Micky Beisenherz remembers his grandfather

M. Beisenherz: Sorry, I’m here privately
Cheers to the Old Ones: Memories of my Oppa

Since another young woman on Instagram had just said goodbye to a likeable older man whom she called “my dear grandpa” in a touching series of photos, let me pause for a moment: the old people will soon outnumber us. Time to treat them with affection. Even if you can watch an entire film by Christopher Nolan on your iPhone while you count out the coins of the front pensioner at the checkout.

The very good musician Gregor Meyle told me that he received his first guitar as a gift from his grandfather. What’s more, what looked like a greenhouse in the garden at home turned out to be something else: his grandfather had built him his first rehearsal room. For which Meyle and his Schrammellants were probably more grateful to him than the neighbors.

What my grandfather had once built in our garden in Henrichenburg also looked like a greenhouse – and it was one. And since our Oppa (always pronounced with several consonants in the Ruhr area) was talented with his hands, his greenhouse had a sprinkler system for warm, moist mist. A smell of earth, fresh tomato plants, chives. But all of Oppa’s technical skill was of no use when it came to preventing his grandchildren from eating his half-ripe tomatoes and cucumbers. The situation should be similar with the pears, apples and plums from the garden.

Patriarch of a gas-water-shit dynasty in Castrop-Rauxel

We looked up to this man who wasn’t physically large, but who had created pretty much everything on which this four-generation family was based. Right up to the founding of his parents’ craft business, which he ran for a long time and where he was still reverently called “the master” long after my father had been managing director there. The pepita-protected patriarch of a gas-water-shit dynasty in Castrop-Rauxel. As a penniless Sudeten German, he built two houses. A company. An old journeyman told us children the demigod-like story of how, as an apprentice, he was once too weak to carry a radiator up to the fourth floor, whereupon “the master” quickly shouldered it and carried it up the stairs while sitting on top. Is it true?

It is true that my oppa liked to take my brother and me with him. We collected old screws at the company’s adventure playground and watched him repair the VW vans. What is documented is how we went with him to the property of his neighbor in the industrial area, a showman, to buy the body of a decommissioned bumper car for a few marks. He built it on a chassis made from old wheelbarrow tires, soldered together water pipes and soapbox steering. The kart was powered by a lawnmower engine that was so powerful that my then 13-year-old brother tiled down the industrial street at 50 km/h (my brother claims it was 80). Of course without a helmet. It was 1984.

Since my parents weren’t completely enthusiastic about it, the engine was throttled down, but not my grandpa’s drive, who, how could it be otherwise, suffered a fatal heart attack years later in his early 70s while hauling a water-soaked bale of hay. He just wanted to start growing mushrooms. Start something new. Stay curious: Sometimes that doesn’t get old.

An authority, an accomplice. I think of him sometimes.