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The Story of Ollie and The Gauleiter
or Y’all May as Well Know I am Sticking It Out and Sticking Around
I really didn’t think the presidential election would go the way it did in this, the year of our Lord 2024. As time has gone on and I’ve read people’s thoughts and processed my own thoughts, I’m seeing that I probably shouldn’t have been so surprised. But on Wednesday morning I found myself pretty shocked.Our family group chat got fired up early. We were seeking each other out.
One of my cousins wrote, “America almost made it 250 years.” That made me think about how Tallahassee had its bicentennial this year. And Yankeetown just celebrated the 100th anniversary of its founding. There is so much history that is really just right around the corner from where we are today.
One of my good Tallahassee friends always used to say, “Dear old Yankeetown. . .” whenever I’d wax poetic about my home. And she was right-on to rib me. Yankeetown is dear to me. Not just nostalgic, but truly a place I love. I nerd out about it. Today it is dear and a little bit downtrodden with the massive flooding that so many folks experienced in Helene. My parents are still living in an Air B&B and fixing the damage to their home.
I keep thinking about my grandparents and great grandparents and what they might think of these 2024 happenings. Of the changes in the weather and in attitudes everywhere.
Will it be okay for us to go back under a Federal government led by those who hate government? There is so much hate swirling around. It is true that I am a person of relative privilege in this world, though I fear that ignorance about how our new leader’s platforms will affect the economy is ultimately going to hurt most people who aren’t billionaires, regardless of privilege.
One thing I do know is how my grandfather, Richard Allman F. Lynch, dealt with some instances of swirling hate that happened in his days. And I think maybe now is a good time to tell a story about that.
My grandfather was in college learning to be an engineer at Purdue before World War Two broke out. He hadn’t fallen in love with the first daughter of Yankeetown yet at that point (she spent some time at the Florida State College for Women before transferring to Purdue- our first proto-‘Nole). It’s wild to me to think about my grandparents when they weren’t much older than my girls are now. Wild, but fun. I have a few really fun pictures of my grandpa as a young man. He was in a fraternity at Purdue- my grandparents were the last generation of my family to go Greek. He helped put on fun drama shows. I always got the impression that literature and shenanigans were included in his college education in addition to hard engineering. And he also did engineering study-abroad in Germany. Engineering study abroad in pre-World War Two Germany. Very directly pre-World War Two Germany.
If you know me, you know that my nose is not exactly the smallest feature on my face. My nose is pretty exactly my mom’s nose, which is pretty exactly my grandfather’s nose. I have southerners ask me if I’m “from New York” from time to time, given the shape of my nose. I know that they are really trying to ascertain my religion with that question.
Anyway, my grandfather went by Ollie, short for Allman, I guess because there are a lot of Richards in the family. One of the stories he tells of young Ollie in Germany before the war was that he noticed an officer once, in a train station, who kept staring at him and then looking up and then staring at him some more. It wasn’t until the train arrived and he moved to get on it that he realized that on the wall behind him was a big poster pointing out the features that could be used to “Recognize a Jew” and the caricatured drawing on the poster did not look completely unlike my grandpa. When he used to tell that story, he would always end it by saying something like, “I didn’t realize at the time how afraid I probably should have been.”
But he also used to tell another story about how a regional leader (my grandfather always likened the position to a regional governor- it was not until I looked the term up this week to write this story that I learned that it was actually a position within the Nazi party), known as the Gauleiter, came to the school where he was studying one day and gave a fiery speech all about how foreigners were bad and lazy, and how the pure German people were about to take the world by storm. It was a real sturm and drang presentation and then at the end of the presentation, the Gauleiter asked to see all of the exchange students that were present up on the stage. The Gauleiter then proceeded to individually and roundly excoriate each one of them for the sins of their home countries, and when he got to my grandfather, the only American, he apparently laid it on heavily about how America was the absolute worst at very long length.
Speaking of long length, my grandfather was my height; six feet and five inches. Apparently the Gauleiter was a smaller guy, but he attempted to make up for that in volume.
When the Gauleiter was all done and went on his way, one of my grandfather’s Norwegian friends approached him. “Oh Ollie,” the friend said (and my grandfather always did an impression of this friend saying his name with an accent, so he was saying “Oh Oh-lee”), “Ollie, I can’t believe how casual you were with the Gauleiter! I can’t believe you just leaned over against the wall and crossed your arms and legs while he was talking to you! Ollie, the Gauleiter is an important person!”
To this, my super-cool college-aged grandfather replied, “I don’t see what the big deal is with him anyway. He puts his pants on one leg at a time, just like anyone else!”
Teenage me so wanted to be as cool as my grandpa in that story.
I mean, I’m also super glad that my grandpa survived to come back home, finish his degree, fall for my grandmother, marry her and ship out with the Army Air Corps where he also managed to survive the war and then come back home to eventually settle in Yankeetown near his in-laws.
Teenage me wanted to be as cool as my grandpa, but mid-forties me doesn’t want to have the chance to be cool in the face of sturm and drang nationalism right here in America. I certainly didn’t want or have any inkling that my daughters would be turning 16 in the dawn of “Your body, my choice” memes spurred on by the emboldened antics of the devotees of a 78-year-old convicted felon who has been found liable for sexual assault and is currently under indictment in multiple jurisdictions.
Nevertheless, here I am. And despite the tornadoes that ravaged my neighborhood and the floods that have ravaged the southeast this year, here I will stay. Because in the long run, I believe in the legal system that I serve within, and I believe in the ideals of my grandfathers and grandmothers, and all of the good people that brought us to where we are today.
I don’t know what more I can do to prevent a slide into chaos, but I am galvanized to do what I can.
