Ms. Pixie's Great American Novel

As most of you know, over the past five years I have been working on a novel, off and on.  I have decided (after much self-debate) to post part of it up here and get some feedback from the six of you who read this blog when I update it once a quarter. (Sorry 'bout that, by the way.)  I welcome your feedback, but please be gentle.  This is the first time anyone other than Ron has read it.
THANK YOU, RON, for your help with editing!
I'll update it with bits every now and then.
While this book is inspired by actual events, the book itself is just a book, not a true story.
So here is the Prologue.

   It’s been fifteen years since I lived in Graz, but the memories are still vivid, the characters permanently locked in time.  From time to time, I get a bit nostalgic for the self-indulgent life I had then.  I was fortunate enough to have a youth that allowed me to make mistakes and take chances, knowing I would have a safety net to catch me if I should fall.  I would trade absolutely nothing, nothing in the world for that year.  I learned as much about a foreign culture and its people as I did myself.  After all, isn’t that what studying abroad is all about?

   In the summer of 1975, my parents took a belated honeymoon to Europe.  They had been married five years, but with the $40 a week my dad brought home in the Air Force it took a while to save up.  Though she had a teaching degree, my mom worked in a local bank.  There just weren’t any jobs for art teachers in the area.  It was the 70s and my dad had an uncanny resemblance to Meathead from “All In the Family.”  He could’ve been Rob Reiner’s younger brother who had more hair and wasn’t schlubby.  My mother had Marcia Brady hair that she cut to shoulder-length just before going on their trip.  After four years of living in Upper Michigan, she was ready for a trim.  She’s around 5’8 and has brown hair and eyes, while my dad was 6’3 with dark brown hair and eyes.  Everyone assumes he’s my Jewish parent, though in fact it’s my mother who is Jewish.  He looks very authentic in his yarmulke, though.  

   My aunt Betsy was two years behind my mother in school and sang in the college choir.  Summer of her junior year, the choir went on tour through Europe, and they sang in towns like Oxford, Chartres, Heidelberg, and Vienna.  Aunt Betsy had very vivid memories of singing in Dominikanikirche in Vienna and watching an older woman weep silently as they sang.  When my parents let their families know about the itinerary, Aunt Betsy was adamant they go to Austria.  The country wasn’t on their list of places like England, Scotland, Belgium, Holland, Germany, and France.  However, Aunt Betsy insisted to the point of pestering my parents on a daily basis, so they took her advice and went.

   Austria is located in central Europe and is surrounded by Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia (formerly part of Yugoslavia), Italy, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland.  Once the vast Austro-Hungarian Empire, it even had a navy – hence Admiral Von Trapp of “The Sound of Music” fame – but now it is slightly smaller than the state of Maine.  Some say Austrians have an inferiority complex because they speak German, but aren’t German.  My parents’ and my experience has shown us otherwise.  The Germans are known for using their left blinker and turning left; Austrians will occasionally use their left blinker and go right.  It has been my experience that they are a bit more relaxed than the Germans – a trait I find most endearing. 

   Aside from the obvious places that most tourists visit in Austria – Vienna because it’s the capitol, Salzburg because it’s the birthplace of Mozart – my parents decided to go to Mariazell, the most visited pilgrimage site in Central Europe.  My parents are not very religious or even Catholic, but they felt the need to go to this small town located about 100 miles south-southwest of Vienna.  The relic is a miracle-working wooden carving of the Virgin Mary.  It was brought to the area in the mid 12^th century and has been a popular visiting place ever since.

   My parents boarded the train to Mariazell, but were able to only find seats in the smoking section.  Remember - in the 70s, babies were born every day with cigarettes in their chubby fists.  My dad smoked a pipe, but the haze from the cigarettes was too much for even him.  The seats were in one of the cars that have rows of chairs and give little space for a long-distance traveler who might have a larger-than-average backpack or suitcase.  It sort of resembled an airplane’s economy class seating.  My parents did not have much, just a large rucksack each and a bag of fresh fruit, cheese, and some bread.  Most places where they stayed included breakfast in the room rate, so they would try to eat a large breakfast and then save money by having a Cadbury bar for lunch so that they could go someplace inexpensive for dinner.

