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Biography
(Non-Fic)
MAKING A RUN FOR IT FROM BERLIN TO TEXAS BOOK THREE
by Manfred Kaiter and L.arry Thompson


Manny returns to Insel Ruegen and completes his stone mason training. He joins with four of his friends, and they set out to begin their careers as a brick layers. They are approached by Western Intelligence to spy for them in East Berlin. Their decision is a fateful one and deadly. "Sounds interesting!"

Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

 

 

 

As things turned out, after our escape from the village Communist thugs, Dad fixed up Schultz's old pickup, and he, Mom, and Luther left for Oranienberg. My brother, Siegie, boarded an east bound train back toward Peenemunde and went back to his job, welding at the ship yard. He had vacation time owed to him, and he wasn't penalized when he showed up for work a day late on Tuesday.

I boarded a north bound train and went back to Sassnitz on Inse...



Chapter 2

There it was. They had me. I took a deep breath and prepared to step forward. Behind me, I heard a tearful David shout, “You can’t blame me for that. It was my father’s idea.”

His confession surprised me so badly that I almost fell forward. In total surprise, I turned to look at David. The Headmaster spoke behind me as he laid a work hardened hand on my shoulder, “It’s alright, Manfred. You couldn’t have known. We were just as surprised as you when we found...



Chapter 3

The foreman appeared to be near tears. He whined, “If I let you do this and if you fail, then I’m still in trouble and behind schedule. But if for some strange and unexplained reason you can actually make this thing work, then I’m ahead of the game. I guess half a hope is better than no hope.” He handed me the set of plans. He said, “Here use this set of plans while I go write my suicide note.”

I couldn’t tell if he was serious or not, but I quickly gathere...



Chapter 4

We worked for the redhead for a couple of weeks bricking his three-story building. When we were through, he took us to the Bricking Pool. The Bricking Pool was a building where all the bricking brigades spent their time waiting to be called out to do a job. Generally, whichever brigade that had been their the longest was the first to be called out, although some foremen had a relationship with some of the brigades with whom they preferred working. Usually, it was accepted practice for them to call out th...



Chapter 5

We five in the work brigade cheered again at the end of that work day when the foremen were standing at the project exit gate. waiting for us. None of us in the work brigade owned a car. We were accustomed riding a trolley and walking to work. The foremen owned cars. They were party members and were privileged, but they didn’t want to haul the five of us around, so they drove ahead of us telling us they would see us at the Kellar. The walk to Zum Kellar was only a kilometer away, ...



Chapter 6

I told the brigade about the conversation.

Erwin said. “Interesting response to an interesting offer. You should have let him finish so that we would have more information to make a group decision. Next time ask him if he meant all five of us and not just you.” Erwin always amazed me with his philosophic reaction to things like that.

Martin said, “You probably made a good decision without much more information than that. These Communists are deceptive demons!” I felt l...



Chapter 7

We got the job bricking the ornate Intelligence building. The unusual thing about that job was that the exterior brick was about as plain as could be, but there was interior bricking was very ornate. Of course, we celebrated at Zum Kellar. We must have been talking too loudly about our success, because the man who had offered to help me escape was there and came over to our table. Of course, he and two or three other men could have been surreptitiously listening to our conversations, and the con...



Chapter 8

We went back to our apartment that evening, and we talked about Bill’s offer. We sat down in the kitchen.

 Erwin asked, “What do you think?”

It took me a few seconds to frame my thoughts, “Here, in East Germany, if you are heard talking about ‘escape,’ the authorities will beat you and send you to Siberia, which is almost the same as a death sentence. At any rate, your life is over!”

Hans said, “If you are caught trying to escape, the...



Chapter 9

Just like always, we arrived at work before any of the others. We walked through the gate as usual. We waved, “Hello” to the gate guard. He waved back, and we kept on walking. We went to the plans table where the plans for our work were kept. We memorized how the weights were arranged that held the plans down against a stray wind. Without rolling up our trouser legs we each wrapped a sheet of construction plan around our shins to see how high up it would come on our shins. On all of us except...



Chapter 10

We tried to act casually. As we walked through the gate to the project site. We waved good morning to the gate guard with shaky smiles on our faces/. The guard nodded his head at us, and then, he pointed at me and waved with his hand that I should come over to where he stood. He was the same guard we had first met when we came to work in Berlin. HE had a stern look on his face. I thought, Oh, no! what have I done. What have I left undone? Then, I thought, Oh, brother, what if we have been un...



Chapter 11

When we arrived at the apartment, we took the plans out of our pants legs. We locked the doors and we closed the window curtains. I said, “Everybody stay here. I’m taking the message about cookies to the…ah…to the mailbox.” The nodded their approval, and I left. I felt that my mind was supernaturally alert. At first, I thought people, men, were following me. My heart beat so forcefully in my chest, I was afraid people see my chest expanding with each beat, or my head expanding with ...



