CATS, BATS, AND THRASHING MACHINES: A Guide to Surviving Childhood

Memories of a Minnesota farm boy: Cats, Bats, and Thrashing Machines is a loving and humorous chronicle of a boy’s life on a small farm in Northern Minnesota in the 1950’s.

Hines revisits the games he and his sisters played and describes the chores he tried to avoid. He celebrates the simple joys found in a shady meadow or a mound of newly mowed hay and warns readers about the dangers found during any expedition to the deep woods or to the nearby barn. His world is filled with wild and not-so-wild animals and all are potential playmates. He lives during a time when neighbors gather as a community to thresh a crop of wheat and celebrate the harvest with feasts of fried chicken, biscuits, roast beef, cake and coffee – lots of cake and coffee.

Although the boy’s stories embrace the specific traditions, hardships, and joys once common in his Minnesota farming community, one cannot ignore the universal appeal of celebrating a time and a way of life now gone.

Thomas Hines began life as a farmer’s son and sixty years later retired as Professor and Chair of the Department of Theatre at Whitman College. He is the author of "The Ancient Theatre Archive: a tour of Greek and Roman architecture" and cites his early rural experiences as fundamental to his successes as an educator, scholar, and designer.

His love of travel and his passion for research and teaching can be traced to his early adventures and discoveries on his family’s farm in Northern Minnesota. There’s not much difference between, “Look what I found in the back pasture,” to “Look what I found at the Acropolis in Athens.”

Although Tom is comfortable sifting through ancient ruins in Turkey and Greece, he is equally at home installing a new roof or repairing a broken fence. His recent design project was a chicken coop in the backyard of his retirement home on Whidbey Island in Washington. Once a farm kid always a farm kid.

He is the father of two amazingly successful daughters and the grandfather to four equally amazing and beautiful grandchildren.Thomas Hines is also the grandson of William Hines, early Minnesota settler and founding father of the town and township of Hines, Minnesota.