It was close to the end of the first week when the light came on and the door opened in the middle of the afternoon and an older boy was put in with me.  I found out later since there were only three isolation rooms and when there were more boys than there were rooms they would double boys up in a room.
    I would say the boy was three, maybe even four years older than I was.  He was also nude as I was so I could see the hair that covered most of his body.  I had never seen a "Big Boy" without his clothes on and it sort of embarrassed me.  When he came in I was sitting on the mattress with my legs together, my knees against my chest and my back against the wall so he couldn't see much of me.  Even after the nurse had once again locked the door and turned the light out, there was still enough light coming through the little window to easily see each other.
    The first hour or so he seemed to be sort of mad about something.  He hadn't said a thing to me except for me to move over for he wanted to lay down.  I had gotten off of the mattress and sat on the floor by the window with my back against the wall, my knees against my chest and my arms wrapped around my legs.
    He laid there on his stomach for an hour or it could have been a little longer, until the light came on and the door opened again.  The nurse had a tray with two bowls of milk and some bread on it.  I went to the door and took the tray from the nurse, seeing the boy didn't make a move to get up.  Once I had taken the tray the nurse had closed and locked the door again, leaving the light on.  I took the tray and sat it by the mattress then taking a bowl of milk and half of the bread I returned to the window to eat.
    At first I didn't think the boy was going to eat but a few minutes after I had sat the tray down he sat up on the mattress crossed his legs and reached for the bowl of milk and some bread.  He still seemed mad about something when he asked "What are you doing here?"
    I had been pretty nervous when he spoke, I guess that is why I was so confused as to his question.  I sure didn't want him to be mad at me and I was afraid it wouldn't take much for him to get mad at me.  When I understood what he meant I told him I had ran away.  He said something about "Dumb. That's going to cost you two weeks."
    He had asked me who gave me the "Stripes."  That is what the boys called bruises from a whipping.  When I told him Mrs. Beebee had, he had called her a name or two and commented no one had better not ever try that with him.  That was easy for him to say he was almost as big as an adult.
    I ate mostly in silence only speaking when the boy had asked me something like how old I was.  I had told him I was eleven but I would be twelve in a couple of months.
    "Your only a punk kid, your not even growing hair yet."  He had seen me when I had gotten up to put my bowl back on the tray. I didn't like being called a "punk kid" but I couldn't tell him that.  I told him I didn't like hair on my body, as though that is why I didn't have any hair.
    It was about a half hour when the nurse had returned for the tray, then locking the door she turned the light out.
    I was still sitting on the floor by the window when he had showed me a comb.  Some way he had been able to sneak it into Isolation.  Holding it out to me he said, "Here."  I had crawled on my hands and knees over to the mattress and took the comb from him thinking he meant for me to comb my hair.
    As I took the comb he rolled over onto his stomach and told me to comb the hair on his back.  I hated to see hair on someone's body I thought it looked grotesque.  I even hated to touch it.  But there wasn't much I could say, not unless I wanted him to get mad at me.
    I took the comb and holding it so I wouldn't have to touch any of the hair on his body I started combing the hair on his back near his shoulders.  He told me to comb so it would scratch his back more.  Eventually I was to scratch all of his back and comb the hair on his buttocks.  He had rolled over and told me to do his chest too.  I didn't know anything about sexual arousal so combing him the way I was I didn't know I was arousing him, especially when he told me to comb his pubic hair.
    He had asked me if any guy had ever had sex with me.  He hadn't said it in those words for he used words I never used.  But I knew what he meant.  I had lied and told him "No," for a man had sexually assaulted me not more than eight months before when I had ran away from the orphanage.  I had felt uncomfortable when he had asked me but I didn't feel threatened, not at first anyway.  I didn't feel threatened until he had told me to lay down on my stomach and by the way he had gotten upon his knees.  I had told him I didn't want to lay down for I knew what he was planning on doing to me and I knew that it was going to hurt.  But he had been insistent and to me almost threatening.  It had been quite painful but I knew he would hurt me a lot more if I didn't do as he told me.  It hadn't been as painful as the first time but I suppose that was because the boy was smaller than the man had been.  I had submitted to the boy's demands that night and twice more in the following week.  I was happy, when a week later they took the boy out of my room and put him in another room or maybe they sent him back to his cottage.
