MY GERMAN ROOTS

Now that the wall has been down for a good many years, I can let the cat out of the bag. I am half German. And I don't mean I have some ancestor from way back that came through Rykers Island or something like that. My mom is full-blooded, born in the land of Colonel Klink, German.

My mother just got back from Dusseldorf where my grandmother still lives. As I was asking her about her trip, it almost seemed this is the first time in my life that I truly realized that is the place where my mother grew up, went to school, lived through World War II and subsequently met my father. He was an Air Force Sergeant left behind on cleanup detail.

What was known in our home as the "Bratwurst Incident;" my mother used to tell us the story how my father romanced her over a plate of 2 pound sausages. Seems she was waitressing at a dive in Weisbaden when my father came in with a bunch of his flyboy cronies. My father found her so stunning he plundered the microphone from the house band and proceeded to sing "You've Lost that Lovin' Feeling" to her a Capella. This was no easy feat as my father could hardly carry a tune and the song was not written until 20 years later.

After some winks, nods and chocolate bars, my dad went over to talk to my mom. There was the one problem though; the language barrier. He was born and raised in the back woods of South Carolina. She had learned to speak only a little English by watching "Gone with the Wind" over and over. My dad once told me that the first 6 months of their courtship all she could add to any conversation was, "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn!"

My mom told me of the prejudice she and my father faced falling in love in war-torn Germany. Their families would not approve of their relationship. Her parents objected to any mixing of the races. My dad's parents objected to him marrying a woman from the country that invented the Volkswagen. Besides, what self-respecting South Carolina boy would wed an old maid who hadn't married and given birth by the age of 14.

Their romance triumphed and flourished though. Post war Germany was not too bad a place to live either. My dad and his buddies would spend the weekends Elk hunting in the Black Forest with bazookas and my mom would practice her English writing skills by running chain letter pyramid scams. After a nice Saturday night dinner of wild game fragments, my mom and dad would usually play cards with other American G.I. couples. They would play a special version of "German" rummy. This is where one player takes everybody else's cards, then a special USA card arrives and then that player has to give all the cards back.

As I learn more and more about my German roots, I understand why I do some of the things I do. It explains my driving fast. It explains my love for any kind of ground meat stuffed into intestinal casings. And being half German explains my lifelong admiration of David Hassleholf. Germans just love David Hasselholf.

Billy Murphy -- 3/27/98