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Ramstein, Germany, March 1979

Dear Jeril,

Your mother and I are just back from our morning run. She’s up to a mile and half now. It happened rather suddenly. The girls don’t like to go with us, but say they’d ride bikes if we had them. We’ve been looking but have had no luck. I hate to invest in new ones, especially since Rosie’s tastes are so expensive. Stephanie will settle for less.

Both your mother and I are working hard getting ready for our classes. I’m getting more anxious than usual, and for the first time since I can remember, I am having classroom dreams about things going wrong, like students walking out on me. These dreams are usual for high school teachers, but rare for professors.

I also don’t look forward to the hundred-mile drives to some of my classes since the bases are not on the autobahn, but regular two-lane highways. Well, I guess one tough quarter won’t be impossible to take.

The girls are just getting up. Rosie is checking the fresh rolls we bought at the bakery this morning on our run.

Love, Dad

Ramstein, Germany, March 1979

Dear Jeril,

It’s nice to see the sun again. Holland in the winter is a downer. If we hadn’t had a summer there in 1975, we would have quite negative feelings about it and would have seen very few of the sights. Our last weekend there was one of the few times we were able to travel.

We had prepared ourselves for Germany by visiting the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam. The pictures and commentary about the brutality of the Germans during the war got me in a proper mood for moving back amongst them. At some level I think I enjoy disliking the Germans. In spite of this I keep working on my German—which comes slowly.

Our last Sunday we went with friends to Uden, Holland, to see how the Dutch go wild and enjoy Carnival. The cities in south Netherlands have a large parade on Sunday followed by three days of much drinking, dancing and loving. We understand it’s even wilder in south Germany. One law we were told about is that if a child is born nine months after Fasching (Carnival) the father may deny paternity and the child can be given up to the state.

We are back living in Rodenbach, a village north of Kaiserslautern. We’ve lived here before in the summer of 1977. It still smells like a farmyard, but the local breads seem even more delicious than we remembered them. The girls have re-connected with some German friends, and we are quickly settling in.

Carla will be teaching a course on Theories of Counseling, and we are both working together preparing our classes. I will be driving a considerable distance of a hundred miles to several of my classes so this will be the most hectic quarter we’ll have in Europe.

We live on a second floor of a two-bedroom apartment, and it is taking some getting used to. The girls are sharing a room for the first time since they were babies. The two halves are quite a contrast. Stephanie’s is a free-form-disorder arrangement, and Rosie’s is a precise placement of everything within a logical system.

Water is heated in the area where you need it, so you must plan baths, dishwashing and laundry ahead of time. Storage space is limited so even before our hold baggage arrives, we are bursting at the seams. The stove heats so slowly that there is some danger eggs will hatch before they cook. But then making adjustments is part of what foreign travel is all about.

Love, Dad

Ramstein, Germany, June 8, 1979

Dear Family,

Yes, the Andersons are alive and well and still living in Germany. How often I write these letters seems to depend on a number of things. One factor seems to be how different I’m finding life. This last quarter was much like my job at Missouri—little travel except to class and mostly working with students and attending committee meetings. All very academic.

Secondly, living abroad is becoming a way of life; everything seems so usual that it hardly seems worth commenting on. It’s as if at times we need to remind ourselves that we are really living in Germany in a village, and that we are foreigners.

On our morning jog Carla and I wend our way over very green gently rolling hills, past fields of fast-growing grain and passive cows chewing their eternal cuds. We see an occasional small deer jumping across a field or perhaps a horseman clopping along the trail. Sometimes a bicyclist passes us. No cars. All very idyllic and just out our back door. For variety we take another direction through a forest. It’s hard to believe that such an industrialized nation has managed to keep nature so close.

Daughter number two, Debra, wrote us a while back and after seven or eight pages of telling us about her physical conditioning for parachute jump school, problems with maintaining the house, etc., drops in a line, “John and I are still going together and are thinking about getting married. So I guess what I need to know is—is September too early, and oh yes, can you live with John as a Son-in-Law?”

I suppose that’s as good a way to get the message as any. My women students that evening informed me that all of their fathers went into a state of shock upon getting the news. Mothers take it much better. For a guy who’s so cynical about marriage in general at least publicly, I do seem to take it very seriously personally. Like my dad, I find myself crying at weddings—those vows seem so full of significance.

We haven’t heard from Debra (twenty-one) since she finished jump school at Ft. Benning, Georgia. We assume she finished although her last letter indicated that a large number of cadets had already dropped from the program because it was so rigorous. (She did get her wings we soon learned.) She’ll be spending the summer at Ft. Riley, Kansas, learning basic infantry techniques.

During the semester on two weekends, Carla and I went to a Virginia Satir workshop on family therapy. She is one of the big names in the field right now. The audience of two hundred included a fair number of Satir worshipers.

Some attendees, who burst into tears if she spoke to them, applauded her every move and sat at her feet in awe during the breaks. I find all this a bit much as do most of the students I work with. Virginia is very gentle with these people and does seem to prefer interacting with the non-worshipers.

