JUST A MEMORY OR TWO

During the autumn of 1969 I would walk to the Rexall drugstore to catch the bus to Community College 20 miles to the north. There was a bench in front of the store. Usually there were only a small handful of students. This was my freshman year. 

One morning, I was the only student there. An old man came and sat down beside me. He wore walking shorts with a faded jacket the kind you typically wear with a suit. On his feet were socks & sandals. The toe of each sock had a hole. I've seen this before and since on others. I've always found it simultaneously sad and disturbing.     

We chatted; I told him that I was a new student at the college.

"I'm a graduate of the University of Heidelberg," he said with pride.

This was the university of Student Prince fame. I loved the movie with Edward Purdom & Ann Blythe! I figured he must have been a student during the 1920's since Hitler came to power in 1933 and it wouldn't have been a good place for an American.

Looking at him I wondered what terrible thing must have befallen him. A graduate of such a famous university should not end up on a bench looking like a hobo.

Soon, 2 other students appeared and our conversation ceased. The bus arrived shortly after.

Fast-forward 9 years, I was in Heidelberg myself. This is where I caught the ferry for the Rhine-Neckar river cruise; one that would pass the infamous Lorelei cliff where sailors were lured to their doom by a siren. I was already familiar with the story.

During my last year of Junior High, everyone in English class was required to memorize a poem and recite it. I chose The Lorelei by Heinrich Heine. In the days following, several classmates approached to ask where I found such a beautiful poem. Actually it was right inside our English textbook amongst many others! They had just overlooked it.

Years later, I learned there are several different translations of this Heinrich Heine poem. However the one in my English textbook is by far the most haunting.

In Heidelberg, I thought of that old man I met briefly nearly a decade before. And I thought of him again as I passed the Lorelei rock and began reciting the poem in my mind: "I cannot tell why this imagined sorrow has fallen upon me, the ghost of an unburied legend that will not let me be."

Life is filled with twists and turns, sometimes your entire world can be pulled out from under you without warning.