CHAPTER 14

Danke

Me, age nine, at a D.A.N.K. picnic, 1976

Life on Hill Street changed everything. My parents did strange things, like host parties. Mom made cheese balls, chicken liver pâté, and little appetizers with toothpicks in them. They would throw dinner parties with adults who were not relatives, serving main courses with names such as chicken Chardonnay.

Once I started first grade, Mom looked into possible part-time work. Instead, she landed an enviable full-time job as the executive assistant for the publisher of the Flint Journal. Even with an aggressive savings plan, with two salaries and no debt, they felt like they’d hit the lottery.

They stocked a bar and kept name-brand pops on hand, referred to as mix, for cocktails, which remained strictly off-limits for us kids. My brothers and sister were heavily invested in high school activities. Years earlier, my parents had scraped together enough money to buy Mike a trumpet, and now he was in every band at school and earned the rank of drum major of the marching band. Sandy landed a spot as one of five baton-twirling majorettes. Doug played football. Milt landed a summer job at AC Spark Plug. When he went back for his senior year, he stayed on at AC, working almost full time while maintaining his straight-A average. Proud, my dad taped his report card to the door of his office.

My parents went to dances at the Davison Country Club, and Mom joined a spa-style gym in Flint. With this shift came a major change to what we ate. For the first time, they bought some convenience foods: Swanson turkey pot pies, Dinty Moore beef stew, and Banquet frozen fried chicken—all items previously considered both too expensive and ridiculous when we lived at the farm. “Why would anyone buy frozen fried chicken?” I remembered Mom sniffing one time at Hamady’s. Now we had boxes of it in our freezer.

Mom had little time to make cookies or bread from scratch, so now she bought gingersnaps. She drew the line at certain grocery items: no “white-white bread,” as she called Wonder bread, or sugar cereal. But even the appearance of the relatively tame shredded wheat and Raisin Bran boxes on the table were greeted with raised eyebrows by my siblings.

I had longed for such foods when we lived on the farm. Now all I wanted was Mom’s homemade fried chicken and bread. My siblings always complained about being brown baggers at school. Now that they could afford hot lunch, it didn’t exactly live up to their expectations. Sandy got so fed up with the store-bought gingersnaps that she started making cookies on her own while my siblings watched TV. She even started to use this skill as leverage against my brother Doug, who would do just about anything in exchange for chocolate chip cookies.

Another strange thing happened. Mom and Dad went away for “second honeymoons.” They’d pack up on a Friday and head off to Bayport, where they kept the boat in the summer months, and spend the night. After a night of dancing and a few drinks, they’d walk back to their motel. The next day, they’d fish in the morning and head home in the afternoon. Mom says, “It let us feel like we were Milt and Irene again, that couple that fell in love. Sometimes married people get so caught up in daily routine that you forget that you’re in the biggest romance of your life.”

When I was a child, my aunt Mary Jo was by far the most glamorous person I knew. The youngest of Dad’s siblings, she was a beautiful woman with the high cheekbones and lovely, light-colored eyes of her grandmother Myrtle, and the jaunty joie de vivre of her ne’er-do-well father, James Flint.

Mary Jo had a man’s job at the plant, but when she wasn’t working, she dressed beautifully and smelled of actual perfume, not cheap dime-store cologne. She had a knack for interior decorating and lived in Grand Blanc, the classy part of Flint. Her four kids were roughly the same age as my brothers and sister so they were always at our house. They were so sophisticated that Joyce, the youngest, even took modeling lessons.

Aunt Mary Jo and her husband somehow got invited to a dance hosted by the Deutsch-Amerikanischer National Kongress, or the German American National Congress. Known by its initials, D.A.N.K., for short, it’s pronounced with a soft a to sound like danke, the German word for “thanks.” The group bills itself as “working to preserve German culture, heritage and language in the United States.” D.A.N.K. was founded in 1959 as a way to ease post–World War II/cold war suspicions of German Americans and to promote pride in their own heritage and culture. Michigan had a couple of chapters then, including one based in Flint.

Mary Jo and Bill mentioned the German dance with inexpensive admission that included food to my parents. All four showed up, not quite knowing what to expect.

They arrived at the rented hall to find attendees decked in traditional German dress, the women in dirndls and the men in lederhosen. The Germans turned out to be great hosts, teaching the four interlopers how to polka as an accordion-driven trio pumped out rousing variations. Dad was impressed that the male members brought along their own steins to drink the free-flowing beer. The food was amazing: ham-stuffed schnitzel smothered with cheese and bratwurst cooked in dark beer served with sauerkraut slow-cooked with onions, apples, and bacon.

By the end of the night, a genial German couple from the Old Country suggested they join. “But my brother and I are mostly Irish and English,” Mary Jo protested. Her husband’s people were a mélange of Scottish, English, and Dutch with a wee token of Native American—also still not German. Mom admitted that her people were mostly Swedish.

The man waved his hand. “It’s a German-American club,” he insisted. “You’re American, aren’t you? We have lots of great parties just like this one, and picnics in the summer. It’ll be fun.”

