Rhonda Bolton Archives

May 20, 2026

Signs you live in Missouri

I never got a message from a Florida neighbor like the one Rhonda Bolton sent me here on Kingsway Drive:

“You have a dead armadillo in your drive. Lol was not there when I left at 9ish this morning.”

Yep, the prime example of road kill on the half shell was right where she described.

Brother Mark and his buddies would decorate animal carcasses with party hats and ballons.

I had neither, so I reached for my root-cutting shovel. When it barely scratched the concrete-hard clay, I turned to a grubbing hoe. After it met similar results, I loaded Mr. Amadillo onto a snow shovel and carried him down the hill. (I know it was a He because he expired in an obvious happy state.)

The Bolton neighbors

Bill and Rhonda moved into the tiny house across the street on Memorial Day, 1994, long enough ago that we no longer refer to the property as the Tinkers. They are the perfect neighbors. They kept a close eye on Mother, and are the kind of folks you feel comfortable asking to borrow a cup of sugar.

Bill’s a great craftsman

Bill Bolton bench made from Dutchtown lumber

We gave Bill permission to harvest old lumber from one of Dad’s sheds in Dutchtown. He turned many of the old boards and signs into wonderful primative furniture.

Bill Bolton table from Dutchtown lumber 11-02-2016

He gave me this bench, followed by a table mounted on a sewing machine base. He would donate pieces to charity raffles, and I was lucky enough to win another table and bench over the years.

Rhonda and Mother were friends

They enjoyed cutting up in a photo booth at Rhonda’s 50th birthday party.

I’m more comfortable BEHIND the camera

I was persuaded to join Mother in the photo booth. Dad was someone who could wear a hat. The hat gene skipped Brother Mark and me.

November 11, 2020

I Like My New Flag

On Oct. 3, 2020, I posted a pitiful photo of my American Flag that was torn almost in two by a gust of wind or just general tiredness.

At the time, I remarked somberly (and maybe a little too dramatically) that I was afraid that flag was a symbol of this nation that was almost ripped apart, and hanging on by a thread.

I’m happy to say that my new flag is flying proudly from a unique flagpole I engineered, partially by accident.

That’s Bill and Rhonda Bolton’s house in the background on a fine Fall day. We always called it the Tinker House because Bob and Mary Tinker lived there for years. The Boltons have lived in it long enough that it’s probably time to rename the place.

How I made the flagpole

My previous flag was attached to a pole in front of the house. When the rose bushes got high, the flag would snag on the thorns. I figured I could solve that problem if I moved it out in the yard.

After scratching my head a bit, I went to the hardware store and discovered that a 10-foot length of 1-inch galvanized pipe would easily slip inside a 30-inch piece of 1-1/4-inch pipe sunk 24 inches into concrete.

I wanted to make it possible to back a trailer into the yard to get firewood, so this lets me take out the long pole and only leave the sleeve sticking out above the ground about six inches.

I drilled holes through both pipes with the intention of putting a bolt through them, but it was after dark when I finished, so I turned the flag and pole in the direction where I thought it would be best and went to bed.

Serendipity sets in

The next morning, I was surprised to see the flag in exactly opposite of the direction it was the previous night.

While I was standing there, a gust of wind rotated the whole pole. I was mesmerized. Figuring there was no way that pole was going to jump out of the sleeve, I decided to forgo the bolts and let it act as a weather vane.

Here’s what it looked like on a gusty day this week. The halo-looking thing at the top is a solar-powered LED array to light the flag at night. The flag sticks up so high that the porch dusk-to-dawn lights only hit the lower half of it.

To be honest, I’m not overly happy with the performance of the halo light, but it’s up there.

One other cool thing is that the pipes make a spooky moaning or groaning sound when they rotate more that about 25 degrees. I couldn’t figure out where the weird sound was coming from until one afternoon when I was outside loading the car and made the connection.

The 10-foot pole is rigid. The “bouncing” is caused by the play from the sleeve being larger than the pole. It’s not going anywhere.

Veterans Day is an appropriate time to show off my new flag.

October 25, 2015

Bob and Mary Tinker

I ran across a photo of neighbors Bob and Mary Tinker in an American Gothic pose. The date on the side of the print – March 1955 – means it was taken just about the same time we moved into our house at 1618 Kingsway Drive.

Mary is holding something in her hand, probably something she grew in her garden. (Click on the photos to make them larger.)

Check out the spotlight

Lots of cars of that era had spotlights. Even our 1959 Buick LaSabre station wagon had one integrated into the driver-side mirror. I thought it would be great for reading street signs and addresses, but it never worked.

If you went the drive-in movie, as soon as it got dark, impatient patrons would fire up their spotlights and start playing fox and hounds on the movie screen. Shortly after that, horns would start honking to wake up the projectionist.

How I remember Mr. Tinker

I almost didn’t recognize Mr. Tinker in the top photo because he almost always had a hat jammed on his head like here.

Mrs. Tinker in 1976

The Tinkers and the Grays, who lived just down the street from them, were great neighbors. This was taken in back of the house.

One of the oldest houses

The house at 1617 Kingsway Drive, is the oldest on the block, and the only one still standing of the original ones from the days when we were outside the city limits.

The Boltons live there now

Bill and Rhonda Bolton live there now. The house still looks from the outside a lot like it did in 1955, but Bill and Rhonda have made a lot of improvements to it. No matter how long they live there, though, we’ll always refer to it as “The Tinker House.”

When Rhonda turned 50

Mother had a blast at Rhonda’s birthday party in 2014. We all took a lot of comfort in knowing they were up on the hill keeping an eye on her.

August 18, 2015

High Chair, High Waters

Neighbors Bill and Rhonda and I went down to Dutchtown Monday afternoon. While we were there, I opened some mostly-empty sheds that hadn’t seen light (except for a hole in the roof) for years. Most everything of value had been taken out of them a long time ago, and whatever contents that remained had floated and rearranged themselves in the various floods since 1973. Stuff that could rust had rusted; stuff that could rot or fall apart had done just that; everything had a thick or thin patina of river mud sticking to it.

As I was playing a flashlight beam around, Rhonda said, “That’s a high chair under there.”

Indeed, it was. It was the very yellow high chair that Brother Mark was sitting in back in March of 1961. That’s my grandmother, Elsie Welch on the left. Dad, engrossed in one of my comic books, is on the right. Looks like we were having some combination of brownies, milk, barbecue sandwiches (made on the grill in the background, where our microwave lives today), and iced tea.

It’s still in pretty good shape

I was surprised to see it was in better shape than I would have thought. The metal tray that Mark used to bang his cup on like he was in a B-Grade prison movie would still slide on and off. The legs have some rust on them, but I don’t know if that’s from the Mississippi River or my brother’s leaky diapers.

You might just see this at Annie Laurie’s Antique Shop one of these days, Lord willin’ and the rivers don’t rise.