A Poor Boy’s Odyssey
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PART ONE THE EARLY DAYS “A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying,” George Orwell once wrote, “because any life when viewed from within is simply a series of defeats.” You may believe the following story or not. Years ago Casey Stengel was coach of the New York Yankees baseball team. He liked to tell stories about baseball in the earlier days. He always ended his yarns by saying, “You can look it up.” That might be a good ending for this story. I have had my share of defeats, but I wouldn’t bother to write a book about them. Many of these comments and stories have been taken from my books that were written when I was a few years younger. ******** I was born in1920, in a little unpainted wood-frame house on the edge of a small cotton farm in Natural Bridge, Alabama. It was three-hundred yards from a rock formation that created a natural bridge, and that gave the village its name. My father was a coal miner and part-time farmer and my mother taught first and second grade in school. She had a high-school diploma, and that’s all she needed at the time. My father had two years of high school and was a veteran of the First World War. She lived with his sister and parents while he fought in the First World War, and they married as soon as he came home from France. When I was five, when my sister was three and a half, and when my brother Quinton was two, my family moved to Lawrence County, Tennessee. They moved with my father’s parents, who wanted to be near grandpa’s sister and her husband, Bob Rooker. One of my mother’s aunts was married to George Roberts and also lived in Tennessee, only a few miles away. Rumor had it that Bob Rooker had spent a year in jail for making moonshine whiskey and he moved to Tennessee so that his new neighbors wouldn’t know about it. I grew up there on a farm during the depression of the 1930s. This is my story, which starts with the beginning of my book Forged in a Country Crucible, Second Edition, published by AuthorHouse. (Publish on demand.) It is available from AuthorHouse or on my web site at www.josephcwhite.com.
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About the Book
This is a memoir about my ninety-three years on this earth and the good luck I have had. It borrows from previous self-published memoirs about growing up on a farm during the depression of the 1930s, about real estate investments, and about a career in governmental service. That started with an entry grade of GS-6 trainee in the Border Patrol and ended with retirement twenty-one years later in grade GS-15. After retirement I was executive assistant to the CEO of the National Rifle Association, followed by two years as Deputy Executive Vice President (CEO) Good luck was a major factor in my success, but the luck was helped by the capacity for hard work developed on the farm as a teenager. Other factors in my successes were my natural ability for pistol marksmanship and my experience as an airplane pilot in World War II.
About the Author
Joe White grew up on a dirt-poor farm in Tennessee during the worst part of the depression of the 2930s. The oldest of seven children, and the last one living, he missed the senior year of high school to work in the harvest and later to join the Civilian Conservation Corps. His father was in poor health, and the money from the CCC helped the family to survive. He joined the National Guard at age eighteen and that became the Army of the United States when he was twenty. He went to flying school and in 1943 became an officer pilot in the Army Air Corps. His primary duty was as an instructor pilot, training Air Corps Cadets. In 1953, he joined the US Immigration Border Patrol as a GS-6 Trainee and retired in 1974 in grade GS-15. He held positions of Patrol Inspector, Airplane Pilot, Chief of Air Operations and Logistics, District Director, Assistant Regional Commissioner, and Chief Intelligence Officer. He was a shooting member of five national championship pistol teams with the Border Patrol, three with the .45 and two with the center-fire gun. After retirement he was national senior (age 60 or older) pistol champion six times. Before, after, and between the times of service in the military and the Immigration Service he was a real estate salesman, broker, and investor. This book is basically a memoir about all of the good luck has had for most of his life, and he is only partly Irish. After retirement, he was asked to go to Washington to work at NRA headquarters as the Executive assistant to Harlon Carter, the Executive Vice President (CEO.) Later he was his Deputy for two years. Joe resigned because he remarried and wanted to move back to Florida to manage his real estate investment there.