By Elliott Brack
Editor and publisher,GwinnettForum.com
AUG. 28, 2018 | During the Dog Days of summer, we try to travel to a cooler destination than Georgia. Once when leaving Atlanta, the temperature was 95 F. On arrival in St. John Newfoundland, the airport weather was 50 degrees F. It didn’t take some of our party too long realize they had to buy warmer clothing!
Remembering our three years in Germany while in the military, and remembering its relatively cool times, we decided to travel there this year, figuring mid eighties would be hot for them.
Once about 1960, walking into my military commissary accounting office, the five guys there all had grins on their faces. Not only that, but there was a pair of shoes in the middle of the room. All eyed the chief accountant, who we turned to, and found him solving his 85 degree heat wave: pants rolled up, he had his naked feet in a bucket of water, his solution for the hot weather.
So you can understand our confusion when we found Germany in an unusual heat wave this summer. Temperatures were soaring well into the 90s. With little rain, they are also suffering from climate change.
An Elvis memorial in front of the hotel.
We returned this trip to spend two days in Bad Nauheim, our first military duty station. It is about 30 miles north of Frankfurt. It’s still the cultured “kur” town, specializing in breathing and respiratory problems. And it’s fashionable, and as lovely as ever. We booked one of the two major hotels (Hotel Villa Grunewald)….learning when we arrived that that this was also the hotel where Elvis Presley lived for four months, renting out the entire third floor. We got a corner room next to where Elvis had lived. And then we found out something more.
The hotel was roomy and well done……..but not air conditioned. The two days we were there the thermometer hit 97 and 95 degrees F., and the town was the hottest place in Germany. Luckily the corner room got a few breezes from three directions.
While stationed in Bad Nauheim as the commissary and Class VI officer, essentially Elvis ate my food. He was a solid citizen back then, well respected in the town. The town still has an Elvis Festival every August. After living in the hotel, he later rented a house for the balance of his military service in Combat Command A of the Third Armored Division, stationed in nearby Friedberg. He trudged to field maneuvers with his unit, just like a regular soldier.
At the Gruenwald, looking down from our third floor window, is a plaque on a pedestal in a plaza to Elvis, and the corner is called Elvis Presley Alley, along one side of the big park in downtown Bad Nauheim. Each day we were there, people laid flowers in front of the pedestal, along with candles to light. After 60 years, Elvis is still a treasure in Bad Nauheim.
It was refreshing to return to this continually charming kur town of Bad Nauheim, little changed since we were there 58 years ago.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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