These are the two that started it all! This was their wedding picture. Mom and Dad. Christine and Reuben Bartholomew, January 19, 1935. Or thereabouts. The family record may be a bit screwed up. The point is not that, the point is this is the woman who gave birth to me and the man who caused that to happen.
My dad was pretty much a share cropper and did day labor for farmers in the area. He had been in World War 1 in the Calvary. I know this because he had a scar on his upper arm close to his shoulder where he had been bitten by a horse. I am very careful around horses because I do not want one to bite me. They must have been happy because they had a baby every two years right up until Dorothy was born and then they stopped that nonsense.
Back in those days, the best anyone could hope to do was eke out a living and that is what they did. There were 6 little mouths to be fed and 6 little bodies to be clothed. Mom cleaned houses for the ladies around town and us kids kind of just existed. There were two times during the year we knew we would get something new. It goes without saying that one of those was Christmas. Santa Claus could always be counted on to deliver to our house. I think that might have been helped by our dear Aunt Helen and Uncle Skinny. They sometimes came by about that time of year. But maybe not because my mother was very resourceful and hard working. She raised chickens and rabbits and I learned very early how to gut a rabbit and I could then and still can now, wring the neck on a chicken and scald it and pick it faster then anyone else. I digress.
The other time something new could be had was when school started. We knew we would get a new pair of shoes and a new dress. This is how the shoe thing worked; we got a new pair of shoes from the Sears and Roebuck catalog. Our feet were carefully measured and they would be brown. They would be lace ups and they would be leather. And they would fit. And they would last. My shoes would be handed down to Donna when I outgrew them. Donna's would go to Mary and Mary's to Dorothy. There the cycle ended. The shoes then left our house and went to God only knows where, but there must have been someone poorer than us!
Ah, but the new dresses were planned for the whole year preceding. Mom went to the feed store in town for the chicken feed and rabbit pellets. Gooch feed packaged their wares in a cotton bag with Gooch clearly marked on the bag. Flour and sugar also came in those bags. Yeah,and corn meal. About everything because the world had not yet become a disposeable entity. Mother would buy matching bags so she had enough for one dress. Then she would choose another color and pattern for the next go round. She very carefully cut out one dress and sewed it for each of us. That was our new dress for school. Of course they were handed down.
Of course there were also times when the Gooch trademark was placed not quite where it should have been and the "ch" or "Go" might appear on the hem of the skirt, but Momma always tried to keep that in the back so we did not see it. Now I gotta go on record here as saying that Gooch always had the best and that was their logo "Gooch's Best." That also went for the bags. I sell on ebay and several years back I sold a big pile of the bags. The bags were 36" x 36" and the least I got for one was $8.99 + shipping and I sold one to a lady in Korea for $49.00 + shipping. I would love to luck into a bunch more of those.
Anyway, until I was grown and gone I was known as "One of the Gooch girls." Until I was 8 I thought my name was Louella Gooch. I did not give a rat's ass. My mother worked hard making clothes for us kids. When I hear Dolly Partin sing her "Coat of Many Colors" I remember my mother bringing home some leftover slip cover material from some place and making me a brand new coat. It was corduroy and it was light teal. I loved that coat and when I could no longer fit in it my heart was broken.
I also remember my mother and her "box of rags." When our clothes reached the point where they could no longer be repaired they went to the rag box. Mother would then carefully cut out the "good parts" which were like the skirt and parts of the sleeves that had no wear. These were used for quilts. I have curtains hanging in my kitchen that I can point to and know that my mother had a blouse with that fabric in her later life. Old habits die hard.
The parts that were still kind of good were torn into strips. A slit was cut in each end and they were linked together and rolled into a ball. This was then taken to the "weaver lady down by the doctor's office, " where they were woven into a rug of whatever length we had scraps to make. We could come home with a nice rug for a couple dollars.
When mother got something wool she was in hog heaven. Wool was cut into strips about 3/4" wide and sewn together. She then took her crochet hook and cotton twine and somehow crocheted the strips into a thick rug. Wish I could remember how she did that.
Sometimes she was Momma, sometimes she was Mother. She was also Mom. And later grandma. She was the driving force behind the woman I am today. Not because she made me who I am, but she emolated who I should become. I wonder if someday one of my kids will sit at a computer and remember me with the same all consuming love that I still have for her? We will see.
