I started reading at an early age. Now, I know that a lot of you out there, might claim the same thing. I started at about age four. I was born during World War II, in April of 1942, back in the Stone Age in so far as technology goes. My dad told me that evening entertainment in those days consisted of listening to the radio or reading. We lived in Budapest, Hungary, which was a very sophisticated metropolis with numerous libraries and bookstores. So, my parents had a nice collection of current editions and classics as well, in the bookcase of our fourth story apartment. By 1944 winter, the war which had been raging all over the world, suddenly threatened our rather peaceful existence.
Adolph Hitler, the murderous leader of Nazi Germany forcibly took over our government and was running our country. Something no one had asked for. So, as the Christmas Holidays of 1944 came and went, the citizens of Budapest were warned that Stalin’s Army was but 25 kilometers from the city, ready to take out Hitler and his minions. As a momentary truce was declared, it gave Hitler a few days to escape with his tail between his legs. My parents decided that, just in case something went wrong, we could be stuck in the eye of the storm. So, it was time to get out of town. In the spring of 1945, we joined a long line of refugees heading for the Austrian border. Just like them, my parents had decided that it would be best to sit out the rest of the war, in a safer place. As we crossed the border, we were met by the US Army that promptly put us on a train to be transported to a refugee camp in Oberösterreich or Upper Austria, several hundred miles away.
Why the history lesson, you ask? Because, I was an only child. Up to this point in my life, I hadn’t read a single book. However, as we arrived in Upper Austria, at Schmitzberg Lager (Displaced Persons Camp) and had our new quarters assigned to us by the American Military, my parents started unpacking the bag and the suitcase they had brought along. My parents had tried to bring only important things that might be needed in our situation. My mother had brought along a small collection of jewelry she possessed along with some clothing. My dad’s suitcase was filled with important papers, such as their marriage license, our birth certificates and deed to our apartment, along with other documents. He also had stashed in the suitcase, his severance- pay from the company he had been working for, to the tune of 50,000 Pengös, equivalent to about $12,500, at the time (quite a chunk of change), until we crossed the Austrian border, just as the currency was being devalued. All that money wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on. We were not only homeless but now, broke as well!
Dad had somehow managed to line the bottom of the big suitcase with his favorite books. Now imagine, he had lugged that suitcase, all the way from Budapest to the Austrian border, about 200 miles, on foot. He must have really loved those books. As we settled in at the refugee camp, he would read them one after the other, until he got his hands on some newer volumes in trades. He also got his hands on some Hungarian children’s books and started reading them to me, until I got to be about four and I started reading some of the simpler books, all by myself. We lived at Schmitzberg Lager for four and a half years. There was no television and only a beat-up old radio to listen to, for the news. So, for entertainment in the evening, my father read, my mother read, and I tried to read; but thank goodness for picture books. Here, I must insert that the local Austrian administration decreed that even refugee children needed to learn the local language, German, so at age 5, I started attending a little Austrian kindergarten, for half a day. This is where I learned to read in German. And yes, “Hänsel und Grete” (Hansel and Gretel) was the first German book that I read. After that, it was “Schneewittchen und die Sieben Zwerge” or Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
After four and a half years at the at Schmitzberg Lager resort and spa, jobs opened up in Southern France and, mom and dad and George Junior hopped on a train to Cavillargues in the region of Languedoc-Roussillon, in the south of France. Auf wiedersehen Österreich, Vive la France!
With the new country, came a new language, new food and a new school. Within a month’s time, I was able to sing ‘Sur le Pont d’Avignon’ and a week later, ‘la Marseillaise’. Of-course this meant, I had learned to read French. It was in the spring of 1949. I was seven. I started reading the French books. At our new school, we also got introduced to poetry. One of the first ones we read and recited was ‘La Cigale et la Fourmi’ or the Grasshopper and the Ant by Jean de la Fontaine.
Unfortunately, our stay was cut short as the mine ran out of coal and all the men in the group of fifty who had decided to come on this venture, were now out of a job. The French Refugee Services started sending people to different parts of France as jobs were opening due to the loss of workers during the war. Again, my parents and a group of a dozen or so, were sent on their way to Algrange in the Moselle region of north-east France, close to the German border.
My father went to work in the local mine, and I was enrolled in the first grade at the Ecole Chemin des Dames elementary school, the very next day. Since I had already spent six months learning French in the south of France, I had no problem catching up with the rest of my little classmates. Even with all the homework, I always made time to read for fun. My parents and family friends would get me books for Christmas and birthdays. Early on, I started reading “Les Aventures de Tintin et Milou”which were hardbound editions of a comic book series about the exploits of a cub reporter, Tintin and his canine companion, Milou, beautifully illustrated by Hergé, in color. I sat in the corner of our little apartment and read, and reread Tintin’s adventure, until someone got me the next volume for Christmas. I eventually collected ten of these, and, I still have them, sixty-five years later.
As I got a bit older, I began reading some of the classics, such as Jules Verne’s Five Weeks in a balloon, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Center of the Earth and several of his other titles. On my eleventh birthday, my dad gave me Cyrano de Bergerac, by Edmond Rostand. I wasn’t crazy about this particular book, at first. It was a bit difficult to comprehend for an eleven-year-old. The book was written in verse, because originally, it had been a play, and some of it, I just didn’t get. If you’ve never heard of Cyrano de Bergerac, it’s a story of this famous, invincible swordsman from 17th century Paris, who had this rather large proboscis, you know, schnoz. He lived for swashbuckling and ended the lives of many arrogant challengers. I don’t want to tell you how it ends, just in case you might want to read it.
Except for the occasional movie, we spent most of our weekend evenings, reading and listening to the radio. Here again, there was no television. That is probably why I learned to visualize the stories I was reading. Lounging on our bed (we didn’t own a sofa) I would read for hours. Had my parents not dragged me off the bed, I might have forgotten to eat.
