Two Bicycles and Love

1745twobikes /1500 words

Dec. 5, 2017

Two bicycles and love

by

Harley L. Sachs

When I first saw Ursel Mathilde Hintz she was a South Schleswig girl of Danish extraction with a German passport. She spoke no English and was working as a shop assistant in a Konsum grocery store on the ground floor on Rindogatan in Stockholm. She was a lapsed Lutheran.

I was an American expatriate with a master’s degree who eked out a sort of living teaching English as a second language, two three month terms and two paychecks a year. My GI Bill had run out. I was also working under cover for the CIA. I was a secular Jew.

The only thing Ursel, known as Ulla, and I had in common was we loved to bicycle. At Indiana University I rode one of only three bicycles on the campus. Ulla had used a borrowed old fashioned bicycle to ride from her job in Sonderborg, Denmark to her home town in Germany.

In Stockholm neither of us had a bike.

After three years in Sweden, starting at the International Graduate School, I spoke Swedish. Ulla, having gone to Danish school after the war, spoke Danish and soon learned Swedish, but had not lost her accent.

When my number came up to be served at the Konsum store  Ulla asked, in the formal Swedish used in those days, “What does the gentleman wish?”

Struck by her accent I asked in the same formal way, “Is the young lady Danish?”

She blushed and I was hooked. In the land of free love and open marriages, Swedish girls did not blush. She struck me like a rose bud soon to flower in amazing ways. I wanted to be part of that. She was smart and adventurous. Wow!

It took a lot of persistence and the promise of American apple pie, home baked by this ex-GI, before she would go out on a date. She was independent and always insisted on paying her own way. For a guy who was paid only twice a year that was a good thing.

Our common languages were Swedish and German. Besides the movies, theater, and walks we soon talked about our bicycle days. I had learned that to keep your under cover informants happy in the spy business, you never forget a birthday and always remembered gifts. I bought Ulla a pair of figure skates that winter and got her a student discount on a radio. We had become a couple.

Stockholm in those days was in transition. Cold cupboards with a northern exposure were being replaced by small refrigerators. Automobiles were replacing bicycles. As the winter snow banks melted, abandoned bicycles emerged, often with no front wheel, and generally ready for the junk yard. I rescued three, took them up to my apartment above the Konsum store, and got to work. I salvaged two bikes, one a 26 inch OK boy’s and one a 28 inch woman’s Crescent.

 I bought two used wheels with pretty bad tires. The OK needed a generator and light. The women’s Crescent had a generator but no light. Both were, of course, one speeds with a coaster brake.

I could not have afforded a new bicycle, or even a used one, but with two cobbled together bikes, we were in business. When I gave Ulla her bicycle, she was delighted. I knew then that she would marry me.  

Ulla’s father was a boat builder and I had always wanted a sail boat. Every weekend we would ride those old bicycles to another of Stockholm’s many harbors and boat yards in search of a boat. I hoped that the money I had earned working under cover would be enough. It wasn’t but in the meantime we had fun looking. We even tented one night at Drottningholm on Lake Malaren, taking along a couple of toy sail boats.

Having lived through the war, Ulla was not spoiled by prosperity. Bicycling, tenting and sleeping rough wherever we could pitch the tent  were just fine.

So we fell in love in Swedish and were married in German because her father came to the synagogue wedding and that was his language. Most of our Swedish friends in attendance hadn’t a clue as the service was in Hebrew and German.

The bicycles were integral to our lives and our relationship. When we got married in May, 1960, it was the most natural thing for us to get on those old bicycles and head out, destination uncertain. Naturally, being a wannabe author, I brought along my Underwood portable typewriter on a special cargo rack over the front wheel. It was a heavy load.

We were quite a sight. Laden with everything we needed: tent, cooking gear, sleeping bag, road maps, and food, camera, and the typewriter, we peddled from Copenhagen through Germany and Holland  to the Belgian Channel ferry to England.

Fearful of the traffic on the London-Dover road, we sent the bikes by rail to London and hitchhiked to the city. Once there and with the bikes retrieved, thanks to a good map of England we discovered the Old Foss Way, a Roman road, straight to Nottingham where I had relatives.

