I’m doing a little housekeeping and while sorting through the myriad boxes of “life” that have collected over the ages I ran across this old newspaper clip:
It’s an article that a newspaper in Orange Texas published back in the Apollo 11 era. The article included a picture of my wife Rita (top) when she was fifteen years old, who at the time, was traveling around the US with her mother and grandmother.
For what it’s worth, nobody here in Europe did a newspaper story on me when I got here. As far as I can tell they don’t give two tugs on a dead dog’s cock about me, but then I’m not the rock star my wife is/was.
The text on the original is faded and difficult to make out clearly, so I took the time to transcribe it for posterity. Any bolding or hyperlinking (duh) has been added by me:
A teenager who has combined, as the old Dionne Warwick song goes, “the best of both worlds” is visiting friends with her family in Orange (Texas).
She is Rita Brunson, 15 –but doesn’t look it– from Essen, Germany. Along with her mother and grandmother, she is making a two week trip to the United States.
They are staying for several days at the home of Mr. And Mrs. Richard Reese, whom they met in Le Havre, France, when the Reeses were on vacation there.
The story in itself would be interesting enough, but put this in your pipe. During her young life Miss Brunson has lived in almost every Western European country, Guatemala and once she called Jersey City, NJ home for a year.
To make it even more confusing she is an American citizen, and speaks English flawlessly.
The story, however was clarified when she said she was the daughter of an American engineer. Her mother is German and operates a restaurant in Essen.
She had attended French, German and American schools, was born in Germany and has spent about two and a half years of her life in the U.S. With the exception of Jersey City, most of these were whistle stop trips.
Thus far on this trip her family has visited New York, Illinois, Ohio, Arkansas – to visit friends they med in Madrid – and Orange.
She responded to questions about life here as opposed to Germany.
“American young people, they have more activities. The German’s go to church because most are Catholic. The sports are more interesting here. In Germany they belong to clubs and you have to be 18 to join,” she said.
The clubs she said, are special,clubs, and youth participate in such activities as tennis and horseback riding. “In Orange, you can’t do much here, but it is fun in a way. If you know people, you can do things. The people, are very friendly, helpful. They’re warmer,” she said.
“The Germans have an older culture than Americans. Americans live freely, but Germans don’t live as freely.
“The Americans, their jobs pay more. In Germany, that’s not it. The Americans don’t specialize on industrial work and that’s what the Germans do,” she said.
Miss Brunson said that in Germany, the “young people go to discotheques in the evening and the older people just stay home and have a good time. That (discotheques) is what they don’t have here.”
Miss Brunson said the educational system in Germany was much more specialized than that of the United States and that students begin training for a profession at a very early age.
For the record, Miss Brunson prefers the American way of dating.
“In Germany, if they go out with a girl they just meet. They go alone. In America the boy acts like he was grateful for the date and in Germany the boys don’t. Here, you go more steady.”
I’ve chosen to share this with my readers as a tribute to my lovely wife and as documentary evidence that I am indeed the luckiest man alive.
Enjoy.
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