Lost and Found – a Novel by Ron Rink

Good morning — I hope you’re all well. Here’s the next chapter of Lost and Found. Thanks again for all the great comments.

Be well — be in peace,

Ron
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Most of the kids that worked at the bowling alley were street-wise and tough. I was the youngest one working there and still the only one who didn’t smoke or hang out with a gang.

The next day after that beating my father gave me with his fists, the kid that worked the alley next to mine kept staring at me. I figured he was curious about the bruising and swelling on my face. He was maybe thirteen or fourteen years old—definitely older than me. He had long, dark brown hair that was usually hanging down in his eyes. He was always squinting because of the smoke from the cigarette in his mouth. You could tell he was poor like most of the kids that worked there because his clothes were old and either patched or torn. Even though he was taller than me, he was still small enough to set pins.

When I first started working there the boss assigned him to teach me how to be a pinsetter. I noticed how he rarely ever smiled and most of the other kids seemed to give him a lot of room. After a while I learned that he was one of the toughest kids working there and really knew how to street fight. I didn’t know his last name at the time, but everyone called him Billy.

“Hey kid,” Billy yelled across the gap between our alley pits, “what’s with the beat-up face? Who’d you get into a fight with?”

“Ah, I didn’t get into a fight with anybody,” I replied, “My old man beat me up last night.”

“What’d he beat you up for?” he asked.

I really didn’t have any idea of how to answer that question because I had no idea what motivated my father to do this.

I decided that it wouldn’t be smart to try and bullshit Billy, so I replied, “I don’t know why he did it. He just comes home sometimes and is all pissed off and decides that I need a beating. It doesn’t matter if I’ve done anything wrong, he just does it anyway.”

Billy didn’t say anything for quite awhile and the lanes were getting pretty busy. About an hour later there was a little lull in the action. Billy was sitting on his shelf having another smoke.

“Is your old man a drunk?”

“Nah, he’s just the opposite,” I said. “He’s a real churchgoer and wouldn’t drink if you paid him.”

“Is your old man a big guy?” he asked.

“Yeah, he’s a whole lot bigger than me. There ain’t no way that I could fight him back—he’d beat me a lot worse than he did last night if I even tried.”

“I was just wondering how big he was. My old man used to pop me once in awhile when I was younger, but he wasn’t much bigger than me. After I got a little older and learned how to fight, I started thinking about what it’d be like to pop him back sometime.”

Billy sort of snickered to himself, took a big drag off his cigarette, and then looked up as though he was remembering something. “Anyway,” he went on after a couple of minutes, “about a year ago, he comes home drunk one night and starts in on me. He’s kind of swinging at me and I’m dodging him and he’s swearing and yelling at me to stand still”.

Billy started to chuckle and dance around like he was pretending to be his old man. “Then he comes at me with this big swinging fist and misses me, and that’s when I hauled off and hit him with everything I had right in his gut”.

Billy took a big swing with his fist to demonstrate. “You should-a seen him, he must have had quite a few beers, because he doubles up and starts moaning and groaning like mad.”

Billy got a huge grin on his face — the first time I had ever seen him smile. He took another drag off his smoke and said, “Then off he goes to the john to puke his guts out. He thought about coming after me a couple of times after that, but he never did it again.”

“Were you scared when you hit him?”

“I didn’t even think about it. I’d been in some pretty good street fights with people a lot tougher than my old man. I knew I’d win if we actually got in a fight. Nah, I wasn’t really scared.”

“I don’t think I could do that, I’m still just a kid. But I sure would like to do something so he wouldn’t beat me up any more.”

Billy just looked at me for a couple of minutes. Then he asked, “What’s your name again?”

“It’s Rollo, Rollo Van Buren,” I said.

“Where do you live, Van? You live around here?”

I told him that I lived over on Russell, but about then the lanes picked up and we got too busy to talk anymore.

Later that afternoon when we got off work, Billy came up to me and said that he knew this kid who ran away from home because his old man and old lady were always fighting and would punch him around sometimes.