My OK bike was not that OK, for the kid who had abandoned it had messed up the rear wheel spokes. It turned out that the number of spoke holes in the hub was not the same as the wheel rim. The spokes were not in the proper order, so were stressed, sometimes to the breaking point. I grew accustomed to replacing broken spokes. I soon ran out of spares and had some made at a shop in Uxbridge.

The rear wheel was also not perfectly round, so had a hump. This wasn’t noticeable until coasting downhill you got a bump-bump ride. The chain guard rubbed against the crank, so it was scrape-scrape with every push.

Ulla’s bike, however, ran like a Swiss watch.

The two bikes were painted the usual black with a bit of white on the rear fender. By today’s standards, they were heavy but nearly indestructible.

We spent the honeymoon winter of 1960 at Borthwick Castle where we used the old Swedish bikes to get from the gatehouse up to the Galashiels road and the bus to Edinburgh.

In the winter we lived there Ulla, always brilliant and determined, taught herself English while I struggled with a bad novel in what had been a cannon port in the basement. By the time she had our first baby her English was fluent.

When I got a contract for a year in Denmark, we had to first store our belongings.  Our possessions which had been in storage in Stockholm, came to Borthwick in an enormous crate. What about the bicycles? They were part of our life. I didn’t want to abandon them. By careful measuring, I managed to disassemble them and fit them inside the crate with boxes of books, footlockers with clothes, etc.

When we later arrived in Denmark for a year we were reunited with the bikes. They were our transportation in that city of bicycles. I rode eleven kilometers from Hvidovre to the university where I learned Danish. So now we had four languages in common.

By the time we were leaving Denmark, we had an old VW kombi to ship back to the United States. The freight company allowed us to pack the bicycles inside the car.

Unwilling to part with them, we carried them on the roof of the VW all summer in 1964. By then we had two daughters. The youngest, Belinda, fit into the bicycle basket on Ulla’s handle bar while Anna-Lena, our three year old, rode on the kiddy seat bolted to the frame.

The bicycles were part of the family, integral to our history and our romance. When we acquired water front property for camping not far from a beach, the bikes were our transportation.

We kept them even when Ulla, who fell in Florida, stopped bicycling, and my legs at age seventy were giving out.

After our fiftieth-fourth anniversary when it came time to move to Oregon, we sold all our Michigan property. What about the bikes? By now they were genuine antiques.  So were we.

I was afraid, when we sold our camp site, the bikes would end up in a ditch beside the road to be taken to the junk yard. I gave our mouse infested Shasta trailer to a young man who, it turned out, collected bicycles. He wanted them.

Those two rebuilt junk Swedish bicycles had carried us across Europe, through our honeymoon in Scotland, our sojourn in Denmark, and back to the United States. Parting with them was poignant, but I know they found a good home.

Nothing lasts. I miss the joy of bicycling, the singing sound of the Swedish knobby tires on wet pavement, the wheee of coasting downhill. Ah, but at 86 my legs have given out. The bikes lasted longer than my legs, but the memories linger on.  Ah, those memories.

The Palestinian Cottage Industry in Murder

The Palestinian Cottage Industry in Murder

In 2016 a Palestinian murdered Jewish West Point Graduate Taylor Force. Though other American Jews have been murdered in Israel in the past, this was the last straw for congress. What most Americans don’t know is Palestinian terrorists are rewarded with pensions for their families using American money. Yes, the United States gives the Palestinians aid to the tune of $350 million a year, and a big chunk of it goes to pensions for the families of prisoners who have committed terrorist acts. It’s become a cottage industry: need a pension? Kill a Jew. Congress wants it stopped and will reduce the annual budget to as low as $120 million. Abbas pleads that without those pensions for terrorist acts the stability of the Palestinian economy will be upset.  Source” Wall Street Journal, Sept. 12, 2017

See no Evil -- a short-short story

1744seenoevil/695  words

8/18.17

See no Evil

A short story

Harley L. Sachs

As a final debriefing I had taken Harry up to the Tower for a farewell look at New York City at night. I was told his name was Harry, which is an inside joke in the company, a reference to Harry Lime of the Third Man. I this case I actually knew his real name, for we had met briefly between beers at a super bowl party. He had been there with his young wife and I didn’t linger for a conversation.