   While my father held their seats, my mother went in search of two in the non-smoking section.  After looking for a while, she came across a compartment with just a couple in it.  The man was wearing a tweed jacket and appeared to be around average height.  He had sandy hair while the woman was very dark with an olive complexion.  She was far shorter and very pregnant.  Not being a German-speaker, my mother went through this in-depth pantomime of not smoking.  She crisscrossed her hands in a waving motion that resembled someone hailing a semi, then pantomimed smoking a cigarette, and then repeated the crisscross motion.  The man of the couple turned to her and said in a proper British accent, “Oh, you don’t smoke.”  Years later, my mother will still talk about how she felt like a complete idiot for assuming no one spoke English.  The couple invited my parents to sit with them.  Mom went back to the smoking section, collected my dad and their meager belongings, and spent the rest of the trip getting to know each other.

   The Austrian couple, Franz and Theresia Feuerstein, was on their way to have their baby blessed while still in utero.  They wanted a baby with curly blonde hair and a safe birth.  Franz was an English teacher and Theresia was a music teacher in a little town in the northwestern state of Upper Austria.  Throughout the conversation, the Feuersteins found out that my parents were on their belated honeymoon and that my mother was an art teacher while my dad was halfway through law school. 

   Theresia’s family was from Linz, the capital of Upper Austria.  After WWII, Austria, like Germany, was divided into quadrants.  The Danube runs through Austria and bisects the provincial capital of Linz.  The half of the city where Theresia lived was under American control while the other half was under Russian.  Theresia and her family were very thankful to not live under Russian occupation, as they had heard horror stories on Russian treatment of the locals.  Theresia’s family had two American soldiers quartered with them.  They were very kind to the family.  They gave the children bubble gum and would share the contents of their care packages from home. 

   This appreciation for kind Americans coupled with her husband’s fascination with English led to the Feuersteins inviting my parents to stay with them in their small flat in the little town of Perg.  At first my parents declined.  “We couldn’t possibly impose!” my father said.

   “Oh, but we insist!  You must stay with us!”  Franz and Theresia were very persistent.  And so my parents stayed for two days with a couple they had met at random on a train in a country they had never meant to visit.  Franz was fascinated with the English language and the fact that it was so diverse in its accents.  “In Austria, we teach British English.  What we call ‘lifts’ are what you call ‘elevators’ I believe?” he asked my father.

   “Yes, we call them elevators.  And the trunk of a car is what the British call boot and the hood is a bonnet,” my father added.

   Over the next two days, my mother went shopping every day with Theresia and helped make traditional Austrian fare for dinner.  The refrigerators were not large enough to hold much.  While Mom helped make potato salad with bacon, my dad was reading out of an English textbook into a tape recorder.  He read sentences like, “Mr. Brown does not like to eat peas,” and “Mrs. Jones drives in the country.”  Fritz had had other native English speakers read into his tape player:  A man from Texas and someone from Tennessee.  As my family is from Louisiana, poor Fritz didn’t realize he had a strong Southern convention on tape. 

   “I just hope he doesn’t think all Americans sound like this,” my mother later lamented.

   Regardless of accents, they have been friends ever since.  Every Christmas we send presents and we call them on Christmas day.  Theresia sings “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” and my mother cries.

   After my parents returned to the States, they received a notice in the mail that the Feuersteins had a baby girl named Portia.  She had blonde hair.  Five years later, they had another baby girl named Astrid who had curly hair.  Portia and Astrid are the sisters I never had.  Franz and Theresia always wanted a third child, but it didn’t happen (biologically speaking), and so they adopted me as their third child, a role I enjoy with relish.  Over the years our families have sent Christmas presents to each other and every Christmas Day we call them to talk to them.  In high school and college I took German because I knew I would one day go over to visit them.  After graduating from high school I spent three weeks with this family I had only spoken to on the phone.  It was an excellent introduction to Austrian culture and served me well two years later when I went over for my junior year.  They were the most gracious hosts and very patient with an 18-year old American who thinks she already knows everything and that American humor is universally understood.  (For the record, it’s not.)  When I arrived in Graz for my junior year of college, I already knew little things like when you clink glasses with someone, you look them in the eye as you do it, and that Erdbeerbowle is a delicious strawberry punch.  It was three weeks of amazing, and I confirmed my suspicions:  Austria was the country for me.