Thanksgiving came and went.  Christmas, we had a lot of activities going on around the campus but Christmas really didn't mean that much to me.  New Years Day, just another day in an institution.  I got to see a movie almost every week, seeing it was too cold to be running away.  In the juvenile home I could get slapped several times a week and still see the movie.
    From time to time my mother would come and visit me.  Her visits never seemed to be consistent, three, four, five or more months could go by between her visits.  I never knew when she was coming or if she would be coming back.  Whenever she did come and visit me our visits were usually short, in or near the administration building.  She was never allowed to take me off of grounds like most of the other parents took their kids.  Maybe they didn't think I would come back.  I surely don't know  why they would think that though.  Most of the parents gave money to their kids so they could buy candy from time to time.  If we had money we could order things once a week from a store in town.  My mother had never given me money nor had she ever brought me anything like candy.  I don't think she realized I could have those things and I didn't feel comfortable about telling her I could.  For some reason, I didn't think it was right for me to ask my mother for things.
    I liked those visits, not only because I could see my mother but also it helped break the monotonous routine of the institution.  Institutions are very regulated and are not much fun, no matter how much trouble you stay out of.
    During those visits my mind was never on her leaving at the end of the visit, not until the very last minutes.  I would try and be brave and not cry when she left for I didn't want her to see how unhappy I was for it would have only made her feel bad too.

A month before my thirteenth birthday.
The last visit my mother was to make while I was in the juvenile home.
It would be eighteen months and another institution before I would see her again.

    It had been that following spring, a month before my thirteenth birthday,  I was caught the second time crying by Mrs. Ladd as I watched the back of my mother's car receding down the driveway towards the street.  Yes, I had been crying and I had been warned about it before but I hadn't seen Mrs. Ladd as she had come up behind me and caught me crying.  She said in a scolding manner, "Quit that crying.  I told you once before if I ever caught you crying again when your mother leaves, we won't let her come and visit you again."  That had been the last time I had seen my mother at the juvenile home.  For my mother never came again.
    It had been during that last visit my mother had noticed some bruises on me.  She had taken me into the office and was going to talk with Mr. Ladd about them.  I had been shaking with fear as we sat there in Mr. Ladd's waiting room, waiting to see Mr. Ladd so my mother to talk with him, when I said to her with tears in my eyes, "Please don't say anything, for it will only get worse for me."  She didn't understand, Mr. Ladd was part of it.  She hadn't said anything to Mr. Ladd but later she had gone to Des Moines and talked with the people there at the head of the Children's Division telling them she suspected I was being abused.  That had only gotten me into more trouble.  Maybe that was why my mother was never allowed to come back.  I don't know, I guess I think a lot of things.
    By the first of May, a couple of weeks before my thirteenth birthday, I had only ran away a couple of times.  Things there in the institution hadn't improved all that much, I sure didn't have any new interest in staying.  I guess it had been still too cold for me to run much.
    On my thirteenth birthday I was in the hospital in Iowa City.  It was to be my last visit there.  The doctor had been talking to me about fitting me for a hearing aid and that was something I definitely didn't want so I started faking the hearing tests, pretending I could hear better than I could.  That had gotten me into some trouble for they said I wasn't being very cooperative.  They also wanted to send me to a special school for the deaf.  I think I would have liked that but then, I didn't know about that.
    It seems though I talked too much during this visit to the hospital.  The juvenile home did not like me complaining about, as Mr. Ladd had put it, "Lying" about my treatment there at the juvenile home.
    During that last visit I had to see a psychiatrist.  I don't remember a lot of what we had talked about.  I remember he asked me if I "played with myself."  At first I didn't know what he meant.  He sort of explained it to me and I was embarrassed and told him, "No. I don't do anything like that."  Even though I had just turned thirteen years old, I hadn't started "playing" with myself.  Looking back on it, there was no privacy in institutions to do things like that.  Well except in Isolation but I didn't even think about doing anything like that.  Maybe that is why my sexual interests developed so late.  At the time I didn't even know the difference between boys and girls.  I knew there was something different but I didn't know what it was.  Then, I may have only started to have an interest in girls.
    I never told him a man had sexually assaulted me a little over two years before nor what some of the older boys back at the juvenile home were doing to me when they had been locked in Isolation with me.  Up until I was thirteen I was among the youngest age group in the institution.  The boys my age didn't seem to get put in Isolation as much as I did.  I guess that is why the boys who were doubled up with me in Isolation had been so much older than I was for they had gotten into more trouble than the younger ones did.  So if a boy was put in with me he was always older than I was.  Sometimes as much as three, maybe four years older.
