Don'tcha Know Your Name and What are you Hiding down there?

In seventh grade Ronald Tipton and I were both engaging in philately. I know that sounds just terrible that two boys of twelve or thirteen were involved in such a thing.

Philately means the study of stamps. Ronald and I were both in Stamp Club. He may be the reason I picked that club over others. In the photo I am third from the left, taken before I wore glasses. Ronald is the boy at the extreme right.

Every year at Downingtown Junior Senior Joint High you had to join a club, which met once a week. In eighth grade I joined Audio Visual Aids Club. I’m not sure why I joined, except I always had an interest in film and recording. Don’t look for me in the photograph; I’m not there. This photo is from ninth grade. I don’t have the eighth grade picture. (Oddly, the boy whose face is cut off on the extreme right does look like me.)

The purpose of the A-V club was to understand how to work and use the equipment, movie projectors, tape recorders, slide projectors and overheads, any device that helped in giving speeches and doing presentations. Later in life I was involved in this area in various ways. I assisted in the sound for a church, put together media shows for the United Way and presentations at various places I worked. I had none of that in mind when I joined this club, of course, but it helped give me a little foundation in those skills. Hibbert Wells (pictured left), a Chemistry teacher by trade, was our sponsor.

It also had a side benefit that proved fortuitous that year. The Audio Visual Aid Club was responsible for bringing any such equipment, setting it up and sometimes running it for classroom use. They called for us to assist if Mr. Ratliff wanted to show a film of the happy Peruvian natives in their colorful dress herding llama or Mr. Wells needed to project overheads of chemical formula. We got out of our class to deliver the equipment and make it work. If they gave me any excuse to escape my own classrooms I was happy, especially if I could escape from English or history.

(Perhaps I should ask my Jamie, next-door neighbor, if this is how they dress in Peru, since it is the country he migrated from.)

I hated eighth grade to the point of dreading going. It was not the kids this year; it was one particular teacher . This teacher was a sardonic, bullying, belittling and ignorant individual whom I had twice a day. Her name was Phyllis Hurlock (pictured left) and she taught English and History. The report cards were printed with these two core courses while the rest were merely handwritten. I know we had English daily. We may have had history but four days a week. (Note: I have some confusion about exactly when I had Miss Hurlock. I did have her for 8^th grade History; however, I am not sure whether I had her for English in 7^th or 8^th grade.  I do believe I had Mrs. Pollock for 7^th Grade English. I know I had Mrs. Rodgers in ninth, so having Miss Hurlock for both English and History in Eighth grade is most likely correct.)

Miss. Hurlock got off on the wrong foot with me from the get go. My first name is Larry; it is not short for anything. I am not a Lawrence or Laurence or a Lorenz. I always joked my family was too poor to afford the extra letters of those longer names. My mother named me after the hero in her favorite novel. My parents dubbed me Larry and then tried different combination to find a middle name that went well with Larry and Meredith. They choose Eugene. My name has no more significance that that.

Miss Hurlock refused to believe my name was Larry. She wasn’t the only teacher I had who thought my name had to be Lawrence. I had a bit of an argument about it more than once, but she was the only one who made it an issue and then held it against me. I forget if this began in English or History, but that doesn’t matter. She resented me for it in both classes. On my first day with Miss. Hurlock we had this exchange.

           Miss. Hurlock greeted the class with a pointer in her hand. She used this to point to her name

scrawled across a blackboard. She sat down setting her pointer near at hand and picked up a pencil. She produced a small black notebook from her desk. Carefully she flipped the notebook open to an empty space.

         “I would like your names, please,” she said, and began a roll of the room. Getting to my turn, she tapped her pencil.                          “Suppose we have your name now.”

         “Lar…”

        “Stand up, please.”

         I stood. “Larry Meredith.”

        She peered over her spectacles at me. She was a great peering-over-spectacles person when annoyed with anything.

        “Your full name, please.”

