Canada in the 50s

Here are my parents, somewhere in eastern Canada, circa 1952. Jobs were hard to come by and, during some periods, they didn't eat much. They don't look very happy either.

Things soon improved. My folks were married in 1953—they had to wait for my Grandmother (Oma) to arrive from Germany. Then it was off to the other coast—British Columbia—where there was more work for an electrician. Annie came along in 1954 and I arrived fourteen months later.

This picture was likely taken in 1957.

By 1958, we were living in a home on a street overlooking Vancouver. Here are Annie, Prince, and I in our backyard. I recall the endless gloom and rain and the spectacular views of the blustery weather and the beautiful city and ocean.  And the music on the radio: "Volare," doo-wop, etc. And "fish and chips" down at the harbor. You have no idea!

Annie, looking deceptively innocent.

This is a scene from my second or third birthday (hence 1957 or 1958).

My dad got a mention in this 1957 trade paper (in Kitimat, BC, near Alaska).
Herb Frey was another German immigrant.
This morning, I gave my dad a ride to town to pick up his truck from the shop. I mentioned these pictures. He said that he had lots of great Canadian (i.e., English-speaking, et al.) friends back in 
Canada (including Bill Lee above), but it seemed clear that immigrants were frozen out of significant positions of leadership or authority. And educational opportunities were lacking. Everything pointed to moving to the U.S., he said, and to California in particular.
That, of course, was my parents' dream all along.

I still thrill to the cheesy organ, the cool tempo change, and all the rest.

I don't know what this guy's sayin', but the song speaks to me, man.
I'm a big fan of the cult fave Alex Chilton, who died not long ago. I was amazed to discover years ago that Chilton actually did a cover of this song, complete with Italian lyrics!

Back in the sixties, I was a huge Turtles fan. Still love 'em. It seemed odd to me that I always loved their (and the Mothers') versions of old doo-wop songs, such as this one, "Tear Drops." Only later did I realize that I had grown to love this music when I was three or four years old, listening to my parents' records and to the radio on the endless drives we took, seemingly to nowhere.

• The original recording, by Lee Andrews and the Hearts (1957).
• "Go Cry On Somebody Else's Shoulder," Frank Zappa (and the Mothers of Invention), 1966.
• "Later that Night," Frank Zappa (and the Mothers of Invention), 1968.
• "Only You," the Platters, 1955.

No textation without representation!

     The Stupid People are feeling their oats again. Evidently fired up by the demagogic right-wing author Brigitte Gabriel, they caused a ruckus at last night's meeting of the Fountain Valley School Board.   
     Read all about it in today’s OC Reg:

Trustees decline to change portrayal of Islam (OC Reg)

     The gist of the story is that Gabriel’s group, “ACT! For America,” has read the text used in Fountain Valley to teach “social studies” to 7th graders—namely, Houghton-Mifflin Harcourts' "World History: Medieval to Early Modern Times.” The book includes a 55-page section about Islamic history.
     Uh-oh.
     ACT!'s complaint is that the book’s treatment of Islam portrays it too dang positively.
     The solution, proposed by an ACT!ual resident: just add some “supplemental materials,” provided by ACT!
     You can just imagine what that stuff is like. ACT! is really down on Islam and A-răbs. More on that in a moment.
     According to the Reg, about one hundred people filled the board room and many spoke passionately in favor of the “supplement” proposal. In the end, however, the board unanimously declined to take action, owing to a lack of authority. After all, the state must authorize all texts, trustees said.
     Yes, the State! Damn them, anyway! No textation without representation! Kill the bastards! Let's start with that guy! String 'im up! Garrrrrrrrrrh!
     Naturally, the board's inevitable decision not to take any action pissed off the ACT!-inspired people in the room, who, um, wanted some kind of action. Is this not a democracy? People groaned and grumbled. Someone farted loudly. Cops had to be brought in to restore order.
     Not all of the speakers were clueless right-wing Neanderthals. One guy reminded the crowd that some of the district’s students are Muslims and that “Muslims have died fighting for this country.”
     Hey yeah! What about that?
     On the other hand, another guy used part of his speaking time to suddenly put hand on heart and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Many in the audience dutifully stood up and followed his goofy example. I guess nobody laughed or snickered when they all got to the “liberty and justice for all” part. I woulda snorted.
     Toward the end of the meeting, the district Superintendent spanked the crowd a bit, suggesting that they had forgotten the “tenets of the … constitution” and our system’s reliance on law and “the appropriate process by which to resolve differences of opinion.”

