Where Are You From?: Children

By Barbara Fahrnbauer

Albert Fahrnbauer and his wife Barbara have moved to a dilapidated old house on a hill near Atlanta, Georgia. They tear out the wall in the hall to make room for an art studio. Barbara paints the portraits because Alberts artwork does not sell. He insists she use his oil paint system. He has devoted his life to it, his sacred quest. His system of precise color matching, he claims, will reveal the glory of each individuals inner life. Barbara hates his system and wants to paint free and messy. She finds the romantic life of poverty is not to her liking, and wants to return to where she was a successful artist in Miami Beach hotels.

When he discovers Barbara is pregnant he is furious. This will cause all kinds of distractions. It does indeed. From then on, everything depends on this event, along with traumas over vegetable gardening, goats and chickens. To survive they have to live off the land, but have no farming experience whatsoever. They make hilarious mistakes, endure periods of starvation, moments of euphoria, and violent arguments over ways to paint.

It is also the time of Civil Rights, the 1950s and early 60s. Their mortgage holder belongs to the KKK. He brings his preacher buddy one time to tell them their Southern traditions regarding Negroes must not be violated. Their white neighbors and customers oppose any change in the racial customs. Albert confronts them with his humanitarian philosophy. All people, he tells them, have a unique and wonderful radiance of living color. His system will prove it if only Barbara will paint with it. So goes the story of two very different artistic personalities, where each of them came from, and how their backgrounds inspire, damage, and diverge throughout their lives together.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504928137

Barbara Fahrnbauer

The author Barbara Paige Fahrnbauer majored in art at Bennington College, and studied at the Art Students League in New York City. Albert died in 1981. Barbara is retired. She works in her garden and visits her three children and their families.

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© 2015 Barbara Fahrnbauer. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse   10/08/2015

ISBN: 978-1-5049-2814-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-2812-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-2813-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015912805

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CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

1     Some Things are not Planned

2     A Taste of Violence

3     Portrait Anxieties

4     The Rumpfs and Philosophy

5     Affairs of Here & Over There

6     Fits Over Fitzi Dog

7     Inside the Frame

8     Bread, a Dress, & Free Lunch

9     Ernst Albert

10   Society

11   Bends in the Road

12   The Snakeskin Episode

13   The Cold War

14   Josephine

15   An Homage to Horace

16   Theresa

17   The Yellow Monster

18   The Antique Flatbed

19   Theresa’s 9/11

20   Jack Kislek has Died

21   The Baby >< Business Mix

22   Hi Yellow and Blue Blood

23   Bring Out the Confederate Flag

24   The Oak Tree

25   A Fierce Dog and a Lost Cat

26   Phony Canvas Art

27   Winter 1961 - 1962

28   Pops & Connie Visit

29   The Convention

30   The Coming Apart Era

31   Distractions

32   Ernest Arrives !

33   This Bastard Art !

34   The Long Chill

35   Pink’s Adventure

36   Running Bare

37   Fourteen Acres

38   MARIA

39   The Country Club

40   The Grand Old Man

41   Country Club and Travels in the Snow

42   Buying a Cow Thru the Yellow Pages

43   ChicKens & Ernest’s Septic Tank Bath

THE INTERIM

44   Dream Search

45   Social Tsunamis

46   Hilltop Little Paradise

47   Bus Trip and the Painted Locket

Endnotes

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Ernest and Maria rub-a-dub in the tub.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To my three children, Theresa, Ernest and Maria, who waited many years for this story about them.

Thanks for their opinions, corrections and encouragement, and sometimes alarm at what was said.

To those who went before:

the now dead ones, parents, relatives, teachers in their ever changing times from where I came from

Many thanks to the Wizards at Computer Tech USA who kept my computers working, without which, for better or worse, this book would not be written.

Finally, to the memory of Albert Fahrnbauer.

His artistic vision was always dedicated to Humanity.

His tragedy was an inability to bring his ideas into concrete expression by himself, and his need for me to fulfill that part. Now at least, I can acknowledge his artistic creation and try to understand it.

1

Some Things are not Planned

One cold day in December 1957 something happened – amazing, personal and profound.

