Speaking German in Texas

In Texas there is a town called New Braunfels , where there is a large German-speaking population. One day, a local rancher driving down a country road noticed a man using his hand to drink water from the rancher's stock pond.

The rancher rolled down the window and shouted: "Sehr angenehm! Trink das Wasser nicht. Die kuehe haben darein geschissen " which means: "Glad to meet you! Don't drink the water. The cows have schit in it."

The man shouted back: "I'm from New York and just down here campaigning for Obama's health care plan. I can't understand you. Please speak in English."

The rancher replied: "Use both hands."

What? They haven't assimilated yet?

Most of the Germans I know in Central Texas have very conservative leanings. They are waiting for the rest of the country to assimilate with them.

Thats funny, dont mean to hi-jack this thread but to tell a little historical story to this...

I knew an older gentleman from that area raised on a farm during WWII and he told me this story. There was a German POW camp near by and some prisoners were assigned to help in the fields. The US Army truck pulls up they all get out and are assigned chores by the guards. All morning long the Germans are jabering away in German along side the farmer his family(the old gentleman was a teenager during the war) and the other farmhands. As lunch time came about Bob's mother had made a big spread for all. as they sat down at the large outdoor table, Bob's father began to say grace "In perfect old school GERMAN". Bob said and I quote,"those Kraut's eyes were as big as saucers." Needless to say there was not quite as much chatter that afternoon.

I dont think that is approprate to mention my older friends family name but lets just say that it is very very German.

Why use both hands? If the rancher really wanted to help he'd have offered a large cup.

Germans make up the largest ethnic group in this country (about 15%)and there are LOTS of them in Texas and up through the center of the country. Hell in places like Fredericksburg Texas (lovely town and the birthplace of Chester Nimitz) every other restaurant's German).

there were German settler communities farther west, too. Brandenburg in Stonewall county changed its name to Old Glory during WWI to demonstrate their loyalty to their new country.
There was also a little German town in Knox county called Rhineland. Not sure if either of them survives.

They tended to become a little more patriotic after the deal in Nueces, 1962.

Humm. I'm not remembering that one Lt.

Google "Battle of the Nueces". German immigrants at that time didn't want anything to do with American politics (or wars) and the Confederacy basically said "If you ain't fer us, yer agin us.".

I think that Pat meant 1862...

At least in the 80s you could find communities in MN that if you spoke German, you could get a response back in German quite easily...

I use to be fluent in German, but have not used it in so many years, most of it is gone..If I was able to go to Germany, I am sure I'd pick it up pretty quick again...

Took my wife down to New Ulm MN one fall for Octoberfest.. walked into a bar, sat down at a table and no waitress ever showed up to take our order... tried to flag down the bar tender, never seems to catch his eye...

finally I just put up my hand and loudly said "zwei beer bitte!" and very quickly this old waitress comes over with two steins and starts rattling away at me and the wife in German....me picking up about every 10th word she said...

my wife's grandparents on each side, were 3rd generation German descendents in Minnesota, but still spoke fluent German... both uncles served in WW 2 in Europe and both were kept over there for a while afterwards, because they were used as translators..

both of her parents could understand it, but never used it...
her brothers and sisters are clueless on it..

before her grandmother passed, she was THRILLED that I spoke some German and wanted me to teach it to my wife... who couldn't care less...

myself, I like to be around people who keep their cultural heritage alive...and also think it is sad that our children in our schools are not taught to speak multiple languages like they do in Europe...

Too bad too. The Germans had doen a great job settling and one of my favorite little towns is Groene TX. Groene was an immigrant who owned a grist mill (now it is a cool restaurant), started several businesses and owned land on the Frio and I have often thought he was one guy I would not have minded tradinding places with. Beautiful place on the Guadelupe.

The Germans actually got along well with the Indians and could trade with them -even the Comanche. A rare feat Sam Housotn was a friend to the Cherokee and wanted to coexist with the tibes but things changed when second President Burnett came to power.

My folks live down in the ares -Kerrivlle and Sister too- in Center Point. I have bagged many axis deer an my best white tail to date at their little place. I adore the hill country.

