Dinner With the Countess

For context, please see the previous post about the spectacular end to the bunker.

With the demise of the bunker the children realized that perhaps a more permanent structure would be of use and so they turned their eyes towards the Villa.  The Villa had been in the same family for centuries. Its wealth grew out of the silk trade that made the entire Venetian region a force to be reckoned with.  During its heyday, silk worms were grown on site, spun into thread and woven into luxurious fabrics  Evidence of this historic past now sits abandoned in one wing of the villa,  untouched since the day of closing when production was moved to more modern facilities.

It was a walled estate over one square kilometre in size and the house itself was rather curious in design. What began as one small building, over the centuries grew into an extensive facility in the form of an H. The outside walls of the H were well over 100m long and most of it was unoccupied, a fact known to the children as their parents had become friends with the Countess and were often invited for dinner. (This is not the dinner that concerns us here.)

It didn't take long for the children to determine access points for entry to the Villa, nor to find a route to the attic.  It was there that they discovered they had the run of the entire rooftop and this became their new home. Furniture was dragged up from the numerous rooms where it was merely collecting dust.
It was here that they stored their treasures. What exactly were their treasures now that they had given up on weaponry?  Boxes of  sewing needles from the silk factory, a first aid kit, books, and their new passion, bits and pieces of archaeology.  The area was rife with evidence of past generations and civilizations and the children often conducted their own archaeological digs bringing bits of pottery back to the Villa to reconstruct. Again it was Werner and his passion for history that drove the children in this direction.

It was from the comfort of the attic that they were able to engage in one of their preferred activities: conducting raids.  A favourite target was the Countess' garden parties where banquet tables were set out filled with food and drink.  The children would plan an attack, capture the cookies, cakes and Orange Fanta and haul it to the attic for storage.  They are certain that this treasure trove must still be there today as no one would really ever have a reason to go into the attic.

A second favourite activity was spying.  The children discovered that with the full run of the attic they could peer down through cracks in ceilings or by shifting tiles, into various rooms in the Villa. Two favourite rooms to spy on were the ball  and dining rooms when the Countess hosted dinner parties.  Here they were privy to adult conversations and had a chance to observe some of the more elite members of  the area.  The children attended many dinner parties in this way and so if you were to ask, "Did you ever have dinner with the countess?" Their answer would have to be, "Yes."

The Toybox Story

OK, many have asked ... here it is... the toybox story.

If there are two things that marked Werner's, Peter's, Jeremy's and Sarah's childhood, I would say it was the exceptional lack of supervision and the ongoing access to explosive materials.

I have much to say about the freedom the children had to play, explore, invent, test, challenge, devise, improvise and imagine possibilities.  These were not children who spent time in structured programs the way so many children do today, where every moment is planned and decided for them.  The modus operandi for Brooks parenting appears to have been invade a country and turn the children loose.  In fact, I would say that all the real learning that any of them did took place outside of school hours under the watchful eye of no one.
These were children who played and even today, I would say they are the only adults I know who willingly and readily enter into play. Life really is one long, playful adventure for all of them.

Ah yes ... the toybox. I'm getting to that.


Montebelluna where they lived in Italy was not far from Venice.  The region gained its wealth from the textile industry and many villas and families in the area can trace their origins back to the time of the Silk Road.  The textile industry was why the family moved there. Ken, their father, after retiring from the British Navy as a commander of a submarine, became a textile engineer and was hired to run the Playtex Manufacturing Facility. (Side note: while other children at Christmas time gave teachers boxes of chocolates and pretty ornaments; the Brooks children arrived with gifts of bras and underwear)

This was a region of history. Napolean had a summer villa there, famous Venetian painters frequented patrons in the area and much of the land experienced battles over hundreds of year including the First and Second world wars, which was rather useful to 4 children who had a passion for history and  a keen interest in how to make explosions.

Werner, the eldest, was clearly the driver of this interest. Peter, the 2nd eldest, was the risk taker who took his lead from Werner and Jeremy tagged along happily being led into mischief by his older brothers.  One of their favourite things to do was to dig and search for leftover weaponry that would regularly rise to the surface in farmer's fields.  This was an ongoing problem in that area. Once a baked potato exploded in their oven because it had grown around a bullet. The biggest thrill for the children was to collect these bullets and then lay them along the train tracks at the bottom of their orchard. When the train passed over them the bullets would fire.  This worked well until one day when the train was late and Brigitte called them in for lunch. As they were running to the house the train came and the bullets fired in their direction. That is when the children decided that perhaps this was not such a good idea after all.

This did not stop them from collecting though and they soon realized that a storage facility was needed.  After scouting the area, it seemed the best location to build a bunker would be on the estate of the Countess who lived next door.  It was an enormous villa with extensive grounds, much of them away from the prying eyes of adults.  In a remote corner, they dug their bunker and stored their treasures.  Again, this worked well for a short time until one hot summer day when the children were called in for lunch. (Thank goodness for lunch!) They were sitting at the table when an explosion was heard in the distance. The bunker and their treasures were gone!

They lived in Italy for six years before moving to the Philippines, New York City, Quebec and then Venezuela.  It was in Venezuela that they perfected their understanding of explosives. The factory contained numerous chemicals which given the lax safety standards in South America, the children had easy access to.  By then, Werner had become passionate about chemistry and it was not long before he realized that some of the chemicals used in the manufacturing of textiles could also be used to create a small explosion. They decided to test it out.  No one will admit to who actually "borrowed" the chemicals but they were stuffed into a piece of metal plumbing with a string as a fuse which was then, to contain the explosion, placed in the toybox and packed in with books.  Peter then stood on the lid. Werner lit the fuse and then ran to join Jeremy behind the dresser.

And explode it did. Peter flew across the room and fortunately landed on the bed. The plumbing piece also sailed across the room and became impaled in a door. The toybox? Well, it was blown to smithereens. Pencil sized shards scattered across the room and bits of paper fluttered to the ground. Fortunately for them, no one got hurt.

After the overwhelming success of that experiment, the children felt that the plumbing piece which had survived intact would make an excellent canon. Henry, a Danish boy, who was equally unsupervised offered his backyard. The canon was built and the children were thrilled with their success knocking several spectacular holes into the brick wall surrounding the yard.  Sadly, their experiments came to a sudden end. They ran out of ammunition.  They arrived one day to find the chemicals in the factory locked up.  Not long after that it was decided that perhaps Venezuela was not the best place to be raising children. Peter was sent to Germany where he lived with Brigitte's brother Florian Geyer, a prominent German sculptor in Flomborn and Werner and Jeremy were sent to boarding school in England.