The Bottlewasher: Selections from a Small-Town Newspaper Column of the Early 1950S

By Kay T. Reilly and Gretta H. Trainer

Few homemakers worked outside the home while Kay Trainer Reilly was growing up in Wisconsin. When she was 13, her mother accepted a job as a reporter for their local newspaper office. During those pre-feminist years (1951-55), Gretta also wrote a humorous, tongue-in-cheek, weekly column that attracted many fans. In some ways, she could be compared to the late columnist Erma Bombeck, who came on the scene years later.

In The Bottlewasher column Gretta claims that she has to please not only "The Big Wheel" at the office, but also her banker husband ("the Head of the house"), three kids, and a temperamental fox terrier at home. She therefore refers to herself as "a bottlewasher in two establishments."

After she died in 1991, Kay felt that her mothers unique and entertaining thoughts could be shared with other generations. So she chose 69 pieces from the column and added an introduction, occasional footnotes, and an epilogue. The result is a light-hearted, often hilarious book that brings to life a small town and its inhabitants from another era--sure to amuse and inform readers of today.

Anyone interested in newspaper work will delight in learning how the Bottlewashers place of employment produced a twice-weekly tabloid using equipment and methods that would be considered archaic today. Several of the pieces describe in detail the Bottlewashers many duties at the office, and explain how some of the machines actually function.

Memoirs are often adorned with hazy "facts" that are not always accurate. THE BOTTLEWASHER tells what life was really like fifty years ago. The reader gets the lowdown right from the horses mouth, you might say!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 6, 2001
• ISBN: 9781462823802

Kay T. Reilly

Gretta Hahn Trainer (the Bottlewasher) published several poems in magazines prior to her newspaper work. In 1963, when her husband died, she returned to the University of Wisconsin for a master’s degree in English literature and taught the subject in Wisconsin and California. Gretta died in 1991. Kay Trainer Reilly has had 16 letters to the editor published in New York City newspapers since 1981. When she became a widow in 1999, she moved from Manhattan to Rhinebeck, New York, where three more published in a local newspaper. She enjoys playing the piano and painting watercolors.

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Copyright © 2001 by Kay T. Reilly/ Gretta H. Trainer

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Contents

INTRODUCTION

June 12, 1952

Column Marks Anniversary;

It is Reprinted by Request

December 13, 1951

Desire for Television Set

Creates This Heady Problem

January 10, 1952

Lots of Bosses Give Orders,

But They’re Pretty Mixed Up

January 17, 1952

She Loves Her Government,

but Only 22.4 Percent Worth

January 24, 1952

Wanted: A Padlock to Fit One

Gold Pound of Butter

February 7, 1952

Slave to a Galley Blames

Everything on Mute Machine

April 17, 1952

Bird Lover Likes Feathered

Friends—With French Fries

June 5, 1952

Water Boy Sends People; But

Not Like Our Frankie

June 19, 1952

Dreams Come True Dept.; But

She’ll Cry Moving Day

July 17, 1952

Vacationing Reporter Has

Week All Cut Out for Her

August 28, 1952

Lesson on Labor Day Given;

Ironically, Teacher Learns It

October 2, 1952

A Veteran Tub Bather Will

Have No Shower Nonsense

October 23, 1952

October is Disappointing to

Sparta Gatherer of Leaves

October 30, 1952

Trick or Treat is No Fun for

Kids; the Head Enjoys It

November 6, 1952

Old Dog Learns Two New

Tricks; Just Giddy Fling

November 13, 1952

Snarls, Gloats Greet Fence-

Sitting Writer; Ballot Sequel

November 20, 1952

Man Rises to Fem Bait;

