Post Cards from World War I - Part Two

Also from the Tongeren Flea market, a couple of French examples:

Although undated you get the sense that this one was from early in the war.  The fellow looks very dashing and "sang froid" as he uses a sputtering bomb as "a new lighter". Indeed, I have seen another example dated 1915.  Here is the text:

The handwriting here is not too bad, albeit with the cramped word spacing common to post cards.

It is addressed to a Madam Parmentier who is staying at the home of M. Pouffier.  Why? The first lines read: "We are all in good health and well happy to be delivered of those dirty boch".   I hope you are the same."  Is this a family who became refugees?  Although the writer is presumably in the army he says little about that, only that "we have not had too much unpleasantness with the boche."

I think it may be a man named Louie writing to his sister in law, as he mentions his own two children. He also says that poor Reimi should get a long letter.

Here is another odd one...what a way to spell out Happy New Year.

And our text:

My French translator could not make much out of this one.  The cute couple on the front notwithstanding it seems to be a fellow wishing his brother a happy new year.  Perhaps that is best, how many sweet hearts would actually want to think of their loved one being surrounded by gigantic artillery shells.  Or is this perhaps a bit of phallic imagery?  It is possible to read too much into such things, but one imagines the target audience for this card was lonesome soldiers and their back home wives and sweethearts.  In that context we seem to have a coquettish smile on her face, a gently held bunch of flowers - could be dropped at any moment - and some serious looking cannons and ammo.

And recall that we are talking about lonesome French people here.

Postcards from World War One - Part I.

Note:  European Flea Markets are a treasure trove for history lovers.  I am not sure how general the trend is but I ran across much more material related to the Great War than to the Second one.  Probably it is a combination of things.  Much of the material from the 1930's and 40's is still sheltered within intact households.  And of course anything relating to the Nazi era is at the same time shunned and prized by the antiquities market.

There are some fascinating post cards from World War One.  I found lots of these at the Tongeren Flea Market.  Skipping over the majority which were of the comic genre - gas masks and latrines, rats in soup kettles - I picked up a few that had a personal feel to them.....

Translated loosely this says:  No Sugar Ration Card!  Since I can't give you sugar I will give you a sweet kiss!

You can't help but identify the sender of the card with the amorous soldier on the front, but in fact this is one of a series of patriotic themed cards.  I have seen them referred to as Romantic Gesture cards.

But who sent it?  And what did he have to say?  We have a few problems to overcome.

This was an era of extravagant penmanship and slang ridden conversation.  Coupled with some ink fading and I fear my interpretation of the above will be guesswork in places.

Even the date is obscure.  On the front of the card is a PFB logo.  This should indicate it was made by Paul Finkenrath of Berlin.  Unfortunately that company went out of business in 1910, and the reference to sugar rationing clearly makes this a war time issue.  The postmark is light in a key spot, but I think it is from 4-10-1917.  One assumes that the Finkenrath trademark was revived during the war years.

It is posted from Motorschule Russelsheim.  Russelsheim was a place where among other things, aircraft motors were made.  It later became the headquarters for Opel.  I have seen an oblique reference to pilot trainees being sent for a month of education at a Motorschule.  This would be after basic training but before flight school.  This makes me wonder if the writer of this card was a pilot trainee?  What I can make out of the message does have one odd phrase in it..."Im luften grussen".*  It means "the airiest of greetings". An unusual way to put things...was he making an oblique comment to sneak it past the censors?

I am assuming that the sender had the last name of Fothenberg or something close to that.  That name does not appear on the list of World War One aces, although my reading indicates that there were a surprisingly large number of pilots trained in World War I, and few attained memorable success.  Or was he a humble mechanic?  Did he attempt pilot training and wash out?  Did the Motorschule also train truck drivers?

Let us assume that Fraulein Kuchart was proud of him in any case.
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* the weird letter that looks like a capitol B is now archaic.  It was the equivalent of "ss"
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Addendum:  It has been suggested that above message actually alludes to training as a motorcyclist.  Less cool than a pilot I suppose, but still interesting.  I can't personally make the German word for motorcycle "Motorad" appear, but my feeble excuse still applies, it was an era of extravagant penmanship and lots of slang.

