Re: CHAT: Being taken for a furriner ...

Mark P. Line scripsit:

> I live in *Texas*. You know, the place where Chuck Norris is always right
> behind you, ready to pounce if you get caught doing anything Untexan.
> "Y'ain't f'm 'round here, are ya."
Yes, but in Texas you *are* a foreigner.

	Many years ago I wrote of this state: "The reason the sky is
	bigger here is because there aren't any trees. The reason folks
	here eat grits is because they ain't got no taste. Cowboys
	mostly stink and it's hot, oh God, is it hot.... Texas is a
	mosaic of cultures, which overlap in several parts of the state,
	with the darker layers on the bottom. The cultures are black,
	Chicano, Southern, freak, suburban and shitkicker. (Shitkicker
	is dominant.) They are all rotten for women." All that's changed
	in thirty years is that suburban is now dominant, shitkicker
	isn't so ugly as it once was and the freaks are now Goths or
	something. So it could be argued we're becoming more civilized.
		--Molly Ivins

> Of course, it was no better when I was living in Bavaria. The locals saw
> me as a Preiss, if not a Saupreiss. They generally didn't know I wasn't
> German, otherwise I'd've probably been a 'Saupreiss, ameriganischer'.
The same thing happened to the German Jew (I've forgotten his name)
who escaped Germany from Berlin while the war was raging by the simple
expedient of stealing the uniform of a dead SS man (the fact that
he was blond and blue-eyed didn't hurt) and walking out.  Only
when he got to the South did he have any trouble, and that was
not because of his Jewishness but because of his German.

--
Only do what only you can do.               John Cowan <jcowan@...>
  --Edsger W. Dijkstra's advice             http://www.reutershealth.com
    to a student in search of a thesis      http://www.ccil.org/~cowan