Fw: Geno's "English-Only" Steaks in South Philadelphia

[Larry Gorbet]

At 10:49 AM -0400 6/5/06, rkephart at unf.edu wrote:
>Quoting Ken Ehrensal <ehrensal at kutztown.edu>:
>
>>  An interesting local story....
>
>"If you can't tell me what you want, I can't serve you," he said. "It's up to
>you. If you can't read, if you can't say the word cheese, how can I
>communicate with you - and why should I have to bend?"
>
>Pardon my ivory-tower pinhead academic elitism, but this guy just sounds like
>a moron.

Hearing this reminds me of a story my father told me about the first 
time he went (hitchhiked) to the small South Texas town my mother was 
from (and where, some years later, I was born). This was a town of 
probably about 400 population in the 1930's and primarily of European 
ethnic background (essentially all American born). My father had got 
there early, so he went over to the bakery to grab a bite. When he 
walked in, the boy who helped the baker greeted him in rapid 
succession, in Alsatian, English, and Spanish.

Not like the myths of later years.

- Larry


-- 
Larry Gorbet                         lgorbet at unm.edu
Anthropology & Linguistics Depts.    (505) 883-7378
University of New Mexico            
Albuquerque, NM, U.S.A.