How to Pull Your Self up by Your Bootstraps, When You Have No Boots

By Winston T. Hatch

As I am writing this I realize some of the stories are a little fare out, might be difficult to believer, but I assure you they are all true, and I lived them. I used only first names to protect both the guilty, and innocent. I also vaguely de-scribed locations, and companies for the same reasons. I’m about to reach my 86th birthday, have been retired for over 20 years, and I doubt if anyone men-tioned is still alive.
I started this book at the encouragement, and support of my Daughter to preserve the life of us old timers, who grew up in a world far different from what we have now. The amount of news, and information I am exposed to in one day now is about equal to what I was exposed to in a year when I was 8 years old, and World War 2 started. My story is not unique, it is only one of many, some far more interesting, and they’re disappearing rapidly as we pass on. I encourage these old timers to write them down or record them. But be prepared for as you write your life stories your going to almost relive them, your going to have time to think about them, when at the time you didn’t. Your views, and values may have change with time, and are now different.
As I look back over my life I have had many successes, and failures. Your failures you remember, they hang around your neck forever, and influ-ence your life without you being aware of it. Your successes you soon forget, and assume that’s the way life’s supposed to be. The only successes I can take pride in is those of my Children, both of them have been immensely successful-ly, they both have traveled, and worked throughout the world. I and my Wife Pat have been blessed.
I hope you enjoyed my life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796071566

Book preview

GROWING UP

To begin, you must be born in 1933 in the middle of the greatest depression the country has ever had, be on a Oklahoma dirt farm in the middle of the Dust Bowl in a house that once used to keep hogs, and be the last of four children to an abusive German father with an eighth grade education, and a wonderful mother who was the daughter of a prominent local dentist.

My oldest brother was 14 years older than me; the next brother was seven years older, and the only daughter was three years older. Now in all old German families, the first son is the golden-haired boy. He gets the first and best of everything. The next children get whatever’s left - all the old hand-me-downs and leftovers from the first son. The first new clothes I ever wore were after I had escaped the farm and enlisted in the Navy when I was 17.

My sister suffered from a medical condition that the crude medical system at that time diagnosed as epilepsy, fact her medical problem was from a fall out of a upstairs window when she was a baby, resulting in her experiencing seizures.

Our education began in a one room country school that taught up to the eighth grade. My sister and I rode a horse without a saddle two miles to and from this school every day. Due to my sister’s condition, my job was as her protector from the cruelty of the other students, and this went on until she graduated from the eighth grade. Most of my grade school years were during World War 2. The Oklahoma National Guard was the 45th. Division which was one of the most active combat unites in the European Theater. Many times a class mates would leave the room crying over the loss of a father or brother.

Times were tough during the war. We didn’t have electricity or running water and money was scarce. Food for us wasn’t a problem, there was always plenty of milk, and a large garden that we canned, and stored it in the storm cave where it was cool. In the winter when it started getting cold we would butcher a beef, store it in a upstairs bedroom that wasn’t used on an old bed, and opened all the windows so it stayed cool. As we needed it we would cut off what we wanted, and cook it.

Food rationing was on then, and you were limited on sugar. One year we saved all our coupons on sugar, and drew them up at once for canning. There was a 100 lb. of it, and we stored it in the upstairs bedroom with the beef. This turned out not to be such a good idea, mice got in it, and left their little calling cards all through it, the folks sifted it though some cheese cloth, and used it.

The farm we lived on was owned by my mother’s father, and rented by my father. It was a combination wheat and dairy farm. Like all German farms, we had a much better barn than house. We always milked at least 20 cows twice a day and we had three milking machines. My job was to help with the milking and feed milk to the calves, and there was usually about 10 of them. This was done ever day before and after school, and it had priority over school work. Needless to say I was not a honor student.

My father was a believer in spare the rod, and spoil the child or wife. A riding whip was always handy on the back porch. My oldest brother was never around much when I was growing up, he would work, and live at other farmers. When he went to high school, he would work, and stay at the fire station. He was always going on trips with our mother’s father. I never thought about it much; it was just the way things were.

