Garage Art

Between the ages of 80 and 101, Grandma Moses painted over 600 significant works of art, and Ms. Rachow wonders if there are undiscovered masterpieces lying within us all.

Sunflowers, colored pencil by Grace Rachow

If you’ve been anywhere but under a rock, you must’ve heard about the Van Gogh recently verified as genuine. Sunset at Montmajour went from being a fake hidden away in an attic to the most significant art discovery of the century. The newly verified painting could fetch enough to put the United States in the black, if only the anonymous owner would donate auction proceeds to our national treasury.

This stunning Van Gogh news got me wondering whether I had any such treasures in my own collection.

I have plenty of worthless junk stored in my garage, and much of it is nicely framed. Some of these art items were abandoned by long ago roommates, or I picked them up at garage sales. I could’ve accidently acquired something of value.

The first candidate was a watercolor painting of my mother’s green bud vase. Yes, it’s true I painted this masterpiece as a child, and the watercolors I used were from an 8-color paint set for kids. From the looks of the crude strokes, the brush I used came from the paste jar at school. But my mother liked the piece well enough to preserve it in a charming midcentury dime-store frame. And as a bonus, I have that original green bud vase.

So the artist was still living, and she was in possession of the original objet d’inspiration. That was better provenance than the newly revealed Van Gogh had.

How much would this watercolor be worth? A bucket full of bupkis with a chaser of nostalgia.

I continued searching through my treasures. There was a charming collection of family snapshots framed with a multiple-peephole mat. This was put together 30ish years ago, and some of the romantic hairstyles and shoulder pad fashions were definitely representative of the period. But was it worth anything?

This was my family, and I had relegated them to the garage for the past 20 years, so it is a safe assumption this junky piece would not rise to the level of anyone’s treasure. However, the frame itself might fetch a dollar at a garage sale, and I could toss the photos into the big box of them I plan to sort through and put in albums some day.

Then, I hit pay dirt…and when I say dirt, you better believe that framed pieces can collect a whole lot of it after decades in storage. A quick swipe with my sleeve and, voila, it was The Girl with the Pearl Earring by Vermeer. She was framed by Mohr Art Galleries in Toledo, Ohio, and from the look of it, the framing was at least a hundred years ago.

Yes…yes…I know the so-called real painting is much older than that and is held by the Mauritshuis gallery in The Hague. But artists often do studies preliminary to the real painting. Maybe that is what I had. Luckily the seal on the back of the frame was already broken by the relentless march of organic decay. So I easily slipped the girl from her frame to check if there was any evidence of Vermeer on the back.

Alas, I discovered that this was not a painting at all but a photo repro of the girl. It was lovely presentation, though, and at the garage sale it might fetch two dollars for the frame alone!

I similarly investigated the Portrait of Robert Cheseman by Hans Holbein the Younger and The Man Wearing a Ridiculous Hat by Rembrandt. Repros all.

Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso…I had a garage full of fakes! The Picasso I’d painted myself via a class assignment in college. Three Musicians had looked simple, but it was challenging to get it just right. Still my effort had earned an A.

Hmmm…obviously, my art collection was not going to reveal any long lost masterpieces. However, the longer I stared at the fake Picasso, the more I wondered if I still might have what it takes.

I dug deep into another corner of the garage and found the box of art supplies I’d saved from college. The paints were petrified after decades in storage, but I still had colored pencils. And they don’t dry out.

The silverfish had made lace of my ancient art paper, but I had a new ream of cardstock from Office Max. That would suffice for a little experimental scribbling.

I was ready to go, but what to draw?

In honor of Van Gogh, I pulled out the yellows and browns and went to work making sunflowers.

Quintessential Cork

Cork Millner 1931-2013

I met Cork Millner in his writing class over 30 years ago, but our first encounter might just as well have been at a wine tasting, on a tennis court, or at a polo match. This was a man who lived everyman’s dream of retiring early and having a long second career living his many passions and writing about them all.

My hope back then was to make a career of writing and selling magazine articles, and lo and behold, there was an adult education course taught by Cork on just that. The classroom was packed. I sat in the back where I wouldn’t have to do anything but listen.

