This Is the Good Life'; An Old World Grandfather's Pride in the Land FINAL Edition

• Published in: The Washington post
• Main Author: Fenyvesi, Charles
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, D.C WP Company LLC d/b/a The Washington Post 20.12.1990
• ISSN: 0190-8286

Holidays are for family and remembrance, and for recalling people who serve as beacons in our lives. In my family, the master gardener and model farmer was my maternal grandfather, Karl Schwarcz, or Karoly in Hungarian. Born in 1861 in Derzs, a tiny village in northeastern Hungary, he managed several thousand acres of land - some inherited, some acquired and some rented from aristocrats far wealthier than he. Karl Schwarcz loved wheat fields and trees, roses and horses and rivers. He cherished those parts of the Jewish liturgy that gave thanks to God for the abundance of life. On a sunny day each spring, he would decorate his best open carriage and his two best horses with long, brightly colored ribbons and take his wife, Roza, and their children for a ride around all the lands he owned and leased to inspect the fresh green stalks of new wheat. When Karl and Roza Schwarcz walked under one of the allees along the Danube River, he used his walking stick to hit the spiky husks of horse chestnuts so they split, releasing the nuts that were shinier than the sweet chestnuts they resembled and as brown as a crust of Hungarian bread. There were always a few horses pulling fiacres (carriages) to snap up and eat the nuts.