Childhood memories- part 1

Speaking of roots, here are a few stories from my childhood. I was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, in 1956 as the oldest of four children, and lived there for about a year with my mother and aunt. By the time my sister Anette was born 14 months later Mom, Dad, and I lived in Offenbach. After World War II housing was scarce, and so three separate families shared a two-bedroom inner-city apartment. My parents with their two children occupied the living room, since it was the biggest space. An elderly couple lived in one of the bedrooms and a single person in the other. The kitchen was used by all the tenants.

In 1960 the family, now with three children, moved to a new housing development situated in the Offenbach suburbs, the Hans-Boeckler Siedlung. At that time, the neighborhood still had a "country feel" to it, complete with fields and tractors. Each apartment building had two entries and five floors; a total of twenty apartments. The twenty buildings, complete with a playground and a grocery store, were our "village". My father hated "people dancing on his head", so we lived on the top floor, without an elevator. Most apartments were heated with coal stoves, so every so often the coal truck would come by, and very dirty men lugged huge sacks to our building and dumped the coal into the basements through small windows near the ground. Atop the center building was a loud sirene used for periodic "ABC" bomb alarms and fire drills.

Our lives were enriched by various colorful characters. The "Lumpensammler"or rag collector regularly gathered the natural fiber clothing too worn out to mend. Some also collected old iron and other metal items. During the warmer months Herr Strohl, the ice cream man, stopped by each afternoon after school was out. The white box on his motorcycle was filled with paper ice cream cups in several flavors. Small cups cost 20 Pfennigs, and large one thirty. Each cup came with a tiny wooden paddle to use as a spoon. Herr Strohl was very popular with all the kids, even though we could only talk our parents out of the needed cash once every few weeks. He often laughed and talked to us, obviously enjoying his work. Herr Strohl always wore a chef's jacket and a tall white chef's hat, and his hand bell was a kids' delight.

Near each house was a metal frame used for beating rugs. Carpet sweepers and vacuums were still a rarity then, and most people used reed carpet beaters. So each week we had to roll up our scratchy sisal rugs, lug them down all those flights of stairs, throw them over the frame, and beat them. Carpet beating was mostly a kids' chore. In the meantime, our mom would mop the floors, apply paste wax, and polish them. This was before the days of "streak-free shine".