    It was the day after the boy had left, when again I had heard my door being unlocked in the middle of the afternoon.  Even though I had taken a couple of baths while I had been locked in Isolation those two weeks, I still felt dirty when Mr. Urquhart opened the door and came into my room.  As soon as I saw him my heart seemed to stop and fear shot through my chest.  It wasn't the sight of Mr. Urquhart but what he was carrying in his right hand.  In his right hand was a board that was a little over two feet long and about three and a half inches wide.  I had just met the "Man."
    By now it had been two weeks since I had ran away.  Before at the orphanage I had gotten a whipping the same day I was brought back from running away.  So at first it didn't register as to why Mr. Urquhart was going to give me a whipping.  I really didn't know him except he had taken me to Iowa City once.
    I was confused and scared as I got up from the mattress.  No matter how many times I had been whipped before, each new time I faced a whipping it would bring on an uncontrollable fear within me.  I don't know how it is when a young boy gets a whipping from someone he knows loves him, I'm sure it hurts but I do know how scared I was whenever I got a whipping by anyone.  For I knew they didn't love me or even care about me.  I felt they didn't even care as to how much they hurt me or where they hit me.  There was no talk about how someday I would thank them for straightening me out.  They were always mad at me and as far as I was concerned they were taking their anger out on me.  At those times I had felt they hated me and as strange as it may sound, in some way I felt I deserved their hatred.  It was a frightening experience to have to go through.
    Tears were in my eyes as I backed up against the wall.  I pleaded "Please Mr. Urquhart don't hit me."
    He brought the paddle up in front of him and grabbed the other end with his left hand, "Get over here in front of me and grab those ankles."  At first he didn't seem real angry only stern but from the way he said it I knew he didn't want to discuss it.
    I had slowly walked towards him then standing in front of him I bent over and grabbed my ankles.  Hardly had I done so the board landed with a resounding whack that sent a wave of pain through my body.  Again and again the board had landed.  Each time I could hear him grunt as he brought the paddle down across my bare buttocks.  The last one driving me almost to my knees.
    I hadn't counted the number of times the paddle had hit me.  I hadn't even been able to hold onto my ankles.  I had tried to stay bent but every time the paddle hit I had straightened up with a scream and a promise on my lips.
    "If you ever come to my cottage, I'll break you of this running away."  Now I knew why I was being whipped, if I hadn't figured it out before then.
    "Go upstairs and get dressed, then go back to your cottage."  Had been his stern directions.
    Still nude, the backside of me burning, I had followed him upstairs to the nurses' office.  Then as a parting remark he told me,  "That is only a sample of what you will get if you ever come to my cottage and run away."  Mr. Urquhart and his wife were now the cottage parents of Turner Hall, the next older boys' cottage.
    Once I was dressed, the nurse unlocked the front door and I went back to my cottage and Mrs. Beebee.  As I came in the front door of my cottage, Mrs. Beebee was sitting there waiting for me.  She was sitting in her wicket chair, with the horse reins laying across her lap.  I knew when I had left the hospital and walked east across the lawn to my cottage, Mrs. Beebee would probably give me another whipping.  So when I seen her sitting there with the strap, I wasn't surprised.
    As soon as I had stepped inside of the door, she was out of her chair.  "Get out of those clothes."  She was mad, boy was she mad.  "I'll teach you not to go into my apartment and steal."
    I had forgotten all about breaking into her apartment, it didn't seem that important to me.  I needed my clothes and I didn't feel bad about taking the candy for I had been hungry.  I knew everyone got mad at me for running away.  I never could understand why they got so mad at me for that, for they never cared about me.  She was mad at me for going into her room and I couldn't understand why.  For I hadn't known anything like, "This is mine and you are not to touch it."  I was never taught about personal things and places, nor anything about privacy for those things didn't exist in my world.
