Word: petered
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Shoe and bootmaking is a Limmer family tradition. Both Peter's and his wife's fathers were shoemakers, and the present family boasts innumerable shoemaking uncles. He was one of twelve brothers and two unfortunate sisters. Unfortunate, because they cost the family 200 marks and considerable fame...
...Bavaria," says Peter, "the king used to give 100 marks to a family that had seven boys born in a row. Also, the king would be godfather of the seventh boy. My mother had six sons, and when the seventh was coming, they thought it would be a boy, but it turned out to be a girl. So papa said, 'Well mama, I guess we have to try again.'" Unfortunately, the second try resulted in a similar buildup, and a similar let down...
...training in Fachenburg, Bavaria, started at the age of nine, when after school chores in his father's shop were in order. These chores were good experience in more than shoemaking. Rushing the growler for his father, Peter found it expeditions to slip off a hit of the beer that might otherwise have spilled in transit. "In a family of fourteen, anyhow, there never was enough milk for everybody...
...Peter's apprenticeship was interrupted by his induction into the German Army in the first World War. Sent to the Eastern front, he was captured by the Russians and spent three years in various prison camps. At one time, he was in a road gang building a railroad in the Caucasus. "It was very hard work," Peter reminisces, "and I wondered why I should work there if I could never ride on that train. I noticed the guard wasn't looking, so I just moved a little in the woods. Then a little more. It took them three months...
After a war Peter's lift was a mixture of shoe and boot making and visits to nearby Roseheim where he courted his wife, alias Mama, alias The Boss. (She denies the last titles). In 1921 Peter was awarded his Meisterbrief and became one of the youngest master shoemakers in Bavaria. But bringing up two children in inflation-ridden Germany was too much of a job on shoemaker's money, so Peter decided, in 1924, to emigrate to the United States where one of his sisters lived...