Young and Dumb is No way to Go Through Life.   

But you have to start somewhere

The photo above is me sitting on the balcony railing outside of my 2nd floor room in the hospital in Nürnberg.  I was 19 years old at the time.  Just a young and dumb guy learning about life and the world.  I wasn't totally clueless.  I had been to Europe 3 times already prior to my joining the Army.  I went through Army Basic Training which taught be many things about myself and what I could do.  I had worked in my father's store for some time, I worked in a big factory for a year.  I have always been an avid reader and by the time I was 20 I had read a lot about a lot of things.  But I was still "wet behind the ears" as they say, there's only so much you can experience and learn in life after only 19 years.  This next story happened because I was young and dumb, that's pretty much the reason for it.  It wasn't a lot of fun at the time, but I did learn a lot about human nature and other things, and like many stories, with age it has grown to be quite an amusing tale.  Any story involving drugs, money, stolen cars, shady characters, and the US Military Police and the German polizei has a certain appeal, right?

My story starts out with a friend of a friend.  Sometimes a friend of a friend can become a good friend and a wonderful relationship can begin.  And other times a friend of a friend is no friend indeed.  In this case the friend of a friend was a guy we'll call Olsen (Actually his real name was Olsen, but I am using it for reasons that will become clear later in the story).  Olsen was a former American soldier that had been discharged at the end of his enlistment and chose to stay in Germany because he had a German girlfriend.  This option was called a 'European Out', and was often chosen by soldiers in the same situation as Olsen.  Sometimes they could find jobs working as civilians for the military, sometimes, if they spoke German well enough, they could get jobs with a German employer.  Some of them like Olsen just seemed to survive by their wits ands the support of their girlfriend. 

I was hanging out with a couple of friends at my little cellar apartment one day and a guy I worked with came over with Olsen.  I had never met Olsen before.  My co-worker introduced Olsen to me and we all sat around talking and having a few beers.  Then we decided to smoke a little hash, a pretty common occurrence as you might realize by now if you have read my other blog posts about my life in Nürnberg in the 1970s.  As we were smoking, Olsen mentioned that he "knew people" and if we wanted to buy more than a few grams of hash, he could hook us up.  I should explain something at this point about buying hash back then.  Most often, for casual users such as most of the people I knew, if you needed some hash you asked around.  Everybody knew somebody that seemed to be able to get some hash.  At the time, the standard amount was 10 grams, a little over 1/3 of an ounce.  In other words, not a lot.  The 10 gram chunk cost $20.00, or $2.00 a gram.  We called this a 20 cent piece for obvious reasons.  Hash came in several varieties.  There was Afghan black, brownish-black in color, a very nice mellow high; Tripping green, kind of a light grass green color which as the name implies would make you see things and was quite strong; Chokin' red, which was red in color, of average intensity but it was very harsh and made you cough a lot; And blond, another mellow high without any remarkable qualities, named after its color, a nice light shade of blond.    

Somebody asked Olsen what amounts he was talking about and what the price was.  Olsen said at the time, he could get a 100 gram brick of Gold Seal black for $180.00.  Gold Seal Black was a black Afghan hash that had a small elephant and 3 interlocked rings below it stamped in gold on the brick, a trademark of sorts.  If you do some quick math, if you buy 100 grams for $180.00 and sell nine 20 cent pieces, then you have 10 grams left for personal consumption.  So essentially you had a free piece of hash for yourself.  Of course there was the danger of getting caught with 100 grams of hash.  It was bad enough to get caught with any kind of drug, but in larger quantities the punishment was more severe, possibly even prison time and a dishonorable discharge.  But of course the lure of a free 20 cent piece can cloud a young person's mind.  

It just so happened that on that particular day I was celebrating my 20th birthday.  In addition to that, because we were paid on the last day of the month, I had just gotten paid 3 days earlier.  At the time my net pay was around $350.00, most of which was spending money because food and shelter and most other essential life costs were taken care of by the Army.  So here I was, feeling festive about my birthday, a wallet full of cash and a guy offering me a way to get some free hash.  What's not to like about a situation like that!  What could possibly go wrong?

