To Grandmothers house we go.

Posted on by Thor

Christmas with the Schwartz family always involves a car ride to Grandma Martha Schwartz‘s home. Dirt snow encrusted roads turned into asphalt roads that then turned into snowy side roads.  The small farm house has been in the family for generations.  The white paint is worn and chipped and the place lists a bit from the pull of gravity over the years.  The front port is at such an angle that it feels like being on the Titanic.  Years ago a family member had a ticket to go on the Titanic, but he decided to make the crossing on another ship two months later.  Had he made the Titanic trip he would have been in steerage and would have most certainly died.  That would have meant that Pam, her dad and all the siblings would have never been born.

In the living room, the TV was on, showing a program where a bow hunter was tracking a goat with a huge lion’s mane. The men were seated and stories told were of the latest dear hunts. Ron had to shoot at a deer from a huge distance between one foot gaps in the tree branches.  The end of his barrel literally covered half of the deer.  Regardless, the shot dropped the animal to the ground.  The venison is packed and ready for the winter in the outside barn cooler.

The temperature outside had dropped to negative nine so cold drinks could be stored out on the porch.   A refrigerator would be overkill.  Grandma Schwartz is a traditionalist.   She insisted that the men line up for food in the kitchen before the women could eat.  That left the living room available for the children to open presents.  I kind of would have liked to sketch the kids ripping open presents, but instead, I had to do my manly duty and eat.  I learned quite a bit about the narrow profit margin in farming corn and the challenges of moving huge hay bails.  I listened intently wondering how I would fare in this harsh winter landscape.  Outside the snow blew horizontally past the window insulated by sheets of plastic.  I spotted black cows marching against the stark white landscape. 

The children played in the front room with a small Christmas tree.  There is a tiny little half step staircase that spirals up to the top floor of the rickety farmhouse. The tiniest toddler couldn’t resist trying to climb her way up. Parents kept having to interrupt her progress. Pam’s dad Ron Schwartz told the story of how he climbed that staircase as a child and his sister pounded him with a pillow at the top of the stairs causing him to topple down the steep steps head over backwards.  He had his revenge when he slipped a whole bunch of pins inside his sister’s seat cushion at the dinner table.  She squealed loudly and never again tried to knock him down the steps.

Family history covered every wall.  A wedding photo on the wall showed Ron and his wife, both slim and beautiful in their youth. Pam keeps 5 by 7 inch note cards that have notes about what she has done each year.  Her notes for Christmas day were always the same, “Christmas at Grandma’s and then at home.” Family traditions remain strong on this Iowa farm thanks to a matriarch that is approaching her hundredth year. 

Board Games over the Christmas Holdiay.

Posted on by Thor

The Schwartz family has a beautiful farmhouse and land in Maquoketa, Iowa. Overnight, the entire landscape was dusted with an inch or so of snow.  Breakfast, lunch, and dinner were all delicious home cooked meals.  The temperatures outside dropped to negative nine degrees by the end of the week.  With temperatures so low, we all stayed in all day either relaxing under a quilt on the couch or playing games on the dining room table.  Board and card games were played as the little ones ran around playing their own imaginary games.  The youngest had gotten an electronic ice cream cart that had a recorded track that taught numbers by requesting certain numbers of scoops and syrups.  The little sisters fought over that cart relentlessly until they discovered that the large cardboard box that the present came in was a much more interesting toy to crawl in and out of.  It could be a car, tunnel or time machine, the possibilities were endless.

By the end of the day, I had my fill of board games, and I settled in on the living room couch to sketch the Schwartz family playing a game called “Watch Ya Mouth” which was hilarious to watch. The game involves putting a plastic guard in your moth which spreads your lips wide making it impossible to pronounce Ps, Bs, and Ms.  The goal is for one player to say a phrase on a card and for their teammate to guess what is being said.  If you have a small mouth you are at a disadvantage.  Pam and I had played before and we were pretty good at understanding each other.  What happens for most players is that they laugh so much that they never even get the phrase out.

Another board game that we played was “Quelf.”  It involved answering hilarious trivia, performing ridiculous stunts, or obeying silly rules. Players had to use creativity, wit, and sense of humor to progress around the board. One stunt I had to perform involved recreating as many yoga poses as I could in 30 seconds.  Since I had done yoga in the past, I had an advantage.  Another stunt involved me becoming a boomerang and saying, “wha, wha” as I walked around the home and back to the board.  Players could request that I perform the stunt again, and wouldn’t you know, every player insisted I perform that stunt again and again.  I was exhausted from laughing so had.  I should have taken the penalty points.  The most popular game was a card game called “Euchre.” It uses a regular deck of playing cards with only the cards from nine and up used.  Jacks are the most powerful cards and could change suite.  The rules are pretty complex, but I started to catch on over the course of the holiday.   Games began shortly after breakfast and went on all day, sometimes until 3 AM.  Needless to say, Christmas at the Schwartz homestead is an adventure. 

White Christmas.

Posted on by Thor

Pam Schwartz and I are in Iowa for Christmas. On Christmas Eve
it started to snow and it snowed all day long. I set some time aside to paint
the view out of some bay windows that overlooked the property. The house is on
top of a hill that overlooks all the land around it. There is a pond down at
the bottom of the ravine in the direction that I was painting. There was a fine
dusting of snow all day. I was pleased to find out that there was a brush on
the tablet that easily paints snow. 