‘Nothing to Wear‘ Routine

December 11, 1952

Sorghum Theft Undiscovered

After Cheating on the Head

December 24, 1952

Tannenbaum Drinks Altogether

Too Much Water, Head Says

January 22, 1953

Rasslers Captivate Shameful

Gal Decked in Ribbon, Lace

January 29, 1953

Classified Ads Offer Drama,

Even Sale of a Commodore

March 19, 1953

Motion Before the House to

Reduce Income Tax Complaint

April 9, 1953

After Notable Practice, Things

are Now in Apple Pie Order

April 16, 1953

Without Champagne, Vessel

is Launched on Perch Lake

April 23, 1953

How to be Happy Though

Snagged; One Easy Lesson

May 7, 1953

No Rocking Chair on Her

Day; Cubs Braves Fanatic

May 28, 1953

The Queen Will Never Know

What Novelties She’s Missed

June 4, 1953

Braves Camper, Wigwam Unit,

Files Report on Outdoor Life

June 11, 1953

Anonymous Poet Writes Ode

to BW; Late Coronation Bid

June 25, 1953

Father’s Day Irritant Plagues

Head; Unmistakable Cruelty

July 2, 1953

Mollycoddled Bovines to Get

Their Days at Dairy Show

July 9, 1953

Pitched Tent in Central Park

to Mark Vacationer’s Trip

July 16, 1953

Hunted Pinchhitter So Long

She Had the Job Finished

July 30, 1953

Queen Contest’s Judge Mixed

Up with Trip and 23 Skidoo

August 6, 1953

Here’s Umpire for Sparta,

Tomah Test; Ammunition Too

August 27, 1953

Watermelon Linked to Auto

Driving Instructions by Head

September 3, 1953

Mental Accounting Ends Tips

to Porters, Bellhops, Cabmen

September 17, 1953

Tugboat Annie Rides Again

as Football Season Opens

October 15, 1953

Culture Won’t Absorb When

Furnace Interrupts Her Sleep

December 10, 1953

New Specialist Qualified as

Surgeon, Dog’s Day Variety

January 7, 1954

Ready Or Not, Here Come

Resolutions, Unkept, for ‘54

March 4, 1954

Escapes Furniture Moving,

but He Gets Usual Abuse

April 8, 1954

Parting Thrust at Red-Haired

Editor Who Shares This Page

April 22, 1954

The Sap Begins to Run and a

Birdbath is Forsaken

May 13, 1954

Hey Diddle, Diddle, Moon Is

Scorned for Leap Into Silo

May 20, 1954

A Three-Way Worry Besets

This Poor, Ailing Old Lady

May 27, 1954

The Quandary: So Many Places

to Go, But so Little to Wear

June 10, 1954

Mosquitoes Take What Should

Have Gone to the Red Cross

June 24, 1954

A Long-Eared Delegation Is

on Hand to Welcome Travelers

August 12, 1954

The Time Has Come to Talk

About Wisconsin Sweet Corn

August 26, 1954

Pickled Beets Detract from

Pleasure of a Rainy Sunday

September 16, 1954

Hurricanes and Frogs Come

Under Discussion This Week

October 7, 1954

Ear! Ear! A Most Terrible

Weakness Has Been Revealed

November 18, 1954

They Have Thousands of Good

Things to Eat at Home: Beans

December 9, 1954

Nuttier Than a Fruitcake

May be Right in This Case

January 6, 1955

The Year 1955 Looms Mighty

Sweet, Happy for This Corner

January 13, 1955

That Squeaking Is the Sound

of Pennies Being Pinched

January 20, 1955

There’s More to Printing Than

Merely Publishing a Newspaper

February 3, 1955

When it Comes to Birthdays,

40 Is a Naughty Word

February 24, 1955

Students Missed Important

Part of Newspaper on Tour

March 17, 1955

You Can Do Most Anything

To an Irishman, But Not This!

