After breakfast the next morning a man came and escorted me to the orientation unit.  Because I had been classified as a "High escape risk" he not only put handcuffs on me but my ankles were also shackled together.
    A highway ran in front of the training school and separated the main campus from the orientation unit.  To get to the orientation unit, we had to pass behind the administration building and follow a sidewalk to the west side of the institution, passing several cottages along the way.  The sidewalk then crossed the highway and continued onto the orientation unit, which sat back about three hundred feet or more from the highway.  The nick name the boys had given the building the orientation unit was in, was "Across The Road."  The west wing of the building served as the isolation unit for boys who got into trouble.
    On the way to the orientation unit I could see several boys, all about my age, marching, all dressed in military type uniforms and marching in military fashion.  They all looked very rigid in their khaki uniforms, ties and their cap tipped slightly to the right.  Even though we had marched at the juvenile home, these boys were marching in close cadence which was very unsettling to me.  For if they could make boys march that way, then this had be a very strict place.
    As we approach the building the orientation unit was in, I could see from the looks of the lawn about the building it wasn't very old.  It had to have been built within the last year.  There was a high chain-link fence in front of the building.  Along the top of the fence were rolls of barbed wire.  If by now I had any intentions in running away from this place, that fence convinced me I was in a big time prison and they had every intention in keeping me there, but then I wasn't planning on taking off from the orientation unit but later when I was sent out onto the campus, which I had some very serious doubts as to whether or not I would live that long.
    The heavy door at the entrance was locked so after the man had pressed the button we had to wait until someone on the inside came and unlocked door.  The man who was with me had not spoken a word to me since we had left the hospital.  As we stood there, waiting for the door to be opened, I had a chance to reflect on what had happen to me in the last couple of days.  How my life had suddenly changed so much.  A chance to think of what might be waiting for me on the other side of the door I stood at.
    There was no thoughts, of me might liking this place better than the juvenile home or any other place I had been.  Not from what I had heard of this place.
    Here they used the "Anamosa Stick," (A section of hoe handle hollowed out and filled with lead.) heavy leather straps called, "Tugs" and short leather pouches with a handle on one end and the other end filled with lead shot, called "Blackjacks."
    Here I was, standing at the doors of the place where they killed boys.  To say I was scared is an understatement.  I was terrified.  It seemed I couldn't shake the fear from my body.  I knew they could do anything they wanted to do to me and there would be no one on the other side of that door who would protect me.
    I was trying so hard to understand why they were doing this to me.  Why were they so angry at me?  All I had done was run away.  Why were they so angry?
    Yes I was very much afraid as I stood there waiting, not knowing what was waiting for me on the other side of the door, thinking this was the building they killed the boys in.
    My thoughts had been interrupted by a heavy key turning the lock in the door.  The door swung open and I was taken inside, to wait as the door was once again locked.  Only then were the shackles removed from my arms and legs.
    Both men walked me down the hallway to a room barren of all furniture, there to strip in front of them.  One of them commented, I was wearing state issued clothing.  It was the uniform I had worn from the juvenile home.
    "These are state clothes you are wearing.  Where are you from boy?"  One of them had asked me.
    "I'm from the juvenile home in Toledo, Sir."  Was my quiet reply.
    "How come they sent you here?"  The other had asked.
    "I ran away, Sir."  Again was my quiet reply.  Stealing the car was completely out of my mind.  I had ran away and they were mad at me was why they had sent me there.  I guess, I had felt like I was a very "Bad boy."  I must have been, why else would they have sent me there?  Though in my mind I couldn't define a "Bad boy."
    They had asked me about the bandages and the harness I was wearing and when I had told them I had been injured in a car accident one of them remarked, "Well don't expect any sympathy around here.  Probably the reason you wound up here is that your mom and dad babied you so much."
    I didn't bother to tell them my dad was dead and I didn't know where my mother was.  I hadn't bothered to tell them I had been in the orphanage either, among other things.  I guess I was starting to have a lot of secrets.  Secrets I was becoming ashamed of.
    They had handed me some other clothes to put on.  They were very similar to the ones I had taken off.  I could see how the railroad man at Maxwell, Iowa, who had caught me about two years before, could have mistaken my clothes for the ones the boys wore in the training school.
    I finished dressing then standing at attention, they explained the rules to me.
    "Boy, when I'm talking to you, you look me in the eyes."  The officer had angrily snapped at me, his head making a slight twisting jerk.
