Between a Rockwell and a hard place


“The original Norman Rockwell painting, ‘Breaking Home Ties,’ was found behind wood paneling in a home in Vermont.”

— Berkshire EagleApril 6, 2006


This past Saturday, while tearing out the walls of my home with a pickax in hopes of discovering a Norman Rockwell original, I received a phone call I dreaded.

It was Pete Hosgrove, the Berkshires’ distinguished garden-implement antiquarian. Turns out that hoe I found last fall under some planks isn’t a Hittite original from the Ganga Valley, circa 14th century BC.
“It’s a handsome hoe, Felix. Don’t get me wrong,” Pete said. “But there’s certain distinguishing features — the words ‘Craftsman,’ the fiberglass handle, the faded price tag — that tell me this was mass produced, probably in 1998.”


Needless to say, after I hung up, I had to sit down for a moment.


Let me back up. You see, the excise tax on my 1983 Chrysler K-car is due — 17 bucks! (To be honest, I always thought that if the engine falls out within the first two months of the year, your car was exempt.)

Anyway, I grabbed the pickax again and tore through the living room walls. Then, the phone rang again. Gloria down at Old World Mill. I braced myself.

“Felix, I took a good look at those planks you brought in,” she said. “They’re not Spanish mahogany, and probably not the hull of a ship sailed by Vasco de Balboa.”

I kept my cool. After I hung up, I started knocking out the staircase with a sledge hammer until the phone rang again.

“Bruce, ol’ boy,” I said. “How’s everything at the museum?”

“Fine, except I have some bad news for you, Felix”

I won’t bore you with the specifics, only to say I widely misgauged what a meteoritic fossil might look like — particularly one proving there are four-leaf clovers in outer space.

“You’re not the first person to bring me a chunk of cement with the paw print of a kitten,” Bruce said, though I suspected he was only being charitable.

Honestly, when I hung up, I was angry with myself. I swung the pickax at the wall in the den, and all’s I remember seeing is a center joist swinging down toward me. When I awoke, my wife and young son were home. While giving me gentle, sweet kisses and wrapping my head in gauze, my wife whispered: “Did you find anything?”

“No yet,” I said.

But then, something caught my eye. I crawled through the debris and peeled away some dangling wall paper. “Oh my!” my wife said. Clearly, it wasn’t a Rockwell. Definitely Hudson River School.

“It looks exactly like our own Monument Mountain,” my wife said.

“Maybe Thomas Cole took a wrong turn at Rhinebeck,” I suggested.

“It’s beautiful!” she said, teary-eyed. Our ship had finally come in! We grabbed the boy, put him between us and made a little love sandwich.

“Daddy, look, the painting’s alive,” he said, amidst the hullabaloo.

“No, my boy, you’re witnessing the exaggerated drama of Thomas Cole’s genius brush strokes!” Hugging, we all leaned in for a closer look. All the sudden, a flatbed from Formel Motors went barreling across the painting, from left to right.

“Honey,” my wife said. “That’s not a painting. That’s the view from the front of our house. The wall must’ve caved in.”

Long story short: We got out of the house just before it collapsed. We’re now living in a yurt behind the Best Value Inn in South Lee. But an amazing thing happened yesterday. After Dumpster diving for bar snacks behind the 102 Tavern, who picked me up thumbing? Laurie Norton-Moffatt of the Norman Rockwell Museum, an old family friend.

We laughed, she and I, recalling old times. Then I said, “And remember my parents threw me that ‘Breaking Home Ties Bash’ before I headed off to college?” Laurie kinda looked at me funny, but by golly, I remember it like yesterday —sitting by the car with Pa, my suitcase at my feet, Trudy, our collie, licking my hand.

“Can I be honest with you, Felix?” she said. “Your father always said you were an ‘original,’ but I always suspected something was wrong with you.”

Unfortunately, I had no more time for small talk. “Laurie, look,” I said. “I need a favor.”

Wouldn’t you know it? Moments later I was skip-jumping to the yurt, $17 in one hand for the excise tax and $20 in the other for “whatever.” Laurie’s a sweetheart!

So last night, the wife, the boy and I strolled down to Lee Bowling Lanes and had ourselves a time. Get this: My boy, on his first turn, the bumpers down and everything, rolls it straight down the middle — strike!

We grabbed him and made another little love sandwich out him, and I’m certain that if Norman Rockwell could have gotten a load of us, he’d have put us on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post.

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