@Ed: Thank you for a great and interesting history lesson. FSK, misguided memorials, and murder at the Rio Grande. I couldn’t ask for anything better. You do realize, however, that all work done for the Fishwife is voluntary?

One of my favorite Deutsch-Tex moments was in a documentary made by Thomas Meinecke of FSK. He had a great moment in which a guy swung back the gate in front of his place and said, in a wonderful accent “Wilkommen ahn mahn ray-unch.”

I once wrote (and was, of course, unable to sell) a story on the town of Comfort, which was founded by Freidenker, religious nonconformists in the 1840s who walked there from Galveston, which was the point of entry for those bamboozled by the land agents trying to increase the non-Mexican population of the Republic. Only two of a party of about a dozen survived, but the town thrived once it was founded. Somehow, some actual atheists from San Antonio (Freidenker were Christians, just not the kind the Germans in Germany approved of) decided to commemorate them, thinking they were “freethinkers” in the American sense, and erected a plain stone — a boulder, really — in the city park. At that point, the good Christians of Comfort decided to take umbrage, and voted to have it removed. But it was huge, and anyway, Comfort doesn’t have a budget, being under the administrative control of a larger town nearby. All very silly.

It should, however, be noted that one legacy of the Freidenker was that they were able to make friends with the local Comanche tribes, unlike the Anglos, and lived in peace with them. Further, their religion wouldn’t allow them to keep slaves. Comfort has the southernmost Union cemetary in the U.S., dedicated to a brave bunch who sided with the North and headed south to the Mexican border during the Civil War to hook up with some Union troops, after which they were going to sweep north and conquer the state. Someone betrayed them, and several were killed and several more died in jail somewhere on the Rio Grande. The stone in the graveyard with their names is very instructive: German, Anglo, and — no! — Mexican, all working towards a common cause.

No wonder the good burgers of Comfort were upste.

Your commentary is funny, more so for its subtlety.