If you’ve never read “Second Hoeing” by Hope Williams Sykes, you really aren’t missing much. Written in 1935, it’s 309 dark, dismal pages about German Russian immigrants in the sugar beet fields of Northern Colorado. If The Grapes of Wrath just isn’t depressing enough for you, give this one a try. I know there are a lot of people who consider this barely legible novel a classic, but if you live in a German Russian community like I do, it’s infuriating. We are not dirty, and we are certainly not thieves like Sykes tries to portray us as. One of the worst insults that you can call a Volga German is lazy. Thief isn’t any better.
I picked up a copy from Thriftbooks a few weeks ago, and made it to about page 3 before I remembered how much this book pisses me off. In fact, it enrages me so much that I’ve been seriously considering writing a better version, without the garbled attempts at the German Russian dialect and the outright lies. Also, it’s not going to be so bleak and depressing that it makes you want to drown yourself in the nearest irrigation ditch after you finally slog your way through it and throw it in the trash. There may be a pervy school principal getting punched in the face, a couple of duels, a few sugar factory workers being turned into beet pulp, and a whole lot of bootleggers, though. You know, things that actually happened in these communities.
Cat Hoskins 