June 26/08...another month gone by. I've no interest in treating this as my events calendar but indeed..time flies. So let me go on...
Sadly, I noticed in a south German paper article that my old hometown is in trouble. The local economy is in the sewer..the once flourishing shoe industry is just about gone, the Americans have left and today there is a vacuum much like at the time of the Landgraf Ludwigs demise when this whole shoe thing started.
On a personal note, I left Pirmasens 1956 at age 18, my choices were to do some armee stint ( got drafted) or leave. So I left for Canada and never really looked back.
Every 10 years or so I would come by for a brief visit but have gradually lost touch with friends and family.
My home was at Gaertnerstrasse 46, an old row house which was built during the Landgrafetimes as housing for one of the grenadierfamilies.
About 10 homes away from our house you would find the largest shoe factory in the world, Rheinberger, in the early fifties they employed over 5000 people, many of them bused in daily from the surrounding towns and villages.
Uptown was a factory with the sign Peter Kaiser Shuhfabrik . Apparently it was the oldest shoe factory in the world and was owned by somewhat distant relatives. (Dad's aunt..his mothers sister nee Steigner).
I've seen hard times in Pirmasens, the city was 80% bombed out by 1945; with several hunger years to follow. I've seen french occupation and all the associated memories, and I was subjected to beatings and brutality by an idiot of a homeroom teacher at the Horebschule. ( Klein).
But after having said all this, it is sad to see that this booming and once flourishing place is rapidly going downhill with little hope of an early recovery.
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