“This kid’s been away from home for a couple months now,” Billy said. “He’s a little older than you, but he’s still on the streets and the cops haven’t touched him. Maybe you could do that too.”

“I don’t have much money, and I wouldn’t know where to go to hide out,” I said without much hope in my voice.

Billy and I were waiting for the boss to come and pay us for the day. He looked around to make sure no one was around and he said, “How about if you sneak in here just before they get ready to close up for the night? I’ve worked here plenty at night and I know the boss just counts up the money and leaves. He doesn’t clean the alleys or get stuff out of the stock room until he comes back in the morning. If any of the guys that work here at night see you sneaking in, they won’t say anything. They know to keep their mouths shut.”

“Yeah, but then I’m locked in here, right? Won’t he find me when he comes in the next day?”

“Nah. Just sneak in the back way and hide in that little empty space over in the corner.” Billy turned around and pointed to a corner behind us. “It’s real dark back there. The boss don’t show up until about nine in the morning and you could get out the bathroom window before that. The lock on that window’s been busted for a long time and you’re small enough to slip out that way, easy.”

We looked over and saw the boss coming toward us, so Billy quickly added, “You wouldn’t have to sleep outside and you could even sneak some food. There’s always stuff in that big icebox in his office and there’s crackers and pop too.”

Hope you all had a great weekend. I know mine was fabulous — busy — but had a lot of fun. Didn’t do any writing as I’d planned, but will get to it today.

Here’s the next bit of the book, “Lost and Found”. This is more of the descriptive background to set the scenes for the rest of the book. I know it’s a lot more enjoyable to read dialogue, but we’re not there yet. Stay tuned. The characters will begin to make their appearance soon.

Be well – be in peace,

Ron Rink
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The neighborhood where I grew up was on the east side of Detroit and on the Northern edge of the city. I lived on a street called Russell in a small house that was built during the Second World War. I often heard my parents refer to it as a “post-war” house, even though they had built it during the war. I eventually came to learn that they called it that because of the style and method of building that was used. I don’t understand a lot about building techniques, but I gather that using two-by-four framing and wood for the exterior rather than brick had something to do with it. It was a small house that was painted white with green trim and green shutters on the windows.

The neighborhood was an arrangement of blocks of streets and cross-streets. Our house was in the middle of one of these blocks. There weren’t many houses on the street when we first moved there. Most of them were older, larger brick houses. Our house was one of the first of the newer houses built in that neighborhood. The cross-streets on either side of our house were named after two gun manufacturers, Winchester and Remington. The main cross streets on either side of Winchester and Remington were State Fair and Eight Mile Road.

At the time our house was first built, there were only a few, somewhat widely scattered, brick houses all the way to Dequindre, a main street about seven blocks east of us. The rest of the neighborhood was very much like living out in the country with some wooded areas and lots of open fields or meadows. Many of the people living in that area had cleared out small plots of land in the meadow areas around their houses for victory gardens. This was one of the ways that people found to provide fresh vegetables for their families during the war, since there were severe shortages of all the fruits and vegetables in the stores. Most of the produce was sent to the soldiers. The gardens looked like little rectangular islands with perfectly straight rows of many different vegetables. The only thing that made you realize you weren’t out in real farmland was that the still unpaved streets on many of the blocks broke up the openness you would experience in the country.

Within just a couple of years after the end of the war, that whole neighborhood changed. All the streets got paved and the lots filled up with these little frame houses similar to ours. They were called bungalows. Even though they all looked a little bit different from each other, they were basically one-and-a-half-story houses, with narrow side driveways leading to a small one-car garage in the tiny, postage-stamp-sized back yard. They were built on very small lots and were bunched close together. I can remember one of my uncles, one of my mother’s brothers, who said if you kept your ears peeled you could hear the next-door neighbor peeing. He was a fun uncle who was always saying things that made everyone else get embarrassed.

