All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true. One guy i knew really was shot in Dresden for taking a teapot that wasn't his. Another guy i knew really did threaten to have his personal enemies killed by hired gunmen after the war. And so on. I've changed all the names.
I really did go back to Dresden with Guggenheim money (God love it) in 1967. It looked a lot like Dayton, Ohio, more open spaces than Dauton has. There must be tons of human bone meal in the ground.
I went back there with an old war buddy, Bernard V. O'Hare, and we made friends with a cab driver, who took us to the sloughterhouse where we had been locked up at night as prisonders of war. His name was Gerhard Muller. He told us that he was a prisoner of the Americans for a while. We asked him how it was to live under Communism, and he said that it was terribile at first, because everybody had to work so hard, and because there wasn0t much shelter or food or clothing. But things were much better now. He had a pleasant little apartment, and his daughter was getting an excellent education. His mother was incinerated in the Dresden fire-storm. So it goes.
He sent O'Hare a postcard at Christmastime, and there is what it said:
"I wish you and yourfamily also as to your friend Merry Christmas and a happy New Year and i hope that se'll meet again in a world of peace and freedom in the taxi cab if the accident will."
I like that very much: "if the accident will".
Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut.
I really did go back to Dresden with Guggenheim money (God love it) in 1967. It looked a lot like Dayton, Ohio, more open spaces than Dauton has. There must be tons of human bone meal in the ground.
I went back there with an old war buddy, Bernard V. O'Hare, and we made friends with a cab driver, who took us to the sloughterhouse where we had been locked up at night as prisonders of war. His name was Gerhard Muller. He told us that he was a prisoner of the Americans for a while. We asked him how it was to live under Communism, and he said that it was terribile at first, because everybody had to work so hard, and because there wasn0t much shelter or food or clothing. But things were much better now. He had a pleasant little apartment, and his daughter was getting an excellent education. His mother was incinerated in the Dresden fire-storm. So it goes.
He sent O'Hare a postcard at Christmastime, and there is what it said:
"I wish you and yourfamily also as to your friend Merry Christmas and a happy New Year and i hope that se'll meet again in a world of peace and freedom in the taxi cab if the accident will."
I like that very much: "if the accident will".
Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut.
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