Volume 20, Number 4,
April 1974:
With These Two Hands

Text-only version

ISSUE HOME PAGE

ABOUT THIS ISSUE
- about KSN

IN THIS ISSUE
- section 1
- section 2
- section 3
- section 4
- section 5
- section 6
- section 7
- section 8
- section 9
- section 10
- conclusion

With These Two Hands
by Robert J.Boles

continued...

Richard was fortunate enough to marry an understanding and tolerant young woman, for living with a budding taxidermist wasn’t always easy. She well deserves the dedication he made to her in one of his books, "How to Mount Birds," which reads "...and to my wife Katharina, who spent altogether too many lonely hours with the children while I was burning the midnight oil in my taxidermy studio."

Even farming, which Richard understood well, sometimes became a problem. After working on his birds until two or three o’clock in the morning, rising before daylight to do the chores and start on the day’s farming duties called for almost superhuman willpower and endurance.

It was only natural that Richard’s sons would also develop a love of the outdoors, and they accompanied him on numerous collecting expeditions to obtain rare and elusive specimens for mounting. Unlike most farmers, Richard actually looked forward to rainy days, for then he could work in his laboratory without feeling guilty of neglecting the farm work.

Restrictions on the possession of mounted birds were much less stringent in the 1920's than they are today, and even before his marriage to Katharina the collection of mounted specimens in the Schmidt household had reached such proportions that by the fall of 1929 the first group of visitors, a troop of Boy Scouts, came to see the display. This group was but the first of many to come to the farm for an "educational museum tour."