#memoryboat

Name: Claudia Age: 63 Occupation: Retired Journalist

HOMECOMING

My mom, Lore Feldman, grew up in the shadow of Adolf Hitler and the hatred he spewed. In 1935, she and other Jewish children in Ulm, Germany were kicked out of exercise clubs, off sports teams and out of swimming pools. In 1936, the same children who were ordered to the back of their classrooms, pelted with rocks on the way to school, were eventually expelled altogether. In 1937, when she was 14, her widowed mother had the wisdom and wherewithal to grab her children and flee to the United States. Mom hated talking about Germany. It seemed the subject was always closed. So when the invitation to attend a synagogue dedication in Ulm arrived in the mail, we all knew there was no way she was going to go. The trip was all-expenses-paid for the city’s Holocaust survivors; it was to be Ulm’s first new temple in 74 years. The old one had been torched during 1938’s Kristallnacht. Then everything changed with a phone call from a beloved niece who was also making the trip. That evening, Mom told me she wanted to take the transAtlantic journey. She wanted to see Ulm and her German relatives one last time. That was when we-- her children, son-in-law, and grandson-- realized, we were all going to Europe. At 89 years old, my mom used a walker and struggled with Parkinson’s. She was fragile. Still, she was able to let her anxiety wash away and gain renewed strength for the journey. When we got off the train and she saw the station from her childhood, she wept. Before the dedication, we visited the Christmas market where we ate foot-long sausages and washed them down with mugs of hot gluhwein. We listened to a lecture from historian Dr. Nicola Wenge. She talked about how Hitler came to power in January 1933. That March, Nazis occupied Ulm’s city hall. That November, some area Jews were arrested and tossed in an early concentration camp. “We do this work,” she said, “so it never happens again.” Several branches of our family came together in Ulm from different corners of the U.S. and Germany. Various combinations of us seemed to have the same feet, or the same wrinkles, or the same love for ridiculous knit caps and cool German shoes. I wouldn’t say that my mom unpacked all the pain after so many years. But she was better after the trip. I think she realized that her many fears about the visit didn’t come true. She had more stamina, more strength, more hope for the future than she thought. When we got back, she actually started talking to us about Germany. And I got the sense that the words no longer burned her throat.

Name: Heng

Occupation: Analyst in Oil and Gas

Country of Origin: Cambodia

THE AMERICAN DREAM

I was born in 1979, and after two months, my entire family left Cambodia. We ended up in Khao-I-Dang, a refugee camp in Thailand. We were there for about two years. During that time, my father was shot and killed. They told my mom about it. We actually never got a chance to see his body.

After those two years, we were granted asylum in the United States. Ronald Reagan eased restrictions allowing refugees to come in. We applied for Chicago, Philadelphia, and got accepted to Houston. It was me, my mom, my aunts and my maternal grandparents. They're all still here.

It was hard at first. I remember sometimes having to go dumpster diving. At first, my mom got a job taking care of the elderly. She went from that to being a live-in nanny. She did that for about a year. Then she moved to another family, as a live-out nanny. She did that for several years and eventually ended up working in dry cleaning for about 16 years. My grandmother had a job picking up trash along the highway. Then she moved to another job building vertical blinds. She’d spend 10 to 12 hours every day on her feet, building and carrying these heavy blinds. My grandfather worked as a dishwasher at a cafeteria.

We didn’t speak English when we started school. My friends and I were all refugees. We met because we were all put into one apartment complex. We’d watch TV and make up our own English based on what we thought it sounded like. I remember being in kindergarten, and the teacher asked us to read something on the board. Everybody raised their hand. She called my name, and of course, I couldn’t read it. After that I was put in ESL. I was in ESL for three years.

My family loves living here. We really appreciate it, because if it weren’t for America, we’d still be in Cambodia. I’d probably be on the side of the road selling tarantulas or something. We struggled when we first came to America. But of course, if you work hard here, you actually get something out of it. They’re very appreciative.

I ended up going back to Cambodia in 2008. It was my first time back since I was two months old. I met my uncle and my paternal grandmother, before she passed away. She was very frail. She thought I was my mom.

It was terrible what happened in Cambodia, but on the bright side, I’m here. This is my home. I’ve been able to make something of myself. I’m not a taker. I’m not on welfare. I’m not on food stamps. I pay taxes every year. I’m an American. I think like an American. I act like an American. Even though, deep down inside, I’m Cambodian.

Name: Merlyn

Occupation: Craftsman and Tarot Reader

City: Houston

NO ONE EVER REALLY DIES

I was born with Spina Bifida. I’ve had 25 surgeries. The most recent one being earlier this year.

