Lost and Found – a Novel by Ron Rink

Here’s the next Chapter of Lost and Found. This Chapter, and the next one which I’m working on as we speak, will be taking care of some scene-setting and character building, so they won’t be full of action and dialogue. There will be plenty of action and dialogue coming along soon, though, so don’t give up. I’ll get the next chapter up the first of the week.

Went to see the Dayton Philharmonic last night. The feature was a Premier of The Songs of Rumi, composed by Jeff Olmsted. It was fabulous! Jeff Olmsted lives close by in Miamisburg, Ohio. He directs the Dayton Ohio Peace Choir. The entire concert was wonderful.

Don’t forget to fill out the “New Chapter Notice” form on the right if you’d like to be notified by email when I post a new Chapter. — And, tell your friends! — Thanks!!

Be well — be in peace…

Ron Rink
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Both my mother and father were raised in the strict, Calvinistic, Dutch Reformed Church. The beliefs of this faith left little possibility for avoiding what they considered to be sin. Just about any behavior of a youngster, or anyone, for that matter, would fall into the category of being sinful. The religious teachings also gave parents complete control over their children, although my father had taken the concept far beyond what most other fathers in their church would find acceptable.

However, child rearing was not a subject which was discussed openly. These matters were private and were considered the business of the family unit alone. I believe this is why my father was able to get away with as much of his abuse as he did, plus the fact that harsh, physical methods for punishing children were still the norm at this time—even in the schools. Getting a good “whap” across the back of the head or a ruler across the back of your hand or a paddle across your rear, were common forms of discipline in school. There were some teachers who even carried it further without any risk of criticism from their administrators or the parents.

One of the other factors which made my parents different from those of most of my friends was their complete lack of ability to show affection, not only to me, but also to each other or to any of their acquaintances. I have absolutely no recollection of ever being held, stroked or kissed by either of them. I also have no memory of seeing my mother and father kiss or hold each other—not even holding hands. Their demeanor towards each other was always stiff and formal. Even general conversation between the two of them was rare and consisted of a minimum of words. I would sometimes see my father joke with other men around the church, but my mother was always stern with everyone.

They had very few friends; only one or two couples with whom they would play pinochle from time-to-time.
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Finally coming down after the weekend. What weather we had here. The colors were great — the temps were nice and warm — got tons of yard work done — and now it’s back to the weekday routine. Did a slew of FaceBook posts this morning and will make this the last one so I don’t drive folks away.

I was surprised and pleased to hear from so many folks yesterday who are reading Lost and Found online. Everyone had good things to say. Please do feel free to spread the word. I know it may sound like I’m maneuvering for attention, but I truly do want to encourage people to read it. You-all are the reason I’m motivated to get this book finished. I am doing some rewrites on the next few chapters today, but will get another chapter out this week.

Be well — be in peace,

Ron Rink
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The next morning after the police caught me, my father had gone to work as usual. He still hadn’t said a word to me. My mother and I were alone in the kitchen while I was having my breakfast.

I wasn’t hungry but I still nibbled at my cereal. My mother was busying herself with some dishes in the sink. She kept rattling the dishes and with her back to me she said, “Roland, you are not to go away from this house for the next two weeks. Not for any reason. Do you understand?”

“Can’t I go outside at all?” I asked.

“Not away from here,” she answered. “You must stay in the house or in the yard. That means no riding your bike or playing with your friends. You can work in the victory garden, but that’s all the further you can go.”

She still had her back to me and I kept my eyes down and stared at my cereal as I stirred my spoon back and forth.

“You will also start practicing the piano for two full hours each day instead of just one. You need something to keep you busier than you have been,” she said. Her voice was growing stronger as she continued, “Your father said he wants you to go back to the bowling alley after the two weeks is up to see if they’ll take you back.”

I waited to see if she was going to say anything else, but she just continued to wash dishes.

After she had described my punishment, I gathered up my courage, crossed my arms across my chest and asked, “Mom, do you know why I ran away?”