    I had taken all of my clothes off, then grabbing the seat of a straight-back chair, she gave me another whipping, with me screaming and begging to no avail for her to stop.  After the whipping I had to stand, naked with my hands clasped behind my back, about five feet in front of her for the rest of the afternoon.  It had been cool outside and even though the front door of the cottage was open, I hadn't been cold as I stood there being bathed in the warm sunlight coming through the open door.
    As I had stood in front of Mrs. Beebee, she had been sitting in her chair knitting.  It had only been a few moments after she had sat down and picked up her knitting when she looked up at me and said, "You are an orphan boy and the lowest thing on this earth is an orphan boy.  Nobody wants an orphan, so you might as well stop your running away."
    Even though I hadn't seen my mother more than three or four times since I had been taken from her, some six years before and I had lived and was treated as an orphan, I really didn't consider myself an orphan. At least not until she told me I was.  I would believe anything an adult told me but I couldn't be an orphan boy for I had a mother.  It was as though she was tearing that last thing from me, my belief I did have someone that loved and wanted me.
    I had said to her in about the most polite way I could, "Mam, I'm not an orphan, I have a mother."  Thinking she didn't remember I had a mother.
    She had angrily responded to me, "You are an orphan and having a mother makes you even worse than just an orphan boy."  She continues, "I raised two daughters without anyone's help.  I don't see why your mother didn't raise you instead of dumping you on the state to raise."  She had continued knitting in short jabs, as though she was very angry, glancing up from time to time, with her twisted and angry face.
    There had been other things she had said that afternoon.  I had tried to interrupt her once but she had grabbed her strap and had half raised as though to come at me.  I had quickly brought my hands out in front of me and did sort of a quick jig backwards, "Please Mrs. Beebee.  I'm sorry.  Please don't hit me again!" I had cried.  My only defense was to be quiet and try not to act in any way that would make matters any worse than they were already.  Any act on my part she could interpret as being defiant, I knew would mean another sever whipping from her.
    Of course she didn't need an excuse but I felt as though she was only waiting for me to give her one, no matter how slight.  So the rest of that afternoon,  I stood there naked with my hands clasped in back of me, only a couple of steps from her and her strap.  So scared, any slight motion on her part would make me flinch.
    When it was supper time she let me have my clothes back.  But after we had returned from our evening meal she made me take all of my clothes off again and sit in a straight-back chair directly in front of her until bed time.  While all of the other boys had pajamas to sleep in when they went to bed, Mrs. Beebee said I couldn't have mine.  "To keep you from sneaking out at night."  Is how she had put it.
    This had gone on for several days.  I could only have my clothes for meals and when I went to school but when I got back in my cottage I would have to take them off again and sit in front of Mrs. Beebee.
    There was one thing about me, when it came to adults of either sex or boys my own age, I was not very modest.  It never bothered me whenever they saw me without my clothes on.  If the purpose of me not having any clothes on, was to humiliate me, then they failed in that respect.  When I had sat there on the chair in front of Mrs. Beebee, I didn't make any attempt in hiding myself.  Even though I had notice her glancing in that area of my body from time to time.  I sat there at times with my legs spread open, with my feet along side of the chair with my hands at times were in my lap or at times fidgeting along side of the chair or somewhere else.
    I didn't hate Mrs. Beebee, nor any adult.  I was very scared of Mrs. Beebee for what she had done to me.  She was one of those people in my life I had an extreme fear of.  Even after she had started letting me wear my clothes again and doing what all of the other boys did, I felt I was her favorite target.  I couldn't make my bed to suit her or clean up the cottage right and it always seemed I was too slow for her.  It had always seemed to have cost me pain one way or another.