With the thought of having 10 grams of my favorite variety of hash at my disposal, and enough friends that I knew I easily could sell the other 9 pieces. I told Olsen that I was interested in getting a brick.  I have to admit that the idea of holding an actual brick of Gold Seal Black in my had and admiring it before I cut it up was attractive as well.  Kind of like that thrill you get when you have a large amount of cash in your hand, or some other interesting thing of value.  I asked Olsen just what was involved in making the transaction.  He told me that I could pay him half of the money, $90.00, he would go to his source, get the brick, return in a few hours and I would pay him the other half of the money and I would get my brick.  That sounded pretty simple to me.  But of course nothing is as simple as it first appears.  

The first of what would turn out to be many complications was that Olsen didn't have a car.  He said it would be faster and easier if he could borrow somebody's car to go get the hash.  Well, it just so happened that I had a car!  A couple of months earlier I had bought an old Fiat 131, a 4 door, boxy looking, Fiat sedan, from another soldier at the hospital.  It's a pretty common thing for soldiers to buy and sell old cars to each other. Often when a soldier leaves an overseas duty station it isn't feasible to bring their car with them.  Many of the cars soldiers would buy were old, cheap and not really worth the time and trouble to ship back to the US.  In addition, there were different rules about equipment on European cars vs. American made cars that often made it virtually impossible to ship the car back to the US.  I had paid $400.00 for my Fiat and it ran pretty well.  For a car that price, you weren't going to get something wonderful or beautiful, you got basic transportation.  The main criteria was; did it run OK, did it have a heater that worked, and would it pass a rudimentary safety inspection.  Anything beyond that was a bonus.  My Fiat wasn't pretty but it worked and the body was sound and for what little driving I needed to do, it was just fine.  

I told Olsen that the could borrow my car as long as he would return in a few hours.  He assured me that he would do that.  So I agreed that he could run his errand and I would wait at my apartment for his return.  He said he could go immediately to get the hash for me, I just needed to give him the $90.00.  I pulled out my wallet and as I was counting out the $90.00 and I thought to my self, I'll just give him $180.00 and get it over with.  To this day I wonder if I hadn't done that, maybe this story would be entirely different.  But I did what I did and you can always look back on the past and think, "If only  I would have..."  I gave Olsen the money, my car keys.  He told me he only needed half of the money, but I insisted he take it all (foreshadowing alert).  He said he would be back in about 2 hours at the most.  Off he went to get my hash, and my friends and I sat around drinking and smoking.  I had already gotten promises from a couple of my friends to buy some of the hash from me when Olsen returned.

As you might suspect at this point, a couple of hours passed, it was now about 4 p.m. and Olsen hadn't returned.  I wasn't worried.  I mean things happen right?  Maybe he was running some other errands, maybe his dealer wasn't in, who knows what.  Shit happens.  So we sat around some more, no one in our little group was worried about Olsen either.  Around 5 p.m. the other guys decided to go to the hospital to get some supper.  I stayed at my apartment because I wanted to be there when Olsen returned.  Around 6 p.m., I started to get a little nervous.  But then I thought he was only a couple of hours late and maybe he ran into a problem or something.  I was sure that soon he would appear with my  hash, or worst case, he wouldn't have been able to buy it and he would give me my money and my car keys back.

Around 7 p.m., I was getting more than a bit concerned.  I decided to go over to the hospital to my room in the barracks.  On the ground floor, there was an entrance to the barracks portion of the hospital.  There was an inner door that led to the barracks area and a broad staircase to the 2nd floor where my room was.  Next to the stairway was a little wooden shack with a window opening and a door.  This was the CQ shack.  Every Army barracks has such a little room, or a desk or something where the Charge of Quarters sits.  During off duty hours, this desk needs to manned so that in the event of some kind of emergency or other needs, a soldier is available to find somebody in the barracks or whatever. They are also tasked to ensure no unauthorized people entered the barracks.  For example, at that time women were not allowed in the men's barracks without a very good reason and vice versa. The person,  sometimes there were 2 people, were normal soldiers in the unit that periodically incurred this duty.  They would sit there from the close of duty hours in the afternoon, usually around 4 p.m. until the following morning at 8 a.m.  On weekends, they did a 24 hour shift.  Nobody liked pulling CQ, it's usually very boring, but that's Army life.  The CQ had a phone on the desk, soldiers in the barracks didn't have phones.  

