University Daily Kansan
Thursday, August 30, 1979
9.
Hatch uses his weatherbeaten Ford pickup truck for handyman work in Lecompton.
Lecompton's own
Leroy Hatch needs no time to warm up, whether it is playing a cold fiddle in the yard of his Lecupom home or about his life of self-imposed indifference.
"Now you watch this," he said, as he took a smooth violin out of its case, placed it under his chinned, tapped his foot a lot and traked into a wild sun
His two-year-old daughter, Paty舞了拉到 his side. Her germ was on her back, and she hadn't worm on her silken skin as they had on his. On the leeves of Lory's face, Paty had a stubble beard farming and scraping for a living in the tiny town that has always been his
When Leroy's song was done, he said,
"Nobody can do that—be working outside and come in and pick up a cold fiddle and play like that."
"Not everybody can play music, but I was born with rhythm. I was born with a feeling for music."
Leroy, 55, was also born with a feeling for making treasures out of junk—like his fiddle, which he bought for only $3.
"There wasn't one string on it," he said, and explained how he fixed it up in about a year's time.
AFTER HIS SHP performance,
Leroy's conversation turned
technical—how the air pressure and
density affect the pitch of the fiddle,
how the neck should be just tiny but
the neck has eight cycles per second"
made a difference.
For every song he plays, Leroy has a story to tell. For every story he tells, he has a bit of philosophy to relate.
"People like to hear you talk," Leroy said. "They like to hear you express your opinions."
So Leroy does not wait to be asked how he feels about life.
"Life in my hobbit," they say. "Some days, you don't feel so well, so you should leave your hobby alone, whether you're music or catching grasshoppers."
"Some days I don't feel up to par and
I don't want to play music. On bad days
I don't want to do anything."
USUALLY, LEROY works around Lecompton doing "everything and anything." For example, he explained
that yesterday he put some siding on a house, went to town to run some errands, put anchors on three house trailers and poured a concrete step.
His life is unstructured—just the way he wants it. He explained that he is much harder to Howard Hughes than he is to Mark Twain. "I don't operate as well under pressure."
"There is one thing I've always wanted to do," he said. "I love kids, I love my classmates, I love week of each year reconstructing toys to give to kids at Christmas. That's just fun."
LEROY PULLED a black leather pouch and a package of papers from his back pocket and started to roll a cigarette, then a smoke in two or three hours," he said.
While fumbling with the tobacco, he told about memorizing the Oskaloosa phone book.
"I figured if I ever had trouble and had to call someone, why waste time looking up the number?"
By this time, Leroy was sitting on his
Leroy and his wife, Gerdie, have eight children, from two to 25 years old.
front porch. His three-year-old daughter, Delores, loses contentedly against her daddy, with her arms wrapped around his neck.
"Yeah, I love people," he said. "I love society. But the trouble is, people are afraid to have more than one kid.
"If you have one kid, you need two. If you have two, two need three—if you have eight kids, you need one more for a baseball team."
The trouble with kids today is silence. Leroy said, so he makes sure his students understand his 18-year-old son, Ernest, keep busy together, tinkering with model airplanes.
Tubb, the country musician. "I met him," Leroy proudly said. "I met him live in person."
"we pulled out a smoke and got a little reflective. "I've learned enough to find out what I don't know, he said. "Sure, you know, you don't learn in books."
'Life is my hobby'
—Leroy Hatch
The three elements of Leroy Hatch's life, a hammer, a violin and a Bible
The music from Leroy's violin draws a cherubic smile from his daughter Patsy.
Photos by Bill Frakes Story by Toni Wood
Hatch enjoys time spent with his children. Idleness is the downfall of youth, he says.