The Fleas of Tongeren

You don't travel to Europe to find things you have back home.  No McDonald's for me, even if they do serve beer.

Among the things the Old World has and we mostly do not is, surprisingly, flea markets.

Oh, I am sure they are still around in the States somewhere, but the advent of ebay and a general disinterest in history has trimmed them way down.

But in Europe they are very much alive and well.

Flea Market, or Flau Markt is the generic term.  In France you find them called Brocade Markets.  In Germany a somewhat lower end version seems to be called Trodl Markt.

I had heard about a rather fun one in Tongeren, Belgium.  It was a convenient stop off for us on a Sunday morning....

The market runs along the outer aspect of the city wall on its east side, then in on several side streets.

Garish ceramics seem popular.

Creepy garden decor and advertising items.  I think the Coca Cola guy's head has a hinge on the side.  Not sure what is in there.  Interesting to see decorative "arts" that have not been Disneyfied into homogeneous, bland forms.

What a mixed array of stuff!  Saints and a baby Jesus from a (hopefully) decommissioned church are sharing floor space with a stuffed leopard head!

I confess to being a sucker for taxidermy.  And the Tongeren flea market had a ton of it. Check out these stuffed boars....some were as cheap as 60 euros!

I love the wonky eyes on that last one!

In the end I decided that bargain or no, a boar's head was just about the worst idea for air travel packing.  Bulky, tusky, hard to explain to customs....So I settled for a small medallion that I found at a militaria dealer

I am totally gonna wear it at our town's Oktoberfest, even if it is a Belgian Army commemorative item.

Tour Guide to the Real America

On our recent trip to England and the Continent I invited a number of folks to stop in and visit next time they are in the US.  I forget how many, there were some rather late nights at the pub. Maybe six or seven?  Enough anyway that it seems likely that a few of them will actually turn up one day on my humble doorstep.  This raises an intriguing question.

What should I show them of America?

Most of them are already well traveled.  But I think their experiences of America to date may not have been, shall we say, representative.  New York City for instance is an important place.  But is it the "real" America? The other common destination for most is Florida. But it is hard to justify that aggregation of theme parks and retirees as being typical.

And regards the depiction of America in the news and entertainment media - here and abroad - I can only shudder and note that a German relative asked me in all sincerity if we really had a big problem with the Neo Nazi militia types.

So where do we start, and what do we show our Old World visitors?  What and where is the "real America"?

Well they have to get to Wisconsin first.  I would suggest that they get a car and start driving on small roads.  Stop at every garage sale you see.  Talk to people - your accent will be your entree to society.  They will surprise you.  Remember that in the States it is not only acceptable but expected that you ask folks "what they do".  That grizzled fellow in a seed company cap may well be a bank president.  Or a bum, both are interesting.

I would encourage a daily scan of the Roadside America website.  Giant Muffler Men, World's Largest Ball of String, peculiar little museums....these say something about America.  I am not sure what really, but it is an odd, expansive character trait rarely seen in the Old World.

Eventually they will turn up at my door.  This has happened in the past, sometimes without warning.

I won't take them shopping.  Other than the garage sales mentioned above I think it would be both familiar and depressing for them.  In England pubs are dying off in part due to cheaper alcohol sold in bulk by Tesco.  In Germany I understand that the shops in smaller towns are now extinct, driven out by the Big Box stores on the edges.  "Of course the bakeries and meat markets are still there..."  I did not have the heart to say that they would be going down next.

The last time I had a young German lad stay with us a while there was an election on.  He seemed very impressed that a campaign stop was scheduled for our town.  "You want to go hear the President?", I asked.  In Europe people do not have much contact with their leaders, most of the real work in any event being done by a permanent bureaucracy. Most Congressfolks have periodic public meetings, (at least when they don't have to talk about health care reform!), and it would be easy enough to go have pancakes and ask a few questions.