Ex-students of mine came down from Holland and up from Italy so we had several stay with us and had some parties for the rest. I suppose it’s this sort of thing that has given us the feeling of being at home here in Europe.

A Special Trip to England

The big travel was to England during our two-week break. I had wanted to see Poland and Czechoslovakia; but after the intense quarter we just had, it seemed too much like work. We have U.S. government plates on our car that give visitors trouble on the other side of the iron curtain.

So we packed a tent and took a slow boat to England. The trip turned out to be a winner. We toured famous places like the battleground at Hastings, visited Brighton on the south coast, spent six days in London, attended a Dickens’ festival in Rochester and saw plays, plays, plays. Well, seven.

It occurred to us when Rosie said that one of the plays about a Catholic girls’ school was the dirtiest play she’d ever seen, that we have spent little time protecting our youngest daughters from the R-rated aspects of life. This is quite a change from the long debates we had with you about why you weren’t allowed to see PG movies until you were twenty-one. Well, sixteen.

The British have never lived up to their publicity as far as we are concerned. They are supposed to be very formal and always wait for an introduction even when the ship is sinking. We found them friendly and eager to talk. At Rochester we felt like long lost relatives who had just come home. They even bought us a drink at the theater as they showed us the back stage scenes.

The British are also said to have no sense of humor, or at least take hours to see the point of a joke. While we were there, gas was in short supply, prices were going up, there were a number of strikes, at least one flood—all of this seemed to give them a chance to show off their stiff upper lip and humor under stress.

They laugh a lot. The curator of the Battle Museum outside of Hastings felt it was a terrible shame the way William the Conqueror had won the battle and that the French influence had not been good for the course of British history. They do love their history and have great good fun with the gory parts.

The characteristic that they do have is politeness. After standing in lines and driving on the continent, it was a pleasant contrast to find people doing these things as if they really respected other people’s rights. Stephanie, by the way, started the trip on crutches. She took an ankle out on a volksmarch, which left her handicapped for several weeks.

We are back teaching. We didn’t know until the morning that classes started what we would be teaching. For one reason or another my courses for this summer have changed four times since I was hired. I have the maximum number in my courses—Human Sexuality, Structured Groups and Counseling Practicum. Carla ended up teaching a practicum, but really hoped to teach a Human Sexuality course.

It looks to be a good summer here. We hope you all are doing well.

Love, Dad

Ramstein, Germany, June 11, 1979

Dear Jeril,

I addressed an envelope the other day when I wrote you and then put the letter in a blank envelope and sealed it, so I have an empty one here I don’t want to throw away.

When we were in London, the Scots had come down for the soccer match between England and Scotland. They were dressed in their plaids, some in kilts; most had tams or woolen scarves that were actually more like serapes. London brought in extra police from all over the country.

The Scots took over many squares where they were singing, dancing, drinking too much, and insulting the women. They were running through the subway screaming and generally raising hell. It was either a riot or ball depending on who you were. The English never lost their sense of politeness. Very interesting.

Carla and I both marched yesterday in a Volksmarch with one of our students. Stephanie still does not feel her leg is strong enough, and Rosie had a cold. It was beautiful and the trail was mostly through woods. A brass band played for us while we drank beer and relaxed afterwards.

I find my digestive system can now stand an occasional beer, if I’m careful. The beers are really different here. Between acts in plays in England, drinks are served. I’ve tried various English beers, warm and slightly sweet—even their bitter beer is sweet. I tried a German beer yesterday—boy, was it bitter. Germans prefer it really strong so it would really take me some time getting used to it.

Today is Monday, a long work day for both of us. We start seeing students at 12:30, have no supper break, eat while we talk, start class at 6:30 and finish at 10:30.

Love, Dad

Ramstein, Germany, July 24, 1979

Dear Jeril,

Well, the depressing news for us is that we can’t leave here until August 18, Saturday. No earlier flights are available—that means 18 days without a car since we sold ours as of the first. We can get rides to classes and for groceries, but will really be tied down otherwise. If I had known flights (these were military not commercial flights) were so scarce, we wouldn’t have sold our car so soon.

Our household goods leave on August 8th. I think I’ll hold on to the TV so that Stephanie can keep from going crazy. Would you send me the dates classes start at the university and when school starts for the girls?

The car brought what I asked, and I could have held on longer since there was more of a market than I thought. I had two serious lookers after I had made my commitment to sell. I’m taking the girls to tennis in just a minute. They start a new class today. They just finished beginners last week and were promoted to intermediate.

This weekend we went to France for a day. The city of Metz was our main point of interest. They have a cathedral that has more stained glass than any other in the world. It was impressive. Also their Roman Museum is one of the best we’ve seen anywhere. Inside they have reconstructed a Roman graveyard and have some glass openings that let you look into the floor to see how graves were set up. Their collection of everyday objects was formed well in groups such as make up, tools, sewing and cooking.

We spent several hours trying to find a French restaurant open and finally had to go back to Saarbrucken to find something to eat. The girls did get French food however, Cordon Bleu.

Love, Dad