Page 44 - My Story

With Toby’s arrival I had become the proud owner of a brand-new Fiat Panorama in white that
was slightly larger than the old one. I seemed to be the only woman in the village with her own transport,
unless it was a tractor. Frau Eichorn (squirrel) was often to be seen progressing down the village street
driving her tractor and wearing her husband’s socks. I was occasionally called on to do a hospital run and
one of the women approached me one day and said if I would drive, she could take me to a farm where
we could purchase wonderful fruit for canning and jam making. Oh yes, so off we went, and it was cherry
season. We came back with kilos and kilos of both sweet and sour cherries. For the next two days I stoned
and boiled and canned and had a couple of dozen jars of jam and bottled cherries to show for it. The
children ate cherries galore and nobody got sick. I would have been too busy to notice, anyway! Several
of the neighbours grew strawberries and we were always being invited to pick as many as we wanted, so
we had strawberry jam, as well. The other Diesner grandmother was a shriveled old lady, dressed entirely
in black as befits a widow and she was always to be seen bent double, tending her vegetable garden. She
would bring us four sticks of rhubarb at a time. Not enough for a pie so I would sit the children on the
outside steps with a pot of sugar, give them each a stick of rhubarb and they would make short work of
it. Frau Füller would tut-tut over this but continued to bring us only four sticks at a time! The woodyard
Grandmother, on the other hand would leave a basket of lettuce and scallions and tomatoes and
cucumber which went to making our daily salad.

Then it was plum season. We had seven plum trees in our back garden and all bore masses of
fruit – the small, dark prune plums called Zwetchgen. I made plum pies and plum puddings, I pickled
plums, I made plum chutney and best of all were the plum cakes. I would go over to Bäcker Pfeiffer,
purchase a kilo of yeast dough, take it home and shape it into a large baking tray and cover this with plums
then sprinkle it with streusel. I would let it rise and then, along with a whole stream of hausfraus take it
back to the baker to have him put it in his oven to bake. I also made up baskets of plums to give to all the
kind neighbours – and still we had plums!

We also had a bountiful walnut tree. Our swing hung from it but that didn’t stop it giving us kilos
and kilos of walnuts which were pickled, put into salads and cakes or just eaten. I know I spent many
hours cooking in those days and I enjoyed it.

When summer came, we spent hours at the local swimming pool. On opening day, the girls and I
would stand shivering on the side wanting to be the first ones in but knowing the water was going to be
freezing! It was. It was around 16 degrees Celsius or 61 degrees Fahrenheit, but we jumped in and swam
around for not too long and then came out to warm up in the sunshine. I always took along a whole sheet
(Blech) of homemade cake and the children and their friends would consume it remarkably quickly.

After about two years in Wehrheim I heard there was an international Girl Scout troupe in Bad
Homburg. I set about finding out about it. Helen and Susan were very keen to become scouts or Brownies.
We went down there – Bad Homburg was up and over a small mountain, the Saalburg, on top of which
was a reconstructed Roman fort. On this first day we met Janet Bryan with her two girls, Carrie and Amy.
We enrolled the girls and sat waiting for them and chatting. Janet was an American from New Jersey, a
teacher and was in Germany with her lawyer husband, Tom. She also had a son, younger than the two
girls, called Lamby Chops. Well, not really, his name was/is Andrew. Andrew was at a German
Kindergarten and the girls were at the International School in Frankfurt – for international read American.
Meanwhile the girls had all been chatting and decided they liked each other so we made plans to meet
again. After about our second session at Brownies Janet was approached by the leader and asked to take
over as she was returning to wherever she’d come from. Janet, being the girl who can’t say no agreed
and talked me, I also have difficulty with the word no, into helping her. So, we were both brownie leaders
without knowing the first thing about it!

Our friendship blossomed but nearly ended one Christmas when we had arranged to take the
Brownies carol singing to all the nursing homes in the area. Janet got sick, finishing up, as I recall, in
hospital, so I got stuck doing the rounds with a bunch of somewhat unruly girls. I got Carrie and Helen to
come along and help keep them in order and they were much more efficient than I!

Another time we took the girls on a weekend trip and were to stay overnight in a hostel which
was a converted stately home. It was a beautiful house with original staircase. The lady warden came

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