Oct. 28, 2003 - 18:51 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

In There Somewhere

I guess the urge to be grown up and grown up right now exists in the hearts of all very young, little people. Explains maybe the games we play and the toys we use wherein we are 'pretend grownups' so much.

I was well treated and loved by my parents. We didn't have much, but back then neither did most of the people in our country. My age was about fourteen years, my only real dissatisfaction was that I couldn't be a grown guy with a job and an apartment, right NOW. That and I hated winter as well as having a fiddle foot to boot.

Winter was breaking up and a few warm days were so tantalizing, yet I knew we would have some more snow and cold before the real Spring would be here. We lived fairly close to the train tracks, in the winter it seemed that the trains were going to come right through the house the sound of their whistles were so loud in the cold air. As warm weather threatened and the train whistles urged me to be on my way, finally becoming overwhelming.

My buddy and I decided to run away to the south, south where it was always warm and the fruit fell off the trees and fed you we thought, and felt we could light somewhere, find a job (in the depression, heh) and live our own life somewhere south of where we lived. So we liberated all the cash we could find and with our winter jackets on our shoulders we were on our way to school but we caught a southbound freight train instead.

High adventure for us indeed, exciting and invigorating to be outdoors yet riding on a flat car and watching the scenery as we passed. The train passed through a stretch of mountains and we huddled together 'cause it was cold. Riding the back end of a flatcar loaded with telephone poles still let some of the frigid air in at our seams. Then the country leveled out a bit, the train gathered speed and eventually we came to a town. The train stopped there and sat and sat, no activity around it, no noise, no nothing. We figured that it was the end of the line for that string of cars and we peered around for railroad cops, then hopped out and went into town.

It wasn't a rinky-dink town but yet it wasn't a modern metropolis either. Here we were two boys, not in school and obviously not dry behind the ears yet, gawking and rubbernecking at the new place. A passing cop noted automatically that we weren't townies and were strangers and not in school. So we made the acquaintance of the chief there. We played tough guys and wouldn't give our names or home addresses. So the chief had his man lock us up. Clang.

We were given a languid lunch and a meal that substituted for supper. In passing by the chief dropped the word that he would put in motion the work to send us to reform school as we were such tough guys we needed reforming. We spent an uncomfortable night on pallets and choked down a barely passable breakfast. We talked, gave our names, addresses and phone numbers.

Our parents were contacted and my Dad agreed to come down and pick us up. Late that afternoon we were on our way back to Denver and home. There was no conversation in the car on the way home, but my Dad didn't rail at us for being the stupid jerks that we were.

We were in school the next day and had to make up the work we missed. Our parents were not stern, but not too friendly either for a long time.

I must have learned something from that sortie into the world and I probably did, I just didn't realize it at the time. So I lived and fumbled and rumbled my way along, still thinking I was grown up already. And of course still a beady eyed innocent.

The years have taught me lessons, hard ones to learn too, but they were good ones. I finally reached the age and stage of experience that I was technically grown up and had the rights of an adult. Thinking back though, it amazes me that I lived long enough to arrive at my majority.

I still have the rush that being out on a daring adventure gave me yet today. There's a grown person in the pile and I can be found In There Somewhere . . . . . . . . . . . �

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