When I went into the barracks, I stopped at the CQ desk and told the CQ that a person named Olsen might come to see me, and I gave him my room number.  I figured when Olsen went to my apartment and saw I wasn't home, he would go to the barracks and try to find me, or our mutual friend that lived in the same room that I did in the barracks.  Even though I had an apartment off post, I was still required to maintain a place in the barracks, as technically I wasn't authorized to live off post although they allowed us to do it unofficially.  I went up to my room and my co-worker was there.  We talked about Olsen, he vouched for him and said that something probably came up and not to worry.  About an hour later, there was a knock on the door.  I was hoping it was Olsen.  I opened the door and the CQ said that Olsen had called and I need to come down to talk to him on the phone.  I was relieved that Olsen called, now at least I could talk to him and see when he would arrive.  I went to the CQ shack and picked up the phone receiver.  Olsen said he was sorry, he had to wait for his dealer, but finally everything was done and he would come to the barracks in about 1 hour.  I said that was great and I would be waiting for him to come around 10 p.m.  

 !0 p.m. came and went and no Olsen.  I went downstairs several times to see if he had called but the answer was negative.  I was quite worried, not about Olsen, but about the fact that he had my car and $180.00 of my money.  I regretted giving him the entire amount, but still held out hope that it would all work out.  Finally about midnight I decided to sleep in my room in the barracks, I needed to be to work the next day on the early shift which meant I had to be in the mess hall at 5 a.m.  I went to sleep hoping that Olsen would be waking me up at some point early in the morning.  My alarm went off at 4:30 a.m., I got into my cook whites and went off to work.  No word from Olsen.  I pondered my situation and thought what a nice birthday I'd had.  I gave some guy I didn't know my car and $180.00 and he never came back.  At this point it was beginning to dawn on me that perhaps I had been ripped off, a common phrase in those days meaning that somebody had taken something from you or did you wrong somehow.  I talked to my friend that had introduced me to Olsen, and he was mystified.  He didn't think that Olsen would do such a thing.  On the other hand, my co-worker friend was from a small town in Michigan and was even more naïve than I was.  After about 4 days, I did believe that Olsen had done such a thing.  I was getting a little pissed off, if there was a problem, he would have contacted my by this time.  So I decided to report the situation the the Military Police, the MPs.

Now of course I wasn't going to tell the MPs that I gave some former soldier $180.00 and my car to buy me some hash and the guy ripped me off.  I might have been a little naïve, but I wasn't that stupid!  So I decided to tell them that Olsen was a friend of a friend, which was true.  I had met Olsen and he told some sad story about having a German woman he was living with and they needed to go shopping for necessities for their love child, so I loaned him some money and my car and he never came back, which was mostly not true!  I went to the MPs and told my story, signed a statement to that effect and never heard another word from them about it.  Ever.  But wait, that's not the end of the story, not at all.

A new soldier had come to the hospital around the time of this incident and we became friends.  He was a new pharmacy tech and he was assigned to the hospital pharmacy for a few months to learn the ropes before he was sent to the medical clinic in Bamberg, not too far from Nürnberg.  Our hospital was responsible for 13 satellite outpatient clinics on Army bases in the Nürnberg area.  I was sad to see my new friend leave when the time came, but that happens in the Army.  By this time it was probably 3 months since I had last seen Olsen.  I had gotten over the experience for the most part, I figured the MPs didn't consider my situation a big crime.  