March 24, 1955

Rendezvous With Crazy Horse

Makes This Girl very Happy

June 23, 1955

Dairy Industries in State All

Love Her and Vice-Versa

June 30, 1955

There Are Times When the

Family Should Play Together

July 7, 1955

First Maid, After 17, Takes a

Leave of Absence

August 11, 1955

This Week a Guest Writer

Takes Over for You Know Who

August 25, 1955

If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Join

‘Em—Is Moral of This Story

September 15, 1955

This is About the Care and

Feeding of a Football Player

September 22, 1955

A Native of State Returns

Here for Last Resting Place

EPILOGUE

For Anne, who never met her biological grandmother

INTRODUCTION

According to recent polls, nostalgic folks of all ages think «the best decade» of the past century was the 1950s. Hightech freaks would scoff at this, of course, and insist that our present life couldn’t get much better. Meanwhile, obesity statistics and health problems have skyrocketed. Is all that butt-sitting in front of the Internet catching up with us?

True . . . some of us did sit on our rear ends a lot at the beginning of the fifties. Television sitcoms were in their infancy and about to hit an all-time high. Our family was the fourteenth in town to make a home for one of those wondrous entities. We remembered important statistics like that.

But just how realistic were those sitcoms? My siblings and I tried in vain to identify with Robert Young’s TV family. After all, Betty, Bud and Kathy were close to us in age. However, every time Father Knows Best came on the tube, we would snicker or feel embarrassed—especially me. Our dad would have choked on one of his unfiltered Camels if his oldest daughter had draped herself around his neck the way Betty snuggled up to her TV father. And, sure, a lot of men donned themselves in suits, ties and hats every time they stepped out of their homes. Yet were other families really so . . . sappy?

Americans during the fifties have the reputation of being bland, conforming, and fairly content with their everyday lives. However, as television sets became popular, more of us began to watch the nightly news; thus, we found ourselves experiencing new apprehension and distrust.

One of the nation’s greatest fears of that era was the threat of nuclear destruction. School children were taught how to crouch on the floor at the shriek of an air-raid drill and their parents were encouraged to install fallout shelters. A takeover by the commies seemed a real possibility. Joe McCarthy, Wisconsin’s notorious senator, attempted to exterminate this problem, but he ended up making personal enemies of his own. (And I used to think my native state was known for its cheese!)

For many of us, the first part of the decade held other terrors as well. When my mother wasn’t worrying about her half brother, who was stationed in Alaska during the Korean War (he survived), she panicked whenever one of us had a fever, sore throat, or stiff neck. The polio epidemic was especially bad in 1952; the vaccine had not yet appeared on the scene.

One afternoon when I was at the public swimming pool, a young girl around my age was sitting on the ledge. Just as I emerged from the water, she vomited into the air and missed my face by only inches. A few days later, we learned that she died of bulbar polio. Scary times, certainly.

Nowadays, people use computer chat rooms or TV and radio talk shows to spill their guts to the world. Back in the early fifties, most folks were not so eager to reveal their inner frustrations. It seemed my mother was an exception. She let hers hang out through a newspaper column called The Bottlewasher . . . often to her family’s dismay.

Sparta, Wisconsin was a small town when Gretta Hahn was born on January 31, 1916. (The road sign boasted 5,280 inhabitants by the time I came along.) Her father had died the previous day at the tender age of 27. According to his obituary, he had been in poor health for a long time, suffering with rheumatism, which finally affected his heart. A year and a half later Gretta acquired a stepfather, and eventually a half sister and brother.

Her mother (we called her Big Ma, later shortened to Big) was a strong-willed, devout German Lutheran, born under the stubborn sign of Taurus. She encouraged her daughter’s interest in becoming a teacher, and with financial help was able to send her to La Crosse State Teacher’s College, a short distance from Sparta.

While attending school, a friend introduced Gretta to Edwin J. Trainer. Ed was a tall, affable lad of Scots-Irish descent who had grown up on a farm and was now working in a bank in Viroqua, Wisconsin. His mop of black hair had not yet turned prematurely gray. He was eleven years her senior. And—uh oh— he was a Roman Catholic.