“No, and I don’t want to hear any of your excuses,” she replied with a very nervous, tight tone of voice. She turned to face me and I could see that her face was red and splotchy, which was normal whenever she was in a difficult position like this.

She closed her eyes, put her hands on her hips, and continued, “What you did was wrong, and you must be punished for it. This is your home and you will have to learn how to behave according to our rules.”

I stood up from the table and put my hands on my hips as a way of mimicking her. I could feel my jaw jut out in what was, for me, a rare display of defiance. “But, Mom, it’s Dad that makes me want to run away. When he takes me up into the attic, he’s really hurting me, and you don’t seem to be trying to stop him,” I said.

“That doesn’t matter. He is your father and you will just have to learn to behave like a good Christian boy. When you do bad things, he has to punish you!”

“But, when he takes me up there, I haven’t been bad.”

She turned away from me again and went back to her dishes. This was one of her ways to avoid eye contact when she was arguing. I had watched her do this at times when she and my father were having an argument.

“All children do things wrong. You are committing sins every day. He is actually being kind to you when he doesn’t punish you every day. Now, stop arguing and go to your room until I find some things for you to do.”

I left my unfinished cereal on the table and went to my room.

There wasn’t anything further to be gained by arguing with her. I could see that I wouldn’t be able to find any protection from her as long as she felt the way she did. My mother was not a forceful woman; in fact, she was probably quite typical for the women of those times. It wasn’t in her nature to stand up to her husband or to voice her own opinions about anything. She was raised in a large family that was under the iron rule of her father. There were nine children in her family, four boys and five girls. Her sisters looked just like my mother—short, buxom and sort of square in their body shapes. A good way to sum up their general appearance would be “matronly”.

Neither she nor my father ever said anything further about my running away.
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I’m finally getting caught up with all the things which were let go for the week we were away. It’s amazing how quickly things pile up in only a week’s time. Fortunately the grass isn’t growing fast but the leaves are sure piling up.

Here’s the next Chapter of Lost and Found. I’ll be back the first of the week for the next installment. Have a great weekend. —

Oh, and don’t forget to ask people you know to drop by and read Lost and Found.

Be well — be in peace,

Ron Rink
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For the next two days I did pretty much the same thing—worked at the track in the mornings and early afternoon—hid in my little hay-filled hide-a-way until it started to get dark—then rode my bike over to the bowling alley neighborhood and stayed hidden around the back until it was almost closing time. Everything was going along smoothly except I was getting really hungry just eating peanut butter and bologna. I had some of my mother’s canned stuff like green beans, peas and jam. The beans and peas didn’t taste good cold, plus they made my stomach upset. I did use some of the jam on my peanut butter bread and that tasted great. I also stole some carrots from a victory garden one night. They were wonderful—so fresh and crunchy.

I was getting really dirty from being around horses, hay and stables all day, plus I was sleeping on a dirty floor all night. I did manage to wash my face and I brushed my teeth with my finger in the bathroom at the bowling alley (I forgot to bring a toothbrush). But I had no way to take a bath. I was starting to itch all the time so I stole a towel from under the counter to try and clean under my arms and my butt. I thought about asking Billy if maybe I could take a bath at his house, but I was afraid to go into the bowling alley during the day. I knew if I wanted to connect with Billy I had to be around when he got off work.

On the next night while I was riding my bike to the bowling alley from the race track a police car went by me. I had just crossed Eight Mile Road and was in Detroit. I only had a couple of blocks to go before I got to the bowling alley. I noticed after the cop car went by me it was starting to slow down. My stomach went into knots. I could feel my hands start to shake and the sweat break out all over my body. I panicked. I just knew they were looking for me and would be making me go home. There was no place for me to go. I wished I knew how to disappear.

They turned around and came back to where I was and pulled over.

I put my head down and started peddling as fast as I could.

They made another U-turn and came up along side me.

“Hey kid,” one of the cops called out to me. “Where are you going so fast? Stop your bike, get off and stand by the side of the road.”

