When I had first started running away, I didn't go very far.  But each time I would run away I would go a little further than I had before.  As though I was expanding my world.  A lot of times at first I would only be gone for a few hours before I was caught and brought back to the orphanage.  One time though, probably because I had ran away so late in the evening, I was gone all night.  At first I had stayed off of the streets and walked down the alleys behind the houses.  I had learned, dressed as I was, not to walk down the streets like I owned them, anyway not that close to the orphanage.
    It was about getting dark when I came upon a large park several blocks west of the orphanage.  I knew I needed to find a place to hide and sleep that night.  As I walked into the park I seen a greenhouse in the north end of the park.  Along the northwest side of it there were some heavy bushes I crawled in behind.  Getting next to the wall of the greenhouse, I laid down and soon fell asleep.
    I had slept late the next morning for as I came out from behind the bushes the sun was well up in the sky.  As I walked clear of the bushes I was shocked at seeing Mr. Guold walking towards me.  The orphans' home car parked not far behind him.  I later learned a man who worked in the greenhouse had seen me sleeping behind the bushes.  Recognizing me by my clothes he knew I was a runaway from the orphanage.  He had made a call to the orphanage and then standing back and keeping an eye on me, he had let me sleep until Mr. Guold had come.
    I didn't try and run for I stood there in shock and stared at Mr. Guold as he walked up to me.  I had thought I was miles from the orphans' home.  I couldn't understand how he could possibly have found me.
    Mr. Guold coming up to me took a hold of my arm and led me to the car where he placed me on the front seat, none too gently, then he took me back to the orphanage.  I could easily tell he was more than a little peeved with me, it had only been a few days since the last time he had brought me back from running away.
    When we had gotten back to the orphanage he didn't have to tell me to go to his cottage.  By then, I had already made a few trips there and knew the way well.
    After we had gotten out of the car, I had started towards his cottage, even before he had taken a hold of my arm.  He held onto me until we had gotten into the dormitory.  Then he went into his apartment and got his razor strap.  Like I knew he would.  I could have taken my shorts off and got ready for him for I knew what he was going to do to me but I didn't.  At that point, I wasn't in any hurry about getting it started.  I stood there by the bed and waited.
    As I waited I guess a lot of things were racing through my mind.  Like maybe he would forget I was waiting.  Maybe he would have a stroke or something and fall down the stairs.  I stood there with my hind-end and my legs almost quivering in anticipation of what was about to happen.  There were ripples of chills running throughout my body.
    It always seemed, all too soon he would come out of his apartment.  Entering the dormitory he would tell me to take off my shorts and lay across the bed.  It always followed the same pattern.  I would always do as he told me.  I would always slowly remove my clothes, trying to delay the inevitable as much as I could.  I would always lay across the bed, pleading with him, "Please Mr. Guold, don't hit me, I'll never run away again."  Mournfully pleading, "Please don't hit me."  My begging and pleading was never of any use for the strap would soon land across my bare body.
    One time after bringing me back from escape, he stopped in the middle of the whipping (one of his hardest) when I was pleading and begging with him, telling him I would "never run away again."  He told me, "I wouldn't believe you if you sat on a stack of Bibles a mile high."  Then the whipping went on.
    A whipping from Mr. Guold was somewhat different than the ones I got from anyone else.  Oh, they were painful.  When the razor strap hit, it hit hard.  I was so afraid, I would shake whenever I went into one of those events with Mr. Guold but unlike anyone else I would try and get next to Mr. Guold shortly after he had whipped me.  He was the closest thing I had to a father figure.
    The whippings Mr. Guold gave me were never as severe as the ones Ms. Gruber gave me.  He would give me five or six swats with the razor strap and then quit.  Unlike Ms. Gruber, who would hit me in anger until she was exhausted.
    When the whipping from Mr. Guold was over with, I would put my clothes back on, then Mr. Guold would take me back to my cottage and hand me over to Ms. Gruber.  After Mr. Guold had left she would get her razor strap out and tell me to take off all of my clothes again.  Then she would lay into me.  The whippings from Mr. Guold had been bad enough but the ones from her, no boy should ever of had to face.
