By Josef Schramm
Translation by Brad Schwebler
What a
glaring difference between the three
generations. When the grandmother was a
small child, she lay in a basket and
received corncobs to play with. The basket
stood at the edge of the corn field. Next
to the basket the dog lay and watched the
child while the parents worked in the
field. The child played with the corncobs
and magically made the most beautiful dolls
with them in the basket. In the second
generation there was progress: the village
lathe worker made a child’s stroller. The
older siblings of the child or the younger
sisters of the mother had to push the child
around and watch it. People bought simple
dolls and gave the child leftover stuff to
dress up the dolls. The third generation,
pushed here by the grandmother, lay in the
child’s stroller which was manufactured in a
factory in a foreign land. “Rappili” and “Schnudili”,
dolls with movable eyes, dolls and bears that cried or
growled, the child had as play toys…but certainly the
most expensive doll cannot be as beautiful as the
magical doll made from the corncob which the grandmother
played with 40 to 50 years before.
