Good Morning All!
Happy “Donut Day” to all of you donut lovers out there! Without question (in my humble opinion), the best tasting donuts ever made are “Spud-Nut” donuts…made from potato flour. They are light and fluffy and melt in your mouth! Nothing better than a maple bar spud nut, not to mention a glazed spud nut donut….ummmmm….good!!! I had the privilege of selling spud nuts door to door when I was a 12 year old kid in Olympia WA. I used to pick up 12 dozen donuts at a time from the local Spud Nut shop in downtown Olympia, near the old Capitol Theater, and then proceed to visit every business I could find that was open on a Saturday and delivered these delectable goodies to waiting customers. My biggest customers were automotive repair shops, paint stores and other businesses that catered to walk-in customers. I always sold out my supply and usually cleared about $40 every Saturday…not bad wages for 1967! Here’s to the donut…one of life’s simple pleasures!
Prayers are lifted up for my little grandson, Izaak Jacob Newbold. He’s got a bad cold this morning and won’t be able to visit our house for his normal Friday stay with us while his mom is teaching art at the Spokane Montesorri (sp?) School. Also prayers are lifted up for his mom, our beloved Sarah, who is also under the weather. It’s Ike’s first bad cold!
Happy Birthday wishes go to our first-born, Andrea (Andy), who celebrates her 37th birthday this Saturday, June 8th. Here’s to you, Andy…wife, mother & teacher extraordinaire. You are definitely one in a million! Have fun on your special day of celebration! Happy Birthday wishes also go to two of my favorite people in the universe…Mary Hertrich, wife, mother, river guide, waitress & homebuilder extraordinaire, who celebrates her birthday this Sunday, June 9th; and Julie Shepard-Hall, mother, community volunteer, Garland Business District leader & employee benefits consultant extraordinaire, who also celebrates her this Sunday, June 9th. Here’s to both of you! And, last but certainly not least, here’s to the incomparable singer Tom Jones (“It’s Not Unusual” & “Delilah”…to name a few hits of his), who celebrates his 79th birthday today! He and Elvis could really swing their hips!
Here’s some more from my recent World War II adventure with my friend Harold Voltz:
May 16, 2019 (continued)
Our personal guide, Roland (Roland Lebon), shared with us that his mother worked for shoemaker in Ghent, Belgium during the Nazi occupation in World War II. During this time, his mother worked for The Resistance. The Nazis were looking for her and the shoemaker hid her and two Jewish girls in his cellar. While being hidden away, Roland’s mother helped the shoemaker repair shoes for the Nazi occupiers. After the war, the shoemaker was wrongly accused of being a Nazi collaborator. Roland’s mother and the Jewish girls he hid in his basement during the war were able to testify on his behalf and he was spared prosecution and possible death. I think I may have shared this before, but I asked Roland if he had any family members that were lost or injured during the war and he recounted to Harold and me that his aunt was killed by a German SS officer who she spurned when he tried to force himself on her. Roland said that many civilians in towns and villages across Belgium suffered greatly at the hands of the SS & the Gestapo. In one village, Roland showed us where the SS took some 34 male citizens of the village and shot them all in a cellar. Belgium bore the brunt of both World Wars (I & II) as much of those conflicts played out in Belgium due to its geographical location (between France & Germany).
During that same car ride, Roland shared more about his background. From 1967-1972, he danced professionally when he was only 16 or 17 as a Go-Go Dancer with the “Mini & Max Group”, as they were called (I hope I got the group’s name right!). They travelled throughout Belgium, France & the Netherlands and even did a six week gig in Italy. Some of you are old enough to remember the “Go-Go Dancing” craze that occurred in the mid to late 60s and very early 70s. I shared with Roland that my favorite singer, Gordon Lightfoot, wrote a song about Go-Go Dancing…it’s title was “Go-Go Girls In Love” or “Go-Go Round” or something like that (the title escapes me right now!). My visual take away of that time in our cultural history was of girls in tight, short skirts with elongated white boots dancing in a gage and guys dancing in bell bottoms…how’s my memory? Going on the road at 16 or 17 years of age was quite an adventure for Roland, as he shared with us. He said he was fortunate to have a handler/manager who was good to him while he was on the road. He later finished high school and continued on with his dancing career. Roland’s manager discovered Roland in a dance club and asked Roland to perform in a show called “Psychedelic Show & Improvisation” (or something like that title), which led to an appearance on Belgian T.V.. I hope I got this story right! I was scribbling notes as fast as Roland talked and, I must admit, I’m no professional stenographer! In addition to his dancing career, Roland mentioned something about being involved with a T.V. show called “Semanon”, which means “Man With The Pipe”. It was about an Inspector Michel who solved various crime mysteries…if I got the story right from Roland. My friend Harold may have to help me out here to get all these stories straight!
Roland did say that his dancing prowess has helped break the ice when he travels to different places, particularly his favorite place outside of his native Belgium…Cuba. He started to visit there some time ago on vacation (in January & February). His favorite dance form is “Salsa” and he likes to visit various discos/nite clubs in Cuba. He takes his time scoping out which women are the good dancers and then approaches them for a dance. When they see that he is a good dancer himself, he has no difficulty getting dances with good women dancers, as a good male dancer seems to be few and far between. The same goes when he is home in Belgium. Just listening to Roland talk about the joys of good dancing made me want to sign up Judy and I for some dance lessons!
