Now and then while watching a TV show that is not all that engaging, I will unconsciously begin to twiddle my thumbs, first clockwise then counterclockwise. It’s a habit I picked up from my Danish grandfather who, in idle moments or when he was sitting at the table waiting for a tardy dinner guest to arrive, would begin to slowly twiddle his thumbs. Another habit, however, that I did not acquire from Morfar was smoking. I remember how when he…..
During the writing of I Was Hitler’s Baker I incorporated several episodes that my mother related to me of her childhood in Denmark. She told me how she and her brother and sister had placed coins on a railroad track to have them flattened by a passing train. (What they did with these coins, I do not know.) I used this image to flesh out Adolf Hitler’s childhood, and showed young Adolf placing pfennigs on a railroad track and afterward…..