I really wanted to start crying, but I didn’t. I did stop peddling and got off my bike.

“What are you doing out here at night?” one of the cops yelled out of his window while the other one got out of the police car and come over to me shining his flashlight in my face.

I didn’t know what to say so I said, “I’m just out riding my bike.”

“Where do you live, son?” asked the cop.

I lied and said, “I live over by the bowling alley on Dequindre.”

Then he asked, “What’s your name, kid?”

When I didn’t answer he asked, “Is your name Roland and do you live over on Russell?”

I started to cry as the cop came over, put my bike into the trunk of their car, and put me into the back seat.

“You don’t have to cry, kid, we’re not going to hurt you. We just have to check you out and see if we can get in touch with your parents. Don’t worry. We’re going to go over to the station and give your parents a call. You don’t have to be scared—everything’s going to be okay.”

When we got there, they sat me down in a chair and showed me a picture of myself I had taken in school. “Is that you?” the cop asked with a smile. “It sure looks like you. How come you ran away from home?”

“Because my father is always beating me up,” I said still sobbing away. I was really scared. I didn’t want these guys to make me go back home.

“I don’t want to go back there,” I pleaded. “I’m learning how to take care of myself and if you make me go back there he’ll just start beating me up again!”

“I don’t think you’re doing a very good job of taking care of yourself, Roland. Look how dirty you are and you smell pretty bad too! What we’re going to do is call your parents and tell them you’re here. We’ll talk to them about beating you up and maybe they’ll stop doing it, okay?”

They put me in a small room with a table and chairs. I was feeling extremely sad. Going back home was not what I wanted to do, and I was starting to really enjoy the sense of freedom that was mine when I was out on my own. The police gave me a cheese sandwich with some milk and told me to eat my sandwich and wait.

A little while later my parents both came to the police station and were just as sweet and nice as could be. They still had their very stern faces but didn’t act like they were upset about anything. I know as the years went by and I’d relive that scene, I would wonder why my mother hadn’t been crying.

When we got in the car to drive home, neither of them said a word to me. Once we were in the house my mother said, “You need to take a good bath and get to bed. We’ll talk about all this in the morning.”

My father never said a word.
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Back in Ohio after an all-too-short trip to Vermont. Although, to be honest, it felt super good to be back in my own bed and be able to know where everything is. The trip was wonderful. We spent Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning with my son and grandson in Michigan. We left for Vermont on Sunday around noon.

Vermont was fabulous, as always, but the colors weren’t as vibrant as I’d hoped. It was still beautiful, but the weather had turned much colder than normal, so instead of bright fall colors, we were seeing many bare trees and snow in the mountains. In fact, at Killington, one of Vermont’s ski resorts, it had been cold enough to allow them to make snow for some of the higher trails.

So, it’s back to work. Here’s the next chapter of Lost and Found. I’ll try to get another one up this week.

Be well — be in peace,

Ron Rink
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It was a gorgeous morning and even though I spent the night sleeping on a floor with my satchel for a pillow, I felt good. I didn’t think about how scared I was the night before—I just enjoyed the fact that I was out in the brisk morning air on my way to a new adventure. I figured I would go right out to the track and see if I could find some work so I could stay off the streets. If my parents had called the police when I didn’t come home, they would probably be looking for me. An eight-year-old kid riding his bike with a satchel tied onto the back wouldn’t be too hard to spot.

I got to the track and rode into the open gate on the side by the stables. After leaning my bike against the fence surrounding the property, I took my satchel and hid it in some nearby bushes. I walked around to the front of the stables and looked at some of the horses sticking their heads out of the top half of the door. When I got near to one of them, I reached out to pet its nose. It made me laugh when the horse picked up its head as I reached for it and it let out a big whinny.

There was plenty of activity at that time of the morning. As I stood near the doorway of one of the stables, I asked three or four people who passed by me if they had anything I could do for them, but they all said no.