        “Larry Eugene Meredith.” There were some giggles at hearing Eugene.

        She took a deep breath, laid down her pencil and interlaced her fingers. She was prone to interlacing her fingers when really annoyed.

       “Your full name. Please.”

       I blinked in surprise because I had no other name to give. She glared at me.

       “Larry Eugene Meredith,” I repeated with a gulp.

      Her jowls quivered. “It is the standard at Downingtown Junior High School that we use our proper given name. Your proper given name is Lawrence, is it not?”

       “Not. It’s Larry.”

       One eyebrow danced above her spectacles. She was a great eyebrow dancer when extremely upset.

       “I understand,” she said in measured tones, “that you prefer ‘Larry’ in the company of your friends, but school is not your friend. (Man, wasn’t that the truth!) Education is quite serious business. The school has in place very important and serious rules you must obey without question. Remember, obeying rules is the first and most important aspect of education. I will call you Lawrence in here. Your parents gave you that name and you should be proud of it.”

       “But they didn’t. They named me Larry.”

   

   She rose from behind the desk, her large bottom flipping back her chair, which hit the wall with a bang. Spittle sprouted on her lips as she picked up her pointer. I pictured her caning me like some scene out of a Dickensesque novel. She finally conceded to me that I knew my own name, but I don’t think she ever believed it wasn’t Lawrence.

         The idea she might smack me with her pointer was not farfetched in the 1950s. Teachers and

principals could inflict corporeal punishment if they felt inclined. Remember Mrs. Warren in first grade that would yank your hair if you didn’t pay attention or acted up. The scuttlebutt through out East Ward Grade School was Mrs. Yost, the principal, kept a special paddle in her office called “The Enforcer”. It had holes drilled through to make it hurt more. No one had ever seen it, but we believed it was real. Indeed, it may have been. Even today there are 21 states that allow corporeal punishment and some of those have specifically banned the use of paddles with holes.

        Miss Hurlock would not forget this confrontation. Later in the year during an English class speaking on word meaning she made these comments.

       “No intelligent parent would give their child a name ending in ‘y’. The ‘y’ is a diminutive meaning ‘little’. Such a child would go through life as Little Bill or Little Joe. They would always think small of themselves.”

        She looked directly at me as she spoke. I don’t know what Gary, Barry and the assorted Marys thought of this. I found it degrading. What kind of person would say things like that to children in their trust and care?

     

  I finished the year with a C in history and a C minus in English. Some may wonder if I was determined to be a writer, why did I do so poorly in English. English wasn’t writing; it was diagramming sentences. I didn’t have much interest in the craft. To me writing was characters getting in and out of difficult situations. I was concerned with plot structure, not sentence structure. I didn’t know the difference between Active and Passive Voice and didn’t care. (Hopefully there are not too many passive sentences in this book.)

        I really was turned off on sentence diagramming because Miss Hurlock would make you do it on the blackboard and hover over you criticizing in a caustic manner. I was usually very nervous if called to the board in front of everyone. It was a time of my life when standing before others was nerve wracking to me. I was scared to death to be the center of attention because being in the spotlight usually meant ridicule. I never raised an arm in class even when I knew answers because I didn’t want the class to laugh at me if I was wrong, but to be truthful, they often laughed at me because I was right.

       There was one thing I found I could do I enjoyed, even though it was in front of everyone. I could give off the cuff speeches. We were required to bring in an object each marking period and give a short talk about it. We were supposed to be learning how to write a speech. I didn’t do any more homework than I thought I absolutely had to, which was very little. I spent zero time at home writing out any scripts. I would find an object and make up my speech while walking to school. I generally received a good mark for my speeches. It is a good thing we didn’t have to turn in a written version.