    He had told me a couple of rules before he had noticed I wasn't looking him in the eyes as he talked to me.  Without looking at his lips, whatever he said sounded like a foreign language to me.  This condition was even amplified whenever I was in an emotional state.
    "Sir, I am deaf, I have to read your lips."  My voice almost pleading with him.  I even thought my hearing made people think less of me.
    Then he raised his voice so I might hear him better.  He didn't understand, I could hear him but his speech was garbled unless I could read his lips to facilitate the sound of his voice.  I had to depend on both lip reading and sound to understand anyone, one without the other just didn't work.
    "Well boy, you had better read my lips real well, you don't want to screw up here." His warning was not really needed.  As he explained the rules to me, he must have seen several shudders pass through my body.  There should have been no questions in their minds as to whether or not their message was getting through to me, I was so scared there were tears in my eyes.
    They took me down the hallway to a room.  I guess you could call it a community room, though there was no one there.  It was a large room where all of us boys were to quietly sit and read if we wanted to for about two hours every night before bedtime.
    There was no radio, TV, no music of any sort, not even newspapers were allowed there.  At fourteen, it had been very seldom I had even seen a newspaper.  I had been very well protected from that world.  All we had to read, were hard covered books and magazines like Reader's Digest.
    Each boy had his own cell in the east wing of the building.  The cells were located on both sides of the corridor that extended the full length of the wing.  The rooms were small, only large enough for a bed and small metal table with a drawer in it, a stool and sink.  The table sat near the metal framed window.  Because of the way the window was built I couldn't crawl through it and even if I could there was still the barbed wire topped fence that sat about twenty feet out from my window.  The door had a small reinforced glass window in it so without opening the door we could be checked on during the night.
    Each morning the door was unlocked at 6:00.  We had to get up, make our beds, wash, get dressed and put our pajamas away neatly on a shelf below the desk.
    At 6:30, we stood at attention outside of our door for inspection.  Those who passed inspection went to breakfast, those who didn't, missed breakfast and redid their room.
    I didn't miss many meals because of my room but for most of the boys, if not all of them, this was the first time they had been in an institution.  So it had been a little harder on them.
    Maybe having been in institutions, what seemed like most of my life, is what helped me get through orientation as well as I did.  For the staff paid more attention to the other boys than they did to me.
    As far as I know, I was the only boy who had been in another institution before going there.  I was also the youngest boy there, though later I was to find out, there was a younger group of boys in the institution.
    I was also the only orphan there but I never told anyone that.  That was a secret I never let anyone know.  None of the boys even knew I was from another institution.  I guess I had a lot of secrets.  I didn't even want people to know about my hearing.  If one of the kids said something to me and I didn't understand what he had said I would smile and act as though I had heard him.  I guess, I was pretty ashamed about everything in my life, being an orphan, having been in the orphanage, the juvenile home, running away so much and all.
    One of the things they had told us boys in the first week I was in orientation, if we behaved ourselves and didn't run away, we would be sent back to our parents in eleven months.  I had stood there with my mouth open and stared at them, almost afraid to breath, thinking they would say,  "Except for you Larry, you will have to go back to the juvenile home."  To get out of the training school I would have gladly gone back to the juvenile home but not at the expense of not going home to my mother.  I didn't think they realized I didn't have a home to go to.  I didn't even know where my mother was.
    I was afraid to ask any questions.  Like, "Would your parents have to pick you up?" or "Would they put you on a bus and send you where you said your home was?"  Thinking I could make up a place and have them send me there.  I didn't know about parole and all of that.  I thought they would just open the door and let me go and that would be the end of it.  I would have a whole new life and I would no longer have to be afraid.  So my runaway plans were put on hold for I couldn't run now if I had a chance of going home to my mother.
    All of the time we were inside of the building we were not allowed to talk unless a staff member talked to us or asked us a question.  We could only talk for about one hour each day and that was in the exercise area on the north side of the building.  That area was totally enclosed by a fifteen foot fence, topped with coils of barbed wire.
    The dining room was on the lower floor of the main section of the building.  Each meal was the same, we would go through a line and have food served on a dish that we carried on a tray.  Then after picking up our silverware we would walk to a table where the staff directed us to stand behind our chair with our tray in front of us on the table.
    Once everyone had their tray and were at the table, then we could all sit and eat.   There was no prayers, no niceties like, please pass this or that.  You sat there quietly and ate your food.  That is if you wanted to eat.
