The Longest Christmas Letter Ever, Part 3

We bought new furniture for the living room. Getting the couch into the house proved to be a challenge.

Saturday, May 19

A couple of months ago, I provided a progress report on our home and yard maintenance. At the rate that JoAnna and I are now going, we’ll be able to cross everything off the list by the end of the summer – or go broke trying.
This morning we visited Steinhafel’s furniture store. Just about 30 feet inside the main entrance, we found a sofa, chair, and ottoman combination to our liking. One of the sales associates – isn’t that the term most stores use nowadays? – must have seen our “we’re-here-to-buy” aura and immediately approached us. Within minutes, we were looking at fabric samples. We weren’t interested in the plain fabric of the floor model.

Just to be sure, JoAnna and I walked around the store’s immense space of interconnected showrooms. Our alternatives basically boiled down to three:

Traditional. Light fabrics with bold, bright, flowered or striped patterns. Definitely not for us.

Leather. We’re not fans of this style either, particularly after the cats turned our faux leather chairs (now discarded) into their personal porta-potties.

Recreational. Massive puffy units with an abundance of cup holders. (Designed for the home theater crowd, or people who’d rather spend time in their SUVs.)

Our first choice looked even better after we had finished our circuit.

To complete the transformation, we added a coffee table and end table to the package. Since the furniture is a custom order, it won’t be delivered until mid-to-late July. That’s OK, as it gives us time to complete two related projects.

We stopped at Mautz to look at paint samples. JoAnna wants to extend the kitchen’s gold-and-blue color scheme into the living room. With the fabric samples from Steinhafel’s in hand, and a consultation with one of the “sales associates” – somehow I don’t think Mautz is into this terminology” – we walked away with two promising color swatches: Baguette (the lighter side of gold) and Still Water (a deep blue-green). The ceiling will be painted a neutral color.

Final stop: Carpets Plus.

Stu, the “sales associate” who guided us through the selection process for the family room carpet, showed us samples of Berber and similar carpets. JoAnna and I ended up agreeing on the style and color (Champagne Bubbly – how much time do they spend thinking up these names?) that we had tentatively agreed on last month.

And just what is Champagne Bubbly? you are no doubt asking yourselves.

It’s hard to describe. Somewhere between neutral and tan. (OK, so I’m not being very helpful here.)



Wednesday, June 27

It was the thought that couldn’t be expressed.
What if we can’t get the couch into the house? I remember asking myself within the past week.

The front entrance doesn’t provide straight-ahead access. Any large object, such as our 6' x 9' bookcase, needs to be carefully angled through the doorway. The doors leading from the garage through the hallway into the kitchen provide more direct access but are narrower. That’s the route we used to move the old couch and love seat out of the house.

One of the delivery men attempted to carry the upholstered chair into the house on his own. He needed his partner, though as he tried to turn the corner just inside the door. It took some careful maneuvering even with the two of them working together.

The way the second guy studied the front entrance, moving his hands around as if to take measurements, I sensed a self-fulfilling prophecy coming to pass. The men struggled mightily to squeeze the couch through the doorway – and we have scratches on the doorframe to prove it. They then discovered, pretty much right from the start, that going through the garage wasn’t going to work.

The problem was with the legs. Although covered by a skirt, they extend five inches from the bottom of the couch itself. And they aren’t removable. I guess what we selected is designed for a grander home – or at least one with a bigger front door.

While I was on the phone – leaving a message for the woman who sold us the furniture and conferring with an extremely disappointed JoAnna – the men tried once again to bring it through the front door. From my angle, they looked as though they were going to succeed, but they only managed to add a few more scratches.

Since neither JoAnna nor I were thinking very clearly, we had them take the couch back to the warehouse. I checked the “did not fit” box on the delivery form. Obviously, this is a common occurrence.

Now that we’ve had time to think things through, we’ll request that the couch be returned and store it in the garage. And how then to get it into the house? We’ll replace the kitchen window on the driveway side of the house. That will (#1) provide us with the temporary opening and (#2) take care of another home improvement item on our checklist.


The Annual Richard Family Reunion

Saturday, July 28.

I attended my first Richard family reunion 23 years ago, during the first weekend of August. At the time, JoAnna and I had gone out on just one date -- to Jansen’s, a neighborhood bar on the east side of Oshkosh for the Thursday night shrimp boil.

“Do you like shrimp?” I nervously asked her on the previous Monday or Tuesday, tapping a pencil against the wall as we waited for the elevator on the third floor of the Oshkosh Public Library.

Nobody has ever called me a smooth operator.

Fortunately, she said “yes”, and the rest, as they say, is history.

A few days after our first date, JoAnna traveled to a national student government conference in Eugene, Oregon, with a group from UW-Oshkosh. She was away for about a week. I found myself thinking about her a lot. She must have experienced the same sense of yearning. Immediately upon her return, she called to ask if I’d like to accompany her to her family reunion in Two Rivers. I accepted the offer – how quickly, I can’t recall – without considering how my appearance there would play out. I’ve probably shared parts of this story with you before, but my favorite can be attributed to Alice. She thought I had just come along for the ride, as I was the only one in a group of three (a friend of JoAnna’s rode with us) who knew how to drive a borrowed VW bus with a standard transmission. Little did she know that I was soon to become her “favorite” son-in-law.

