1958

After Martin was accepted at Yale University, they moved to New Haven in Connecticut, where he started to work in the Physics Department. He had gotten a grant for his studies on account of his service in the army. Physics was his field and he seemed to be very good in it. They had rented there an apartment in a nice old house at 2 University Place, consisting of one bedroom, a large living room, kitchen, and a little garden. From the street there were a few stairs up to the entrance door. The landlord lived upstairs. We visited them quite often, usu­ally bringing with us some good things to eat. Martin was in general friendly and both seemed to be happy, and they also came once in a while to visit us in Brooklyn. It did not take long that Johanna was expecting a child. It was on December l7th, 1956, that Nancy was born in the New Haven Community Hospital. A few hours later, I was there, brought my camera along, and took the first picture of the baby. A few days later, when Johanna and the baby were already at home, Hedy came also to see the child.

We had prepared a vacation trip to Puerto Rico and left soon afterwards. We stayed there in San Juan at the new hotel “La Concha”, made a few excursions, to the rain forest El Yunque and other places, and then rented a car for an extensive round trip, went first south into the mountains, to Barranquitas, Aibonito, Coamo, and Ponce on the South-coast and came finally to La Parguera, a fishing village, where we stayed at a hotel for a few days. Swimming was lovely there, especially near the island “Mata de la Gata”, where we were taken by boat. A night excursion by boat to the “Fluorescent Bay” was very interesting, where the fluorescence of the water was caused by certain infuriae. We had made that trip together with a big group of geo­logists, who had come to La Parguera from many countries, and we could speak German with some of the people. I went out on a fishing trip with one of the fishermen and I caught two amberjacks, and one good-sized mero, a fine eating fish, which was then prepared for us at the hotel for dinner. We continued our round-trip to San German, where we visited the University, then on to Mayaguez, a big city, to El Rincon, where we had a beautiful view of the ocean, then Aguadilla, Arecibo, and back to San Juan.

Back in New York, we returned to our daily routine. Once Johanna and Martin came with the baby and left soon, to go to Washington D.C. on an excursion. We thought it was too early to take a baby, a few weeks old, along on such a trip, especial­ly in winter. But they did it anyway. It was a great pleasure to see this baby, and we could not restrain ourselves and visi­ted them in New Haven quite often. We heard that Martin’s pa­rents had also come to see the baby, and Martin and Johanna took the baby also to Boston, perhaps once or twice, also to Mrs. Loewenstein. We brought often packages with toys for the child, and also food, and Martin did not like it. It was a kind of arrogance, which he never tried to conceal. But we knew that they needed that stuff, and always brought things along. When we came, they often took us along on small excursions. Martin showed me once or twice the Physics Institute, where he worked, and I was always amazed how much he knew about physics and what complicated apparatuses he had built for his experiments. He had to study a lot, to prepare himself for examinations, and when we came, we usually went out on walks, so that he could be alone in the house and not be disturbed. Once we made a bigger trip to Hammonasset Beach, east of New Haven, when Nancy was 8 months old. It was for us an enormous pleasure to be with her. Martin did not seem to have patience with the child, and I hardly, if ever, saw him play with the child. He could be very rough with her, when she cried, pick her up in anger, throw her into her crib in the bedroom, and close the door.

What I remember about him so well was his guitar playing. He could sit and zip on the strings, without any melody and sing in a low voice. It was very annoying, especially when we were talking, that senseless humming, with an almost idiotic expression in his face. They had a few friends there and went sometimes out with them. These were friends, who had a sailboat, and he liked sailing very much, and they went out with them. Once or twice they took me along also. I can say that Martin was never unfriendly towards me, or Hedy. I forgot to men­tion that they had gotten a big dog, an English basset hound, named “Kassie”, which friends had given them. Nancy played a lot with that dog, but it kind of complicated their life, made it certainly not easier. I had mentioned, I think, that Hedy and I never saw anybody of the Waine family again after the wedding, and we felt very bad about it. We learned later that there were no Jews among their friends in Boston, and we suspected that it was mostly anti-Semitism that had caused their enmity. Oh, yes, we saw the two boys, Kenneth and Peter, later in New Haven, on 2 or 3 occasions.

