These days, we can find out definitively where we came from – we spit in a cup, send it in and tada; we know.
I’m going on the information I was given by my family, the traditions we continued from our ancestors; both sides emigrated from Germany. My grandparents spoke German until WWI, when it was dropped for obvious reasons. That meant they spoke it in front of my parents as children so they could carry on a private conversation. It seems a shame to me that the language was not passed on, though I do find myself saying “ya, ya,” with no compunction.
When my parents, my brother, and his then girlfriend, helped me move to Iowa for graduate school, my roommate and landlord John, another German, directed us to Bill Zuber’s restaurant in the Amana Colonies for dinner. It felt like going to grandma and grandpa’s house. The smell was the same, the colors on the walls, the decorations – the food – it felt like home.
When we left the farm and moved, eventually ending up in western Wisconsin, among Norwegians (my younger sister became Norwegian), I was baffled by what they ate; and what they didn’t eat. They ate a wide variety of elaborately fashioned items all made from the same thing – butter, flour, sugar and cream. I’m not complaining – I love butter, flour, sugar and cream. They didn’t make cut out Christmas cookies, intricately decorated and hang them on the tree. They didn’t make lead dumplings slathered in rich gravy; they didn’t have a crock of sauerkraut fermenting on the back porch. We did.
Grandpa marveled that my Mother knew to make his favorite meal when they visited: pork chops, dumplings and gravy. She didn't have to think twice about it.
During my second year in Iowa City, my roommate’s cousin, Markus came for an extended visit from Germany via the Pacific Rim where he had been traveling for half a year. He’d saved his money teaching newly freed East Germans (The Berlin Wall came down while I was in Iowa), and took a year to travel the world before he settled down. We became fast friends and I enjoyed introducing him to many Americanisms, such as big hamburgers, root beer, popcorn, road trips and buying a used car.
Ironically, his American cousin moved out of his own house the summer Markus came to visit. One of my favorite memories was discovering rural Iowa together with Markus and my new roommate, Skip, fifteen years my junior, from California. We toured a giant flea market around the entire racetrack of the county fairgrounds in What Cheer (pronounced “Watcher”), Iowa.
During that fall Markus took his newly purchased Toyota north to visit my parents in Wisconsin. I couldn’t go, but Mom made sure to serve him sauerkraut and dumplings. He returned reporting that they were more German than he was.
