Post date: Aug 13, 2014 12:09:22 AM
28 February 1966
I have been busy making the drawings for my demonstration organ. I’m out of practice since High School mechanical drawing class. I was able to borrow a machine which replaces the old T-square and is much faster. Had to repair it before I could use it, though.
6 March 1966
We are having wonderful weather. Today we went “wandering” all day. I must get a camera. What does a Minolta SR-7 cost in the US? The model with the cheaper lens? I’d like to get one through the PX in Frankfurt.
My pay now covers room and board, and I spend about $50 per month for extras, gasoline toys, stamps, beer, etc. That still leaves me with a little left over at the end, barring a catastrophe, like a letter from the draft board, which would make me stay here a bit longer. All these airplane accidents together are enough to scare one as it is.
David Dahl is coming back to Europe in June with a group [choir] from his college [Whitworth]. Somehow connected, he is teaching a course in comparative organ tonal design, which is his forté. He is frustrated with the sound of many American-built organs, which I can well believe.
The organ for Christ Church in Neuss am Rhein is nearing completion. Almost all the pipes are here now and I am wiring the stop action. By Friday we’ll be finished, except that we haven’t started the console yet (don’t have the keyboards). As it is, only two men at a time can work on the console.
13 March 1966
The weather has turned cold again, now that all the buds have burst, and yesterday and today we had snow like corn meal.
Did I ever tell you how crazy the Germans are [at least the family I lived with]? They won’t eat fresh bread because they claim it’s not healthy, but they won’t eat stale Brötchen [which means ‘little bread’], so at breakfast the bread is hot from the oven and at dinner it is a week old. The Germans worry themselves so much about health that they have mental breakdowns from all the worrying.
They do have something here I’ve never seen elsewhere: quark. I think it is just mashed cottage cheese. They spread it on bread with chopped onions and salt, east it with fruit as dessert, which seems to me like a salad, or just plain, like yoghurt. Yoghurt is a fanatics’ food, but quark is very popular here.
My demonstration windchest is finished, but I have to make a frame and mechanic for stop and key action. The organ for Christuskirche, Neuss, is almost ready to go, but the case will take another three weeks. Don’t know what we will do in the meantime.
Tonight we’re going to see the film of Othello made in Russia, supposed to be excellent.
Tomorrow evening my friends the organists (Jack and Joanne Rodland) come from Frankfurt on a trip to Hamburg. They will stay a day and come to a concert in which I’m singing Tuesday night. The universities have holidays now, but he has to be back every Sunday for church services. My friend the violinist in Berlin has bought a car and is driving to Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, and Athens, coming back the Yugoslavian coast and through Innsbruch. Sounds wild. In the next week or two I’m probably going to Lübeck. We’ll only be there for a weekend.
Meanwhile I’m sitting here plowing through a book on organ building, trying to figure out a mathematical system for saying how fat each organ pipe is—the essence of organ tone—in German, naturally. And unfortunately not very well explained.
When I get too frustrated, I work on a model house for my railroad. The latest are very detailed and have many very small pieces, but less to paint than some of the others. I think I’ve built all the half-timbered houses on the market! I have some 25 houses, a castle, and two churches now. Quite a village. Also cobble-stone printed paper for the streets. Neat.