Hopefully it will be summertime.  I can just pull up a list of Wisconsin small town festivals and pick one.  For instance in July we could go with:  Venetian Night, Strawberries and Cream Festival, Stump Dodger Bash, Door County Wearable Art Show, Sunsplash, Sawdust Days, Bean and Bacon Days, Eight Miles of Ag-Tiques, Watermelon Days, Ducktona 500, Steam Up Days, Bastille Day, Rock Dam Boat Parade, Wine in the Woods, Hodag Country Music Festival, Nabor Days, Catfish Days, The Cars that Time Forgot, Wa Du Shuda Days, Chalkfest.....

That by the way is a partial list of just the first two weeks of July, and one in which I left out the Fourth of July events and Pow Wows.

Parades, kiddie rides, tractor pulls, a demolition derby.  Maybe a Polka Mass.  You don't see that on BBC or read about it in Der Spiegel.

Maybe a ballgame would be in order.  I favor baseball, but would avoid the Major League parks.  They should see a Minor League game where young raw talent is scrapping to make it to The Show.  Or better still a town ball game where guys play just for the love of the game.  High school football would be ok as well, I understand that there is nothing quite like it in Europe.

But perhaps I am over thinking things.  I tend to do that.  Maybe they would learn just as much about the Real America by simply plopping down a lawn chair at our usual Friday evening neighborhood cocktail hour.  Potluck dinner on the picnic table.  A beer or two.  A chance to chat with the local lawyer, the used car dealer, the young folks across the alley who just moved in.  Dogs wander up to have their ears scratched.

Suggestions?  Where is the Real America?

The sad end for Chuck Knoblauch

I remember Chuck Knoblauch.  He was a second baseman who came up with the Minnesota Twins in 1991 and had a stellar year.  He was American League Rookie of the Year, and played a key role in their Cinderella World Series Championship.

But his career as a whole was not a great one.  He had a few good years in the mid 90s but fell out of favor with the local fans by insisting on being traded.  He ended up with the hated New York Yankees. Minnesota fans - generally among the best behaved in the game - jeered and booed him.  Very unusually, they even threw things at him.

His fielding went first.  Soon he was routinely launching throws past the first baseman.  A move to the outfield did not help.  Eventually he was traded to the lowly Kansas City Royals.  By now he was not hitting much either.  He was released and not offered a position by anyone else.

So, what finally happened to Chuck Knoblauch?  I found the answer in a market in Alsace...

Hmmm...one row down...

I meant to quit right there.  Just another minor post that makes a bit of harmless fun out of the fact that a player I mildly disliked had the same name (it means garlic) as a variety of German sausage.  But sometimes a story keeps going even after you thought you had wrapped it up.

Because the story of Chuck Knoblauch really does have a sad end.

Playing well is not enough when you wear a Yankee uniform.  Excellence is demanded.  "Knobby" started to make some notable mental errors.  In a post season game in 1998 he stood and argued with an umpire while a ball was still in play.  An alert Cleveland base runner scored all the way from first.

His fielding deteriorated.  Much like the pitcher "Nuke" Laloosh in the classic movie Bull Durham you never quite knew where his throws to first would end up.  He once hit the mother of sportscaster Keith Olberman square on the head.

On June 16th, 2000 he hit bottom as a ball player.  He made three throwing errors in six innings before "voluntarily" leaving the game.  He then put on this street clothes and left the stadium while the game was still in progress.

For my non baseball fan readers I will point out that both of these deeds - asking to be taken out of a game and then abandoning your team with a game in progress - are Unthinkable Acts in baseball tradition.  It brings to mind a quote from Bull Durham. Witless pitcher "Nuke" Laloosh asks his catcher:

   "How come you don't like me?"

   "Because you don't respect yourself, which is your problem.
     But you don't respect the game, and that's my problem."

When the Kansas City Royals don't want you any more your career as a player is over. And with his attitude Knoblauch could not have expected to find work as a coach or scout.

Things seemed to go from bad to worse.  He divorced his first wife in 1997.  He pleaded guilty to domestic assault on his second wife after an incident where he choked her.  They divorced in 2010.  He is now married for the third time.