Both of my parents were doctors. My mom was a pediatrician. When I was 17, I had yet another set of surgeries. While I was in the hospital, there was this little African American girl. She was in the isolation room. I was in the hospital for a couple of weeks, and the entire time I was there, she never stopped crying. I was told that she had full blown AIDS. This was the summer of 1987.

I remember her, one day, sitting right outside the isolation room. One of the nurses came up to me and said, “Don’t go near her. You’ve already got enough problems.”  

Even then, that just struck me as wrong. Fast forward later that year, I was in my mother’s office when she got the news that that baby had died.A little over a year old. It was the first time I ever saw my mother cry. So from very early on I knew that AIDS wasn’t about your orientation. It wasn’t about guilt or innocence.

Once I moved to Houston, and tested positive, I spent a lot of time at Twelve Oaks hospital. Back then, they had particular floors for people with HIV. And going there, I vividly remember there being this crowd of people in the lobby. They were the family members of somebody in the ward. On the same day, this entire family was discovering three things about the person in that hospital: 1) he was gay, 2) he had AIDS, and 3) he would probably not live to see the end of the weekend. And I remember thinking, what kind of screwed up world is it that people have to hide all of these things from their family until they’re about to die?

In my own life, I had the irony of finding out that I was positive during a display of the AIDS Quilt at the George R. Brown Convention Center, back in 1995. I was volunteering for the Names Project. I went from volunteering for the quilt, to the clinic where I found out I was HIV positive, right back to volunteering.

And I can remember the man telling me, and my virtual lack of reaction to it. In the long term I’ve looked at it as, I’ve survived everything else. I’m not going anywhere yet.

But what I struck me most about that day has nothing to do with me. It was about a woman sitting by one of the quilts. A young woman with long hair. She was kind of laying on her hands, looking at one of the quilts. She was there when I left for the clinic. She was there when I got back from the clinic. She was there when the evening ended. And she never stopped crying. Whoever that was on the quilt meant that much to her. And she never stopped. She just kept crying.

But I’m an eternal optimist. I survived Spina Bifida and 25 related surgeries. I’m a firm believer that as long as one person remembers you were there, and speaks well of you, you never really die. And I say that thinking of the little baby, whose nickname was Leele Watson, to the person on the quilt in ‘95, to the most recent friend who died of something related to HIV last year. They’re still with us.

Name: Roger

Age: 64

Occupation: Record producer, engineer, and owner of Bong Island Sound Recording Studio

THE WORLD IS YOURS

I was working at Digital Services Recording Studio. I started working there in 1986. It was the only state-of-the-art studio between here and Dallas. We had all sorts of cutting edge digital recording equipment, world class microphones, reverbs, and mic preamps.

Anybody who could afford to record there, would. We had the equipment and reputation. So, that’s how I started working with Rap-A-Lot Records. They were just one of the clients. They had their own engineer, but we always had to have somebody from the studio there to be the assistant. To do what needed to be done in the room, because we knew the room.

I don’t remember how it came up, but somehow they learned that I was a bass player. And basically, as soon as they heard me play, they asked me to be on a lot of their records. So I played bass and worked as the room assistant. By that time, I was doing some recording for Rap-A-Lot, and I guess my name got around. From there I started recording and mixing for UGK, Scarface, The Almighty RSO and a few others.

I ended up getting a gold record for my work on Scarface’s “The World Is Yours”. On that, Mike Dean did about 98% of the engineering, and all the mixing. I maybe overdubbed a few vocals. But I did play bass on a couple of things. In between tracks, Scarface would have these minute and a half long “commercials”, and he used one of my original chime diddys. That was my biggest contribution to the record. But I got a gold record out of it, so that was pretty cool.

Name: Marlo

Age: 60

Occupation: Co-host of KPFT’s Open Journal

SOUTH BY DUE EAST

I was a music publisher in Nashville while also managing bands and artists. I worked with punk bands, new wave bands, and country western acts. So I’ve had a lot of experience in the music business. All the acts that I’ve worked with have had one thing in common: they all created original music.

So when I came back to Houston in the late 1990s, to take care of family, I met Guy Schwartz. He’s kind of a force of nature. He’s a musician and band leader with the New Jack Hippies. He introduced me to this internet radio station, Earthwire. It was a cool little performance venue. Very underground. Very hip. If you knew about it, you loved it. It ran 24 hours a day.

Having been in the music business, I looked around at all these great, local talented people and none of them were actually involved in the business side of things. Well, everybody knows about South by Southwest. I was around when it started. I knew the guys who started it. Originally, it was supposed to be a festival where artists got signed. It’s changed into something completely different now and I can’t stand it. I got really fed up a few years back when the only two “representatives” of Houston music were a cover band and a country band that no longer lived in Houston. So I figured, why not start our own showcase?