The Christmas tree had been set up with care and the next morning
the presents under and next to the tree would be unwrapped. All the open fields
became white encrusted in the snow as we rode to grocery stores for holiday
supplies. On Christmas Eve evening we had a 15 pound NY strip loin roast that was amazingly
tender along with cheesy potatoes and green beans with bacon. I gave Pam’s brother
credit for a pan full of roasted water chestnuts wrapped in bacon that were delicious, that had really been made by Pam. 

Relatives come and go in waves and the family chats in the
living room, warm from the snow outside. We often gather at the table to play
board games. The sun has just set and online sites track Santa’s progress
around the world. His sleigh seems to always be in flight. He never seems to
and drop off presents. There is only an electric fireplace here in Maquoketa, so he must
have to be good at breaking into homes to drop off his presents.

Cutting the Turkey.

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Thanksgiving in Iowa was a crash course in Midwestern hospitality. The family farm occupies 16 acres but is land-locked on three sides by neighbors’ farms. The red house is at the top of a hill which allows epic views of sunsets and sunrises. It is the end of bow hunting season, but that didn’t stop a lone doe from standing at the edge of the woods about 100 yards away from the back sliding glass doors. Up in another clearing about a quarter mile away wild turkeys foraged at the edge of the field.

Ron Schwartz was responsible for carving the turkey and I couldn’t resist sketching the Norman Rockwell moment. First, all the stuffing was removed and then carving commenced. Ron is skilled with knives, so the carving went quickly. The kitchen behind him was alive with activity as the other Thanksgiving sides were prepared. Green beans had crunchies, potatoes had gravy and four different pies waited for desert. No one at a Schwartz dinner table leaves hungry.

Once the Turkey rib cage was cut free of all the white meat, Ron put the bird and platter on the back porch where four outdoor cats picked it clean. The cats must have even swallowed some of the bones. Later, after we ate and were playing board games, the black cat hauled a huge dead squirrel up on to the porch and dropped it down by the sliding glass doors like some sort of reciprocal peace offering. The cats had celebrated Thanksgiving in grand style, and even enjoyed a squirrel for dessert.

Playing Canasta.

Posted on by Thor

Playing cards and board games are a family tradition in the Schwartz household in Iowa. Grandma Schwartz, and Pam’s other grandparents, have been carrying the card game Canasta on as a family tradition for decades. I followed along trying to understand all the rules. Two team members sit diagonally across from each other, the cards are put down on the table in groups and the first team to get rid of their cards wins the round. Any cards remaining in players’ hands are then added up as negative points.

These card games can go on until three in the morning. I sat in on several games with Pam Schwartz offering advice over my shoulder. For the kids, we played Gubs, which is a card game in which you try and collect as many Gubs (bugs) as you can. The trick is that opponents can steal your Gubs, entrap them, or even kill them. I never did manage to hold on to all my Gubs.

Thanksgiving was a week long event in which family slowly arrives in a crescendo until Thanksgiving day when there were 24 people in the Iowa household. Then over the next several days people slowly disappear. When the house was full, everyone shouted out their story over each other. It was a bit overwhelming at first, but then I adjusted and just enjoyed the variety of exchanges. All the board games reminded me of Thorspecken family games that I have sketched in the past. My family however has scattered to the winds and no one household hosts large holiday parties.

Installing a Winch

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Pam‘s dad, Ron Schwartz repairs large farm equipment in Iowa. So when he has time off for Thanksgiving, he can’t resist tinkering and repairing his own equipment. One of the first things we did when we got to the family farm was to go out to the work shed and help Ron install the winch. At first he worked solo, but eventually he relied on his daughter for assistance. As Pam says, he has huge bear paws for hands and the task involved getting some bolts lined up in a very tight space.

I started the sketch as Ron drilled holes in the winch support assembly he had custom built. Then he spent the rest of the time at the utility vehicle so I switched gears mid-sketch. The task of installing the winch was harder than expected, giving me plenty of time as father and daughter worked on the install together. In random spots around the work space, deer skulls could be found in buckets or mounted to light bulbs. Pam’s niece Destiny sat behind the steering wheel of the Rhino utility vehicle the entire time, as if she would drive off the second the install was complete.

After the install, Pam took me on a spin around the 16 acre property. There is a pond in the ravine and some steep hills that I felt might tip the vehicle over if approached at the wrong angle. The lake had a thin sheet of ice over its surface and the wind made the ice sing. There was what looked like a stabalized stick shift bar and grip on the roll bar that Ron referred to as “OH shit!” grips. I clutched those grips tight the whole time.

Ron needs the utility vehicle and winch to haul hunted deer back to the work space where they can be dressed and cut up as a winter supply of meat. The deer is field dressed where it is shot, leaving all the stink and weight of the innards of the animal behind. After being brought back the deer is skinned, hanged in a cooler for a few days before being processed. Each evening Ron would go out to shoot a deer but they eluded him all Thanksgiving. One faced him and was just six paces from being shot. That buck eluded the bullet by standing strategically behind a tree before bounding off just in time.