Going to get busy…

I have no family of note. My dad was an only child of parents who didn’t keep in touch with their siblings, who also had almost no children. My mother; a more convoluted but similar story. Anyway, they all died and I got generations of papers to store in my garage.

I found this in a box with 100 year old land deeds and Temperance Union correspondence. I have no one to ask what the hell this is…so I have to speculate.

So.

Anonymous threat to have my grandparents deported back to Germany for disloyalty, coupled with “Vital Statistics” listing my grandparent’s marriage to prove “THE NEIGHBORS” know where they live. And…all of this stemming from a “Poisoning stunt.”

If you knew how dull my dear German farmer Seventh Day Adventist grandparents were, how self contained and apolitical, you would just be as thrilled with this little gem as I am. I mean, yeah, my grandparents had German accents so thick they were unintelligible and they lived in this country through both world wars. Grandpa was restricted from waterfront access, for heaven’s sake.

But to think they got German-hate-crimed is just impossible to wrap my head around. I mean…GERMAN. How many people do you know who don’t have German heritage in their blood? And their stereotypes, beyond leiderhosen and Heidi, all have to do with being diligent, stalwart, and occasionally trying to dominate the world. There is just so little to dig your nails into there.

Grandpa had a dairy farm. Could he have sent out a batch of sick milk? Was that the poisoning? If so, and it’s the 1920s, you should just get your own damn cow. No need to threaten deportation.

Anyway, as my specialty is digging through the dark stacks of history and finding that which is shoved and crumpled and forgotten, I couldn’t not share my very own tiny dark intrigue on das Blog. Danke.