport in Europe. I was very skeptical at first, but through the years I was there, most endeavored to live up to these ideals.

Management seemed to do everything they could to ensure everyone’s success. They gave us everything we needed and wanted to do our job. They gave us time and place to talk among ourselves. This openness gave us the opportunity to cooperate with each other and we did! Even the cleaning staff could see things that we couldn’t see and they would let us know about it. This was extremely helpful. No one had the feeling that anything was going on without their knowledge. We all knew everyone’s strong and weak points and were able to be very productive, because there was nothing to hide and the petty infighting was held to a minimum. Pay and benefits weren’t bad either. For the first time in my life I realized that everything good is about relationships and not about control.

The word “gestalt” is a German word and means basically that a physical, biological, psychological, or symbolic configuration or pattern of elements so unified as a whole that its properties cannot be derived from a simple summation of its parts. The whole can be greater than the sum of its parts! My colleagues and I were given the opportunity to experience this. We were not set against each other in competition, but worked together for the common good. Very un-American, I thought at the time.

We helped each other find solutions to problems, we passed around ideas, we built on these ideas and we did great things. I have never before nor after this experience felt so much a part of a group. There, I learned many, many profound things and I am humbled and honored for having had this opportunity. I belonged to a unified web of relationships! Quantum jazz! How radical!