    I had hated it when they put other boys in with me.  We always had to be nude when we were in Isolation and there had always been enough light coming through the small unpainted window that we could easily see each other.  I guess, us both being nude and spending several days in the cell together without any type of monitoring (no one could see into the room unless the door was unlocked and opened) it was only natural what the boys had done to me.  I had told myself, it really didn't matter what the boys did to me or what they had me do to them.  I sure couldn't tell on them, not with them standing there in the room.  Later I couldn't tell for I didn't want anyone to know what had happened to me.  By the time they or I had left the cell it would have been over with so there wasn't any point in telling, even if I had thought it would have done any good.  (Which I didn't.)  I guess a boy doesn't want to tell when those things happen to him.  I really had some very mixed feelings on all of that anyway.  Was it worse than what the adults were doing to me?  At that time I didn't think it was.  So why would I tell an adult anything?
    When I had talked to the doctor several older boys by then had already sexually abused me over the last year.  The last time had been when I had been in Isolation the previous fall when I had ran away and was caught in Belle Plaine and returned to the juvenile home.  Bobby at that time had a cell in the far end of the building.  I don't know if anything like that had ever happened to him for I had never asked him and I never told him anything about any of those kind of things happening to me.  I never talked with any boy about sexual things, friends or otherwise.
    The other thing about having boys in with me, was when "The Man" came with his board they seen me getting a whipping.  I guess it was, the boys were seeing me at my weakest moment.
    I had been sadden when my visit with the psychiatrist came to an end for I had liked talking to him.  It always seemed I needed to talk to someone.  Just anyone but there never was anyone there.  The doctor had written back to the juvenile home and told them of some of the things I had said.  He had also told them I had a "very depressed outlook on life that seemed to get progressively worse on each succeeding visit."  I wonder why?
    A week hadn't gone by after I returned from the hospital when I had decided to run away.  I hadn't been associating with Bobby very much over the last few months but we did manage to get together once in a while when they didn't notice.  They had also got a little careless over the months in watching us.  Bobby was to be the best friend I was to ever have.  The only fun I ever had in the juvenile home had been the few times I had been with him.
    Bobby had come to the institution from his home when he was eleven years old. When he had been at home he had a school truancy problem and he did a little shoplifting.  All of which got the attention of the Child Welfare system.  He wound up being taken from his parents and sent to the juvenile home.
    It had been in early June when I had seen him in the day room and as I walked past him, I had sung our song and headed out the back door.  As I sat down under the cottonwood tree and looked back towards the cottage I seen Bobby coming.  He didn't seem to be in any hurry to go anywhere but he was heading directly towards me, if anyone had noticed.
    It had been a warm and sunny day and it had been shortly after our evening meal when Bobby and I, with a quick look around, laid down on the bank and rolled into the ditch and headed for the hole in the fence, a hole only Bobby and I knew about for each time I had gone through the fence I had pulled the wire back in place.  Once we were in the trees we had ran as hard as we could for the railroad yard two miles to the south of us.
    This time as we arrived at the yard a train was leaving, headed west.  We had barely enough time to climb into a boxcar.  Until the train was well out of the yard and into the country we stayed well back in the car, we weren't taking any chances of someone seeing two kids riding in a box car.  Once the train was out in the open country we moved up near the door so we could watch the farm fields and the miles roll by.  About an hour after we had caught the train it had gotten dark enough that we could stay near the doors when we passed through towns.
    The train had passed through my "home town."  Anyway that is what I called Ames, Iowa the town I was born in.  Even though it had been several years since I had seen it, I was able to recognize several of the streets in the section of town where I had lived before my dad had died.  I had been pretty excited but the train was going too fast for me to jump off.  Even if I had been able to jump I wouldn't have known where to go.  My dad had several brothers and at least one sister but I didn't know where any of them lived.  I knew my grandparents lived in Nevada, eight miles east of Ames but I knew they didn't want me.  So I guess it was just as well Bobby and I stayed on the train.
    It was well after dark when Bobby and I huddled together at the far end of the boxcar and went to sleep.  As I went to sleep I remember how good it felt to have my friend there laying close to me.  Bobby was my best friend, my very best.
    About 7:00 the next morning when we woke up, we found we were in a railroad yard.  We didn't know what town we were in but seeing some houses to the north of us we headed that way.  We went up to the back door of the first house we came to.  We had it planned if someone came to the door when we knocked we were going to act as though we were looking for someone.  We were going to use my adopted name, Jessie Ross Potter.  But we had been in luck at the first house for no one was home.  We had gone into the kitchen and looked for food.  Finding bread, milk and some lunch meat we made some sandwiches for ourselves.  As we finished eating, I told Bobby, "Let's put everything back just like it was so no one will know we were here."
