in America come from the Germans.”
“Not the electric irons,” said Loats’s wife—the new wife, Pernilla—Clarissa had finally died of tremors and weakness. “I heard in town Mrs. O’Grain got a iron runs from the electric cord. She don’t have to heat it on the stove, roast to death. That’s what I want with my egg money, one of them irons.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Beutle, “you got to have electricity first. Where you going to plug it, up your hole? The iron ain’t no good by itself.” (Six months later, when he discovered the appliance was made by Rowenta, a German firm, he told Loats he ought to buy one.)
In the autumn of 1916, Beutle, furious at the crooked reporting of the American newspapers, subscribed to a second paper, Fatherland, which he read with vitriolic relish. He donated three dollars to a German war relief fund and as a token received a ring decorated with a replica of the Iron Crossand the inscription To show my loyalty to the old Fatherland, I brought it gold in time of trouble for this piece of iron.
“Well,” said Loats, “don’t pass this damn paper along to me anymore, Hans. I don’t like it no more. Anyway I got one of them crystal sets. They are broadcasting the war news.” (Although he sat with the earphones on his head, adjusting the cat’s whisker by the hour, he heard nothing.)
“Oho!” said Beutle. “Listen, my friend, the crystal set will be as bad as the American newspapers and everything you read in an American newspaper favors the English and condemns the Germans. That’s Wilson’s famous neutrality! Fatherland only corrects this unfair reporting of the news. The lies and unjust accounts of the Lusitania? You can’t deny their lies. Fatherland tells you right here about this crazy American newspaper that named what happened to the Lusitania as ‘the worst crime since the crucifixion of Christ.’ Jesus Christ, they don’t admit the ship was loaded with munitions. You have to read this paper to discover the truth! And look here, American news too—in New Jersey a man is poisoned by his wife through pancakes.”
“I guess I give up the hyphen, Hans. I don’t care if they drop a thousand bombs on the Kaiser’s head. I don’t feel so German now. My children, they’re born here, this is their country. I should keep hanging on to the old place that never did anything but drive me away? I just want America to stay out of it, this war, I want to work my farm and sit down to a good dinner and sleep good at night.” And it was true that Loats’s daughter Daisy had borrowed a copy of Walt Whitman’s I Hear America Singing from the teacher and read it aloud after supper.
Beutle hawked and spit at this perfidy, ordered four new gramophone records from Columbia’s Patriotic GermanMusic selection: “Hipp, Hipp, Hurrah,” “Die Wacht am Rhein,” “Wir Müssen Siegen ” and “ Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles, ” sung by a rich-toned male quartet. But this was not enough. He joined the German-American Alliance and his buggy showed up at every rally. He wrote, in his rusty German, a repetitive four-page pamphlet titled “The German Hog in America,” listing the names of outstanding noble German white hogs, many of them his own. Two evenings a week, after supper, he took his accordion down to the saloons in Prank and tried to explain reasonably to the men he knew that as a person of German extraction he was loyal both to his motherland, Germany, and to his bride, America. He tried to persuade them with German music.
“And this is terrible beer. Jesus Christ! You come out my farm and try my beer, German beer, one time.”
The bartender rolled his cold American eyes away from Beutle, turned his shoulder. He spoke to a customer at the end of the bar.
“They come right up to you and tell you they’re better.”
“Hang the Irish and shoot the hyphenates,” said the customer, sniggering. The next day a sign without a single flyspeck hung over
“Not the electric irons,” said Loats’s wife—the new wife, Pernilla—Clarissa had finally died of tremors and weakness. “I heard in town Mrs. O’Grain got a iron runs from the electric cord. She don’t have to heat it on the stove, roast to death. That’s what I want with my egg money, one of them irons.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Beutle, “you got to have electricity first. Where you going to plug it, up your hole? The iron ain’t no good by itself.” (Six months later, when he discovered the appliance was made by Rowenta, a German firm, he told Loats he ought to buy one.)
In the autumn of 1916, Beutle, furious at the crooked reporting of the American newspapers, subscribed to a second paper, Fatherland, which he read with vitriolic relish. He donated three dollars to a German war relief fund and as a token received a ring decorated with a replica of the Iron Crossand the inscription To show my loyalty to the old Fatherland, I brought it gold in time of trouble for this piece of iron.
“Well,” said Loats, “don’t pass this damn paper along to me anymore, Hans. I don’t like it no more. Anyway I got one of them crystal sets. They are broadcasting the war news.” (Although he sat with the earphones on his head, adjusting the cat’s whisker by the hour, he heard nothing.)
“Oho!” said Beutle. “Listen, my friend, the crystal set will be as bad as the American newspapers and everything you read in an American newspaper favors the English and condemns the Germans. That’s Wilson’s famous neutrality! Fatherland only corrects this unfair reporting of the news. The lies and unjust accounts of the Lusitania? You can’t deny their lies. Fatherland tells you right here about this crazy American newspaper that named what happened to the Lusitania as ‘the worst crime since the crucifixion of Christ.’ Jesus Christ, they don’t admit the ship was loaded with munitions. You have to read this paper to discover the truth! And look here, American news too—in New Jersey a man is poisoned by his wife through pancakes.”
“I guess I give up the hyphen, Hans. I don’t care if they drop a thousand bombs on the Kaiser’s head. I don’t feel so German now. My children, they’re born here, this is their country. I should keep hanging on to the old place that never did anything but drive me away? I just want America to stay out of it, this war, I want to work my farm and sit down to a good dinner and sleep good at night.” And it was true that Loats’s daughter Daisy had borrowed a copy of Walt Whitman’s I Hear America Singing from the teacher and read it aloud after supper.
Beutle hawked and spit at this perfidy, ordered four new gramophone records from Columbia’s Patriotic GermanMusic selection: “Hipp, Hipp, Hurrah,” “Die Wacht am Rhein,” “Wir Müssen Siegen ” and “ Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles, ” sung by a rich-toned male quartet. But this was not enough. He joined the German-American Alliance and his buggy showed up at every rally. He wrote, in his rusty German, a repetitive four-page pamphlet titled “The German Hog in America,” listing the names of outstanding noble German white hogs, many of them his own. Two evenings a week, after supper, he took his accordion down to the saloons in Prank and tried to explain reasonably to the men he knew that as a person of German extraction he was loyal both to his motherland, Germany, and to his bride, America. He tried to persuade them with German music.
“And this is terrible beer. Jesus Christ! You come out my farm and try my beer, German beer, one time.”
The bartender rolled his cold American eyes away from Beutle, turned his shoulder. He spoke to a customer at the end of the bar.
“They come right up to you and tell you they’re better.”
“Hang the Irish and shoot the hyphenates,” said the customer, sniggering. The next day a sign without a single flyspeck hung over
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