Well, this day (May 16th) we’ve visited four countries…all in one day! How about that…France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany! Things are close together over here. Not like traveling in America, where it can take you two days to travel through just one state (i.e. Montana)!
We visited the American Cemetery in Luxembourg City…we had to negotiate the largest round-about I’d ever seen! Thankfully Roland was driving and he deftly maneuvered through it with ease. Multiple lanes in a round-about make for a confused driving experience for we Americans! Although, I must admit, the traffic seemed to flow through it with no disruptions. It does get drivers to slow down through the round-about curves! The cemetery is a sight to behold. It gives you chills to walk down the row upon row of soldiers who gave all for freedom. Each marker has a name and there’s story behind every name, for sure. The cemetery is kept immaculately. Everything is trimmed by hand and the work is meticulously done by local people who are hired by the American Battle Monuments & Cemetery Commission who has the responsibility for maintaining all of the American cemeteries overseas.
Had dinner in downtown Luxembourg City. It’s a grand city with lots of beautiful buildings and fabulous architecture. It’s situated along a spectacular river. We were trying to find the headquarters of Generals Bradley & Patton. There were many buildings there that fit the description, but we couldn’t seem to find the right place. We asked for directions from some young people who work in the financial district there (Luxembourg is a banking and insurance center for Europe), but none seemed to know much about World War II sites in the downtown area. We found a nice little diner/deli to get something to eat for dinner. It was owned by an older gentlemen who looked to be Eastern European. I had a chicken curry sandwich that tasted pretty good. After dinner, we happened to stumble by a plaque on the outside wall of one of the buildings that identified it as the headquarters of the American army (12th Army Group—General Omar Bradley) in World War II! We were pleased to find it just as we were about to leave the city and return to our farm house cottage in Anliers (the actual name of the village where we stayed was Louftemont (between Anliers & Legliese). There are so many little villages along the way that it’s sometimes hard to figure out when one village ends and another begins.
I mentioned to Roland on our way back to our cottage from Luxembourg City that there seemed to be little or no wood used in constructing homes in Belgium and he said that building codes there prohibit the use of wood in construction…hence the use of stone & brick in home construction. While there are a number of forests in Belgium, they are mostly hardwood forests and the number of trees that could be used in home construction (i.e. pine & fir) are not enough to justify removing them for construction purposes….at least that is what I surmised. In addition, there seems to be a large number of stone quarries throughout France & Belgium (particularly in the area of Belgium where we visited—southern Belgium)…so stone seems to be readily available as construction material.
May 17, 2019
I arose early and went for a run in the area surrounding Louftemont & Anliers…what a terrific place to be! The farmlands and the forests that surround these villages are spectacular….lots of dairy cows & horses in the fields…and while the temperature in the morning is a bit chilly, it warmed up quickly with the sun rising. A favorite a place of mine was the school house just outside of Anliers…it has a sign that shows a pencil with a smiling face at the top of the pencil with a school boy walking underneath and the word “Prudence” showing beneath the caricature of the boy. What a sweet sign to warn motorists to approach the school crossing with prudence (caution). What a fun twist on what could have been a mundane school crossing sign!
Speaking of school, Roland told Harold and I that the Belgian school year runs all year long with the following holidays being observed:
Mardi Gras: They call it “the day of the salesman” – All sales people in Belgium get the day off…how about that! It’s also a school holiday.
July & August: Summer Vacation.
Carnival: One week off of school around Mardi Gras (the beginning of Lent).
Easter: Two weeks off.
Christmas/New Year’s: Two weeks off.
The school holiday around Mardi Gras has something to do with the fact that the Roman Catholic Church has historically been the predominant church in the region. All of the villages seem to have one church building as its focal point. From what I could see, it appears that the church buildings are now merely edifices and not much goes on within the church walls. I would imagine that the churches are maintained through endowments. I could be wrong, but it seems as though folks are nominally Roman Catholic and there aren’t as many church goers as there had been in the past.
Nonetheless, it was fun to see the school children and their parents make their way to the school as I ran along the narrow country lanes that crisscross this area. It was one of the sweetest experiences of my time in Belgium, for sure.
After breakfast with Roland & Harold at the farm cottage where we were staying, it was off to Arlon to begin the journey tracing the steps of Harold’s Dad as his unit moved north from Arlon to relieve that 101st Airborne at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge.
To be continued…
Here’s the silly question of the day:
Q: Why did the frog take the bus?
A: Because his car got towed.
Here’s the silly saying of the day:
“I before e…except when you run a feisty heist on a weird beige foreign neighbor.”
“We do not want merely to see beauty…We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.”
—C.S. Lewis, “Transposition and Other Addresses”, as quoted in “C.S. Lewis’ Little Book Of Wisdom: Medications on Faith, Life, Love & Literature” (2018)
Here’s to a great Friday and lots of love always!
Press on,
Papa ‘a (Dad, Uncle Mark, etc.)