Rebane's Ruminations

Road Ruminations – 19jun08

George Rebane

Yesterday morning we left a rainy Tallinn and drove south toward my birthplace Viljandi.  The country outside of the capital continues the style, wealth, and mood of the capital – the highways, fields, and forests are modern, well-signed, and as neat as a pin.  Estonia is, perhaps, the only country in history to refuse US aid after liberation - they didn't want to become dependent on a very addictive teat.  The land now compares favorably with Germany and New Zealand, places where people take pride in where they live.  The only reminders of a tragic past are the Soviet built factories, processing plants, and workers’ apartments that startle the eye when encountered – the products of socialism resemble pieces of crap no matter where you encounter them.  (Witness ‘the projects’ of government housing in our own fair land.)

Before reaching Viljandi, we stopped to discover and visit important places in the Rebane family history that were located a few miles off the main highway.  Again, the country roads are in meticulous condition as are the fields and villages off the beaten path.  We saw the community of my maternal grandparents who operated the local windmill that ground the local grain before WW2.  Lots of pictures and tromping around old churchyards.

Then we found the graves of my paternal grandparents – I was named Jüri Rebane after my paternal grandfather (how I got to be George is a long story).  This involved a search through two grave yards required some serious time wandering through weeds and broken masonry crosses.  Tending Christian graves was frowned upon during the occupation and things do go to seed after sixty years in a country as lush and green as this.

In the late afternoon we finally pulled into Viljandi, a community of about 20,000 which is the capital of the Viljandimaa province.  Jo Ann had booked us in the Grand Hotel which was completed in 1938 and in which my mom worked after I was born.  There she met her lifelong friend Rita who became part of our family as we escaped to Germany in 1944 and was with us when the war ended in 1945 – she emigrated to Canada and lives there now.  We have had a picture of them both at a 1941 employees’ luncheon in the hotel, and last night we confirmed that the picture was taken in the existing main dining room of the establishment.

Road Ruminations – 15jun08

George Rebane

We landed in Tallinn, Estonia about noon today after a short flight up from Frankfurt, Germany on Estonian Air (Boeing 737).  This completes a circuit I started in 1944.  The perfect hosts Hans and Gitta had breakfast ready for us at 630am, and then drove us to the airport on Sunday morning traffic-free streets and autobahns.  We said temporary good-byes since we will see them again before we come home.

(Yesterday our hosts organized a perfect Teutonic tourist terror tour of Frankfurt.  I didn’t know it was possible to see so much on trams rides interspersed with forced marches led and paced by Gitta.  At times I thought that Peter would pop his newly emplaced stent, at other times I thought I could use one.   Here we – l to r, Helga, Gitta looking at camera, Hans, Fatso, Jo Ann - are smiling in front of the doors of the old city hall where Gitta and Hans were married over forty years ago.  Don’t believe your lying eyes; inside I am trying to think of the German equivalent of 911 on my cell phone.  Hans at 66 still plays soccer and Gitta was a Wehrmacht drill sergeant in a previous life ;-)  In sum, it was a wonderful day.)

Estonia seems to live up to its press as a modern very western European country that just happens to be located in northeastern Europe.  Having already entered the EU through Germany, we didn’t need to go through passport or customs when we arrived since Estonia is both a member of the EU and NATO (with troops in the mid-east conflicts).  It was as easy as flying from Sacramento to Seattle.

But before starting the Estonia log, I have to close out last night in Germany.  Another couple whom we have known for some time – Manfred and Irmgard – came for the BBQ dinner and talk.  For the topic of the evening Hans asked me to pose my question about the EU’s lack of a military to the entire group.  The answer(s) that came back were both surprising and disturbing.

Here’s the short form.  What is the EU doing to build up the ability to project force so that it can defend its interests around the world including eastern Europe since the US – especially with a likely new and left-wing Executive and Congress – promises to begin reducing our military involvements, commitments, and capabilities?  Detail – the EU economy is now the biggest in the world, and many powers (Russia, Islam, and China) are looking forward to taking advantage of the EU as the US tires of being the champion of western civilization while having to pay for its own guns, bullets, and body bags.

Road Ruminations – 14jun08

George Rebane

We arrived in Frankfurt am Main yesterday, descending through a cloud filled sky that sprinkled the countryside with brief showers.  This reminded me of the exact scenes I saw 45 years ago as a young second lieutenant arriving in Germany for my first duty station after Artillery School.  That eight-hour flight had been on a CL-44 turboprop run by Varig Airlines under contract to the Dept of Defense, and full of military personnel and dependents with young children.  I was blessed with a little screamer about six months old in the seat behind me – that kid must have held the Leather Lungs of 1963 title.

