Where and How the BCM Publisher grew up

[Gary Hatt - Publisher BCM]

In case anyone cares, this is where I was raised from about 8 to 25 years old.  My dad owned his own electrical business and was a hobby farmer.  My mom was an elementary school teacher.

My dad was born and died in this house on 100 acres of land that he bought for $26,000 from my grandmother after my grandfather passed away.  My grandmother lived in the apartment on one end of the house until she passed. 

My dad with his 3 brothers and 2 sisters grew up on this farm and they raised beef and milk cattle as well as several other livestock. My grandfather and all of his sons were primarily chicken farmers until the big chicken houses like Purdue mass-produced chickens which dropped the price of chickens so much it was no longer worth it.

My grandfather used to raise 50,000 chickens at a time on the range, and each son raised almost that in large chicken houses they built themselves. I shoveled a lot of $#!% in my day and believe it or not, I actually enjoyed it.

This is where I learned about operating heavy equipment and farming as we had tractors, a dump truck, a mowing machine, a hay bailer, a hay rake, etc., as well as a dozer that started on gas and switched over to diesel once it got warmed up a bit which Cliff said was an International I believe.

I used to sell eggs when I was in elementary school and cut, split and sold cordwood in the fall when in high school. In the beginning, we split it all by hand until my dad bought a hydraulic splitter. That made all of the difference. 

We heated this 14-room house mostly with wood, and it would take about 20 cords of wood each year. The house had a wood furnace in the basement (as well as an oil furnace), and five fireplaces, of which three had wood stoves in them, including an old-fashioned kitchen stove I found in the woods nearby and restored. We put that in the 7' wide fireplace in the dining room where we spent most of our time. We burned a LOT of wood and growing up I always thought my name was "Get Wood".   

We were poor chicken farmers until my dad got into the electrical business. But we didn't know we were poor. I had great parents that taught me right from wrong, and that a Gentleman's Agreement and a handshake meant something.  They also taught me that you should always give 110% which I still try to do today. As many of you know, living on a farm you have to learn how to be able to fix almost everything so I do most of the work on my own bus conversion whenever I can.

This is the house I grew up in.  It was pretty run down when we moved in as my grandfather was unable to keep it up as he grew older, but over time, working almost every night and every weekend, my dad and us three boys, were able to get it into very good condition over time. None of us were afraid of work, unlike most kids today.

We pored cement floors in two of the barns and in the cellar of the house.  We mixed every bit of the cement by hand with an electric cement mixer.  I personally painted one side of each house or barn every summer and it took a 40' ladder, with another ladder tied to the top of that one, to reach the peak of the gable end on the back side of the barn. 

Only when my dad's health started declining, around 75 years old, did the house and barns start going downhill and ended up almost like it was when we first moved in.

So now you know a little bit about the owner of BCM.  I could go into the problems, money lost, and countless hours of running BCM, but that would be a completely different and unnecessary story.  But I do feel that my background growing up on a farm, suited me to be the owner of a bus conversion, as I always liked running and working on heavy equipment and that money was never that important to me.

As Paul Harvey would say, now you know the rest of the story.

https://www.redfin.com/NH/Westmoreland/55-Hatt-Rd-03467/home/63509176

[windtrader]

quite a story - growing up on Hatt road, some coincidence. House from the 1700's, hard to imagine a structure standing for so many years. Seems like winter can get a bit cold, burning that much wood. thanks for sharing. beautiful country.

[CrabbyMilton]

Great story. Looks like the idyllic scene. Thru good and fun times and not so good times, that was home and nobody can take those memories away from you.

[Jim Blackwood]

A country boy can survive. A real shame so few youngsters get to experience that today.

Jim

[luvrbus]

LOL  a county boy that eats can potatoes,at a cook out Gary open a can of those our Canadian friends took 1 bite and gave Gary a look I will never forget,Gary does do a lot of work he is not lazy,very seldom does he need my help working on his bus  .If you have a sprinkler system keep him off the John Deere mower   

[chessie4905]

Gary, we prefer to use the FBI to check your background. Also, please submit a DNA sample....

