I was fourteen and up until that time in my life I never really had a job, except cleaning my cottage.  Here at the training school, I was assigned to work in the butcher shop when I wasn't in school.  I would go to school in the morning, in the afternoon I would work in the butcher shop.
    I guess the real reason I was never to run away and thus losing any chance of going home to my mother was Mr. Parker, he was the supervisor of the butcher shop.  It was only a matter of a few short days and I fell completely in love with him.  It came to be, my whole world would revolve around him.  I loved him?  I think I worshiped him for he seemed to have been the one person I had been looking for all of my life.  I loved him more than if he had been my own father.  I was never to get over my fear of the training school but when I was with Mr. Parker I was able to bury that fear and almost live a normal life of a boy in an institution.
    I always enjoyed working in the butcher shop, knowing Mr. Parker would be there.  When I returned to my cottage though my fear would return.  I always tried to stay well clear of Mr. and Mrs. Leaper. Any danger to me, I felt would most likely come from Mr. Leaper.  I had to have contact with them and at those times I lived in constant fear Mr. Leaper, or Mrs. Leaper would misunderstand something I said or did and think I was being disrespectful.
    I also had another problem besides my hearing, I had a habit of turning my sentences around.  For instance, I once should have said, "Maybe I'll see you later."  What I actually said. "I'll see you later."  I hesitated, as though as an after thought and said, "Maybe."  It had been interpreted, "I'll see you later baby."  I had been talking to a woman and it hadn't gone over too well.
    The regime of cottage life in the training school was much the same as it had been in the orphanage and juvenile home.  The biggest difference being we had to act more like military cadets.  Under any other setting it could almost have been called a military school for boys.  There was one big difference though, there was at least one very scared boy living there.
    After supper, if we weren't marching with our wooden rifles upon our shoulders, pretending we were soldiers, we would stay outside of our cottage until bed time.  That wasn't a choice we could make.  If the weather wasn't good or if in the cold days of winter we were allowed to stay inside where we could read or play table games.  We were allowed to talk but nothing noisy or rowdy like.
    Saturday was our scrub day in the cottage.  We were assigned certain rooms to do by either Mr. Leaper or Mrs. Leaper.  This would usually take us all morning.  Then the afternoon was more or less our time as long as we stayed in or near our cottage.
    Sunday, after breakfast and after we had done our normal morning chores we would get ready for church.  Which involved getting into our Sunday clothes, which were the identical type suits I wore in the juvenile home.  For some reason the basic color of all of my suits had been blue.  We would have to wear these clothes, like at the juvenile home, until after our noon meal.  Sunday was also our visiting day so if we had a visitor we would have to wear these clothes during our visits.
    About seven o'clock every evening, we would start putting things away and straightening up the cottage.  After the cottage had been straightened up we would all go in the locker room where we would undress and take showers.  Mr. Leaper or Mrs. Leaper and sometimes both of them would supervise our showers.  I was glad they did.  For if they stepped out of sight of the showers for only a minute or two the horse playing would begin.  Usually a boy would get behind another boy and goose him. Not necessary with his finger.  Then a fight could very likely ensue.
    When two boys were fighting, especially in the shower, I didn't want to be anywhere near them.  I didn't even want to see it.  Fighting had always been pretty unsettling to me.
    The shower room had three walls.  The shower heads were along three of the walls, a total of nine shower heads in all.  There were no partitions or curtains for the fourth wall, it opened out into the locker room.  With something like thirty boys in my cottage we couldn't all take a bath at the same time, not unless we wanted to share a shower with several other boys.  Some boys did but I always held back until most or the other boys had finished their showers.
    Even though I was fourteen, as were most of the other boys, a woman being present while I took a shower never gave me second thoughts.  Like maybe a nurse giving a person a bath.  But most of the other boys, if not all of them, had not been raised in institutions the way I had been.  I had heard a few quiet remarks the boys had made about Mrs. Leaper that it was a good thing Mr. Leaper hadn't heard.  I think my new sexual vocabulary started in those showers.
    After all of our showers were over with we would get into our pajamas and quietly go upstairs to the dormitory and get into our beds.  There two lights were left on all night while a night watchman watched over us.  There was no talking, no playing around when we went to bed, we laid there quietly until we fell asleep.
