Explaining Traditions: Folk Behavior in Modern Culture

8. Symbolizing Tradition: On the Scatology of an Ethnic Identity

319 8 Symbolizing Tradition On the Scatology of an Ethnic Identity Mahlon Hellerich strode to the podium to talk about Pennsylvania German (or, in his folk usage, Dutch, from the dialect Deitsch) culture to a gathering of the Pennsylvania German Society in Allentown , Pennsylvania. The audience did not need lecturing about the history of the group, since it comprised many people who, like him, had grown up with “Dutch” traditions. So he decided to focus on how the Dutch identity had changed from the mid-twentieth century of his youth to this twenty-first-century moment. In his eighties at that point, Hellerich was a well-recognized speaker on Pennsylvania German topics. Calling himself a proud “Dutchman,” he drew on his experiences growing up in East Texas, Pennsylvania, which he described as a Pennsylvania Dutch hamlet. He began his lecture with a story that, he said, encompassed what being Pennsylvania German was about: A Pennsylvania German mother tells her daughter that she would need to go to English school to register. And she tells her daughter to take her little brother because he would need to register next year. She goes to the teacher and the teacher asks for her name. The little girl answers Waggeraad [“wagon wheel”]. The teacher asks again, “OK, what is your real name?” Waggeraad, the girl emphatically answers again. “And how did you get that name?” the teacher follows up. The little girl explains, “My mother told me that when I was born the first thing she saw out the window was a wagon wheel by the 320 EXPLAINING TRADITIONS barn.” Still skeptical, the teacher tells her to go home and get a note from her mother confirming the story. The teacher then asks the boy, her little brother, to come forward. But the little girl exclaims, “Don’t bother, if she didn’t believe me, she’s not going to believe you, Hinkeldreck [“chicken shit”].1 The story got a good laugh, and several persons in the audience glanced knowingly at one another, indicating they had heard that one before. At first, the joke may seem like an odd choice to represent the Pennsylvania German experience. Besides its off-color reference, some people might interpret its crude characterization of Pennsylvania German bumpkins as unflattering. Hellerich, however, recalled the narrative fondly from his childhood and appreciated the way it related the ethnic identity, and especially the rural consciousness, of Pennsylvania Germans, in contrast to the “English” outsiders (English -speaking Americans) viewed as part of the formal establishment. He lamented that this identity, arising largely out of an agrarian lifestyle , was on the wane. It is a story I had heard regularly at the annual all-male Fersommling (“gathering”) in Lykens, Pennsylvania, featuring an after-dinner speaker who related humorous jokes and anecdotes to hundreds of dialect speakers. It was usually part of a series of narratives the Pennsylvania Germans euphemistically refer to as earthy Bauer (“farmer”) stories revolving around the feces of farm animals, especially chickens and horses. The narrative’s anal theme was echoed in the joyous singing of “Schnitzelbank” with various barn images: Ist das dein schnitzelbank? [Isn’t that your carving bench?] Ja, das ist mein schnitzelbank? [Yes, that is my carving bench] Oh, du schoene, Oh, du schoene, Oh, du schoene Schnitz-el-bank! [Oh, you wonderful carving bench] Ist das nicht dein waggeraad? Ja, das ist mein waggeraad? [Chorus] On the Scatology of an Ethnic Identity 321 Is das nicht dein haufen Mischt [manure pile]? Ja, das ist mein haufen Mischt. Outside of the Fersommling hall, I solicited descriptions of such narratives as a fieldworker. The most common comment I heard was, “That’s earthy stuff,” connecting manure with farm life and suggesting that the motif of animal feces was a defining feature of Pennsylvania German humor . It was what folklorists might call an “esoteric” expression, because it was intended to be communicated from one member of the group to another, rather than shared with outsiders or used by outsiders about Pennsylvania Germans (categorized as “exoteric”) (Jansen 1959). To be sure, it was not the sole theme, as published field collections of oral tradition by John Baer Stoudt (1915) and Thomas Brendle and William Troxell (1944) indicate. For public audiences, Pennsylvania German collectors might recount trickster tales of Eileschpigel, the cycle of Swabian jokes related to ethnic “moron” humor, ghost and treasure tales, accounts of...