Lederhosen and Grapes

The Tales From an Unusual Childhood Children

This photo came back into family hands via Facebook and a long lost cousin - well the cousin wasn't lost, it was the Brooks who had lost touch with many people during their wanderings. It was taken shortly after their arrival in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valdobbiadene Italy and at that point the family's common language would have been German.  All four children had a passion for languages and rapidly adopted the languages of the countries they invaded.  It wasn't long before Italian became their lingua franca.

The red sweaters and lederhosen? Those came courtesy of Mutti, their German grandmother who deserves a story in her own right, and were a godsend for Brigitte.  The boys were not shy about wandering and frequently disappeared into the hills. The bright red sweaters were easy to spot in the distance and allowed Brigitte to keep somewhat of an eye on them. The boys on the other hand could never figure out how the local farmers knew it was "them" creating mischief in their fields.  Ken would often arrive home at the end of the day to find an angry farmer on his doorstep. They soon became know as the piccoli conquistatore tedeschi (the little German conquerors).

The hills, vast estates and family run farms were all fair game in the boys eyes and it wasn't long before they discovered they could "pick" fruit and bring it the local bars and restaurants in exchange for ice cream cones.

The grapes? The grape of the region is Glera use to make Prosecco, a dry white sparkling wine.  The Brooks own 3 acre vineyard lay on a steep hill with a small fortified castle at the top that was the summer home of a wealthy Italian family. To the delight of the children it was usually unoccupied. The thick wooden door had enough perches and footholds for the children to scale and then squeeze through a tiny gap in the arch. From there they could drop down and were free to roam and play. Hide and seek in rooms filled with heavy hand-carved antique furniture was a favourite activity, as was climbing the tower to look for the owl.

Many of the wines of the Veneto are sold at the LCBO, our provincial wine dealer, including a few that carry the grapes of their own vineyard that was sold a few years ago. Shopping for wine with any member of the Brooks family is never just a "let's pick up a bottle of wine" trip. It is a journey through memories of  farmers, friends, artwork, vintners, villas, Italian nobility, adventure and mischief.

A Year in Brighton: Not Your Average Boarding School

A midst the fun of blasting holes into brick walls (see previous posts) and being driven around Caracas in an enormous white Cadillac convertible with orange leather seats by the handsome millionaire Tommy, Venezuela had its risks.  Tommy was a graduate of Harvard. His father was a concentration camp survivor who made his millions from the textile industry in Venezuela.  Tommy was primarily a playboy who occasionally worked.  It was Tommy who introduced them to the music of Deodato, Vytas Brenner and Santana. He would often arrive at 11 at night to take the boys to the Choroni a scenic fishing village on the Atlantic. It is now overrun with tourists, but at the time was for locals only as the unpaved road across the mountains was fraught with danger. There were frequent near misses and cars and buses often plunged over the edge.  It was also a place of beauty. Jeremy recalls vividly the time they came across thousands of migratory butterflies. There were so many that they could not be avoided by the car.

The primary task Tommy gave the boys on these journeys was to pick seeds and stems from bags of marijuana and roll joints for him. It was South America in the 70's - the drug culture was strong. Brigitte and Ken became increasingly worried that their sons who were now in their early teens might get swept up into it so a decision was made to send them away.  Peter would return to Germany and begin an apprenticeship ; Werner and Jeremy would go to boarding school in England.

What school though?  Brochures were poured over until it was finally decided that Sussex Tutors in Brighton England, a cram school aimed at ensuring university entrance, was suitable. It was situated on the ocean, had lovely facilities including a yacht club, tennis courts and swimming pool, and the boys could earn their A and O levels.   On the designated day the boys who were then 12 and 14 were driven to the airport, put on a plane and given instructions, "When you land in England, go find your school."  It never occurred to anyone that this was somewhat irregular. It was just how things were done in the Brooks household. You were expected to cope and survive. In London, they found the connecting train to Brighton and took a taxi cab to the school.


Both boys have very fond memories of Sussex Tutors, but not for any of the reasons their parents had hoped. The school did indeed front the ocean at 55 Marine Parade. It was an enormous home that had a pleasant well-worn Persian carpet and polished wood feel.

The first surprise were the facilities.  It turned out that while those lovely facilities did indeed exist in Brighton, they didn't actually belong to the school. They were private facilities that required membership fees and those under 18 were not allowed.

The second surprise was the owner of the school who referred to herself as Lady Victoria Gibbs. She dressed in gowns and carried a silver flask of port wherever she went. Lady Gibbs' primary role was dinner time inspection. Students were summoned to the dining hall - boys in one line, girls in the other. Lady Gibbs would then lead them into dinner muttering something about girls being riffraff sparrows and guttersnipes.