So one day, I was at work and somebody told me that I had a phone call in the mess hall office.  I thought that was unusual, who would be calling me on the military phone system at work!  When I picked up the phone, it was my friend now in Bamberg.  I asked what was up and he asked me if I had a red Fiat 131.  I said yes, I did.  I told him that it had been stolen from me.  He said he suspected something like that.  My friend told me he bought it from a former soldier by the name of Olsen, and he found out that the motor in the car was ruined and the car was basically worthless.  I told him given that Olsen had stolen the car from me, that news didn't surprise me at all.  I asked my friend how he knew to call me.  He replied that he found papers in the glove box with my name on them.  Then he asked me if I wanted my car back.  I told him I had no use for a junk car and he could do whatever he liked with it.  So now you are probably thinking this long complicated story is over right?  Well you're wrong!  As they say on the infomercials, "But wait, there's more!"  

About a month later I was at work again and I was told the German polizei wanted to talk to me on the phone.  Now, I was nervous, why would the polizei want to talk to me, I didn't remember doing anything to come to their attention.  So I nervously picked up the phone and they asked me if I knew a character named Olsen, and did he steal a car from me.  I replied, yes, those facts were true.  They told me I needed to come to the central police station in Nürnberg to answer questions about the incident.  They said they had arrested Olsen for stealing  a German rental car and then they ran across the stolen car report I had filed with the American MPs.  Of course that made me a little nervous because who knows what Olsen might have told the polizei about why he had my car.  

I practiced my sad story  about milk for the baby and the next day I went downtown to talk to a detective.  I was shown into a small office and there was a German plainclothes detective that could have stepped right out of a TV detective series.  He was middle aged, bags under his eyes, his shirt sleeves on his button down, wrinkled white shirt rolled partly up on his forearms, and of course a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth.  He asked me about Olsen and  I told him the same story I had told the MPs.  He asked my name, birthday, my parent's names, and yes my mother's maiden name again(If you read my last blog, this will make sense, go read it!).  He was smoking and taking notes the entire time, while I tried not to act too nervous.  I must have done well, because after a few more questions, he told me that Olsen was sitting in prison and he was charged with stealing 2 cars.  The polizei told me thank you and I was free to go.  I walked out of the building with a sigh of relief, and happy that justice was finally served.  

Yes, that is finally the end of the story .  I certainly learned a lot from the experience.  The biggest thing probably was that I wasn't cut out for a life of crime, even as a minor criminal.  I just wasn't cut out for that kind of activity. I also learned maybe I shouldn't be so trusting or, yes, I'll say it, so stupid.  There are people everywhere just waiting to take advantage of young innocent rubes like I was at the time.  Not that I haven't been taken advantage of later in my life, but I had a good idea it would happen, and let it happen any way for various reasons.  I have developed a very high tolerance to stress over the years, in part because of experiences like this one, in part because of some of the jobs jobs I've had, and in part because I like a little excitement in my life at times.  Olsen was my first experience with a genuine sociopath, somebody that will jump at the chance to take advantage of others with no remorse whatsoever.  I met many others throughout the course of my life.  

As I mentioned earlier here, I often wonder if I had only given half of the money, maybe he would have returned that day.  Maybe the extra $90.00 was enough to tip him over the edge and he decided it was worth the risk of ripping me off.  $90.00 wasn't a small amount of money back then.  Who knows.  I chalked it up to another life lesson and I've gotten a lot of mileage out of the story over the years.  All this time later it's pretty funny in that 'real life' story kind of way.  Nobody got hurt, the bad guy eventually got caught.  And it was just another step on the path to experience life, do various things, and sometimes pay a price for it.  I will honestly admit that as the years went on, I purposely made questionable decisions because they sounded like fun at the time, even there was a bit of risk involved.  I figured if it went south, I would have a good story to tell years later!  And for the most part It has worked and most of the scars I got in the process aren't too terrible.    

More Memories From Nürnberg

I think the statute of limitations has passed

I certainly had some interesting experiences in my 19 months as a soldier in Nürnberg from January 1975 until August 1976.  Some were very sobering like my last story, this time I want to tell you some humorous stories.  Well, maybe some of them weren't so funny at the time but they are now.  And I can solve an unsolved crime after all of these years that probably drove the Nürnberg police crazy at the time.  They like everything to be in order, it's a German thing. Like many other things during my time there, these incidents left an impression on me, and perhaps was the origin of my desire to collect stories about my sometimes crazy life.