I think that it was in her book, Pine Tree Shield, about her late husband, that Elizabeth Canfield Flint told of a Negro who worked in the northern Wisconsin woods with a bunch of old-country Swedes and picked-up their lingo. The Swedes were sending money home for relatives to come over for jobs in those same woods. When a contingent of new Swedes was coming-in on the train, the Negro was sent � with the wagon � to meet 'em at the depot and to bring 'em out to the timber camp.

These Swedes had never seen a Negro, and were discussing him aloud in Swedish before he greeted 'em in good colloquial Swedish.

As if their surprise at that weren't amusing enough, the Negro then told 'em that he was a Swede whom the long northern Wisconsin summers had browned.

Seafire- just saw your post -smilar experience for me. Was at the Stock Yards in Fort Worth near some shy German tourists and we met at a door at the same time. I held it open and said "entshuldige bitte" and politely went on my way. Stunned look by one of them as they ran to friends to whisper and point my way. Little did they know that that, and Happy Birthday, was about the extent of my high school German!

An old anecdote � probably true � told of an American tourist in Germany who sneezed.

"Gesundheit!" a nearby German gentleman said.

"Oh, you speak English!" the American woman said.

Most of eastern and central Wisconsin was settled by Germans, in fact that is my heritage. The northern part of the state (North of Hwy. 64) is a different terrain and has a heavy contingent of Swedes and Finns. The area looks identical to pictures from a good friend's elg (moose) hunting trips to Sweden.

If memory serves, I think Castroville was also settled by Germans. I think it was Henry Castro that brought immigrants from Alsace/Lorraine in the mid-late 1840's to the area in exchange for land.

My ancestors on dad's side came from Alsace-Lorraine about the same time. Only they went to Missouri and Iowa.


And yes, the Hill Country is beautiful. Been to Kerrville, Mountain Home and Fredericksburg. Actually drove through Fredericksburg on the morning of July 4th before their parade started. Town was packed and really neat to see.

im guessing you would be surprised how much you still know if given a chance to use it.....my wife used to be pretty fluent in German but hasnt used it for most of 20 year....if yah ask her bout it or ask her to translate something off the top of her head(she doesnt do to bad if its written) she has a hard time but if im watching something on WWII and she is in the kitchen she has no problem following along with any of the interviews in German and knows whats being said....

a large portion of my family is only bout 100 years off the boat from Norway and Germany.....no one in the family speaks either(in the states atleast, have living relatives still in Norway)....the reason? my great grandparents would punish any of the kids that they caught speaking German or Norwegian....their families were American and would speak English and nothing else....granted they would speak German and Norwegian to other immigrants but each and every one of them went out of their way to take classes to learn english shortly after they hit the US....

Right...sorry.

Ok. The only thing I can remember of consequence back in the area of the 60's were that the dimocraps sent Shriver down to tell the Texas Rangers to lay off the rioting Mexican farm laborers.

I live in Boerne, another German settlement from 1849. Yes, the Hill Country is full of 'em.

I was born and raised in New Braunfels and my grandfather has a ranch there and I could ABSOLUTELY see him doing something like this! This is classic!

It's actually Gruene, pronounced "Green", if anybody wants to google it. I used to bartend at Gruene Hall and it's an awesome little historical district with good restaurants and awesome little shops! Anybody visiting the hill country should hit up Gruene!

WoW!!! I see several members are either near or from my neck of the woods.

Sadly, I don't hear German spoken much anymore in the NB area while out and about like I did 20 years ago.

Is there anything at Mountain Home besides the Post Office? That's all I see from the 4way stop.

Guess I should clarify and say I've been in the vicinity of Mountain Home on the way to the YO.

And here I thought it was Mezzikans.

huntsonora- yeah I know it is "Green", and saw I fat fingered too. Lucky man -can't imagine a cooler place to bartend than that hall! Wouldn't you have like to have met that man- Gruene I mean? Talk about having your own little corner of heaaven.

Tony- I like Boerne too (bernie!), cool place to loiter a while. Say hi to my relatives if you run into them.

POBOY, There is a Volunteer fire department about 1/2 mile east of the Mountain Home Post Office on Hwy. 27. That's pretty much IT. You were about 4 miles from my house when you saw the post office.