We had a visitor from Vienna in our house for one week, cousin Kleraentine Dietrich, and we showed her around as much as we could. She then went to Cincinnati, to visit her niece Ditty Carter and her family, and she stayed there for about one month. It was agreed that we would pick her up from Cincinnati at a certain date for an extended trip by car, and that we did on June 25th, 1959, took a good friend of ours along, Mrs. Sadie Cohen, who had a married daughter in Cincinnati. We had to in­terrupt the trip in Somerset in Pennsylvania in a motel and there we noticed that a valise of Hedy was left behind in Brooklyn, since she had packed it on the porch and had left it there. The valise contained many things, which she would have needed on that trip, and she was quite unhappy about it, but we decid­ed that she would buy everything she would need in Detroit. We stayed one day with the Carters in Cincinnati and they showed us around there, took us also on a little tour to neighboring Kentucky. On the next day, we started our tour and went straight north to Detroit, where we had great difficulties and loss of time to find a motel for the night. The next day we used for shopping, to replace all the things that Hedy was missing, since the valise was left in Brooklyn, mostly underwear and a swimsuit, and Klementine got one also from us as a gift. In the afternoon we went to Dearborn and on a tour of the Ford Motor Company, and we were shown the whole process of building an automobile, beginning with the motor block till the end, when the car was driven out of the factory and then polished. It was an amazing experience. Every 2 ½- minutes, a car came out of the factory. Next to the factory is the Dearborn Park with a museum, which contained Henry Ford’s birthplace, his workshop, and his first car, etc., and also Thomas Edison’s workshop, the workshop of the Wright brothers. I have all that in a good movie film. The next day, we went over to Windsor in Canada, stopping at Belle Isle Park, which has a beautiful children amusement park and zoo. In that park, we were amazed to find a statue of Friedrich Schiller. Prom Windsor, we went along the north-shore of Lake Erie, went for a swim in Port Stanley, then, crossing the Welland Canal, which carries water from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario, to Niagara Falls. Before that, we had a fine treat, when we passed an area with an enormous number of cherry trees and were allowed to pick as many as we wanted and take as many as we wanted along, without having to pay. In Niagara Falls, we went on a boat ride, had to put on heavy rubber raincoats with hoods, and went very close to the water­fall, where we were at the end in a cloud. My movie camera got very wet, but that did not seem to harm it. Then, back to the Canadian side, we went again to the waterfall, saw the up­per part, where the water flows over the edge and falls down. Quite an experience. Then on to Lake Ontario, where we had again a swim in Port Dalhousie, then to Toronto. There we had again a special treat; Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip were visiting Canada, had come with their yacht and had anchored on that day near Toronto. An enormous crowd was gathered there, and we had to wait long, but could finally see the queen, com­ing back in a car from the city to her quarters on the boat, escorted by a great number of motorcyclists in red uniforms.

Something very funny had happened to cousin Klementine on the way. We had stopped at a gas station and the ladies went out of the car to move about a little bit. About 20 miles away from the gas station, somebody showed us that a ladies handbag was standing upright in the back of the car on the cover of the trunk compartment. Fortunately, it had not fallen down. It was cousin Klementine’s handbag. It contained a large amount of money, her passport, her plane tickets for the return trip to Vienna, and many other important documents. She would have been in terrible difficulties, if all that would have been lost. We went then along the St. Lawrence River, went there on an ex­tended boat ride along the so-called 1000 Islands, very interest­ing and pleasant, and went then on to Montreal, where we were lucky to find a nice cabin on the outskirts of that city. It was the 3rd of July, and it is usually difficult to find a place for the 4th of July, and we wanted to stay in Montreal for 2 or 3 days. For the next day, we had an early rendezvous with Edgar Ziegler, a nephew of Klementine, and he showed us around, since he lived there and knew Montreal very well, we stayed the whole day together. We went with him also up to the top of Mont Real, from where we had a beautiful view of the city, tee had not seen our landlady, when we had left in the morning, and when we came back late at night, we found a little note stuck in our door, but could not read it, since it was dark. And Kle­mentine had also such a note at the door of her room, and, without reading it, opened the door, and, to her surprise, found peo­ple in her room. A bearded man jumped out of his bed, had a long nightshirt on, and yelled: “Va d’on, va d’on”, which was French and meant “Go away, go away”. Klementine was very excited about that incident, but the landlady arrived soon and explained that she had rented that room for a long time to somebody for the 4th of July, wanted to tell us that in the morning, but had no chance, since we had left early in the morning. She had moved all of Klementine’s belongings into another room, and she would find everything there. Klementine calmed down and we had a good laugh, couldn’t stop laughing about that bearded man with the long night shirt. The rest of the tour was in a southern direct­ion, back to the U.S., to the Ausable Chasm and a boat ride there, to Lake Placid, then Lake George, Albany, and Hyde Park, where we visited the house of President Roosevelt, also saw his grave, and went then on to New Haven for a short visit, to see Johanna and Nancy, who was then about 7 months old, and back to New York. It was a pleasant two-week trip.

When Johanna got married in 1957, she had just finished the third year at Hofstra College. She never went back to Hofstra. Only now, 20 years later, she is continuing and attending classes at New York University at Purchase, studying anthropology, work­ing towards a bachelor degree, which she will get in another year.

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