Blame It on the Dog by Jim Dawson

Author:Jim Dawson [Dawson, Jim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-77877-2
Publisher: Ten Speed Press
Published: 2011-03-29T16:00:00+00:00

MEET THE DUMFARTS

How would you like to spend your whole life telling people, “Yes, I’m a Dumfart”?

Actually, you’d more likely be telling them, “Ja, ich bin ein Dumfart,” because Dumfarts are most plentiful in the heartland of Austria, with a few strays in Germany. Linz, Austria, seems to be their ancestral home; many Dumfarts live there, including the owner of the Dumfart Gas-und Wasserleitung Installationsgesellschaft, which installs plumbing and gas lines. They’re rare in the United States and England, most likely because any immigrant Dumfarts changed their name as soon as they realized why everybody was guffawing.

Anyway, besides concert tuba player Karl Dumfart (savor for a moment the image of a Dumfart tooting the tuba), the most famous Dumfarts are Josef and Maria, who gained posthumous renown when a photo of their grave marker in Austria made the rounds on the Internet.

Among the many websites celebrating the Dumfart couple is Louisville Mojo (http://louisvillemojo.com), which asks visitors to supply a caption to the photo. Among the submissions:

“In today’s news, the man who invented the pull-my-finger joke died at the age of 97.”

“Josef and Maria Dumfart are survived by their only child, Ima Dumfart.”

“Their presence will linger on with us for years to come.”

According to Manfred Dumfart, an Austrian engineer who is presently working in Johannesburg, South Africa, Maria was his mother and Josef was either her father or grandfather. “The whole Dumfart family tree is not 100 percent clear to me, but my ‘uncle’ in Austria should know more about it,” he said in a March 2005 email. “I will contact him, because I want to know myself more about our family.”

Since then, Herr Dumfart has apparently caught wind of what I was doing. I’m still waiting to hear back from him.

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