My mother was Patricia “Patsy” Kaelin. She was born off of Mellwood Ave., close to Fischer’s Packing Company then they moved to Thompson, near the old Tumbleweed. There were five children, and they went to St. Joseph Church. Her sister, Aunt Margaret developed the Tumbleweed Restaurant. Uncle Forest Kaelin was a well-known jockey, trainer, owner. He had records that can never be beat. He rode for Burkhardt, off Hwy. 42. He won races two days in a row, riding the same horse! Mom and Aunt Lib did the cooking at Norton Elementary School for a while. Aunt Lib owned Germantown Caf, and she was born, above Pat’s Steakhouse. In fact, I worked at Pat’s Steakhouse when I was a teenager. I cleaned the shrimp, one for me, one for Pat’s! Pat succeeded Mike, his dad who started Pat’s. He and his wife, Trish, run Pat’s today. Uncle Boots was a trainer and he owned The Trackside Restaurant in LaGrange.

Dad (Charles) was born on Paris Point, at Broadway and Barrett. Theodore (Gramps) was his dad. There were six of them, five boys and one girl. Gramps was President of the Pigeon’s Association. He lived on Belaire off Frankfort Ave. Straight across from Gramps house, is a high bluff and they had cannons there during the Civil War.

Dad’s family included his siblings: Uncle Ted, Aunt Helen, Uncle Bob, Uncle Paul and Uncle David. I remember that some of the Bachmann’s still spoke German so I think they came to the United States in the early 20th Century but the Kaelin’s came around the 1840s.

My parents married around 1954. I had five siblings, Chuck, Kenny, Timmy, Julie and Paul, all born between 1955 and 1964. We lived in a carriage house that was cut up in four apartments at the corner of Vernon and Sycamore. The manor house was monstrous. The original owner collected trees from all over the world.

There were still cows grazing nearby. There were a lot of slaughterhouses around the area. We were outdoors a lot. We went to Bingham Park where they had programs Uncle Forest was a thoroughbred rider so my parents would take one of us kids, at a time, to watch him ride. He would have races in Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky. We spent a lot of time on Uncle Johnny Head’s farm on Chamberlain Lane, off Hwy. 22. When my older brother learned to drive, he would load us boys up in his purple four door Chevy and take us to Uncle Johnny’s farm to pick potatoes! We got a quarter for a 60-pound bushel of potatoes. At that time, we lived on Hite and Crescent Hill. At the end of the day, when we got back home, we had more money than any of our friends because we dug potatoes!

We also camped and fished at Uncle Johnny’s farm. Dad would take us fishing a lot on the Ohio River and we would stay in the cabins at Hanover Beach, (near Madison, Indiana). We spent a lot of time on the river and went boating with friends and family. Our main family eating place was Minn’s Diner on Story Ave. Minn would snap the beans while she was talking with you. There were large bowls of fresh vegetables and it was family style dining. She served the best yellow dumplings. And Mario’s Pizza on Lexington Rd. in St. Mathews was another good place. It was really good pizza.

I went to St. Francis of Rome that ended up being the Clifton Center. I went on to Barrett Middle School then Atherton. Nuns were the teachers in elementary school, they were strict and I ended up sitting in my “spot” in the hall most of the time with one particular nun. But I will say the mathematics that I took at St. Francis was really good- I already knew math when I went to Barrett. I went to Atherton High School in the first year of busing.

We acted pretty good as kids. Dad would get “a look” that kept us in line. He worked for Local One 10 as a sheet metal worker. We had complete health insurance that we needed from that one Union job. We were well taken care of and never left the table hungry. Our tuition for the whole family in the Catholic School was like $50 but Mom would volunteer and cook in the cafeteria.

We had everything we needed in our family. I got my love of the nature and plants from my mother. She was in heaven in her garden when we moved in the bigger house on Hite Ave. and I would help her. Mom was always very kind. One time I thought I was cleaning up the garden and getting the dirt ready and cleaned out all these prize peonies which I thought were weeds. Instead of getting mad at me she just said, “Honey, those are peonies so we need to put them back- in!”

Dad provided me the work ethic. As sheet metal worker they worked on various projects that were timely and Dad would work through it until it was finished. Like he would work three days solid, not come home and nap on a bench, at work, until the jobwas done.

On Christmas as a big family, we would usually go to Grandma Bachmanns for Christmas Eve and have oyster stew and ham sandwiches. Since our family had the most kids, we would have families over for most

Tommy Bachmann is pictured inside the springhouse he rebuilt.

celebrations. We grew up on a lot of “innards” or organ meat. Frog legs, squirrels, rabbits, Mom would fix them and is a gourmet cook. Today, Mom lives on Smith Lane in Oldham County. I crave her beef heart stew. She cuts the heart up into chunks I eat three pounds of mashed potatoes with beef heart stew and lots of pepper.

All of these recipes I grew up on were handed down from both sides of the family. Every cake you ate from Grandma Bachmann were made from pigeon eggs. Grandpa had all those pigeons so she used those eggs. When Gramps came home with all the boys from rabbit hunting, he would keep his car lights on low beam so he wouldn’t use up the battery! He had lived through the Depression era.

