This Week on the Dining Table

The "Remembering the Fallen" Edition--

Bernard J. Wingo

Sept. 25, 1892

Oct. 7, 1918

Supply Co. 323 Div. 81

Died in France while in the service of his county.

Greater love hath no one than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

I took this photo for Find A Grave while in Drakes Branch VA photographing my 2 x Great Grandparents headstones a few years ago.  After I added this World War I veteran's headstone to the FAG database I did some research on him--

Bernard Jackson Wingo served in the US Army as a Wagoner and was part of the American Expeditionary Forces in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive(also known as the Battle of the Argonne Forest).  He was part of the US Army's 81st Division of the 4th Infantry(the famed NC Wildcat Division), in Supply Company 323.
He was KIA 7 Oct 1918, just 33 days before the Armistice was signed. Bernard had turned 25 just 13 days before his death.

Bernard was a farm boy from rural South Central VA who according to his WWI registration card was the support of his mom and dad before he was shipped out to Europe.

Bernard was not interred at the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery near the village of Romagne-sous-Montfaucon in Meuse, France, like over fourteen thousand of his fellow patriots who died there, but was brought back to his home in Virginia to be buried near family.

Coincidently I did find out later that Bernard Wingo is related to me by marriage.....his sister Alma Lee Wingo married two of my cousins-Pascal Lee Holt(3rd cousin 4 x removed)and when Pascal died, Richard Hammersley(4th cousin 4 x removed).

Remembering all our veterans who perished during service today.

Moving On....

Onward to the meal planning!

This is what was planned--

1. Sunday--Chicken Tenders, Pear Gorgonzola Salad

2. Monday--Catfish, Cole Slaw, Sweet Potato Fries

3. Tuesday--Roast Turkey Breast, Stuffing, Asparagus, Cranberry

4. Wednesday--Ravioli, Salad, leftover Garlic Bread

5. Thursday--Pork Roast, Green Beans, Garlic Mashed Taters

6. Friday--Red Beans and Rice with Andouille Sausage or Fend For Yourself

7. Saturday--?

And this is what actually happened--

1. Sunday--Chicken Tenders, Pear Gorgonzola Salad

2. Monday--Catfish, Cole Slaw, Potato Fries

3. Tuesday--Roast Turkey Breast, Stuffing, Asparagus, Broccoli, Cranberry

4. Wednesday--Ravioli, Salad, leftover Garlic Bread

5. Thursday--Graduation/Birthday Dinner Out

6. Friday--Red Beans and Rice with Andouille Sausage or Fend For Yourself

7. Saturday--Fend for Yourself

Pretty much the meal plan went off as planned except the sweet potatoes went bad so we had regular old french fries.  The roast pork wasn't needed so moves to this week's plan.

Last week saw 5 nights of home cooked dinners, 1 night of leftovers/fend for yourself, 1 nights of Take-Out or Eating Out.  
2 grocery trips to Weis, 2 trips to Dollar General(for a butt load of chili for the menfolk), a trip to the Bread Outlet and a spur of the moment trip to Price Chopper for steaks brought the shopping to $217.40 for the week and brought May's food spending total to $596.99.   
I am in about as much shock as you are over this!lolz

I've got negative $196.99 left in the food budget for May and 3 days left in my shopping month.   Yes, I am over by almost $200 for the month.  EEK! 8-(

My savings percentages last week was 48.13%(without Rite-Aid trips)and May's monthly savings total so far is at 47.72%.

Leftovers going into this week.......potato salad, garlic bread, turkey, stuffing, ravioli, red beans w/sausage, rice.

Here is this week's "food plan".....

1. Sunday--Fend for Yourself

2. Monday--Burgers, Hot Dogs, Roasted Veggies

3. Tuesday--Leftovers

4. Wednesday--Pork roast, Mashed Potatoes, Garlic Green Beans

5. Thursday--Leftovers or Fend for Yourself

6. Friday--Marinated Beef w/Broccoli, Rice

7. Saturday--Chicken Fajitas, Refried Beans

This week will see 4 new meals cooked, 3 nights of leftovers/FFY and 0 nights of Take-Out/Eating Out.

What needs buying for this menu?  Some fresh Veggies to roast(getting today). 

What is getting fixed and served at your house this week?

Was last week's plan successful, did you go off plan or did you not even plan what was going to be eaten last week?

Any great deals on food at your stores this week?

Sluggy

A Little More Rite-Aid on Saturday

I went up to Rite-Aid on Saturday because the Mentholatum Ibotta rebate was back in my account($1.50)and it was the last day R-A was having it on sale($3-a Monthly Deal)and it gave $2 back in BC.
They also, surprisingly got a big load of the cheapest Visine back in stock in their Friday shipment so I could finish doing the Spend $40/Get $10 in BC Deal on it.  I had already bought 2 Visine earlier in the week.............

