Part 12: A New Chapter In Life Long before the big move, a new phase of my life had also begun. I started school. In my school bag was a slate board, an arithmetic book, and a reading primer. A damp sponge and a cloth to dry the board dangled from two strings in the satchel.
Part 11: A Life For The Factory Our father had taken a courageous step and broken the eternal cycle of ‘once a miner, always a miner.’ He was now working in a distant plant as a chemical worker.
Part 10: I Want To Become A Train Driver Everything that was harvested, grandma had to boil down: Beans, strawberries, salsify, currants, gooseberries, everything. Potatoes, carrots, and cabbage were stored in the cellar.
Part 9: Cinema In The Village There were three bars in the village. In one of them, the dance hall had been converted into a cinema. The first silent films were shown here, and a little later the first UFA sound films, of course everything was still black and white.
Part 8: A Little Shopping Trip Friday was a special day. If my father had an early shift, he was already home in the afternoon with the week’s wages. My mother put on a pretty dress, Hannchen and the baby carriage were cleaned up, and I had to put on shoes and a clean shirt.
Part 7: Dogs Are Only Human Too It was a beautiful, warm Sunday. As always, we children had to put on our good Sunday clothes. For me, these were shoes, white knee socks with colorful pompons and the hated sailor suit made of a blue wool, with the big sailor collar that scratched so terribly, and I hated it.
Part 6: My Friend The Hairdresser Apart from a few septic tanks and cesspools, the sanitary and hygienic conditions in the village were catastrophic. There was no sewerage system, and no sewage treatment plants. Most of the village’s sewage ran down the streets and gutters into the creek.
Part 5: A Little Sibling It was in this very parlor that I woke up one morning. My grandmother had woken me up and told me that I now had a little sister. Probably my father had carried me into the room, because in the night with my mother the labor began.
Part 4: Pentecost Traditions Less noticed, the feast of Pentecost already began a few days earlier. There, the ordered Pentecost May – young birch trees – were distributed by horse-drawn wagon in the village. For this purpose, the Pentecost boys had divided themselves into several groups and drove from house to house.
Part 3: Harvest Moon In summer, the Polish harvester came with their families to bring in the harvest. The grandmother – the babushka – stayed in the barn with the smallest children, where everyone slept, and took care of the dinner.
