Albuquerque Journal from Albuquerque, New Mexico • Page 59

TRENDS Features 2 Fifty Plus 6 Television 11 Sunday, December 17, 1989 Albuquerque Journal Page 1, Section miiaiaiM.llii i.iiiiliii mijw mi pi.i ji ninun i in i i i i. i.inn.i i. the allFal Ultimate Trips Seeing 7 fj? i Jr. 'End of World' Unforgettable Jim Arnholz K7.A-' i I OF THE JOURNAL One Wall Falls, Another Goes Up mf-mimsi mm I -V, 1 I. I 7 l.l nvmmm' KHWtlMII I' i 1 JIM THOMPSON JOURNAL 1 Rudi Utescher with his T-shirt that translates: "I was there." The cries of celebration at the dominolike crumbling of ton fist Communist rule in Eastern European countries echo joyfully among Albuquerqeans who emigrated from the area and still have family there.

Here are two reactions. Stories by Pat Kailer JOURNAL STAFF WRITER RUDI UTESCHER saw the wall come down. He brims with excitement telling his story. "I was there, at the Berlin Wall," he says, eyes shiny at the memory. "These two young fellows helped me up to the top of it.

I'm 75, 1 think I was the oldest person there and I was an American transplanted from Berlin. They liked it (that I was) and I loved it, I loved it. "We are all singing and crying and screaming Oh, it was a big noise. And on November 9, my mother's birthday, I'll never forget it." A one-time soldier in the German Army, Utescher, whose accent remains shot through with "zees" and "zens," emigrated to this country in 1953 before there was a Berlin Wall. He is a widower with two sisters who, along with their extended families, still live in East Berlin.

A retired tool and die mker, Utescher visits Berlin three, four, sometimes six times a year, on vacation and as a freelancer in his field supervising the setting up of factory machinery or other related work. Frequent flyer plans allow other trips. He decided to go to Berlin just for a few days this time, he says. "I felt something was coming. "No," he says, with a wry smile, "I didn't have knowledge.

I am not a spy, I am Rudi. My heart was bubbling." Nonetheless he was a little blue on Nov. 8, the day he arrived in Berlin. He left his hotel for a restaurant to have a beer and some schmalz stulle. "Schmalz stulle? Oh," he says, his face creasing in a smile as though the taste still lingered, "some apple, onion, bacon mixed, lightly browned, and you spread it on rye bread.

I make it sometime." Pretty soon, he says, somebody came along and said something was going on with the wall. Utescher joined others going to the Brandenburg Gate, where they found everyone standing on the platform looking over the wall. "A lot of young fellows had knocked down a section and got through," he says. "First the police tried to blow them down with fire hoses, but when they got maybe one down, 10 or 20 would get up, so they stopped." Then, he was hoisted to the top of the wall. Afterwards, he took one fellow back to "I tell you, the whole thing was so emotional for me.

Berlin, Berlin, I was born in Berlin, my parents were born in Berlin." Rudi Utescher Gayle Klinikowski, a Roswell resident, has kept a haunting, picture of the Berlin Wall in her head for years. On her first day in Berlin in 1964, her father, an American who was in military service there, took her to see Checkpoint Charlie, the American Zone entrance. "There was a platform built on the side so you could kind of see over the wall," she says. "A young man with a baby was standing on the platform. A typical tourist, I asked him what he was doing there.

It didn't dawn on me he might be a Berliner, but he was and he spoke English. 'I am showing my son the end of the he said, and I have never forgotten that." The child was about 2 years old, says Klinikowski. "The man told me he brought him there quite frequently because he didn't want him to forget it." The day the wall came down, her father called to tell her, says the Roswell woman. "He said he knows if I had been there I'd be right down there helping them to do it with a jackhammer. And I would have." As a tour guide for military and dignitaries visiting Berlin, Klinikowski said she knew and hated every inch of the wall and what it stood for.

Part of the wall was houses with bricked up doors and windows, she says. "They bricked it up so quickly it even caught curtains from peoples' windows." She remembers the great number of people who lost their lives trying to get to West Berlin. "While I was there," she says, "there were some who delivered meat from East Germany into West Berlin to sell it. They were allowed to go because the government figured they'd always come back to their families. "Two men delivering the meat got together, doped their families, packed them in meat carcasses and brought them over.

One was a small baby who almost died from hypothermia. That's how desperate some of the people were." worked for Siemens Corp. (the German-based international company) as a tool and die maker foreman, been a bartender, a waiter and was back in heavy construction as a foreman when the layoff came. They said it was temporary, he says, but he had to work. He came to Jackson, through the sponsorship of an American soldier who'd married a German woman and became his friend.