On yesterday’s flight Jo Ann and I were on an American Airlines 767 in business class – what a difference.  We breezed through passport and customs and were met by our longtime friends Hans and Gitta.  After lots of hugs and frenzied conversation where everyone wanted to ask all questions all at once, we walked about three miles to the airport’s parking structure where their van was waiting.  Frankfurt is the economic center of the EU and the commercial hub of all Europe with an enormous airport to match.

Tagasi Eestisse

George Rebane

Tomorrow we leave on a trip that has been anticipated for about fifty years and has been in various stages of planning for about twenty-five years.  I am returning to Estonia, the little Baltic country where I was born, which we left as refugees in the spring of 1944 during the depth of World War II, and have not seen since then.  Jo Ann’s planning for the trip competes favorably with Eisenhower’s effort for D-Day.  We will fly to Germany and stay with dear friends we have also known for about fifty years – Jo Ann first stayed with their family as an exchange student, and then they became our family away from home when we were in the Army and I was stationed in Germany.  From there we fly to Tallinn, rent a car, and begin an odyssey of discovery guided by old family photos and documents that survived the war and have served as the link to my roots all these decades.  I think I still speak the language – we shall see.

Depending on the ease of connectivity, I will try to post some reflections and pictures from the old sod.

Southern California Fires – Part III: Lessons Learned

George Rebane

This concludes the series on wildfires that started with Part I: Our House Burns and continued in Part II: Our House is Still There!.

During the hours we spent with the fire crews who were sheltered in our house, we learned a lot about the nature of wild fires and how they could and could not be successfully defended against.  Jo Ann and I were the only civilians within a circle of ten or twelve firefighters gathered around the breakfast table and adjoining family room.  There were no reporters, everyone could talk freely, political considerations were the furthest from everyone’s mind.  Our main concerns at this point were 1) had we prepared properly, and 2) what else could we have done or now do to prepare for the future?

We were told straight out that the ‘future’ we were concerned about was about eight years away given how thoroughly the vegetation around our neighborhood and nearby mountains had burned.  But there were some important insights which the fire fighters led by their captains laid down for us.  These formed our lessons learned – some corroborated our thirty-plus years of experience watching and studying southern California wildfires; and some points made came as a complete surprise.  I will list them with comments as appropriate.

Southern California Fires – Part II: Our House is Still There!

George Rebane

(continued from Part I: Our House Burns, concluded in Part III: Lessons Learned)

The morning after in Simi Valley found us at our friends Chuck and Lois’ house eating breakfast and talking about what we would find when we returned to Saddle Peak Road and how we would rebuild.  The Malibu fire was still raging and would do so for two more days.  The TV was on and several stations were carrying ongoing coverage of the devastation.  Then we saw that one station was broadcasting live shots of the burning mountains from a helicopter and doing actual close-ups of charred remains of burned houses most of which were still smoldering.  The ruins seemed oddly alone, the sweeping close-ups showed no humans and the reporter explained that no attempt was made to save these houses because of the sheer intensity of the firestorms in which they were engulfed during the night.  Jo Ann and I were sitting on the floor with eyes glued to the tube waiting for a familiar shape or scene to appear from the panning camera.  Again, the reporter had no idea what area he was covering; to him it was just “in the mountains above Malibu”.  To us it was maddening. 

Suddenly we saw a familiar bend in a paved road and the camera stabilized for a moment on two charred foundations the outlines of which we instantly recognized – they were the remnants of the ‘A-Frame’ and the ‘Ugly Dome’ diagonally across from our house.  (In the sparsely populated mountains every family gave their own names to the houses in their neighborhood.)  I remember going into a kind of numb state where the voices in the room sounded as if from a distance; we were ready to see the camera sweep across the road and show the remains of our house.  Instead the view went directly across the road to the huge, almost finished ‘Bailey house’, our next door neighbor to the west.  The Bailey house was gone, the rubble piles didn’t even reach more than a couple of feet above the foundation.  The concrete walls on one side of the ground level garages had crumbled from the intense heat, the reporter was babbling something in the background about the “complete devastation” he was seeing.  We were holding our breath not knowing how we would react as our property came into view.

Southern California Fires – Part I: Our House Burns

George Rebane

We lived our entire adult lives in SoCal; Jo Ann was born in Los Angeles where I arrived as a teenager.  The 25 years before we moved here in 2002 were spent on Saddle Peak Road on the crest line of the Santa Monica Mountains above Malibu.  With sweeping one hundred-plus mile views of the ocean, islands, the city, and mountains it was the most scenic of places to live in that metropolitan madness.  But there was a price to be paid for all that natural beauty and wonderful wilderness so close to everything.