Cork looked as if he’d just come from a fashion shoot for GQ. And he could skewer us all with his repartee and sophistication.

I was fresh off the farm and was lucky to make it to class in something spiffier than overalls. I wasn’t sure this class was a good fit for me, but I figured if I stayed, I’d learn something.

Every week Cork brought examples of magazine articles he’d written and sold -- celebrity interviews, reviews of wineries, tales of being on TV game shows, to name a few. The official bio on his website states that he wrote and sold over 400 articles during his lifetime, but I think that number must be modest, because he showed us at least that many that first term.

Cork was a fine teacher, and I learned much about freelancing. Writing is tough work. Marketing is tougher. And if you don’t have a repertoire of passions and creative ideas, you have nothing to write about.

When the term was over, after the final class, I put away my typewriter (because that’s just how long ago it was) and decided to get a real job where I was paid money for doing something odious. And meanwhile all the things I’d learned in Cork’s writing class brewed in my mind.

Over the months of his teaching, I’d heard much about the life and times of Cork Millner. He’d been a navy aircraft carrier pilot. I could only imagine the nerve it took to take off and land on a vessel even once, much less 850 times.

As I toiled away at my day job, I tried to imagine something equivalent in my short, boring life. Well, once on a dare from a fellow 7-year-old, I hopped on the back of a pig and rode it for two or three feet before it dumped me into the mud. Funny, yes, but that stunt required more stupidity than nerves of steel.

No, I was convinced I had nothing at all to write about, and I should leave the writing of clever magazine articles to the likes of Cork Millner. He had the lifestyle and the moxie to make a freelance career work.

It turns out the desire to write doesn’t just go away. It took me 10 years to work myself back toward being a writer. To learn more about the craft, I signed up for the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. I was still nervous and shy, but I was happy to see Cork Millner’s familiar face. He was a right hand man to founders Barnaby and Mary Conrad, as well as teaching nonfiction writing at the conference.

In that workshop Cork mentioned that when he lived in Spain, he’d become an aficionado of bullfighting, a bent he had in common with the one-time matador, Barnaby Conrad.

I learned that at times, under the stress of keeping the conference running smoothly, Cork could be a bit irascible and bull-like. But, in the end, it was his sense of humor that always won out. He was a man of relentless wit as well as being a damn good teacher of writing.

After a week of writing workshops, we all unwound at the SBWC talent show. I was surprised when Cork got up and performed a word-perfect Shelley Berman routine, complete with Berman’s exquisite timing.

I can only guess at the number nonfiction writers who got good starts in a workshop taught by Cork Millner. After 30-some years of teaching, this number has to be huge, and we all owe him for his help.

I like to imagine Cork at the Pearly Gates. He’s dressed in a white Armani suit. The brim of his hat’s at a dapper angle. He pours St. Peter a glass of fine vintage wine, and the gates open wide.

Let’s drink to that.

Super Plumber

An unexpected $1000 dollars appeared in our hands right before my husband’s winter vacation. Our friends would’ve taken that as sign to head off to Mammoth to go skiing, but we decided to spend it on a home fixit project.

We talked it over and decided to use the money to replace all the 60-year old faucets in our house. Off we went to the plumbing store. By some miracle, we were so much in agreement as to which faucets we liked, a stranger might’ve thought we were young and in love.

Now we needed a great plumber. My friend Linda had recently hired a genius named Albert Trejo to solve her gnarly problem with a stubborn reverse osmosis system. I called him, and he was available to install our faucets that Wednesday.

Not only did he do a fine job, he hummed on tune while he worked. A cheerful plumber is a rare and beautiful thing. When a pipe broke off in the wall, Albert said, “Son of a beehive,” but he soon solved every challenge, and we had new faucets.

I’ve been on the planet long enough to know plumbing projects typically cost twice as much as predicted. When Albert turned in his bill it was reasonable. We were only a few hundred over budget.

Water whooshed out of the new faucets in a lovely stream. We brushed our teeth several times just for the excuse to use these gorgeous fixtures. This was much better than freezing with our friends in the snow.

Then, when we walked the dogs before bedtime, we noticed a river in the gutter in front of our house. We had a leak, and, apparently, it was not a small one.

