The Bateman Family

Explaining family relationships as a backdrop for what’s to come is something akin to begats in the Bible, necessary (at least to the author), but boring. As I write, I’ve tried very hard to stay away from boring in Cat Skinner – a Story of Lust, Love and Loss in the 1930’s, but you may get a taste of it here.

My cousin, Janet Peterson Esser, and I have been exchanging email about the Bateman family. Her mother, Evelyn (“Toots”) Ruth Bateman Peterson was my dad, Webster (“Webb”) Warren Bateman’s oldest sister. There were six siblings. After Toots came Raymond Wellington, then Webb, followed by Walter Harrison, Vivian Lois, and Blanche May. They were born to James (“Jim”) Robert Bateman and Tomine Teodine (“Dena”) Ramsland Bateman during the first two decades of 1900. 

Thanks to Janet, I now have some details about life in the Merchant Hotel in Almont, North Dakota that I wouldn’t otherwise have. Janet verified the Bateman family did live in the hotel (she remembers visiting the hotel as a young child) while Jim operated the pool hall and livery stable across the street. What becomes obvious in our exchange of information is Toot’s natural instinct to “mother” Ray, the oldest brother and Webb, two years younger. At the time the boys left to join the circus, Toots was seventeen, Ray sixteen and Webb fourteen years old.

“I remember Mom (“Toots”) talking about how upset she was with her parents that they allowed the boys to do it [join the circus],” Janet commented in an email and later asked, “So why did they?”

I responded with facts from Dad’s own brief memoir, information Janet hadn’t known. 

Ray was almost strangled to death by Professor DeNoyer, the head master at school. He might have been if the janitor hadn't pulled him off Ray. DeNoyer was also a boarder at the hotel, paying $30/month rent.  

Jim lectured both boys even though Dad wasn't in the fight. He said (according to Dad), "If you boys don't want to go to school and behave, you can go out and go to work for your own living." Dad and Ray thought that was a good deal and initially "rustled" jobs on separate farms working 14 hour days, seven days a week for $15/month. Dad also said about his farm job, “I think dogs had it better." And from there they joined the circus which made one night stands in small towns in the Dakotas and Minnesota. 

When Dad reflected on Jim telling the boys to go get work, he said it seemed Jim was more interested in getting rent than feeding two hungry boys. Obviously Dena went along with it or felt she had no say in the matter. DeNoyer was later sent to an insane asylum for the mentally ill and criminally insane. He died there.  

While recitation of family lineage may get a bit tiresome, the stories the family relationships produce are truly stranger than fiction – and deserve to be told.

The New "Game"

In my dad’s very brief memoir, he had this to say about the first Christmas in the Almont hotel his mother operated. It was 1922, Webb was eleven years old and he was learning a bit about the birds and the bees.

In six months the hotel was doing well, so all the relatives and their hired help, the boarders and some friends came to the hotel for a two day Christmas party. The rafters rang with merriment and in a dark room upstairs, a Russian girl, who worked for my uncle, and I played a new game that was new and pretty exciting.

Following is my interpretation of what happened:

The bedroom had a couple single beds, straight backed wooden chairs, a small dresser, and a table with a kerosene lamp, which they lit. Webb closed the door, grabbed the key hanging on a hook close by, stuck it in the lock and made sure he heard the tumbler click into place.

“Just makin’ sure we aren’t bothered by some drunk,” Webb offered as an excuse for the locked door, hooking his thumbs over the top of his belt, not sure what to do next.

“I can teach you game,” Alina offered in broken, but teasing English. She smiled. The small gap between her front teeth made her seem even more playful and inviting. Her honey blonde hair was pulled back with a scarf tied around her head, Indian style. There was no reason for her to follow fashion and wear a cropped do like some of the women in town. There were a couple downstairs. Even Toots was wearing her hair shorter these days.

It was also obvious Alina wasn’t wearing the breast flattening, hide-every-curve kind of corset he’d seen his mother cinched into a time or two. As a hired farm girl, that get-up wouldn’t have been practical and she couldn’t afford it anyway. He was happy about that. He had ogled her curves all evening.

Alina sat on the edge of the bed, hazel eyes glistening with anticipation of what she would be showing Webb. She inched up the hem of her long-sleeved, drop-waist wool dress, revealing shapely legs in dark stockings. Earlier as Webb followed her up the stairs, watching her hips sway from side to side as she climbed, he’d counted what seemed to be about a hundred buttons down her back. He was up for the challenge – in more ways than one.

