Go Fly a Kite

During World War II, there were several German POW camps in Wisconsin, where I grew up. In fact, 22,000 German prisoners were housed in the POW centers there. Many of them were put to work in the cherry orchards and cranberry marshes in the central part of the state. My dad’s career choice then and forever after was cranberries and, though he didn’t own his own cranberry operation until several years later, he was heavily involved with the industry already at that time. The fact somehow surfaced that German had been my mother’s first language as a child and she was recruited to help with translating. I wasn’t born yet so my stories have come down to me from my older brother and sisters, who still have memories of our mother helping out with language challenges. The German soldiers, as were most of the men drafted to fight on either side during the war, were very young. As you can easily imagine, they liked to spend their off hours in non-military ventures. At one point, my brother remembers these young German men constructed a wonderful large kite for him and my sisters. My mother hadn’t checked it out ahead of time but when they sent it up in the air, she saw it was adorned with a painting of a nude woman. My mother, very Catholic and in many ways pretty provincial, told them they had to cover the figure before they would be allowed to take it out with her children again. They painted a one-piece swimming suit on her.

Photo copy of VintageBlue At Pixabay.com