    I can only remember one time she didn't get her turn at me.
    I had ran away and as usual I had been brought back by Mr. Guold.  As usual, we made the trip to the dormitory in his cottage.  After the whipping he gave me, he took me back to my cottage and Ms. Gruber.  Ms. Gruber met us at the front door of my cottage.  As she was saying something to Mr. Guold, I stepped around her and started running.   I went through the cottage and into the back hallway. The back door was open but the screen was closed.  I hit the screen door so hard, I thought it was coming off of it's hinges.  I never stopped to look back.
    Turning left at the service road, I ran past the front of storehouse and onto the girls' side of the institution.  Going through the girls' side, I passed the hospital and down to the railroad tracks, bordering the southern boundary of the orphanage.  I followed the tracks south until I was about seven or eight blocks from the Mississippi River, where I left the tracks and walked down a street.
    After walking about two or three blocks, I came upon a boy about my age, sitting on some steps in front of his house.  I stopped to talk with him and after talking with him for awhile I told him, I had ran away from the orphanage.  I had told him how they were treating me there.  I told him, how I had been adopted out once and how I wished I had a mom and dad again.
    We had sat there and talked for the better part of an hour, until his mother called him into the house.  As he got up, he told me to wait and he would be right back.
    He went into the house and in a few minutes he came back out.  He said, "My mother wants me to go to the store and get some bread."  Then sort of excitedly, "She said I could buy each of us a popsicle."  Then in almost the same breath, "Do you want to go to the store with me?"
    I replied, just as excitedly, "Sure I want to go."  Getting up I walked to the store with him.  A feeling of friendship seemed to flow between us.
    After we had gotten back from the store and he had come back out of the house he told me his mother had said I could stay and have lunch with him.  He was going to have sandwiches.  I liked my new friend and I told him I would stay.
    As we sat there finishing our pop-cicles, we talked mostly about the orphanage and the time I had been adopted.  Soon after we had finished our pop-cicles his mother had called us in and gave each of us two sandwiches.  Then we went out and sat on the front porch as we ate.  As we sat there eating I told him I thought his mom was nice, that I liked her and I wished she was my mother.
    We must have been on our second sandwich, when out of the corner of my eye, I seen a car pull up at the curb.  I turned and sort of casually looked that way.  Then my heart seemed to stop.  I had a panic feeling in my chest for the car that had pulled up to the curb was green and had the state emblem on it's door.
    Mr. Guold had hardly gotten out of the car before I was on my feet.  I threw the sandwich I was eating on the ground.  Then almost screaming at the boy, "That is Mr. Guold from the orphanage."  Turning, I ran as hard as I could to the back of the house.  I didn't realize it then, the boy had told his mother I had ran away from the orphanage and she had called the home.  They must have told her to try and keep me there until they had someone come by and pick me up.  They had tricked me into staying by being nice to me.
    When I entered the back yard, I found the yard was closed in on three sides by a high stone wall.  The wall was much too high for me to climb, anyway in the time I felt I had before Mr. Guold would be there.  There were some dense bushes near the rear wall.  I dove into the bushes and laid on the ground between the bushes and the wall.  I laid there as quietly as I could, hoping Mr. Guold would think I had climbed over the wall and had gotten away.
    The boy and Mr. Guold came running into the back yard.  They didn't see me and I heard the boy say, "He must have climbed over the wall."  I laid there and literally prayed Mr. Guold would believe I had climbed over the wall.
    Mr. Guold wasn't so sure, for I heard him say, "No, he is too small to climb over the wall.  Help me look in these bushes."
    They had started searching the bushes in the middle of the back wall.  The boy searching in one direction and Mr. Guold searching in the other direction, towards me.  It wasn't long before Mr. Guold found me.  Grabbing me by the arm, he pulled me from under the bushes.  He wasn't at all happy with me.  This was the second time that day he had come after me.  To put it mildly, he was pretty mad at me.
