Eberhard Dolch

This is Eberhard (Ebb) Dolch, retired optometrist from Indianapolis, as I met him a while ago, wearing his leather jacket and hat with the insignias of the 23rd Division "Americal", a proud Vietnam veteran (his full unit designation: 11th Infantry brigade, 4th battalion, 1st infantry). We sat, he had club-soda, slice of lime and I had Jack and Coke and Ebb told me his story. He was drafted in May 1967, went to Ft. Bliss, TX for basic training and deployed later that year to the 23rd in 'Nam. I asked if he knew anybody in the 3rd Infantry Regiment who was ”involved”. He became very defensive and said: ”what a shame that my buddies were smeared by those ”peaceniks”, good that justice prevailed and all unbased charges were dropped. Even when they got Lt. Calley as scapegoat and sentenced him to life, Nixon let him go”. Ebb was much happier to talk about the GI Bill and how he went to Ilium College in Eastern New York to study optometry. His family was originally from Dresden and Billy Pilgrim, professor at the college, had spent time in that city and knew it well. Ebb asked him if he knew Metzger Strasse 5, the location of the original Dolch Butcher Shop, but Billy was stuck. He later became unstuck in time, so it goes.

Hannah Caro (Diamond)

This is Hannah whoruns the "Das Caro", a pub on Caroline-Michaelis-Straße.

You cannot meet a sweeter kid: clever, hardworking and talented: just a beautiful person. We had beers and she told me her story. One night, after she threw out the last stragglers and locked the pub she started towards home and, as it was a warm evening, she decided to walk. Her playlist going, she heard behind her a strange loud noise, like a series of bangs and scrapes. When she turned, she saw a huge dark shape or shadow. She thought it looked a little like a dragon and when it started rising, she realized that it was indeed a dragon in aggressive stance: glowing eyes, large mouth full of teeth and scales all over down to the fishtail. Hannah is not intimidated easily, she shouted: "Get lost Fafnir!!!" and took out her can of trusted Ballistol Pepper Spray upon which the silly dragon instantly dissolved into nothingness. The number 12 street car direction Pasadagplatz was just slowing to stop so Hannah ran for it. Once aboard, breathless from the effort she showed the driver her pass and sank on a seat in the empty car. Rely on Berliner drivers to be funny: "Rennst wie du 'nen Drachen jesehen hast." Still panting Hannah replied: "Denkste?"

Gigi Roth

This is Gigi Roth as I met her the other day at the Art Gallery of Ontario. She was making notes on her favorite painter: Cornelius Krieghoff. We went for coffee and I started telling her what a crappy painter Krieghoff actually is; Gigi was very upset and defensive. Turns out she is a believior ... there is nothing anyone can say or do to convince her otherwise than what she believes (like the Smofpses of Atlanta, who believe that inside our earth is another earth with a diameter eighteen times larger than the external one or like those who believe that Ștrumpf won the 2020 election). Gigi is delightful and nice but just a tad gullible: about four years ago, at a party, she met this guy Michael and when she told him that her mother left her $15,000, he said "Put it all in Bitcoin!" and she did. A few months ago, when she looked it up, she had more that nine hundred grand. Gigi immediately cashed in and bought that mountain bike she always wanted, then, went to the Toronto Humane Society and rescued a dog (William) and a cat (Oscar) both chipped and neutered.  

Mel and his Many Talents

There was this older, thin, slightly stooped guy that I saw in neighborhood grocery stores. We always nodded  "How you doin?" one day we went for coffee. His name is Mel, he lives alone, a retired book keeper who said he was a very boring person with a very boring life but has talents, one: excellent shoplifter, two: very clever with witty, come-back lines. 

Wasn't he afraid to be caught? "They'll never catch me, I am really good". I could tell he was dying to share something and asked him his story: He was working at an  accounting firm involved in vote counting for the film festival and his boss asked him to "assist with the awards". It was a coveted assignment for junior staff. You went with the boss to carry the shiny brown leather briefcase with the sealed envelopes. "Wear your best suit, be here at seven!" A limo was waiting, Mel took the case and the "All Access + BACKSTAGE" pass with his name and picture and sat with the boss in the car. At the hall they took the side entrance to the "Green Room". It was large and very bright, full of people around tables with expensive looking food and exotic deserts. Waiters in white gloves and black ties walked around with trays of drinks. Mel sat on a couch by the door and the boss "mingled". A pretty waitress asked "Anything to drink?", he whispered "Just coffee". He felt somebody sitting down next to him and when he turned, he almost spilled his cup: it was the great Alida Venti multiple winner of Best Actress Award. She seemed smaller, older and wearing more make up than on-screen. "Hello, I am Alida Venti from Verona, nice to meet you, how is the coffee here?" She was smiling and talking to him! Mel choked, he  managed: "Just coffee". He saw the boss, eyes bulging, fighting the crowd making his way towards them. A loud group burst in:  "Andiamo Alida" she stood up just when the boss got there to hear her say "Ciao caro!" "You talked to Alida Venti?! She called you caro?!" Mel told him that Alida introduced herself and said that she is from Verona. "And what did you say?" Mel said he told her that everybody knew who she was and that he watched all her movies many times and he thought her to be magnificent. "That was clever, Mel". Somebody called and the boss turned  "Let's go!", Mel ran behind him with the briefcase. "The case! Wait here!" Mel stood against the wall, heard the murmur of the crowd and saw people with headsets busy in the half-shadows. There was applause and gasps and shouts and music and applause again over and over, Alida and a bunch of others rushed past laughing and holding shiny little statues. He waited for a long time: things settled and it was quiet when he asked a guy if he knew where his boss was "Everybody left". Mel found the stage exit and took the bus home. The next morning he proudly hung his precious backstage pass in his cubicle as people came to ask  how it went. The boss emerged from the elevator and told a stunned audience how Mel had a tête-à-tête with Alida Venti on a couch and how Mel came up with really clever lines. 