Taking agents up in the Tower on their last night has become a routine ritual for me. We don’t  want anyone to spend the last evening in a bar where they might drink too much and talk, like say where they are going the next day. Instead I take them out for a swell filet mignon dinner with red wine. I don’t claim reimbursement for the wine because our bookkeeper is a teetotaler, so I claim the dessert part of the menu and always pay cash. It’s my chance for a hundred dollar dinner before I go home to my wife who’s into chemo therapy for her breast. She’s too sick to cook and I’m no chef.

We call it simply the Tower. Used to be the Trump Tower before the assassination. Nobody lives in the penthouse any more. The building was foreclosed and bought by a shell company financed with laundered Russian money. I borrow a key to the private elevator from the building manager and take the occasional special guest up top so they can see the bathrooms. Everybody always wants to see the bathrooms and sometimes pee in the gilded commode.

So Harry and I were on the top floor balcony, looking down over the city. He said he’s leaving for Hong Kong in the morning but I know he’s flying to Moscow via Warsaw. It’s not etiquette to ask much.

The agent called Harry is in his thirties. I know his history and have to write a contact report on his last evening in the States. I make those reports as brief and innocuous as possible, just enough to justify the cost of the meal. You never know who reads those.

We were standing at the parapet looking down at the city. On a floor two stories down there was some sort of party and on that balcony there were two men who had separated themselves from the crowd. Just two men, talking.

Harry said, “Isn’t that, er, Cannon?”

“Bannon,”  I said. “Steve Bannon.”

“Oh.”

“Been in the news again.”

“Yes.”

“Not good.”

“No.”

One second there were two men down there on that balcony. Then in a blink of an eye, there was only one.

“Did you see that?” Harry asked, shocked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Shouldn’t we report it?”

“What? You report it? You’d miss your plane to Hong Kong.”

“What about you?” Harry asked.

I tapped the American flag pin on my lapel and gave him a knowing look. “Got it.”

“That your Go-pro?”

I just gave him a thin smile like don’t ask. Everyone thinks we’re equipped with button cameras and other James Bond shit.

“Oh,” Harry said.

There was a faint sound of a siren on the street down below. “We’d better go out the service exit,” I said, not wanting to encounter uniforms in the lobby.

When we reached the street I hailed a yellow cab to get him back to his hotel. As Harry got into the cab he turned and asked, “You’ll report it, right?”

I nodded.

He was off.

Before the assassination the president used to fire people. Pence just kills them.

Not my problem. I’m up for retirement soon. We have a rule: see no evil. Works for me.

A year later I learned that Harry had been killed in a car crash in Moscow. I thought it probably was a car crash. The Russians can’t afford to spend a car and driver when it’s cheaper to toss someone out a fourth story hotel window. I wondered what had gone wrong, if the man called Harry had made a mistake, or someone like Cheney had blown his cover. 

The Toilet Police

1741toilet/ 650 words

4/8/2017

The Toilet Police

 by

Harley L. Sachs

I’ve always been a guy. Even when I was only three, people used to call me the little guy. Now with all this bathroom brouhaha my guyness is in question. It’s all because of that Carolina law about who gets to use what toilet. The transgender folks, those who can’t make up their minds if they are a guy or a gal or whatever, have been persecuted. I can see that if I dressed up as a drag queen for the Moose Halloween party, it might look a bit peculiar, but even in a wig and lipstick, there’s no doubt that I would be seen as a guy. Stupid looking, comical, but still a guy. Now all that’s changed.

Now to use a toilet in some big stores you have to prove your birth gender. In Saudi Arabia they have the religious police, in case a woman shows her ankles, bare wrists, or doesn’t cover her eyes. Here it’s the toilet cops.

I was standing in line by the men’s room for my turn when I was stopped by toilet security. This was a tough looking person in a badge and uniform but of. to my mind, uncertain gender. “You have to show proof of gender,” the toilet cop said, very stern.

My gender was never questioned before. I thought it was a joke. “You want to see my circumcision scar?”