I worked part-time after-school and full-time in the summer setting pins in a bowling alley. The bowling alley was over on the corner of Dequindre and Conant, and was close enough to our house so that I could either walk or ride my bike over there. The building sat back off the road to make room for the parking area in front. There were no windows visible from the side that faced the street, just a big sign that said Dequindre Alleys hanging on the brick wall. The entrance was along the side and you could look in through the windows by the door and see the alleys inside. The interior was sort of grungy. The place reeked of beer, tobacco and piss. Except for the bowling lanes the floors looked like they hadn’t been scrubbed for years. A fresh coat of paint would have made a world of difference. There was a drink and food counter along one side as you entered, and the office and shoe racks were on the other side of the door. Then there were three or four steps down to where the bowlers could sit by the alleys. There were 15 bowling lanes — when they were all functional.

My job was to sit up on a shelf at the far end of the alleys. The shelf was just behind a large, flat rack that had ten round, numbered slots in it for the bowling pins. The rack was triangular shaped and when the pins were in the slots, they would be in the right position to be placed on the floor of the alley when the rack was lowered. The game of bowling was the same then as it is now, except there were no automatic machines to pick up the pins that were knocked down and re-set them, nor was there a machine to pick up your ball and return it to you.

There was a narrow, dark passageway right behind the shelf where we sat that was just wide enough to walk behind the pin racks. They kept it as close to pitch dark back there as possible because, as my boss explained to me, “We can’t have bright lights back here to distract the bowlers, you know!” The narrow passage was necessary because we would frequently work two alleys at a time and needed a way to slip back and forth. As soon as we racked the pins on one alley, we would jump down off the shelf into the passageway and then jump onto the shelf in the next alley and rack the pins there. Once I grew more comfortable with the system, I found that I was able to just vault over the wood separator between the alleys, rather than jumping down into the passageway-—that saved a lot of time when we had to work fast.

Most of the guys who worked as pinsetters would either be small in stature teenagers, or they would be younger, little kids like me. You had to be small and wiry to be able to fit into the tiny space where we worked. I don’t think it was legal for the bowling alley owner to hire kids of my age, especially since they served beer and wine to the customers, but there were about four of us that were eight to ten years old. In those days people didn’t pay much attention to hiring practices and whether they were legal or not. Businesses needed employees and families needed money, so whatever worked to accomplish those two objectives was considered appropriate.

The rest of the guys were older. In fact, there was one guy who was actually a grown man, but he was not much taller than I was. He was always telling us stories about how he used to be a trainer at a racetrack until a horse kicked him and messed up his leg. He had quite a limp when he walked, but it didn’t interfere with his agility when setting pins. There were times he worked three alleys at once.

What we did was wait until the bowler had rolled his ball down the alley to hit the pins. Then we would jump down off the shelf, scoop up the pins that were knocked down, put them into the pin-slots on the rack and roll the ball down the ball-return gully back to the bowler. If it was a strike that was thrown, we’d put all the pins back in the rack, shove the rack down onto the alley floor, jam a big lever down that would release the pins from the rack, and then raise the empty rack back up again. As soon as we sent the ball back to the bowler, we jumped back up onto our shelf to get out of the way for the next ball to come down the alley, or jumped over to the next alley if that one was ready to be worked. We had to pay attention to the game so we didn’t mess up and set the pins before the bowler had finished.

It was hard and dangerous work. The pins were made out of wood, and we had to learn to pick up three or four of them at a time and slide them into the slots on the rack. They were also heavy and some of the bowlers who were overly aggressive would throw the ball as hard as they could and send the pins flying in all directions. It wasn’t unusual to get clunked in the head or the legs by the flying pins. We had to work fast because if we took too long, or we made mistakes, the bowlers would start yelling at us. After the bowlers had a few beers in them they would start hurling loud and abusive comments at us, anyway. There were a few times when a bowler would lose his temper and come running down the alley yelling all sorts of abusive language at the pin-boy. Fortunately, there was no easy way for them to get back behind the pin racks where we were and the owner would have enough time to get the bowler back where he belonged, or throw him out, which also happened more than a few times.