"I was two days in America and I start i to work," he says. "The only English I knew was what I'd learned in the black market coffee, yes, no." Utescher, who is Uncle Rudi to a number of German relatives, soon became a success symbol to his family back in Germany, with several of his young male relatives following his trade. He has an Uncle Rudi kind of face, kindly, worldly wise with a hint of mischief, the countenance of someone who has survived tough times and also lived well a suitable representative to stand atop the Berlin Wall in celebration. He anticipates many changes on his next visit. Before, as an American, Utescher, like everyone else, had to apply for a visa to visit East Berlin.

"You had to fill out four forms and send it in with some money to get your application for a visa," he says. "At the border you got your visa. You would then go to the police station to report you're there. And for every day you stayed you had to spend 25 marks 15 a day if you were retired. If you didn't spend that amount, you could give it to relatives, but whatever you did with it, you could not bring it out with you.

Food and staples weje cheaper than in West MORE: See ULTIMATE on PAGE F3 the restaurant with him. "We were crying," he says, "I tell you, the whole thing was so emotional for me. Berlin, Berlin, I was born in Berlin, my parents were bora in Berlin I have my father's birth certificate. They both died before the wall went up." At the restaurant, a group of young men gathered around him, interested in an American who spoke German, says Utescher. "They asked questions, intelligent questions, mostly about, America." Utescher had seen some of his family earlier this year, but not this.

time. There was a mass of people as solid as a wall of water coming from East to West, he says. "At first police tried to stamp ID cards, then they just stepped back and let everyone through. Buses were filled. There was no way you could go from West to East.

When I go in January I will see my family." Utescher originally left his homeland after a layoff from work. Before that, he had served two years in the Army, East Bloc Changes: Too Much Too Fast? THIS was going to be easy. It was to be a simple story about one wall and two natural human instincts: (1) the desire to hold a piece of history in your hands and (2) the desire to create a decent profit margin from (1). But I hadn't planned on two walls. "Check this out," a friend said.

He put a small cardboard box on my desk. Here's what the words on the box said: "THE BERLIN WALL Contains: Authentic Cut From The Berlin Wall." "I got it over the weekend," he said. "I call it the Pet Rock of Perestroika. I doubt that you'll find any left, though. There were only three when I was there." He was right.

At the shopping mall department store, there were no more Berlin Wall souvenirs. They had sold like hotcakes. Only the display remained. On a high wall was a color photo of the Brandenburg Gate. On a shelf in front of the photo were red bricks, strands of barbed wire, a rusty shovel blade and a floppy, Vietnam-style jungle hat.

(Cold War, Hot War, so who's counting? You've seen one souvenir war, you've seen 'em all.) Under the Berlin Wall display were shelves holding coffee cup warmers, the Wet Tunes Shower Radio, the Wet Tunes Shower Cassette Player and the Braun Multipractic Hand Blender. (Is Braun German? Could it be a Berlin Wall souvenir hand blender?) None of this seemed to be evidence of a melting Cold War. I talked to a sales clerk. She introduced me to the manager. I asked how many Pet Rocks of Perestroika the store had sold.

I asked him how long it took to sell them. "I can't communicate that information to you," he said. He was a pleasant, friendly sort of guy, the kind you take an instant liking to. When he said what he said, he wasn't the least bit hostile or even aloof. If anything, he sounded a little apologetic.

"I can't communicate that information to you." No normal human being talks like this, but the words still had a familiar ring. They were the words you hear from the Pentagon and the CIA; they were the words you used to hear from Eastern Europe before the tidal wave of democracy rolled in. Only people forced to follow bureaucratic orders say something like "I can't communicate that information to you." But rules are rules. He couldn't talk to me. I wasn't going to hold it against him.

He gave me the name of another person who could talk. She was the special events coordinator in Denver, not Albuquerque. All I wanted to do was talk to the grunts, the front line sales clerk infantry who sold Pet Rocks of Perestroika to average Albuquerqueans who strolled into the store. I couldn't imagine what the special events coordinator in Denver could tell me about Albuquerque customers, but I called anyway. The store's special events coordinator in Denver was just as friendly as the store manager had been.

She had the kind of voice that might make you say, "You want to come over to the house for Christmas dinner?" I asked how many souvenir chunks of the Berlin Wall had been sold in Albuquerque. "I'm sorry," she said. "I can't give out specific sales information." But she could give me general sales information. "I can tell you we've sold hundreds in Albuquerque," she said. I asked about the customers.