[lvmci]

Gary, what caused you to move to SoCal? Tom...

[Gary Hatt - Publisher BCM]

Gary, what caused you to move to SoCal? Tom...

Interesting question Tom.  To make a short story long...

I was living in a 37' Fleetwood Discovery motorhome and traveling gig to gig all over the U.S. teaching CAD (Computer Aided Design) classes for EDS.  Because I was able to travel and stay in places for extended periods of time unlike other instructors in our group that had to fly home to be with family every weekend, my boss asked me to move to San Jose and coordinate all classes taught at Applied Materials, an electronics manufacturing firm that specialized in all things related to computers and electronic products.

I moved into an RV park in San Jose and shortly after landing there, a guy with an MCI moved into the slip next to me. One day when I was working on my Stick-N-Staple unit, I mentioned to him that there seem to be a lot of things that needed repairing on my Stick-N-Staple unit that only had 70,000 miles on it and I asked him how many miles he had on his bus.  When he told me over 3 million miles on it, I about spit up my beer.  It was then, that I knew eventually I would own a bus conversion.

When the gig in San Jose played out three years later, I decided I was tired of San Jose and asked my boss if I could move to SoCal and work out of the office there.  We had an EDS office in San Jose, but it has no permanent classroom in that facility.  We occasionally held classes in a conference room, with laptop computers, but that was only now and then.  Had I stayed in San Jose, I would have been teaching a few classes there, but mostly I would be flying all over the country weekly to teach classes, and with over 1 million miles on American Airlines and United already, I was tired of flying.  In SoCal we had a permanent classroom that held weekly classes and if I was there, I could teach classes in-house and limit my traveling.

My boss said that was fine with him, so I packed up the bus and traveled south to Anaheim one day where I found a white trash trailer park, moved in, and made several new friends there.  Unfortunately, because I was not assigned to one customer as I was in San Jose, I had to start paying for my own RV Park fees and my own gas to travel to and from work every day, and my own meals, a luxury I had enjoyed whilst in San Jose.

One day I noticed the MC-7 in the park had a For Sale sign in the window, so I went over and knocked on the door.  There was no answer so I called the number on the sign and a guy answered and told me a bit about the bus. He was a Truck Driver and was out of town and he had owned the bus for several years and being an OTR truck driver, he even put an 8V92 in. He just finished building a house up north and no longer needed the bus.  Bottom line, I ended up buying his bus for $16,000.  I actually never did drive that bus as I lived in that RV park until I traded up for my MC-9 Log Cabin bus you can read about on our Blog.

He also gave me a copy of a magazine called Bus Conversion Magazine (you may have heard of it) and I read it that night cover to cover.  I was so impressed with what I learned about bus conversions in that one issue that I was chomping at the bit to read more.  I discovered that the magazine was published only about six miles from where I was staying so the following weekend, I went over to meet what I envisioned a "Wizard" (I later had a new name for him) and I signed up for a subscription to his magazine and I even bought 10 back issues that day. I took them home and read every issue cover to cover.

About a week later, I was chomping at the bit for more, so I went back over to get 10 more issues and I went upstairs to the magazine storage room, where I found shelves full of back issues as well as even more issues in and out of boxes strewn all over the floor. I asked him if I could have one copy of each issue if I organized all of his back issues on the shelves.  He said sure, under one condition, I could only take one of every back issue that had more than 10 issues of that month. 

I agreed and then every night after work that week, I stopped by and organized a few more copies on the shelves and after about a week of my efforts, everything was organized. I then took one copy of each issue that had over 10 copies in stock and went home and started reading. Over the next two months, I read every day and eventually read every issue cover to cover. I came away with an amazing amount of knowledge, leaving no doubt that a bus conversion is the only way to travel, as you all know very well.