        One time I brought in a little glass vial. It belonged to my grandmother and contained sand

weaved into a colorful design. I believe she bought it at an Indian Reservation during a trip west. Unfortunately I also had gym class that day. I don't know why I didn't put the vial in my locker, but it may be I had no break between English class and Gym. They wouldn’t allow us to go to our lockers between classes. In Gym we put our clothes in these wire baskets and padlocked them in a shelf space. Ronald Tipton and I shared a basket that day. I buried the vial down under the clothing so no one could work it out through the spaces and steal it. When we came back to dress while pulling out the clothes the vial flipped out, hit the floor and broke. I felt as shattered as the glass. It is something I have felt bad about to this day. I was extremely upset about this because I had pleaded with my grandmother to let me have it for show and tell. The vial meant something special to my grandmother and I had promised her I would be very careful. Now Ronald claims I blamed him. If I blamed him I am sorry.

       

 Sometimes there were funny things in Miss Hurlock’s classes. Once she had to leave the room for some purpose. While she was gone an eraser war broke out. Pupils were throwing the blackboard erasers across the room at each other and one errant eraser landed in the shade of an overhead lamp. Our lights hung from the ceiling on long black pipes. The shades beneath the bulbs were white and shaped like inverted Frisbees. When that eraser landed there it was out of sight and not coming down. The lamp was too high for anyone to reach in and pull that thing out, even if the tallest of us stood atop a desk. We had to forget about it. We figured no one would ever miss one eraser.

        Miss Hurlock returned and everyone snapped around in his or her seat as if sitting quietly with hands folded was what we did during her entire absence. She went about the lesson, but after a while this acrid smell of burning rubber wafted through the air. We all knew the eraser resting against a hot bulb caused it, but no one said anything. Miss Hurlock kept wrinkling her nose and sometimes looking about, but I don’t know if she ever figured it out. That smell of rubber remained a constant for several more classes in that room.

        One of the funnier moments was when Denny Myers gave one of his show-an-tell speeches. He

forgot part of it and couldn’t remember the next line. He stopped speaking in exasperation and shouted, “Shi-hi-hi-hi-hi-hi-hi-hi-hi-hi-hi-hi-hi-hi-hi-hi-hi-hi-hi-hi---oot.” He stuttered on forever, but finally managed to catch himself in mid-syllable. His face turned a bright scarlet, much like his makeup for that scarecrow he played in the East Ward Operetta. Even Miss Hurlock stifled a laugh.

It was during eighth grade that the pubescent male’s growing transition from boy to man became a constant problem and fear. If it occurred during class you hoped it would go away before the bell rang. If not you would position your books in front of you to hide it. A teacher calling you to the blackboard at such a moment was the biggest worry. This was where the odds would be against you in Miss Hurlock’s English class. She might send you to diagram a sentence, although diagramming a sentence in front of everybody may have been a more

embarrassing situation for me than the other. Besides, just the though of diagramming a sentence publicly would deflate anything for me. Her calling upon me to give my little speech was the worst possible scenario. There was no way to hide. I would be standing in the center of the floor in full frontal view.

It seemed that as that year progressed I found myself in constant arousal. It did not take very much stimulation. The vibration of riding in a car would bring it on and I often had to slink out at stops so my parents didn’t notice.

This may sound like a contradiction given the repressive sexual mores of the 1950s, but girls wore sheer blouses to school. It was a common fashion. Of course, girls wore so many undergarments in those days you saw little but bare shoulder. They wore slips, bras and crinolines. I was sitting behind a girl wearing such a blouse. Her slip and bra straps accidently slipped down her one arm. That was all it took.

Please don't call me to the blackboard!

I have been racking my brain trying to figure out my sexual knowledge out during junior high. I stated way back somewhere that some events of my life become confused as to the exact sequencing. I am certain that I did not find and read that rudimentary sex manual, booklet actually, until we had moved to Bucktown, which was after junior high. It was not until then, either, that I learned about masturbation. I knew early that babies were inside the mother, but had never had explained to me how they got there or how they escaped. Ronald had to be mistaken about me telling him the facts of life beyond the statement the baby was inside the mother. It is still possible I told him about conception, but at some time when we were in senior high. Ronald has stated his youthful naiveté on sexual matters several times in his own writing, as well as in conversations. He may have run two different occasions together when we discussed this function.