I just read a book about cowboys and outlaws and such. "A Days Ride From Here". The author lives near Mt. Home. It was printed in 2111. I go thru there on the way to Leakey.

A rodeo-clown friend of mine taught me how to speak Spanish � 'sta frijole, caballo? (How you bean, Hoss?)

Once was aquainted with an old guy who grew up in Texas, and he would tell about going down to "the German colonies" for dances. Sounded weird to us then, but not as wild as his stories of Texas style "adobe wall" justice!

Got any good Jerry Jeff Walker, Robert earl Keen, Bruce or Charlie Robison, etc. stories for us?

Shiner Bock comes from the good German folks at the K. Spoetzel Brewery in Shiner, too.

Used to be able to drive down to Shiner at buy it off the dock. Any beer brewery and distributer actually. But this was about 1974, before it was well-known. I think part of that George Strait movie "Pure Country" was filmed at Gruene Hall.

My grandmother was a German from new Baden,Texas. Her great grandparents were the ones that emigrated but German was her first language and she had a very heavy accent. When ever she would get excited she would always lapse back into German and none of us could tell what she was talking about other than a word here or there

I do have a few good stories, some of em I can even tell here on the fire

Had a guy come in one night and sit down with his parents and ordered a couple beers. I knew who he was and knew he was playing that night as I had a tape he had put out in college and he was a fraternity brother of a good friend of mine up at SMU. I told him and his parents how much I appreciated his music and that I actually had a tape he had sold and they looked stunned that I recognized him. I guess it didn't happen much back then. Anyway, we exchanged numbers and I was going to take him and his band floating the river if they were ever down when it was running good. We chatted a couple time over a 2 year stretch and I can tell you as a point of fact that Jack Ingram is a GOOD DUDE!

Another time I had a guy come over and ask if I could deliver a fried catfish dinner to the bus parked on the side of the dance hall. We weren't busy so I said no problem. I went to the Grist Mill and picked it up and took it to the bus and knocked on the door. Merle Haggard answered the door and invited me in. I set him up with all the goods and left but he was real cool and appreciative. Seemed like a nice guy and he put on a hell of a show.

Jerry Jeff Walker always put on a great show but they were better when he used to drink

I lost a wallet with $800 in it before a shift one night and didn't realize it. I got to my truck about 2am and there was a note that said look underneath your tire. I looked under all 4 tires and found nothing and 30 min later I realized that my wallet was missing. Next morning I called every shop in Gruene and a lady at Buck Pottery finally told me that she had eaten breakfast with the bass player for the Jack Ingram band and he found my wallet and put it underneath the spare tire in my truck bed. Sure enough, there it was! Guys name was Mitch Marine and last I checked he was playing bass for Dwight Yoakum. Every Jack Ingram concert after that I'd send up a round of beers for the band and Mitch referred to me as the "wallet guy".

Hal Ketchem is from NB and used to work at Gruene Hall. There is a basketball goal there that has a sign on it that reads "Hal Ketchum put this up" or something to that effect and one night a few coworkers didn't believe me that I had won a huge slam dunk contest in TX back in high school and they bet an absurd amount off money that I couldn't dunk on that goal. Well, I'm not one to turn down a bet, especially when I know I'm good so I grabbed a ball and did a reverse dunk and in the process tore the entire damn thing down. I had to fix it the next day and I'm not sure if its still there or not but it probably is

I had a JC college teacher who said that the Germans were "recruited" into Texas to boost the population of the new "Republic". Does that float around down there? He also said the issue of sour cream in chile/mexican food came from the Germans not being able to handle the heat. Can't remember the guys name beides "Frank" but came from a working cattle ranch in Tx.

Back in the republic days Texas had a lot of land but no cash so they had agents going throughout Europe selling land for colonies. Most who came over were German but there were also french, Czech and polish colonies.

You will also find lots of Texans with German names that don't speak German. I know in my family my Great Grandfather was the first born in the US. He was fluent in German and English as he needed both languages. My Grandmother his daughter was born in 1927, when she asked to learn German he adamantly refused telling her they were Americans...

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!