Migration — A memoir of moments

In the public domain via Wikipedia Commons— The SS United States 1952

I was five years old, my brother eleven, when my father excused us from the great American dining table to move to Wiesbaden, Germany — a city in a country defeated in WWII, its land mass the spoils of war, divided into east and west, rebuilding but endangered still. Our ship would depart the day after Thanksgiving, from New York Harbor. It was 1960. John F. Kennedy had just been elected. My staunch Republican parents were to leave the USA in the hands of an upstart Democrat.

There were gifts of champagne, a silver chafing dish and cigarette lighter. Neighbors brought a ship-shaped cake, we consumed after the ham-with-pineapple-slices, the Jello mold, and the green bean casserole. The adults laughed louder as the martinis and sun settled. Children played, confident there would be enough food and fun to go around day after day, wherever they might be.

Our move only fifteen years after the end of WWII was a blatant act of upward mobility. My father was to be the first USA salesman, marketing Wilson Sporting Goods to the United States Air Force in Europe, where troops prepared for a Soviet invasion. “This will be a great adventure!” my father said. I imagine his promises to my mother — of exotic travels and (someday) a fully equipped kitchen with one of those newfangled electric dishwashers.