Anyway, here is what I know I knew as I progressed through eighth grade. I understood my body was changing somehow and doing weird things, but I didn’t know why. Since much of this concerned my private parts I couldn’t discuss it with anyone, certainly not a teacher. I was very close-mouth about myself around other kids for obvious reasons, to avoid teasing. I couldn’t talk to my father about it for the same reason feeling he would laugh at me. I was too embarrassed to bring it up with my mother or grandparents. I understood that some things happening to me were also happening to other boys in my class and we all tried to keep it secret and hidden. When certain things happened it felt good and I felt guilty about feeling good.

I still didn’t know what a naked female looked like, but I was determined to try and find out. The days of raging hormones, of pirates and of thievery lay ahead.

"The Incident" and the Shadow of Prison

This is my entire Seventh Grade Class. Can you find Waldo…I mean me? Hint, I am in the photo on the top and this was taken before I wore glasses. I am standing next to my on-again, off-again friend, Gary Kinzey. Iva is in this grouping in the front row, the first girl on the right. Okay, now find the fifth girl from the right in the front row wearing a dress with broad stripes. Go up from her to the thrid row and there I am, my lower face hidden. Gary is next to me toward the left. The boy directly behind me slightly to left left is Doug Way, one of my tormentors from the Charles-Bird-Way Gang.

Ronald Tipton and Stuart Meisel are in the third grouping, as is my one-time heartthrob, Mary Jane Chudleigh.

In Seventh Grade I was either harassed or embarrassed or bored out of my mind.

For instance, in my first week of school I was hustling to go between classes, fearful I would be late. I turned a corner and crashed into a girl. She was older, probably a Ninth Grader. She was carrying several books. I had my head down as usual, looking at my feet not the hall ahead, when I slammed into her. Her books flew every which way and she fell down. She was not happy. I was scrambling about trying to pick up her books when I heard the second bell ring. Sir Gallahad simply dropped her books in her lap and ran for it, hoping I’d never see that girl again.

If life were a Hollywood movie that girl would have become my steady date. The reality is I never did see that girl again, much to my relief.

We had assembly every week. I even had to watch my back there. We had fold up wooden seats. This allowed you to stand up for things like the Pledge of Allegiance or the National Anthem. The assembly always began with something you had to be on your feet for. At the end of these opening exercises everyone would sit on the edge of their seat and it would fold down under the weight, except the guy behind me sat first and stuck his feet up under the space between my seat and the back of the chair. When I sat there was a loud splintering noise and every head turned to stare at me.

I was always the center of attention for the wrong reasons, always the Doofus or clown.

In class I would become bored listening to most of the teachers. I had a young lady teacher named Lila Barnes (pictured right). If I remember correctly, she was fresh out of Teachers’ College. She had red hair and was pretty, but a bit hesitant. She taught History and I can’t remember anything about the class. I can’t tell you if it was World or American History. I use to kill time in class by flipping through the textbook just to look at the pictures.

I even invented a game for this distraction. The pictures in the textbooks had the source written in tiny print beneath the photo. I began marking down the names of these in my notebook, then making a pen stroke after the name when it got a credit. It was a contest to see which photographer got the most recognition.

My desk was against the wall right behind the doorway. I noticed there was a long space between the wall and the jam. I torn a page from my notebook and wrote a little poem.

To the one who finds this

Lodged in this resort,

Look tomorrow and you will find

The secret for winning every sport.

I signed it, “Helpful Edd”, folded the paper several times and stuffed it inside the crack.

The next time I had history, which was probably the next day because I think we had it four times a week, I wrote another poem.

To those who found the paper

Folded in here so neat

Here is the message on how to win.

Just one word…Cheat!

I signed this one, “Crooked Nedd and stuffed it into the crack.

I wonder if they are still in there?