    He roughly twisted my arm up behind my back.  So hard I thought he would break it.  He marched me to the car and deposited me on the front seat.  None to gently I might add.  Then he slammed the door.  The door wasn't locked in any way.  I could have gotten out and "took off" as he walked around to the other side of the car.  But as mad as he was, I was so afraid of what he would do to me if I did, if I so much as touched the handle of the door.
    Once we were back at the orphanage, it was up to his dormitory for one of the hardest whipping he ever gave me, then to Ms. Gruber for the worst half of a very painful double event.
    That was the only time I had been caught twice in the same day for running away.  The only day I can remember that I got three whippings.  All for running away.  That day Mr. Guold had whipped me twice and Ms. Gruber had gotten me once.  But I guess one from Ms. Gruber was worth more than several from Mr. Guold.
    I was ten years and almost two months old on the Fourth of July that year.  By now, I had been in Cottage Eight a little over a month.  By then, if I had been keeping track, I had lost count on how many times I had ran away.  By now I was being called a "chronic runaway."  That Fourth of July though I was there, anyway I wasn't on escape.
    On the Fourth of July, an outside group called the "49ers" always put on a fireworks display at the orphanage for us kids and the general public.  It was held down on the ball field, on the boys' side of the institution.
    After supper that day, all of the boys and girls in the orphanage started gathering on the terrace overlooking the ball field, waiting for it to get dark enough for the fireworks to start.  Except for church and movies the Fourth of July was the only time I know of that the girls were allowed on the boys' side and only then without being separated and closely supervised.
    As usual I was dressed in a white T-shirt and blue shorts.  I wasn't wearing shoes.  The legs of the shorts were loose and very short.  The bottom of the hem was not more than an inch from my crotch.
    I was sitting alone on the sloping part of the terrace.  Leaning back on my elbows, legs well apart, with my knees fully bent.  On the terrace below me and about six or seven feet from me, sat three girls.  About a year, maybe two years older than I was.  They kept looking up at me and giggling.  I couldn't figure out why they were doing it and it was making me feel very uncomfortable.  They did this for several minutes before it dawned on me what they were giggling about.
    From the position they were sitting in, they could look up the inside of my left pant leg and since I wasn't wearing any underwear, they could see everything there was to see.  Which wasn't much.  But apparently they thought so.  I didn't know much about the difference in boys and girls but that was one area of my body I didn't want them to see.  Even taking my T-shirt off would embarrass me if there were any girls around.  I could undress in front of adults and other boys my own age but not girls.  I didn't even want them to look at me in any way.  I didn't hate girls, it was I couldn't understand them.
    Realizing they had seen more of me than I would want them to see, I got up, embarrassed, and ran back to my cottage, where I stayed until after the fireworks started.
    When I went back to watch the fireworks, I found a different place to sit.  Well away from those girls who had seen a lot more of me than any ten year old boy would want a bunch of girls to see.
    It seems like all of the time I was in the orphanage I was in some sort of trouble.  I wish there were more good times I could remember but there weren't that many good times.
    In the winter time I enjoyed sliding down the snow covered terrace to the ball field on a piece of corrugated tin I had found.  But then in the winter time I never ran away.  I would get to see a lot more movies and do things.  But I was still just as lonely.  My cottage mother had a lot closer contact with me in the winter time for I had to spend a lot more time in my cottage.  But when the weather was good I would be outdoors. Usually off alone thinking.
    That sitting off alone and thinking sort of got me into trouble a few times.
    That service road which ran a hundred feet from my cottage, was a boundary marker. Across that, we were out-of-bounds and into trouble.  On the other side of the road they had cut down a large cottonwood tree.  The tree wasn't far from my cottage but it was in a part of the institution that was defiantly out-of-bounds for us boys.  I was sitting on the fallen tree when Mr. Guold seen me and yelled at me to meet him in his cottage.
    I knew I was in trouble again.  I knew what was in store for me when I got to his cottage and later when I got back to mine.  So I took off and went down to the ball field instead of going to his cottage.  Arriving at the ball field, I went to the far east side of the field and climbed up into my oak tree.  Which was also very much out-of-bounds.  It was the oak tree I always sat in, watching the cars go by on the street below.
