XXIII

Then, one day again I read the Boston Globe and saw a 3/4" high add in the Help Wanted column that made me stop scanning and look again: "Mechanical Engineer. Diploma from recognized institution. Must have experience in pressure vessels design and manufacture. Must be fluent in English and German languages." This was signed by TÜV and a Danvers, MA address was given. To fit it all into such small space, the print was so small that by itself the ad stuck out of the crowd. I wish I had cut it out and saved it to paste it in here. Of course I rushed my application! I had studied mechanical engineering at the federal college in Zurich, I had gathered experience in pressure vessels design and manufacturing during my years at The M.W.Kellogg company in New York, and German - I felt rather weak there, after almost twenty years of not speaking the language any more. My application got me an interview and on the two hour drive from Lulu's house in Vermont to TÜV's office in Danvers, MA I spoke nothing but German to myself. I told myself about the road and the trees along the side and about the villages I drove through, the weather and other drivers and it is amazing what different muscles one must activate in one's face to speak that language vs. English' not to mention the deep digging into cold memory for the words. But these two hours gave me some confidence. In the interview the question never came up. The interviewer was the director of administrative services and he clearly did not know what type of engineer the office needed. so I left after the basics.
Within the week I got a call to come back. It was explained to me that the Head of the office in search of the engineer had been absent when I came the last time, but he had returned to his desk and wanted to see me.
The man I met looked about twenty years younger than I and spoke an atrocious English so we immediately switched to German. It turned out he was not the boss at all, the boss himself having left short notice on an urgent trip. Ferdinand, his name, was visiting from the German HQ in Munich and just 'helping out a bit'. He asked me what I knew of TÜV and I told him that I had encountered the office way back in Switzerland and at that time the main subjects had been automotive engineering, traffic safety and accident investigation, this latter not only for automobile accidents but also airplane crashes and train collisions or derailments, which lead to metallurgy and materials science. He agreed to all that and asked me about my education and then wanted to know what the annealing temperature of aluminum was and I groped in surprise for a number in my far back memory and luckily he agreed with what I came up with and let me go with the promise that I would hear further form them.
The next thing I heard was a serious job offer and an invitation to come back to Danvers and settle the paperwork if I were interested. Was I interested! By that time I was so hungry for a decent job I would have accepted dry bread and water.
The confirmation of all with an agreed-on starting day came two days before Tiiu and I left to drive to Virginia Beach to see Iivo through his wedding. You cannot imagine how elated i was when I started out on that trip: My birthday (58), Iivo's wedding and a new, secure and promising job! I was so elated, My joy ran away with it and our guests at the wedding rehearsal dinner ware kept sitting in form of their full plates while I carried on for a long long time with an impromptu tale about young men traveling to the sea shore to rob heavy maidens etc. etc. and after a while I could read in my cousin-in-law's face that she was very, very hungry and wanted absolutely to pick up fork and knife and get on with it. There is a recording of the feat, together with other historic documentation, on a video tape that was produce during this occasion. Ask Laurie about it, unless I already talked you out of it.