In the Clear Light of Day
Part XX
The Ghetto
Our two semesters at Schiller College came to an end. Buck and I had a great
time and lots of experiences, but we decided not to continue there. Instead, we
concocted a scheme. At that time, there was a “hippie road” from Europe to
India. An aspiring traveler could catch a bus at a bus stand in Munich and take it
all the way to India and on to Nepal. In his autobiography “The Journey Home”
(Mandala Publications, San Rafael California, 2008) Radhanath Swami provides a
vivid description of this trip.
Buck and I decided not to take the bus trip. Our friend Eric had also finished his
time at the University of Maryland in Munich and he signed on as well. It was
also possible to drive the hippie road to India. This is the alternative we
embraced, (although I did not have a driver’s license and had never driven).
I had talked to Buck about India for years and we decided that we should actually
go there and see what it was all about. We planned to stay in India for a year (or
two). We had no funds of any kind, so we planned to take jobs in Frankfurt.
After putting together a nest egg, we would buy a Volkswagen van. We would
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then depart from Frankfurt and drive all the way to India, from Turkey through
Iraq and Iran and Afghanistan and Pakistan.
It was still possible to make the trip in those days. That was before wars in Iraq,
Iran, and Afghanistan, and terrorism in Pakistan closed the route. Today,
everyone flies to India. Although the wars had not yet started and the Shah of
Iran was still on his throne, the “hippie road,” was not all that safe. In “The
Journey Home,” Radhanath Swami makes it quite clear just how dangerous the
trip was. It involved traveling through some wild country and there were plenty
of predatory people aiming to rob you (or worse) along the way. As the traveler
got deeper and deeper into Asia, he/she became increasingly cut off and isolated
from sources of assistance. It took a hardy (or foolhardy) person to make such a
trip.
Our first priority was to find jobs and a place to live. During this cold war period,
hundreds of thousands of American troops and their families resided in
Germany. The Army provided an all-inclusive infrastructure that provided “little
Americas” for the troops and their families. The Department of Defense
employed thousands of civilians to run everything from recreation to
commissaries and PXs. During my summers, I had always worked within this
massive establishment to earn some extra money. I had been a clerk typist,
bookkeeper, and warehouse laborer. I knew the drill. I went to the civilian
personnel office. Although I could not drive, I found a job as an “Assistant Truck
Driver,” for the “Office of Dependent Schools.” I don’t remember what jobs Buck
and Eric ended up with.
My father kept his hair in the “GI cut,” and went to the barber every week at the
Army barbershop in the IG Farben building where he worked. We got a tip that
his barber “Herr Mai” (we called him “Hair Pie” – after the Bob Dylan song) had a
room for rent. We contracted with him and concluded the deal. The room was
quite small, maybe 20 feet square. Its kitchen consisted of a hot plate and a small
refrigerator. There was no other furniture. Buck’s former girlfriend was now
going out with an Army lieutenant. He was getting out of the Army and staying
in Germany for some reason. He came in with us on the room. He helped us to
acquire two Army bunk beds with the steel frames and springs. These were the
only articles of furniture in the room. Even with only the two beds in the room, it
was very crowded.
The room was in a building with a burned out ground floor. You walked up steps
through the burnt out section and to the second floor. Our room was at the end
of the hall. We shared the hallway with some hookers, some black guys who had
gotten out of the Army and stayed in Frankfurt, and some Africans. We all
shared a bathroom. It was the old style of European plumbing. For hot water,
you had to place pfennig coins into a machine.
The hookers thought we were quite amusing and giggled at us, but were
otherwise very quiet. The black Americans living next door to us appeared to be
some kind of black militants in the vein of the Black Panthers. The walls were
very thin. It seemed they had only one record. It was by a group of what we
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would now call “hip hop artists,” called “the Last Poets.” Their big number was,
“When the Revolution Comes.” I heard it over and over again through the wall.
The Africans turned out to be dealers in marijuana from Africa. Hash was the
most common recreational drug in Frankfurt at that time. Marijuana was harder
to come by and sold for premium prices. I think they were from Nigeria. Their
records were by an African group called “Osibisa,” based in London. Even though
they were two doors down the hall, I heard Osibisa loud and clear. I don’t
remember whether we had brought our record player with us from Schiller. I
don’t recall any special music during this period. I had left most of my stuff at my
parent’s house. They lived in a village about 35 kilometers outside Frankfurt.
