Chapters 1-8

Chapter One

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 teen-ager, 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.

Chapter Two

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 that there were no automatic machines to pick up the pins that were knocked down and re-set them, or that would 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 teen-agers, 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.

Chapter Three

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 that 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.”

Chapter Four

The decision was made to run away. I can’t even say if it was a conscious decision or whether I was just really excited about the possibility of not having to be home with my father. Whatever it was, my little eight-year-old mind was working overtime thinking of all the things I would have to do to make this work. I don’t remember being frightened by the idea at all. I reasoned I had to get some clothes and some of the money I had stashed away. I remember thinking I wouldn’t have to worry too much about food because there were so many victory gardens around with plenty of things there for the taking. I knew I could steal from them after dark with no problem. Of course, as I was going to discover, there were many, many things I didn’t think about, or plan for.

When I got on my bike outside after talking with Billy, I decided I was going to shoot right home to see if my mother was there. It was one of her days to go to the church to practice on the organ, and even though it was after four in the afternoon, she might not have been home yet. My father usually didn’t get home until around six. If she wasn’t home, I was going to get some of my clothes, some food and the money I had hidden. (Even though my father would make me give him any money I earned, I always managed to hold back a little each time. If I got paid five dollars, I would put one dollar in my shoe before I went home, and give him the other four.) If my mother was home, I would just wait until her next practicing day, which was only a few days away, and then get all my things before I had to leave for work.

As it turned out, my mother was home when I got there, so I didn’t get a chance to gather up the things I wanted and run away that same day. That might have been a good thing because it gave me a chance to spend more time thinking about what I would need and what I would do once I left.

There were things like remembering to take my raincoat and a warm sweater. I needed something to put extra clothes in because I couldn’t carry them around with me all day. I would need to find someplace to hide my things where nobody would find them. A cardboard box wouldn’t work because if I hid them outdoors and it rained, everything would get wet. The bowling alley would be a good place to hide them. Even though I was planning to sleep there at night I wouldn’t be able to go to work there after the first day I was gone from home. The bowling alley would be one of the first places my father or the cops would come looking for me.

I began thinking about what I would do during the day. I couldn’t go and play over by the school down by State Fair—it was too close to home. If I hung out with other kids I knew, my parents would easily track me down. When I did go I had to get out of the neighborhood during the day, and I’d probably have to find another place where I could earn some money. I could get along okay for a few days on what I had saved up, but I’d still need money coming in. I was starting to get nervous about this, but every time I thought about not running away, I would think about my father hitting me with his fists and how that felt. By keeping that thought in my mind I stayed determined to go through with this.

Since I had a few more days before the next time my mother would be gone for her organ practice, I started to make more plans. First thing the next morning I told my mother I had to work an extra shift at the bowling alley and I’d be there all day. That way she wouldn’t make me stay around the house. She had questions and comments like, “Why do you have to do that all of a sudden—you’ve never had to do it before?” And, “You’re much too young to be working in that place!” While at the time those comments made me worried she wouldn’t let me go, there was a part of me, deep down, where I knew my father wanted me to bring money home, and whatever he wanted, he got. So, I didn’t think she would push too far to keep me from going. Even if she didn’t like me working there, she would never have put her foot down and stood up to my father.

After my mother stopped questioning me, I left the house and rode my bike out of the neighborhood. I headed north where there were very few houses. There were a few farms out that way and lots of woods and open fields. Once I crossed over Eight Mile Road, I was in a city called Hazel Park. This city really wasn’t much more than open country. There were businesses of various kinds along the north side of Eight Mile Road, but not much else. I had never been in that area alone before. As I rode along I realized there wouldn’t be many places I could go during the day. There were a couple of stores but not much else in the way of places to hang out.

Some of the guys at the bowling alley had been talking about a possible racetrack starting up in Hazel Park. They had seen some activity out around Ten Mile Road with some stables being constructed and the beginnings of a grandstand. I decided to head over that way just to scout out the area and see if there might be somewhere I could go during the day where I wouldn’t be too noticeable. I headed north on Dequindre.

Before I got to Ten Mile Road, the first of the buildings and sheds came into view. If it weren’t for the beginnings of the grandstands it would have looked like any large farm area. There were fences all around the area but I couldn’t see much of what was happening from where I was. The grandstands were the most obvious of the structures and looked to me like they went up about three or four stories high—they were huge. They appeared to be made out of steel and I could see how the seats were made out of long wooden planks. It must have been too early in the day for any work to be taking place because there wasn’t any activity around the grandstands I could see. The development of this area into a full-blown racetrack would take a few more years.