7 x Visine($4.63 w/20% Wellness disc.)=$32.41
2 x Suave deodorant on sale($1.19)=$2.38
SubTotal..........$34.79

Coupons Used
7 x $2/1 R-A In-ad Q=$14.00
3 x $2.50/2 Visine CatalinaQ=$7.50
1 x $1/1 Visine ManuQ=$1.00
Coupon Total......$22.50

$34.79-$22.50=$12.29(no tax due).
I paid with $12.29 in BC and earned back $12 in new BC($10 wys $40 Visine, $2 wyb2 Suave).


I also did this on my Daughter's card........

4 x Suave deodorant on sale $1.19=$4.76
1 x Mentholatum on sale=$3.00
SubTotal......$7.76

No coupons were used.
$7.76+.30¢ tax=$8.06 paid with Bonus Cash.

I earned back $6 in new BC(2 x $2 Suave wyb2, $2 Mentholatum)
$20.35 spent on these two transactions in BC, $18 new BC earned back and $1.50 Ibotta cash rebate earned so .85¢ short of being totally free.  ;-)

After BC earned, sale price, Qs stacked with In-AdQs all 9 bottles of Visine bought this week "cost" me $2.17 in BC.
And all that Visine earns toward the $20 Allergy Reward so that card is at $66.62.  Only $8.38 to spend on qualifying products to earn that $20 BC.

I need to concentrate on rolling the BC on my card in the next couple of weeks.


Sluggy

Frugal Friday.....the May 25th Edition

Let's see what frugal wins we had this past week......

*  Got the Weis(PMITA)Markets Friday Freebie last Friday........

Of course the digital Q didn't come off so I paid .50¢ for this.  I made Hubs get my money back when he had to go up to Weis later that day.  Hubs seems to have a way with the Customer Service lady....lolz

*  I already recounted the Rite-Aid porn.......

I spent down $5.38 in BC and earned back $1.25 in cash rebates from Ibotta for all this.

*  Here are my best grocery deals this week.....

8 cans of small size pineapple products.  On sale at Weis earlier this week for $1 each so $8 subtotal.  I had .65¢/2 Qs that were set to expire next week, which doubled to $1.30 off on 2 cans, making them .35¢ per can after sale/Q.  Nice.

I also made a rare trip to Dollar General this past week as I had a "$5 off $25 spent" Q that was good until Monday.  We needed a few household type things(drink pitcher, grill brush, coffee filters, camp chair though I didn't get the chair)so I combined those needs with a 12 pack of wet dog food for Chester $5.21(+ a $2 off Q for that one too), a bottle of  Gator-Ade for CB .48¢(+ a digital Q for that), 3 bottles of Snapple for CB to take to work($2.17)and 2 bags of candy for him for .86¢ ea., 2 cans of baked beans($2.58), 4 cans of canned spaghetti products($2.60), and 3 cans of Hormel chili($3.44).  I saved $11.75 on this $24.18 trip.
Even without a Q the Hormel was a very good deal at $1.15 a can. That's even cheaper than the Weis brand chili on Tuesdays when I get the 10% senior discount on it.  I may go back Saturday with another $5/$25 Q and load up.......the guys here go through a ridiculous amount of chili. lolz

*  I earned $2.00 back in Ibotta cash rebates for various items bought this week.....not the bigger rebates for buying certain name brands but just the little .25¢ here, .25¢ there type of cash back and $1 for the light bulb I got at Rite-Aid.

*  We finally got a chance to do Hubs birthday meal out.  We combined it with a Graduation dinner out for ex-College Boy. We've been trying to get this done since April but nobody's schedules aligned just right on a weeknight until now.

Ex-College Boy started his new job last Monday and he was tired(sure looks tired in this photo)but that didn't keep him from scarfing down his meal. lol
We went to Red Lobster....some place I rarely go to these days.  I bought gift cards for there last Fall on a Rite-Aid deal so the $ was already accounted for in last year's spending.

I printed off and used a Q for $4 off 2 adult dinners(like that hardly paid the sales tax on this meal!lol).
After the Q was applied the bill came to $80.71 for the 4 of us.

Gift Cards applied and I've got $19.29 left to spent there.
Of course I had to pay the tip out of my WAM but hey!, I hardly spend any of that so I had plenty left to cover it.


*  And finally...........

This was the best thing this week.  We received a bill for another year of insurance on the LA house.
I guess the billing department didn't get word in time that we don't own that house anymore.

$900+ I don't have to pay ever again!  WOOhoooo!!!

What good frugal things happened in your week?