We called our new pad, “The Ghetto.”
My job was to ride around with the truck driver in a two and one half ton truck.
We picked up food from a warehouse and delivered it to the dining hall at my old
high school (and other dining facilities around town). The truck driver had just
finished a hitch in the Navy. He had gone to Frankfurt High School and joined the
Navy after graduation. After getting out of the Navy, he found this job and was
hanging around Frankfurt.
In those days there were lots of Americans, Brits, and others hanging around
Germany and doing these kinds of jobs with the Army. They were easy to get.
There was a lot of turnover. The truck driver was easygoing and talkative. He
told me that he had no money after his Navy stint because while with the fleet
and traveling around Asia he had “spent everything on hookers.”
Our job was not all that demanding. I sat in the cab of the truck and loaded and
unloaded it. I carried a book with me everywhere and when I had nothing to do,
I read. Although I had spent four years at the High School, I had never eaten at
the dining hall. It smelled bad. Maybe it was because of all of the canned food
sitting in heating trays and the lack of proper ventilation. I learned that the High
School students ate the same food that was served in the Army mess halls. I was
free to eat whatever I wanted, and often took meals in the kitchen, or at the Army
mess hall where we also made deliveries.
Alcohol was a theme. The cooks in the kitchen were a motley crew from
different countries. One of them was a flaming alcoholic who was always drunk.
Another kitchen worker was from Africa. He was interested in talking about the
Blues with me, and asked me for one of my books. I gave it to him gladly. It was
not very good.
The Office of Dependent Schools was a small operation, headed by a young
lieutenant. He supervised an old sergeant who was also an alcoholic. One day
the Lieutenant called the sergeant into his office. I was there for some reason
and was a fly on the wall. The Lieutenant made the sergeant stand at attention
and proceeded to ream him out, calling him a hopeless old drunk who should get
out of the Army as he was no good for anything. The sergeant stood there at
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attention taking the verbal beating. At the end of the harangue, tears streamed
down his cheeks.
Our quarters were quite claustrophobic. My personal space consisted of my
bunk. I was on the top bunk on the right hand side of the room. The other bunks
were on the opposite side. One side of the room was a doorway going out onto a
small balcony overlooking some green space. Our “kitchen” was on the other
side. We never made any meals in the room as I recall. I often ate in various
mess halls. We ate dinner at an Italian Restaurant around the corner three or
four times a week. We had our own waiter who served us every time. It did not
take him long to know what we would order in advance. On Fridays, I ate
calamari (fried squid) at a Greek restaurant by myself. I tacked up some Hindu
prints on the wall beside my bed and meditated in that small personal space.
We had spent a year in college and were now back in town. The kids in the high
school thought we were something exotic and all wanted to get to know us. We
had lots of entre with the high school girls. These kids were a couple of years
younger than us, but we were all we had to hang around with. We would go to
their homes and go around Frankfurt with them. We befriended one girl who
lived down the street from my old house in the Edwards Housing Area. We
would go to her house to hang out, but her parents were suspicious of us. We
gave her an LP of the doors “Morrison Hotel,” but her parents made her give it
back to us. They said it had “bad language” on it. Morrison sings, “been down so
God-damn long that it looks like up to me,” and “loved me two times baby and my
knees got weak.” This was before any four-letter words were allowed on
records.
Buck and I formed an acoustic duo called “Uncle Jon’s Band,” after the Grateful
dead song. He played the guitar and we both sang. Our only gig was at the
dormitory of the high school. Our audience was entertained but not lively. I
tried to form another band, but without success. I found some guys to play with,
but we did not really hit it off. We were called “Mud,” and also played only one
gig, at the Officer’s Club.
After several months the Ghetto lost its luster. We all found the former
Lieutenant to be insufferable. He eventually left and returned to Chicago. Eric
talked in his sleep. He held long conversations with himself. We found it quite
amusing. He spoke in lucid entire sentences. We woke up when we heard him
talking and tried to converse with him while he was in a sleep state. Sometimes
he sat up in bed and rode his motorcycle. His arms would be out on the
handlebars, he would shift gears and make engine noises.