The bowling balls were another part of the procedure. We had to not only pick them up, but we also had to get them back up the alley to the bowlers. One of the guys taught me how to give the balls an extra spin so that they had enough speed to go all the way back to the bowler. We put our right hand face up in front of the ball and our left hand on top of the ball near the back. Then spin the ball by moving our left hand over the top of the ball and at the same time move our right hand under the ball and then over the top. By the end of the day our right hands would be bruised and swollen from rolling the ball over them. We actually got docked in our pay if there were too many complaints about balls not making it all the way back to the bowler. We would also take some nasty ridicule from the bowlers if we had to crawl out of our hole and run up the alley to push the ball the rest of the way back to them.
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Here’s the first Chapter of Lost and Found. Please don’t think this entire book is going to be about the relationship with my father. It won’t be — not by a long shot. I hope you’ll return for the unfolding of this young boy’s life.

Be well — be in peace,

Ron Rink
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I was eight years old when I made up my mind to run away from home. The idea to do it came from a guy at the bowling alley where I worked. It happened on a Thursday. It was in the summer. Since there was no school I was working full time.

The day before I made this decision I had a piano lesson right after I finished my shift at the bowling alley. I was practicing on the piano after my lesson when my father came home from work. He was furious about something. I don’t recall what it was. It was usually something to do with the house not being clean enough — or someone touching something on his desk in the basement — or dinner wasn’t ready — or something got left out of place in the garage. It didn’t seem to matter what it was. Whenever he came home in one of those moods I knew I would probably get another beating. Even though it didn’t happen every time, it was regular enough so that I would get that feeling of fear deep in the pit of my stomach when he would come storming into the house.

That Wednesday night my father had once again taken me up to the attic with his Bible in one hand and me in the other.

As I look back on it now, I had somehow come to understand that his “reasons” were nothing more than excuses for why he felt he had to do this to me. There had to be something inside of this man that caused his need to strike out. I knew of other kids that were beaten by their fathers from time-to-time, but only when their fathers were drunk, or when the kids had done something bad. Not only that, but the abuse usually went to their mothers as well. My father believed in total abstinence where alcohol was concerned, and to the best of my knowledge, he never hit my mother. His violence against me will always be a mystery since he’s no longer on the planet. Plus, I ended my relationship with him while I was still a teenager, so those questions never got asked.

This time it was worse than usual. It started out just like it did all the other times. He’d pick up his Bible off the table in the living room, then grab me by the back of my neck and shove me down the hall towards the door to the attic. He’d make me open the door because his hands were full of his Bible and me. It seemed as though he was actually lifting me by my neck as he pushed me up the stairs ahead of him. Once we were up there, he would start by just slapping me in the face and pushing me around while he kept shouting that he was going to make sure I was a good Christian boy. He’d hold his Bible up in the air and yell at me to hold my head up and look at it. Then when I looked up he’d slap me across the face again.

Usually, that was as far as he went with these sessions. I would start crying and he would keep slapping and pushing me for a while, but then he would suddenly decide to stop and tell me I could come back downstairs when I finished crying. The slaps stung, and sometimes when he pushed me I would fall to the floor or bash into the wall. It wasn’t so much that he hurt me physically; it was more the fact that he frightened me terribly.

That Wednesday evening he did something he had never done before. He always brought the Bible with him, but this time he kept sticking the Bible in my face and in a tight, vicious tone of voice, would order me to tell him what sins I had committed that day. When I would say that I hadn’t done anything bad, he would hit me in the face with his fist and yell at me to tell him the truth.

He screamed, “Don’t you know that lying is a sin? If you keep lying like this, I’ll just have to keep bringing you up here and punishing you!”

Hitting with his fist was new and it really hurt a lot. He did that several times until I fell to the floor. I wasn’t knocked out but I guess I thought that falling down would make it harder for him to keep hitting me. But he’d just tuck the Bible under his armpit, grab me by the arms, pull me back up to my feet and hit me again. I was crying uncontrollably and bleeding from my mouth and nose. I was so scared that my body was shaking uncontrollably. I didn’t know how to make him stop.