I was going to have a baby.

We never planned for this. Albert wanted no interference with his art theory projects. After six and a half years with almost no birth control I had ceased to worry about it. Nothing would happen. Now it had. It took awhile for me to be aware of it.

My momentous change took place under cover you might say. All sorts of other dilemmas were whirling around, like how to make money painting portraits in this town of Atlanta we had recently made our home. The economy was in a slump. Potential customers made excuses. They might be suddenly unemployed. Their property might lose value, especially if Negroes kept demanding equal rights. That scared and infuriated most white people. The trouble, the Big Trouble, was all about this new old thing: Civil Rights.

On September 23, 1957 President Eisenhower had sent the 101st Airborne Division to protect a small group of Negro children entering the all-white school in Little Rock, Arkansas, and to breakup angry white people rioting against integration. What if that happened here in Atlanta, Georgia? People had genuine fear that big scary changes were happening much too quickly. What if coloreds (as Negroes were called then) were allowed to eat right next to white people in restaurants? Even worse, Negroes were buying homes in formerly exclusive neighborhoods, and sending their children to school with white children!

In the South, we found out The Wa-er meant the Civil War, not World War II, and nothing stirred up anxiety more than Civil Rights. Yes, the Wa-er was lost, but for white people there had been ways to keep traditions of one’s place in society secure.

Compared to other cities, Atlanta had avoided trouble more or less. So far, delaying tactics had worked. Prominent citizen Ivan Allen Jr. tried to pressure Governor Griffin to declare the Supreme Court’s order null and void in Georgia, a ridiculous and illegal proposition, but many people took this in all seriousness. Segregation is our way of life, said Ivan Jr. and his audience cheered. Horrendous cracks in the Apartheid system tore at people’s beliefs and conscience. Big changes lay ahead. We thought of our second mortgage holder, Mr. Highborn, giving his Ku Klux Klan harangue the Christmas before. Albert insisted we stick to art – work on it harder than ever. Forget these distractions, he shouted. I was glad we lived on top of a steep hill, far enough from the neighbors when he sounded off like that about his precious oil paint system. But then, I wasn’t dedicated and on a mission like he was. I wondered what it was really like to be that fired up about something, with a cause worth starving for. Trouble was, his mission sadly was not mine, and the political and social turmoil worried me a lot.

Beyond Albert’s paint system, Civil Rights and war worries, the Sputnik amazed everybody. On October 5, 1957, the Soviets launched the first ever satellite to orbit the earth, and Sputnik II on November 3rd. This started a race in space with the Soviets. On December 6th the US Navy launched a rocket called Vanguard from Cape Canaveral. This glorious Navy rocket, untried and unready came crashing to earth in multi-million dollars worth of fire and smoke. A great furor arose for scientific acceleration. Rivalry and Fear woke Americans up. Thankfully a better rocket engineered by Wernher von Braun rocketed off successfully the following year.

Then Albert found out about….   The Alarming State of Me

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World problems were forgotten, arguments about paint mixtures, Sputnik, Civil Rights, War…. NOTHING exploded in the Fahrnbauer house with more immediate repercussions than a prospective baby.

How could such a thing happen? he gasped in disbelief.

When he knew for certain this was no joke he came up with a solution. Albert remembered a trick he had learned from his aunt Maria. She had confided to him when he lived with Maria and her husband in 1939, after arriving from Germany, that she had gotten pregnant several times, but knew what to do about it. This advice might get Albert out of a fix someday, she warned. He repeated the trick to me.

Take a cold bath, and then a hot bath, then a cold bath and a hot bath.

He studied my flat front. Are you sure about the…? I nodded.

Aunt Maria told me that worked every time, he said hopefully.

I protested. Our bathroom was outside on the porch, and February was no time for getting naked in the fresh air. The hot water heater had been turned off and never used because it was rusted, not to mention the nuisance of removing all those food-stuffs and things we stored in the tub, clean the tub and then put everything back again afterwards. I told him he talked as if this pregnancy was all my fault and he had nothing to do with it.

Oh you know what I mean is throw water over yourself, he said irritably. Make sure it’s very hot. Then very cold. Hot, cold, hot, cold.

