My father spent 26.5 years in the American Army. He spent most of that overseas, which is how he met my mother who was a German national.
At the time, the exchange rate was four German marks to the American dollar. My parents had a maid, as did many American soldiers stationed in Germany around that time. The exchange rate meant all American soldiers were relatively wealthy compared to the Germans around them.
One of my mother's sisters ended up a single parent with young kids at home when her first husband died. My parents generously helped her out in the aftermath of his death. For example, they bought her a washer and dryer as a gift so she could do laundry at home instead of at a laundromat, making it far easier to manage work and raising children alone.
My parents also visited her fairly often. She lived in a small town and my parents really spread the money around and got treated like visiting royalty or something.
The local grocer stayed open later in the evening -- or perhaps opened up just for them -- so they could buy groceries the day they arrived. The farmer let them come get fresh milk for the kids on a weekend morning. Kids on bikes trailed their car into town while they threw candy out the window at them.
My mother's mother came from a low level noble family that sold the title when they fell on hard times. Most of the time, I had no awareness at all of how this impacted my mother and made her different from other people or how this impacted my life.
But she once told me that when she visited her poverty-stricken, widowed sister, she bought enough food for both families because my mother wanted to eat well and "You can't eat in front of people while they go hungry. That don't work."
It was a form of enlightened self interest.
But it was also a form of noblesse oblige and it is the one and only time in my life that I felt like I could clearly see that my mother came from a noble line and was taught things growing up that "ordinary Joes" don't typically get taught.
At the time, the exchange rate was four German marks to the American dollar. My parents had a maid, as did many American soldiers stationed in Germany around that time. The exchange rate meant all American soldiers were relatively wealthy compared to the Germans around them.
One of my mother's sisters ended up a single parent with young kids at home when her first husband died. My parents generously helped her out in the aftermath of his death. For example, they bought her a washer and dryer as a gift so she could do laundry at home instead of at a laundromat, making it far easier to manage work and raising children alone.
My parents also visited her fairly often. She lived in a small town and my parents really spread the money around and got treated like visiting royalty or something.
The local grocer stayed open later in the evening -- or perhaps opened up just for them -- so they could buy groceries the day they arrived. The farmer let them come get fresh milk for the kids on a weekend morning. Kids on bikes trailed their car into town while they threw candy out the window at them.
My mother's mother came from a low level noble family that sold the title when they fell on hard times. Most of the time, I had no awareness at all of how this impacted my mother and made her different from other people or how this impacted my life.
But she once told me that when she visited her poverty-stricken, widowed sister, she bought enough food for both families because my mother wanted to eat well and "You can't eat in front of people while they go hungry. That don't work."
It was a form of enlightened self interest.
But it was also a form of noblesse oblige and it is the one and only time in my life that I felt like I could clearly see that my mother came from a noble line and was taught things growing up that "ordinary Joes" don't typically get taught.