When The
World's Going Cuckoo
And he
shall be unto thee
a restorer
of thy life,
and a
nourisher of thine old age. . . .
--
Ruth 4:15a
Mr. and Mrs. Peetz were an elderly
couple in a little old house across the street. I used to love to go over there
in my pixie cut and Red Ball Jets, because inside was a whole 'nother world. I would
ring the Peetzes' doorbell at five minutes 'til noon, and sit in their quiet
and stately parlor.
There were straight-back chairs with doilies
over the tops, ancient photos of relatives from the Old Country, and, my
favorite, a whole wall full of cuckoo clocks.
There wouldn't be long to wait for the joy:
CUCKOO! CUCKOO! CUCKOO! CUCKOO!
Awesome! Spectacular! It was a sensation you
couldn't get anywhere else in our suburban neighborhood.
These days, it's as if the whole world is like
that, a cacophony of cuckoo clocks that no one can stop. But at their house, it
was fun and under control. They were really nice to me, the Peetzes. They knew
I only liked them for their cuckoo clocks. But that was OK. I think they
enjoyed my visits, anyway, telling me the story of each clock and where they'd
gotten it. They were the greatest.
People are missing out on so much when they
don't hang around with the elderly, and learn from their stories. I thought of
the Peetzes recently when I heard about a friend's neighbor, another neat
elderly person full of stories.
Her name was Julia
and she grew up in Antwerp, Belgium, a war bride after World War II. That's how
she ended up here. She was famous in the neighborhood for stripping and
refinishing all the woodwork in her house every five years, even though it
didn't really need it. If you commented on how squeaky-clean her house and yard
were, you'd find out that, on Saturdays in Belgium, no one went to their normal
jobs. Everyone was out on the
streets and sidewalks, sweeping and cleaning. Julia used to say that their
barns were cleaner than most American homes. No doubt, that.
Her parents had
been divorced, which was rare back then. Her father lived in a nearby town and
ran one grocery store, while Julia and her mother ran the other one.
Maybe her love of
order came from her experiences during the Nazi occupation. She was by then a
young, single mother of a son; her first husband must've been killed in the
war. One morning, as Julia and her mother prepared to open the store, they
heard trucks pull up, boots hit the ground, and breaking glass as rifle butts
crashed through the door. She described it as like a movie: German soldiers
came running in and systematically emptied their little grocery store of
everything, everything. . . . Julia and her mother stood, dazed, looking at the
empty shelves after they left.
The same thing
happened to her father's store in the nearby town. They wanted him to work in a
fighter plane factory, building German planes. He refused . . . and disappeared.
Julia felt she had
no choice, so she agreed to work there. She had to leave her son early in the
morning, when he was still asleep, and did not see him 'til very late at night,
when he was back in bed.
In the German
plane factory, she sabotaged everything she could - leaving bolts and wires
loose at every opportunity -- but never told anyone, for fear of being turned
in by a snitch.
Toward the end of
the war, Julia and her brother were taken to a warehouse, and asked their
names. They thought, "We're dead." Instead, soldiers stomped in and slammed
down a suitcase and a jar of ashes. "Here's his suitcase, and here's your father."
They never knew if it was true or a mind game.
But here's the
coolest thing about this elderly lady:
During the war,
Julia was one of a group of women who sought out the girls who slept with the
German officers during the occupation of their town, held them down . . . and
shaved their heads!!!
She was a tiny old
lady, with big, thick glasses and a thicker foreign accent. But she would tell
that story with fierce pride.
Way to go, old
girl. Way to stand for what's right . . . when the whole world around you is
going cuckoo. †
