Random Memories of Germany-The Windows

SUNDAY MEMORIES

Judy Wills

While we were in Heidelberg (1980-1983), the military decided that the windows in all U.S. government housing apartments needed to be replaced with newer, better ones.

1980 – our apartment building.  Ours is the top left, on the end.

Now, that usually isn’t a big deal, and the new ones were a great improvement over the old ones.  And those buildings (with kitchen/bathroom fixtures) were built in the 1940’s, so an upgrade should have been welcomed.

The windows in the housing in Patrick Henry Village (PHV) were a pop-out/pop-in situation.  The buildings in PHV were built much later than the ones we lived in – in Mark Twain Village (MTV).  So PHV windows were done first, then they turned to us.

Unfortunately, the window spaces built in those MTV buildings were not any kind of “standard” sizes.  The frames were just not the same size as the windows they wanted to replace.  Therefore, they had to remove all the windows in our buildings and drill out the window spaces in order for the new windows to fit!!

That might not have been much of a problem, except they wanted to do all that drilling work while we were still living in the space!!  Here are a couple of pictures of what we had to do – everything had to be moved away from the windows and stacked against the walls.  So we covered everything with sheets and plastic sheeting, to keep the dust off the furniture.  And that included every window in the apartment!

The alcove in the living room

Here are pictures of the windows in Karen’s room – one at the end of the building, and one on the side.

Here is a picture of Janet’s room – and you can see that there was a large double window there! 

Here is a picture of Janet’s room – and you can see that there was a large double window there! 

That was also the same as the windows in our master bedroom. (Sorry, no picture there)

There was one window in the bathroom,

and another triple in the kitchen. 

There were three or four windows in each of the alcoves in the living room and dining room, and another large set at the end of the building.

The window at the end of the building, before the renovation.

So that’s a lot of windows.  It took them two weeks to drill out the window space and replace the old windows with the new ones.  We lived in a hotel during that entire time.  There was just no way we could live – in October! – in that apartment with no windows.

And then, when they were done, we found that the window replacements were taller than the original ones – and, therefore, all the window “treatment” that we had, was MUCH shorter than it had been before!  Not too happy about that.  But I didn’t want to purchase anything else for the window treatments, as we would be leaving Germany in June of the next year – just eight months later.  So we just “made do” with what we had.

Yeah, it was an inconvenience, but life is like that.  It was still an experience, and one we won’t forget any time soon! 

Judy is living in Central Florida with her retired U.S. Air Force husband of 50+ years. Born in Dallas, Texas, she grew up in the Southwestern United States.She met her husband at their church, where he was attending the university in her town. After college and seminary, he entered the Air Force, and their adventures began.They lived in eight of our United States, and spent six years in Europe, where their oldest daughter was born. She was a stay-at-home mom for many years .

  Judy has always been involved with music, both playing the piano and singing. Always interested in exercise, she was an aerobic dancing instructor, as well as a piano teacher for many years, and continues to faithfully exercise at home.

After moving to Central Florida, she served as a church secretary for nearly nine years.Her main hobby at this point in time is scanning pictures and 35mm slides into the computer. She also enjoys scrapbooking.She and her husband have two married daughters and four grandchildren, including grandtwins as well as a great-grandson. She and her husband enjoy the Disney parks as often as possible.

Tags: Memories of Germany, Milittary Memories