The rainbow never sets

days I noticed that there was quite a friendly atmosphere at the office. Quite a bit of teasing went on, and Fräulein Meyer liked to join in, in her jovial way.

Steinmetz often had very late nights. When he appeared blurry-eyed in the office in the mornings, he would sometimes disappear in the sample room and curl up in a bale of wool, where we threw out old wool samples. One day old Siemering came into the main office and asked in his husky voice:

"Where is Steinmetz?" "We don't know," was the usual answer, but on that day it did not seem to satisfy old Siemering. He went looking for him everywhere until he found him curled up in one of the bales. He ordered him to come into the main office, and still with bits of wool hanging on his white dust coat, and still blurry-eyed, he got a dressing down from old Siemering in front of us all.

My financial situation had still not been resolved. I had received a letter from Vater, dated 5.10.49

"My dear Boy, I received a letter today from Mutter. She had talked with Onkel Wilhelm about financing your apprenticeship with Wunder & Siemering, and I have just finished, with a heavy heart, the letter to Tante Emma, to ask John or the firm Kreglinger through her, to send you $US50 per month. I am asking you now, so that the letter goes quicker, to post this per air mail to Tante Emma É Enclose also Oma's letter and take a very light envelope, so that the letter will go per air mail. You can imagine how hard it has been for me to write this letter; It is hard that at the age of 56 I cannot even finance my son's apprenticeship, so I had to decide to go on this "walk to Canossa". If we do not get this help, you can still follow up the offer to go to England and commit yourself there for two years, but I wouldn't like this. It would be really nice if you could do your apprenticeship at Wunder & Siemerings. I hope you are gifted for this type of work and it measures up to your expectations and hopes. Have courage, I do hope you will succeed. Write soon how everything is and how you like it there. My thoughts are continuously with you. Remember to be careful with money. I think you could manage with much less than $US50 per month. Farewell, God bless you, kiss from your Vater."

Subsequently he urged me to work very hard and to remember the saying: "Lehrjahre sind keine Meisterjahre" (an apprentice is not his own master). I had to think of this saying many times, as I experienced hardships and deprivation. My meagre savings from Kerstlingerode and the money I had received from Vater ran out. I had to borrow money from Wunder & Siemering, in the hope that I would be able to repay them from money received from America. This uncertainty made me even more

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