    There had only been one night, there had been any disturbance in the dormitory after we had gone to bed.  The night watchman was a big fat guy.  He had quite a belly on him. One of the boys (I never knew which one) said in a somewhat disguised voice,  "Hey night watchman when was the last time you seen your peter?"  The night watchman had gotten up, trying to see where it had come from.  Thankfully, from the opposite end of the dormitory than what I was on.  Not determining exactly where this unusual voice was coming from, he sat down.  Again, within seconds, this strange voice ask another question and again the night watchman stood up and again, thankfully, looking towards the far end of the dormitory.  Every time the night watchman would sit down the boy would say something else.  Questioning the man's manhood.  There had been a few times I had to stifle a giggle even though I thought the boy had been very wrong in what he was doing.  I could hear other boys giggling too.
    That went on for some time until Mr. Leaper, hearing the commotion (His apartment was across the hall from the dormitory.) came into the dormitory.  Everything went deathly quiet and remained that way for the rest of the night.
    While I was in the training school I went to the eighth grade.  A good year behind in school.  My teacher's name was Mr. Cosgrove.  He was a kindly old man, somewhere in his seventies.  He stood somewhere near six feet tall and had snow-white hair.  He always wore a clean and neat white shirt with heavily starched collars.
    He taught me my penmanship, gave me my interest in math and he was a great reader.  I could sit and listen to him read for days on end, he was that good.  He could make me forget all of my fears and troubles of reality and take me off into the land of "Sleepy Hollow," "Rip Van Winkle," "Black Beauty" to name just a few of the many stories he read aloud as I sat there with my head laid on my desk and my eyes closed.
    One time, while I was alone in the school room with Mr. Cosgrove, he said to me, "Larry when you get older, get married and have some children."  He seemed so sad as he continued, "I never got married so I have no children now and it is very lonely."  I felt so very sorry for him for he was such a great man.
    My best times in the training school were with Mr. Parker at the butcher shop and at his apartment, for one evening each week he would take me to his apartment.
    Mr. Parker (Muray Parker) had three children, a boy a year older than I, a girl my age and a girl three or four years younger.  His wife's name was Zella, his son's name was Gary, Barbara was his oldest daughter.  His youngest daughter's name I don't remember.
    Mr. Parker's apartment took up all of the lower floor in one of the old cottages.  Which was located about three hundred feet north of Cottage #1, on the way to the dining hall, which was located in the main building.
    After Mr. Parker got to know me he started taking me home with him about once a week.  I believe I was the only boy who he ever did that with.
    There was no special night he would take me to his apartment as long as it wasn't Monday night.  Monday night was the evening Mr. Parker watched over my cottage while Mr. and Mrs. Leaper went into town.
    When he did take me, he would come after supper and pick me up at my cottage.  He would walk me over to his apartment and I would play games with his kids until it was time for me to go back to my cottage.
    He would take me to his apartment to play with all of his kids but usually it turned out to be only with Barbara.  I have always felt Barbara was my first real girl friend.  But that would never be allowed there in the training school, if anyone had even suspected how I felt about Barbara they would have put a quick end to me going there.
    It was there, as I listened to records in Barbara's bedroom I first heard the song, "Beyond The Sunset."  I thought it was a beautiful song.
    I kissed Barbara a couple of times but it had only been quick like for fear someone would see us and I wouldn't be allowed to go back.  And I didn't want Mr. Parker mad at me.
    The one of two times I had seen Mr. Parker mad was in his apartment.  That had been when he had gotten mad at his son Gary.  Who was fifteen then.
    Gary was talking back to his mother, something that made me feel very uncomfortable for I didn't think he should be talking to his mother that way.  Apparently his dad didn't think so either.
    In the room was a large dining table, I and Mr. Parker were on one side of it, Gary and his mother on the other side.  Gary had said something to his mom and Mr. Parker had almost went over the top of the table to get at Gary.  Gary had quickly jumped back from the table, out of reach of Mr. Parker.
    Mr. Parker had told his wife to slap Gary.  Mr. Parker was so mad, I think he felt he couldn't get around the table fast enough to get at Gary is why he told his wife to slap him rather than do it himself.  Thankfully Mrs. Parker didn't slap Gary for I think it would have hurt me just as much, maybe in a little different way.