He grumbled and complained while he sat in comfort next to the coal stove. I cleaned out the tub, squatted on the floor to heat a pot of water on the camp stove, and carried the pot out to the bathroom. When I took my clothes off I shivered uncontrollably. Damn! Why should I take all the blame? It’s his fault. He doesn’t even offer to pour the water over me. I poured cold and hot water into a basin, splashed in comfortably warm water instead, rubbed vigorously with a towel, felt clean and energized, and let it go at that.

As long as Albert didn’t keep blaming me for getting in Your Condition as he referred to my pregnancy, I was careful not to talk about it, not to complain, not to plan anything, just go on attending to everyday problems. I called Mother and told her the news which absolutely delighted her. Well, I thought – at least someone is happy about it. If Mother wanted to tell my half sisters and they would tell my father, OK. If not, it didn’t matter. There were plenty of problems to keep us occupied.

Frozen Pipes and Hauling Water

I found water frozen in a dish on the sink one morning. By the end of February we had looked forward to spring, but as often happens, winter blasted through again with a real cold snap. I tried to turn the cold stiff faucet, but no water came out. For a long frustrated moment I rubbed my chilly fingers inside my sweater and stared at the useless sink, at the frozen water in the dish, and let loose with all the swear words in German Albert had taught me in one of his breezier moments, wishing Albert would hear me and do something about this.

To save fuel for the daytime we let the coal stove in the kitchen go out. In the morning just a few dying embers still smoldered down in the stove belly, and with a few dry bits of wood and fresh coal a new blaze would soon start up. The stove was so small it barely spread its feeble warmth through our rooms with their rattling window glass and windy gaps in the floor. It was never warm, just slightly better than nothing. We counted more on the Georgia sun coming out on nice days and for a few mid-day hours making it bearable until the shadows of late afternoon. Today we had no coal to burn. It was all used up. That meant cutting whatever wood we could find, usually green and giving much less heat. It had come to that now.

Two days earlier I had scratched up the last tiny pieces of coal. Only a dark sprinkling of coal dust, infertile and dirty, showed where the pile had been. Even the small burlap bag of coal was used up – the one from Mr. Highborn, our mortgage holder. It lay at the edge of our own disappearing coal pile until the very last, like an evil bag of snakes, a shocking gift from his Ku Klux Klan visit on Christmas day. As our own pile diminished, the brown bag became impossible to ignore, and I knew soon we had to open it and gratefully burn its cursed coal. I would be the one, going out early in the morning while Albert slept off his night session after he crept chilled and exhausted to bed.

That time came all too soon because the winter had been severe, and after Mr. Highborn’s coal was gone I put the bag also into the fire. The KKK coal burned like any other. Yet who is to say the fumes of violence and discontent might not have mingled with the welcome warmth, seeped into the walls, and hung waiting, immaterial, un-energized until called forth? Fire’s the great purifier, I had told myself, while inside me something else was simmering, and that day after all the coal was gone and our kitchen froze – a portion of that something deeper flared up hotter than the room was cold.

I hate this poverty-stricken, miserable life. And next winter we’ll have a baby that Albert doesn’t want. What’s so idealistic about living in a shack and pretending to be a great artist-inventor? Or just married to one, which is worse.

I stood there, shaking from cold. An old memory popped into focus – a visit from a fellow student, at Bennington College. She had come with some friends of hers to warn me about the perils of getting hooked up with an artist, especially one with poor financial prospects.

She warned me!

She told me her sister had married an artist, and all they had to eat was spaghetti without meat sauce….!

Here I am freezing, with nothing to eat. Oh how I’d love some plain hot spaghetti right now, and – run away back to Florida or New York.

But no, I can’t – can’t go back. But only if. If only….

That morning I went back to bed and stayed there, hungry and miserable, finally asleep with angry dreams. When Albert woke up he examined the kitchen faucet and the well at the bottom of the hill. He pronounced the problem incurable until the sun came out. It’s the pipes, he announced. There was no possibility of hiring somebody, or running to the hardware store for supplies. We owed them too much already. Somehow, we had to fix this problem ourselves. Albert took the shovel and dug until he found pipes leading from well to kitchen. Easy enough to find; they lay so close to the surface that very little insulation from the earth protected them from frost. It’s a wonder we went through all of last winter and most of this, Albert informed me. They’re busted in several places.