For all my dislike of school, I was absent very few days. I hated being there, but I showed up. I missed a total of twelve days in the three years of Junior High, ten of them in seventh grade. I missed one day in eighth grade and one in ninth.

I missed half of those seventh grade days within the first two marking periods. I know most of those were due to the hiccoughs. When I got the hiccoughs I couldn’t stop. I would have them for hours, sometimes for days. We tried all the famous measures, a bag over the head, drinking water without taking a breath, eating a spoonful of sugar and even standing on my head. Nothing worked; they just had to run their course. Years after I got out of school I discovered eating pretzels would quiet my hiccoughs, but I didn’t know that back them.

The school nurse sent me home from school a few times because my hiccoughs were so persistent that the teachers complained I disturbed the class.

I was not hiccoughing though for three of the five days I missed in the late spring of 1954. I wasn’t sick either. I was playing hooky with my parents’ blessing. My mother decided my father and I should have a chance to bond. Maybe she believed if my dad and I became closer I wouldn’t be so moody all the time. Since starting junior high I was growing more and more meloncholy everyday. She talked my dad into taking me on the road with him. Early in April we set out for Pittsburgh together.

It wasn’t that bad. I don’t think we talked much, but the ride was an adventure to me. I would climb into the sleeper behind the seat and the rocking of the moving truck usually put me to sleep. We stopped in the Howard Johnson’s that were the only eateries along the Pennsylvania Turnpike in those days for all our meals. We sat at the counter. I usually had eggs and bacon for breakfast and hamburgers or those hot dogs in the funny looking buns for every lunch and dinner.

Whenever we stopped my dad would go to the restroom. He always asked me if I had to go. I always shook my head no. I didn’t want to use public restrooms. I think I urinated three times the whole trip and then only when I was absolutely certain I was in the restroom alone. If someone was in there, I left and held it to the next stop where I could hopefully have privacy. Even when I got that privacy, I used a stall, not a urinal. We were two nights and the most of three days on the road. See why I said Teddy and Stuart weren’t going to beat me at the Drinking Game?

I remember going through the Blue Mountain and Kittatinny Mountain Tunnels. I also remember sleeping in a bunkhouse overnight near the mill where dad picked up a load of steel. I believe this was actually located in Butler, Pennsylvania, a town about 35 to 40 miles north of Pittsburgh. He was most likely hauling out of AK Steel.

He told me to hide in the sleeper and not to come out when we reached that mill. They forbade children inside. He had to pull his truck through a part of the plant where they loaded it. I did as he told me. There were large forklifts and bustling men surrounding the truck while I peeked through a part in the curtain. A crane swept overhead and dropped the heavy steel beams on the trailer. What if the crane operator misjudged and dropped one of those on the cab?

That evening we were driving on a mountain road above Pittsburgh. I could see the lights of the city down in a valley and the three rivers converging in the twilight of the distance. The two-lane road was very twisting. Suddenly some fool in a car came around a blind turn passing another truck. My dad swerved over as far as he could and the car tried to squeeze back to the proper lane. The driver didn’t quite make it and sideswiped dad’s trailer. Dad’s truck was fine, but the guy’s car was badly smashed in on one side. We had to wait around for over an hour while dad talked to the police and they examined the scene trying to determine who was at fault.

The trip was not bad. My dad didn’t harp on me about much, except he did start nagging me about not going to the restrooms. We didn’t come home all bonded and at peace with each other for evermore. Things went back to normal. I returned to school and dad returned to telling me to stand up straight or whatever.

The Sunday after the trip was “The Incident”. I honestly don’t know why I did it. It was early in the morning and mom and dad were still asleep. In fact, it looked as if the whole street was still in bed, but I was soon to learn that was not the case.

I got out of bed, but didn’t go into the bathroom as usual. I took off my pajamas and then in just my undershorts, I went downstairs. I pulled off my underpants in the kitchen and went naked out on the porch and down into the back yard. There was no sign of any life. They closed the farm machinery store because it was Sunday. I stood over near their long garage and urinated. Then I went back inside, up to my room and dressed. As far as I knew no one could possibly seen what I did.