Then this really old guy came walking by carrying a bucket full of water. I don’t know how old he was, but he was all bent over and his face had so many creases it reminded me of the old brown leather on my satchel. He had a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and was wearing some beat-up old overalls with a flannel shirt under them. He had on cowboy boots and a cowboy hat. When he was all bent over like that he wasn’t much bigger than I was. As he came closer I could see him squinting at me with his bleary-looking eyes.

“Hey, mister,” I called. “Would you be able to give me some work so I can buy some food?”

I don’t know what made me say that—I had enough money for food for a while. I guess I thought maybe making it look like I was this poor little kid in trouble might work.

It did, because he said, “Sure, Sonny, come with me and I’ll give you a job.”

That was one of the first lessons I learned about surviving as a kid on the streets. Since I was so young and there were a lot of people who were really struggling during those years after the depression, and during the war, people were inclined to want to do what they could to help. This was especially true with people who were themselves struggling. I learned quickly to use this fact to my advantage.

The old guy took me to a huge stack of hay bales inside a large barn and showed me how to break them up into smaller bunches and put them into hay racks inside the stalls for the horses. The racks holding the hay were like strips of wood built out on an angle to make a sort of trough. The hay would stick out between the slats and on top so the horse could get at it.

At first the horses frightened me since they were enormous in size compared to me. I was also worried they would either run out the door when I opened it or they would knock me over. Then the guy I was working for showed me how to open the stall door and sort of push my weight against the horse’s front thigh to move them to the side so I could shut the door and put the hay into the trough. I had to do this for the whole row of stalls on two of the buildings. After I finished hauling hay I carried water to the watering troughs inside the same stalls.

I worked most of the morning when the old guy came up to me and said, “You’re a pretty good worker, kid. What’s your name?”

“My name’s Van Buren”, I answered, “what’s yours?”

He looked up at me with his eyes narrowed, and then shook his head. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a Bull Durham pouch and some papers. He kept his head down as he rolled a cigarette and stuck it in his mouth. He lit it with a match he struck on the back of his pants.

“First lesson you need to learn if you’re going to hang around here is don’t tell anyone your name and don’t ask anyone theirs, okay? We mind our own business around here, and we don’t want no one sticking their nose in where it don’t belong—got it?”

I nodded and he said, “That’s all I can give you to do today. Here’s a buck. Go get you some eats. You coming back tomorrow?”

“Yeah, I’ll be back in the morning,” I said.

I noticed some of the people were starting to take the horses out of the stalls, so I asked, “Can I stick around and watch the horses?”

“Yeah sure,” he replied with a quick grin on his face, “They’ll be saddling them up soon to take them over to the track for a workout. You can watch, but stay out of the way.”

He was a strange old geezer, but I now had a dollar more than I did when I started the day.

This track would eventually become the Hazel Park Raceway. It would become known for harness racing. At the time I was there, the only racing that took place was regular horse racing which didn’t seem to be organized—just a lot of people who boarded their horses there and would race them at the make-shift track. I learned some of the horses actually did go to other racetracks for organized racing, and this track was used mostly for training purposes.

I watched the horses exercise for a couple of hours and then went to a store across from the track and bought some lunch meat and some bread. I went back over to the track and found a place behind the stables that had a bunch of loose hay in it and a lean-to cover over it. I didn’t know what it was used for, but I arranged the hay so I had a place to sit and ate some of my food.

That night I got to the bowling alley before it closed so I had no trouble getting in. I sneaked in the back door and slipped over to the dark corner and hunkered down. Billy was right—no one noticed me at all and soon the bowling was over for the night. The boss just filled a bag with the money, turned off the lights and went out the back door. I was starting to feel quite confident about being out on my own and not getting caught.
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It’s the Thursday before I’m off on my trip to Michigan to visit with my son and grandson. I don’t get to see my grandson very often as he lives in Switzerland, so I’m pretty excited about it. Then, on Sunday afternoon, we’re off to Vermont for a few days to see some color and visit with good friends.