Apparently the two were smitten with each other. Although she had two and one-half years of school remaining before she would graduate, Gretta quit college in order to marry Ed. On their wedding day, in February of 1936, only my father’s sister and one or two others were able to attend the ceremony. The bride’s mother was a no-show, and she refused to have anything to do with the happy couple. Unfortunately, this estrangement would last for several years.

It is not difficult to understand my grandmother’s grief. Her daughter was now officially excommunicated from the German Lutheran Church for having converted to Catholicism (conversion had been required for the marriage to take place). Also, because she had dropped out of college, Gretta’s potential career as a teacher now seemed unlikely. In those days, married women were not expected to have teaching careers outside the home. But what probably upset my grandmother the most was the fact that her daughter had . . . horrors! . . . married a Roman Catholic.

It is said that family relationships offer one of the best opportunities for working out karma from past lives. It must have been embarrassing for Big to face her friends and fellow church members, convinced that they were shaking their heads behind her back. She may also have worried that her wayward daughter would be denied salvation and sizzle in hell for eternity.

Gretta, as a newly converted Catholic, may or may not have feared her mother‘s destiny was similarly bleak.

Ma and Pa (we kids loved the „Ma & Pa Kettle" movies) rarely discussed religious differences in front of us. The subject may have been a hornet‘s nest they determined not to touch . . . maybe even between themselves. Consequently, our spiritual instructions were left in the hands of the good nuns at St. Patrick‘s parochial school.

I sometimes wonder what my ex-Lutheran mother really thought about our latest Catholic teaching. One day, as a third- grader, I burst into the house exclaiming, "Good news! Father Deeney’s mother died on her birthday! That means she went straight to heaven!" (None of this lurking about in purgatory . . . where, we were guaranteed, souls received the same rotten treatment as they would in hell, only it wouldn’t be a forever thing.)

Pa was able to land a job as a cashier at the Monroe County Bank in Sparta. (In 1948 he was also named to the bank’s board of directors; ten years later, he became president of the bank.) For some reason, my parents spent the bulk of their marriage in houses only a few minutes’ walk from where Ma grew up, and where my grandmother continued to dwell for much of her nearly 88 years.

As we got older, Big slowly involved herself in our lives. How could she not? We passed her house nearly every day on our way to town. I—as the oldest, perceptive, artistic, child—always sensed her hesitation in getting too close to us. Wigger, our fox terrier, had no trouble charming her, though. Big would slap her thighs and let out a hearty hee, hee, hee whenever the dog acted silly.

We used to love the fresh donut smell that often permeated Big’s kitchen. On donut-baking days, we left her house with a big greasy bag of warm donuts. Wigger always got a special treat: the holes.

As we grew to admire and, yes, love our Lutheran grandmother, I would worry about her final destination in the great Hereafter. According to Catholic teachings of that era, as Big was not a baptized Catholic, she would never be allowed into heaven—and therefore „never see the face of God." Because of this, when she finally took off, she could expect to reach nothing loftier than a place called limbo (which didn‘t sound all that bad to me . . . certainly a better option than eternal hellfire). Somehow, this whole scenario just didn‘t make sense. Big and our other Protestant relatives were friendly, decent people . . . and certainly religious. We often saw Big sitting on her front porch, fanning herself with the Jesus fan from the Lutheran Church.

It seemed to us that Ma enjoyed mental stimulation more than physical activities. She was definitely not the athletic type. However, whenever she was on one of her many diets, she would enthusiastically bash her hindquarters against a wall (how they would shake . . . the walls!), or roll her hips on the floor (how Wigger would yap!). She spent much of her life battling an excess- poundage problem. John, Alice and I would tease that one of her favorite pastimes was sitting in a chair, reading a book and eating fudge.

During those pre-television, pre-newspaper office days, Ma often asked us to pick up some „escape novels" from the public library—any novels, she devoured them all—and we had to lug them home to her by the armsful. Was she too embarrassed to choose them herself, or did she merely look forward to our little surprises to perk up her day? As another diversion from housework, she wrote beautiful poems, several of which were published in various magazines.

