In their father’s house

By Felix Carroll

Through the gate of the white picket fence, passed the unusual combination of rhubarb and California poppy, then up the porch steps and through the door are two sisters and a brother who love their father so much they wrote a book about him.

Jo Humphrey is the author. Her sister Shirley Miller and brother Peter Franz helped. The three of them are in the kitchen with their significant others. A lot of activity is going on. It’s a late summer afternoon. Cocktail hour has just begun. But to grow up on Elm Street in Stockbridge as the children of Joseph Franz means that most things of beauty — such as cocktail hour — are upheld by the practical things that surround them.

For the dazzling California poppies, it’s the levelheaded rhubarb. For the late afternoon martini, it’s the canning of pears. Shirley and Jo have been at it all afternoon. The pears, that is. They’ve been earning that cocktail. "Pealing, pealing, pealing,” is how Jo puts it, wiping the sweat from her brow as Shirley sinks a series of pear-filled mason jars into a pot of boiling water. The whole kitchen fills with steam.

The pears come from a tree out back, a tree with a huge hole straight through its trunk. Wire sheathed in a garden hose acts as a truss holding the whole thing together. No good reason can explain why that tree is still alive, and certainly no good reason can explain why this year it’s yielding a more bountiful harvest than Shirley, Jo and Peter can remember.

Somehow that tree, that strange, improbable pear tree, won’t be quelled. It remains anchored in the Berkshire earth, as headstrong as rhubarb, as lively as the legacy of their father.

Yes — most things of beauty are upheld by the practical things that surround them. For instance, for the Boston Symphony in summertime, it’s the Tanglewood Music Shed, and for the dance companies at Jacob’s Pillow, it’s the Ted Shawn Theatre — two highly practical Berkshire landmarks built by their father.

Suffice it to say, an assertive German immigrant staking his claim amidst the bluebloods of Stockbridge in the first half of the 20th century was about as odd a sight as rhubarb in a bed of California poppies. Yet Joseph Franz — who died in 1957 at the age of 76 — left his fingerprints are all over the place. An engineer by trade, he’s the reason why Main Street Stockbridge has no unsightly overhead wires. Aesthetics was a mere consequence to a system he designed to run underground for the sake of easier maintenance.

 

For instance, with the Tanglewood Music Shed, after estimates from an eminent architect came in way over budget, they turned to the local upstart immigrant known for reading books, taking risks and figuring things out. Joseph Franz built the shed under budget and on time for the summer opening in 1938, and its fabulous acoustics quickly became world renowned. His career is filled with countless such stories.

The pears are boiling while Joseph Franz's children are sitting around a coffee table in the house their father built wondering why so few people have ever heard of him. They wrote this book — Joseph Franz: A Renaissance Man in the Twentieth Century (iUniverse, Inc., 2006) — to set the record straight. Jo, who now lives in New York City, will be giving a book talk at 5 p.m. tonight at Jacob's Pillow.

"Mother is the one who kept pushing for someone to write Father's biography," says Jo.

"Now wait," says Peter, who lives in Cheshire. "I was the one who asked Father way back to write down his memories."

It's all good-natured. They remember their father as a stoic man who made sure they each learned how to fix a lock and how to do plumbing and carpentry and electrical work — all the practical things any sensible person should know.

Shirley goes back into the kitchen where the pears have sat in boiling water long enough. She pulls the jars out one by one. After a few moments the jar's dome lids give the popping sound of pears that have been properly preserved. The noise is like horse's hooves falling on cobblestone. Joseph Franz's children know how to preserve things. It's only practical. And they have so many things worth preserving.

After a career as a draftsman in Virginia, Shirley moved back into this house. Just like her father, she relaxes by tending to the garden. But with the rhubarb, you don't need to do much. You just let it do its thing.