One day I was home alone in the Ghetto. Someone started pounding on the door
demanding to be let in. I decided that there was no way I could resist, as he
would break down the door. I opened it, and the man pointed a pistol in my face.
It was terrifying. He demanded to search the room. I quickly obliged. It took
him only minutes to look under the bed and around the room and then he was
gone. This was the first time that someone had pointed a loaded gun at me. It
was not the last.
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I started to spend more time at my parent’s house. They had a two-story
arrangement in the village. The Hessian villages during this period still retained
their traditional architecture. Since medieval times, the homes had been built
around a courtyard (hof), filled with manure and hay. The farm families stayed
in a farmhouse on one side and the animals lived in barns on the other sides.
Because traditionally Germany was wracked by perpetual warfare, the farmers
could not live outside the village. Each village was fortified and each farmyard
was like a fortress. The village where my parents lived was changing from a
farm village to a bedroom community. Increasingly people worked in Frankfurt
and nearby towns. Many took the train to work every day. My parent’s
landlords had changed the barns into a set of apartments. My parents rented
two of them and thus had a two story living arrangement, which was quite
unusual in Germany. My father and mother both worked in Frankfurt and
commuted on the autobahn every day. When I stayed in their house, I slept in a
spare room on the ground floor. They slept upstairs.
I found a stack of discarded window frames and decided to build a “meditation
hut” in my parent’s back yard. We had been reading about Buckminster Fuller
and his geodesic domes that were favored by communes. This was supposed to
be the cheap housing of the future that would free everyone from mortgages. I
used this design and somehow crafted the frames together into a dome shape
and covered it with cloth. Inside I had a cloth covering as a floor and a candle
and incense holder. I used the “meditation hut,” for meditation sessions.
While at my parent’s house, I found a pup tent. I took it to the Ghetto and erected
it in the grassy back yard to obtain some privacy. I then abandoned my bunk and
started sleeping in the tent. It was a good respite from the close quarters. On
one occasion I was awakened by the sound of guitar music. Buck was serenading
a long lady just yards from the tent. He was singing a number by Neil Young.
I had been using Swami Vishnu-devananda’s book “The Complete Illustrated
Book of Yoga,” as my guide. He was very systematic and clear. He emphasized
starting from the foundations and working up to greater levels of complexity. He
was very strict about breathing exercises (prananyama). I had never actually
studied yoga with a teacher.
I was delighted to learn that an Indian guy was offering a yoga class. I signed up.
We met every week. There were only four or five of us. Yoga was still not
familiar to most Americans (or Germans). Our teacher (I never learned where he
came from or what his qualifications were) was very patient. I was very
dedicated. We hit it off nicely and I was able to learn a lot from him. I enjoyed
the classes very much. This would serve as the initial foundation for more yoga
classes during later periods in my life.
Indian people were not very common in the United States or Germany during
that period. I had not met very many. Some Indians worked for the Army as
they spoke English. There was an Indian supply clerk with an office in the old
World War Two barracks that served as our high school annex. I had brief
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conversations with him but nothing in depth. This unnamed yoga teacher could
have been the first Indian that I ever held a serious conversation with.
That barracks annex was the subject of repeated dreams in later years. I
dreamed that I was walking the hallways in the middle of the night and that it
was very dark and scary. Sometimes I dreamed that I was in a dark space under
this barracks. Like many such dreams that repeat, it disappeared over time.
More Travels
While we lived in the Ghetto, we continued to take periodic trips around Europe.
We had acquired our Volkswagen van, although I had still not learned how to
drive. We tore out the seats and built beds in the back as well as spaces for
storage. We traveled in the van around Europe. We took a trip to Spain in the
dead of winter. We drove through France and camped on the beach. We met
French kids there and conversed with them long into the night. We then drove
into the Pyrenees and on into Spain. We drove right past the tiny country of
Andorra and wanted to visit, but got lost or distracted and never made it.
