Selling Pieces of Berlin Wall

There must be something peculiar to our species that we have this preoccupation with rocks. When we’re growing up, we collect them. When we stop growing, we erect them--into walls.

I’ve touched rocks and walls in Washington, D.C. One rock was polished smooth so that people couldn’t break off a piece. It was from the moon. One wall was nothing but broken pieces--its black surface scratched with the names of a few of my teen-age friends--and 58,000 more.

The Berlin Wall, now there was a wall! It divided people and ideologies for more than a quarter century. They got their money’s worth when they built that eyesore.

I never actually thought we’d ever see an end to the Berlin Wall, except from Soviet Bloc tanks blasting through.

Instead, I bought a piece of that monument to subjugation, at a department store, at $10 a pop, just in time for Christmas.

I know it’s an artifact, and a piece of history, but every time I look at it I have to smile. There’s just something about the thought of free enterprise selling the Wall for profit that smacks of poetic justice.

Who says God doesn’t have a sense of humor? Only those who don’t know him and build walls.

BRAD L. SMITH

Redlands