Oktoberfest

Here's Ethan, all bundled up for the Autumn in his Peruvian coat of many colors, what I bought him at the Clinton/Division street fair back in the summer. Ah, the summer street fair, another fixed point in the seasonal calendar, a further locus in the cyclical round of pleasures and joyful happenings that abound in this neck of the woods. September, oddly, hails Oktoberfest. It's an especially big deal down in the otherwise sleepy hamlet of Mount Angel, but Portland has it's share of self-identified "Berliners" - as Kennedy famously and erroneously put it - and, perhaps more importantly, is not the sort of place to pass up the opportunity for a piss-up.

One might imagine that Americans of my generation would have been raised on the same steady diet of "They flew to Bruges" type movies as the average Englishman; but, if that is indeed the case, then the American melting-pot acted as some kind of psychological prophylactic, for they possess none of the prejudices natural to the British sensibility. "Don't mention the war!" doesn't raise a smile here; you might as well stick a golliwog in you cubicle. That said, it's still A-OK to refer to the French as cheese-eating surrender monkeys. They are, apparently, the last people it is politically correct to mock. Which is fine by me.

Ethan, who is one eighth German, seemed quite in his element as he wandered around the Oaks Park take on the Bavarian festivities, and danced merrily to the music of the oompah band, sporting his blond mop and little pot belly. To him there will seem nothing sinister about the accent, his mind will not automatically suffix every sentence uttered with the phrase, "...for a thousand years," his blood will not run cold when asked to produce his passport, if indeed he will be asked at all. This we shall call progress.


Note the italics above - few solicitations appear less enticing.


German folk-dancing at Oaks Park Oktoberfest. Absolutely nothing sinister about that. In truth though, how wonderful it is that people devote their time to keeping these traditions alive whilst I flick between the channels on the TV and chase Ethan around with a bucket and mop.


An Aryan mädchen oversees a fertility rite. I know, I can't help myself. Must remember that my witty bon-mots associating all things German with the Holocaust are actually racist and may cause offence.


Partly German. His tummy, I think.