Then suddenly he did stop, and like nothing happened he said, “Clean yourself up and then come to dinner.” He tromped back downstairs and left me sobbing on the attic floor.

When I finally got up and went down to the bathroom to wash my face and hands, I could see that I had some dark marks around my eyes and one side of my face was swollen and red.

After I came to the dinner table, my mother just looked at me and never said a word.

This entry is longer than I would like, so for those who are reading along, I hope you’ll bear with me. I felt I needed to keep all of this part of the Prologue together. It is the end of the Prologue and the next entry will be the start of Chapter One.

Again, if anyone reading this thinks this is a dumb way to get a book “out there”, please let me know. I know I’m having some thoughts along that line myself. Please don’t hesitate to be honest with me. Really! I’d appreciate your thoughts. — either here or on Facebook. Thanks!

Be well — be in peace — Ron Rink
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I found a green metal box underneath some of the house papers in the Valuable Records box, but it was locked. My boss at the bowling alley had one just like it where he kept his cash. He always brought it out when he got the money to pay us kids. Had I found my pot-of-gold? Why else would they have a box up there with a lock on it? I knew there was a bunch of keys hanging on a hook near the back door. I had to hustle though. My mother had gone to a neighbor’s house to do some sewing. She was due back and I didn’t want to think about the consequences if I got caught.

Out of about fourteen or fifteen keys hanging on that hook, there were a few that looked a lot like the one for my boss’s cash box. The first three that I tried didn’t work but the fourth one turned the lock easily and I opened the lid.

There wasn’t any money that I could see — just a photo and an envelope. The photo was a plain black and white shot of some little kid in a wicker laundry basket—cute kid—I guessed it was a little boy—just a baby—maybe not even a year old. The basket was behind an old frame house or garage. The building didn’t look painted and the wood was weathered. The laundry basket was one of those oval wicker types sitting up on a wooden stand. The baby was holding himself up by the top of the basket and grinning from ear to ear.

The envelope had some folded papers in it, but no money that I could see. The papers looked official…

How strange that seemed. The first and middle name were mine but the last name was different. My last name wasn’t Flynn. There was some definite confusion in my young mind.

PERSONAL HISTORY – MATERNAL

Description: The mother is 5’ 4½“ tall and weighs 114#. She is a nicely built girl and appears healthy. The mother is an attractive girl with dark brown hair, blue eyes, and a nice complexion. Her teeth are crooked and in poor condition.

If the papers were about me, it made no sense. My mother didn’t have blue eyes or crooked teeth, and she sure didn’t come close to 114 pounds—she was way over that. She was short, somewhat wide and not too tall.

Who was Roland Gene Flynn? Was it possible that my father was mixed up with someone else and maybe my mother wasn’t really my mother? For a religious nut like him—going on and on about sinning all the time — that wasn’t believable. Moreover, his last name wasn’t Flynn. I didn’t know of anybody in our family that had the name “Flynn”.

Birth: The mother was born on 6/6/14 in Pennsylvania.

I knew that couldn’t have been about my mother. My mother wasn’t born in Pennsylvania; she was born in Holland, Michigan. I’d been to Holland enough times to know. I’d seen pictures of her when she was young with her sisters and brothers. I’d met them all; they were all born in Holland, Michigan. I think her birthday was in September, not in June. I knew she was born before 1914. Anyone born in 1914 would be about 31 in 1945—my mother was in her 50s. Her hair was short and gray and the wrinkles had started to crease her face.

Who was this “mother” born on 6/6/14 in Pennsylvania?

Health: She was a normal, full-term baby. During childhood she had only whooping cough and three-day measles. She reached puberty at the age of 12 and her periods have been regular and painless. She claims she had no illnesses such as tuberculosis, cancer, syphilis, epilepsy, insanity, and venereal disease, and no miscarriages or stillbirths.