    One of the problems I was having while I was living in White Hall, was the girls.  The range of the ages of the girls there in the juvenile home was from about my age to about seventeen or almost eighteen years old.  All of us boys were eleven years old and I don't think any of us boys were too interested in girls.  I know I wasn't.
    The girls were always pestering us boys.  One of them especially, she was about a year or two older than I was.  She had her eye set on me and no matter what I did seemed to discourage her.  She had been one of the girls who had seen me laying nude on the floor getting a whipping the night I had ran away.  Her name was "Mary."  All of the girls and a lot of the boys would yell whenever they seen her near me, "Larry, Larry when you going to marry Mary?"  Or yell, "Mary, Mary had a little lamb.  Wherever Mary went Larry was sure to go."  I hated to have them tease me about that girl.  I even thought then I hated Mary.
    One time when I was walking in front of one of the girls' cottages,  I met about three older girls.  One of them had said something to me.  I didn't like girls any too much so I had said something back they must not have liked for one of them had said, "Peterson, you are simple."
    I couldn't let that pass, so I flexed my scrawny muscles and puckered out my lips and replied, "I'm not simple, I can take you."  I am glad that she didn't take me up on that for she was big enough to have quickly put me on the ground.  Then again, I wonder what she really meant by "simple."
    After I had returned to my cottage from running away and had gotten off of restrictions, it was about the end of April.  Even though I felt I was getting a lot of Mrs. Beebee's attention, there were other boys in the cottage who felt the same way as I did.  So shortly after getting off of restrictions, four of us boys got together and decided to run away.
    The boys names were, Bobby, (Robert Archer, my best friend) Theodore Gatewood, (I called him Woodgate) and Richard Snider.  There was another boy who was part of our tight little group, a group that did most everything together.  His name was Teddy Lovell.  We didn't know he was aware of our planned escape or even part of it.
    After supper, the four of us boys went to the yard in back of our cottage.  We had sat as far from our cottage as we could, some fifty feet from the nearest girls' cottage.  This put us as far from the boundary of the institution as we could get.  The boundary was north of us at the other end of our yard, where there was a fence about four feet high.  I suppose we had chose that spot to sit, out of fear if we were anywhere near the boundary someone might think we were going to run away.
    As the four of us sat in a group, we sat and discussed how we were going to run away. We all had agreed, we would wait until Mrs. Beebee rang the hand bell to call us in for the evening.  That would have been about the time it would have been getting dark.  When Mrs.  Beebee rang the bell at night, she would always go out on the front porch of our cottage.  From there she couldn't see what was going on in the back yard.
    When we felt it was about time for Mrs. Beebee to call us into the cottage, we started to casually wander over towards the fence.  I felt as though the eyes of the institution were on us.  Like Mrs. Beebee was peeking out, watching us from behind the curtains in one the of the back rooms of our cottage, waiting for us to just get near that fence and she would come out with her horse reins and herd us back into the cottage.  We had timed it very close for we were only a few feet from the fence when the bell rang.
    We had waited for the bell to ring, so it would put us as close to darkness we could get before we had to go into the cottage.  We had felt we needed the darkness to make it difficult for them to catch us once we had ran away.
    When the bell had rang, it was like a starter's pistol.  Not one of us boys said a word as we turned in a group and headed for the fence, running as hard as we could.  We had all gone over the fence in a group.  Not looking back, we had ran as hard as we could for about a quarter of a mile to the first street east of the juvenile home.  Here we turned south and followed the street.
    In all we had ran about a three-quarters of a mile before we had slowed to a walk, then casually walked down the street.  By now it was getting dark and we had thought we were several miles from the juvenile home.  Even though it had only been minutes since we had jumped the fence we were already feeling we had made our escape good.  We were feeling so at ease about our escape as we slowly walked in front of a cemetery about a mile from the juvenile home, we were joking about sleeping there all night.