This was not going to be cheap, but I knew Albert would come to our rescue.

I left a message, and he called first thing the next morning with a jaunty, “What’s up?”

When he arrived to assess the situation, his best guess on the massive leak was when we’d turned water off to install the faucets, it’d put extra pressure on rusty underground pipes, and that’d caused one or more blowouts. We wouldn’t know the answer as to which pipes until we’d dug them out. He offered a crew at a cost matching the national budget…or we could dig ourselves.

We were already over budget, so we opted for putting our own shovels to work. Albert would come back Saturday to cap off any leaking pipes we’d found.

Meanwhile we were without running water in the house. Carrying buckets is not as much fun as they make it out to be in Zen literature.

Those new faucets seemed to mock us. Not only are plumbing jobs fraught with potential problems, they have a sense of irony.

On Saturday morning, Albert called. “My wife’s working all day, and I’ve got kid duty till she’s back.” Nevertheless, he showed up near sunset and capped the leaking sprinkler lines my husband and I’d dug out. I figured we’d solved the problem.

When we turned the water on, the soil in the middle of the yard began burbling. The leak was still alive, and now it was mad.

Our main water supply line appeared to be leaking. Albert warned us replacing it could be expensive. He showed us where to continue digging. “Call me when you find the leak.”

The soil near the new spout was supersaturated, sticky clay. We dug like maniacs until we uncovered another leaking irrigation pipe tied into the supply line, at the meter. Oh the things they did back in the good old days.

It was already past sunset, and Albert had worked long hours Monday through Saturday. Nevertheless he showed up in his church clothes on Sunday to look at what we’d dug up.

He couldn’t cap off that third leak until late the next day, because he already had several emergency jobs on his Monday schedule. My husband and I were tired of carrying buckets, but others were even worse off.

True to his word, our plumber showed up Monday afternoon. The leaky pipe was stubborn, but a giant wrench and Albert’s massive finesse budged it. When the water was restored, there was no leaking…a real woo-hoo moment.

Living without running water for 116 hours offered us new perspective on the miracle of plumbing. As a result, we’re so grateful for guys like Albert who fix our plumbing catastrophes. They are true heroes.

Let us sing their praises.

Wanda Tegmeier's Christmas Pageant

People who now know me as a kind-hearted heathen might be surprised to hear I had extensive religious training in a rural clapboard church with peeling paint…at least until my best friend Carol Fujan talked me into playing hooky from Sunday services.

However, even Carol and I knew that as the season neared, Santa was watching, and it behooved us to keep our butts stuck to the pews throughout the sermon and, of course, to volunteer to be in the Christmas Eve church program.

When the annual insanity of the holiday season peaks, I like to travel back to that kinder, gentler time, to the Christmas pageant put on by our Methodist church in O Little Town of Carleton, Nebraska where I grew up.

Wanda Tegmeier, a lovely rotund woman who magically produced one baby boy every year, spearheaded the event.

Her oldest, Dick, was 8, and she cast him as Joseph. I was desperate to be the Virgin Mary, but one look at me, and anyone could see I was much naughtier than nice. However, my friend Carol, despite her sneaking-out-of-church ways, had the perfect holy face, and she got the part. So I ended up as one of the kids who recited a piece of the Christmas story.

Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, and the wise men were off stage in the Sunday school room when the program began. The rest of us kids lined up in the back of the church with the choir. Wanda gave each of us a lit candle to carry. Thinking back, it doesn’t make sense that little kids would be allowed to transport open flames in an old wooden building, but those were more innocent times.

We marched to the front, singing “Come All Ye Faithful.” The choir took their seats. We placed our lit candles in the holders, dripping wax and narrowly avoiding setting the altar afire. A row of child-sized chairs waited for us to nervously sit until it was time to say our lines.

Rodney Smith took the lead and announced the census by Caesar Augustus. I had a crush on Rod. He looked like a 6-year-old George Clooney with a flat top.

Then Rosalee Penner, 14, beautiful and with a voice like an angel, sang “Silent Night.” The girl knew how to set a mood.