During the three days of that reunion – Friday night fish fry, Saturday picnic, Sunday brunch – I remember meeting lots of relatives whose names it took me a few more years to remember without prompting.

For this year’s reunion, Andy and Gretchen left Middleton at 8:30 on Thursday evening, after a Strauss family outing at Cheeseburgers in Paradise. (A party of 18.) Shortly after they hit the road, they encountered extremely wet driving conditions. Near Beaver Dam, Andy noted when describing their trip to me the next day, he had to come to a stop as a struck passed them on what was already a nearly blinding rainstorm. West of Sheboygan, the rain again started to fall in sheets, so they ended up at a motel for the night.

Some of this rain actually reached the Madison area. On Thursday night, it serenaded me to sleep. When I awoke Friday morning, the first thing I heard was a gentle patter on the leaves. But I don’t think it had been raining all night.

Eddie and I left at 9 a.m. on Friday and reached Larry and Alice’s house at 11:40. We found most everyone sitting outside. Cyndi was in the kitchen forming hamburger patties for lunch, and Andy was removing a section of bathroom tile. Uncle Albert had put him to work shortly after he and Gretchen arrived. I know he wasn’t expecting this assignment, the first step of a small remodeling project (plastic sheathing on three sides above the tub, shower head installation, curtain rod, towel racks) that Albert and Larry finished up by the end of the afternoon.

JoAnna, the boys, Gretchen, and I spent two hours of the afternoon on a small section of beach by the Lighthouse Inn, where Albert & family are staying this weekend. I would have preferred the much more expansive beach area at Neshotah Park. Out of boredom, I ended up walking across Memorial Drive to the Lester Public Library, where I browsed through some of the books in the local history collection.

The five of us are sharing a room at the Fox Hills Golf Resort and Conference Center in Mishicot, just a few miles from Camp TaPaWingo, the site of the Richard family reunion since about 2000. No suites were available as the sprawling facility is hosting four wedding parties this weekend. (We were probably lucky to get a room there!) We spent the latter half of the afternoon there checking in, unloading the cars, taking a swim in the outdoor pool, and then dressing for dinner. This year’s Friday fish fry was held at the K of C, where it had always taken place in the pre-TaPaWingo days.

It was past 10 o’clock by the time we left the K of C. Too late to play cards at the camp, all of us but Eddie decided. Albert provided him with taxi service for the night. It was nearly 2:30 when JoAnna responded to a soft knock at our door.

Eddie has become Mr. Sociable this week: dinner at Quaker Steak & Lube (all you can eat wings) on Tuesday with a group from the football team, a team party after Wednesday evening’s practice, and Friday night cards until the wee hours.

While everyone else played golf this morning, I explored the downtown Manitowoc area and the neighborhood just to the south. It provided with a great excuse to take an extended walk. I also spent some time on a computer at the Manitowoc Public Library. The attractive, spacious facility opened in 1999, but already the adult nonfiction shelves are groaning under the weight of too many books. In most subject areas, there’s no room to squeeze in a single volume. From my observation, it seems that the library has a no-weeding policy. Not even for multiple copies of yesteryear’s popular titles.

Across the street from the library sits Cooks Corner, which billed itself as the “Nation’s Largest Kitchen Store”. It’s now the “Nation’s Emptiest Kitchen Store”. It seemed to be a popular destination in December, but I supposed it couldn’t sustain that level of business year-round. Sine retail started to relocate to the edges of the city in the 1960s, downtown Manitowoc has struggled to compete. And it’s been more successful than most. Like many other communities of its size, it center-city energy is stoked by locally owned restaurants, gift and other specialty shops (or, more often than not, shoppes), arts and crafts stores, refurbished theaters, and local and county offices.


Sunday, July 29

After Saturday’s lunch, this year’s version of the Richard family reunion could have turned into an indoor card party had not JoAnna come to the rescue. She got everyone outdoors by organizing a bocce tournament. A series of games continued until dusk on a warm, but not oppressive day – perfect summer weather.

On Sunday morning, the Larry Richard family was in charge of breakfast preparations. Cindy and JoAnna made two institutional pan-size frittatas, a baked egg dish that also contained the previous day’s leftovers: chicken, brats, cheese, tomatoes, and buns – all of them cut into bite-size piece, of course. We almost didn’t have enough to serve the 45 members of the family who attended. And those were two huge pans they used.

The days of a simple scrambled egg meal are over.




Alice, Cindy, and JoAnna Richard



Fire marshal Eddie (left) and his handiwork (below)














Front row: Larry, Alice, Al, Cyndi

Back row: Cindy, Paul, JoAnna

Clockwise from top: Shirley, Bud, Alice, Winnie, Larry, Marie, Lucille, Ed

Cindy, Al, JoAnna









The Children of Joseph and Wilhelmina Richard

Shirley, Winnie, Lucille, Larry, Marie