Did I cause World War II? Some say yes.

This is my mother at about 7 years old.  I would guess that this is a picture taken to commemorate the purchase of the new washing machine on mom's left since pictures of kids and dogs were not real important at the time, but a new waahing machine was!  And the washer seems to be more centered than mother!  LOL

This is my mother when she was in high school.  She was a farm girl with the soul of an angel.  Now I did hear tales that perhaps mother was not the saint we gave her credit for and history did show that before she met my father, she was married to a man named Jack Walden and my oldest sister was indeed a Walden when we were in school and before she married.  What ever became of him is unknown to any of us.  I recall scuttlebutt that he was a gangster from the Chicago area and mother did indeed live in Chicago before Josephine was born.  It was rumored that she had escaped his evil clutches and returned to Plevna, Kansas and grandma Haas had sold a cow to pay the doctor bill when the baby was born.  No one is alive now to ask, so I guess if I want to I can make up a story, but for history's sake, I will not.

This is my mother and father when they eloped.  Now here is another story.  Dad had been married before and he and his wife had 5 children.  There were 4 boys and one girl.  One of the boys and the girl died of sand pneumonia back in the "dirty 30's"  His wife was rumored to have lost her mind and then died or perhaps taken her life.  Dad put the 3 boys in an orphanage.  Earl and Richard were adopted, but Gene remained in the orphanage until he was taken by a family named Banks who did not adopt him, but gave him a home until he was mostly grown.  Some where I have letters that he wrote to my dad while in the orphange which I shall post for posterity, but not now.  They are very sad.

There were also rumors that dad had his own dark side and I recall a man named Costello that he took me once to the house and I waited in the road while he went inside and talked to him.  Frank Costello lived in a very big house across the river.  And that is all I know about that!  We never went there again and what Dad  did was never fully known to us.

This is me when I was tiny (a sight that will never be repeated).Wasn't I the cutest little thing that you ever saw?   I was hatched out in  Nickerson, Kansas  right before Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese.

Now, I ask you, what the hell happened!?  My mother was beautiful and my father looked like he was mostly Irish and here I come as sturdy German stock.  But it is what it is.  I fully intend to delve into my dark past over the next few weeks, so hang on kiddies, we may be in for a bumpy ride!

The Stroh place falls by the wayside.

I do not remember the layout of the house, but I do recall the yard.  In the summer time we were brown as little berries and spent very little time in the house.  Why would we stay in the house?  There was nothing there except our beds.  Television had not been invented to our knowledge.  When it rained the yard turned to a lake.  Well a giant mud hole might be a better description!  And just like a heat seeking missle we gravitated to the mud hole.  Since bath night was only on Saturday when we got muddy we could be sure that we were going to be crammed under the pump out in the yard and "rinsed off."    Life was dangerous for little kids.  Donna poked her finger at a turtle and the turtle latched on and did not let go.  The only solution for that was to cut the turtles head off and this caused his vice like grip to loosen in time.  Poor Donna.

I fell victim to the old gander which proceeded to give me a flogging that was one for the record books.  Mother did save me, to her credit.  The goose business and the fact that my brother Jake had whacked me over the head with a turnip when I was very small seemed to be my sole claim to fame in the Bartholomew household.  Dad farmed with a man named John Britain.  Mother drove the truck and hauled the grain to market, except for the year she gave birth to Dorothy.  Back in those days it was an unwritten law that when a woman had a baby she was to stay in bed for 10 days. I remember mother in bed and we were allowed to stand by her bed for 5 minutes every day and gaze at her and the baby.  We hated that baby that had made our mother have to go to bed for 10 days and maybe she would die.  But she didn't.

Life was good there, though.  We had the milk cow and every morning she was "staked out" beside the road so she could eat grass all day.  Then when it came time to milk her, we unstaked her and herded her along the road to home.  Some times she liked to just mosey along and we found that if we grabbed her tail, she would run home.  If we ran her all the way home, she would not give us her milk.  That got us more than one "licking".  A  licking did not entail the use of the tongue, it entailed the use of a leather strap.  I laugh when I remember mother saying on  more than one occasion, "Do you want a licking!"  Oh, yes, mother, you know I do!  I do not recall ever really wanting one, but I do recall getting them.  Today they would call it child abuse, but back then, it was called "keeping them in line and teaching them to be good."  I think we turned out pretty good and I never hated my mother for spanking me.  She never did it for fun, just to enforce what she said.  And I must confess, several times I heard my mothers voice issuing from my mouth, "Do you want a licking?  Do you want me to come in there?"

