Germans have a pretty long history of combining firearms and beer. I know this because a few years ago my wife and I went over to Germany and spent a couple days with some German cousins of American friends of ours. The better part of one afternoon was spent taking turns shooting a giant zucchini dressed up like a bird off the top of a thirty foot pole while drinking, unsurprisingly, some beer.

It was probably one of the best days of my life.

Another reason I know this is that I’ve lived in Effingham County for over a decade. Effingham County is, historically and contemporarily, something of an enclave of German-Americans. I am half German-American myself, and while I’m not a big proponent of spending weird amounts of time dwelling on ancestry, there is one moment during the year when I am quite willing to embrace my old country heritage.

And that time is known as the Altamont Schutzenfest.

Altamont, as many readers are aware, is a small town on the western edge of Effingham County. Its name basically means “high mound,” and if you know anything about south-central Illinois topography, you also know it doesn’t take much around here to make a mound “high.” The town is predominantly made up of the descendants of German immigrants who moved there in the 19th and early 20th century, some of them straight from Europe, many of them from the Dakotas, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Many moved there for the same reason numerous people moved to this part of Illinois: dirt.

Schutzenfest is a German word that means “marksman festival;” a celebration designed to show off a person’s sharp-shooting prowess. The Altamont Schutzenfest was once a tremendous event where hundreds of people, including busloads of out-of-town college students, gathered to show off their trap-shooting skills, listen to ethnic music, eat German cuisine and imbibe on their historically appropriate beverage of choice. People even vote on a Schutzenfest King and Queen; teenagers from the community who brave the potential taunts hurled at them by their more Yankeefied peers by dressing up in traditional German garb.

My daughter, of course, is at least a quarter German-American, and so I saw fit to bring her to the most recent Schutzenfest about a month ago. It was a pleasant early autumn evening, we had nothing else to do, and we’re still so relatively inexperienced at this parenting gig that such an outing seemed perfectly reasonable. At the time.

There is an old maxim about life that basically states, “You will be taught a lesson until you learn it.” The lesson we had already been taught many months ago and yet still, apparently, had yet to comprehend, was this fairly simple scheduling tidbit: Don’t have her out of the house after 7 P.M. unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

My daughter, therefore, is quite like a gremlin in this respect. After seven, she is too tired to function decently in public and she will almost always punish us for keeping her out past this cosmically significant time.

On this particular Friday, once we had parked our car and entered into the Schutzenfest grounds, she wanted to play the “Swing, Please” game. This game is comprised of her mother and I each taking a tiny hand, then, on the count of three, we swing her a few feet toward our destination. This is actually pretty enjoyable for everyone involved for the first dozen swings or so, and I think many of the less-serious psychological issues our society deals with could be at least partially alleviated if we all could be swung in this fashion a few times a week. Granted, it would look silly and we’d have to build rather tall robots, but it would at least be more enjoyable than taking antidepressants.

Regardless, after the twentieth or so swing, the overall inefficiency gets kind of old, and thus the first round of Transportation Negotiations begins. After seven O‘clock, these talks rarely go well.

“You need to walk like a big girl, now.”

“Noooo!”

“Then mommy’s going to carry you.”

“Swing!”

“Do you want Daddy to carry you?”

“NOOO!”

“We need to get some food, sweetie. Aren’t you hungry?”

“SWING!!!”

Sometimes we swing her some more, sometimes one of us just snatches her up like a football, depending on how eager we are to make it to our destination. On this particular evening, with the smells from the nearby grill mocking our empty guts, we rushed the toddler.

We ordered our meal—bratwurst, potato salad, sauerkraut soup—and found a table. She insisted on trying each food but quickly conveyed to us she found it all rather gross and then returned to her crying.

So, we wolfed down food in a few painful moments that was, based on the money and energy spent securing it, meant to be savored over the course of a leisurely enjoyed draft beer. We hurried our protesting darling out of the Schutzenfest grounds, carrying, swinging, whatever, urgently moving toward the car that would take us where we should have been the entire time: home.

At this time of night, we assumed the car ride back to Effingham would surely lull her to sleep for the evening. No good. Remember what happens to those cute little Mogwi creatures when they eat after midnight? It’s not cool. Do you know what happens to a toddler when you keep her up past her bedtime? It’s much worse.

Now, logic suggests that a tired little girl, once given the appropriate environment in which to do so, would merely fall asleep. Unfortunately, logic and toddlers don’t mesh. Now she’s in a state called “over-tired“. That’s not even a real word, but that’s what she is: she’s too tired to go to sleep.

We lie in bed with her, hoping the double security of our parallel presence will be enough to knock her out. No dice. Now she’s rolling all over the bed, slapping our faces, kicking our throats, mocking gravity with weird little yoga moves I’ve yet to see even in a book. We all end up watching a feature-length Strawberry Shortcake movie until almost midnight. You think gremlins are bad? Gremlins don’t insist on watching feature-length Strawberry Shortcake movies until almost midnight.

In retrospect, I think she would have appreciated the actual German version of the Schutzenfest much more. As mentioned, in the Old Country, they make a pretend bird out of something available--in our case a zucchini--secure this fake bird to a thirty-foot pole, and then hoist it above everyone. Participants shoot at the doomed creature with an air rifle until someone finally “kills” it and it plummets to earth.

That great marksman is now the Schutzenfest King, making the German version of coronation much more “Old World” than the American. In Germany, the guy who kills the bird—the best warrior—is King and picks his own Queen. In America, the community votes on their pretend rulers in authentic democratic fashion. In Germany, we all danced around the impromptu royalty while “singing” some undecipherable folk song. In America people take pictures of their new leaders to be used as blackmail at a much later date.

Sounds ridiculous? Absolutely, which means it would have been perfect for a two-year-old.

Thus, my daughter’s first introduction to her Germanic heritage was less than impressive. Maybe it was the sauerkraut soup. Maybe it was the polka music. Regardless, she and I will not be attending the Schutzenfest together again anytime soon. At least not until she’s old enough to kill her own zucchini.