Mr Ardagh was the headmaster. Martin Amis, Sussex Tutors' most famous alumnus  makes reference to him in a letter home.

Letter from School

Sussex Tutors,
55 Marine Parade,
Brighton, Sussex.
23rd Oct. [1967]

Dearest Dad and Jane,

    Thanks awfully for your letter. So we all appear to be working like f****** fools. I seem to be flitting manically from brash self-confidence to whimpering depression; the English is all very fine, but the Latin I find difficult, tedious, and elaborately unrewarding. It would be so boring if it buggered up my Oxford Entrance paper. I spend about 2-3 hours per day on it, but I feel a painful lack of basic knowledge — not being one of those little sods who has been chanting `amo, amas, amat', from the age of eighteen months. Anyway, the set book (Aeneid Bk. II) is pretty splendid, and if I slog through that with sufficient rigour I should be O.K. on that part of the `O' level paper.

    Mr Ardagh decided that the best plan for Ox. Ent. is to choose about 6 chaps and know them pretty thoroughly, rather than farting about with a bit of everyone. I have chosen: Shakespeare; Donne and Marvell, Coleridge and Keats; Jane Austen; [Wilfred] Owen; Greene; and possibly old Yeats as well. I do enjoy the English but I must say that I get periods of desperately wanting something else to occupy myself with.

P.S. Convey my cordial regards to Karen — there are no doleful regrets there because, as far as I can remember, she should be about 9' 6" tall by now.

                                              

**********************

Mr Ardagh was a stout man with squinty eyes, a large red nose, and tweed jackets  who seemed on the verge of exploding at any given moment. Ken, Jeremy's father, had read the man well from his picture in the brochure.  The boys arrived with two bottles of Cacique - highly valued Venezuelan rum - which he promptly tucked into his desk drawer.  They were warmly welcomed into the Sussex Tutors fold.

Classes were held at Sussex Tutors, but the boys boarded around the corner at The Primrose Inn run by Mrs. Mazakowski. She and her husband had been members of the Polish Underground Resistance during the occupation of WWII. Mysterious comings and goings went on throughout the year they were there and the boys suspect she continued to be politically active against the communist government that had taken over Poland after the war.

The third and most delightful surprise at Sussex Tudors were the students - a mishmash of global teens who found themselves thrown together.  None of them could quite believe their good fortune in landing at what Amis referred to as his "last chance saloon".  It was commonly recognized that the ex-pat parents had fallen for the glossy brochure and the students were thrilled to find themselves in such highly unsupervised conditions at the height of their risk-taking years.  What luck to find that the boy from Persia had his own chauffeur driven vehicle into which they could pile on weekends and head to Devil's Dyke away from the not very watchful eyes of adults.

And of the course, there were the riots.  Quadrophenia was released that year which sparked a reprise of riots between the Mods and Rockers. On bank holidays Rockers arrived by train while mods rode in on mopeds. Windows along the route from the station were boarded up and dozens of police on horseback  herded these fine young men toward the beach where battles ensued.  Jeremy and Werner would purchase fish and chips and watch from the pier along with the German and Dutch tourists until it was time to head back to school for their Italian Poetry class with Mr Vessey.

Mr. Vessey was a classically trained teacher with a passion for Spanish and Italian poetry and a builder of  spinets. He was a gentleman - kind and learned.  He was also a director of Oxfam and long after leaving Sussex Tudors they would catch glimpses of him on television. His classroom sat at the top of the building with a spectacular view of the ocean.  Jeremy and Werner were the only students in the class as they were privately tutored.  That year they learned a great deal about spinets.

Riots were not the only drama that took place during the year at Sussex Tutors.  The Athina B ran aground in viewing distance of the school.

At the International Airshow one of the Red Arrow Hawks clipped the mast of a boat and crashed into the pier. And of course, there was the bet. Jeremy earned a large sum of money by not changing his shirt for one month. The saxophone tale is still recounted with delight.  Across from The Primrose Inn were apartments and in one of those apartments lived a saxophonist who practised loudly and often.  One day an argument erupted.  The saxophone flew from a window followed by a large trunk both of which landed on the Mini parked below.

Over the course of the year, the boys gained many non-school related skills including snooker, played in the halls of St. James St. in places such as The Castle Snooker Club and Regency Leisure. This didn't prevent them from distinguishing themselves during exams, however, before being summoned home. Much to their disappointment, Ken had found a position in Connecticut and it was safe for them to return.  They would be enrolled in Hopkins Grammar School and have to adjust yet again to a new country with its own set of customs and ways of being.

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.