I recall one of the cows dying and we had to drag it to the pasture, soak it in coal oil,  and burn it.  That must have been when the anthrax epidemic happened.  I remember dad plowing with the horse and plow.  I remember taking him water.  I remember baby bunnies in the field.  I remember wolves howling at night.  I remember being afraid of a dog because he was stumbling around.  He had Rabies.  I remember my childhood and it makes me sad that it all ended, things changed and that era will never be again.  We walked wherever we went.  And when we left the Stroh place we put all our belongings on a hayrack that was hitched to 2 horses and it took the better part of the day to move across town.  We moved to the Ailmore place, which I think was a step up in the world.  It was a two bedroom shack on the other side of Bull Creek.  It was owned by a doctor.  There were trees in the yard and we would have a telephone!  

A snap shot of my test kitchen! Oh, and the judge of the cookies!

You may remember this little tyke when I babysat her several years back.  Well, now she is growing up and insisting I make her cookie, which of course, I did.

 Here you go.  Try this and tell me what you think!  This one is gluten free for your granny.

 

Hmm.  This has a different taste.  Gluten free, you say?

By jove!  I think I like this!  Why yes, yes I do!  Let me give these a big 2 thumbs up!

 

 

And that was how the day went!  A rousing success for my gluten free friends!

 

 

Many years ago and far, far away.

Way back in the dark recesses of my mind is probably the first memory of my life.  It was before I started school.  Before sister Dorothy was born.  I must have been 4 years old when we lived on the Stroh place outside of Nickerson towards the Arkansas River.  I have many memories of that place, so we must have lived there for a while, or that was when my tiny mind was first starting to grasp things.

See there, how innocent I am?  So anyway, back to this memory.  We had an uncle. Well, we had several, but this one I am not sure how he was connected.  Was not on mom's side  unless it was a way distant one.  So it must have been one of the renegades from my dad's side.  His name was Uncle Ode.   That is all I know.  No last name.  Anyway, one day he came for a visit.  I probably seen him two times in my whole life.  Uncle Ode smoked a pipe, and like all little kids, I was fascinated with that pipe.  So he let me have puff.  I recall I must have done something because all the adults laughed.  He gave me several puff off that pipe and every time the grown ups laughed.  Then I got sick.  Oh, very sick.  And then the grown ups were not laughing any more.  Served them right, I think.

On the Stroh place, mother used to go to "Club".  I do not remember how often or where, but I remember "Club".  Us kids went with her, because there was one lady designated to watch over us and we better be good, and we better be quiet and there better not be any bad reports.  Back then parents ruled the home.   Now there is a tradition that I wish had been kept!

We had a chicken house and several times something had gotten in and got a hen.  So dad set out back and when the weasel showed up, he killed it.  Now, I do not remember our family ever owning a gun, so I am wondering just what he killed it with,  and I was way to young to remember much about that ordeal.  I think it was a weasel.  Could have been almost anything.

I remember us being on the porch one day and the cat came to the yard with a baby chicken in its mouth.  Mother dispensed Jake and the cat into the forest and I remember Jake had a hatchet.  When he came back he still had the hatchet, but I never seen that cat again.  Big yellow tom cat.

Jake and I were in charge of taking the old milk cow down to the road and letting her eat the grass in the ditch.  She would amuse herself like that for quite a while and when we seen her looking towards the house, we were supposed to go "bring her 'round".  One of our favorite ways of doing this was to grab her tail.  This would cause her to run for the barn a lot faster.  Otherwise we had to walk behind her with a switch and touch her rump when she stopped to eat grass.  That was pretty boring!  Course when we made her run, she did not give much milk.  No winning when you are 5 years old.

Sister Donna poked her finger at a turtle once and it latched on to her finger.  Much discussion on that one.  Cut it off?  No way!  It will never let go if it is dead and she will have that thing hanging on her finger for the rest of her life.  And try to catch a husband with a turtle head on your finger!  But be patient and it will let go when the sun goes down.  I do not know how that one played out, but I do not think she still has it hanging off her finger!  So it must have been resolved.

My brother Gene came home from the Army for a brief visit and then was gone and wound up in prison for writing hot checks.  But it was not his fault!  It was that damn Banks boy that made him do it.

