I must reveal that I was once the “master of escape.” The chicken wire pen that enclosed a shaded section of our small backyard proved no obstacle to my frequent quests for adventure. Although it was meant to protect my four-year-old self from wandering out of the yard and into the street and beyond, my protective barrier offered little challenge to my creative and devious mind. When I escaped, as I often did, there was no evidence remaining to reveal the wonder of my method, and, in fact, over seventy years later I have no recollection of my technique. Like most of my life, it was undoubtedly a spontaneous, intuitive act that served an immediate and impulsive purpose. So I gained my freedom to scamper off to the La Porte County Fairgrounds, just a short, but dangerous two blocks’ journey from my “G” Street homestead (or detention cage, if you prefer).
I can vividly recall three of my adventures, actually misadventures, as if they occured only yesterday. The mental images, re-enforced by unforgettable and pain associated tactile recollections, linger in the recesses of some crevice of my brain and will remain there until whatever force it is that allows me to access them ceases its function.
On one occasion, I recall visiting the La Porte County Fair, along with thousands of others who gathered to view the 4-H exhibits, the carnival midway, the grandstand variety shows, and the sulky racing. When people were not wandering around the grounds, they were usually enjoying food provided by both carnies and local benevolent organizations – fraternal lodges, church groups, youth baseball parents, etc.
(Please try to keep in mind that I am a four-year-old who has just escaped from solitary confinement and although unarmed and harmless to others, have gained entrance to a ticketed event by the use of stealth and cunning. I have crossed at least two busy streets; and have slipped through an undetected hole in the fence securing a vast public facility. I am about to enter a food tent provided by women of a local church.) It is probably fortunate that I found that hole near the church ladies’ tent on that early August afternoon. On another occasion I might have been kidnapped by carnival gypsies, only to become a grease covered, tattooed, toothless carnival worker, a few days short of a bath and dating the hermaphrodite/bearded lady! As it turned out, I was instead fed ice cream and offered unlimited affection from saintly women whose only failing was not to inquire of my origin. Perhaps, they assumed my angelic little being belonged to one of the other grandmotherly volunteers, having no reason to suspect that I was a fugitive, on the run from an allegedly protective cage
On another occasion, I was to learn the principle of gravity; no apple falling on my head, thank you. I prefer a more painful lesson. The Fair was a distant memory and my return to the grounds on this occasion took me to the very center of the expansive facility. There were numerous ball diamonds there, and on one of those diamonds, the premier softball facility of the city, rose an inviting platform nestled at the very top of the bleachers. It served as the scorer’s bench/press box for league play. I scaled the bleachers to gain the view that only the platformed pinnacle could provide. I had no fear of heights (perhaps “no sense” would be the more appropriate phrase relative to “fear”?) Eagerly, I mounted the platform and scanned the grounds, the entire world, from a perspective that I had never known.
There about me lay the multiple ball fields, the harness horses grazing, the huge grandstand, the barns, the half-mile dirt track, and to the north, I could almost make out the roof of my home. As I took a last daring step up and onto the railing that framed the platform, I learned the certainty of gravity, and how one escapes the effect of gravity upon reaching the earth some ten feet below. I did not understand death; therefore, I settled for total awareness of excruciating breathlessness. Not momentary breathlessness. Not breathlessness relievable by simply inhaling; but terrifying, paralytic, suffocating breathlessness induced by the total inability to recall how to inhale. I lay there for some time trying to recall what it meant to draw a breath. At last, my lungs began to involuntarily re-inflate and I was able to leave the friendly confines of the fairgrounds having learned that respiration “just happens.” It was possible, and painfully so, to interfere with the natural order of my existence as one who requires the normal atmosphere of earth to survive. I recall, later in life, hearing someone say, “He just has the wind knocked out of him.” Someone who was not writhing in the throws of suffocation, someone whom I wish could “just (and justly) have the wind knocked out of him.”
Finally, I recall my introduction to the science of animal behavior. Once again, it was a non-Fair period, and I had escaped without detection to the fairgrounds that always seemed to call to me for more of life’s little lessons. Grazing on the outfields of the several ball diamonds located within the infield of the racing oval, horses of various ages, colors, and dispositions idled away yet another late summer’s afternoon, consuming the outfield’s ample grasses. A four-foot nothing, toe-headed fugitive from a nearby neighborhood did not intimidate most of the horses. Several provided me with the opportunity for personal contact. A young colt was particularly unimpressed with my intrusion into his herd. I walked behind that colt, the least imposing of the herd, and grasped not one, but two handfuls of flowing tail. The colt responded, appropriately, by thrusting not one, but two hooves firmly into my chest before sauntering away to a greener pasture. A rear somersault, preceded by a full front tuck completed my unanticipated response. I was once again in the land of zero atmosphere, a most difficult place to breathe. To this day, I have an abnormal fear of suffocation which is, perhaps, somewhat surprising – considering the opportunities I have had to practice involuntarily not breathing for extended periods of time. (By the way, in my memory, I score the rear somersault/front tuck as a perfect ten.)
It might appear that my response to pain and incidental punishments was one of indifference, or that I was destined to be among those souls adjudged to be “slow learners,” but to tell the story in its entirety, each time I returned from going over or under or through the chicken wire (and I always returned without the same same stealth with which I escaped,) I was suitably whacked about the buttocks by my distraught mother. I do maintain that those whacks were always tempered by a mother’s relief that her wayward son was home again safely. (Fortunately, she never knew the extent of my misadventures. Of course, neither did she attempt to investigate the method of my occasional escapes, but I will not pursue the reasons for her inaction to avoid the need for psychological therapy.)
As I recall, those whacks for escaping and doing my Huckleberry-thing were less painful than those which were issued for others of my misadventure. Removing all the labels from the canned goods in the kitchen cabinet was not celebrated, nor was my proudly urinating in the kitchen wastebasket, thereby demonstrating my newly gained independence in the performance of a critical bodily function. It was difficult for me to see the relative difference of urinating into a more appropriate receptacle which resulted in praise, not punishment. Was it not the act itself that was being praised? Perhaps, it was because of the outbreak of WWII at this time that my deeds and misadventures were not seen as humorous manifestations of innocent childhood. As I reflect on that era of my life, I am reasonably sure that I am not accountable for WWII, despite what I was made to suffer.
Glorious childhood – Sometimes one can barely survive it, but fortunately one cannot live without it…I tried to live it to the fullest as a free and curious child, And, survive the ‘hood I did…
As a postscript to my adventures, I must mention that escapism and misadventure might be an inherited characteristic. My daughter Leigh frequently fled the confines of her crib at various hours of the night to seek who knows what adventures. She scaled the kitchen counter on one occasion to gain access to the highest cabinets over the sink to secure orange flavored baby aspirin to be shared with her younger sister. And with that act of generosity, she also shared having her stomach pumped at the local trauma center. On another occasion, she was found seated in the street at night after her empty crib was discovered following an unusual sustained silent period – a period when climbing to freedom attempts were more common. And finally, she was returned on one occasion by the neighbor across the street, well after dark when three year-old’s usually have retired for the evening.
It is interesting to consider that my progeny would follow in the footsteps of the great Houdini and actually embellish the family’s childhood business of escape and exploration by performing her misadventures under cover of darkness. To use mysterious night, not as a coward seeks cover of darkness, but as one expanding the danger and the consequences of the experience is a glorious use of bravado in childhood and worthy of acknowledgement.