Manure and other things of importance....

Our family lived in the Village of Binsfeld. Our house was newer and had a coal stove that had to be started and stoked through out the day to keep us warm in the winter. No closets, but base provided wardrobe's to hang our clothes. The cinder block home was not plastered on the outside - it was just a HUGE cinder block, 2 story building. BUT it was one of the nicer homes and was on the edge of town.

On 3 sides of us were corn or wheat fields (depending on that year's crop) and on the other side was German gasthaus (bar). The owner of the gasthaus was a real NAZI. Boy, did he hate us living next door to his gasthaus which was also his family's home. I used to think, what a creep, but in 1964, WWII had only been over 19 years. Who knows what hell he went through and why he hated Americans. But there was no doubt in my mind that he did though he was the only one I remember who was so obvious about it at the time.

What I do remember, is all manure piles outside the front of every house. Most villagers kept a few cows, chickens and pigs and the manure had to go somewhere. And right out the front door was where they piled it in Binsfeld, in little holding areas that were blocked in to contain the manure.

Worse, they would use the manure as fertilizer on the corn and wheat fields. I don't know if these crops were for human consumption or not, but in the summer they would spread the stuff all over the fields. And, if they didn't have enough, they would literally dip into the local sewage system and haul human waste out into the fields and spread that. GOD FORBID they spread this concoction and it didn't rain for a few weeks, in the middle of summer.

WOW! It stunk to high heaven.

I thought it could get no worse, but then when you visited France, Belgium, etc. you saw the same thing. I loved the standup toilets I saw for women in France. You know the ones I mean? They had footprints embedded in the floor in the urinal so women could hike up their skirts, place their feet firmly on the embedded footprints (and assuming the urinator was anatomically correct)let loose with a stream of urine, properly directed to the opening to contain it.

I always wanted to know how did this do this if they were wearing undergarments?

Pigs and Eyeballs

At the end of the street one of the farmers took 2 pigs, trussed them up and hung them from their rear legs on hooks in the front of his house which also was on the main drag through the Village of Binsfeld. I would have been in 8th grade, attending Spangdahlem

The farmer had a cylindrical device in which he inserted a single bullet. It had some type of spring action because he cocked it; held it against the pig's head and fired the bullet directly into pig's brain. The squeal was indescribable but thankfully brief.

He then took a razor knife of some sort; slit the throat and huge amounts of blood poured into buckets. HUGE AMOUNTS!

After collecting as much of the blood as he could - he proceeded to gut the animal with the entrails failing out onto the pavement directly in front of his house. I then watched as he did the same to the other pig.

When I watch the TV shows BONES or one of the CSI shows, I wince when they do autoposy scenes even though everything is staged and fake. But for some reason I was able to stand there and watch the farmer the whole time.

I have no idea why, but after the farmer was done, he got a glass jar and put the eyes in the jar which he handed to me. He spoke German so except for the casual thank you, no words were exchanged between us.

Next day, I took them to school and showed the eyes to everyone. I have no idea why I thought that was something I should do, but I did.

The street the farmer's house was on was the MAIN road through Binsfeld. Just like the Germans had no problem with piles of manure just outside their front doors, they obviously had no problem with butchering pigs in the front of their houses, out in the open.

I still have no idea how I could stand there the entire time and watch? And were the pigs eyes my reward for being an attentive observer?