The best part of that time in my life was learning to take care of my hair!  Sarcasm there.  The way we got haircuts back then was to have a bowl placed over our head and then trim around the edge of the bowl.  Hence the term "bowl hair cut".  This was second only to washing of the hair for pure enjoyment.  This is how that went down.  We had no hot water, and the only source of water was a pitcher pump in the corner of the kitchen.  This pumped into a sink (of sorts) which was attached to a pipe that ran through the wall and outside into the yard.  Mother would tuck me under her arm with one hand supporting my flopping head and sister Josephine would start pumping.  Ice cold water was pouring into my hair at about 7 gallons per second.  Shampoo and lather and rinse.  I learned very early not to scream , beg, and whatever I did do not wiggle or try to kick free because that just prolonged the ordeal and got my butt beat royally!  And you think you had it rough! 

Well, I could reminisce all day here, but this is not getting the chores done.   When we left the Stroh place we moved to the Ailmore place.  I think my next book may cover some of my childhood lived in abject poverty, but you know what?  I would not have it any other way!

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Alina & Tommy sitting in a tree?

Here is Alina, the very proud mother!!!

Here is great Aunt Lou and the lovely little Adriana!

Now here is a picture of daddy Tom and Grandma Donna!  The only other picture I have of Tom also has grandma on the other side.  As you kow I do not use pictures without permission and I did not get permission from Donna for any picture except this one.  Sorry.

The red writing below is now moot since you have your pictures!!

I must apologize because there are no pictures here, but I can not figure how to get them with someone elses software.  When I get home I will add pictures.  Thanks for understanding an old woman who is clueless on a computer!!

As you know I am on vacation!  This is my first evening. Left Pueblo this morning, well actually yesterday, which was Sunday. Stopped in Lakin for lunch with the kiddies, but that is a whole nuther blog!  Arrived in Hutchinson, Kansas around 7:00 PM.  Where is the first place we had to go upon arrival at my sister Donna's house?  You guessed it!!  She has a brand new, and the only one in the world at the time, Grand Daughter!  Her only son, Tom Bartholomew and his lovely wife, Alina are the proud parents of a bouncing baby girl, born only the day before.  How exciting is that? And this precious little baby was wanting to meet me! Me! Can you beleive that? At least that is what Donna told me and of course I beleive everything people tell me.

Now, I want to go on record as saying, this may look like a normal baby, but such is not the case.  Far be it from me to brag about my family of which I am the official Matriarch, having outlived the other older siblings, but I shall digress and do just that.  Her mother is Alina Aldatova, formerly of Russia and current and former Karate/Kick Boxing Champion of the World.  I kid you not! Go Google Alina and there she pops up.  My traveling companion, the wiccan, reminded me to mind my manners as I had not yet met Alina, and I sometimes come across a tad bit overbearing. She did, however, say she had my back.  Yeah, my waaaaaaay back.

Alina is a very sweet and wonderful person and I think she liked me as I left the room in one piece! I had seen pictures of her in her karate poses and asked if she would show me how she could put her foot clear up over her head while standing flat footed on the floor.  She declined, but there will be another day.

While Alina is a world wide celebrity, Tom is fairly well known in this area,  He is a salesman for Sysco Foods which sells to resturants and institutions.  Not just your old run of the mill salesman either.  Boy has been very succesful in this field.  Wins all sorts of awards, but the best part is his customers love him to death. He is one of the sweetest little (and I use the term lovingly, not literally) kids I have ever known.  But while Tom is a celebrity in the food service circle, his mother is a celebrity in the resturaunt circle.

Donna Bartholomew along with her partner, Karen LeShure own and operate Skaets Steak Shop in Hutchinson, Kansas.  Now this place has been around for quite some time.  My first job was washing dishes at Skaets in 1959. At that time it was owned by Norman Deschene and his wife.  I was 18 at the time, a mere slip of a girl, unsullied by the world.  But there is a whole new kettle of worms! 

Tomorrow I shall give you the history of  Bartholomew involvement in food service in Hutchinson, Kansas.  For now we shall just wait till Donna gets up and I can verify a few things before I post this. In the meantime, I am going to pull on some shorts and tee shirt and a pair of tennies and jog on over to McDonalds on the highway to meet my boy cousins.  I have not talked to them, but I did email them that I was headed this way and I think they will get the telepathic message.  If they are there I will eat yogurt, if not I will do the sausage and grease thing. BBL (In chat room talk that means Be Back Later!)

Oh, and tomorrow I will be lunching with the girl cousin and a Kansas politician of rather high standing, who just happens to be a Republican. Need a picture of him for my phone.