Later in the week a teacher called my name and told me to report to the Principal’s Office. I am not sure it was on that very Monday or a couple days later. I went to the office and was ushered into Mr. Evans’ office. He was sitting behind his desk looking grim, but he often looked that way. There was a police officer standing by the desk. I knew the officer because he was a friendly guy who regularly said hello to we kids when he saw us walking back and forth to school. He didn’t look any too friendly at the moment.

I thought it had something to do with the trip I took with my dad. They found out I had played hooky perhaps. Maybe it was a follow-up to the accident. But then the police officer said someone had seen me in my backyard stark naked. They had also witnessed me urinate. Was this true?

I was stunned. I was scared. I was only 12 years old. I nodded my head.

The police officer then explained to me what I did was wrong. It was a very bad thing. He told me I might go to the reform school in Camp Hill as a result. I had heard tell of Camp Hill and what I had heard was not good. It was not a place one wanted to go.

Camp Hill was founded in 1941, the year I was born. It was a State Correctional Institution for young offenders, and at that time was mainly for those below the age of 16. In 1975 it was ruled that Camp Hill was inappropriate for juvenile offenders and in 1977 it changed to an all-adult facility for men.

I was then send back to class, like I could concentrate on any lessons after that. I arrived home that afternoon expecting the worse. My mom would probably be crying, but at least dad would be on the road. Dad would be home again soon enough and I expected he really would whip me with his belt this time.

I got home and there was nothing out of the ordinary. My mom cooked dinner as usual. She was fine. I went to bed, but couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t sleep well for the next month. Dad came home for the weekend and it was the same as any other weekend. Every day I went to school waiting for the cops to arrest me and tote me off to Camp Hill. It didn’t happen. I started to believe that it wouldn’t happen.

I was now nervous about who knew. It felt as if all eyes looked my way whenever I entered a room. What were they thinking? How many people saw me do it? Who told whom about it? How many of the other kids knew I did this disgusting thing? How could I face my friends? Had Iva seen me? Had Patty Robinson seen me? Patty lived on the side that might have allowed the best view.

The cops never came for me and nothing happened. My parents never mentioned having any knowledge of The Incident. No one said a thing about it to me, neither a grownup nor a kid. I found out ten years later a man named Stan Fredericks was the one who reported it to the police. He lived in the other half of our semi-detached house. I learned this fact from Ronald Tipton in a letter dated December 13, 1963, a decade after it happened. He wrote that Mr. Fredericks had told his dad about it and Ron’s dad told Ronald he should stay away from me. I wonder if Mr. Tipton thought I was Gay? How ironic if so.

In the letter where I learned this, Ronald claimed, “Stan Fredericks related to him [His father] he often saw you playing with yourself in the nude in your back yard…” This was not at all true. I did this one time and I was not engaging in “playing with myself”, because at this point in my life I had still not learned about masturbation or sex for that matter.

Mr. Fredericks worked at Guindy’s with Ronald Tipton’s father. Ronald says Fredericks told  his father I came out of my back door naked and crossed the back porch. He said I walked the length of my yard to the back and then to the front again masturbating the whole time. I knew knowing about masturbating at that time. I didn’t know about masturbation, and wouldn’t, until I was 15, which was when I was in Senior High School and not living in Downingtown. I had not walked to the back of the yard, either. I had walked from the back porch steps to the side of the farm equipment building. He couldn’t have seen me walk to the back of the yard where we had a dog run and house for Topper (pictured right), because I never did that.  He obviously saw me cross from the porch to the edge of the farm machinery garage and urinate there since that is what I did and all I did, which is what the police officer said was reported, but nothing more. Not that it matters, since it happened over 60 years ago and I was but a twelve years old (I turned thirteen the next summer.).

