Never know what you 
might dig out of a snowstorm

While being snowed in last week, I assigned myself a little “snow job.” I shoveled through the piles of papers drifted on my desk, my nightstand, and even on the floor under my bed.

First I plowed through all the owner’s manuals for devices I no longer own, didn’t realize I ever owned, or never owned at all because they were for my kids’ contraptions and just ended up on the nearest pile of paper. Like the users’ guide to the Gravis Eliminator Game Card and the 1990 version of the IBM Paint and Print set up guide. And an order form for a Quicken logo baseball cap. I don’t think I’ll ever need that. Besides, the price has probably really gone up by now. I say that because there was no Web site and no option to order online. In fact, at the top of the form it said, “For fastest service call our 800 number.”

The next blizzard I plowed through were all the recipes I tore out of magazines
over the last four decades. If I still haven’t made the Marzipan mushrooms I thought were so cute back in 1979, then I probably never will.

As I sifted through recipes that people had given me on printed index cards, I
came across a few that my mother had handwritten on the backs of old Christmas cards. (My mother was the mother of recycling.)

When I turned over her recipe for pumpkin spice cookies – which calls for a stick of oleo, if that gives you any idea how old the card is –I noticed under the picture of a wreath the signature “Robert Laessig.”

My first thought was that it was just some starving artist. Or maybe some convict
who drew pictures to accompany the greeting card verses that inmates, according to urban legends, supposedly write. But since my new I Pad was at my fingertips, I typed in his name to see if anything would come up. I was surprised to see over a dozen Web sites.

An accomplished artist, Laessig’s career began in Germany before WWII and
spanned over eight decades. He designed Christmas cards for the White House during the Johnson administration and today his paintings fetch as much as $4,000. Laessig died last November at age 97, leaving quite a legacy to the world of art. And I have one of his works, even if it’s a reproduction devalued with a recipe written on the back.

My final “snow job” was to go through my 2010 Christmas cards one last time
before disposing of them. But this time, I looked carefully for any artists’ names. The only one I saw was for a photographer, Sandy Weaver, who is the activities coordinator at Annandale Village in Suwanee. I think I’ll keep that one. Who knows, my snowed inexperience may someday bring one of my grandkids a windfall.

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