Sluggy

When Things Go Terribly Wrong-A Genealogy Post

When I work on genealogy for my family tree macrame, I don't just work on my direct family lines.  I have been known to fill out my tree branches of the direct family of siblings and the families of folks who marry into my tree.
Because of this my tree has grown exponentially over the years and is the size of a California redwood rather than a spindly birch sapling.
I have been known to get lost in side branches and the branches of those who are related by marriage.
And sometimes a person you find, you just can't shake thinking about them and their life story.

Another thing I am a member of is Find A Grave.  This is a site where people walk graveyards(or access cemetery records)and record online where the dead are buried(or create cenotaphs or 'burial unknown' memorials for those cremated, lost at sea or who's burial place is unknown).  Find A Grave aka FAG can be another helpful source of information when official records are unavailable to you.  FAG can also confirm or help you sort out confusing information in your genealogy research.

A fellow FAG member contacted me a couple of weeks ago.  They had been to a cemetery in VA and had photographed the gravestone for someone I created a memorial for and whom I had placed in a different cemetery.  Their death certificate had listed them buried in the graveyard I placed the memorial info into, but it turns out they aren't buried there after all.

This family is actually related to me through a cousin(we've both done the DNA thing to confirm it and on paper it's 6th cousins)by marriage into her direct line.  Her father's sister married into this family. Cousin's aunt married Carl Anton Lipp.

Carl Lipp's parents were John Lipp and Minnie Urech.
John and Minnie were born in Switzerland and immigrated separately to America-Minnie in 1893 according to Passenger lists and John either in 1881 or 1893 depending on which census he self-reported this information on.
At any rate they both ended up in Nebraska by 1897 and were married there in Columbus on the 29th of April of that year.
In the 1900 census they have one child, Mary, born in 1899 and are living in Columbus, NE.  John incidentally is a farmer.

By the 1910 census John and Minnie have removed to Newville, Sussex County, Virginia and their family has grown to include 5 children-Mary, Frank, John Fred, Bertha and Lillie Olivia.  And John is still farming.

Another daughter was born in Sept of 1910, Rosa Lipp, and a son arrived in 1918 named Carl Anton Lipp.

Sometime between 1910 and 1918 Mary Lipp, John and Minnie's oldest daughter, married a man named Peter T. Piatka.  Their marriage license has not been found online yet but later evidence leads me to believe that indeed they were married.  The marriage probably took place in one of the counties in Virginia were this family lived-Sussex or Prince George county, both of which are south of Petersburg Virginia.

Mary and Peter Piatka had a daughter, Louise Virginia Piatka born on 18 June 1918.

In the 1920 federal census the household of John Lipp contains these family members--Mary Lipp Piatka, John Jr., Bertha, Lillie Olivia, Rosa, Carl Anton and Louise Piatka(Mary and Peter's daughter).
John's wife, Minnie is gone and Mary Lipp is not living with her husband and the father of her child Louise, Pete Piatka.
John Lipp is listed as a widow so I turned to the death certificate records, finding Minnie's certificate and made this discovery........

Minnie Urich Lipp died on Sept 23rd 1918, only 2 months after giving birth to her youngest child Carl , at the age of 46.

Here's a close up of the important part the "Cause of Death".........

"Murder by shot gun in hands of Pete Piatka".
WTF???

I then went to find Pete Piatka's death certificate.

Peter T. Piatka died on the same day as Minnie Lipp, 23 Sept. 1918.
Cause of death...."Suicide by shotgun."
Wow!  A murder suicide in the family.

Here is as much as I can find about Peter Piatka from official records.
He was from "Bogaw" Austria according to the ship passenger manifest.  I believe the place name is Burgau and it wasn't written correctly as there is no Bogaw in Austria.  Burgau is in the eastern edge of present day Austria near the Hungarian border.
Peter arrived in American in the port of New York on board the "Caroline" on 13 Feb. 1910, 4 years before the start of World War I in Europe.  He was 18 years old at that time and listed his occupation as a shoemaker.
On his WWI draft registration from June 1917, it states his birth date is 29 June 1892 and he is 25 years old.  He is stout of stature, medium height with dark hair and blue eyes.  He was working at that time as a machinist in Waverly Virginia in a garage and is single.
By June of 1918 he is married and a father and by Sept. of that same year he is dead from a gun shot.

If you are like me, your mind wanders to questions about what went wrong in these people's lives.

Why did Peter come from NY to settle there in this part of VA?
Did he speak only German(or Hungarian)and found a community of German speakers who were culturally similiar in this small town outside of Petersburg, VA?
Did he or a relative in the Austria know someone there?
With the timing of his immigration, was he fleeing the Austrian-Hungarian Empire because he foresaw political/civil unrest and the coming of a war?
Was he a "hot head" who pissed off someone important or did he have a dysfunctional family and was running away from something?
Was there a lack of employment and opportunity for him in Europe?
Was he discriminated against due to his ethnicity?