After a month or so I kind of put it out of my head. I was grateful then that my parents didn’t punish me and that the authorities didn’t send me to reform school. Looking back at this from the distance of age, knowing what was raging inside me those years and what was ahead, they didn’t do me any favor by totaling ignoring it. I was obviously a troubled boy who needed some help that I wasn’t going to get. Of course being sent to Camp Hill probably wouldn’t have helped me; it most likely would have destroyed me.

This is the view of the back of 417 Washington Avenue. The Fredericks home was on the left with the white walled-in back porch. I had exited the kitchen door, went down the porch steps and turned left going straight across the yard to the side of the farm equipment garage, then returned the same way. Fredericks must have seen me from the upstairs window, the only viewpoint he could have had on the back of his home. Needless to say, I didn’t run out into our backyard naked anymore and I kept my bathroom functions in the bathroom after that.

It wasn’t the end of all things nude, however. It wasn’t the end of uneducated sexual urges leading to criminal acts. It wasn’t the end of the turmoil, low self-image and doubt inside me. It just added to my angst.

Back to Nature in the Woods

Some may ask why hold up such a besmirched picture of myself to the world? For one I promised I would be honest about me. We can go through life putting makeup over our blemishes and scars, of course, and many do. I chose not to do that.

This is also a form of confession. Confession is good for the soul because we must recognize the need for it and then confess our faults and sins to God or we can’t find forgiveness and salvation. (See Psalm 32.) I believe if we truly seek forgiveness and salvation we need to confess to everyone.  

Some things seem so securely secret that no one would ever know, so why tell them? Perhaps my feeling and my thoughts are deep secrets that would remain such if I said nothing, but truth will out because frankly, somebody knows most of what I write. For instance the striping naked when my friends played war. Is that so secret? It isn’t since 2004 when Stuart put it out there in his memoir.

My most embarrassing public act was noted in a December 13, 1963 letter from my best friend, Ronald Tipton. He was passing on information he learned from his father, who learned it from the man who also told the police. Who knows whom else the man or Ronald’s father may have told. It may be mostly forgotten today, but it is hardly secret. Why pretend I was perfect in any way? Why not get it out there? One thing about confession is you no longer have to be concerned someone learning of it will use it against you, because you’ve already held it up to the light of day.

Finally, telling your past, good, bad or indifferent, shows people how you’ve changed. How can people know you’re a new and improved model if they don’t know how badly the old product was flawed? I was 34 years old when I turned to Christ. I was a lost sinner in need of salvation before then, so I must have required saving from something.

I’ll tell you, I thought I was a loser by the time I was 12, but I also thought I was a really good person. Hopefully, this autobiography shows how wrong I was about both.

We return you to our sordid story.

It was nearing the end of summer 1953 before the beginning of Seventh Grade. The weather was very warm. Temperatures had peaked in July at 101 degrees. I wore short sleeves. I hadn’t worn short pants since I was 5 years old. I decided shorts were for little kids and stuborningly refused to wear them. I didn’t begin wearing shorts in hot weather again, except for swimwear, until I was fifty. On the right is my typical boyhood outfit during the summer, short sleeve button-down the front shirt, blue jeans held up by a wide belt, socks and sneakers (Usually Keds). I had switched by the spring of

1954 from my usual baseball cap to a motorcycle hat. The hat was similar to what Marlon Brando wore in “The Wild One”, a movie released in December 1953 that I liked a lot. I identified with Brando’s outsider, just as later I would identify with James Dean in “Rebel Without a Cause”. Except for the style of hat, my outfits in the summer of 1953 were basically identical.

(The boy balancing atop the barrel was an acqaintance named Dallot Norris, who weaved in and out of my clique. The photo was taken in Downingtown’s Kerr Park.)

On this particular 1953 summer’s day I went to Stuart Meisel’s and he wasn’t home.