Cheer up! he said, noticing my gloomy expression. All we need is a good portrait order, and really use the color system this time, and you’ll see our fortunes improve. I nodded apathetically. In the meantime, how about getting out of bed. Get yourself outside and look for some firewood!

Albert located his GI-can as he called the ten gallon, army green metal container, and went to get water from the gas station. The well had been shut down. For a moment I wished we had an old fashioned well with no pump or pipes and be able to draw a bucket-full, and carry as much as needed up the hill.

No no, no! I don’t like that idea either!

Why can’t I go backwards to where I used to live in New York, or in Florida, with wonderful modern conveniences? Please, please God – make a miracle happen! Please God –if there is a God! I used to believe in God. What happened? How did I end up here in such a horrible place, with no comforts and no God to….

If I had taken a tour through certain parts of Atlanta and seen shacks where people, mostly colored, lived without plumbing of any kind, would I have felt myself blest? I could imagine, but why should I try to? In parts of New York where I had lived, there had still been outdoor privies, people crowded into rented rooms infested with rats, with dilapidated doors and windows the property owner seldom repaired, people whose spirit froze like the winter because they had so little hope of improvement. If I had known these conditions existed only a few miles from where we lived now – I wonder if I would feel better about our own situation? Or – What difference does it make to me if someone’s worse off? I have known much better where I came from. Why do I deserve this?

At that moment it seemed this was rock bottom. At such times if I prayed at all, it was for myself and my confusion. Nothing seemed right. Hopeless! All I wanted to do was lie down under covers and wait for these ghastly problems to go away. I screamed into the pillow with despair and hatred for anything and anybody around me. How could Albert say that all things were possible for improvement if we worked together and realized the blessings we had?

I thought about that. He too suffered cold. He could have raged at me out of shear frustration. If anyone had strong belief in the rightness of his artistic vision – Albert never faltered. Despite annoying, uncomfortable set-backs, I always found it impossible to stay in an angry mood or complain without effort to change. But now – I was hungry, cold, and thinking about what was in the freezer from last summer’s harvest.

Tomatoes! At least we had tomatoes! Ugh.

Every meal had tomatoes. Albert said he was sick of tomatoes and wanted meat. The goat meat was long gone. Our two milk goats were dried up, on the down cycle before spring when both should freshen again. We still had Horace, the white Billy-goat. Except for keeping females in production he was quite useless. He annoyed me as another mouth to feed. But Horace was special. He had a beard by now and horns. He rubbed his horns on trees, scraping off their bark. He butted your ass, if you didn’t watch it. He did unmentionable things to the female goats – his mother and his sister and caused inbreeding. He got along best with Albert who scratched his head and behind his left ear and talked to Horace about color theories and all the wonderful projects he had in mind for The Farm where Horace would be top goat.

2

A Taste of Violence

Hunger can Drive One to do Horrible Things

Two little goat kids – cute as could be, still wobbly on their legs, goat-mama’s darlings pulling with gusto on her teats. Oh let them live – couldn’t we get by without the milk?

With nothing much else to eat? How long could we live on dandelion greens or hope for groceries when all portrait money went for mortgages and to keep the old van rolling? We knew we had to kill the two little goat kids to get the milk they were drinking up. I felt horrible about this, but when you’re hungry you resort to a lot of unpleasant things that never bother you when you can go buy groceries in the market all wrapped up or bottled or pay for meat cut to order at the butcher counter. Albert and I agreed we couldn’t wait until the kids got bigger and didn’t need the milk. But he left the decision to me, and the killing to me, without really saying it. More like putting off something unpleasant. I simply took the initiative myself.

I grasped them by the hind legs and smashed them against a tree trunk. Sickening. But at least it was fast and effective. Albert didn’t witness this. I saved him from it you might say. He never asked how, or said a word about it. I just cooked the meat and served it and it was very delicious. But there was precious little on their young hides. A few small meals.