Mental: The mother was given a mental examination on 3/5/35 and her intelligence quotient was 120.

3/5/35—was just over a year after I was born. My birthday is in January and I was born in 1934. The part about the crooked teeth was interesting. In those years I didn’t have any teeth that looked like they belonged to the same mouth. Kids were always teasing me about my teeth. “Hey, Rollo, waddya put between those two front teeth, huh?” Or sometimes, “Hey beaver, when you gonna chew down a tree for your new house?”

I had whooping cough when I was younger, and I had pneumonia twice.

The idea that I was reading about my “real” mother had begun sinking in. I was frightened and confused—even feeling sick to my stomach. I had completely forgotten about finding money.

Employment: The mother states that she worked four months in the filing department of a department store. While employed in Florida in the winter of 1931 she worked packing oranges. On returning to the North she secured a job at a bakery and worked there for two years. At the present time she is working in a restaurant.

The mother I’d lived with never had a real job, not even when she was younger. She played the organ at some church when she was young, but she never said anything about other jobs. Being a church organist was her life.

Home Environment: The mother states that her home life has never been pleasant as her own father drank a great deal which, of course, made it disagreeable at home. Her mother and father were separated when she was 8 years old and she does not know where her father is. Her mother remarried and the mother of this child is now living with her mother and stepfather. The mother advises that both her mother and stepfather are unstable as they make a decision one day and change it the next, therefore making an unsettled condition at home.

“…and the mother of this child”—that clinched it—“this child” was me. I realized my mother must have adopted me. But where did my father fit into all this? Was he my real father?

Religion: The mother claims she is a Protestant, although not affiliated with any church and rarely attends.

Recreation: The mother has always enjoyed swimming, dancing, ice-skating and roller-skating, as well as an occasional movie.

That cleared up any question about who “the mother” was. The “mother” I’d lived with was definitely affiliated with a church. Recreational activities, like dancing, roller skating and going to movies were thought of as sinful in the Dutch Reformed religion. She would never have danced or roller-skated. “The mother” was my real mother.

Marital History: The mother was married on 2/14/35 to a man other than the father of this child.

Institutional history: None.

… “to a man other than the father of this child”. I felt anger greater than I had ever felt. My hands and body were trembling; my mouth was dry as sand. The fear of being in the attic alone had disappeared. It had been replaced by a frightening understanding that the parents who seemed to hate me were not my real parents, though I was still confused about my real father. Who was the man with the fists and the Bible – and who is the man who is “the father of this child”?

Paternity – Mother’s Story: The mother named a man who is married and separated from his wife as the father of her child. She met him in the fall of 1931 at which time he lived in the lower flat below her and her mother and stepfather. The mother and her boyfriend and this man and his wife, would often double date. Gradually, as their friendship grew, they would exchange partners. The mother stated that several months later they had sexual relations, and from then on it would occur two or three times a week. The father has been employed at a paint company for a number of years. The mother stated that at the time he was living with his wife, but had left her several times and was planning to divorce her and marry the mother of this child.

The realization that the “father” who treated me so cruelly wasn’t my real father caused the anger to bloom like a bomb inside me. I wanted to stop reading but I couldn’t put the paper down. My body was shaking so hard it could have broken into a million shattered pieces. I wasn’t crying, but the tears rolled out of my eyes like raindrops on a windowpane. I could barely read the words.

Legal Action: A bastardy warrant was taken out on 8/31/1933. Examination was held on 9/9/1933 and the father of this child held for a circuit court hearing on 6/1/1934. The father of this child pled guilty and was ordered to pay $2.50 a week, the order to date from 7/1/1934.

One of the guys in the gang, Jimmy Cross, was always talking about how he was adopted. He told me his adopted parents kept telling him that they chose him—they had found him. As for me—if being adopted was being found, I wanted to be lost again.

I wondered if being adopted meant you were a bastard. If I had ever called Jimmy a bastard, I’d have had a serious fight on my hands. If anyone had called me a bastard, the son-of-a-bitch would’ve been on the ground and getting stomped before he knew what hit him.

