THE GARDEN APARTMENT 4500 words

 THE GARDEN APARTMENT

Part one: SPRING/SUMMER 1989

Don't quite remember how we found the place. Must have been April 1989 or so. "Yes, it's furnished," they said, "but…it doesn't have a shower." But this wasn't much of a concern to us. Money was tight and time was short. My mother was flying in on June 24th, and K****'s mom was the next week. Our wedding was going to be on July 7th. We needed something, and fast.

We had little money. I was a 19-year-old Specialist 4 and she was a 20-year-old Private First Class. The Army would give us a housing allowance but not until we were officially married. Can't put up mom in my room in the barracks. We already had a car, a Mercedes 350 SEL that was almost as old as I was. This was a big old boat of a car. Every other car around was a Benz or a BMW, even among the Americans, which sounded like a big deal but wasn't.

The apartment was in the Gross Au Heime section of Hanau. It was still West Germany at the time. Our warehouse was not far away, a leisurely ten-minute stroll. There was also a city bus stop just around the corner, that could bring us to the small base where the PX and the Commissary (an Army-run American-style grocery store) and even went past the small base where our company area was, on its way downtown.

Gross Au Heime means 'Large Home' in German. Across the Main River was the town of Kline Au Heime, 'Little Home'. It was good to get away from the Army, even if it was just until the next day. The place was little more than a glorified garden shed. It was in the backyard of a house owned by an old Czech couple. We referred to them as O'MA and Opa, German for Grandma and Grandpa. In their backyard, there was a garden and that summer we saw them in there almost every day. They didn't speak much English or even German, but we figured out what we needed.

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