Then we had milk to drink. To me it tasted of death. I gave a little to the cat, and poured most of it into Albert’s cup when he wasn’t looking. Violence saturates memory like a dye. Washed over with time, intermittently it bleeds through. It’s always there: one’s collection of large and small sins, pale ones, dark ones, confused forgotten gray ones, or those subtle sad and un-spoken, shared with no one. And doesn’t the degree of involvement make a difference? We buy meat packaged and think nothing about it. Those whose job it is to cut throats, or operate machinery of death wash their hands and collect their paycheck like any other worker.

I, who devised the how and hoped it would be just another day’s work, found I could never forget those little white goats, or their piteous cries before they died, or the blood-taste of the milk they did not drink. I wondered if the child within me witnessed any of this, felt through the color of my emotion where all things are connected – when later that baby too, would die.

3

Portrait Anxieties

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A Dog with Fuzzy Boy

We were in desperate straits. This is the normal for us, I thought grimly, and wished more every day we were back in Florida’s big hotels. Then I would think of My Condition, and knew it was not the best thing to become a single parent. Albert might be a rotten provider because his main concern was always his passion for the color system, but he was the father. I believed he would love the child when it was born. I realized I would too, no matter how I had professed otherwise until now.

Time for Action! Back to the old stuff – knock on doors.

Albert insisted I canvass with him. He thought it increased our chances of doors once opened to us, would stay open, at least long enough to look at our samples. We did get one order out of two weeks trying in a middle class neighborhood, and apparently – all Jewish. Why we did best with Jews had always been a mystery to me. They had served us well in upper state New York and in Miami. The only time I was rebuked by a Jewish person was at Lake Placid. His wife had been dickering with me for days to get a price bargain. Oh I would love a portrait of you, dear! she cooed to her husband. Meaning of course she was dying to get a portrait of herself also. No graven images, declared her husband who always wore a black beanie, the Yarmulke. He said it out loud so other guests could hear. They heard, but gave me portrait orders anyway.

So here we were again in little Jerusalem. This time I must have looked less Jewish or Albert forgot his Yiddish, because all we got from knocking on doors was that one order when we knocked on the door of Mrs. Saul Moskowitz. She opened the door, started to shut it, hesitated, and finally said, Oh all right, as she studied our samples. We were told to wait outside. The door was shut in case we had bad intentions. After so long we figured she must have changed her mind or forgotten, the door finally opened and she thrust a small black and white snap shot at Albert saying Here, see what you can do with this.

We looked: A boy with a dog. Really terrible. Mostly dog with boy. Must be pretty old, I observed, trying to find something hopeful. To look for hope when stuck with something hopeless – that is the hope! Here we are: with fuzzy features, lousy lighting, sun in the kid’s eyes squinted shut, shadow across his nose with its tip illuminated like a neon advertisement. And we are hopeful? The hope is to find out if this person is long dead! Ah, so sorry for your loss… Do you remember dear… (Poorly remembered) so we can resurrect a fantasy.

That’s my dear husband! said the woman reaching for it out of Albert’s hand. Isn’t he cute, she purred, sliding cu-oooute upscale like a trill. Then she sighed. Or – he was at one time.

We walked away with that one, and she walked over us. She demanded guarantees. She could pay in installments. She didn’t have to sign anything, pay nothing down, and worst of all – she could refuse it and pay nothing if she didn’t like it.

Bad enough. I hoped the little snap shot was worth diamonds to her. Maybe. What if she demanded it back and we tried to keep it so we could continue work on the portrait until she liked it and she still refused and….

Paint it exactly like it is! Albert instructed, after giving me detailed orders for color scheme. He squinted at the snapshot through a big magnifying glass. Improve the lighting on the boy’s face. Open his eyes. Eliminate most of the background. Paint out that house, those trees and bushes. He made a swirling motion with a brush across the photograph, threw down the brush and left me with the magnifying glass. I glared at the dreadful thing. It looked even fuzzier when enlarged. I felt sick. I was sick in the morning, often sick in the afternoon. I wished I could go take a nap, or bake some bread, if only we had some flour, or…. Anything but this.