    Please pass this or that?  There was nothing on the table to pass.  We had no salt and pepper.  We ate our food the way it was prepared.  Our bread and drink, we picked up as we passed through the line.
    We had less than thirty minutes to eat our meals in.  There were no snacks here so if we didn't get all of our meal eaten or if we should miss a meal we didn't want to miss the next one.
    In the orphanage and the juvenile home there had been no snacks of any kind.  There had been no candy, no pop, no peanuts or chips.  Not unless it came through your parents.  At times, it had hurt when I had seen the other boys having those things their parents had given them but all I could do was turn and walk away.  Even if the staff would have allowed it I couldn't have asked the boys for anything.
    As each of us boys finished eating, we would sit with our hands on our lap until one of the staff told us it was time for us to get up from the table.  We would scrape our plate clean and then stack them and our tray, then in a group we would file back upstairs to the community room.
    Once we were back upstairs after our meals, we would wash walls, windows, scrub floors or anything else that could be cleaned.  It didn't make any difference if we had done it the day before or even earlier that day, we did it again.
    In the evenings though, we were usually allowed to read but at 8:00 we went to bed.  Not before or after.  I always wanted to go to bed long before that.  For there I could escape into my own world and be alone so I went to bed as soon as I was told to.  If a "New Kid" was to ask to stay up late, say to finish a page in a book, it was the last time he asked.  For he would find himself standing with his hands above his head until he was about to drop.
    You didn't cry and complain about the treatment there.  In the orphanage and the juvenile I had never seen any kid crying and whining about his or her treatment.  I don't know why it was that way but in institutions it just didn't happen.
    There were basically three forms of punishment in orientation.  Standing with your arms above your head or out in front of you with a pillow across them, hanging from a pipe or standing with your forehead against the wall.  Leaning with your forehead against the wall, hands clasped behind your back and feet about a foot and a half from the wall, was for long term punishment, like two or three hours.  Easy?  Try it some time.
    No one had to do very much if anything to get punished.  It seemed as though the staff would go out of their way to find a reason to punish us.  I stood several times with my arms above my head or out in front of me, so did a lot of the other boys.  Not because we had done anything wrong but because they had told us to.  (I think we were all too scared to do anything but what they told us to do.)  Maybe they thought it would teach us discipline.
    What would have happened if we let our hands down or didn't hang onto the pipe or not do something we were told to do?  I found out once shortly after I had arrived there.  Once was all it took.
    There were always two men there and whenever I saw them they were always carrying "Anamosa Sticks."  The first time I had to hold my hands out in front of me with a pillow across them, my arms had gotten so tired I had started lowering them, when from behind me a "stick" had hit me across the back of my legs, almost buckling my knees. "I want those arms out in front of you boy.  I'll let you know when you can let them down."  He had stepped to my side, his face only inches from mine.
    There was a door off of the community room I never went past.  It led into the isolation section where at times during the night I thought I had heard screams coming from.
    At the end of my thirty day orientation period I was escorted to Cottage #1.  In about a month it was to become the "Old Cottage #1" for the new one would be opening up then.
    One of the first things I had noticed as I was being escorted to my cottage was that there was no fence around the training school, if I wanted to run, I could.  On that particular day though I was pretty scared to be even thinking about running and I did have their promise I would eventually be allowed to go home to my mother.
    Mr. and Mrs. Leaper were to become my new cottage parents.  Mr. Leaper had taken me to the dormitory to show me where my bed was and at the head of the stairs on the way back down he had stopped and laid the rules down for me.  There were a bunch of them but most of them had to do with my attitude and showing respect towards the staff, especially his wife.  I was to say, "Sir or Mam" to all staff members in the institution.  I was to address all staff members as, "Mr. or Ms."  But these had been the easy rules for those things I had done at the orphanage and juvenile home.
    Not only had I always been respectful to all women, but also all men.  So I had no problem with that either.  My problem was, I felt Mr. Leaper didn't know I had come from another institution and I knew how to live by the rules.  He was treating me as though I was some "punk" kid off of the streets of Des Moines who had got "busted" and sent to the reform school with a chip on his shoulder and he (Mr. Leaper) was the one who was going to take it off.
    He didn't have to emphasize what would happen to me if I broke any of the rules, that had already been pretty well explained to me.  My impression I got from him was if I broke any of "His" rules Isolation would be a much safer place for me to be than what he was going to do to me.
    I think the nicest thing he had said to me (or maybe I should say the way he said it) if I wanted to stay out of trouble, all I had to do was do as the other boys did.  That he had said with a spread of his hands and a shrug of his shoulders as we had started back down the stairs.
