The Bottlewasher
Selections from a Small-town Newspaper Column of the early 1950s
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About the Book
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 mother´s 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 Bottlewasher´s 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 Bottlewasher´s 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 horse´s mouth, you might say!
About the Author
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.