Next came Ricky Widler. He had red hair, freckles, and dripped with mischief. He’d threatened to moon the congregation, and I hoped he would drop his trousers, but he played it straight, introducing Mary and Joseph, who waltzed on stage, looking pure and holy. And so cued, the choir rose to sing “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” I thought it was the most beautiful carol in the whole world.

Bobbie, another one of the Tegmeier boys, stood to announce the arrival of the Baby Jesus. He took his infant brother from his mother Wanda and handed him to Mary who placed him in a cradle, and we little ones gathered around to sing a grotesquely off-tune version of “Away in the Manger.”

And on the pageant went. Doug Smith introduced the shepherds, and they trooped in wearing sheets belted with rope. You could see the cuffs of their dress pants and dark shoes, but they were still able to watch their flocks with stunning authenticity.

The choir sang “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.” Janet Penner delivered the line about “glad tidings of great joy,” and the congregation rose to sing “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” which made me think of another Harold, the nerdy son of our school bus driver.

Then it was my turn to say my piece and cue the wise men, my brother John, Bob Stofer and LeRoy Disney, all wearing striped bathrobes. They sang “We Three Kings.”

We all marched off stage singing “Joy to the World.”

Once we kids were seated in the pews, the choir sang “Up on the Rooftop.”

Good old Santa Claus appeared from the Sunday school room. It was my grandpa, and I knew because my grandma had mentioned about a hundred times how the only way she could get the old coot to church was to put him in a Santa suit.

Grandpa gave candy canes to all the little kiddies, and we went home to pick one present to open on Christmas Eve. Even if it was underwear, it didn’t matter, because the real Santa had not yet arrived, and our hearts were still full of hope and wonder.

Home for Christmas

When my brother John and I were in college in Nebraska, we shared a dilapidated two-bedroom cottage within walking distance of campus. Yes, the kitchen floor sloped, and we had to kick doors to get them to open and close, but the place was a mere 120 dollars a month, and it was home to us.

We lived with two dogs, a spirited Brittany spaniel and a mellow half-pint Aussie. My brother took them mushroom hunting with him. You might think stalking toadstools was a recipe for agonizing death, but John possessed a library full of esoteric information on fungi. No mushroom was consumed until it had been positively identified with spore print and all.

The tastiest and most plentiful of the wild mushrooms were morels. Our kitchen was strung with lines of them drying. Fresh or dried, these mushrooms turned ordinary fare into gourmet feasts.

Since we were students, we lived on a microscopic budget. What we ate had to be cheap. We shopped sparingly, and by the end of any month, what was left in the larder was slim.

So as Christmas neared that year, we had little food left in the house, not only because it was late in the month, but because we’d planned a 400-mile trip to the other end of the state to visit family. We both intended to load up on our mother’s excellent cooking during the semester break.

For weeks I’d been singing, “I’ll be home for Christmas…” driving John as crazy as any in-store holiday music ever could. Still we were in good spirits and ready for a cozy week with our mom and dad.

Then the storm came. It began with freezing rain. Ice pulled down electric lines and killed power for the area. Our furnace didn’t work without it. Then the blizzard arrived and blanketed the ice.

Our only hope of getting home was to have Santa pick us up in his sleigh, and we all know Mr. Claus has much more important duties in December.

Luckily, we had a gas stove and water heater, so we ran the oven and burners and continually refilled sinks and the bathtub with hot water.

We wore layers of warm clothes topped with parkas and really appreciated having two thick-furred dogs to cuddle with.

The snow got so deep the pooches didn’t want to go outside. We shoveled a clear space for them near the door, but we had to physically carry them out to get them to do their necessaries.

Our food supplies dwindled. Even though there was a great market a block away, it was closed due to the blizzard and for lack of electricity.

I took inventory of what we still had. Flour, potatoes, a few cans of soup and vegetables, powdered milk, cooking oil, and a well-stocked spice cabinet. And, of course, we had those wrinkly morels.

We put together a pot of soup and made bread and managed for the first couple of days. We weren’t about to starve, but it appeared Christmas dinner might be a little bleak.

The morning of Christmas day it was below zero. The power was still out and the roads were not yet cleared of snow. John appeared from his bedroom holding a can of tomato sauce, a package of spaghetti, and an onion. He’d been hoarding!