We found ourselves driving along a narrow road along a cliff skirting the sea. We
stopped at a small restaurant for dinner and the innkeeper gave us a free bottle
of wine. Buck enjoyed the wine and provided us with an exciting drive in the
dark in the dead of night in the rain on a road along the cliff.
At one point, we stopped for the night in the middle of the Spanish countryside. I
left our van (which we had named the “batsbus”) and slept among the ruins of a
medieval monastery. In the morning the sun and the quiet countryside
reminded me of a scene from Don Quixote.
We headed back to Germany, but were stopped at the border by the Guardia
Civil. Spain was still in the grip of the Franco dictatorship and the national police
ruled with an iron hand. Seeing our van and long hair, they were convinced that
we were smuggling drugs. They made us get out of the van and they removed
everything we had. They even took our cans of food and opened some of them to
see if we had stashed drugs inside. They could not have been more mistaken, as
we had nothing whatsoever to do with drugs.
Eric loved motorcycles. He particularly liked the Norton motorcycle
manufactured in England. While we lived in the Ghetto, he ordered a custom
built Norton. He asked if I would like to accompany him to the UK to pick up the
bike. We would ride back together through France. I don’t remember how we
got to the UK. Once we got there, we tried to check into a hotel. The hotel clerk
would not let us check in. He did not like our long hair and hippie clothing.
We found another place to stay and the next day picked up the bike and headed
out. We crossed the channel and arrived on the coast of France. We stayed in a
coastal village and went to a seaside café for dinner. We enjoyed a huge dish of
mussels, with the waves crashing just feet from the verandah where we ate. The
local villagers engaged us in conversation using a variety of languages.
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The next morning, we checked out and drove through the French countryside in
the direction of Germany. The road was narrow, just one and one half lanes. I
had goggles on to keep the bugs off of my eyes. Tall trees lined the roadside. We
drove between them. It was a picture out of an impressionist landscape.
Over the years, I kept returning to France. It was not always planned. It just
seems that France and particularly Paris, draws me like a magnet. On this trip
Eric and I stayed in a flat in Paris. We had acquired the address from someone,
although we did not know the people that lived there. It was a free place to stay.
I wasn’t familiar with Paris at that time and did not identity the neighborhood. I
would not be surprised if it was the Left Bank. It seemed quite medieval. We
stayed in a long loft room. A guy was talking on the telephone to someone from
the staff of the Prince of Monaco. This man was convinced he was a distant
relative of the Prince and wanted to talk with him on the phone. The Prince’s
staff would not allow it, although the man tried for a long time.
We had no shower in the flat. I went to a local bathhouse to take a hot shower. I
was surprised to find that an attractive young woman worked in the bathhouse
and hung up my clothes. It was an encounter with my American puritan
heritage. On the way home from the bathhouse, a brass band dressed in odd
costumes played songs and walked down the sidewalk. The local Parisians
seemed so blasé that they paid no attention, while I stood mesmerized on the
sidewalk. It was dreamlike and surreal.
Another time, Eric and I decided to hitchhike to France and hopefully on into
Spain. We made it out of Germany and into France, but then everything ground
to a halt. It was the time of year when everyone in France takes his or her annual
vacation. The roads were clogged with bumper-to-bumper traffic. The problem
was that all the families were going together on vacation. It is almost certain that
a family traveling together with children will not pick up hitchhikers. We spent
three days in France trying to catch a life and dining on French bread and cheese
and fruit. We tired of the incessant waiting and watching thousands of cars pass
us by.
We saw a sign for Liechtenstein, and decided that we would take our vacation
there. It is on the border between Austria and Switzerland in the Alps. We went
to the train station and caught a train. The capital and only city in Liechtenstein
is Vaduz. The entire country is only 64 square miles in extent with a population
of only 36,000. Since everyone was heading for the beaches of Spain and
Southern France, Vaduz was quite empty and we had no trouble finding a room.
That night we went to a Gasthaus and ate Fondue, as we were told that you have
to eat Fondue in Liechtenstein. The next day we woke up and quickly
determined that there was really not much to do in Liechtenstein, so we decided
to hike the length of the country. The entire country is in the Alps and the hike
was very pleasant. It took less than one day.