I’m going to try to write and read more long-form and less fast-social online. I’ll see if being the change I want to see helps. Come along with me if you like.
or Y’all May as Well Know I am Sticking It Out and Sticking Around
I really didn’t think the presidential election would go the way it did in this, the year of our Lord 2024. As time has gone on and I’ve read people’s thoughts and processed my own thoughts, I’m seeing that I probably shouldn’t have been so surprised. But on Wednesday morning I found myself pretty shocked.Our family group chat got fired up early. We were seeking each other out.
One of my cousins wrote, “America almost made it 250 years.” That made me think about how Tallahassee had its bicentennial this year. And Yankeetown just celebrated the 100th anniversary of its founding. There is so much history that is really just right around the corner from where we are today.
One of my good Tallahassee friends always used to say, “Dear old Yankeetown. . .” whenever I’d wax poetic about my home. And she was right-on to rib me. Yankeetown is dear to me. Not just nostalgic, but truly a place I love. I nerd out about it. Today it is dear and a little bit downtrodden with the massive flooding that so many folks experienced in Helene. My parents are still living in an Air B&B and fixing the damage to their home.
I keep thinking about my grandparents and great grandparents and what they might think of these 2024 happenings. Of the changes in the weather and in attitudes everywhere.
Will it be okay for us to go back under a Federal government led by those who hate government? There is so much hate swirling around. It is true that I am a person of relative privilege in this world, though I fear that ignorance about how our new leader’s platforms will affect the economy is ultimately going to hurt most people who aren’t billionaires, regardless of privilege.
One thing I do know is how my grandfather, Richard Allman F. Lynch, dealt with some instances of swirling hate that happened in his days. And I think maybe now is a good time to tell a story about that.
My grandfather was in college learning to be an engineer at Purdue before World War Two broke out. He hadn’t fallen in love with the first daughter of Yankeetown yet at that point (she spent some time at the Florida State College for Women before transferring to Purdue- our first proto-‘Nole). It’s wild to me to think about my grandparents when they weren’t much older than my girls are now. Wild, but fun. I have a few really fun pictures of my grandpa as a young man. He was in a fraternity at Purdue- my grandparents were the last generation of my family to go Greek. He helped put on fun drama shows. I always got the impression that literature and shenanigans were included in his college education in addition to hard engineering. And he also did engineering study-abroad in Germany. Engineering study abroad in pre-World War Two Germany. Very directly pre-World War Two Germany.
If you know me, you know that my nose is not exactly the smallest feature on my face. My nose is pretty exactly my mom’s nose, which is pretty exactly my grandfather’s nose. I have southerners ask me if I’m “from New York” from time to time, given the shape of my nose. I know that they are really trying to ascertain my religion with that question.
Anyway, my grandfather went by Ollie, short for Allman, I guess because there are a lot of Richards in the family. One of the stories he tells of young Ollie in Germany before the war was that he noticed an officer once, in a train station, who kept staring at him and then looking up and then staring at him some more. It wasn’t until the train arrived and he moved to get on it that he realized that on the wall behind him was a big poster pointing out the features that could be used to “Recognize a Jew” and the caricatured drawing on the poster did not look completely unlike my grandpa. When he used to tell that story, he would always end it by saying something like, “I didn’t realize at the time how afraid I probably should have been.”
But he also used to tell another story about how a regional leader (my grandfather always likened the position to a regional governor- it was not until I looked the term up this week to write this story that I learned that it was actually a position within the Nazi party), known as the Gauleiter, came to the school where he was studying one day and gave a fiery speech all about how foreigners were bad and lazy, and how the pure German people were about to take the world by storm. It was a real sturm and drang presentation and then at the end of the presentation, the Gauleiter asked to see all of the exchange students that were present up on the stage. The Gauleiter then proceeded to individually and roundly excoriate each one of them for the sins of their home countries, and when he got to my grandfather, the only American, he apparently laid it on heavily about how America was the absolute worst at very long length.
Speaking of long length, my grandfather was my height; six feet and five inches. Apparently the Gauleiter was a smaller guy, but he attempted to make up for that in volume.
When the Gauleiter was all done and went on his way, one of my grandfather’s Norwegian friends approached him. “Oh Ollie,” the friend said (and my grandfather always did an impression of this friend saying his name with an accent, so he was saying “Oh Oh-lee”), “Ollie, I can’t believe how casual you were with the Gauleiter! I can’t believe you just leaned over against the wall and crossed your arms and legs while he was talking to you! Ollie, the Gauleiter is an important person!”
To this, my super-cool college-aged grandfather replied, “I don’t see what the big deal is with him anyway. He puts his pants on one leg at a time, just like anyone else!”
Teenage me so wanted to be as cool as my grandpa in that story.
I mean, I’m also super glad that my grandpa survived to come back home, finish his degree, fall for my grandmother, marry her and ship out with the Army Air Corps where he also managed to survive the war and then come back home to eventually settle in Yankeetown near his in-laws.
Teenage me wanted to be as cool as my grandpa, but mid-forties me doesn’t want to have the chance to be cool in the face of sturm and drang nationalism right here in America. I certainly didn’t want or have any inkling that my daughters would be turning 16 in the dawn of “Your body, my choice” memes spurred on by the emboldened antics of the devotees of a 78-year-old convicted felon who has been found liable for sexual assault and is currently under indictment in multiple jurisdictions.
Nevertheless, here I am. And despite the tornadoes that ravaged my neighborhood and the floods that have ravaged the southeast this year, here I will stay. Because in the long run, I believe in the legal system that I serve within, and I believe in the ideals of my grandfathers and grandmothers, and all of the good people that brought us to where we are today.
I don’t know what more I can do to prevent a slide into chaos, but I am galvanized to do what I can.
I’m going to try to write and read more long-form and less fast-social online. I’ll see if being the change I want to see helps. Come along with me if you like.
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