Add some morels to the above, and we had the makings of a most excellent meal. The aroma of onions sautéing was like heaven. The sauce simmered. The pasta boiled.

John dished up the feast and handed me my plate. I was ready to dive in, and that’s exactly what I did. Our Brittany spaniel took that moment to jump on me, and the uneven kitchen floor didn’t help matters. Whoops! My spaghetti slid off my plate and went flying. The dogs went to work cleaning it up.

My brother stared at my empty plate and then at the dogs lapping rich sauce from the floor.

“Don’t think for a second I’ll share my food with you.” He grumbled, grabbed my plate and filled it with half of his meal. He carefully carried both plates to the table himself. “Sit,” he said gruffly to me.

I did, and the dogs sat, too.

We ate, savoring every bite. All these years later I still remember the taste of that incredible sauce.

The meaning of this season is blessed with the good memories we keep. And we can be home for Christmas, if only in our dreams.

A Coffee Fiend Gives Thanks

It’s predawn on a recent Thanksgiving morning. I haven’t had coffee yet, and I’m in a daze, staring at that sweet old Quaker dude on the box in the pantry. I’ve no clue as to why I’m here.

“Are you going to make breakfast?” my husband asks.

“Yes…that’s it…thank you.” I sound like Stephen Hawking’s voice synthesizer before I get properly caffeinated. But now that I’ve been reminded what I’m doing, I pour oats in the boiling water, and the day can begin.

Finally the coffee’s ready. I take my first sip. Ahh…I’m grateful for this elixir.

Around Thanksgiving many people like to wax eloquent about the things they’re thankful for. My husband gets cranky as a cornered possum when asked to recite his gratitude list, which maybe explains why we’re roasting our own turkey for two again this year. But there are many things I’m thankful for, such as all the factoids I learn from my husband.

He’s at the kitchen table reading news on his iPad. “Did you know the world’s record turkey weighed 84 pounds? Those must’ve been some drumsticks.”

“Hah,” I say, “I bet it was an ostrich with short legs.

As I serve the oatmeal, our Jack Russell terriers mill around my ankles, ever hopeful I’ll drop a morsel their way. Their natural Tasmanian devil personalities are mellow in the morning, and I’m grateful to have these creatures that often look as dazed as I do before I get my coffee.

My husband eats breakfast while checking Facebook postings. “Our pal, Deb St. Julien, says she’s grateful for protein synthesis, cellular respiration, meiosis and mitosis,” he reads.

“Once a high school biology teacher, always a high school biology teacher,” I say.

“I’m glad we have Google so I can look all this stuff up,” he says. “She’s also grateful for quarks.”

“You know what happens when you cross a dog and a duck?” I ask.

“I give up.”

“You get a pet that goes, ‘quark, quark, quark.’”

He groans.

“You’re just jealous you didn’t think of it.”

“I’m going for a bicycle ride,” he says.

My husband takes off, and I start a load of laundry. Ahh…the washer and dryer. And running water. Pop in a basketful of dirty clothes, and clean ones emerge a short while later. It’s a miracle. Now that’s something to be grateful for. Laundry underway, I head for the garden. Who knows why getting dirt under my fingernails puts me in such a blissful state, but I can’t imagine anything more fun to do on a holiday than pulling weeds. At my age it’s about time I had a little fun.

When my husband returns, I have a mountain of weeds for him to haul to the compost pile. We work a few more hours together in the garden, and then, about the time we should take our showers and get the turkey in the oven, we hear a rat-a-tat-tat nearby.

We know this sound. They’re jack hammering in front of our neighbor’s house. The only reason they dig up the street on a holiday is because the water main has broken once again. Our water’s been turned off. We ask the workers, and they estimate it’ll be 6-8 hours before they restore service, and that’s if everything goes well.

“Ummm…I guess we aren’t going to get a shower anytime soon,” I say.

“What about the turkey?” my husband asks.

“You can’t cook a big dinner without water. You can’t even wash your hands.”

“Cavemen didn’t have running water,” he says.

“Cavemen only lived to 22.”

“But I’m starving,” he says.

“So find some takeout.”

“Excellent idea.” My husband leaves for the hunt. He’s gone over an hour. The sun sets.

