Running Away

Perhaps the grand finale of this wild period in my life occurred when my closest personal friend, Gary Huskinson, and I decided to run away and go to California to get a job. I was simply tired of standing in the sugar beet field with a hoe in my hand all summer. First it was thinning the beets, then it was hoeing weeds. I got paid, of course, but it was definitely not my idea of a great summer job. I gave my parents warning, in a lie, that we had a job all lined up in Clearfield, Utah and rather crudely informed them that they couldn't stop me. I was fifteen. The night before the big day when we were to depart, all the crowd got together to celebrate and see us off. We broke into the restaurant stand at a local drive-in movie, stole several boxes of wieners and candy bars, and then made a successful escape. As far as I know, we were never suspected of having perpetrated this crime.

The next day, armed with the raw wieners, we took off for Utah – resplendent in our contempt for the world we were leaving and supreme in our confidence that we could handle anything. A couple of days in Utah, two or three days in Las Vegas, Nevada, and we were broke. (I had sold a pig I owned to my dad for money to finance this dubious undertaking.) Despite the growing crack in our invincibility, we continued to pursue our poorly defined objective of getting to California. By walking and hitchhiking, we managed to get to San Bernardino. Somehow we found an abandoned house, forced our way inside, and slept on the bare floor of a room that appeared to be a meat locker. The following morning we were as penniless as when we lay ourselves down to sleep and considerably hungrier.

For lack of a better plan, we began walking toward Los Angeles, stealing oranges along the way in order to have something to eat. No one picked us up, and so we continued walking until we were in Los Angeles. Nothing had happened to increase our fortunes and no abandoned houses were found. We'd heard that people sometimes were allowed to sleep in jail so we headed for the nearest police station only to be turned away. We were told, however, that a number of "missions" located nearby might be able to put us up for the night. Fear, hunger, and a dozen other inexplicable emotions accompanied us as we approached the mission we'd selected to inquire about our staying the night. I recall being treated quite rudely, certainly worse than we could ever have expected given our small town Idaho backgrounds.

We were eventually accepted by a mission on Los Angeles Street and literally herded through an in-processing procedure that lumped us together with the inner-city derelicts, winos, bums, and ne’re-do-wells I wanted to protest that I was different–I was not a bum, nor an alcoholic, nor a criminal. This was I, the fine upstanding boy from Idaho, who milked the cows morning and evening, went to church on Sundays, etc. But all these protestations remained locked inside my soul as we were herded through the showers, sprayed with de-lousing powder, and put to bed on old army cots in a large room with approximately fifty of our new found compatriots. The tuberculosis coughs, my unhappiness, and the general state of affairs kept me awake most of the night. I cried. The sugar beet field looked pretty good at that point.

The following morning, hot oatmeal, stale pastry, and black coffee tasted like a banquet. We were by now anxious to leave Los Angeles, and so the following evening found us in Santa Barbara. At the local employment office, things looked exceedingly bleak until, almost at the last possible moment before the office closed, a man showed up looking for someone to work in his hotel. So it was that we ended up in the Montecito Hotel on Route 101. For two months we lived there. I painted and redecorated rooms with an elderly black man named Charlie, while Gary worked in the kitchen of the restaurant. In the evenings, we both served as bouncers in the Hotel's Flamingo Room nightclub. I was still fifteen.

The good Lord allowed us a lot of freedom with which we might have done ourselves irreparable harm. At one point, for example, Gary and I concluded that we were going to "roll" one of the drunks (that is, steal all his money) we bounced out of the nightclub. Luckily, when we went back to look for him, he had vanished. The old black man "Charlie" wanted to buy me a prostitute, if he could watch. Charlie's offer was quickly brushed aside, and somehow I managed to come out of the California experience not really much worse for the wear.

Like most other things, my "run-away" experience ended and I was a little wiser than before. However, being wiser didn't substantially improve my overall behavior. I was, perhaps, the archetype of the notorious teenager who knows more than anyone else. Consequently, I was impatient with my parents, whose bona fide wisdom didn't become apparent to me for years. I fought constantly with my mother, who generally was much wiser than I ever understood. Thus, one of my greatest regrets of my growing up years is that I treated my mother so poorly, seldom gave her the respect to which she was entitled, and generally was incredibly insensitive to the common courtesies of family living. Nevertheless, it has always been my impression that of the four children, I most resemble mother – perhaps that explains why we quarreled so frequently.

The running away experience made a lasting impression on me. My inclination to challenge my mother on everything she did and said dissipated. I began to understand my parents’ love for me. Later I learned that Dad had wanted to call the police to see if they could find us and bring us back, but mother could not face the shame of having the police after her son. So it didn’t happen. My final years in high school were achievement years and I treasured every moment. All subjects came easy to me except math and science that I avoided as best I could.