Klarinet Archive - Posting 000302.txt from 2002/09

From: Neil Leupold <leupold_1@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] dachshund
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 07:20:52 -0400

Hey David, you wrote on Klarinet:

> Dog loving clarinettists please correct:
> Dachshund from Dachs = badger and Hund = Dog

I was glad to see you clear that up on the list (it was bugging me a
little bit too). Funny (and also kind of sad, I guess) story: for the
longest time, I thought it was roof-dog, as opposed to badger-dog, a
confusion exacerbated by my father's stories of growing up in a poor
East German town (Plauen, in Vogtland -- are you familiar with it?).
He said things got so bad at one point that people were catching cats
for dinner, earning them the nickname Dach Hase -- informally, "roof
rabbit". The "rabbit" part referred to the fact that if one went to
a meat shop and requested a rabbit (say, for Hasenpfeffer or something),
they needed to be sure that it came with the head of the animal as well.
Apparently the body of a cat and a rabbit are somewhat similar in size
and shape. My father was a butcher, apprenticed in Plauen while still
a teenager, so I guess he would know such a thing, and it provided an
educational picture of the poverty during the immediate post-war years.
Ironically, my father's family was comparatively well-off, owning the
most popular restaurant in the region at the time (Stadt-Weimar), so
I don't think he personally ever had to worry about accidentally eat-
ing a cat for dinner. For all I know, he might have been one of the
butchers who tried to pass them off as rabbits.

So who's it going to be in the upcoming elections? Schroeder again?
Or will this Stoiber character from Bayern edge him out?

Neil

Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! News - Today's headlines
http://news.yahoo.com

---------------------------------------------------------------------