I found out the reason some 30 years later when I was visiting my oldest brother. He said one morning Dad was beating on Mother with a broom stick, and my brother told Dad if he ever did it again he would take the old shotgun, and shoot him while he slept. He said he was not around much after that, and after high school in 1939 he enlisted in the Army Air Corp.

Dean was seven years older than me, and had a much greater influence on my life. When Pearl Harbor was bombed I was eight, and Dean was fifteen. I have always admired Dean, and he was a roll model for me. However we were very different, he was a extrovert, loud, and boisterous. I am a introvert, quiet, shy. and interested in what others have to say. Dean was always intimidated by Dad, and suffered many beatings from him, even when Dean had married, and left home he still strived for his approval. I on the other hand was just the opposite. Even though I suffered the same beatings, I have always had a high pain tolerance, and I didn’t give a damn what he thought Dean, and I always worked well together, and we had a lot of fun playing tricks on each other. At harvest time as we were greasing up the machinery we’d get into grease gun fights. Sometimes this would backfire. One time when we were milking the cows we got to wrestling in the milk room, and the floor was wet, I slipped, started to fall, reached up, and grabbed the hot exhaust pipe from the vacuum pump engine, burned the hell out of my hand. He took me out, poured motor oil on my hand, and it didn’t even blister.

However this stopped the milk room wrestling. Dean didn’t finish high school, he was a year behind in school, eighteen when he was a junior, and was about to be drafted so he joined the Navy. When Dean went into the Navy there was only Dad, and me to take care of the farm. In addition, Dad had taken on another wheat farm that was 30 miles away. We would get up, and milk the cows, drive 30 miles to arrive at the other farm by daylight, work all day in the fields until sunset. and then drive 30 miles back to milk the cows. It was about midnight when we were through. This was our routine the next day, and every day until the wheat was planted, and then again at harvest time. Again, my education was not a high priority.

This went on until the war ended, and Dean came home from the Navy. My oldest brother never returned home, but instead married, and settled down in California. Dean became a Boatswain Mate 3rd Class on a troop ship running between New York City and Europe. It was a converted luxury liner, and too fast for the German Submarines so that didn’t have to travel with the convoys. After VE day they moved into the Pacific, made one run to Japan, and then he was discharged.

He came home, wanted to farm with Dad, and that kind of eased up my load. I remember one night in the spring we were all in bed, we started getting one of the famous tornado alley thunder storms, and were going down to the storm cellar.

Dean said I’m not going down there I’v rode out worst typhoons in the Pacific, and about that time lightning struck the chimney in his bedroom, and he passed me going down the stairs to the storm cellar. Fortunately it didn’t set the house on fire but it sure blew a lot of soot around his bedroom, and we didn’t hear anything more about his damn Pacific typhoons. The next spring Dean married Margaret, and they took over operating the dairy farm at Blackwell. Dad, Mother, Jane my sister and I mover to the wheat farm at Pond Creek.

I think a little explanation is needed about this wheat farm at Pond Creek. It was owner by Aunt Jan, and Uncle Ed. Dad rents it from them. Aunt Jan was a sister to Mothers Dad. Aunt Jan died in the spring Dean, and Margret were married. Uncle Ed told Mother if she, and Dad would move in with him, and take care of him he would leave the farm to Mother.

The house was a custom built three bedroom with basement, built in the twenties after they had made quite a bit of money from wheat during WW1. It was somewhat of a show place at that time. It had beautiful inlaid oak floors throughout, a running water system from a cistern, indoor bath room, a Delco battery system with a wind powered generator for electricity. It had a screened in porch running half way around the house.

So we moved to Pond Creek, Dean, and Margret took over the Dairy Farm. I hated the place, it was like living in a Museum, the place was full of all kinds of china collections. The only place you could be comfortable in was the kitchen which had a large breakfast nook. The town of Pond Creek was a real dump, and only had about a thousand people. The High School was even worse. It had a graduating class of five students. The Principal was a real sadistic hard ass who loved to use his belt on the students. I, and two of my fellow students received a sample of this one day for shooting rubber bands in town while on our lunch hour. Afterwards I kind of laughed at him and made him mad as hell, he was a real amateur compared to what I was used to from my Dad. Uncle Ed, and I didn’t exactly hit it off too well either. He was too set in his ways, and I was too inquisitive.