I’m sure there is wi-fi in Vermont, although it was rare the last time I was there. Let’s face it, my next door neighbor when I left was a herd of jersey cows. Seriously — it’s the truth. I am going to bring my laptop, but the chances I’ll have a chance to do another blog post while I’m away are pretty slim. I will attempt to pop in to say “Howdy” to my friends on Facebook though.

So, this Chapter will be it until I’m back in Ohio on the 19th. I’m going to take my video camera, so, with some luck and good weather, I should have some “Beautiful Vermont” to share with you later on.

Be well — be in peace,

Ron Rink
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It was still light out when I left the bowling alley, so I got on my bike and headed out to the north. I did start to feel some fear as I rode along. I wasn’t going to be sleeping in a bed that night and I could feel the trepidation of not knowing what I was going to do to keep from getting caught. I knew I would be able to stay out of sight after the bowling alley closed. I wasn’t sure where I’d go during the day?

After it started to get dark, I got really hungry. There was a small store on Ryan Road past the other bowling alley so I went in and bought some peanut butter, crackers and milk. I sat on the ground next to my bike while I ate some of my food. Since the light was fading quickly, I decided to head back in towards Eight Mile Road because there wouldn’t be any lights out this far when it got real dark. There were lots of stores and other businesses along Eight Mile Road.

Later, I found this car lot which was closed up for the day. I drove my bike around in back of it and found an old metal chair near the back door. I ate the rest of my crackers and peanut butter, drank the milk, and then fell asleep in the chair.

One thing I didn’t have at my young age was a watch, so when I woke up I didn’t have any idea what time it was or how long I had slept. It was dark and I guessed it must be pretty late. There was hardly any traffic along Eight Mile Road. It was eerily quiet.

I rode over to the bowling alley.

It was closed for the night.

I went around the back and tried the door.

It was locked.

I started to feel sick to my stomach. I knew there would always be a chance I couldn’t find someplace inside to spend the nights, but I was so sure the bowling alley would be where I would go, that finding it closed caused me to panic. I started crying and was getting back on my bike to ride somewhere, although I didn’t know where, when I remembered what Billy had said about the bathroom window being unlocked.

I walked around the side where the bathroom was but the window was way too high for me to reach. I looked around for something to stand or climb on so I could reach the window. I found some old boxes in a storage area behind the building. They were wooden crates, so I stacked a couple of them up by the bathroom window and climbed up. It was easy to open the window and climb in when I got up to it. Once I was in, I looked around and said, “Oh, shit!” I realized I had left my satchel outside on the back of my bike. So, I climbed back out the window, got the bag and moved my bike back into the same area where I found the wooden crates so it couldn’t be seen.

It was pitch black inside the bowling alley. There was no light anywhere. I didn’t dare turn any lights on, so I just started to feel my way along the walls. I did know the layout of the place, so I had some idea of where I needed to go, but it was still too dark to see anything and my eyes hadn’t adjusted to the darkness yet. Eventually, I could begin to make out the shapes of things and had a better idea of where I was. It never occurred to me how I could just have stayed in the bathroom. There was no one in the building so I didn’t actually have to go back into the corner. That was the plan only if I had sneaked in before the place closed. However, I continued slowly moving along the walls until I got into the narrow passageway behind the pin racks and felt the opening to the corner.

I was frightened.

I don’t think it was the dark as much as it was the idea I was alone in this dingy, spooky building. Every once in a while I could hear things moving around. I don’t know if it was just the wind blowing against something outside or whether it was rats or mice inside. I had no idea—I just knew I was one scared little eight-year-old kid.

After I sat down in the corner, I remembered I had left all those boxes stacked up under the bathroom window. I was thinking about what to do about it when I fell asleep, because the next thing I knew my eyes were open and I could see it was getting light outside.

I went into the bosses’ office to look at the clock he had on his desk and saw that it was a few minutes after five o’clock in the morning. I found some bologna and bread in his icebox and ate that for breakfast. After I went to the toilet I climbed back out the bathroom window and shut it behind me. I climbed down, stacked the boxes back in the storage area, tied my satchel to the bike and rode off.
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