They were sold. By their second party, Mary Jo had invested in a full-on dirndl.

At first, our membership was perplexing and a little odd. People would introduce themselves with names that sounded like characters out of The Sound of Music.

“I am Friedrich Moeller,” a boy would say in introduction.

“And I am Britta Krause,” a girl would add.

I’d meekly explain my name was Kathleen Flinn, so not German. Sometimes a person would say, “Oh, then your mother must be German.” I’d explain she was Swedish American. They’d walk away, confused.

Mom and Dad were not the type to do anything by halves. They attended all the organizational meetings. They volunteered for fund-raising efforts. They worked in the trailer that the group took from fair to fair during the warmer months. These days, it would be known as a food truck. They called it the Krautwagon, not as a derogatory term for Germans but because of the vast amounts of sauerkraut they served.

Mom’s sole experience with German food growing up was the sauerkraut that Grandma Inez made a couple of times. Utterly unfamiliar with the stuff, she took a jar of sauerkraut, dumped it ungraciously into a pan, and added chopped hot dogs or sausages to heat up in the liquid. Mom told one of the German women she worked with in the Krautwagon about it.

“She didn’t drain it first?” the woman said, horror-stricken. “Da wird ja der Hund in der Pfanne verrückt! That’s crazy! You’re lucky you didn’t get sick!”

She taught Mom how to prepare real sauerkraut. They’d start by thoroughly draining the fermented cabbage and then slowly simmering it to evaporate any leftover liquid. They’d add in diced onion, bacon, apples, and caraway seeds along with dark German beer and let it simmer slowly for an hour. Meanwhile, they grilled strongly seasoned bratwursts slowly and perfectly, until the skins grew dark and ready to burst. Just as the crowds were expected, they set up a small box fan in the trailer and blew the smell of the sauerkraut and brats outward.

The Krautwagon parked next to the usual fair offerings such as simple hot dogs and hamburgers. The German fare would crush such weak competition and they’d end up with long lines. In these situations, Mom heard many colorful German phrases:

“Sich wie reife Kirschen verkaufen!” one woman exclaimed during a rush as she piled sauerkraut onto platters as fast as she could.

“What does that mean?” Mom asked, working just as fast putting brats into buns.

“They’re selling like ripe cherries!” she replied, handing two platters out the window of the trailer. “In English, you would say ‘like hot pancakes!’”

Mom and Dad loved D.A.N.K. The members knew how to have fun. The dances were rollicking affairs. The beer flowed freely. Dad got a little green Bavarian-style hat that he wore while drinking from the massive stein my mom bought him as a gift. He looked completely at home, drinking his beer and wearing his hat as he chatted with the other members.

But honestly, it all came down to the food.

“When you went to a German potluck, it was like feasting in heaven. They’d have tables laden with the most amazing dishes,” Mom says. “And then I’d bring something lame, like deviled eggs.”

At the first party my parents took me to, the buffet had a variety of schnitzels. The members had made their families’ versions of the traditional German dish made from pork or veal. Schnitzel begins with a piece of meat that’s been pounded thin, then dredged in a mix of flour and cheese, before being fried to a golden crisp. There’s a line in the song “My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music about “schnitzel with noodles.” I had never had schnitzel. For some reason, I had it confused in my mind with strudel, a dessert, and thus couldn’t fathom why anyone would eat cake and noodles together.

With my first bite of jägerschnitzel, an entire world of possibilities opened. The pork schnitzel was layered with a silky, peppery mushroom cream sauce and served alongside homemade buttered spaetzle, a soft egg noodle resembling a small, squat dumpling. The tender pork, crisp coating, savory gravy, and supple noodles together yielded an intense flavor at once foreign yet comforting.

At picnics, they served huge, hot, Bavarian-style soft pretzels. One of the club’s officers contributed his special pretzel sauce, a combination of strong mustard, white Cheddar, Worcestershire sauce, and dark beer simmered together and served warm in little bowls. Tasty, tangy, cheesy, it was absolutely everything you could want to have with a leathery, warm pretzel.

Sometimes our enthusiasm for the food got us into trouble.

At one fund-raising dinner, the hosting couple served their infamous schweinshaxe, a whole roasted pig knuckle, a specialty of Bavaria. Huge meaty knuckles arrived at our table with a knife sticking out from the middle of each. The hosts explained they’d made the schweinshaxe in the traditional fashion by marinating it for seven days, then roasting it atop a bed of sauerkraut. The result was fall-off-the-bone tender pork with a crackling hard crust. Everyone in my family—including me—ate one apiece. Later, we learned that one schweinshaxe is normally split between two to three people. That night we shivered in our beds from meat sweats.

Members took turns hosting a Christmas party at their house each year to serve the traditional dish sauerbraten, a beef roast that’s marinated for days in a bath of red wine, vinegar, and juniper berries. One hostess explained that she added crumbled gingersnap cookies to thicken the sauce. She ended the night by handing each child a pfeffernüsse, a pepper nut cookie.