Children: Roland Gene was born on 1/28/1934 at the Women’s Hospital in Detroit. He was a full term baby and the delivery was normal. At the time of this history he was a bottle-fed child and in the best of health. Before confinement, the mother talked to her mother about the possibility of bringing the baby home from the hospital. After confinement, she tried this plan and found that it was not satisfactory as the child made both her mother and stepfather nervous. Therefore, it was necessary to return the child to Valley Farm until a boarding home was found for him through the Children’s Aid Society.

There was no longer any doubt in my mind – I was adopted and these people who I thought were my mother and father were not my real parents. All I had at that point, beside the terrible gnawing anger, was question after question. Where did they find me? Why did they want to adopt a child? Why hadn’t they told me? Why did they keep it a secret? Why did they act as though they hated me? As my mind worked through all that information, I began to savor my anger and newfound hate towards them.

Impression of Mother: The mother appears to be a refined type of girl and one who would not be considered promiscuous. She has a nice personality and is an intelligent talker.

Impression of Alleged Father: The father was neatly and carefully dressed when he appeared in the office for the interview. He was cooperative, friendly, serious, and appeared to be eager to help make a suitable plan for Roland. He was much interested in the little boy and asked many questions about him.

I’d finally reached the last page.

The last thing I did was to put the photo and the papers back in the green cash box, lock it and put everything back the way I found it. I went downstairs and put the key back on the hook.

Then I went to my room and sat on my bed in a daze. After a moment or two, I knelt down and pulled out the box where all the Boy’s Life magazines were stacked. Buried in between the magazines was my Composition Book where I often wrote my private thoughts. It fell open to something I had written when I was eight-years old:

“I hate him,” it said. “I’m going to run away.”

I then flipped to the page after my last entry and wrote, “I hate them. I’m running away – for good this time.”
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Here is another segment of the prologue to my novel, “Lost and Found”. Thanks to everyone who commented either here or at Facebook. Your words were encouraging so I’ll continue on.

Also, someone asked if the picture here of the book cover was me — the answer is yes, it’s me at about a year and a half. You’ll learn more about it as we continue with this venture.

Also, if you’re new to how blogs work, they show the most recent post first, and then the preceding posts follow. So, if you’ve arrived and want to read from the beginning, you’ll have to look down at the lower right under Categories and click on Novel.

Be well — be in peace — Ron
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My father first brought me up to the attic when I was around six or seven years old. My memory of that first time is as vivid today as it was on that day. I can still feel the fear in the pit of my stomach when I think about it. I hadn’t done anything bad that day. He just came home in a terrible, crazy mood and started yelling at my mother and me.

He was shouting things like, “I work all day and have to come home to this sloppy, messy house!”

Or, “What were you doing that kept you so busy dinner isn’t started yet?”

Or, “Why don’t you get that boy to help you instead of letting him just play around all day?”

My father was a little over six feet tall and had light, thin reddish hair, sort of a carrot color. Sometimes other men called him “Slim”. His arms were long and you could see freckles on his skin through his arm hair. His hands were large. When I was little, I would look at his hands on the steering wheel of the car and think how enormous they were as they grasped the wheel with that same reddish hair and freckles on the backs of his hands and arms.

I don’t know if calling my father anti-social would be completely accurate, but he was certainly one of the quietest, inwardly focused people you’d ever meet. There weren’t any “How was your day?” conversations in my house. About all I’d ever seen him do at home was read the newspaper or his Bible – take naps – eat dinner – or do bookwork in the basement. Occasionally he and my mother would have friends over to play cards, but even then, he didn’t make small talk—he just focused on the game. After the friends left, he’d usually complain to my mother, “I wish those people would quit jabbering so much and concentrate more on the game.”

That first awful day I tried to sneak off into my room, but he grabbed me by the arm, stared at me with venom in his eyes and snarled, “You just stay put here, boy! Don’t you go trying to sneak off somewhere while I’m talking to you!”

