Commemoration of Natenom

Of happiness when CarFriday & Easter coincide miraculously

The accident history of Dr. Bernd W. Kubbig, Wiesbaden

In memory of Andreas Mandalka, who had his Car Friday on 30 January 2024, unfortunately not followed by Easter. He and his cause are to be forgotten.

“How nice that you offer us a follow-up story after your Christmas story. Easter week is doing well, not always just disasters. What we need is “finish good, all good stories”. Facts are trumps. As you know, without reference to your home country, everything is nix at maximum – maximum! – 14,000 characters and a few crushed.’
My homeland did not appear in the first version, well, except for my brother Claus, who, although tied to chains on his deathbed, wanted to save the world once again in a missionary way. But his story did not turn out well on 16 June 2021 (no apparent Easter hope). And from my accident history, which I then offered with Wiesbaden as the current accident site, the homeland had stayed completely away, for reasons of great inner defense, which only gradually revealed themselves to me. So: Rewriting, the reaction from the editors made me sweat.

A beautiful autumn day (Monday, the 9. 10. 2023) I was on my way home from WI-Biebrich after noon with my freshly repaired city bike. My boules brother Alexander had also put the last hand on my magnificent belly shop with the inscription ‘Der spie Gel!’, which I wanted to use for handouts for my drama of the same name – a piece bulging from home – as part of the upcoming Frankfurt Book Fair.
The sky was blue, and the birds sang that although I was slightly tired at that time of day, it had its kind. Shortly hesitant, then left side drive into the city instead of crossing the huge Biebricher Allee. To the right and left, the bicycle path was exemplary. Here, the justifiably critical slogans ‘WI – wild Kurdistan for F-riders’ and ‘Better camel riding in WI than getting on a two-wheeler’ did not apply.
Strampel, Strampel, Strampel – just before the top I saw a silver-grey small car coming out of a small side street from the left and stopping briefly. I could not be overlooked in my safety outfit (helmet as well as vest) which, of course, was properly yellow-shining. So why slow down my pace and be overly careful when the slope finally flattened. A reasonable driver also looks to the right.
But the small car driver didn't look to my right. He drove off. And he hit me. The hard rubber of the bumper hit my left leg. In no time I tipped over to the right on the hard ground by the impact.

"Another devil, why are you turning me around?" I shouted angrily at the driver. Around a hair, and you would have crushed my left leg and killed me, you Schengel, you (did I really say that to him in a suddenly childlike tone: Schengel?). "I just didn't look to the right!" said the driver through his half-cranked side window. In the meantime, I had scrambled up, including the bike with the heavy bags.
‘Are you all right?’ I was stunned. He did not disembark, but behaved in the British way “My car is my castle.” “All right?”, the car driver repeated impatiently. ‘Why don’t you go on?’ He must have been in a hurry. Annoying F-driver. I took a deep breath. I slowly came to myself. ‘Because I want to see your license plate after you have turned right.’ The driver started: ‘RÜD-YA 611’. And I, slightly in shock, proceeded cautiously and arrived at home unscathed with a slight headache. What more do I want as a narrator: I was up-and-coming. CarFriday & Easter in one. And that with less than 4,000 characters. Hallelujah!

But it went on! After my deep resting sleep, I told my wife about my fall, also about the persistent mild headache. She strongly advised me to contact the police about possible long-term consequences with regard to insurance coverage. I outlined the incident on the phone. ‘The man clearly committed a driver's flight’, according to the angry police voice. “He should have gotten out and exchanged coordinates with you. Do you have at least the license plate number?’ I: ‘Clear, RÜD-YA 611.’ The voice: ‘You will be in the station immediately or two colleagues will be with you in 20 minutes.’ I: ‘Better, you let them come to us, I don’t feel fit.’ Two friendly police officers were there in no time, took the minutes in the presence of my wife, relativised her colleague’s driver departure thesis, informed me of my rights in the context of the criminal complaint. I informed the two officials of the registration number ‘RÜD-YA 611’. I decided to file the criminal complaint for ‘negligent bodily injury pursuant to Sections 223 and 229 of the Criminal Code’ only if health consequences made this necessary. I wanted to push the car driver forward to teach him a harnessed lesson. The two policemen then determined the name of the side street from which the car had come, which I did not know; they wanted to find out whether the driver had crossed my cycle path irregularly (wrong direction) (he had not). I myself had driven on the left side of the bike path, but the arrows placed there made it clear that this was right. So I was off the hook. At this point, all paletti, clear attribution of blame. Time to stop the story at well below 6,000 characters.

But two days later (Wednesday, 11. 10.) my case was published in the local newspaper ‘Wiesbadener Kurier’ in the ‘Bluelight’ section under the heading ‘Drivers are wanted’. This is the limited rendition of the text from the previous day, which was accessible on the internet and which was additionally large-formatted with a symbolic image of a bicycle accident; it was drawn with ‘PM PP Westhessen’. Because ‘facts are trumps’! Correct information mixed with outrageously false facts. Both reports culminated in the police's request that the driver report to her. The car registration number of the police was known. And: What should motivate the driver to report? I would find the driver anyway to feel him on the tooth – I couldn’t get away with it.
I let the whole thing go, because my headache subsided. Above all, I had been able to get up unharmed. A passable end at not removed 7,000 characters if the ‘Open Books Programme’ had not started a week later as part of the Frankfurt Book Fair. For four days, authors physically present their new books to a curious audience with their editors or even the publisher. Finally, an opportunity for me to distribute my handouts from the undamaged ‘Der spie Gel!’ belly shop in a targeted manner. I had specifically selected the publisher Joachim Unseld to draw his attention to my play, for which I was looking for a publisher and which I would like to see performed in front of the appropriate backdrop of the collegiate church. However, the publisher was not at all receptive to my contact before the event. His focus was solely on his author, Brigitte Giraud, whose book ‘Living fast’ he occupied in the overcrowded Grand Hall of the Evangelical Academy Frankfurt on Wednesday (18 July). 10., 6.30 p.m.) would immediately present itself glamorously. Brigitte Giraud was the 2022 Goncourt Prize winner, the highest literary honour in France. During my first contact, Unseld demonstratively turned his back on me, and the second time I was able to give him my ‘Der spie Gel!’ handout for my piece, which is chained to my homeland in terms of content, with a word of thanks. Mission accomplished. To warm up, I took a seat as a zaungast to the left of the entrance on the wide Evangelical window sills.