I did see some people working around some of the sheds. The sheds were made out of wood and were long and narrow with pitched roofs. There must have been fifteen or twenty of them spaced all around the sides of the track. Some had their backs facing the road I was on, but I could see the fronts of others. As I drew closer I could see these sheds were actually stables, because there were horses poking their heads out of the upper part of the doors of some of those facing me. The area all around the stables was dirt and I could see the dust being kicked up by the people who were working. As I got closer I could begin to smell the aroma of the area, such a wonderful, sweet smell of the mixture of hay and horses. I now know how with this particular aroma — you either like it right from the start, or you don’t. I loved it right away, and still do to this day. I love being in a barn or around horses.
The people working around the stables were doing things like carrying big bundles of hay or straw, raking out the stalls, or carrying buckets of water or feed to the stalls. Some of them were walking the horses, while others were brushing, combing and even washing them. I decided right then that I would talk to the guy at the bowling alley about whether I might be able to get a job at the track.

Since I didn’t have much more time before I had to go to work I rode just a little further on my bike to see if there might be good places to go during the day where I could stay out of sight and not get caught. There was another bowling alley over on Ten Mile Road near Ryan. Maybe this was a possibility for another place to work my parents wouldn’t know about.

I did talk to the racetrack guy at the bowling alley later on, and he told me they probably wouldn’t hire me because I was too young, but some of the people who did work at the track would pay kids who were hanging around to do odd jobs for them.

Chapter Five

The following Monday, my mother went off to the church to do her organ practice.

As soon as she was gone, I went up to the attic to see if I could find something to carry extra clothes and food in, something I could easily carry and would keep things dry if I had to leave it outside sometimes. I found an old brown leather satchel tucked way back behind some boxes. It was really scuffed up and the handles on it were all worn, but I guessed from the way it had been stored it wouldn’t be missed. After I brushed the dust off I could see some of the leather was worn away, but I figured if it rained it would still keep the things inside of it dry.
I grabbed my raincoat, some sweaters, overalls, underwear and socks from my bedroom and tucked them into the satchel. I got my money (I had almost fifteen dollars) and stuck it in my pants pocket. Then I took some beans, peas and jam my mother had canned from down in the basement fruit cellar and put those into the satchel along with the clothes. I cut a couple of pieces of rope from a long length of rope my father had in the basement and used those to tie the satchel to my bike.

My memory of the moment I rode my bike down the driveway and headed north seems to hold little more than a clear recollection of the excitement I was feeling. I don’t believe I was feeling regret or worry—I was just excited to actually be doing it—I was running away from home! No matter what mood my father happened to be in when he came home from work that night, I wasn’t going to be there for him to beat on. I do know I didn’t think about how my parents were going to feel. My mind was already in a place where I believed they didn’t care much anyway, so I never gave their feelings a second thought.

I do remember it was sunny and warm and I felt like I was literally flying down the road on my way to freedom.

I knew I wouldn’t be missed at home until five o’clock in the afternoon, so I decided to work my regular shift at the bowling alley. I’d be able to keep all the money I made for myself and I could sure use it. I had a little over an hour before I had to be at the bowling alley for my shift, so I just took my time and enjoyed a leisurely ride out along Nine Mile Road and then over to Dequindre and back down toward the bowling alley. I enjoyed the sense of freedom knowing I wasn’t going to go home after work.

Later that afternoon I told Billy what I had done. He wasn’t surprised.

“Billy,” I asked, “do you think I should sneak in the back door tonight or should I just come in through the front?”

“You better use the back door. It’s dark back there and you can just stay back behind the alleys. No one will pay any attention to you. It’s really busy at night and the guys won’t have time to even notice you. Just go right back into that far corner after the last alley and hunker down. Nobody ever goes back there.”

The corner Billy was talking about was in a space beyond where the last alley ended. It must have had something to do with the way the building was constructed because there was this strange little nook tucked back in the corner. It was dark there—hardly any of the light from the alleys seemed to penetrate. I had never been back there myself, and had never seen anyone go there. It was only about six or seven feet long and two or three feet wide. I looked back there from the alley I was working and couldn’t see anything other than blackness. It made me feel a little nervous while at the same time reassured me I could duck in there without anyone seeing me.

“I probably won’t be able to come to work tomorrow,” I said to Billy as we were leaving after our shift. “If my parents or the cops are looking for me, this will be one of the first places they’ll come looking.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he replied. “There are guys who don’t show up all the time around here. We just get paid for when we’re here. There are usually a few guys just hanging out that the boss could put to work if he doesn’t have enough.”

“I thought I’d see about getting a job at the bowling alley out on Ten Mile and Ryan or maybe see if I could get some money by helping out where the new racetrack is going.”

“If the cops get involved, they might check other bowling alleys around here. You might want to stay away from there,” he suggested.

Chapter Six

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.

Chapter Seven

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.

Chapter Eight

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.
===========================================