    I was hoping, by not going to Mr. Guold's cottage he would forget about seeing me out-of-bounds.
    It was about a half hour, to an hour after I had climbed up into the oak tree I noticed a group of boys walking north on the far side of the street that ran below me.  The boys were older than I was.  Maybe they were fifteen or sixteen years old.  I knew they were from one of the older boys' cottage.  They were searching the brush and weeds as they walked along.  They were on the other side of the street and were definitely out-of-bounds for me but I climbed down from the oak tree and walked over to them and asked them what they were looking for.  One of the boys turned to me and said, "We are looking for a boy who ran away, his name is Larry Peterson."  Then he asked, "Do you know what he looks like?"
    "Sure, I know him."  I had answered without hesitating.  I thought it was some sort of a joke for I hadn't ran away.  "He is in my cottage."  I added, as though to prove I knew him.
    One of the boys asked, "How about helping us find him?"  Then he went on to explain, "Mr. Guold said he ran away and that someone had seen him walking this way."  Whoever had seen me walking across the ball field, must not have seen me climb the tree I had been sitting in.
    I could have told them who I was but instead I said, "Sure, I will help you look for him."
    Yes, I could of told them who I really was but I knew if I did they would have taken me to Mr. Guold and told him they had caught me.  Even if they had told him I hadn't ran away, I would have gotten a whipping for being out-of-bounds.  Probably a very hard one for not going to his cottage like he had told me to.
    As we searched the weeds along the street, I heard one of the boys say, "Boy is he going to be in trouble when we catch him."  I had no doubt about that.  From the way they had been talking, they were going to give me some of that trouble.
    We walked on north, searching under a small bridge along the way.  About a half mile or so north of the orphanage we came to Kimberly Road, running east and west, dividing the orphanage's farm.
    The boys wanted to go and search through the farm buildings that belonged to the orphanage.  Which were about two blocks west of us.  I told them, I had to get back to the orphanage or I would get into trouble with my cottage mother for being gone so long.
    Those boys, Mr. Guold, nor anyone else were ever to know, on that day I searched for myself.
    I slowly started back towards the orphanage.  As soon as I noticed the boys were not looking back towards me, I slipped in among some small trees that bordered the east side of the street.  Then I walked about two blocks further east from the street and then I turned south, walking through the cemetery that was across the street from the main campus of the orphanage.  On the south side of the cemetery was the railroad tracks that ran along the southern border of the orphanage and in the other direction to the downtown area of Davenport.  Beyond that was the Mississippi River and Illinois.
    Getting to the river, I got off of the tracks and walked across the Arsenal Bridge to Rock Island, Illinois.  A city which is directly across the Mississippi River from Davenport, Iowa.
    This was the first time I had ran away I had gotten so far.  I was now in another state.  My world had become larger.  To me, it was like being in another country.  I felt they could never take me back to the orphans' home again.
    I was wrong, for on the first day I was there I was caught while trying to sneak into a movie theater.  The police had taken me down to the police station.  I was thinking I was in real trouble this time for trying to sneak into the theater.  They were probably going to send me to prison, maybe for life.
    They asked me who I was and were I was from.  If I told them, I was afraid they would send me back.  If I didn't they would probably send me to prison.  I opted out, telling them who I was, hoping since I was in a different state they wouldn't send me back to the orphanage.
    Again I was wrong.  They called the orphanage.  Then they told me, the people at the orphanage weren't too happy with me and they would send someone over to pick me up.  He had told me the orphanage wanted me back for some reason, and he couldn't understand why they would want a boy that had ran away and tried to sneak into a theater.  I had a pretty good idea what they wanted me for.
    It wasn't very long before Mr. Guold was there to take me back.  But now my world had been extended.  From now on when I ran away, I had a destination.  Something I never had before when I ran away.  I guess I was sort of lucky that day if you can say what happened luck.  From my calculations, I had been caught out-of-bounds, I had not gone to Mr. Guold's cottage as he had told me and I had ran away, I should have gotten three whippings from Mr. Guold and three from Ms. Gruber.  I had only gotten one from each.  Of course, I didn't feel all that lucky when they got through with me.