Unexpectedly, I stayed. Brigitte Giraud's novel is about her husband's motorcycle accident. Unlike me, Easter had not followed CarFriday at Claude's, let alone that CarFriday & Easter had collapsed. Decisive: He could never get up again, even if an oncoming car played no role in his accident. After 20 years, the author tried to cope with Claude’s death in 23 ‘Had a motorcycle chain’ chapters.
At the book table next door I quickly bought a copy, which I had signed by the crowned Brigitte. In my school French, which I learned solidly from Maître Werner Reinhard, I told her about my accident nine days before. The whole difference to Claude was in front of her. In a soft voice, she empathetically said to me: ‘Soyez prudent!’ I accepted this ‘Be careful!’ as a kind of blessing to keep me safe in all my ways. And Brigitte I adopted as a kind of belated guardian angel, although I bet she would have rejected this role as well as the blessing as superstitious casperias.
Her strictly secular novel convinced me neither in terms of content nor in terms of literature – leaving aside the few avoidable typographical errors and annoying gallicisms such as “consulting his phone” p. 185). As a life support for Brigitte – OK, but for me she had missed her topic with her ‘would-have-motorcycle chain’ approach. Because Claude could have died the next day or the next day under completely different conditions. According to his ‘live fast’ principle, he had ‘accelerated a motorcycle that was not his’ (p. 9), ‘unintentionally reared’ (bad German) and ‘dropped off the pilot’ (p. 193).
And yet the novel set in motion for me an inner carousel of buried feelings and thoughts. The seconds before my own accident came to my attention differently, albeit disturbingly: a fighting situation with the car driver, David against Goliath, my secret stinking finger, my ‘belongs to the world’ attitude, coupled with trustworthiness: the rational driver is already letting me pass. At the same time I was queasy: What if he did not look in my direction? Bums! I should have gone down! If only I had been under Brigitte's blessing. Victims and perpetrators blurred. – Optimal number of characters (including the couple crushed), but all questioned. The perfect ending. This was without prejudice to my intention to locate the driver of ‘RÜD-AY-611’, even if it was obstinate, as Heinz Rühmann did in ‘It happened in broad daylight’.

I would have stopped here if it hadn't been for the required domestic reference. The Heberbörde with the crime scene Gehrenrode makes me uncomfortable, I would have liked to have avoided this, because what is coming now violates the principle of ‘healing homeland’ for anxious, anxious moments.
‘Writing, that is, being led to the place you would like to avoid.’ How untrue this motto is to me, which Brigitte Giraud put before her novel! Because there's an incident that I thought stoically ticked off. It is (probably in the year of the Lord 1960) about a highly aroused fourth grader on his bicycle who crossed the main road behind the primary school and diagonally opposite the rectory on a beautiful early summer day (the sky was blue, and the birds sang that it was his kind) in a completely confusing – and well-known highly dangerous – situation, because he could not see this so-called army road, because the hay fog of Mayor Wilhelm Bock just passed by from the left blocked his view and he would have had to get off his bicycle, which he did not do (‘as children are’), and therefore collided with the right-breathing, pale yellow DRC ambulance and ambulance – if the driver of this car had not been the well-known and extremely experienced Mr Severitt, Who yelled at me with words like ‘Boy, boy, I could have driven you dead!’ And I, not crushed, unharmed – yes, untouched – pale in body and full of fears of hell (as far as I can remember): ‘You are my shengel, Uncle Severitt.’ A new word was born that Pastor Enge uttered in his sermon on Sunday when he placed his guardian angel differently, which was and is the same to me.
Because I didn’t have to get up, Carfreitag (by the way, I didn’t know the word ‘car’ as an elementary school student, I didn’t learn it until a year later at middle school) & Easter had once again fallen wonderfully together. Twice survival happiness within a good 63 years. ‘Heil Heimat’, so to speak.
At home there were no beatings, but in our church-pious family rather thanksgivings behind my back, by me certainly some. I encountered my Schengel a few more times in the 1960s. I owe my life to his mentally present step on the brakes. Nix ‘Had a bicycle chain!’ Fortunately, the ‘RÜD-YA 611’ driver had also spontaneously hit the brakes and not accidentally hit the accelerator pedal. It could have been worse. That is why I decided not to prosecute this Schengel, whom I wanted to track down with light foam in front of my mouth and feel powerful on the tooth in a state of clandestine anticipation – and to teach myself lessons, so be careful. And in case of doubt, descend and sincerely hope that the guardian angel will appear as comprehensive and just as possible, but this within the framework of expanding shelters that do not fall from the sky.