Posted by
Michael on Monday, November 19, 2007 4:18:57 AM
As I noted in a previous post, I'm in California right now. I love
California, and while it may have as many faults as an area full of
humanity would be expected to posess, I enjoy the vibe of this state
alot. It's also a great break from the bleak, wet depressiveness of
Seattle.
While I was on the train ride from Seattle to San
Francisco (Oakland to be more precise), I got to talking to a very
interesting man sitting across from me. Well up in years, he was
dressed and looked like just about any other aging American male and
had the kind of dark wit that many older American males have. After
talking for a while, I learned that he was actually a German American
who had arrived in America after World War II.
I couldn't make
sense of alot of it because the train setting made it a little
difficult to understand each other at times, but I still learned much
of his history. He was about fifteen when the war ended, and had never
seen any combat but had been enlisted by the Nazis. His family was in
Ukraine, and by 1952 he was allowed to come to America as a "D.P."
(Displaced Person). When he came, he didn't know how to speak a lick of
English, and according to him, he learned what many words were from the
Sears catalog, where the meanings of item were spelled out quite
bluntly.
I noticed that the man still had an accent, which he
preferred to describe this way: "Yes, I still have an accident - Oh, I
mean accent!"
The number of people alive who experienced the
second world war is getting smaller and smaller each day, and it was a
blessing to be able to meet one of these men.