    Mr. Leaper was a couple of inches short of six feet tall, close to two hundred pounds. None of it I could see was fat.  He had large, heavy hands.  He was an ex-naval officer, a disciplinarian and he didn't joke about anything.  He believed we should do everything in a military fashion, eating, standing, walking or anything else, it had to be done by the Navy Book.
    We marched everywhere, not simply marched but precision marched.  If he didn't think we did good enough during the day we would march from after supper to until bed time.
    He took a lot of pride in our marching for no other cottage marched the way we did.  It was as though he wanted to show us off as a precision drill team he had shaped.
    Though I hated to march that way, I did take pride in how well our cottage could march and obey his commands.  We looked sharp, dressed in our khakis, marching in double file, quickly responding as a unit to each of his crisp and snappy commands.
    Though I did take pride in marching, it was another prime example of others controlling my life rather than teaching me how to control my own.  What they were teaching me was only good if I was to eventually lead a military life.  Something I wanted to do but was to later be denied me.
    Mrs. Leaper was somewhat nice.  Though she didn't interact with me much other than to give me instructions.
    The first few weeks I was in the training school I lived in constant fear I would do something wrong.  The discipline was a lot stricter than it had ever been at the juvenile home.  I didn't know where the whips were they beat the boys with but I had seen the building where they had killed the boy, some three years before, for other boys had pointed it out to me.  My least fear they would only use their fists on me. I didn't even know who "they" were.
    I was told by one of the other boys how it had all come about, how they had killed the boy.
    It had happened about three years before I had gotten to the training school.  Back then a boy got so many merits a day.  Extra merits if he did something special, like reporting anyone who was planing on running away.  When a boy got so many merits he would be allowed to go home.  Telling on seven boys is seven times the merits points you could get for telling on one boy.
    A boy had told one of the officers of the training school that seven boys from his cottage were planing on running away.  That evening those seven boys were called out of their cottage to be taken to the disciplinary cottage, so it was called then.  As they had come out the front door of their cottage they were met by three officers.  And as each boy had walked out the door they had been hit on the back of the head with "Blackjacks."
    There had been no talk as to whether they were, or were not going to run away.  There had been no chance for the boys to defend themselves in what the boy had said about them.  The boy had gotten extra merits for turning them in, whether or not it had been true.
    The assistant superintendent, the boys' cottage father and the officer of the disciplinary cottage marched all of the boys to the disciplinary cottage.  The boys had been stripped and this one boy (Ronald Miller) had gone to the "post" to get "his" seventeen "stripes."
    The device they had used to give him the "stripes" had been what they call a "tug."  A four-ply, heavy leather strap about two and half inches wide and about three feet long.
    After he had been released from the "post," there had been some sort of commotion.  The assistant superintendent had decided the boy should receive thirty more "stripes."  Something the boy apparently didn't agree with.
    There had been somewhat of a scuffle.  The boy had picked up a chair to defend himself.  The other boys and a couple of boys who worked in the disciplinary cottage attacked the boy, hitting him with their fists.
    They had gotten the boy down where the officers could use their "Blackjacks" on him.  The boy was then dragged back to the "post," and strapped to it.  After the boy had gotten a additional thirty stripes the other six boys "got theirs."
    After it was all over with all of the boys had been taken up to their cells on the next floor.  Where they had to stand until 3:00 in the morning.
    The next day while working on the coal pile, the boy had collapsed and was taken to the hospital where he had died early the next morning.
    I was later to go into the "Old disciplinary cottage."  By then it was an empty building and hadn't been used since the new Isolation unit had been built.  It wasn't much of a building.  The floor area was about fifty by fifty feet.  At one time it had been the fire house.
    On the first floor, in the middle of the room, I seen the "post," with it's iron rings still near the ceiling.  The cells on the second floor, they were too small for a boy to lay down in, they weren't much bigger than a broom closet.  I was to later help tear those rooms out.
    At first, I guess the fear of what might happen to me if I ran away is what kept me from of even thinking of running.  I also knew that strap could be used on me for many other reasons.  In my mind, something "they" misunderstood in something I did or was even thinking and I would find myself tied to a "post."
    My thinking process was greatly altered when I entered the training school for I felt "they" could actually read my mind.  Which made my life even more frightening.  It was so bad, if I was to think of something I felt "they" would disapprove of, I would stop and say a prayer asking God to forgive me.