    When we had left the house we could see some tall buildings to the southwest of us.  It looked like the downtown area.  So we headed that way.
    Finding a gas station we were shown on the map where we were.  We were in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on the far western edge of the state. Almost two hundred miles from the juvenile home.  To the west about a mile was the Missouri River, the state line!  Finding the direction we had to go, we walked over the bridge into Omaha, Nebraska.  A city much bigger than any I had ever been in before.
    Now that we were in another state we felt we had made it and the juvenile home would never be able to find us and take us back.  Now that we were there we didn't know where to go.  I wish I had known Boys Town was there for I am sure I would have wanted to go there with hopes they would have kept us.  But not knowing where to go we had walked around for a while and as we walked in a residential area I had seen an address on a house and told Bobby, if anyone asked us where we lived, we would tell them we lived there.
    It had been a stroke of luck I had done that for a short while later a policeman stopped us and asked us where we lived.  Probably because we were so dirty from the train ride.  Without hesitation we both gave him the address we had seen and he had let us go.  After our skirmish with the policeman we decided it would be safer where there were more people.  So we headed back towards the downtown area.
    Arriving back downtown one of the first places we noticed was the bus station.  Bobby had said, if we could get some money he could call his parents collect (Then you had to have money to make any kind of call.) and have them send us some bus tickets to us, to his home town, which was in Sioux City, Iowa.
    We went into the bus station and quickly begged enough money from a man so we could call Bobby's parents collect.  His parents went to the bus station in Sioux City and paid for the tickets and that bus station called the station we were at.  All we had to do was go up to the counter and get the tickets.
    It was probably not more than an hour before we had gotten the tickets but it seemed like hours.  There was a policeman wandering around the bus station and we were afraid he would stop us before we could get on the bus.  After checking at the counter several times we had finally gotten the tickets.  Even though we felt a lot safer once we had the tickets in our hands we still had to wait for the bus for it was still another hour before it would leave.  So we went to a bench and sat down and quietly waited together.
    We had noticed the policeman long before we had gotten the tickets but apparently he hadn't noticed us until several minutes after we had gotten them.  When he finally did notice us I had nervously nudged Bobby with my elbow as I seen the policeman walking towards us.  Every nerve in my body said, "Run!"  But I had sat there frozen in my seat beside Bobby.  The policeman stopped in front of us and started asking questions.  I made a quick glance at Bobby.  He looked very calm as he had pulled his ticket out and showed it to the policeman and said, (To my horror.)  "We are cousins and we ran away from our homes in Sioux City.  Our parents sent us bus tickets and we're on our way back home."  I had tried to be as calm as Bobby was as I also showed the policeman my ticket.  The policeman had given us a lecture about all of the bad things that could happen to boys when they run away and we shouldn't be doing it any more.  Bobby had been the vocal one, he had said, "Yes Sir" and "No Sir" at all of the right times.  I couldn't talk, my heart was in my mouth.  The policeman had told us to stay in the station until our bus was called then he walked away.
    As soon as the policeman had left I turned to Bobby and asked, "Why in the world did you tell that cop we had ran away?  He could have put us in jail and called the juvenile home."  Bobby had replied, "That cop isn't stupid, he could tell that we were runaways by the dirty clothes we're wearing.  Anyway, I ran away from home once and I know as long as you have a bus ticket they won't bother you."  I had told him I had about fainted when that cop had walked up to us.  He had told me he thought I had looked a lot calmer than he had felt.  I guess we had both been pretty nervous but we had pulled it off.  Still though, we didn't feel safe until we were on the bus and headed north to Sioux City.
    When they had called out the departure of the Sioux City bus, Bobby and I were the first ones out the door and on the bus.  We headed to the back of the bus where Bobby and I were able to each have a seat to ourselves to lay down and sleep on.  Once the bus had left the station we both had fallen asleep not waking until the bus driver had gently shaken each of us, telling us we were in Sioux City.
    Bobby's parents had met us at the bus station and had taken us to a farm south of South Sioux City, Nebraska.  A farm who's eastern boundary was the Missouri River.  This farm is where Bobby and I hid out for the next two weeks.
    This farm had been a large truck farm and all they grew there were vegetables for the market.  The fields seemed to go for miles in all directions.  I don't know who the people were who owned the farm but I think they may have been Bobby's aunt and uncle.  They had been nice to us, as though they were our real parents.  To me, it was like having real parents again.  I doubt if the juvenile home entered our minds in all of the time we were there for we never talked about the juvenile home.  I think we both felt we would never be going back.