He was named in the investigations regarding performance enhancing drugs in baseball. Eventually he was allowed to avoid testifying when he simply admitted that he had used such substances...and that they had done him no good.

He is one of the few players from the 1991 Twins who never comes to reunions.  He has four World Series rings but his only friend in the baseball world is a journeyman player he got to know in the final twilight of his career.  When he sold the condo that had been his home during his playing days he told the real estate agent to "just throw all the junk away".  Looking in boxes she found among other things his Gold Glove Award.

In the few interviews he has given post baseball he seems puzzled, listless.  His was such a meteoric rise.  And such a complete fall.

It brings to mind another Bull Durham quote.  A frustrated and intoxicated "Crash" Davis holds up the arm of the young pitching phenom and says:

"You see this?  This arm is worth a million dollars.  All the parts of me together aren't worth fifty cents a pound."

Although for the record the Knoblauch sausage did cost a bit more than that.

But it is what our society does with athletes.  We find them young.  We train them hard.  We make their path in life easy, so very easy that maturity and responsibility rarely develop.  We laud them, we worship them, these Demigods in pinstripes or shoulder pads.

Then when the knees, or the timing, or the stamina slip....we abandon them.

Shed no tears for Chuck Knoblauch.  He made a lot of money in his career.  Most of the young men pursuing their "hoop dreams" or their NFL contract, or their signing bonus get discarded long before they attain any success.  They limp along on their bad knees, telling tedious stories of past greatness.

More sausage ground up and spit out by the sports machine.

It sounds as if Chuck Knoblauch has found some peace.  He is married again.  He has two children. He atypically for his peers did not lie about his using performance enhancing drugs.  When asked why he did not attend a reunion of the 1991 World Series team he said he did not think he could stand having his kids hear him booed.

In this at least he seems to have found wisdom.

 He has admitted his guilt, paid the legal penalties.

And when a man has learned that his true stature is how he stands in the eyes of his children he may at last have become a real man.

He is not my favorite Old Ball Player.  But if he had the courage to step back on the field I would not boo him.

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Update 24 July, 2014

The news of the day is that Knoblauch has been arrested again, this time for assaulting his current wife.  The details are sordid.  He is said to have been drunk and to have beaten her in a room where one of their children was sleeping.  The Minnesota Twins have quite properly cancelled his induction into the team's Hall of Fame, scheduled for one month from today.

Legally of course Knoblauch is innocent until proven guilty.  Morally however there can be little doubt that he is a troubled, disgusting individual.  It is to be hoped that his next uniform is blaze orange.

Is there ever a point at which redemption becomes impossible?  C.S. Lewis had some interesting thoughts on the matter.  It was in a somewhat different context but he proposed the theory that if a first Fall from Grace required a certain amount of atonement, a second would require that amount squared and a third would require that the amount be cubed.  So as Knoblauch's sins increase linearly the measures he would have to take to get right with his former fans and fellow citizens increase exponentially.  I doubt he has it in him.

My thoughts and prayers to the family of this man.  They deserve far better.

Chuck Knoblauch is now the poster boy for spoiled, entitled, greedy athletes who treat the world, even that part of it that should be dearest to them, with contempt.
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Update 11 August, 2014

For a post that started out being about sausage and that was probably tossed together in about 15 minutes this one has generated quite a bit of interest.  And some criticism.  As I have tried to make entirely clear, I have no sympathy whatsoever for domestic abusers.  But after much reflection I have decided that the piece is in fact better when I delete one sentence.  I have not done this before in over three years of regular posting, and am in fact a little reluctant to do so now.  But the reality is that I can't expect my readers to see the world through the perspective of an ER doctor, and that their misconstruing my intent is through no fault of theirs.

Besides the subsequent behaviour of Mr. Knoblauch has cast a darker shadow on the entire matter.

Thanks to the anonymous poster who suggested the ideas came through better for this - one time only - post facto editing.  T

I Visit the Shrine of Hercules

My wife is pretty tolerant when we travel.  In particular, while she certainly notices that we visit Roman sites quite often she is thus far appearing to accept my explanation that in Europe you really can't avoid them.  Those Romans were just....everywhere.