“Now, put that under your pillow and make a wish,” she instructed. “Santa will grant it.” Dad overheard. I was eight, and well beyond Santa. But I knew he still believed.

“Did you hear that, Daddy?” I asked him.

“Yes, so be careful with it,” he said, as the hostess handed him his beer stein, now emptied and cleaned. “You don’t want to waste a wish from Santa.”

I handed him my cookie as I pulled on my wool mittens. “Of course, Daddy, I would never waste a wish from Santa.”

Thanks to D.A.N.K., we spent time in Frankenmuth, a historical German settlement in lower central Michigan.

Frankenmuth is a bit of a curiosity. Called Michigan’s “Little Bavaria,” the entire town is built with alpine architecture. The restaurants, inns, shops, and even a couple of the banks look like ski chalets with their off-white exteriors, steep roofs, and half-timbered façades. Every other store’s name seems to involve the word Haus.

In the mid-1800s, a popular German preacher decided to send members of his congregation to the American Midwest to offer spiritual guidance to Lutheran settlers in the region and, while they were at it, convert the Chippewa nation to Christianity. Through an acquaintance living in Ohio, the pastor discovered the lush Saginaw Valley and decided that’s where he’d set up his colony of Franks, the name of people from the Franconia region where his church resided. He dubbed the whole effort frankenmuth, “the courage of the franks.”

Today, more than three million visitors flood into Frankenmuth to partake in a seemingly endless string of festivals. They visit the quaint shops, drink freshly brewed beer at the brewery, and visit Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland, which proclaims to be “the largest Christmas store on earth.”

But like us with D.A.N.K., most people go for the food.

Frankenmuth restaurants offer the traditional schnitzel, sauerbraten, and bratwurst dishes, but most people flock there for the family-style fried chicken dinners. The dinners come with noodle soup, salad, creamy coleslaw, fruit preserves, and stollen, a fruit and nut bread. The chicken has a strong dose of paprika, not unlike Uncle Clarence’s version. Best of all are the sides of hot German potato salad, studded with bacon and tossed in a vinegary dressing. Something about the tartness of the sour vinaigrette combined with the salt of the bacon hits just the right note in the back of the mouth.

The first of May took on a whole new importance as we became involved with the annual May Day weekend in Frankenmuth. Thanks to D.A.N.K., each of us had a role in the town’s biggest parade. Dad carried the ceremonial Maypole, a canopy-like structure he held up with a holster while Joyce and I danced around it with other girls who were, in fact, at least part German. My brothers and my cousin Steve walked in the parade proudly holding German flags. As a kid, absolutely nothing was more exciting than being in a parade.

But none of us experienced D.A.N.K. quite like Sandy.

Every year as part of the May Day festivities, they held a Miss D.A.N.K. contest. To qualify, candidates had to take a test that covered German history and geography, and there was a section on the definition of German words. Sandy had never been to Germany, and aside from what she’d gleaned from our encyclopedia studies, she knew nothing about the country’s heritage. In high school, she studied French. She didn’t speak a word of German.

Sandy took the test but was convinced she had failed. Without revealing her score on the test, the president called to tell her that she had made it into the finals. At a pre–May Day dinner at a local dance hall, she performed the song “Willkommen” from the film Cabaret with the four other contenders for Miss D.A.N.K. Sandy had blossomed into a beautiful young woman. She had a certain poise from years of studying baton and performing as a majorette with the marching band.

When the moment came to announce the winner, no one was more stunned than she when they placed the crown on her head. Finally Sandy had an official excuse to wear a tiara.

The next day at the May Day parade, while I danced around the Maypole, she sat in a convertible wearing a white dress, a blue sash across her chest declaring her “Miss D.A.N.K.” She had practiced her wave.

Within a month, she was expected to go on to the national competition in Chicago, the home of D.A.N.K. headquarters. The Flint chapter would provide an all-expenses-paid weekend in the city with Mom as an escort.

Sandy refused to go.

“Mom, I’m not going to do it. They ask you questions in German. I don’t even speak it, and all those girls are fluent.”

“But we could go to Chicago,” Mom said, making an appeal.

Sandy rolled her eyes. “Don’t make me go. I only took the test to make you and Dad happy. I’m not going to embarrass myself. Plus, it wouldn’t be right. I’m not even German.”

Sandy manufactured an excuse. She gathered up the tiara and the sash and drove them the two hours to Frankenmuth to deliver them to the first runner-up.

“Oh, danke, Sandy, danke, for driving all the way here,” the girl said as she answered the door. She cradled the tiara and the sash in her arm. “I wish you could go to Chicago. You’re so pretty, you would surely win.”

The girl’s parents and grandparents had been members of the German club since its first year; she’d been crestfallen when she came in second place. At that moment, looking at the happy teen’s face, Sandy knew she had done the right thing. Being Miss D.A.N.K. didn’t mean as much to her as it did to the girl standing in the doorway.

“Danke to you,” Sandy said. “My family loves being a part of D.A.N.K.”