Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Speaking German in Texas

Met one of his descendants here in PA, about 20 years ago.

Stopped by the local Sears customer service counter to get a defective garage door operator replaced. Blustery winter day, doors from the loading dock were swinging open a bit, pretty cold in the service counter area.

Elderly white woman ahead of me complained about the cold to the guy behind the counter, who was an NFL linebacker-sized black feller in his 40s. She asked him if it didn't bother him having to work in that cold. He deadpanned nope, must be my nordic heritage.

She didn't know what to say, stood there with her jaw drooped, but I grinned at him, he grinned back. When it was my turn, asked him if his name was Olaf, cracked him up.

This is all warm and comforting, but the monument at Comfort tells a different tale.

Word spread rapidly through the faculty that the president of the college had hired two new English-teachers (Hung Sen Wu and Ken Howell).

When I showed-up for work and was introduced as a "new English-teacher," faculty dim-wit Mrs Power asked me "Are you the Chinese gentleman?" I thought that she was kidding, so I said "Yes, Ma'am." She wasn't kidding. She looked very puzzled and murmured "You don't look Chinese."

"That's because both my parents are Caucasian."

That puzzled her even more, and the other ladies were both amused and embarrassed.

I was born on the Triangle Ranch in Wichita County the day after Pearl Harbor.One of my earliest memories is going to Punkin Center-a German community - to the blacksmith to get plow discs sharpened.We went in a wagon since gasoline was rationed.

I recall conversations among the hands about "them damn krauts killin' our boys" but Daddy claimed the Germans in Punkin Center had to make a livin',too.

Later on,when Punkin Center got a Post Office,they had to change the name to "Haynesville".

Windthorst,Scotland, and Muenster are just three German dairy farming towns in North Texas.

And,friend Steve,Rhineland is still here............ or there.

I'm in my early 30s, but my grandfather (dad's dad) was born in 1883. (His first wife died and he remarried my grandmother and had a whole second family--his last--ninth--son was born when he was 69 and my grandma was 50!) Anyway, he was born in Ohio of German parents, in a town that was entirely German--he didn't even speak English until he went to school. As soon as WWI broke out, he swore he would never speak another word of German as long as he lived--and he didn't until the day he died (in 1980). I think those two world wars did a job on the German cultural identity here in the US...

But regarding Texas--I remember hearing that in the 1880s(?) there were so many Germans that the state legislature actually had a bill on the table to make two official state languages--English and GERMAN!