I hiked back into the woods behind his yard. (Picture: Behind Stuart’s) There was a little field of high grass just past the Slave House. A narrow path went through it and into the trees. The path followed the edge of the Millrace. Once you entered the woods you couldn’t see much of anything to the East. You could see the lake on the other side of the millrace and the back of the Bicking Paper Mill beyond it. The path would lead you to Pennsylvania Avenue coming out across from what is now called the Lion’s Trail. Lion’s Trail goes through Kardon Park and joins the Struble Trail.

Lion’s Trail, Kardon Park and Struble Trail didn’t exist in 1953. There wasn’t very much at all along Pennsylvania Avenue in those days. It was fairly private and quiet back in those woods. It is all built up today (left).  This is where Stuart, Teddy Miller, Bill Brookover, other friends and I would sometimes play Cowboys or War using the large indentation we called Devil’s Nest as a bunker or fort. I now began to play one of those games by myself, running down one side of the big hole and up the embankment on the other side.

It was hot and I was doing a lot of running back and forth. There was no one there but me, so I took off my shirt. The breeze felt very nice against my bare skin. It occurred to me since I was completely alone and out of sight of anything within those woods that I could take off everything and no one would know. So I did. I striped naked and ran about the “Devil’s Nest” for a few minutes.

I was nervous someone might come. I didn’t stray too far from my little pile of discarded clothes, but no one came. After several minutes I dressed and went home.

I went back the next day. Stuart wasn’t home again. I went back to “Devil’s Nest” and this time I undressed right away. I pretended I was like Tarzan, some person raised by wild animals instead of people, wolves. I was a Wolf-Boy. This time I stayed longer and went a little further away from my pile of clothes. I felt free. I felt cool, especially out of those heavy jeans. I also felt the strange tingle inside I was beginning to experience around girls. I though it was just nervousness, but at the same time a fear in the back of my head said I could be caught.

Having anyone see me doing this was not something I wanted. It was not that I felt what I was doing was wrong in anyway. It was I didn’t want anyone looking at my bony body and once in junior high I would dislike removing my shirt in Gym or taking group showers for the same reason. Sure, I didn’t want anybody to see me nude in these woods, yet at the same time the breeze felt so cooling and the strange tingling sensation was pleasant.

After a while, I thought I heard something and hurriedly dressed. There was no one. It might have been a squirrel or a bird I heard or just a nut falling from a tree. It didn’t matter what I heard, I got out of there.

Yet I kept coming back to that place. I went there without stopping at Stuart’s to see if he was home. I found it exhilerating. I was doing something in secret that no one knew about, something daring. I got the tingle each time and I got ever more daring. Before I would remain hidden down in that hole, because I knew if someone came down the path they wouldn’t be able to see me below the embankments. If I would hear anyone coming I’d have time to dress. Now I was venturing out of the hole into the woods above it. This seemed to increase the tingling.

There was still no way I wanted anyone to see me.

After two or three weeks I was taking more risks. I left the hole and walked down the path a ways in either direction. Ever fearful of being caught I would imagine the sound of footsteps and run for my clothes. One time as I fled back to my clothes a brush struck me across the face. I got dressed and as I walked from the woods my eye hurt every time I blinked.

I thought I had something in it, but it really hurt if I tried rubbing. At home my mother noticed I was in pain and that my face was red from where I kept touching it when I blinked. She made me sit down and let her look at my eye.

“There’s something in your eye,” she said. She took me to see Dr. Neff.

Doctor Neff examined me and told my mother that I had a splinter of wood in my eyeball.

Splinter? To me it felt more like the proverbial beam. Every time I blinked it seemed to slash the inside of my eyelid. He said he would take it out with a needle.

I was calm, which was extraordinary. When I had a splinter in my hand or foot and mom talked of using a needle I would sometimes run and hide, trying to work or suck the object out on my own. Now the doctor was going to stick a needle in my eye, which he preceded to do.

I didn’t feel a thing.

I took this as a punishment for what I had been doing. I stopped going to the woods after that. Besides school was starting.

I’ve never told anybody about these things.