That spring they had a dust storm that blew out ten acres of wheat on a sandy hill just north of the house. Uncle Ed wanted to plant it all to watermelons, which he knew nothing about. Dad wasn’t in favor because it was going to make a lot of work for him but he had no choice. Dad went ahead, planted it, and they didn’t know what they were doing so they planted too much seed. That spring we had a lot of rain, and I think ever seed sprouted.

Dad had to go out, and hoe out the weeds. He did this once, and then came up with this wonderful idea. He didn’t think this watermelon idea was going amount to much so he told me if I’d take care of the work on it I could have his share of what it made. So I spent all my summer out in the hot sun in that damn watermelon patch hoeing, and fighting weeds. Well it started to rain that summer, and those damn watermelons started coming up like hair on a dogs back. We had watermelon everywhere. We loaded out three semi truck loads. I don’t know how many bobtail truck loads, and by summers end we were selling truck loads for hog feed. They made more off the watermelons than the wheat that year but I never got a cent for my summers work from Dad, he couldn’t remember any deal with me.

That summer I slept on a cot out on the screened in porch, everyone else had taken all the bedrooms, I was beginning to wonder where I was going to sleep in the winter. When school started at that crummy High School in September I started in the eight grade, and it was all in one room with the ninth grade. Back in Blackwell I had been in the seventh grade in a Jr. High School, and it was just like the high School, you moved around for each class, and they had a wonderful Principal.

After the first six weeks of school my grades were all F’s. My worries about where I was going to sleep that winter were solved. They pulled me out of that school, moved me back to the dairy farm to live with Dean and Margret. They put me back in the Jr. High School in the eighth grade. Margret was work at a office in town, she could drop me off at school, and pick me up. It also stopped dad from having to hear about his lousy watermelon deal with me. I loved the move, it solved a lot of problems for me. I, Dean and Margret got along fine.

After a year Dean and Margret decided they didn’t want to farm any more, and Dean took a job in town. It was summer, so I alone ran the dairy all that summer. I didn’t have a drivers license, so Dad come over once a week to restock the groceries. I took care of milking, feeding the cows, calves, and chickens. I learned to cook, entertained myself by listening to the Arthur Godfrey, and ball games on my radio. I had no one bothering me. That fall Mom, Dad, and my sister moved back to the dairy farm. My good life was over, that was the best summer of my life.

THE STATE FAIR AFFAIR

That fall four of my friends decided to attend the Oklahoma State Fair, and asked me to go too. I asked my Dad, and was surprised when he let me go. One of the friends had an old model A Ford Coupe with a rumble seat. You could just get five people in it. Three up front, and two in the rumble seat. The next Saturday morning we all piled into that old Ford, and headed a hundred miles south to Oklahoma City to the Fair.

When we arrived we found the Fair on the outskirts of the city on what once was an old farm. We parked in what was a pasture, and went to the Fair. Toured the farm exhibits, and rode some of the rides. Then we looked over the midway, and all the weird shows. The midway ended right into the pasture where we parked, and the largest show was there at the end. It featured the famous Sally Rand and her Fan Dance, it had two large, and very loud speakers. They were blaring out her theme song which was, The Twelfth Street Rag. Now there were two obstacles that deprived us of the education, and appreciation of this fine artistic Dance. Didn’t have enough money, we were too damned young, and they wouldn’t let us in.

It was Sunday morning, and we hadn’t gotten much sleep that night. We were parked only about two hundred yards from those blaring loud speakers, and they didn’t give it up until about midnight. Our car was in at pasture so we slept out on the grass in our bed rolls under the stars. Over all we had a great time, so we loaded up, and started back home. About half way back it started to rain, thats when we discovered you could get five people in the front seat of a model A Ford Coupe.