    That event made me feel very uncomfortable for I didn't know dad's yelled at their own sons that way and I had just as soon not have seen it.  Of course, any time I found myself in a situation where someone was mad, a boy getting a whipping, slapped or even yelled at, I had become very nervous and frightened.  I guess the term for it is, "feeling very uncomfortable."
    The other time I had seen Mr. Parker mad was on a Monday evening when he was watching over our cottage.  I don't know what the boy had done but whatever it had been, it had made Mr. Parker mad at him.  Mr. Parker had told the boy to stand with his nose against the wall.  Mr. Parker was standing right behind him, when the boy must have said something or maybe he didn't have his nose against the wall like he was told to but whatever it was, Mr. Parker hit the boy on the back of his head with his open hand, slamming the boy's head into the wall several times giving the boy a bloody nose.  This was the only time I had ever seen a boy actually get hit by Mr. Parker.  That was another sight I had wished I had never seen.  In all of the time I was there, Mr. Parker never got mad at me, not even once.  He was always friendly towards me.
    Mr. and Mrs. Leaper was another matter.  He used a razor strap, she would slap a boy quick but the heavy stuff she always left to her husband.  You didn't want to talk back or disobey either of them.  There was absolutely no nonsense with them.
    Whenever Mr. Leaper used the strap on a boy, they would go into the clothing room (where our clean clothes and linen were kept) on the first floor near the front of the cottage.  I think every boy in the cottage got the strap used on him at least once, I know I did.
    Because a boy had told on me for sneaking food out of the dining hall Mr. Leaper had taken me into the clothing room and closed the door.  I had to strip and grab a rod on the clothes rack where our Sunday clothes hung.  He told me, waving towards the clothes rack with the hand he had the strap in, "Grab a hold of that rod.  I'm giving you three swats, every time you let go or you scream I am going to add one more."  By the time he had given me six swats and given up he still owed me about three more for I had let go of the rod and screamed every time he had hit me.
    The butcher shop was located in the warehouse where all of the new clothes and supplies were kept for the institution.  There were three of us boys who worked there.  We would grind meat, cut ham and bacon that had been cured in the institution's smoke house, cut pork chops and other cuts of meat.  I enjoyed working in the butcher shop but we also had to do all of the slaughtering at the institution and that is where I had problems with my job.  The one part I didn't like.  As a matter of fact, I dreaded. In the butcher shop, to me it was meat and nothing more.  I could deny in my own mind that it once was a living animal.
    Each week there was a day set aside for slaughtering.  One week it may be chickens, the next week maybe hogs and another week a cow or two.  What we slaughtered was mainly based on what the kitchen had ordered for the next week and what our supply in the large freezer was.
    It was quickly learned, not only by myself but by others, I couldn't stand the sight of killing animals.  The first animal I had seen killed was a cow.  Mr. Parker had hit it between the eyes with a sledge hammer.  When I seen the hammer hit and the noise it made I twisted and fainted.  When I came to, Mr. Parker and the boys were standing over me, where they had carried me outside into the fresh air.  Never again was I to stay inside of the slaughtering house when the animals were killed.  After the animals had been killed I could blank out in my mind they had once been living animals.  It would only be after the animals had been skinned and about halfway processed before I could reenter the slaughter house.  I had been farmed out to the carpenter shop on the days when chickens and turkeys were slaughtered for the killing went on all day.
    I always had an abhorrence to the killing of anything, whether it be animal, bird or fish.  I guess that had all started back when I was eight years old and had been placed for adoption.  My adopted father had killed my pet goat.  When I had found out that Sunday morning when I had come home from church I hadn't been very happy about it.  My pet wasn't even full grown yet.
    On the days I had helped with the slaughtering, Mr. Parker would let me go alone to the machine shed and get the farm tractor and four wheel trailer.  Once the trailer was loaded with the meat he would let me drive the tractor from the slaughter house to the butcher shop while he and the boys road in the trailer.
    The other two boys were a year or two older than I was, I don't know why Mr. Parker let me drive the tractor all of the time but any time I got to drive it, I was on top of the world.
    It was on one of those days we had slaughtered hogs and we were loading them into the wagon when I had jabbed a knife into my leg.