One night I was sound asleep in my room in the barracks at the hospital.  I had to get up at 4:30 a.m. to be to work in the mess hall at 5 a.m.  I was rudely awakened by someone kicking my mattress and yelling my name loudly.  I slowly opened my eyes, and there was my friend Everett, yelling "Lada, wake up goddammit.  You gotta help me!"  Everett always called me Lada, it's an Army thing.  I looked at my watch and I told Everett that it better be important.  It was 12:30 a.m. and I had 4 more hours to sleep.  Everett responded "Goddammit Lada, just get up and get dressed, the taxi is waiting outside!"  Well, that was interesting.  It's 12:30 a.m., Everett needs my help desperately and there's a taxi waiting.  I was intrigued, so I slowly got out of bed, opened my wall locker and started to put some clothes on.  

Now at this point I need to explain some background to Everett's urgent mission.  Around a month earlier, Everett had bought an old, used VW Beetle.  It was a pale blue color and it wasn't a bad little car.  In the 1970s, those little VWs were everywhere in Germany.  Back then cars had these little windows on either door called vent windows or wing windows.  They were right where the door frame met the front windshield of the car, little triangular windows separated from the bigger side window, and there was a little latch on the bottom of the little window.  You would press a little button in the latch, pull the latch up and you could push the window open to let some air into the car without rolling the side window down.  So when Everett first showed me his 'new' car, he told me not to ever lock the vent window because the door locks were broken and you couldn't unlock them with the key.  When you got out of the car, you pushed the door lock button down and shut the door and the car would be locked.  But Everett needed to leave the vent window unlatched, so he could reach through it to open the car door.  It was a law in Germany that you had to lock your car doors when the car was parked.  

One day, Everett and I were out and about in his car.  We got back to his apartment, he parked the car, and I closed and latched the vent window, pressed the lock button down and shut the passenger door.  Everett noticed this after he got out of his side and had locked his door.  For some reason known only to Everett, he always latched his vent window and left the passenger side one unlatched.  Everett looked at me and said "Goddammit Lada, did you latch the vent window?"  I looked in the window and sheepishly told Everett that indeed I had.  It was just a habit, as almost all cars had those little vent windows back then.  So Everett, now a little angry said "Goddammit Lada, now I'm locked out of my car.  I hope you know how to get it open!  You might have noticed that Everett often addressed me as "Goddammit Lada!"  Well, I had no idea how to break in to the car without damaging it.  Then suddenly I remembered seeing someone use a coat hanger to get a vent window open.  So calmly, as though I knew exactly what to do, I asked Everett if he could get me a coat hanger from his apartment.  He came back with the hanger.  I untwisted the hook part of the hanger, straightened the hangar out and fished the hook end through the rubber seal of the window.  I figured I could maneuver the 'U' shaped hook to press the button on the latch, and simultaneously pull the latch up when the little button was depressed.  Much to my and Everett's surprise, it worked exactly as I had planned, although I acted like I knew it would work.  Everett was a big husky guy, and he clapped me hard on the back, almost knocking me over (I was  tall but quite thin when I was young) and congratulated me on my quick work.  

Now, back in my room, at 12.30 a.m., Everett needed my help to break into his car.  I grabbed a coat hanger from my wall locker and we went out front where the taxi was waiting for us.  On the way to his car, Everett explained to me that the had gone to a gasthaus a few miles down the road, and somehow the vent windows both got latched and locked.  A few minutes later the taxi deposited us next to Everett's little blue Beetle, parked on the side of a city street.  In Germany, after 10:00 p.m. it is quiet hours, and usually by 11 p.m., most places are closed, most people are in bed sleeping, and the streets are deserted.  Here I was with a straightened out coat hangar, at 1:00 a.m. on a deserted street in Nürnberg trying to break into my friend's car.  And a very impatient Everett pacing next to me muttering that it was taking me too long to get the car open "Goddammit."  That wasn't making it any easier to do the job, I was already nervous that if the German polizei came by, we would have a lot of explaining to do.  

