Schwäbisch Gmünd and The Day The Third Graders Rebelled

We're having a snow day here, so I figured I might as well re-post this story from a few years back about the best snow day I ever had.

There's a bit of a lead in, so bear with me.

*****

When I was 7 years old, my dad was stationed in Germany the first time, a little town called Schwäbisch Gmünd near Stuttgart in the southerly part of what was then West Germany.

It was 1966 when we got there, Pops was just back from his tour in the Cav. He was the very first person stationed there that had been to Viet Nam, which made him a minor celebrity.

Now the military layout was a small Kaserne (or garrison) on the top of the hill and a slightly larger one right on the edge of the town down the hill, separated by a mile or so. There was a small housing area at the top of the hill also, where we lived.

Hardly anybody drove anywhere. Everything was within walking distance so even those that had cars used them so seldom that half the time when you did want to drive somewhere, you had to get a jump from somebody. We had a Rambler station wagon until Pops loaned it to somebody and ended up fucking it up when the Russians closed the Czech border in ’68. I’m not sure of the entire story but it involved getting the guy’s girlfriend out before the border was sealed or so I was later told. It obviously worked because he came back but we never saw that Rambler again.

The German townspeople there were very kind and friendly and were treated the same in return. It wasn’t uncommon for families of Germans and Americans to dine over at each other’s homes, and I think I had more German friends than I did American. It did cut down on the arguing about who was going to be the German soldiers when we played Army. What’s amazing about their friendliness now that I think back on it is the fact that WWII had only been over 21 years, but there was no animosity from anybody. But then, the town didn’t look like there was much war damage although the 2 kasernes took some shelling and the scars were still plainly visible on the buildings.

Anyways, it was a magical place to grow up. Kids ran freely all over the fucking place without a care, adults kept an eye on the kids, there was a huge wooded area behind our quarters that was full of WWII bomb and mortar craters and foxholes and the occasional dud grenade or mortar. Lots and lots of spent cases. We spent hours down there.

There was no TV at all and only one American radio station. If you wanted to be entertained, you were pretty much on your own. You went outside and played. You might listen to Gunsmoke on the radio. You read a book and if you can’t find something interesting at home then you hiked your ass down to the school library which was never locked and checked yourself out a book, dutifully noting it in the register in cursive handwriting.

We played. We socialized with each other, we had ball games at the school, we rode our bikes down the hill behind the school unless it was covered in snow then we sledded it. Our parents took us places and showed us things and it was not uncommon at all to have 3-4 neighbor kids crammed into that Rambler when Pops wanted to go castle touring.

We didn’t have a phone so we never called home but we damned sure knew when we heard Retreat being played on post it was time to call in the dogs, piss on the fire and head for the Big House because supper will be served in a half hour.

In the winter, it snowed. It snowed a lot. We’d get 3 feet in a heartbeat, just about up to my neck at the time. And there was a great sledding hill behind the school – it was long as fuck and had 3 different slopes from real gentle to medium to HOLYFUCKINGSHIT steep. Hey, it was a long enough slope that some folks skied it, a couple hundred yards or better, I bet. I know to a 7-year-old kid on a sled that motherfucker was miles long.

*

That hill almost fucked us one time though – we got a new principal, and he decided that if all us kids would brave a blowing snowstorm to go sledding behind the school, then we could also walk to that very same school and sit in a classroom during the aforementioned blowing snowstorm. So, he cancelled our snow day, the bastard. Our Friday snow day. That was a bitch move, bro. 

Now if that wasn’t bad enough, the older kids from the 7th grade on up were bussed to Stuttgart or someplace so they got their motherfucking snow days. But us little snot nosed knuckledraggers? We had to go to school. And to make it worse yet, about 9 o’clock the kids that didn’t have to go to school started showing up at the sledding hill, and boy, were they having fun. We could fucking see them, man.

So Recess rolls around and there’s rumblings that they’re going to make us stay inside and play dodgeball or some such shit which immediately caused a couple of the kids normally chosen as targets to start that sissy ass whining again. 

What??? Dodgeball? “Fuck no, we ain’t playin’ dodgeball. That’s a rainy day game and it ain’t raining. It’s snowing. Half of us drug our sleds to school for recess and we’re going outside. Fuck you Mr Wilson. You too, Miss Crandall. Get out of our way” was pretty much what everybody was thinking. When the bell rang, everybody jumped up for a stampede to the cloakroom and then outside. The only ones left were Mr Wilson, Miss Crandall and the class suckass who was dutifully clapping erasers on the fire escape.

That was The Day The Third Graders Rebelled but the story ain’t over yet.

We figured that at long as we we’re already in trouble, we might as well go large. We didn’t go back. Fuck ’em. The bell rang and we didn’t even acknowledge it. It wasn’t anything we planned, it just happened that way – or didn’t happen. Whatever. As soon as we got out there we were joined by the older brothers and sisters that were already there, plus we picked up a few miscreants and ne’er-do-wells from some of the other classes, so our numbers were pretty sizable. And with size comes false security.