    After the hogs were split lengthwise down the middle, I had carried a half of hog to the trailer and had laid it down on the tailgate.  I climbed up in the trailer and had dragged the carcass up towards the front of the trailer to stack it on top of the others that we had already loaded.  For some reason I was carrying a boning knife.  It had a very sharp, narrow and double edged blade.  I'd been carrying it in my right hand and when I jumped down from the trailer about three inches of the blade went into my leg. It had gone into my leg so fast it hadn't caused me any pain but I had been afraid to pull it back out.  Mr. Parker had to do that for me.  When he had pulled it out, it left only a puncture wound that didn't bleed. But because the knife had been covered with hog fat, it was like a vaccination, leaving a small lump in the crook of my right knee, which I was to carry for many years.
    Laddie was my dog, well not really, he belonged to Mr. Parker and his family.  But the way I took care of him everyone considered him my dog.  He was a beautiful brown Cocker Spaniel and a joy of my life.
    He was always outside of the butcher shop door, waiting for me to come out and feed him.  At first I would cut up chunks of beef and feed that to him.  But when I started to give him ground beef he got so that was all he wanted.
    There had been several suppers where I had wrapped my meat in a napkin and sneaked it out of the dining room taking it back to my cottage to feed it to Laddie.  That was where Mr. Leaper had found out I had been sneaking food out of the dining room. That whipping hadn't stopped me, I was only more careful.
    One Monday evening I was laying in the yard south and well away from my cottage feeding a piece of meat I had taken from the dining room, to Laddie.  Unknown to me Mr. Parker had walked up behind me and seen me feeding Laddie.  I thought I was in trouble again for taking food from the dining room.  He asked me, "Do you know what you are feeding the dog?"
    I had replied, "Just a piece of meat Sir."  Even Mr. Parker I called Sir or Mr. Parker.
    "Did you sneak it out of the dining room?"  He asked.
    Mr. Parker had never been mad at me before and I was afraid all of that was about to end.  "Yes Sir, I wanted to give Laddie a piece of cooked meat."  I had answered, as though I had never done it before and doing it for Laddie would make it all right I had broken a rule.
    His face broke into a smile and he said, "Larry, I think you should have eaten that piece of meat yourself, for it was a T-bone steak."  Then he walked away towards some other boys who were at the back of the cottage.
    Even though I worked in the butcher shop I didn't know what a T-bone steak was.  It was only meat to me and I was glad to give it to Laddie.
    That day I had notice Mr. Parker had turned his head the other way when I had broken a rule.  I knew any other boy would have gotten in a lot of trouble.  Why he had done that was to be a mystery to me for a long time.
    Even though he had turned his head the other way, as I was to realize some time later as I reflected back, other staff members had done the same thing, I never pushed my luck.
    Wherever I went Laddie was usually not very far away.  I could whistle through my cupped hands, something I had learned at the orphanage, something I have never seen anyone else could do.  Whenever Laddie would hear me whistle he would come running as hard as he could.  It was quite a sight to see that little brown Cocker Spaniel leaning over as far as he could, coming around the corner of a building.
    Up until the time I had been in the training school I had not been in any fights.  Here at the training school I was to be in my first fight.  It had been over Laddie my first fight had occurred.
    Laddie and I were playing in the yard south of the cottage, well away from all of the other boys.  I was laying on my side, I would throw a tennis ball several feet from me and Laddie would bring it back to me, making me wrestle it from him.  After we had been playing there for several minutes, a boy threw a football that landed nearby.  I picked it up and threw it back to him, asking him not to throw it near us again.  "You might hit Laddie," I had explained, then I laid down and continued to play with Laddie.  The football came back again, narrowly missing Laddie, as though the boy had deliberately thrown the ball at him.
    I picked the ball up, this time carrying the ball to the boy who was standing at the back corner of our cottage.  As I handed the ball to the boy I said, "Don't throw the ball our way again."  I had felt, by the expression on my face and the tone of my voice, my warning had been very clear, if he threw the ball at us again there was going to be trouble.  With that, I had returned to Laddie where we had been playing.  No sooner had I laid down the ball had bounced off of the ground, again narrowly missing Laddie.
    This time I had left the ball lay and walked over to the boy, thinking I could still avoid a fight.  As I approached the boy, I said, "I asked you not to throw the ball near us."  Emphasizing "not."
