Dayle Lymoine Robertson (July 14, 1923 – February 27, 2013) was an Americanactor best known for his starring roles on television. He played the roving investigator Jim Hardie in the NBC/ABCtelevision series Tales of Wells Fargo, and Ben Calhoun, the owner of an incomplete railroad line in ABC’s The Iron Horse. He was often presented as a deceptively thoughtful but modest western hero. From 1968 to 1970, Robertson was the fourth and final host of the syndicated Death Valley Days anthology series.
March 06, 2004
Title: “John Cheese”
It wasn’t easy, especially for them. They were different and just couldn’t seem to fit in with the rest of society. Everyone looked down their noses at them implying that they were not as good as the rest of them. People even invented special names for them, one so insulting that it actually became part of their language.
They were a minority, the first minority in Manhattan. Who were they? The Holland Dutch. Being Dutch was not a good thing at all. Almost anything having to do with the Dutch was usually negative. A Dutch treat is, well, no treat at all. A stern or oppressive relative was a ‘Dutch uncle.’ Frogs were called ‘Dutch nightingales.’ To surrender was ‘Dutch defense!’ And there were more, many more.
These days, not many people use those terms. Most people don’t even know that those old derogatory names existed. But they did back then and like most people who get labeled, the Dutch didn’t like it. There was especially one term that the Dutch particularly objected to. Sometimes people get branded with names that are related to the food they eat. Think about it and it won’t take you long to come up with a few. Well, the early Dutch had a favorite food and that was cheese. And as you might guess, the ruling English class starting calling Dutchmen “John Cheese!” It wasn’t so much the name John Cheese, but that snide and degrading way that the English would say it that really got the Dutch’s goat! It was an insult, pure and simple! So the Dutch started calling all the English by that insulting name John Cheese.
Of course, they said it in their own language of the Netherlands. It became a mantra that would last through the centuries and into today’s modern world. It’s a Little Known Fact that Americans are still referred to by most of the world by the term the New Holland Dutch used to fight off prejudice. “John Cheese,” or as the Dutch pronounced it: Yankees!