Along with my Tintin collection, I started getting books from the Bibliotheque Verte or Green Library. This was a publisher of reasonably priced books by Jules Verne as well as Victor Hugo, Hammond Innes, Eckmann Chatrian, Honoré de Balzac and numerous others, edited for young readers. When it came time to pack my suitcase for our move to the United States, I was fourteen, and decided that instead of a bunch of my other stuff, I would bring my favorite books. Besides, I had outgrown most of my clothes and our sponsors in the States wrote my parents that there would be plenty of new clothes for me when we got here. So, pretty much outside of some clean underwear and shirts, my suitcase contained all my Tintins, a dozen Green Library books, plus a nice edition of Le Dernier des Mohicans (the Last of the Mohicans), Cyrano de Bergerac and Trois Bonds dan la Jungle (Three leaps in the Jungle) a book that, I had won in an art contest. I also liked to draw and still do.
All those books that I brought with me from France, you can still find in my bookcase, along with a couple hundred other titles that I have acquired over the years. In addition, I have several boxes filled with books, sitting on the shelves in our garage. And by the way, every book on all the shelves in our house, I have read, except maybe for a couple titles. “After all, what’s a book good for, if it ain’t been read?”
Now, where am going with all this book reading, you ask? After having read a couple thousand titles, perhaps more, over the years, I decided that I could probably write one of my own. I always liked to write, and for one of my Sociology papers as I was working on my BSBA (Bachelor of Science in Business Administration) degree from the University of San Francisco, I wrote a forty-pager, detailing our fourteen years of wandering, following our escape from Budapest. My plan had been to use this forty-pager as a basis for the book that I would finally write, entitled DISPLACED.
However, when it came time to sit down and start writing my story, I couldn’t find my 40-pager; so, I had to start with a blank sheet of paper. I had read several articles on writing a memoir or autobiography and how long it should be. The consensus of opinions was that, it should be no longer than around two hundred. I started with an introduction, which took about a dozen pages. Then, I got a ‘Writer’s Block’. Where the heck, was I going to come up with a hundred and eighty more pages? So, I went back to my beginnings and broke up my narrative into small chapters; in effect, like writing short stories. This way, I never felt the pressure of worrying about how long my book was going to be. I had it all broken up into manageable segments.
Now that I had worked out a plan, I set about implementing the project. I have rather clear memories of my early childhood, my formative years, growing up in Austria, then France and eventually in the United States. I started writing in earnest and before I realized it, I had produced upwards of 300 pages, wow!
I wanted lots of pictures. As a camera was not always available, I decided to create a few illustrations for events in my life, of which no photographs could be found. I eventually got my very first camera for Christmas of 1956, in Berkeley. It was a gift from our sponsors: a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye, an awfully long name, for a very simple, little, box camera. And, let me tell you, I put a lot of 620 film through it, which produced 4-inch by 4-inch images; a couple of which actually appear in my book. I eventually got to the point where I had enough drawings and photographs, so, I thought I had better get back and finish my story.
I wrote for a couple months until I felt that I had a complete and comprehensive manuscript that covered all the events of my early life and my family’s uprooting from one location to moving to another. A good friend, Karen went through my manuscript and did an excellent job of editing this first cut. I corrected all the errors she had found and then, I of course proceeded to add another five chapters. Finally, one day, my wife Bonnie came to stand by my computer and said, “Haven’t you written enough? Maybe it’s time to get your book published before the end of the century!”
I felt that my final cut was a masterpiece, in my mind. My first edition, published by Alive Book Publishing, contains 411 pages, nicely divided into 42 chapters with a whole array of personal photographs and my 12 pen and ink illustrations. Eric Johnson and the Alive Publishing Team created a great cover and final layout for my ‘masterpiece’.
I’m very proud of my accomplishment and am happy to report that just about every friend I have on planet earth has purchased a copy on Amazon.com.
When I originally came up with the idea for this project, I really wasn’t certain that it would ever get it done, let alone get it published. But, once I started, I kept at it and finally I can see my book in my bookcase, alongside volumes by some of the luminaries of the world of literature like Robert B. Parker, Tony Hillerman, William Shakespeare, Tom Bodett, Rush Limbaugh, Robert Heinlein, Bill O’Reilly, Erich von Däniken and Graham Hancock among others.
In those dark and dreary days after World War II, I really don’t know what I would have done without my books to keep me company and to transport me to distant worlds, where I could get lost in the special effects created by my own imagination. Or simply, get a few laughs, when that’s what was needed. Will I ever be as good as some of those famous authors? Who knows? Actually, who cares? I am going to keep on writing and of course reading, because there are a lot of books out there that I haven’t read yet.
So, if you think you have a story to tell, don’t wait around like I did. Start writing it down, while it’s fresh in your mind. Once you start writing, you will realize that it isn’t even that difficult. And, don’t worry about spelling and composition, or what somebody else might think about it. Write from the heart! Write your story to satisfy you. When you’re all done writing it, then you can decide if and when, you want to see it published, so that you can see it on your bookshelf alongside all the other famous authors.
When I got done with DISPLACED, I was very happy with it and proud to have done it. My wife Bonnie liked it too. That made me even happier. Many friends and relatives have read it, and they all liked it too. The reason they liked it, they told me was, because it sounded like I was speaking to them directly. Before I finally talked to ALIVE Book Publishing, I had actually talked to six or seven other publishers who had all given me advice that, in retrospect, would have totally destroyed my dream and changed the final product into a skinny, 200 page story that wouldn’t have sounded anything like what I had envisioned. So, I got it done my way and now, it’s in my bookcase and I am quite proud of it.
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