When Kennedy Went To Berlin
Making the Grade— Chapter 5
A strip of peeling paint exposed the once red, now olive green school bell that rang on the first day of second grade. The principal greeted the students over the intercom, a dilapidated speaker in a makeshift wooden box, which looked like it was ready to fall off the wall. It was September 3rd, 1962.
Klaus sat in the rear of the class, feeling woefully inadequate. The first grade ushered in a barrage of teasing by his peers. He was labeled an outsider. His clothes were handmade, he wore hand-me-down shoes, and he had a bit of a residual accent. He stuck out like a sore thumb.
He scanned the students to see if any of his newfound friends were in the room; most of them were assigned to the other second-grade class. He recognized three students; the shy Jewish girl, the lanky Italian boy, and his friend Greg who lived a block away — a freckled face redheaded boy with a toothy grin.
He stared at the black and white General Electric classroom clock, the large red second-hand clicking ever so slowly. His palms pooled beads of sweat that trickled down his wrists. Click — click — click — click; the sound nearly deafening. He cringed in anticipation of the moment when the shrill voice of Philomena Dyson would mispronounce his name.
A handful of foreign-born students occupied the halls at Beechwood Park Elementary School. Gossip had it that Mrs. Dyson, on the first day of class during roll call, mispronounced all of their names and reveled in the exercise. She had a reputation for having an indifferent attitude toward immigrant kids and held them to a stricter standard than the native-born. She took special aim at the Germans and Italians.
“Mr. Claus Fisher?”
There it was. Klaus stood from his wooden desk, wiped his hands on his trousers, cleared his throat, and mustered up an ounce of courage as his classmates, some already snickering, peered at him in earnest.
“Mrs. Dyson, my name is pronounced Kl-oww-s. It rhymes with House.”
With a sinister chuckle, she said, “Not in this class, Mr. Claus.”
The stern admonition prompted the bullies to start chanting, “Mr. Claus, Mr. Claus, Mr. Claus.”
“Students. That will be enough of that. Mr. Claus did not choose his name. He is a foreigner. Aren’t you, Mr. Claus?”
For the entirety of the second grade, Mrs. Dyson called him “Mr.Claus.” It was as if she enjoyed watching his discomfort. A simple gesture of validating his name would have been the confidence he needed to excel in his classwork but didn’t get it. The lack of empathy from Dyson held him back.
Stuck on a cusp between German and English, he struggled to catch up from the pain of switching from one language to another, one culture to another. His reading skills weren’t evolving, and he had no affinity for mathematics. He dreaded his monthly report cards, for his middle-of-the-road grades were never acceptable to Josef.
The grades came out on Fridays, which was the worst day because Joseph was home on the weekends, which meant no playtime for Klaus, only work — the punishment for a subpar performance. Work meant everything to Josef. It meant nothing to Klaus, for he felt he could not live up to Josef’s expectations. Josef was a perfectionist, and the slightest mistake by Klaus would send Josef reeling.
“Look what you did now! Do you know how much that cost? Now I gotta buy a new one.”
A frugal, strict, and resourceful immigrant, Josef, in 1953, made his way from Austria to Germany by stealing rides on the trains and busses. He hadn’t a Mark to his name but relished in the fact that the life he left behind was indeed behind him. Germany was where he found Maria. When questioned about how they met, his stock answer was, “I pulled her out of a hole.”
Josef worked at a local Tool and Die Company, sweeping up metal shards and doing whatever grunt work was required. His third job since coming to America. Klaus overheard his father on several occasions saying, “I do what I gotta do. What are you gonna do?” Josef’s thick accent kept him from climbing the ladder of success even though he was quite capable and had sharper skills than most laborers he encountered. He didn’t have a formal education because World War II interrupted every educational opportunity he might have had.
His boys needed to live up to the promise of the American dream. He expected each of them to learn how to use their hands and excel in their studies; otherwise, they would never achieve economic success.
“Klaus, come here! What is this?”
“It’s my report card.”
“Don’t be a smart ass, or I’ll knock you down! Look at these grades. You think these grades are good?”
“Pretty good, I think.”
“They are lousy! What’s wrong with you? You should be getting all
‘A’s. Instead, you bring home this? Another year of these grades, and you’re gonna have real trouble! No playtime for the next month. Go to the garage, we’re going to start building a new workbench. Until I get there, you think about your grades.”
