Non-French TidbitsCheckpoint Able

By Jim and Emmy Humberd

We arrived at Checkpoint Able, about fifty miles east of Hanover, and filled out papers needed to apply for permission to travel to West Berlin. A young lady in a military uniform very politely informed us that we had filled out the wrong form, but said we had filled them out beautifully.

They sold us new license plate that would be valid for the entire two hour drive. They just happened to have mounting brackets for sale so we could mount them on the vehicle.

At this point in the political history of the border, each morning they chose the day's "irritation factor." Some days they required a ten minute wait at the border, and other days perhaps an hour's wait, but today they had selected forty-five minutes as long enough to wait before continuing.

While we waited for the time to pass, Jim went to the aid of a woman whose old car had overheated. That so impressed the East German Officer in charge that he directed us to leave early, ahead of many people who had been waiting before us.

At the West Berlin border, mirrors mounted on small wheels would be pushed under vehicles to make sure no one was hiding. Finally we thought we were on our way, then found there was one more stop, manned by an East German guard who looked really mean and nasty. Emmy's picture had been taken without glasses, so when the guard barked, "Ohne Brille!" (without glasses), she took them off immediately. He passed our passports through a small opening in an opaque window, and we could hear bang, bang, bang as the rubber-stamps were applied.

Now he again carefully looked at the Lindas, stopped to look at Emmy, then approached Jim and held up three fingers, and said, "Drei frauen?" (Three women?) When Jim answered yes, the guard rolled his eyes sky-ward, clasped his hand to his cheek like Jack Benny, as if to say, "You poor fellow."

As we left the last control point, young East German guards, high in a gun tower, held their machine guns in one hand, and threw kisses to the girls with the other.

Well, maybe they had to live and work in that society, but boys will be boys, just as long as blond and brunette teen-age girls continue to look like teen-age girls.

After filling out the proper forms and buying our visa, we approached the next Checkpoint Able control point for our second visit to Berlin. Here the guard, who was the spittin' image of General Charles DeGaulle, told Emmy to take off her sunglasses so he could check her passport picture. He asked if we had a transmitting radio and something else we couldn't understand. Finally he pointed his fore-finger with the other three fingers curled and his thumb sticking into the air just like a little kid playing cops and robbers, to let us know he was asking if we had a gun.

At the next stop a guard took our passports and visa forms and placed them on a moving belt, and by the time we arrived at the last building they were stamped and we were ready to go.

At Drewitz, near West Berlin, we were given a cursory inspection, no problem, except they again snapped at Emmy, "Ohne Brille!" (glasses off, as in her passport picture.) - but what a contrast with our experience ten years earlier.

The next time we were to visit Berlin and former East Germany, was the very day Mr. Gorbachev was thrown out of office in the Soviet Union. We were concerned that civil war might break out, and if the Soviet Army was ordered to come home, they would. We could just imagine what the former East German and the Polish countryside, the stores, gas stations, streets and highways, would look like, during and soon after the "invasion in reverse" by an Army with little or no food, gasoline, or money.

A few days later short-wave radio reported Gorbachev was back in power, so we decided to visit Eastern Germany after all. Twenty-one years earlier, the buildings were temporary shacks; eleven years ago there were several large new buildings and a large parking area. Now, imprisoned behind a high chain-link fence, huge empty buildings and acres of unused parking lots were all that remained of Checkpoint Able.

When we drove past the former Checkpoint Baker at Drewitz, at the Berlin city limits, we saw buildings and huge parking lots behind the fence, but there were no guards to order Emmy to take off her glasses.

To make sure she did not feel neglected, doing his best guard imitation, Jim barked, "Ohne Brille!"

Books by Jim and Emmy Humberd:
Invitation to France
Invitation to Germany
Invitation to Italy

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