Then he picked up his Bible from the side table in the living room, grabbed me with his huge hand by the back of my neck and hissed, “You and me, we’re going to pay a visit up in the attic that’ll get you to understand what I’m talking about!”

He tucked the Bible under his arm and with one hand on the back of my neck and the other on the seat of my pants, he pushed me up the stairs in front of him. I tripped on the steps because he was pushing me so fast. He picked me up like I weighed only a couple of pounds and yelled, “Get on your feet, boy! What’s the matter with you falling down like that? Get on up there!”

He started shoving me around the attic space. I stumbled backwards after each shove, but he’d come after me and shove me again, jabbing at my shoulders and chest with his hand, yelling, “What’s the matter with you? Why were you sneaking off into your room when I was talking to you?”

I was so scared I wet my pants. I started to cry and pleaded with him to stop. He slapped me hard in the face.

My memory is blank about the rest of that time. I don’t need to remember it though—there were plenty of other times to keep my memory fresh, even after all these years.

———— ————

I didn’t know where to start looking – there were so many boxes. Everything was dark, dusty and smelled moldy—it reminded me of the awful Limburger cheese my father liked. One thing I did know about my parents—they’d be more likely to stash money in the house than in a bank. My father was always saying, “I don’t trust banks—what’s to stop those bank people from picking up my money and walking off with it?”

Even with the window shade up, I could barely see. I doubted either of them would be good at hiding anything. They never had to learn to be sneaky. The only thing my mother ever found that I’d hidden was a box of rubbers. I’d tucked them under some clothes in my dresser and planned to hide them better later on, but she found them before I got around to it.

“Roland,” she said in an authoritative voice shaking the small blue box in front of my face, “what in the world are these things doing in your dresser drawer?”

I didn’t know how to respond, but I think I said something weak like, “Geez, Mom, I don’t know where those came from.”

I’d never even used a rubber—but I’d sure dreamt about doing it often enough. One of the older guys in the gang had given them to me—“Just in case you ever need one,” he’d said with a smirk. My mother fussed and fumed and sputtered! She didn’t know what to say. Her face got all red and splotchy and she mumbled something about putting them into the trash and burning them. I often wondered if she really knew what they were.

I spotted a box marked “Old Papers” that wasn’t taped shut. It was a National Biscuit Company box marked Premium Crackers. My father had worked for them since he was in his teens. It’s the only job he ever had other than a paper route when he was a kid. He started out as a truck driver for them and eventually became a salesman.

I dug through the box but there was nothing in it that I was looking for – it actually contained just a bunch of boring old papers.

Even though I didn’t fear him as much in those days as I did when I was younger, I knew that if my father caught me snooping around in those boxes he’d give me another terrible beating. He’d been dragging me up in the attic for so many years that I’d learned not to show him the pain and fear. I’d just stare at him without crying, no matter how hard he’d hit me. I hoped that if he didn’t think he was hurting me, he’d just stop. I often wondered what he would do if I fought back, especially since I was a good street fighter.

Under the Old Papers box was a box marked Valuable Records. Inside were records about their house and church.

My parents were raised in the Dutch Reformed Church. This church had some of the strangest rules, especially if you were a young person. One of them was that you couldn’t do any work on Sundays—something they followed to the letter. My mother prepared the Sunday meal, usually a roast with potatoes and vegetables, on Saturday night. She’d put the whole dinner in a roaster and turn it on before we went to church. It would be done cooking when we got home. Even the dishes weren’t washed until Monday—they sat and soaked overnight. Most people got their Sunday paper on Sunday morning—my parents had the boy deliver theirs on Saturday night. My father bought his gas for the car on Saturday so he wouldn’t be the cause for the gas station guy to work on Sunday. I couldn’t figure those things out. The paperboy still had to deliver the rest of his papers on Sunday, and the gas station guy still had to be there on Sunday, regardless.
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Stay tuned — I’ll post some more tomorrow or the next day. — RR