Now I’m hungry, too.

When he finally returns, he has a big bag of food slung over his shoulder.

“It smells great,” I say. “Turkey?”

“Pad Thai and red curry.” So we have spicy Asian food for Thanksgiving, and we’re very grateful that one restaurant was still open. About 10:00 PM the water’s turned back on. After some sputtering and banging, our old pipes deliver plenty of water for showers. As the hot stream beats against my shoulders, it dawns on me that the fact we have water again means there will be coffee to drink in the morning.

Yes, there’s much to be grateful for.

My Dad the Super Hero

Lt. William Rachow, in Italy, 1944

This Veterans Day weekend I thought a lot about my dad, who served in WWII and survived to live out his particular version of the American dream.

His survival made my existence possible, so, of course, I’m grateful he made it home. I wish there were no such thing as war, but that kind of world is still in the making. And perhaps the creation of a peaceful planet in part has to do with generations of men and woman in uniform in the service of that goal.

My father passed away at the age of 87, and a group of serious men in uniform came to his graveside service to give him a full military send off. I was moved at how, after so many years of his civilian life, one airman’s service still mattered so intently to these young men.

Later I was honored to speak at Dad’s memorial. This is the story I shared with family and friends:

B-24 bomber

Imagine it’s September 10, 1944. We’re in a B-24 bomber flying over enemy territory. We’ve dropped our bombs, and Germans are firing back from ground and air. We’ve lost two engines, and then a third is hit.

                 

For the men in this plane, this is turning out to be one terrible, rotten day. But they aren’t dead yet. They’re now over Yugoslav territory when the pilot gives the order:

“Bail out!”

Twenty-one-year old, William Rachow (eventually to be known as my dad), is the bombardier on this mission. He opens the bomb bay doors and helps the crewmen take that leap of faith into the wild blue yonder. Then Lt Rachow steps into space himself.

He pulls the ripcord, and the miracle of the silk canopy is above him.

They say at times like this your whole life flashes before you. Lt. Rachow notices it’s a beautiful September day.

He thinks of the letter he received form his bride Rogene and the way it still smelled of her perfume. She’s expecting their first child. He has a lot to live for.

He looks for a place to set down. The meadow looks good, but the parachute takes him to a tall pine. He tumbles through the branches. It’s not pretty, but he makes it to the ground with only a few bumps.

Will he be met by enemy troops known for hanging all captives? Or by Russians with a reputation for shooting first and asking questions later?

Lt. Rachow is lucky to be found by Partisans sympathetic to American troops. The bad news is, none of them speak English. He must put his trust in hand signals that they will take him to safety.

He’s given a bed for the night, fed bread and eggs in the morning, and he’s taken to a British compound nearby where several days later he catches a C-47 supply plane back to his base in Italy.

The whole crew makes it back alive. One has an injured leg, and another had the seat of his flight suit blown off by flak, but otherwise they’re alive and well and find the courage to carry out more missions and eventually make it home to heroes’ welcomes.

I didn’t hear much about my dad’s war adventures until many years later when I went with him to a reunion of his squadron. There I learned Dad’s buddies called him Rocky. They told stories of his heroic deeds.

He was always there for them, they said. He shared what he had, money, cigarettes, even oxygen. One told me about when his mask froze at 30K feet, and my dad handed over his own oxygen. Apparently Rocky didn’t need extra oxygen no matter how thin the air got.

I already knew my dad was an everyday hero, working hard, helping family, friends and strangers alike. And I knew how much he loved our mom, Rogene, the first girl he ever kissed. From the way he joked around with her, to the way he held her hand the day she died, he made it clear she was a precious gift.

And later, when he was so blessed to find Irene and marry again at 80, he impressed me all over again with the way he appreciated and loved her.

I’d seen these things with my own eyes, but I wondered why he didn’t tell stories of his own heroism.

His buddies gave me the answer. “Rocky was our hero, but he never tooted his own horn.”

This was true.  My dad didn’t brag, but was strong under fire. He was able to take a leap of faith and trust in the unknown.  And he knew how to show love and gratitude for the ways he’d been blessed.

That’s my definition of a super hero.