So many questions we'll never know the answers to.

And then last week this little gem of a newspaper article popped up in an online search.......

From the Washington Post under their "Maryland and the Virginias" section-

"KILLS HIS MOTHER IN-LAW
          ----------------
Virginia Farmer Ends Own Life as Climax of Quarrel

Special to the Washington Post
  Petersburg, Va, Sept. 23---P T Piatka, a farmer residind about eight miles from Disputanta station on the Norfolk and Western Railway, last night shot and killed his mother in-law, Mrs. John Lipp, and then took his own life.  The tragedy is said to have been the outcome of a quarrel between Piatka and his wife.  Mrs. Piatka went to the home of her parents, a few miles from Disputanta, and there the killing of Mrs. Lipp occurred.
  After the killing(of)Mrs. Lipp, Piatka went into the woods a short distance and fired a bullet into his head.

So mystery solved, at least the bare facts of it.
Either it was a rather large issue which led to this quarrel or Peter Piatka was a bit unhinged.
Either way, two infants were left without a parent and two spouses were left widowed.

Mary Lipp Piatka went on to marry James Walter Bailey sometime after 1921 as they had a son in Aug. of 1922.  Helen and John Bailey were also born to this couple in subsequent years.
Mary Lipp Piatka Bailey lived until 2003, dying at the age of 104.

        Photo taken by John Whitt for F.A.G.

Peter and Mary's daughter, Louise Virginia took the surname of her step father James Walter Bailey.

Louise married George Franklin Blackwell in June of 1936 in Hopewell, Virginia.  They had a daughter in 1939 and then three more daughters.  Between the birth of the first child and their deaths the family moved to South Carolina.  Both Louise and George would die in South Carolina, in 1966 and 1981, respectively.

       Photo taken by Danny & Judy Ard for F.A.G.

After I made a memorial for Peter Piatka on Find A Grave I contacted the people who maintained both Louise's and Mary's memorials to link the daughter and wife to Piatka's memorial.  The "owner" of Louise's memorial had a problem with me linking Peter's memorial to hers.  I told him that I wouldn't post the death certificate nor the details of his death and his part in the murder of Louise's grandmother, Minnie.  He declined to link saying that this father info wasn't in her newspaper published obituary.
I don't see the problem with saying out loud what really happened since all the players have long since passed away.
This sort of shoving unpleasant facts of life into a closet is why people become disconnected from their past.  Yes, this is a sad outcome or even a family tragedy if you will.  I believe this was a tragedy as two infants lost a parent each and two adults lost their spouse and one her mother as well over a momentary situation that wasn't diffused in time.
 I don't think it does anyone any good to hide from our pasts, even the bad stuff in it.  If we aren't trying to hide from the bad things in life they can't define us.


Sluggy

Rite-Aid This Week

I did all my Rite-Aid transactions in one day for this week.......

All this was on three different cards/account.

6 x Colgate toothpaste on sale($2.99)=$17.94(2 tubes per card)
2 x Mitchum deodorant 20% Wellness disc.=$7.18
2 x Visine 20% Wellness disc.=$9.26
1 x GE light bulb on sale=$7.99
1 x Nivea lip balm 20% Wellness disc.=$2.71
SubTotal......$45.08

Coupons Used
6 x $1/1 ColgateManuQ(from Dentist office)=$6.00
2 x $1/1 Mitchum ManuQ=$2.00
2 x $2/1 Mitchum RA In-AdQ=$4.00
2 x $1.50/1 Visine IPQ=$3.00
2 x $2/1 Visine RA In-AdQ=$4.00
1 x $5/1 GE LED lightbulb Load2CardQ=$5.00
1 x $2/1 Nivea lip balm RA In-AdQ=$2.00
Coupon Total....$26.00

$45.08-$26.00=$19.08 + .30¢ tax=$19.38 paid with Bonus Cash.
I earned back $14 in new Bonus Cash(6 x $2 Colgate, $2 GE)

After sale and Qs-
* The Colgate toothpaste was a .01¢ moneymaker per tube.
(Tip-Check your dentist if they give out Qs for toothpaste.  I found $1/1 Colgate ones to use on this deal when the Sunday Insert Qs were only .50¢/1.)
* The Mitchum deo was .59¢ per stick.
* The Visine drops were $1.13 per bottle.
* The GE light bulb was .99¢.
* The Nivea lip balm was .71¢.

$5.38 spent down in Bonus Cash, nothing OOP.
I earned .25¢ cash rebate for buying the eye drops and $1 for buying the light bulb at Ibotta.
And the Visine tracks toward the Allergy Reward too. ;-)

Sluggy