    I was about in arm's reach of him when he said, "Ya, what are you going to do about it?"  He never stood a chance, hardly had the last word left his lips when my first blow landed.  It landed square on the side of his face.  I drove my attack in, not allowing him the opportunity to swing back at me.  I rained in blow after blow, each one directly into his face.  At one point I had tried to throw him over my shoulder breaking his wrist.  I didn't realize I had broken his wrist until some of the boys had pulled me off of him.
    The fight had been very quick.  It had started without any of the normal warnings a fight was eminent nor had it lasted long.  So there had only been a couple of boys who had stepped in and broke the fight up.
    As soon as I had realized how badly I had hurt the boy it made me feel bad, a little sorry I had broken the boys arm but I said, hiding my real feelings, "It serves him right for I warned him not to throw the ball at Laddie and me."  With that, as though I didn't care, I turned and went back to where Laddie and I had been playing.
    It is amazing to me, I never got into any trouble for that fight.  Fighting was a capital offense in the training school.  One or both of the fighters always went to Isolation.  No staff member even talked to me about the fight.  There was always a staff member around so someone must have seen the fight.  How does a boy explain a broken arm, except maybe he fell down?  Normally I was very quite, polite to everyone and I kept mostly to myself.  So maybe when they had seen the sudden change in me, without warning, the violent, vicious attack I had made on the boy, they didn't know what to say or do.
    For a fourteen year old boy, my attack had been very vicious.  My mind had been void of everything around me.  All I could see was that boy's face in front of me.  I had gone into him, not allowing him an inch.  In that period of a few seconds, I could have killed him.  I had let out all of the pent-up hate and anger that churned within me, leaving me very weak and sorry I had done it.
    Yes I was sorry I had hurt the boy so bad.  It scared me I could be so violent towards another person, even though the boy had been my age or maybe a year older than I was.
    It was unusual I would normally associate with other boys.  I wouldn't participate with them in any sports activities and I stayed pretty much to myself.  I suppose the main reason I didn't associate much with the other boys was because of my hearing.  It had always been difficult for me to follow a conversation in a group so I would always avoid those situations where my hearing would be detrimental to me.
    Then there was another reason too.  In a negative way, I felt I was very much different than them.  I was an orphan and I had been in an orphanage and juvenile home.  They had parents and they knew what the real life was like.  I didn't want the other boys to know how I really felt so I didn't associate with them that much.
    I believe all of the boys and some of the staff members had the impression I was better than I felt I really was.  The boys would ask me to settle arguments between them as though I knew a lot of things.  They acted as though my moral character was very high.  Something I wanted them to believe, something I definitely didn't feel.
    One time when all of us boys were taking a shower Mr. Parker was teasing a boy.  He told the boy, the reason he had pimples was because he played with himself.  The boy had said, "Larry has pimples and he doesn't play with himself."  He was half right, I did have some acne.
    Talking about things like that had always made me feel uncomfortable.  So I hadn't made any comments.  I wanted them to get off of the subject, the sooner the better.
    As far as playing with my self, I was about fourteen and a half years old then. I guess “playing with myself “ had started about the time I had turned thirteen, when I had made my last trip to the University Hospital in Iowa City.  Right after the time I had seen the psychiatrist.
    I had met a girl I had seen while I had been in the orphanage.  I had never talked to her before but I knew her and she remembered me.  She was about my age, maybe a little older.
    We had crawled under some baby cribs that had been stored in a room.  She definitely wanted to have sex with me.  I didn't know anything about it but she had been willing to teach me.
    In the process of preparing for sex with her, I had felt the slight tinges of a climax.  It had only been a fleeting feeling.  It had been there and gone.  I was startled by it and was very much interested in investigating it further.  She was nervous and was afraid we might get caught.  Why we would get into trouble for something like that, I had no idea.  Being near a girl, I knew I could get into trouble, for that was against the rules.
    She wanted me to hurry up and have sex with her but I was trying to rediscover that feeling again.  I told her what had happen and to wait for just a minute.  Finally her fear won out.  She hadn't even taken her pajamas off so I could see what she looked like.
    I was never to rediscover that feeling again until I was fourteen and at Eldora.  So I hadn't played with myself all that much.  I never really had the interest to.  Even then, I didn't think my character was all that great, not after some of the stuff I had been involved in.