So, the offer from the Monroe Country Publishers came along at the right time. Her children were growing up and, like many homemakers today, she felt she needed to become more fulfilled. A job as a newspaper reporter was the solution.

Ma was in her mid-to-late thirties when she authored The Bottlewasher column—a mere whippersnapper from where I sit today. Nevertheless, she delighted in referring to herself as the poor, old, fat, middle-aged Bottlewasher (ignoring a possible redundancy in the description). Could other women have considered themselves over the hill at such a tender age back then? I doubt it.

In The Bottlewasher, our mother permitted herself a lot of exaggeration and creative license. At holiday times, for instance, she claimed to gather her brood around her knee for a question- and-answer session. She would then have us prattle some smart-aleck, ridiculous response that we could only hope our friends would not take literally.

Ma often declared that adolescents were a more fascinating species than younger children. By the time they reached their teens, according to her, their earlier slugfest sessions were replaced by the more invigorating verbal attacks. Although she would appear to be annoyed with us, we knew she was amused by our own corny arguments. After all, she had been on her high school debate team!

In hindsight, I wonder what our family life would have been like if we had paid more attention to nutritious meals. We polished off an enormous amount of fatty meats, dairy products, and rich desserts. (Thank God for the fresh vegetables from Pa’s garden, although we probably cooked them to death!) Could we have avoided many of our emotional outbursts and bickerings if we had simply eliminated junk foods? Even Wigger tore around in a hyperactive frenzy from the stuff we would feed her, especially my homemade fudge. Did anyone else back in the fifties know that chocolate is a doggie no-no? We sure didn‘t.

I admit that I was responsible for much of our sugar eating. I was always eager to try a new and delicious cake or cookie recipe— not only for the thrill of mastery, but because I enjoyed the cheers of appreciation. (Sound familiar?)

But, you know . . . I think we Earth dwellers learn and grow at our own speed. Somehow, it all comes out in the wash in the end and we do finally „get there." Whatever their origins, our little family foibles and mishaps were able to supply the fodder my mother eagerly used in churning out her weekly column.

It is claimed that humanity‘s consciousness has expanded, especially over the past few decades. Because of technological inventions, advanced knowledge regarding health, nutrition, the mind-body connection, and more acceptance of other religions, ethnic groups and life styles, we are said to have taken giant leaps in our evolution. I hope so. Maybe in this new century we can also realize that our thoughts and actions do indeed create our future, and will learn to use them wisely.

But let‘s now go back to the early fifties . . . to a time when newspaper columns were pounded out on manual typewriters and life seemed simpler, yet was in many ways more problematic— while I resurrect and reminisce with selections from The Bottlewasher column.

*  *  *  *  *  *

NOTE: The following includes a repeat of the first piece from the column. As it explains the why’s and who’s, I jumped it ahead of the others.

June 12, 1952

Column Marks Anniversary;

It is Reprinted by Request

A year ago this week the first Bottlewasher appeared on the front page. The edition was a complete sellout. There is not a single copy left in the office except for the file. Yesiree, that paper sold like hot cakes, and the Bottlewasher refuses to believe the result was the headline feature of that day. She is quite sure the eager public bought it out just because . . . aw, shucks, she better not say it.

However, just in case a few readers may have missed the debut, and because a few other people asleep at the switch have asked how The Bottlewasher got its name, the Bottlewasher is borrowing a trick from Out Our Way, and reprinting the first Bottlewasher under the heading Reprinted by Request.[1] She will not say at whose request, and, if pressed on the subject, would have to tell a big whopper; but, let a poor, old, fat, middle- aged Bottlewasher have her fun, especially on her anniversary.

The following, naturally, should be in quotes, but the typesetters in the back room do not like quotes or exclamation points so the Bottlewasher is scared to use too many. Use your imagination.

There is no chief cook at our house any more. The First Maid, going on