My Dad and Uncle had the Tollhouse Saloon which was an old toll house and had a jail off Frankfort Avenue. They had this saloon together and had a turtle club. In the back of that place we had horseshoes and turtle fries. The neck is the best piece of the turtle. The Tollhouse they had in the 1970s and early 80s is an
Italian restaurant now. It is next to the Irish Rover.

I mostly worked during high school like at Pat’s Steakhouse. I used to cut roses for greenhouses. I really didn’t think about what I would do after high school. I had worked with Bud Diehl since I was 13 and at the time, he was the main gardener for Mrs. Mary Jo Gheens who owned the Lincliff estate off of River Road. They were a wealthy family who also owned a lot of land  in Louisiana (started the Gheens Foundation). She loved Bud to death and built him a ranch house on River Road. So I went to work for Bud and Mrs. Gheens. Later, Sue Grafton (novelist) and her husband, Steve Humphries, bought Lincliff. I met her several times; she was a delightful person. Lincliff was built in 1911-1912 by Richard Belknap of Belknap Hardware. The gardens were originally designed by Frederick Olmstead’s nephew, John Olmstead.

When I was 21 years old, I was working for Pella Windows and I was riding my motorcycle in a rush to get home to get my deer license. I lived at Irish Hill at the time. A guy ran a stop sign and crashed into my motorcycle. I broke my femur, and it took about two years to recover from that, had to have bone grafts.

In 1981, I ended up working at the Belknap Land O’Goshen Nursery. Burt Bottorff opened the Land O’Goshen Nursery along with his partner, Don Belknap. Burt died in 1986 after a long illness. I kept the nursery running while Burt was sick and I have been there ever since. The nursery has had three different names: Land O’Goshen, Bert’s Goshen Nursery and now Goshen Gardens.

I really liked native trees so I started growing more natives for the nursery. I really don’t have a plan for the nursery; I just get plants I like and line them out. I want trees that are going to last 100 years. I planted the trees on the history center campus and selected trees with history and that were attractive. Beech trees are our specialty, so we planted a Beech tree, Dawn Redwoods, native juniper, redbuds, an oak, couple of boxwoods, a dogwood. Dogwoods are another one of our specialties. We collected seeds from Cave Hill Cemetery for the dogwoods and beeches. Cave Hill is probably our best arboretum in our region. They gave us permission to collect the seeds. Lee Squires, at Cave Hill, really welcomed our effort.

In these last stages of my life, I am going to grow seedlings, just out of our nursery. I am going to collect the seedlings off our own trees. Starting the seedlings differs with every species. For instance, you can get a seedling off the red buckeye, and put it right in the ground and it grows, where some others you have to put them through a germination period.

Timing is important for planting a particular tree. Every plant is different. Shade trees do better if you plant them in the Fall, flowering trees plant in the Spring. Evergreens are funny. Their root system is different then deciduous trees so you should put them in when the ground is getting ready to be warm or is warm. You may have to water them more, but that is okay. The  least amount of time the tree spends from when it is dug to when it goes in the ground is important.

We have a famous spring and springhouse at the nursery where pioneers would stop, in their covered wagons. It was the site of the last Indian attack where a child with the last name of Huckleberry was killed. There were old stones piled down six feet in the ground and had to dig them up. I had an old timer show me where to dig. I took the stones and rebuilt the old springhouse. A lot of people depended on that old spring in the early years.

I met my wife Missy Smith in 1987 who is from the Butchertown area and her folks had a market on Market Street. She was waiting at the bus stop at Messner’s Hardware Store, to catch her ride to work, and I drove up in my Volkswagen, and asked her if she wanted a ride! We had seen each other before. Missy is one of ten kids and they lived up from Irish Hill where I was living. I think our first date was to go to a movie at the Uptown Theater. We did a lot of swimming and canoing, and she had a young son at the time so I took them canoing to Harrods Creek and 18 Mile Island. I flew Missy on a trip to Las Vegas and I asked her to marry me- we didn’t have an Elvis chapel wedding though- we just married at the Justice of Peace.

Our first child, Lindsey, was born in the Fall of 1991 and then we moved out to Trimble County. Daughter Lindsey was named after Lindsey East who was one of my dearest mentors and managed Belknap farm for 65 years. Our son Henry was born on January 19, 1994 during the record cold in history!

There was 20 inches of snow, 37 degrees below zero but I got Missy to the hospital; Henry was born on a rough day! Louisville was 22 degrees below!

Missy’s last job was working at the Ky. State Reformatory before she retired. Both of our kids graduated from Trimble County Schools and we still live in our house on Barebone Road outside of Bedford.

This year celebrates my 40th year at the Goshen Gardens Nursery. Since I have been at the nursery, I have been really fortunate to meet the old families in Goshen. The Bottorff’s, the Dick’s, the Belknap’s, the Nay’s, the Hamptons, Jack and Jo Miles, a lot of the older people, who I loved to talk with when I first started working at Goshen. 

For 40 years, I’ve had the best job in the world. I love my work, wouldn’t do anything else.

Photo by Peter Campbell

Growing up with nature.

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