“What kinda game are you talkin’ about?” Webb asked somehow knowing it wasn’t going to be kick the can.

“You take off …” she paused to think of the word. “Clothes. Not all. One first. Then I do.”

Webb hesitated a moment. Under his shirt and pants, he had on long handled underwear with a long row of buttons down the front and a flap in back, the same kind he’d been wearing as long as he could remember, especially in the dead of winter. The only difference - now they were his own. He’d outgrown wearing Ray’s hand-me-downs and thank God, his mother wasn’t making him wear his dad’s left overs.

(To be continued in Cat Skinner)

Not Worth a Tinker's Dam

In the notes my dad left about his youth, I wondered why he started his memoir at age 28, referring to himself as, “not worth a tinker’s dam.” A tinker was traveling repairman a couple centuries ago, who used temporary patches to repair holes in metal pots and pans. The material used for patching might have been mud, clay or wet paper. The dam wasn’t worth a damn! 
 

My dad didn't finish his memoir, but once my half sister, LaReta, shared letters her mother had written to our father, between 1936 and 1939, I understood. Dad was not the man I later knew him to be. (I was born in 1945). My story of his younger years, 1920's and '30's, is fiction, but based on facts garnered from Webb himself, his first wife, Dorothy, and historical information. Following is an excerpt from Cat Skinner, Chapter 1.

 

Dorothy’s too young to be gone. Only twenty-seven, for God’s sake! Webb hunched his muscled shoulders, conditioned by years of farm labor and construction work, toward the steering wheel.

I should be lying in that coffin for the way I treated her. Twenty-eight years old and I’m not worth a tinker’s dam! Been to the top and bottom in a lotta ways, but this is the worst payback a man can get for his mistakes.

Guilt and regret were a load Webster Warren Bateman’s six foot, one hundred and ninety pound frame wasn’t used to carrying. He was a handsome Norwegian with a wavy shock of light brown hair. High cheekbones and a dimpled smile added to his good looks. His facial features were boyishly soft even though he wasn’t.  Born on a farm near Milroy, Minnesota, May 28, 1911, Webb was a guy who could hold his liquor, put on a poker face, shoot pool with the best of them, and tell stories until his audience, drunk or sober, was in stiches. He was a man used to being the center of attention and liked it. The ladies liked him too… long before Dorothy and Ogallala.

Webb’s deep set blue eyes, usually mischievous, scanned the road ahead through fading light. He was headed west from Ogallala, Nebraska toward Cheyenne, Wyoming. It would take another three hours on Highway 30 before he turned north onto 87. His brows furrowed into a serious scowl. Exhaust clouds roiled behind the 1930 Chevy Sedan mirroring thoughts churning in his head. It was Wednesday evening, March 8th, 1939 and it was cold. The temperature had dropped below freezing again. At least it’s not snowing. Hell of a blizzard we worked in just four days ago. Glad it didn’t stick or I’d probably never made it to North Dakota in time.

 

Cat Skinner: The Search for a Subtitle

Last Friday morning, I shared with my once-a-month breakfast group, Women in Transition (WIT), the tentative name of the novel I’m writing about my father’s life in the 1920’s and 30’s.

Cat Skinner drew non-responsive stares - which compelled me to explain the name. I didn’t want my friends to think I’m descended from a psychopath or that I’m promoting cruelty to animals. I recently helped to start a non-profit benefiting animals at our local shelter – for heaven’s sake!

Following is an excerpt from Chapter 1:

He was used to being in charge and in control, whether it was operating heavy equipment: Caterpillar tractors, bull dozers, crushers, backhoes, blades, shovels, dump trucks – or men. He’d been a shift boss on a lot of jobs. He knew how to lead and get things done. He was a Cat Skinner. That’s what they called heavy equipment operators. Webb liked the moniker because it recognized his skill, but he joked with friends about “skinner” since it referred to a man who drove a mule team. Skinning a mule just meant you were smarter than the mule. “A questionable gauge of intelligence,” Webb would say with a belly laugh and a drink in his hand.

There are those who know what’s meant by the term, Cat Skinner, but usually they’re folks with lots of miles behind them and a penchant for starting sentences with, “Back in my day…”

So here is my dilemma. What should the subtitle be?

My dad was a Cat Skinner who was self-educated. He only attended a year and a half of high school – maybe not even that long since he and his brother were told to leave home when Webb was fourteen and his brother Ray sixteen.

