Post date: Aug 14, 2014 11:07:43 PM
25 August 1966
I returned from England - thought I’d written, but perhaps not.
We were in a friend’s car and the friends have a baby, so we did our share of feeding and baby-sitting. Mostly we just saw cathedrals, but that was OK, because we had a good book on English Medieval architecture, so I learned a great deal. I bought several color slides and have a short talk on the subject.
Also bought an old book on half-timbered houses and hope to find one in Germany, too. A friend [Böreas (Bob) Rave] here knows a man who has studied the subject and built an entire farm complex in the old manner. He should be able to help. It seems to me to be an easy way to build a very interesting-looking house. The real drawback for modern America is that most half-timbered houses are two-storeyed, or more—but not all.
Arthur Howes, a very important man in pipe-organ circles (perhaps the most important) in USA was here with his tour group of 15 organists. I toured them thru the factory and we showed them three organs in the area which I had adjusted and tuned before my holiday. Kleuker had an organist-friend who improvised for a half-hour on the smallest (15 stops) and really impressed the whole lot. Mr. Howes has ordered a very interesting organ of 26 stops for Baltimore. This will probably mean a paid trip back East in a year or two.
Kleuker has for us to build five organs before Christmas, although so far this year we’ve only done two. The pipes for Düsseldorf are almost finished, altho I hope I won’t go down with them (if so, then no longer than a week) because I want to work in the the Positive (one-manual organs) workshop, where the techniques are somewhat different.
Oh, yes, I saw Mary Brown [former girl-friend from Seattle] in England, while she was visiting family there. Both she and Dave Dahl said I haven’t changed a bit in the three years since they last saw me. That may be of some assurance in case you feared your son has turned beatnik of something worse.
My car is still running fine—not using so much oil now. I have to register and pay taxes and get a new customs plate tomorrow. 50 DM for a quarter year, which will hold me ’til I come home.