“WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE MY ETCHINGS?”

I consider that I had a reasonably good relationship with my dad. We talked. We laughed. I learned much from him. But there were many things he preferred not to talk about. He left mysteries for me to unravel.

It was 1988. My mother and I made a trip to the attic of the family home after my dad's passing. She wanted me to take some of the things he had stored for me – things I had mostly never seen and knew nothing about.

"What are these?" I asked, coming to some frames wrapped in old newspaper.

"Oh! Those are your dad's etchings," she said, a certain disdain in her voice.

"Etchings? What are etchings?"

"Don't you know? – That's an old line that bachelors use on dates: 'Wouldn't you like to come in and see my etchings?'"

"No, I never heard that old line," I said. I was 38 and married with children. Just when was she planning to tell me about this line? (However, just last week I heard Melvyn Douglas say it to Irene Dunne in Theodora Goes Wild.) "Well," I continued, "may I have them?"

Mother actually seemed quite pleased to have the old etchings leave her premises. They didn't appear sinister in and of themselves. I took them to my house where Mike was suitably impressed and we hung them. When we moved they were stored again, and somehow it was easy just to leave them in storage while Hallie complained that a house with blank walls is not homey. So we recently brought all eight boxes of stored "wall art" and photos – the etchings included -- to the farmhouse for consideration of possible re-hanging. The process was just as confusing for me as I had feared and I asked Hallie and Nick to help us while they were there. We spent several hours on the project. We felt good about some decisions, standing back to gaze at how well this particular "whatever" seemed to fit that spot perfectly. Other framed items weren't so easily placed and had to be laid aside for another time. I think Mike would like to see it all hung and the mess cleared away, but it just doesn't work like that for me.

Anyway, back to these etchings. We have seven of them, all numbered prints, and my dad picked them up while he lived in Raymond, WA, in the 1930s. The artist was Joe Knowles. One of etchings, "The Warning," is of a Native American on a horse and is inscribed as follows: "To my good friend, Vance Dobson, with compliments of the artist," and signed by Joe Knowles. Three are of sailboats, two are of sailing ships, and one (Mike's favorite) is of two people walking along a road – quite indistinct and what I think of as an oriental influence. These are numbered etchings, each bearing a typed sticker identifying its title and number out of so many printed from the original copper plate.

Perhaps all this background information isn't very interesting, but what is interesting to me is how the mystery of the etchings has unfolded. Through Grandma Ina's letters, I discovered that at Christmas 1933 my dad had gifted her with several of them, and she had quite a bit to say about them: "Your presents are very nice indeed and you said you wouldn't spend much on us! The etchings are lovely and will make a fine group over the mantel. Thank you, and don't do it again. These look like money to me. You mustn't make false promises, you know, about not spending much on Xmas presents. Well, these things are the aristocrats among pictures. I feel I'll have to live up to them. Myrtle is crazy over them. There is one of his, a ship, that she particularly wants. Do you think you could get a copy for her? I'll help out on it but want you should have a finger in the pie, either for her birthday or next Xmas. What say you?" So, by this I infer that probably three ("a group") of those we have had been gifts to Ina that my dad later saved for me.

My next discovery – years later – was of a full-page newspaper article about Joe Knowles, carefully folded and tucked away in a box of Grandma Ina's trinkets and photos. I found that article several times before I realized that it was about Joe Knowles, the artist responsible for the etchings. I learned that Joe lived in Seaview, in the same general region of southwestern Washington State as Raymond. That article provided a starting point for online research. But that's the subject of another post.

Have you heard of Joe Knowles? KW