The term Cat Skinner fits him so well, I don’t want to change the name, but the subtitle needs to explain he doesn’t skin cats. It has to succinctly convey the essence of the novel which is a working stiff’s story of love and loss in the 1930’s. Does that do it or do you have other ideas? All offerings welcome. J

It's Fiction, but Check the Facts

“It’s fiction, for God’s sake, Bonnie! If you want it to snow, let it snow.”

It may be a mistake to tell friends and family what I’m doing – attempting to write something people will read and enjoy – but I do anyway. Perhaps it’s a way of holding myself accountable. If you tell enough people you’re writing a novel, maybe you’ll believe it yourself and actually write!

Over horses doovers (aka hors d'oeuvres. Have to look up the spelling every time) and drinks, I shared with Sue and Laurie the research I’d done to get a visual on what my dad, Webb Bateman, was seeing as he drove from Nebraska to North Dakota.  

“Phebe, in my writer’s group, pointed out I could check the weather for March 1939 to make sure it was snowing,” I explained. “Sounded like a good idea to me, so I did. Cost me $20 to subscribe to a reliable site ( weathersource.com/past-weather/weather-history-reports), but I actually verified Dad worked in a blizzard on March 4, 1939 in Ogallala, Nebraska, as he indicated in a letter. But then I found out the snow melted and it was fairly mild. So I changed my story to get rid of snow as he drove north.”

Sue, who is an avid reader, just shook her head. I tried to reassure her I wasn’t going to recite the high, low and median temperatures for every day of the trip. “It’s just a method to get me in the moment. Besides, Sue, my brain game, Lumosity, indicates I should have been a researcher or scientist or something like that.” She knows my analytical side well, having worked with me for twenty years before we both retired. Nonetheless, her head wagged back and forth again.

Google and I have become very good friends which doesn't say much for my social life. One of the searches helped me with the typography of Wyoming. “Would my dad have to shift down in a 1930 Chevy Sedan, if he were going from 3000 to 6000 elevation in 17 miles?” I asked my husband, Scott. He also looked at me in disbelief.

The research in and of itself hasn't always been riveting, but it's helped my comfort level in writing description. On the other hand, I've found information I'm not sure my 80 year old relatives would approve of. Lyrics from "Dirty Songs of the Twenties and Thirties" are real eyebrow raisers. Then again, Who am I kidding? My relatives probably helped write them. 

Yup, I’m hooked on research and for now, there may be snow on my roof, but not on my roads.

Hunkerin' Down

Fair to middlin’. Cat skinner. Shenanigans. Fracus. Charivaree. Yoohoo girls. Blind pig. Crazy as a shit house rat.

I’ve been living in the ‘20’s and ‘30’s the past year. Words and phrases like these continue to crawl from the crevices of memory or leap out at me from historical novels. In my attempt to write the story of my father’s youth, the jargon of the time finds me. Is it because I’m steeped enough in Webster Warren Bateman’s brain? Am I recalling his memories or am I remembering the language of my childhood? Whichever it is – it’s an adventure and I’m lovin’ it.

There I did it again. Helpin’. Talkin’. Filterin’. Writing dialogue of farm guys shootin’ pool in Jim Bateman’s establishment during prohibition years will do that to a writer. At least it’s done it to me. Forget the “gs” and to hell with grammar. The fact that I used to teach English in the States and overseas no longer holds sway in this writing. I read aloud what I’ve written to see if the rhythm and tone sound right to me – perhaps not to someone else – but this is my invention, a historical fiction novel based on stories from my dad’s life.

Have I written a novel before?  No, but there have been thank you notes, emails, operator manuals, technical reports, and – oh yes, my first blog of five years, Bonnie King Photography: As I See It. www.bonnie-king.blogspot.com. I also started my own memoir four years ago, From Australia with Love, stories of my wild and crazy youth, but instead of finishing it, I became enamored with the idea of teaching memoir writing to others. That old adage, “If you can’t do – teach.” But I’m a damn good teacher and people like the class so I continue to this day. My photography business also gave me a good excuse not to write seriously, so I didn’t, until now.

My passion for photography as a business waned and the desire to tell my dad’s story took hold. I closed the business. With the help of rain and wind urging me to hunker down with my computer, a cup of coffee, cat on my lap and dog at my feet – I’m finally on my way. Only another 100,000 words to go.