We set it up in a Houston bar. Guy Schwartz rented a video camera and, after the showcase, he took five or six bands over to Earthwire and recorded them on video. It was amazing! There was so much creativity there. We felt like we needed to turn it into an annual showcase. We decided to call it South by Due East. We’ve been doing it nearly 15 years now.

So now, we’re able to give bands, who create their own music, an opportunity to get the type of press kit they need. We make sure they have multitrack recordings and video that they can share online to get bookings. And it’s also part of an archive to really get a snapshot of what the Houston music scene is like in any given year. I can’t tell you how it amazing it feels knowing that our little idea flowered into this multi-day festival.

Name: Guy

Age: 65

Occupation: Musician, Producer, Director

GET READY

I don’t remember how it happened, but when I was 15, this guy came around and hired me and my little band. A three-piece band of 15 year olds. He wanted us to play with a singing group that he was managing. Essentially, to be their backing band.

He picked us up in his Cadillac, took us down to a studio on South Park Boulevard-- which is now Martin Luther King-- and we rehearsed with his group. They were four, young, good-looking black guys in their early 20s. They wore matching suits, sang covers of The Temptations and had matching dance steps.

We played at Ray Barnett’s clubs. Ray had a little more than half a dozen clubs around Houston, including the Cinder Club and the Latin Worlds. He advertised on the radio, and everybody knew about Ray Barnett’s fabulous clubs.

All eight of us would pile into his Cadillac, get to the first club, perform for 12 minutes, get back in and drive off to the next club to perform the same set. These guys loved The Temptations, so we would do their songs. The newest hit was “Cloud Nine”. We’d start off with that, then slow it down for “My Girl”, then finish with the big show stopper, “Get Ready”.

The one that goes: “I never met a girl who made me feel the way that you do, you’re alright. So get ready. Get ready, here I come.”

During “Get Ready” the guys would each have a dance solo. It was the big ending. People just loved it. All the girls went crazy for us. We’d play all seven clubs, then do the whole circuit all over again the next night. Three to four nights a week. $28 dollars a person, per night. Get ready. Get ready.

I learned a lot of lessons during this time, including how to be a professional musician. The main one they kept telling us was to keep playing no matter what. If a fight breaks out, you keep playing. If something goes wrong, you keep playing. It was the most important lesson.

Well one night in Bay City at the Club Astronaut, a fight broke out while we were doing our set. The whole place emptied out, and we kept playing like we’d been told. Three minutes, five minutes, eight minutes. We heard gunshots. We kept playing.

All of the sudden, this man in a green and red plaid suit and a Pork Pie hat came running through the door. He was holding his leg with one hand, and a gun with the other.  He was waving the gun around and bleeding profusely from his leg, and he started running toward the stage. Straight for me. And we’re playing, and he’s yelling something at me. And, remembering what they told us, we kept playing. He’s at me yelling something. We just kept playing. He got right up in front of me. I couldn’t hear him, but I could tell he really wanted to talk to me. So I mustered up all the courage I could, and bent forward and said, “I can’t hear you. What are you saying?”

He waved the gun in my direction and says, “Do y’all know ‘Get Ready’?”

Name: June Age: 60s Occupation: Retired Sales Manager 

TRAVEL OFTEN

One of the best times of my life was when I married my husband, and we moved to Europe. He’s Swedish, and had been wanting to return to Europe, so a client of my company was able to offer him a job. We moved to England, where I worked as a regional sales manager. The territory I covered included the UK, Ireland, Scandinavia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan. We both love to travel, and living in Europe it was very easy getting around. My husband worked as an airline pilot. Normally, I’d go along with him to his conferences, and he’d come with me to mine. As the chief pilot for a Swedish airline, I’d go with him to a number of international conferences. I had several conferences in Geneva and he’d come with me to those. Normally, right after the conferences, we’d do our own little mini-vacations. These were partially paid for by the company, which made it fun. We had a wonderful time meeting people and seeing how they lived. It’s something that I think more people in the United States should do. It’s quite fun and educational. Because when you travel, you begin to understand that people all over the world are the same. They want the same things that we do. They want a good family. A good job. They just want to be happy. My husband has reminded me, numerous times, that Americans have the least number of stamps in their passports. Of course, I defend my country, because I love the United States. I always remind him that we’re a very large country and it’s a lot more difficult to travel abroad here. Traveling is still very important us. Now that he’s also retired, we usually plan a couple of trips a year. So far, my favorite destination has probably been Monschau, Germany. It’s such a beautiful little town. It looks like something out of a Walt Disney film.