Mel turned to me: "This was the highlight of my very boring life", then stood up looking for the right bin to throw his empty coffee cup. A tall blond girl said: "Can you move already?!" Mel came back to the table saying in a sarcastic tone "Was there anywhere a 'please' that I didn't quite hear?" He had a shy smile when he said: "See? I always come back with a clever, witty line ... but late".

Jancsi and the Legend of the Air Beast

I meet Jancsi every Thursdays at ten in the admin office on the ground floor to borrow the cart to deliver food to Parkdale Foodbank clients in the building. He is a big guy (at least 300 lbs.) of an age difficult to guess (I'd say thirty something to fifty something) with masses of dark hair covering his face and head. He also has remarkably small feet. His English is grammatically excellent and he has a perplexingly rich vocabulary all spoiled by his atrocious Hungarian accent. We say ”Hi!” and load the boxes from the trunk of my car onto the cart and go to the elevator. I used to start at the top floor working my way down but when I was paired with Jancsi he insisted we deliver in ascending order, I am easy, so this is how we do it: unit 103 first and 909, on the ninth floor,  last. Then we take the empty cart to the elevator, punch the down button and wait. Inevitably we end up looking at the dirty sign: ”EXIT AIR BEAST”. Jancsi jokes (I cannot tell if is German, Hungarian, English or his combination of the three) so I nod and smile to get the few seconds I need to untangle the words from his messy pronunciation. He usually quotes Schiller's Fiesco's Conspiracy at Genoa: ”The Moor has done his work—the Moor may go" He says: disappear, exit like us, the Air Beasts. We take the cart back to the office and say ”So long, until next week, yeah?”. Yesterday Jancsi stared at the so familiar sign for a long time and then started scratching the lower left-hand corner of the cardboard with his fingernail. In time, the grimy paper peeled off to reveal the surprising full original text: ”EXIT STAIR B EAST --->” Janci grabbed his heart and cried out: ”Jaj, Istenem!” and we laughed all the way to the office

Murad et Grand-père

This young man approached me to ask where to dispose of his banana peel, I showed him the nearby rubbish bin and asked his name, he was Murad Piez, severely myopic refusing to wear glasses as he thought to see the world as God intended him to see it. His voice was unusually high and melodious reminding of the Barry Gibb falsetto. When I asked if he is the singer of "The Ziegenzwischenwirtshaft" he was astonished to be recognized and by my so correct pronunciation.

We had coffee and he told me his story going back to his grandfather Zbigniew Piez: in the south-central Polish village Kraśnica of his birth, rumors started that Zbigniew was a wizard who poisons the water in wells (and should be burnt at stake - is how Catholics were known to fix this). His friend, the dentist, told him that they actually just want to take his goats. The following week when Zbigniew took his fourteen goats to the fair, he couldn't find buyers even at very lowest of prices. That night he killed the goats, threw their carcasses into as many wells he could and walked to near city of Konin where he jumped a freight train to Gdansk. He signed up on a ship to work for his fare anywhere. He landed in Halifax, Canada where he found work loading beer barrels at a brewery. In time, married the brewer's daughter, bought a house and a few goats (never more than fourteen); he had a son he called Murad who also had a son who was also called Murad. Murad (père) studied economics and ran the brewery he inherited very successfully. Zbigniew, on his deathbed, gave Murad (fils), a piece of paper saying "this is the secret of my life". It contained only one word: Ziegenzwischenwirtschaft. So Murad just had fun, wrote songs and used that word to name the alt-rock band he founded. They played along the Eastern Seaboard and had a small but dedicated fan-base. When I told Murad what the word actually meant, he stopped smiling, turned and walked away without a word.

About six months later I saw Murad on Letterman talking about signing with a major label, his band's number on hit and about his book (#1 NYT list) based on the life of his grandfather.

Charlie Melfort

This is Klaus-Heinz Frischzeit (*2 April 1922, Trier, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany – †1 July 2010, Melfort, Saskatchewan, Canada), I never met him, but I know his story from Burt Melfort, who also supplied the picture, but let me start at the beginning:

Klaus-Heinz turned eighteen in 1940 and fell desperately in love with Gertrud, wife of his much older brother Klaus-Werner, who had a son of fourteen named Hans. In an act of incalculable cruelty Klaus-Heinz killed his brother, who was sleeping in the backyard, by trusting in his ear a very sharp thin dark hardwood stick he found in the attic. There was no blood, no sign of external injury and the doctors concluded "natural causes". When Gertrud rejected Karl-Heinz' awkward advances and "Uncle Hans" became suspicious almost violent, even pretending to see his father's ghost, Karl-Heinz, in another bout of irrational anguish, went to the recruiting office and enrolled in the Wehrmacht. He went first to France and then to Northern Africa where he was captured by the Allies and sent to the POW Camp in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. Pretending to have farming skills and waiving his rights under the Geneva Convention, Karl-Heinz became a labourer in the rural community of Melfort, Saskatchewan. In 1946 when German POWs returned to (the now divided) Germany, the British government allowed him to stay as he married Ophelia, youngest daughter of Paul Danmark, his employer.  His name was unpronounceable to all around him, so he changed it officially and picked Melfort as a nod to the host community, first-name Charlie, what people called him anyway. The Melforts had five children who had children of their own: Burt was the eldest and Charlie's unabashedly favourite grand-son. One dark summer night, sitting on the porch looking out to nowhere, Charlie, by now in his eighties, told his story and showed Burt the sharp polished dark hardwood stick that he kept all these years. "Burt, meboy, this is where's y'all comes from!".