We had lived in the Ghetto for over six months. Our jobs did not pay us a lot of
money. We had purchased the van and fixed it up, but really did not have enough
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money for the trip. Our interest in the plan was also flagging. We were running
out of steam. We were growing increasingly tired of the living arrangement. We
were not making serious preparations for our departure. Eric was a year older
than us. The draft hung over his head. He was worried. He decided that he
could not go with us to India and that he had to return to the United States and
get into graduate school or he would be drafted and sent to Vietnam. He
departed. Our friend Michael had also returned to the United States to go back to
school. Buck and I were on our own.
We ended our stint in the Ghetto. Buck rented his own flat on the outskirts of the
city and I went to live with my parents. Buck and I decided that we were in no
position to take such an ambitious trip. It was probably for the better. The trip
could have proven to be quite a disaster. Our van was old and there was no
guarantee it could make such a long trip without breaking down. We would have
quickly run out of money.
A few Americans have travelled to India with no money, stayed for some time,
and adopted a religious life. I would later meet some of these individuals and
have considerable interaction with them. The most famous of these is Bhagavan
Das.
Richard Alpert, (Baba Ram Dass) met Bhagavan Das in India. It was Bhagavan
Das who introduced Alpert to the Indian guru Neem Karoli Baba. Alpert was so
moved by this encounter that it changed his entire life. He felt compelled to
write about the experience. This became the book, “Be Here Now,” (Lama
Foundation, New Mexico, 1971). In the book, Alpert describes Bhagavan das and
his life in India and tries to make sense of his encounter with Neem Karoli Baba.
Bhagavan Das traveled to India in 1964 as a teenager. He came to India alone
and stayed for five years. His account of this journey is in his autobiography, “It’s
Here Now (Are You).” (Broadway Books, New York, 1997).
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Another such individual is Rampuri. He also arrived in India alone. He was
initiated into an order of Saddhus and is the only American that I am aware of
that has done so. Unlike Bhagavan Das, who returned to the United States and is
now of “the guru circuit,” Rampuri has remained in India, where he has his own
ashram. Rampuri chronicled his journey from American teenager to Hindu guru
in his book “Autobiography of a Sadhu,” (Destiny Books, Rochester, Vermont,
2005).
The ISKCON guru Radhanath Swami has a similar story. He traveled with friends
to India on the bus at the age of 19. His friends departed and he remained in
India, living as a religious seeker and initiate for two years, returning to the
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United States in 1971. Like Rampuri, Radhanath Swami resides in India and is a
leading guru in ISKCON.
Buck and I wanted to make this Indian journey. I wanted to follow in the
footsteps of these notable personalities. We came right to the brink, but then
pulled away. It was not our time.
I did not know it then, but I would make it to India within 18 months of our
aborted trip.
With our Indian plan scrapped, Buck and I had to come up with other
alternatives.
Buck decided to drive the batsbus to Spain and live there for a while. Both of us
were adrift. We were looking for our purpose.
I knew what I wanted to do, but had not yet determined how.
I decided to return to Schiller. In my mind, the bucolic environment of
Boennigheim was like a refuge. I needed time to think and reflect. It was almost
like living in a monastery. For years after leaving Schiller I had vivid dreams of
Boennigheim. In those dreams, I was still at Schiller but had moved on to the
campus at Heidelberg and was going through the entire four-year program. In
those dreams I felt secure. Then I would awake and say to myself, “I am having
another one of those Schiller dreams.” I would then be glad that I had not
pursued such a course.
This time, my Schiller sojourn would be different. I would be on my own. I
would have my own room. I no longer lived in the former stables right next to
the Schloss. I was in leased housing several blocks away. I walked back and
forth to my classes through the quiet village.
Many of our group from our year at Schiller had departed and moved on to other
things.
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Although I would make new friends, it would not be the same. Nothing ever is. I
would have close friends, but was no longer so involved in the group ethic.
Maybe I was maturing and getting more capable of doing things on my own. I
was no longer immersed in the group identity that is such an essential
characteristic of adolescence.
Maybe the Ghetto experience had also changed me. Maybe it was a necessary
stage in my development. I had realized that my group was not going to
accompany me everywhere. We were after all, individuals. We had our own
needs and wants and paths. I would have to pursue my own dreams and let
them take me where they would.
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