More Stories From Berlin

More Stories From Berlin Berlin, 1983. One day I was at a field house and had just finished a basketball game. I must have been all of nine. That year I scored four whole points. That's how good I was. I showered, dressed, and left the locker room with my gear and as they say in the South, I was fixin' to go home. The place was packed with over 2000 screaming people because the Army men were having a tournament. They were going up and down the court, scoring, rebounding, passing. There was a circle of kids off to the side in the crowded gym and all I heard was them saying "You do it," "I'm not going to do it," "How 'bout you do it?" They were a bit older than me but I wanted to be cool and fit in so I said, "I'll do it." They turned as a unit and showed me the object of their attention. A whistle. "Blow it," one said. That was all I needed to hear. I puffed my cheeks out and blew it as hard as I could. And the game on the court came to a dead halt. The guy dribbling the ball stopped and looked incredulously at the ref. The ref looked back at him and shrugged his shoulders, his palms up, as if to say,"I didn't do it." All my new friends pointed at me and said, "He did it!" Well, the ref said to the players, "I'll be right back." He walked over, took the whistle, and escorted me to the door, in front of all those people, and before I knew it I was outside and on my way home. Earlier than I thought. Hard way to learn a lesson. I lived in Whilhelmshaven, Hamburg & Berlin at the height of the Cold War. How cold? We had tanks, that's right tanks, motoring down the avenue outside our apartment building. You could see them from my living room window. The first time that happened it was kinda scary. But it happened so much I got used to it. One day there was a conference that the East Germans weren't invited to. No big deal, right? Wrong. All day MIG jet fighters were in the sky breaking the sound barrier and shattering windows. Scary again. John F. Kennedy came to Berlin, back in '63. Remember the "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech? It was then. There was a big crowd lining the streets to catch a glimpse of his motorcade and I was in that crowd. There were policemen everywhere and wooden barriers that you weren't supposed to cross. A white guy said to me, with a smile, "You should see your president," and held me up high above the people. I was a young black kid. I wonder if that would happen today. There's an addendum to that story. This happened five months later. The cities mentioned and Berlin is six hours ahead of New York. So right before bed time I'm in the tub taking my nightly bath. I was busy pouring Ajax into the water to give the appearance of the water being dirty. Why I didn't just take the bath is something that only a nine year old understands. Real life intruded, the President had been assassinated. When you're nine, news like that doesn't usually affect you. Here's how it affected me. The story came over the radio at my house and caused quite a commotion. My father upon hearing the news rushed past the open bathroom door on the way to his bedroom. Sounds came out of that room. He was sobbing. It was the first time I heard my father cry. Berlin There's been a lot of talk lately about a wall. Let me tell you about my experience with a different one. The Berlin Wall. Berlin, Germany. I used to live in Berlin. I also lived in other parts of Germany namely Whilhelmshaven ( land's End) and Hamburg. My father was in the Air Force and that's why we moved there. It wasn't the first time we lived in Germany. When I was little John, John-john or Johnny we lived in a town called Zweibrucken. That's German for "two bridges" and my younger sister, Karen, was born there. Some of my earliest memories are of that time. Think hard of your first recollections. It almost hurts. It's like seeing everything through a haze, through a curtain. At least that's how it is for me. So, Berlin. We moved there in 1982. There were six Silvas when we arrived. When we left there were eight, I had two new brothers. Talk about a stranger in a strange land. Some streets were cobblestone, I had never seen that before. The mark was their dollar and when I was there it was four of them for one dollar of ours. My allowance was a dollar a week. Guess who was always converting dollars to marks? I would spend all my allowance on gummi bears and sweet treats from the bakery. Television was new and we didn't have one. That's where reading took hold and I read everything. Well not everything, things that a kid would read. Mad magazine, the Hardy Boys, Chip Hilton, Tom Swift. Don't tell anyone but I even read Nancy Drew books. I read "The Call of the Wild" by Jack London. It's set in Canada during the Klondike Gold Rush and introduces you to a dog named Buck. I know, I know, too much information, but I remember shivering from the cold, in July, because of that book. It was the first time I played baseball in little league. There was a German kid named Roman in my school. His mom would give him a Schmaltz sandwich for lunch every day. Schmaltz is chicken or goose fat used as a spread on bread and he hated it. I did not. I bet you know who ate his lunch every day. There was a park behind our apartment building, Berlin was full of pretty, green, parks. People would walk through it holding hands sometimes, deep in conversation at other times, or just saying nothing. You weren't allowed to ride your bikes there, you were supposed to walk them. Right. We would ride ours, laughing the whole time. The older park ranger would shake his fist, yell at us in German, and chase us on his bike. It was on. Great fun for us kids. The Wall. You know the story. One day there was no wall the next day there was. People who just happened to visit their boyfriend, their girlfriend, their family, and spent the night in what became known as East Berlin, were trapped and could not go back home. Eventually of course the wall was torn down around President Reagen's tenure. "Ich bin ein Berliner" and "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this Wall." The Berlin Wall (German: Berliner Mauer) was a guarded concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. Constructed by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany), starting on 13 August 1961, the Wall cut off (by land) West Berlin from virtually all of surrounding East Germany and East Berlin until government officials opened it in November 1989. Its demolition officially began on 13 June 1990 and finished in 1992. The barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, accompanied by a wide area (later known as the "death strip") that contained anti-vehicle trenches, "fakir beds" and other defenses. The Eastern Bloc portrayed the Wall as protecting its population from fascist elements conspiring to prevent the "will of the people" in building a socialist state in East Germany. In practice, the Wall served to prevent the massive emigration and defection that had marked East Germany and the communist Eastern Bloc during the post-World War II period. I'd never heard of anything like that. The Brandenburg Gate The Brandenburg Gate (German: Brandenburger Tor) is an 18th-century neoclassical monument in Berlin, built on the orders of Prussian king Frederick William II after the (temporarily) successful restoration of order during the early Batavian Revolution.[1] One of the best-known landmarks of Germany, it was built on the site of a former city gate that marked the start of the road from Berlin to the town of Brandenburg an der Havel, which used to be capital of the Margraviate of Brandenburg. It is located in the western part of the city centre of Berlin within Mitte, at the junction of Unter den Linden and Ebertstraße, immediately west of the Pariser Platz. One block to the north stands the Reichstag building, which houses the German parliament (Bundestag). The gate is the monumental entry to Unter den Linden, the renowned boulevard of linden trees, which led directly to the royal City Palace of the Prussian monarchs. Throughout its existence, the Brandenburg Gate was often a site for major historical events and is today considered not only as a symbol of the tumultuous history of Europe and Germany, but also of European unity and peace. People in a state of shock that their brother, their mother, their good friend, was on the other side of that wall. I do remember going to the Brandenburg Gate on a field trip from school. There were wreaths in places along the Wall where people had been shot trying to escape. They had wooden platforms where you could look over the Wall into East Berlin and I did. I saw nothing moving as far as the eye could see. I remember thinking, even as a kid, "How could the streets be empty, how could nothing be moving?" Not even a bird flying. An image that has stayed with me forever.