Klaus made every effort to explain to his father why he was having trouble in class, hoping his father would sympathize with him and cut him some slack. He tried to explain that his grades were average and not terrible. He talked about kids making fun of him and that his teacher was of no help to him. Nothing worked. Josef didn’t want to hear about the struggles. When Klaus suggested Josef attend a PTA meeting, Joseph blew up.
“I don’t have time to go to no damned meetings! I got to work for a living. You need to do better. You think life is hard? You don’t know hard. You don’t have to go outside and see people getting shot in front of you—nowhere to hide. Nowhere to go. No job. No food. Nazis hunting you down. This is America! You have a chance here. Don’t ask me what I can do for you. Ask what you can do for yourself.”
Klaus made his way to the workshop in the garage. It was late afternoon. He opened the side door and took in the aroma of old lumber stacked atop the wooden rafters. A pool of sunlight through the dirty window illuminated an old yellow door laying atop a pair of saw horses. Tools used to repair a car, build a cabinet or fix a running toilet lived in various places. Next to a pile of sawdust in the north corner sat a nearly dilapidated mahogany stool Maria set out for Josef to repair. One side wounded, the chair was sturdy enough for Klaus’ small frame.
He sat and thought about his grades. Three C’s in Arithmetic, Reading, and Science. One D in English. One B minus in Art and an A in attendance. At least he didn’t have any Fs. What was Josef so mad about?
Although his father finally brought up the war, he wasn’t sure how it related to his own predicaments.
He stared out the window at the bird feeder, watching the newly emerged feathered friends as they struggled with their balance, wings flapping rapidly to stay upright on the makeshift feeder his father constructed. The male Cardinal bright red and potent pulled seed from the holes in the feeder to nurture his juvenile.
Klaus turned on the Magnavox transistor radio his father kept near the bandsaw. The bandsaw fascinated him but Josef would not let him touch it for fear that he might lose a finger or something. Klaus scanned the AM dial and tuned in on the familiar voice of the President.
“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”
A loud bang hit the garage window. Klaus flung open the door to see a helpless baby Cardinal lying in the grass. Unsure of what to do, Klaus waited a moment to see if the bird would move. It didn’t. He waited to see if his father would come out of the back door. He didn’t. Klaus bent down to get a closer look and see if it was breathing. It appeared not.
His instincts or curiosity got the better of him, and he reached down with sweated palm and scooped up the fledgling. To hold a helpless bird in his hand and feel the rapid heartbeat sent electricity through his arm. The eyes of the Cardinal were closed. For a moment, Klaus felt ill, thinking the wounded could die at any moment. His mom was at work. What would she do if she found a bird like this? Maria loved tiny creatures, and surely she would impact this fledgling, but Maria wasn’t home, and Klaus was alone.
Holding the bird in his palm, he stroked its plume ever so gently. He didn’t know if it would affect the Cardinal, but it had the most calming effect on him.
Out of the silence came a roar.
“Klaus, are you out there? Go in the garage and get me a Phillips head screwdriver. I need it right away.”
Klaus turned to look toward his father, who was leaning at the open window. When he turned back to the bird, its eye had opened, and his beak wide, gaping and gasping for air. Was it his father’s screaming that woke up the bird? Plausible. Klaus stared at the tiny creature for a moment and said,
“Did my dad wake you up? I wake up every time he screams at me. Or, was it my stroking your feathers?”
With that, the Cardinal rose onto its toes, flapped its wings, stared at Klaus, and ascended toward the daylight moon.
Klaus watched as the bird flew off into the distance.
“Klaus! Where is my Phillips screwdriver? Bring me the Channel Locks too. And the Crescent Wrench. And hurry up.”
Klaus slipped into the garage and struggled to remember what Channel Locks looked like. He grabbed another kind of tool and rushed into the house.
“Here you go, Dad.”
“What is this?”
“You wanted the Channel Locks, right?”
“These are Needle Nose Plyers.”
Klaus looked sheepishly at Joseph. Joseph rolled his eyes and shook his head.
“Oops,” Klaus said.
Juergen K. Tossmann is the producing artistic director of Bunbury Theatre Company in Louisville, Ky. Since 1991 he has produced over 200 plays for the company and serves as a playwright, director, and actor. Since the pandemic, he has taken to new forms of writing, including short stories, poetry and articles.