About that time I heard a car and I said a silent prayer asking that it wasn't the polizei.  It wasn't, it was a US Army Military Police car!  I was relieved, at least they were American, and perhaps they could help us.  The MP car stopped, 2 MPs got out and casually asked what we were doing.  Everett explained our predicament to them.  They looked a little skeptical and they asked for Everett's ID.  "Well" he said, "there's a little problem with that". "Don't tell me" said one of the MPs, "Your ID is in the car."  Everett replied "Exactly!"  So the MPs got on their radio in the car, and decided Everett was the owner, and said they couldn't help us get the car open.  I was hoping they would stay with us in case the polizei came by, but they told us good luck, and drove away.  That didn't make me any more relaxed as I was still fumbling with the coat hanger, and waiting to feel a rubber truncheon that the polizei used to come crashing on to my head.  I could still hear a muttered "goddammit" or 2 from Everett.  Finally, I got the hanger in the right place, and got the vent widow open.  We got in the car, I was relieved, Everett was happy and thanking me profusely. We drove to the hospital and he dropped me off so I could get about 2 hours of sleep before I had to get up for work.  I was tired but I figured it was a good story I could tell years later.

Oddly enough, the next story involved Everett as well, but I didn't know that until some time later.  It was a winter evening, there was a dusting of snow on the ground.  I went out the doors where the emergency room was in the hospital, heading for the little club we had in the adjoining building where the mess hall was.  There was a walkway connecting the 2 buildings.  As I was walking to the other building, some friends of mine stopped me.  They said they were looking for me and asked if I had been at my apartment. I told them no, I hadn't been there all day.  They excitedly told me I better get over there, the landlord and the polizei were there, somebody had tried to break into my little place.  Needless to say, I was a little shocked by this news and I immediately wondered why anyone would want to break into my little basement dwelling.  At this point, I should explain that after my good friend Jimmy had been sent back to the US (see the blog before this one if you haven't already read it).  I had taken over his place.  Cheap apartments near the hospital were hard to find and I jumped at the chance to move out of my room in the barracks and have a place right around the corner form the hospital.  Even the little 2 room place with a shared bathroom was much better than living in the barracks.

As I was hurrying out the front gate of the hospital and going to my apartment, my mind was racing. What would I find when I got there?  Why would somebody go in the building, down the stairs, through a door and then break into my living room/bedroom?  And what was there to steal?  I was a lowly private making $350.00 a month!  When I got to my building, there were no cars around, the front door of the building was closed and locked as usual.  I unlocked the front door, went in and with my heart beating a little quicker than normal, I went down the stairs, opened the door to the hall where my rooms were and went in.  Apparently the polizei and my landlord had left.  The first door was my little kitchen and I never locked it.  The next door was to my living room.  Except the door wasn't there!  Well, it was, but it the entire door, still locked and in the door frame was lying partly in the doorway, partly into my room, leaning at a 45 degree angle.  There was a schrank (wardrobe) a few feet inside on the  wall perpendicular to the hallway wall, and the locked door, frame and all was resting against the schrank.  My first thought was holy shit, who did I piss of enough to want to break my door down looking for me!  My second thought was, what if they are still around!  Needless to say, I was a little nervous about the situation.  So I went out in the hall and went around the cellar to make sure some crazy person wasn't hiding somewhere.    I went back to the hospital and called my landlord, no cell phones back then.  He asked me if I had any idea what had happened and I told him no, I sure didn't  He also informed me that some polizei detectives would come the next morning to question me and that he would send a person to repair my door as well.  Although I still had a room in the barracks, I didn't want to leave my apartment unattended with no door, so I went back to my apartment.  I stood the door and frame up against the wall next to the schrank.  Then I took a blanket and made a makeshift covering over the hole where the door was.  I didn't sleep well, I was hoping whoever had done that wouldn't be back!

