Having grown up in a Pennsylvania Dutch family in southeastern Pennsylvania, the terms nixnutz* and snickelfritz* were common, and personally speaking, were well deserved on my part.

In the middle Susquehanna Valley, people knew a professor of German at Penn State University as the Sunbury “Nix Nutz,” and WKOK AM featured him on a radio program every Sunday for a number of years in the 1940’s and 50’s.

Dr., or Professor Albert F. Buffington, was a member of the Department of German at the Pennsylvania State College. A graduate of Bucknell University in Lewisburg, he then received a doctorate from Harvard. But a June 1949 story in The Pennsylvania Dutchman, a weekly publication about Pennsylvania Dutch culture, reported that he never lost touch with his native Pennsylvania Dutch. Der Nix Nutz shared his story with the newspaper.

"I was born on July 11, 1905, in Pillow, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, and in spite of my name, which is of English origin, I consider myself a Pennsylvania Dutchman. All of the Buffingtons in my family (my great grandfather, my grandfather, and my father) were born and brought up in Pillow and spoke Pennsylvania Dutch. And, of course, my mother's maiden name was Hepler

"Until I was 14 years old I went to school in Pillow, where I was just about as nixnutzich as the average boy, perhaps just a little bit nixnutzicher. I then attended the Lykens Valley Vocational School at Berrysburg, from which institution I graduated in 1924.

"One of the high spots during my high school career was my participation in livestock judging contests. In my freshman year I was chosen a member of the Dauphin County Hog Judging Team, and in the judging contest which took place during the following summer at Penn State I won fifth prize. The next summer I was chosen to be a member of the Dauphin County General Livestock Judging Team. That meant that I had to judge not only hogs (which were my specialty) but also sheep, beef cattle, and draft horses. Our agricultural supervisor was actually well pleased with my performance and believed that I could judge anything. And therefore, 1 was chosen to be a member of the school’s cow judging team at the annual Farm Products Show at Harrisburg. Well, that was an unfortunate choice and my undoing as a cattle judge: I made the unforgivable mistake of putting a three teated cow in first place (Perhaps you don't know, but they're supposed to have four teats-one on each corner.)

"ln the fall of 1924 I entered Bucknell University. Already in my freshman year I decided that someday I'd like to be a college professor of German, and so I majored in German and in 1926, between my sophomore and junior year, I went to Germany to take some courses at the University of Berlin and to travel in Germany.

"After graduating from Bucknell in 1928, I tried teaching German at Central High School in Scranton, Penna. (where I met my future wife-I mean the woman I married in 1932) but I came to the conclusion that I'd rather be a college professor. And so, in 1930 went to Harvard University at Cambridge, Mass., as a Part-time Instructor in German and as a graduate student in German. In 1932 Harvard University granted me the degree of Master of Arts, and in 1937 I was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

''It was while I was at Harvard that began my scientific studies of the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect, and in 1935 I made another trip to Germany, as for the purpose of studying the dialects spoken in the Rhenish Palatinate, the section in Germany from which a large majority of the early German settlers in Pennsylvania came. It was extremely interesting to sit on the square in Kaiserslautern in the heart of the Palatinate) and listen to the small children talk their Palatinate dialect. Except for the absence of English which we all use occasionally here in our dialect, it sounded pretty much like the Pennsylvania Dutch I used to talk back home in Pillow.

“My first scholarly work on the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect was a paper entitled 'Characteristic Features of Penn Sylvania German Morphology.'

"I started my radio broadcasting in 1945, when Dr. Ralph Wood and I presented a series of six broadcasts over station WMAJ, State College, Pa. We gave these broadcasts in English and Pennsylvania Dutch-about half and half. State College, however, is just on the edge of the dialect area, and therefore not enough of our listeners could understand Pennsylvania Dutch. It was soon after this, however, that I conceived the idea of presenting an all Pennsylvania Dutch broadcast over station WKOK, Sunbury.

“When Mr. Scott Rea, of Rea and Derick, Inc., heard of the tremendous enthusiasm with which my broadcasts had been received. he offered to have Rea and Derick, Inc., sponsor them. And so I began on October 20, 1946, my weekly Pennsylvania Dutch broadcasts over WKOK, and except for one Sunday (the Sunday when my father died) I have not missed a single broadcast.

"I do not attribute the enthusiastic reception to my broadcasts to any great ability on my part but rather to the readiness and eagerness of these people to hear a broadcast in their own tongue. Too many of the Pennsylvania Dutch people in this area had been suffering from inferiority complexes. Many of them had even come to the pointt where they were actually ASHAMED to own up to the fact that they were Pennsylvania Dutch and that they could understand and speak the dialect! Now mind!

"Thus, one of the 6rst objectives of the Nixnutz has been to tell the Pennsylvania Dutch in the area covered by his broadcasts something about their European origins and their history in this country. A history of which they have a right to be proud. "I have also tried to inform listeners of other aspects of the culture of the Pennsylvania Dutch. I should point out also that I take advantage of the opportunity to get information as well as to give information. I am continually urging my send in verses, ballads, anecdotes, and other data. And my broadcasts are not always intended to be educational. I realize that a fairly large percentage of the material must be entertaining rather than educational, otherwise people will stop listening to the broadcasts.

"Many people have already asked me whether I don't get tired of driving to Sunbury every Sunday. My answer is always an emphatic 'NO.' I enjoy the beautiful trip, particularly through the mountains, from State College to Sunbury. It is a very pleasant change, after one has been a college professor all week long, to be the Nixnutz on Sundays."

The WKOK broadcast area was heavily populated with Pennsylvania German families and still is. As an example of his on-air popularity, during the Christmas season of 1951, he was flooded with cards from his listeners. Even though, by actual count, "der Nixnutz" was spelled 98 different ways, all the cards reached him.

During his career, the Professor lectured throughout the United States and Germany on the life and culture of the Pennsylvania Germans. Among his many works was a 1963 book containing 439 pages focused on early “Pennsylvania German Dialogue and Plays.” He co-authored “Songs along the Mahantongo,” and “the Pennsylvania Germans.” At Penn State he taught the only class in America on Pennsylvania Dutch language and culture.

Professor Buffington said he liked to debunk the many erroneous impressions outsiders had about the Pennsylvania Dutch. In a 1952 State College newspaper interview he explained, “Usually when someone talks about the Pennsylvania Dutch, he means the plain people, the Mennonites or Amish (and) their distinctive dress and customs. Actually, these plain folk account for only five per cent of the total Pennsylvania Dutch population."

Buffington added that the Pennsylvania Dutch acquired a reputation of unfriendliness which he felt was unwarranted. "The truth," he says, "is that strangers have poked fun at their dialect and customs, and they've reacted as anyone would, by being wary of outsiders.”

Professor Buffington was the acting head of the department of German at Penn State when he retired from the University in 1965 after twenty years of service. He was a professor of German at Arizona State University from 1965 to 1975, retiring as professor emeritus.

Alfred Buffington died on June 18^th, 1980, at the Scottsdale Arizona Memorial Hospital, at the age of 74.

*nix Nutz (Pennsylvania German) mischievous child

**snickelfritz (Pennsylvania German) little rascal or troublemaker