    Every morning after breakfast and until noon, Bobby and I would go out into one of the fields and hoe tomatoes.  Once in a while I would cut a tomato plant off, fearing it would make the farmer mad I would stick it back in the ground hoping he wouldn't notice it.  At noon the farmer would pick us up in his truck and take us to the house for lunch.  Lunch on the farm was a pretty large meal.  Well, I guess all of the meals were great.  Breakfast, we had dollar cakes, eggs, bacon, fried potatoes with white country gravy and more.  Lunch and supper were hard to tell apart.  They said hard working men needed big meals.
    One time at supper we had what I thought were creamed green beans.  I had cleaned my plate up and I had asked, "May I have some more of the creamed beans Mam?  They are good."  The farmer's wife had laughed and replied, "Those aren't green beans that is asparagus."  As she had given me a heaping portion.  I don't know what it was but something snapped in my mind, all of a sudden I didn't like the "creamed green beans."  I have never been able to eat asparagus since.  After lunch it was back to the fields until supper time.
    After supper the evening was ours to do as we pleased.  On a farm there always seemed to be something to do for the inquisitive minds of boys our age.  One evening one of us found some shotgun shells and the next day we took them out to the field with us.  There Bobby and I tore them apart to see what was inside.  There must have been fifteen or twenty empty shell casings thrown about the ground once we had satisfied our curiosity and had gone back to work.  That night at supper we got a lecture about tearing shotgun shells apart.  It seems the farmer noticed all of the empty shell casings earlier in the day but hadn't said anything to us about them until we had sat down at the table to eat supper that evening.  I think it took him that long to figure out what he was going to say to two dumb kids who would tear shotgun shells apart.
    Even though I enjoyed hoeing tomatoes in the garden with Bobby, it did become boring without a break.  So one afternoon I decided to take a little break and walked down by the river.  At the river I noticed what looked like telephone poles running out in the river.  There were thirty or forty of them, all close together in a row.  There were a row of these poles about every two, three hundred feet apart, going down the river.  I also noticed each row was slanted downstream, with the flow of the river. This puzzled me.  Why would anyone put telephone poles out in the river like that?  I sat there for some time watching the water flow in, around and through the poles.  I seen leaves and things in the water and I watched them as they floated around the poles.  I threw a stick out in the water then I walked down the river watching the stick as it navigated itself through the poles.  I notice after passing each row of poles the stick was a little further out in the river.  Then it dawned on me, it must be for forcing water out into the river during floods when the river was running high and fast.  I had felt real good about myself after I had figured that out.  I had never heard of anything like flood control pilings and yet I was able to understand the principle of them.
    For some reason Bobby hadn't wanted to take a break with me.  The farmer hadn't told us we could take breaks so I think Bobby felt we shouldn't.  Well, I guess I had thought the same way too but I didn't think it would hurt if I just walked down to the river for a little while.  I would work a little harder when I got back and that way the farmer would never know I was gone.
    I had been gone about an hour walking slowly down river when I had decided it was about time I had better get back with Bobby.  I had turned away from the river and as I had come out of the trees and into a field I could see Bobby hoeing tomatoes about a half mile up river from me.  I was about to walk that way when I noticed a car parked nearby.  Wondering what a car was doing way out in the middle of nowhere, I walked over to it.  First I had looked in the front seat and I hadn't seen anything and I was about to go on when I had noticed movement in the back seat.  There was a girl and a guy laying there on the back seat, she was underneath him and they were both completely nude.  They didn't notice me for several seconds so I could see what they were doing.  I had stood there with my mouth wide open, staring at them.
    Here I was barely thirteen years old and I didn't know people did things like that.  I knew men sometimes did it to boys and older boys did it to younger boys for by now it had happened to me several times.
    She had noticed me first, she said something to the man and he had looked over his shoulder at me.  With one look at the expression on his face I turned and started running towards Bobby as hard as I could run.  The man had come flying out of the car stark naked, chasing me across the bean field, jumping the bean rows trying to catch up to me.  He had been yelling all of the time as he chased me but I hadn't understood a word he said as I ran as hard as I could trying to get back to Bobby before the man could catch up with me.
    I had laughed later about that but then I was pretty scared.  I had easily outran him and he had given up the chase when he had seen Bobby up ahead of me.  I hate to think what he would have done to me if he had caught me.
    I told Bobby what I had seen and he wanted to go and see for himself.  From where we were standing we could see the car was still there.  I had told Bobby, "No way, that guy was mad and if he catches you he'll beat you up."  I guess Bobby realized what I had told him was true because he never went.