I thought it was a joke. Apparently it wasn’t. People who have undergone a sex change might have operation scars I don’t want to see under any circumstances. I have trouble enough with people who pierce their lips and noses. “

“You have to show proof of gender when you were born.”

“How do I do that?”

“Birth certificate.”

I didn’t have my birth certificate on me. Who does? If I were an immigrant of questionable legality I’d have to carry a green card or a proof of citizenship, but not a birth certificate.

Fortunately, that time my visit to the toilet wasn’t urgent. I went home and searched the file of documents, my high school diploma, my confirmation diploma from Sunday School, my military discharge DD214, and found a birth certificate issued by a Chicago clerk. I decided I’d better carry it with me at all times, just in case I’d have to pee.

Sure though, I did. This time I was in a different big box store and approached the public toilet. Again there was a toilet cop guarding the facility. This time I was ready.

“:Proof of birth gender,” I said, hoping not to be kept waiting. This time I really had to go. I showed my birth certificate. There is was: male baby complete with baby footprint.

The toilet cop was skeptical. “This is a photo copy. We only accept original documents.”

“What are you?  Ex IRS?” I once had to re-file my income tax because I sent a photocopy of the return, not one with the original signature.

The toilet cop wasn’t amused. “Got to be the original document. How do I know if you aren’t transgender?”

If I waited any longer it would be too late. I had to go, now. I gave up and hurried out the door. Round the corner, at the back of the building where there are no windows, I peed against the wall. I was in Italy once. Almost everybody pees against a wall in Italy.

Not here.

I was arrested for public indecency.

Funny thing was, they put me in a cell with several violators, some of them transgender. They’d been caught by the toilet cops without the proper birth certificates.

Nobody seemed to care in the jail. They have unisex cells.

I didn’t have cash for bail money, so I have to stay in the joint to  await my court date.  You know what they have for toilet facilities in the jail? A stainless steel commode and no privacy. Everybody uses the same one, with or without a birth certificate.

Faux Hnting

1740faux/450 words

January 16, 2017

Faux Hunting

A column by

Harley L. Sachs

When our family was in the fur business my father sold coats made from many animals. Mom had an ocelot jacket and a mink stole. I had once had a cut down raccoon coat. But we also sold Labrador seal, sheered beaver, Coney, an occasional squirrel coat, mouton lamb, almost any animal whose hide leant it to making into a coat for humans. Lions were too shaggy, but leopards were fine for coats. Mink was raised on farms just for the hides. Sable was trapped in Siberia. I suspect zebra would be too difficult to match up, what with all those stripes. Arctic fox was often sold as a scarf with a fake animal head clasp complete with glass eyes. You could even get moleskin, though it would take an awful lot of dead moles to make a ladies jacket.

Animal rights fanatics are full of beans, total hypocrites.. A cowboy wouldn’t want a plastic saddle. Saddles need to be leather.  As for the cruelty of killing an animal for its skin, in the Argentine cattle were initially raised only for their hides until they figured out that the meat could be turned into corned beef. Leather or pigskin shoes are just an animal skin with the hair removed. Shaving and pastry brushes are made of pig bristles..

Coming from that fur business background, I was stymied by the label on my new, lined boots. The label says “faux fur.” So what animal is a faux? Not a fox, too shaggy for a boot liner, and not mink, too expensive. We used to sell seal dyed Coney, a Coney being a sort of rabbit and dyed to look like seal. It was still basically rabbit.

But a faux? What animal was that?

It couldn‘t be very large, and being a mammal had to be something with four legs.

I’d heard about fox hunting, but not faux hunting.

I’d never seen a faux in the zoo, either.

Maybe the faux is something like the nauga whose hide is made into furniture. I haven’t seen naugas at the zoo, either but plenty of recliners using naugahide..

Maybe, like the Coney, those animal  skins are processed to suit the technological world we live in.  Seal dyed Coney was just a fake. Maybe the faux is, too. Maybe faux fur is really guinea pig, those cute cuddly creatures that are not actually pigs. A Coney is not a seal even if dyed that color, and a guinea pig isn’t a pig. Nobody would want to kill a guinea pig for boot liner, so they give it another name, faux. So maybe a faux is something else. Go figure.