THE IRON CURTAIN

By Paul Proctor
November 10, 2009
NewsWithViews.com

It’s ugly, really – laying there on the bookshelf behind me: A drab gray, broken piece of history made from a concrete-like substance without a shape or form anyone could easily describe. It looks like what you would find on the floor of a dilapidated building – not really something one would care to pick up and hold in their hand – much less save as a souvenir.

A young female soldier who had just returned to the United States on leave from Germany handed it to me on a stage near Ft. Worth, Texas almost twenty years ago when I was still playing music and singing for a living. She told me it was a piece of the Berlin Wall.

I was absolutely dumbfounded.

As best I can recall, it was a gift to me for having sung Neil Diamond’s hit “Americaâ€