Kraut

When I posted a couple of weeks ago about the virtues of Mildmay, I neglected to mention that I had spent a few years domiciled there.

Full disclosure: I bought a house in Mildmay for $52,000 and sold it six or seven years later for fifty, which tells you everything you need to know about my investment savvy.

But it doesn't tell you much about Mildmay.

Mildmay was somewhat parochial at the time. There were locals who never brought themselves to acknowledge my morning greeting when I passed them on the sidewalk, not once in those six or seven years.

The area was first settled by German Catholics in the early to middle 19th century. These folks put the lie to Weber's theory that only German protestants had enough get up and go to amount to anything.

When I lived there, you'd still hear elderly folks conversing in their suddeutscher dialect on the street. What's really messed up is that in this Germanic back-water the grocery store didn't sell rye bread!

WTF?!?

But I shit you not. When friends from the city came up for a visit I'd ask them to bring a couple loaves of rye bread.

I don't know if it's a part of that German heritage, but I never knew so many people who were fermenting sauerkraut. It was the local equivalent to cooking meth, I guess. There was at least half a dozen guys I knew of who would be peddling their kraut and sausages at pretty much any local event.

And they were really good at it!

One of the kraut-meisters actually ran a pub out where the old railroad station used to be. He'd have all-you-can-eat kraut dinners for $4.99 once a week.

Combine an all-you-can-eat kraut and sausage buffet with my penchant for gluttony... you can just imagine the hilarity that ensued!


But that's a story for another day.