Part 45: Restless In The Village In this daily village monotony, most residents paid no attention to the profound changes currently taking place in postwar Germany. The three western occupation zones carried out the currency reform with the approval of the Allies.
Part 44: A Summer Of Exploration After the exciting entrance exam, I put on my wooden shoes again the other day and reported back to the cherry orchard. Until school started in the fall, there was a summer’s worth of time to do all the things I felt responsible for since Father was gone.
Part 43: Unexpectedly Facing The Entrance Exam I had left school behind me. There was no lack of work but finding an apprenticeship in a car repair shop according to my secret wishes was virtually hopeless. There were not enough cars in the vicinity and consequently no workshops.
Part 42: Cigarettes And Clandestine Business The old plant where father worked again was now called ‘Soviet Joint Stock Company.’ The synthetic raw rubber and all other products went to the Soviet Union mainly as reparations.
Part 41: Herring Hustle My school dismissal was coming up. The locals were not particularly religious, but weddings and school dismissals without church were unthinkable. So I was to be confirmed like all the other school leavers.
Part 40: A Clandestine Nocturnal Operation The plan was quickly conceived: The terraced garden that belonged to Hans’ parents’ house was at the foot of the village hill. The dismantled walls and doors could be dragged unseen from the mountain into the garden at night. Freshly we set to work.
Part 39: The Old Forester While picking cherries, I unexpectedly met my new teacher. He was standing under the cherry tree with his hunter’s hat and chamois beard. Bright blue eyes flashed under his hat. A full gray beard covered his face. The worn green hunter’s outfit had seen better days.
Part 38: Cherry Time In the first warm days of spring, nature around the village turned into an endless white sea of flowers. It seemed as if fresh snow had fallen overnight. Below the edge of the forest, cherry trees blossomed as far as the eye could see.
Part 37: Childhood Joys and Dangers The little free time we children had was extremely poor. There was no sports field in the village and no rubber or leather ball. We played barefoot soccer in the yard with balls tied together with rags and string.
Part 36: Potato Vacations And Rabbit Breeding Most of the harvest help fell during the summer vacations, it did not so much diminish the lessons, but our free time. The autumn vacations were called ‘potato vacations’ anyway, which meant that we had to help vigorously with the harvest of this especially important food.