On our recent wanderings we had a longish drive day.  Looking at spots along the way suggested that we were passing through a rather tedious part of central France.  But, we did notice The Sources of Hercules museum near Luneville.

Hercules has always been something of a personal favorite of mine.  Back in the days when my sons were small enough to wrestle on the living room floor I would theatrically assume the role of Mighty Hercules, acted with considerable bluster and panache.

So I proposed a quick stop and my better half agreed.  She even insisted when we appeared to be a little behind schedule.

The website gives the location - a town called Deneuvre - but we were expecting something more rural.  The shrine in fact had been discovered when a farmer doing field work encountered what he thought was an old water pipe.  It was actually a tumbled column.

But the site had been excavated and relocated to a custom built museum in town.  At first glance it did not look very impressive.  The lady at the desk said it had been a quiet day. Her crossword puzzle was mostly done.  During our visit we were the sole patrons.

In fact the first room of the place was quite humble, just a few cases with bits of pottery and a video in  French showing the excavation process.  Then you turn a corner and go down a ramp to this:

Rather impressively they had recreated the shrine in a large underground space.  This shows about half of it.

The rural site in fact was the largest shrine to Hercules known in the Western Empire. There were at least two stone shrines and an earlier wooden one.  Devotees would come to make small offerings, and if they felt their request had been granted, would commission a stone altar to commemorate the event.  There were about 200 such altars found.  The best twenty or so are on display.  This was a near overdose of Mighty Hercules...

Note the classic Hercules paraphernalia, club on the left and Nemean lion skin on the right.

I was impressed with how "human" Hercules appears in these depictions.  This looks like a guy you would meet in a tavern.

Hercules at middle age.....

An interesting site.  Very well done and worth a visit.  I particularly liked the spooky lighting.  It puts you in the mood of a simpler, more primitive time...

Between our respective command of French and of Roman history we could piece together the information presented.  This was a site that met a violent end.  But not at the hands of barbarians.  When the Emperor Constantine proclaimed Christianity the official religion of Rome it became open season on "pagan" gods.  The Shrine of Hercules was pulled down, the statues attacked with hammers.  There was some sort of burning, perhaps a bonfire of everything not made of stone.  Of the 200 or so altars and statues most could not be salvaged by the archaeologists.

This is actually rather similar to something found at the Vindolanda site some years back. It had been puzzling me until I visited the Hercules museum.  Out in the western end of the Vindolanda civilian settlement the foundations of a shrine were located.  Everywhere there were tiny bits of statuary.  A fingertip here, an earlobe there.  It also must have been the work of Christians, in this case highly efficient ones, attempting to erase the image of earlier pagan gods.

In an age where "iconoclast" has acquired a mildly positive connotation it is something to ponder.  So much lost.

For Doctor Beachcombing on his Lonely Quest

One thing about the internet, no matter how eccentric your interests are you will find like minded spirits.  Then you link to each other's blogs.

Doctor Beachcombing runs the Bizzare History Blog linked on the right.  It covers a variety of things I find fascinating.  And also some that don't interest me much but "Beach" finds irresistible.

In particular he likes fairies.

In the modern world this is not an entirely accepted thing.  Oh, it is fine to enjoy one of the Commercially Accepted versions of Little Folk.  That being a peculiar Trinity of Tinkerbelle, Frodo Baggins and that horrid Lucky Charms mascot.

But to believe in pixies, brownies, kobolds and sprites?  Not so much.

To be clear I don't think the good Doctor actually believes such things exist.  No, in his postings on various Fairy Investigation Societies he shirks not from depicting them as the nutters they most certainly are.

But I sense that he, perhaps for the sake of small family members, really wishes that the magic was real.

Very well then.  To cheer my fellow eccentric on his lonely vigil I present the following.  It was photographed on a bridge in an undisclosed English county (not Norfolk).

This little sign and doorway at shoe top level is either the least effective advertisement ever (the overgrown sign is from someone who makes rabbit hutches), or a special gate for the local fairy population.

Believe what you will.