A Gnostic Childhood - Gnostic Liberation Front

A Gnostic Childhood
Page 3 of 13
"special days." But, even with plenty of coal, this one and only stove which was located in the living room, could
not possibly heat the entire place.
Thus my grandfather put up a cast iron stove in the
shop itself and this little monster burned anything,
throwing out wonderful, radiant heat in abundance. He
used partitions to give this area, where the stove was
located, a sense of privacy where customers, of which
there weren't exactly plenty, in those days, couldn't see
us as we were sitting there around this wonderful
source of warmth and togetherness.
My grandfather, Hermann Becker, was a big man of a
slow and stoic disposition, which drove my
grandmother, Marie Becker, absolutely crazy. On top of
this, he was deaf in one ear and his right arm was
somewhat lame which came from a gunshot wound to
his upper arm many years ago. This gunshot wound
was the reason that he had become a "Socialist" in the
early part of the century.
As I gathered from various sources, mother, aunts and uncles, my grandfather as a young man, after
apprenticeship as a mechanic, got a job as a chauffeur for a rich industrialist. There he lived in the rich people's
house and took also care of odd jobs. One day, the rich people and some of their friends with the aristocratic
"von" in front of their names, were out on a hunt and my grandfather was supposed to pick some mushrooms in
the surrounding forest. As he bend down to pick some, a shot was fired and hit him in the arm. The people he
worked for apparently took care of his injury without an adequate follow up by a doctor in order to save money.
Thus his arm didn't heal the way it should have and became something like seventy percent paralyzed. He could
move his arm only with a conscious effort and his hand was frozen in a position which made it look a little like a
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