    We had continued on south until we came to Highway 30.  Crossing over to the far side of the highway, we turned east.  We had walked down in the ditch so if we saw a car coming we could lay down and not be seen.  As we had walked along we had talked and joked a lot but I don't remember anyone saying anything about where we were going, where we were going to sleep that night or even where we might get food when we got hungry.  I guess we had walked along thinking we were the greatest escape artists that there ever were.  Anyway that was the way we had been acting, walking along, joking and laughing how easy it had been to get away.
    There wasn't a leader among us.  We had been sitting around and talking and it resulted in us running away.  I don't think I or any other boy talked the rest into running away.  None of us decided in what direction to go.  To us, one direction was as good as any other.
    As we walked east, we saw the "King's Tower" truck stop on the north side of the highway.  It was well lighted and seeing we were afraid of any adult seeing us, we crouched down in the ditch as much as we could as we passed it.  Beyond the truck-stop the highway had been dark and we were able to walk on the highway and make better time.
    A few miles past the truck-stop the highway divided.  U.S. Highway 30 went on east, Highway 212 went in a southeasterly direction.  I knew the road to the southeast would lead to Iowa City, the University Hospital and from there on to Davenport and the orphanage.  So it was probably I who decided to follow that road.
    I don't know how many hours we had walked that night but we had walked about ten miles when we had started getting careless.  Maybe it was because we were tired or maybe it was we felt no one could catch us now that we were so far away.  Whatever it was, we were not being very cautious as we walked along.
    Unknown to us, a car with it's head lights out approached us from behind and stopped alongside of us.  The passenger door of the car opened and a deep man's voice from inside of the darkened car had said, "All right you boys get in."  I knew, as probably the other boys did, it was a man from the juvenile home.  That was all he had said and we had gotten in.  We were so shocked and surprised, maybe it was also because we were very tired.  Then again, all of us boys were so conditioned to obey, no matter what an adult said, we did whatever they told us to do.  So it was no surprise we had gotten into the car as he had told us to, instead of taking off running.  It was dark so some of us could have gotten away but running never entered our minds.  Not mine anyway. That was the way us kids were, we did everything an adult told us to do.  I was probably more so that way than any of the other boys were for I had been in institutions a lot longer.  Bobby had a little more rebellion in him than the rest of us but that was something I couldn't do.  The orphanage had taught me well in that respect.
    It was early in the morning when we had gotten back to the juvenile home.  The man had parked the car near the administration building and then walked us boys to the infirmary, where we had been told to sit in chairs outside of the nurses' office.
    It wasn't long before Mr. Ladd, the superintendent of the juvenile home and Mr. Urquhart were there.  They all went into the nurses' office and closed the door.  A few minutes later the nurse came out of the office and took all of the other boys downstairs, locking them in the isolation rooms.  I don't know but there was only three isolation rooms and there was four of us boys.  Maybe it was, they didn't want to double two of us boys up in one room, is why they left me sitting in the chair.  Well that was what I was thinking at the time and that they would put me in one of the hospital rooms.
    I didn't sit there long, wondering what they were going to do to me.  Soon after the nurse left with the other boys, the three men came out of the office.  Mr. Ladd had pretty much told me what he thought of me.  How I had gone off and left Teddy when he had jumped the fence and broke his leg.  (This was the first time I heard he was even with us.)  He told me, since I was the ringleader I could stand with my nose against the wall outside of the nurses' office for the rest of the night.
    I guess he thought I was the ringleader because of my extensive “Run away" record from the orphanage.  I had only ran away once before from the juvenile home and that had been alone.  But I guess having ran away only a month before had been pretty fresh in his mind and I was considered a chronic runaway and that would make me a ringleader.  I had stood there for at least two hours before I was told to go to the hospital dining room for breakfast.  When I had gotten there all of the other boys were there eating.  Being tired from staying up all night I didn't eat much breakfast.  None of the other boys seemed too hungry either.
    After breakfast there still was no time for rest for all of us boys were sent to school.  That I couldn't understand for I had thought for sure all of us boys would be locked in Isolation for two weeks, after that I was afraid to think of what would happen to us.