Why were they buying Berlin Wall souvenirs? She said people wanted a piece of history. The fall of the Berlin Wall was an exciting moment in our time and people felt strongly about it. I agreed. You'd need a hard heart not to be moved by the events Eastern Europe, which was exactly the reason why I wanted to talk to sales clerks. I wanted'to speak with people who actually sold Berlin Wall rocks to other people and talked to the people who bought them.

I wanted to find out what the Albuquerque customers had said about the Berlin Wall and how it affected them, v. The special events coordinator said that would be impossible. Under no circumstances would sales clerks be allowed to talk to me. "Corporate policy?" I said. "I'm afraid so," she said.

So that was the end of that The special events coordinator who didn't have the freedom to talk about certain information said the sales clerks didn't have the freedom to talk about the freedom that brought about the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of the Pet Rocks of Perestroika. But if you're interested in seeing whether more Berlin Wall souvenirs have come in, the name of the store is wait a minute. I don't know if I'm authorized to do this. I know it could be handy for you. You might even find other things in the store to buy while you're there.

I'm sorry. I don't think I can communicate that information to you. HE REVOLUTIONARY NEWS from their native Czechoslova kia amazes Ivana Cerna and her husband, Josef, Dolejs. They J. worry the couple.

"In my opinion," says Dolejs, "what happened was a little bit too fast I believe everything is Gorbachev." Cerna nods and recalls the yelling and cheering crowds shown on TV when the Russian leader visited. "It was like he was a movie star," she says. "You should have seen before when a Russian official visited people just standing there; they came because they had to." Dolej fears that if anything happened to Gorbachev, everything would go back like it was. If anything did happen to him, it would depend on when, says Cerna. "If something is so far in progress in the beginning is very fragile.

The danger now is if it's too quick." Too quick brings unrealistic expectation, notes Dolejs. "It's happening now in Russia, they've had freedom for two years, since Gorbachev, and they're expecting a miracle in one year, stores full of merchandise. It takes a long time to fix everything. When something was reigning for 70 years, it can't be in' MORE: See EAST BLOC on PAGE F5 trace daily developments with delight and some apprehension. "Something I will tell you," says Cerna with her radiant smile, "my biggest wish is to be in the middle of the half million in Wenceslas Square." Her husband nods in agreement.

She had never experienced anything like this, says Cerna. "I had never seen a demonstration in my life. It was thrilling. You know why they demonstrated on that day (Nov. 17)? It was the day exactly 50 years ago that all universities and colleges were closed by the Nazis who'd occupied the country." The couple, who left Czechoslovakia in 1982, have not talked to relatives there since Nov.

17. Those relatives include mothers and siblings of both and Dolejs' son from his first marriage. The public demonstration in Prague's Wenceslas Square on that day launched the dramatic chain of events leading to resignations of Communist leaders and major changes in policies and governing bodies. The rapid fire changes also ALEXANDRIA KING JOURNAL Ivana Cerna and Josef Dolejs emigrated from Czechoslovakia in 1982. Males: Beware 'Present Danger' By John Tierney A before going out to dinner.

Some etiquette arbiters might consider jewelry too personal a gift at this early stage of a relationship, but the earrings met my main criterion: something that would fit in a box small enough to sit Unnoticed in my jacket pocket. I wanted them there just in case. When the dinner ended without her producing a gift for me, I went home with the earrings still tucked in my pocket, proud that I had managed to handle a delicate situation in the classic, suave, manly fashion: Let the woman make the decision. It's odd, this male problem with gifts, because -in some ways we have it easier than women. In desperate cases, we can always fall MORE: See MALES "on PAGE F8 sion.

But these are the minority. There is something about buying a gift that seems to set off an alarm in the male brain a foreboding of what might be called The Present Danger. "Well, if I get her something expensive, she might get the wrong idea about my intentions. I don't want to promise too much which might be, for all I know, more than wants anyway. Maybe she'll just be embarrassed.

But if I buy something inexpensive, she may be insulted. Then if I don't get and she has something for me," I'm going to have to duck out the back door of the restaurant And 'this is why, when I was confronted with this completely hypothetical situation one Christmas, I bought a pair of earrings UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE LET'S SAY, completely hypothetically, that a man finds himself in this situation: He has gone out with a certain woman twice pleasant dates but nothing passionate. He likes her, he thinks something' might develop, but he also knows that ultimately she is not The One. He has another date with her tonight The problem is that Christmas is three days away. Does he bring her a present or not? I'm sure there are men who could deal with this problem sensibly and calmly, the kind of men who are as good as women are at picking out just the right present for any occa.