The next morning I hurried up and hid my hash pipe elsewhere in the cellar, I had no  idea what the polizei would do, but I didn't need them to find my pipe.  I cleaned up the bits of broken dry wall and dust off of the floor.  About an hour later somebody was knocking on the wall on the other side of the blanket.   I looked out and there were 2 German detectives in suits.  They showed me their ID and I invited them in.  They asked my name, where I worked and they wanted to know my parent's names as well as my mother's maiden name.  I had no idea why they needed to know that.  They asked me if I had any idea who might have broken down my door, or why.  They asked me if anything was missing.  I answered negatively to the questions.  They told me that they found footprints in the back yard of the building leading to a gate to the sidewalk, and that they think the suspect had left that way rather than through the front door.  They said they had made plaster casts of the footprints as evidence of the crime.  Then they left.  Next came a handyman and in short order he restored the door and frame to their rightful place in the door opening, and the broken drywall was patched up.  I felt better that I had my door back, but I was still little nervous and curious as to what had happened.  Well, about a week later I found out.

I had gone to visit my friend Everett.  He lived about a mile from the hospital in an apartment behind a nice little gasthaus run by a Czech man.  I mentioned it in the blog before this one.  Everett knew the owner Ulrich well, and we would go there often to eat or have some beer, or both.  Everett and I were sitting at a table eating our dinner and talking.  Suddenly Everett got very serious.  He looked at me and said "Goddammit Lada, if I tell you something, will you swear you won't tell anyone?  I mean you can't tell anyone or I'll be in big trouble!"  That made me curious and I assured Everett that we were good friends and his secret would be safe with me.  He replied "Goddammit Lada, you swear you won't tell a soul?"  I told him I promised I wouldn't tell a soul.   Everett took a deep drink of his beer, swallowed it and said "I'm the one that broke your door down!"  Well that bit of news surprised me to say the least.  I looked at him and said "Goddammit Everett, why did you do that, and why didn't you tell me sooner!  I was a nervous wreck, wondering if somebody wanted to kill me, or worse!"  Everett said "I know, I know, sorry.  I 'll tell you what happened."  Everett proceeded to tell me that he had come to Ulrich's gasthaus to have some dinner and a beer.  Well one beer led to another and after a bit, he was a little drunk. So he decided to walk to my place and see if I wanted to join him in a few more beers at the gasthaus.  Remember, nobody had little phones in their pocket back then.  Everett said that he rang my bell at the front door and no one answered so he rang another tenants bell and somebody buzzed him in to the building.  Then he went down to the hall where my door was and he was banging on my door.  Everett said he might have been a little drunk, and he fell against the door and the "Goddam door fell out of the wall."  He said he might have panicked a little and ran down the hall, up the back steps, ran through the yard and jumped over the gate in the fence and ran to his place.   After Everett finished his story, all I could do was laugh.   I told you that Everett was a pretty big, solid guy and I could just picture him drunk, and the surprise when he fell on the door and into my little room.  I told Everett that I wish that he had told me sooner, but that it was pretty funny now and everything got fixed and I didn't have to pay for anything, so it was all good.  I also told him to be aware that the polizei in Nurnberg had a plaster cast of his shoe prints in the snow.  We both laughed about it and had a few more beers.

When I returned to Nürnberg 23 years later, I really wanted to go to the main polizei building in town and tell them I could resolve an unsolved crime from 23 years ago.  Knowing the German efficiency and need for order I imagined that in some vast evidence room there was a box on a dusty shelf with a plaster cast of Everett's size 13, black Army dress shoes.  For all I know it might still be there, it wouldn't surprise me.  Next time I go to Nürnberg I should ask.  Those plaster shoe prints would be a wonderful souvenir of one of the funnier (in retrospect), crazier things that happened to me in Germany, all of those years ago.  I don't think I'll get Everett in trouble, the statute of limitations probably expired a long time ago!

In my next blog I'll tell a tale of a memorable birthday.  It involves drug deal, a missing car, and ultimately a former soldier going to a prison in Germany.  In spite of how it sounds, it's  one of those stories that in retrospect is pretty funny.  And I learned some valuable lessons from it.  What's not to like about all of that!