Albert said the economy was in a slump and that was why we couldn’t find work. We had no TV, no newspaper, no radio or clock, but we heard news from people we visited or our neighbors. Even these bits of news were ominous enough – nuclear war – world annihilation – now the economy slipping down. The radio in the van worked erratically, much to Albert’s annoyance. He handed me an article out of the newspaper. Read this, he said. It will take your mind off yourself.

Why should I want to hear more horrible news? I yelled. When he left, I threw the paper on the floor. I lay down on the bed. It felt good to do nothing. After awhile I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling. There were holes and cracks in the sheetrock nailed to the ceiling. Some day it would rot and collapse from all those holes in the roof where rain came in. Some day it would break suddenly, and come crashing down on top of me. I tried to imagine how it might feel to be smashed and what I would look like. A newspaper photographer might take a picture of the bloody mess. What would a portrait be like? My grisly portrait! I laughed and howled and rose up to attack this portrait of fuzz-boy.

There it was, waiting on the easel. Albert had mixed some colors on the palette. I sneered at the blank canvas and the small snapshot of fuzz boy taped to the easel. Oh you wretched damn piece of shit! I looked down and there was the newspaper article. I picked it up to read about the slump. When you’re feeling bad – really bad – it helps to hear about something depressing. You know you are not alone.

In 1957 to 1958 the economy will definitely go through a down turn. It will revive some in April, we believe, with ups and downs through 1959. World events are taking center stage with that ever present fear of nuclear war. It is believed it will help lead to the election of John Kennedy on the Democratic ticket. Already there are social upheavals, rife with drugs, violence, and war protests that may get worse. The South is rocked with racial discord, continuing on its usual stubborn way, glorifying the past, cherishing social distinctions and customs, pushing hard against the swelling cry from a million angry dark faces. The Negroes are demanding human rights from a culture that forbids them entrance into a social order controlled by whites. It can only lead to more violence and more laws being passed to force compliance with the Supreme Court order.

The article did its trick. It made me feel better. If everything was so dreadful I might as well throw some paint around, and here was a shitty dog picture to start with. Albert had wanted the background of trees and bushes and house to be minimized, and mostly eliminated. While he was outside smashing rocks I decided to paint it exactly as I felt inspired. With a surge of joy that surprised me (it was so rare) I painted the bushes, trees and house in colorful detail. The dog was enhanced, enlarged, and given a cheerful bark. I was sure Mrs. Moskowitz would delight in the scenery.

Saved by the Kisleks

I’ve decided to try photographic studios, Albert announced as he came in, red-faced and sweaty from attacking boulders. You get on the phone and call every one listed in the telephone book.

I laughed. You want to us to hire artists to sit around a table painting factory style – like that salesman in New York who said we could make lots more money than going it alone? Albert frowned, and made a dismissive gesture. We’ll ask for canvas work! Or any kind of art work if we have to. Yes, even those phony painted over photographs, temporary of course – anything to save us from losing our home.

With Albert consumed with this new idea, he paid scant attention to the Moskowitz picture. I had turned it around backwards while I was looking up photographers in the telephone book. After a while he did look at the easel. Don’t want to work on it? He frowned and waved a dismissive gesture. "That woman and her stingy order cannot be counted on. We need something… Big."

I called a few photographers to find out if they sold oil portraits. Some did and said they already had an artist, or didn’t have much call for it. The last thing we wanted was photo-oils, but we would try anything now.

Albert sighed. He mumbled dire warnings about getting involved in such low down art. We’ll find out, he decided. We have to start somewhere. Then when we show them what we can really do, it will be a different story. Of course, I said cheerfully. Even if we have to paint a photo-oil.

That’s exactly what happened when we went to one downtown studio. Instead of a canvas, they asked us to paint over a blown-up photograph. Did we have experience with this technique? Oh of course! Portrait painting was our profession. Yes, but – (No lies now, just fudge the answer like a politician). How did we want the print made? Albert said it should be printed on the dark side, thinking drama – light face in the middle of darkness. Rembrandt-like. Unfortunately it came out more like pasty face peering out of black gloom. It reminded me of the