* * *

     I checked into Ms. Gabriel and her crusade against Islam and Arabs. She’s tapped into the right-wing’s tendency to love Israel, right ‘r wrong, and to paint all Muslims (i.e., A-răbs) with one nasty stereotypicalating brush.
     I came across a couple of her most demagogic and clueless remarks:

“It is not politically correct to say that our Western societies are better than the Muslim Arab societies, but we are, we have been, and we always will be.”

“The difference, my friends, between Israel and the Arab world is the difference between civilization and barbarism.”

—Yeah, that sort of talk will be a big help in our efforts to get along with all those pissed off Muslims in the world.
     I looked up Ms. Gabby's books on Amazon. The blurb on one of ‘em sports this glowing remark from Publishers Weekly: “Her writing is eloquent and her passion tremendous."
     Sounds great!
     But no. It turns out that Ms. Gabriel isn’t into the “context” thing. Here’s what Publishers Weekly actually wrote about her:

With strident confidence, …Gabriel rebukes the American public for being "weak, asleep or careless" in the face of Muslim terrorism. A Christian survivor of the vicious civil war between Lebanese Christians and Muslims in the 1970s, Gabriel leans on her own terrifying experiences to condemn Muslims, without apparent regard for their ethnicity, ideology or historical role. Consistently using the words "Muslim" and "Arab" as if they were interchangeable, she concludes that the U.S. is "facing total destruction" at the hands of people who are uncultured and cruel, and prescribes such solutions as "profile, profile and profile," and banning "hate education" in Islamic institutions. Though her writing is eloquent and her passion tremendous, Gabriel's strict dichotomy between "evil versus goodness" is too extreme to be informative….

Gosh, I’d say that that was a negative review. Wouldn’t you?
     You can learn all you need to know about the woman by watching the following oddly edited chunk of video on YouTube, which includes Ms. Gabriel’s visit to Bill O’Reilly’s show. O’Reilly pits the always-yelling Ms. Gabriel against an always-purring Muslim apologist. The poor guy can hardly purr forth two words before the bullying bulldogging commences.
     Check it out. Or not.

From the Bauer family archives: 1920s-1940s

I have a motley assortment of photos for you tonight. This is one of my grandfather Otto's photos from the late 20s. My father tells me that people of his region (near Stuttgart) often visited these caves during their early adulthood. Supposedly, my grandfather and his future wife (Luise) are in this photo, but I sure can't spot 'em.

My father, Gunther, and his sister, Ruth, in about 1940. Don't know who the kid in the wagon is. It is likely that Otto (my father's father) made the wagon; he was a model maker (working with wood) for an aeronautics company named "Klemm." Otto's friend Herr Klemm's dream was to manufacture a kind of Volkswagen of the air, a people's plane. His (and Otto's) hatred for Naziism got them into a lot of trouble. It destroyed Klemm. Otto was quietly drafted into the Wehrmacht.

My mother's mother died in 1935, when mom was about a year old (the family lived in Stettin). At that point, mom's Tanta (aunt) Martha and her husband, Otto Haenfler, took her in and so she went to live in Barwalde, in the country, well to the east. 

Haenfler, who seemed to hail from Berlin, was a well-educated and wealthy Marxist, who had worked as a potter for the famous manufacturer of porcelain, Meissen, until the late twenties. Mom tells me that he was part of the group that designed and produced the famous Danish royal china of that period.

Mom's father, who owned a trucking business in Stettin, died in a work accident in 1939 (owing to a miscommunication between him and his Polish POW workers, a log rolled over him and crushed him). Herr Haenfler, who had been wounded during the Great War, died of TB in 1941.

Mom had been very close to him. She always refers to Martha and Otto as her "parents."

This is my father's father, also Otto—and also a Marxist!—in his uniform in about 1943. He had been wounded by shrapnel and pinned down in a skirmish with the British. A tank crew came by and pulled him to safety. At the end of his recuperation, he was able to visit his family briefly, and this photo was taken.

Otto was captured by the British in 1944 and was held in various POW camps until May of 1947. This is a picture of Otto and his colleagues in the miserable Egyptian POW camp, perhaps 1946.

My parents met on the boat that sailed from Germany to Canada. It was a leaky and dodgy old Liberty ship. My dad managed to get a job on the ship during the passage. He spent all of his free time with mom.

This is a photo of my father filming a fire in British Columbia in 1957.