They called our fathers. At work. Oh shit oh dear.

One of us noticed some guys dressed in green trudging up the hill from Bismark Kaserne about the time the dads that worked at Hardt Kaserne were showing up behind us. They had called out the military and we had become complacent and allowed ourselves to become surrounded in a classic enveloping movement – advance from two directions, flank, and then close the loop. Well played, men, well played. We surrendered without a shot fired.

Strangely enough, they didn’t seem angry as they found their own or even a neighbor’s kid. At least I wasn’t hearing anybody getting their ass spanked and the wind wasn’t strong enough to muffle those noises.

And then the mothers started showing up. Still no yelling or hollering. Even Mr Wilson and Miss Crandall and the class suckass were starting to lose that smug look they were wearing looking out the window. And here comes Pops. “What’s going on?” is all he says. Now when Pops says that, it not a friendly greeting like I would use today ‘Hey, what’s goin’ on, man?’ when I see a friend, no, he wants to know what in the fuck is going on. So I told him. I told it was fucking snowing, the older kids got a snow day and we didn’t and goddamnit I’m only 7 years old and these are the best years of my life and someday we’ll look back on this and laugh and laugh and….. and as he’s standing there listening to this line of bullshit and rocking on his heels and working his jaw back and forth like he does when he’s thinking, this fucking monster snowball rockets in from nowhere and wallops him right alongside the head so hard it staggers him. As he recovers, his Commanding Officer Captain Savage (isn’t that a cool name for a soldier?) fires one at the First Sergeant who is running up behind another GI to knock him down the steep part of the hill.

Fucking school was out, man.

After the snowball fight, folks that lived in the nearby buildings ran home and got cases of beer and other adult beverages as well as cases of sprudel (a German soft drink) for us little knuckledraggers, bringing back every available sled as well. There, we just left our sleds outside the building stairwell. Everybody knew which one belonged to who, nobody stole them, I don’t think I brought mine inside for 3 entire winters. It wasn’t unusual to see 15 or 20 sleds outside of a stairwell day or night. Those motherfuckers got raided that day. They were drug down to the hill en masse and ownership was sorted out at the end of the day.

It was cool. After the sun went down the party was still going on. The school had left its lights on for the janitors so the hill was nice and lit up, there were people sledding and skiing and by that time the Germans had shown up. Somebody close by had put their speakers in the window of their quarters and was playing doo-wop. I can remember walking home about 9 or so and turning around and looking back at the adults still there, one couple in particular slow dancing on their own dance floor they stomped out. If I hadn’t been so fucking cold I might’ve had a profound thought or something.

Like I said, magical. And I knew it then too.

*

I went back to Germany twice more. The second time we lived in Kaiserslautern, the exact opposite of Schwäbisch Gmünd – sprawling and dirty, the Germans hated the Americans and the Americans looked down on the Germans. I lived there for 4 years but still managed to have some  good times.

The third time I was there I was in the army myself, stationed in Heilbronn, and coming back from doing something in the Kaiserslautern area in a jeep shortly after arriving in the unit, I asked the sergeant that I was driving around if I could drive through the housing area I’d lived in just 2 years ago and he gave me the nod as long as I didn’t run down a dependent.

Man. It looked so… foreign to me. It had only been 2 years, but I was looking at it from different eyes, you know? The whole fucking area was dingy from all the coal fired buildings in the area, even the snow was gray. I had never noticed that before.

It was almost like I had never really been there before but had seen so many pictures of it I was familiar with it.

I was really disappointed, it was like I was being shown “Look. That part of your life is over. Move on.” And I did. I took the hint.

While I was stationed in Europe, I traveled my ass off. If I had more than 2 days off in a row, I was gone. I knew I would probably never return, and I took advantage of every discount and benefit I could to go see sights that would cost me hundreds of dollars to go see if I was a civilian. I been to Paris, I seen the Colosseum, I got 9 hours and $1600 I can’t account for in the Red Light District in Amsterdam. I am a well traveled man.

Now Schwäbisch Gmünd was only about 30 miles from where I was stationed. 30 miles. Maybe 40 miles by road. Now ask me if I ever returned there with all my traveling?

Not once.

Why?

Because I had already stopped by K-town and I remember how I felt, like a stranger looking in. I didn’t want to ever feel that way about Schwäbisch Gmünd. I wanted to keep those memories the way they were.

Like I said, magical.

*****

When I first posted this 4 or 5 years ago, somebody in a Schwäbisch Gmünd Facebook group for military dependents ran across it and posted the link on their page with a note saying it was a great story but be warned, the language was foul and vile. Right on.

I bet I got a dozen emails from nice folks telling me they too had great memories and felt the same way about the place, but was it really necessary to use the word fuck so much? I'm surprised Miss Crandall didn't chime in. One woman even sent a nice note and some Bible literature to my PO box.