Chapter 12

We finished the Intelligence center ahead of schedule, despite the delay caused updating the architectural drawings. We never knew what the cause of redrafting was. We didn’t care. We were just brick layers. More than that, we could claim that we were certified stone masons. The certification didn’t mean much if we had no buildings to brick. So, that day, before our foreman left for the day, we went to see him,

He stood examining a section of pages for a building. He eyed us curiously, ...



Chapter 13

Finding work outside of the Russian Ruble fueled Government projects was not easy. We did find a few jobs bricking homes, but those projects were of type that we finished each of them inside of a week. While the brigade was bricking a home, I had to be out on the streets looking for people who wanted to rebuild. If we could find them, they would pay us in East German Marks, the DDM money German Democratic Mark. We believed that once we escaped, Bill would help us covert our money into West German Marks. ...



Chapter 14

Our work was nearly finished at the old home that was being remodeled after the war. We stood out in the street looking at the work and estimating how long finishing would take us.

Erwin said, “I would estimate that finishing up should take us no more than and hour or so.”

I was concerned, “What would we do about finishing this house if Bill came for us this evening?”

“What would we do? What do you mean? We would leave!””

“Well, I me...



Chapter 15

The casket was soft, but the road was rough. I was jerked from one end of the thing to the other. My body was pushed from one side to the other as Bill negotiated the turns, the stops, and the starts. Finally, I felt the truck slow. Then, I heard the breaks squeal as Bill slowed to a stop as the checkpoint. I heard him indistinctly discussing the events of the day with a check point guard. I’m sure the others heard the conversation also, but I don’t know if they were as scared as I was. ...



Chapter 16

After we arrived at the airport in Hanover, we departed from the plane together, and we entered the terminal together. The man was not hard to find. He had a large paperboard sign that had ‘Bill’s friend,’ written on it. We walked up to him, and I said, Where the bricklayers.” I asked him, “what are we supposed to call you?”

He nodded and said, “Just call me Friend!”

I turned to look at the other three, and as a group, they shrugged their should...



Chapter 17

I remembered that in school in Germany, we had studied Greek mythology. We studied Apollo and how the Greeks sought his chariot was the sun. Every day was an epic journey for him to travel from the east to the west. Because of this size of America, I thought I was setting out on an epic journey. It was just me and my car driving from the east to the west. In my studies about America, I had read that in vain the Amish, who were of German descent, had settled parts of Pennsylvania. I wanted to go from New ...



Chapter 18

 

While I worked on the hotel, I watched the other bricklayers to find out who among them were quality brick masons. I knew that many of them were local bricklayers, and I suspected that they would be looking for a job once the hotel was complete. I believed that I might be able to spread the word that I was a bricklayer and hopefully catch some work with one of the local builders. If I could do that, then I could hire a crew, and I would be in business as a brick contractor. So, I made...



Chapter 19

On the jukebox, Roy Orbison was singing “Only The Lonely.” Jerry Lee Lewis was singing about shaking, Ricky Nelson was singing “Traveling Man,” and fans were still playing Buddy Holly’s “Peggy Sue.” I was walking around singing, “Patricia Sue, I love you.” I didn’t know that Patricia’s middle name was really, “Lou,” but I didn’t care because the name that I sang fit the music to “Peggy Sue.”

 A coup...



Chapter 20

Patricia and I met at the club Friday night and Saturday night. On Saturday, when Patricia and I saw pictures of Buddy on the wall. Those pictures made him look tall. The pictures I had seen of him made him seem like he was a shorter person. I asked her how tall Buddy was. She told me that he was 6 feet tall.

I was surprised that he was that tall. I said, “but he doesn’t seem to look like your father.”

Patricia said, Oh, he was tall like my daddy. But Larry and I look more ...



Epilogue

Whenever Manfred and I would meet to discuss his life’s story, we would talk about what he wanted done, and he would hand me a cassette tape. Now that I have mentioned the item called a cassette tape, many of you readers will think how backward or old-fashioned I must be. But we started talking and I started writing in 1990. The technology of CDs, jump drives, and memory cards had not been invented. Anyway, we did the best we could.

Manfred would put on tape the things he wanted me to be sure...



Author Biography

The author, Larry Thompson, is a retired educator, and is also retired from the military, living in Lubbock, Texas with his wife. His wife is also a retired educator. She taught Mathematics. His doctorate was in Education, but he taught English. His Bachelor’s degree was in Journalism and English, and his Master’s Degree was in English and Education.

 

He lived in the Saarland in Germany for three years. He lived mostly in Kaiserslautern. He traveled widely in Germany but was...




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