Munich Nights Chapter 58: “Doctor Nagel and that secret potion of the dead doctor”
By the time Walter and doctor Nagel strolled back into the now busy rather picturesque cobbled pitted town square, they were informed by an agitated perspiring, Sgt. Picoult, now seen sitting forlornly on the roadside curb, announced that the car had been towed to the local Mercedes-Benz garage for immediate repairs and should hopefully be completed soon within the hour, to then hopefully be started and driven for the brief successful journey back to Bamberg, and perhaps beyond that if the time of course permitted.
Walter then glanced up at the old attractive town hall rusted clock where dozens of pigeons were perched and noticed with surprise that the Roman numerals were being correctly displayed. He hoped the next hour would be productive for them before their return to the hotel and sample some much-needed and welcomed refreshments.
All three then took the short walk to the nominated garage. The town Walter noticed seemed somehow to have become more vigorous. The usual traditional tradesmen were now still delivering their requested goods and foods to various local popular shops in the busy “Luitpoldstrasse”.
Seen also were some young women walking with happy playful children, most keeping them safely close to their side. And other young mothers pushing colourful practical perambulators, probably all out now shopping for needed food items to prepare for that still traditional evening family dinner. And with whistling delivery boys it all added somehow to a harmonious musical background.
The pulse of the now bustling awakening town centre was beginning a new day. And with an air of prosperity paraded all over the town, it seemed somehow to Walter, that the well-stocked shop windows were anything to go by after any inspection, life here was pretty good. Well for some at least. However, the penalty of poverty had always been inflicted on the underclass in any town or society he rightly suspected and always would be. He hoped that his party when it arrived on the political scene would eradicate some of these social ongoing problems that seemed to have infected most of the country since the war.
Even in that first quarter of the century, transport such as horse and buggy was still the most prevalent local form of transport harking back almost to the last lost century. The then not-so-golden age of course for the poor and the aged and neglected. And the usual failed and forgotten in society. Under Adolph’s future guidance, Germany would once again take its rightful place in Europe of this he was sure. He certainly hoped to be a major player in the game when the time arrived.
However, new exciting forms of transport such as automobiles were now making seriously welcomed inroads into German society Walter suspected, and he welcomed its appearance. Also as well as motorbikes and racing bicycles made serious inroads into the busy German consumer’s daily way of life it seemed.
Walter remembered Adolph’s serious suggestion recently – to design and construct a so-called “people’s car,” and to be made easily affordable for every working family to hopefully purchase for work and of course leisure. And also he talked about a so-called planned network of a future project to be called “Autobahns”. For some reason, to be situated all over the country’s branch roads.
This would definitely be a rather far-fetched and vastly expensive promise to achieve Walter had privately thought to himself. But he had said nothing to Adolph and Heinrich at the time of that discussion.
Yet as Heinrich frequently suggested to him, it could be a possible vote winner in the future saying: “This is the age of technology, Walter. After all, we all must adapt to the times we live in, or we will be sadly and politically left behind like those poor dinosaurs of old, we read so much about” he had then warned, shaking his head and forefinger adding as an afterthought: “Evolve or become extinct. Yes, I rather like that and I might use it in my next speech in Berlin. And I also predict it will be German technology that will place a man or men on the moon hopefully in the next forty years” he had stated with his usual conviction. And this prediction was rightly remembered many years later when Walter watched on his black and white television in 1969 an American astronaut, who with the aid of German technology especially from Wernher Von Braun (1912-1977), had achieved this prediction of Heinrich’s.
As he then continued polishing his glasses to perfection for about the 10th time adding thoughtfully: “And I suspect there is life on Mars just waiting to be colonised and governed. And maybe one day our Swastika flag will fly with triumph over the so-called “Red Planet” he stated with a flourish.
But this claim recalled Walter 60 years later in his Munich ground floor apartment had yet to be fulfilled or proved. And maybe never would he thought.
Days before Heinrich had nearly tripped over an exposed extension telephone cable in his office, causing him to remark as he rubbed his bruised kneecap that: “One day Walter, there will be telephones that will not need cables for them to be used for any immediate communication. The telephones will be free-standing without those annoying dangerous cables snaking around the floor. You just mark my words, Walter. But how they will function receiving and sending voice-volumed wave patterns I really have no idea.” Then he reached for a cold compress offered by Walter to apply to his wounded knee.
(Years later in the mid-1980s, Walter remembered this serious suggestion spoken by his friend, when he himself actually purchased his new cordless Motorola phone in a snow-covered Zurich Canton. And how excited he had been then at this new exciting purchase. Ah, happy days he had thought to himself then in that bitter Switzerland winter. But it all seemed such a long time ago and another lost world that he had just about escaped from).
To be continued…
© Copyright G. Patrick Battell
March 2023
(All rights reserved)