I was so interested in Bus Conversion Magazine and visited Kadletz quite frequently over the next couple of years learning all I could and seeing the buses he had for sale, and even bought one of his Log Cabin buses. He eventually asked me to come to work for him and help with the magazine as he was too busy to do it himself anymore. 

I said I was not interested in that, but I may be interested in buying the magazine business as I thought that would be a good way to pay for my fuel whilst traveling after I retired, as I knew I wanted to travel a lot, and not by air.  A few days later we came to an agreement, and I paid him $25,000 and I owned BCM. At least I thought I did. 

But wait...there's more.

He rented me an office upstairs for $150/month and I was very busy working my real job during the day and went to work in my BCM office every night.  I hired his previous Admin and she worked all day running the company.  Who later, by the way, stole several thousands of dollars from the company.

I continued to ask MAK for the website password so I could start making changes on the website and he kept telling me that he is making improvements for me and was reluctant to give it to me, but I was busy learning how to produce a magazine, as I had no background in this business and almost failed English class, so I was not very concerned.

One day I sat down in his office and told him I needed the password to the BCM website as I wanted to make some changes myself after not seeing him make any progress, and he said to me "You did not buy the website, you only bought the magazine."  Those of you that know MAK, I am sure can understand this. I was devastated.

Being a computer programmer, I knew the website was the future of the magazine's success. (Little did I know that the magazine would never be successful, but I had my dreams.)  I asked him how much he wanted for the website and he threw out a figure of $8,000.  I had to agree to that price, he had me by the gonads by then.  So I wrote him another check for $8,000, and he gave me the password.

Now you know the rest of the story.

[lvmci]

I thought you were a gigolo before you bought the magazine...

[Dave5Cs]

Gary very interesting story. And yes My wife and I do know what you mean with MAK. Sorry you too had to go through it with him.  You do work hard on the Magazine that I saw personally when we were in Arizona. Enjoyed being your mailman bud, LOL

PS I grew up on a 40 acre Farm in Napa, California. Dad was a general Contractor (like I was)and raised Walnuts, ( we had dyed hands in Walnut season from soaking them in Lye)feeder hay, and Plums.

Safe travels

[Gary Hatt - Publisher BCM]

I thought you were a gigolo before you bought the magazine...

Yes, but that never panned out and I was going hungry.   

[DoubleEagle]

This is where I learned about operating heavy equipment and farming as we had tractors, a dump truck, a mowing machine, a hay bailer, a hay rake, etc., as well as a dozer that started on gas and switched over to diesel once it got warmed up a bit which Cliff said was an International I believe.

I had one of those International Bulldozers in New Hampshire as well, I was due north of you up in Littleton. Mine was a TD18A, and it was unusual having everything for both a  gasoline engine and a diesel in one motor. The magneto was tricky to keep going on the gas side, but that was about it. After warming it up and then feeding a little diesel in, and then popping the changeover lever and firing up the diesel, it was always a great experience. It made operating in cold weather easier.

[CrabbyMilton]

Gary, years ago my job position was attached to the IT department. My bosses boss had a wacky and abstract sense of humor. He would come up to me and say. "I missed my calling in life. I never wanted to be an IT person." So I asked him what his true calling was. "I wanted to be a hermit." So I asked him why he never became a hermit. "Because the bank says I can't and my wife doesn't want me lying on the couch all day." But I can see why you got bit by the bus bug. Personally, I don't think a bus would work for me. Sure it would be fun to have one but I'm not that handy and have next to no patience. So a road trip for me would either be in a charter coach or my own car. At least I wouldn't have to deal something broken in a conversion ruining a trip. Besides, if God had meant man to camp, he wouldn't have placed hotels along the interstate with free breakfast. I admire a beautiful landscape but not to sleep in.

[Gary Hatt - Publisher BCM]

Here is a photo of my Mom and Dad that I have on my wall in my Bus.  I think they did a great job of raising us.

[CrabbyMilton]

Gee, I wonder what the inspiration was for that pose? Nice picture of them.