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One Summer at Wernle Children's Home

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  In my wayward youth, I lived at two different children’s homes. The first home I live at kicked me out. I spent two months in detention until my caseworker found a new place for me. He took me there for an overnight visit. The place was cool to me, so the next week I became a resident. The next day at lunch in the dining room, a girl handed me a note and told me who it was from a girl named Dru. Once I got back to the boy’s cottage, I read the note, and it said that she likes what she sees and wants me to get with her. I was not having it. I wanted nothing to do with her. Nothing was wrong with her and I was not stuck up. She was without a doubt the best looking girl there. She was also a bit enigmatic. Somehow, I have always been lucky that way. Even in adulthood, I attracted the ones who were a bit off and not in the mainstream. I have never minded. I had no intention of getting involved with Dru. I hung out with Mary, who was from the same city as me, so it was c...
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First Kiss at Wernle Children's Home

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  The kids at Wernle were playing softball in back of the main building. This was a normal event during the summer. The staff did their best to keep the boys and girls apart, but Doc was always looking for cracks in their armor. He spent long periods of time locked up in the quiet room because of his activities. He sometimes got caught but most times he did not. He knew the best time to talk to one of the girls was right after the softball game because the kids headed back to the main building and boys cottage like a crazy mob of wild lunatics, and the staff could not keep track of everyone. Dru had made it known that Doc belonged to her, and she had overcome all his defenses. It was the first time this had happened to him, and their was nothing he could do about it. On this summer’s day, while playing softball he was plotting a way to talk to Dru alone. Halfway through the game he walked up to Dru and whispered to her to meet him under the kitchen porch after the gam...
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They Threw His Property Overboard and Made Him Miss Ship’s Movement

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  Doc received a phone call at 3 am informing him that he was deploying on a ship for a period of six months and to be ready by 6 am. This was not a surprise to Doc as he had received these phone calls before. At the airport Doc was looking at the plane and wanting to go back home because he did not like airplanes. The two people with him, Will and Keith had no such fears. After a five hours flight from Honolulu to San Diego, the three reported to the ship. They would sail the next morning, so Doc had lots of work to do to ensure everything was up and running. The first thing Doc noticed was that the maintenance man, Rich, was nowhere to be found. No work had been done in the spaces, and they were not ready to go. Doc found Rich coking and joking with staff members and to him that wasn’t a good sign. Doc advised Rich to go to the spaces but he never did. Doc had to prepare the spaces by himself. After getting underway the Intel was always giving Doc a hard time about w...
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It must be a dream

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  It must be a dream In 1991, all the houses on First Street    vanished and all that remained were cement slabs, plumbing fixtures, and electrical wires from the street. Every day the police would bring in bus loads of people who the society at large deemed as unfit. They would place these people on the cement slabs where there used to be a house.  The men and women were paired off and electrical wires on top of their heads and another in their butts. The police would then allow the waiting crowd to see the show. The    hypocrites and pretty people did not believe these poor people were    being harmed, since the subjects of this madness were not human.  They forced the pairs to perform various acts. If they did not continue    after a jolt of electricity, they would receive a tiny cut from a sharp blade. After several jolts, they would rub salt into the wounds. Doc found this street by accident. He had taken a short...
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Laura From Sacramento

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  In the summer of 1980, I lived in Sacramento California. I had just finished music school and went back to California to look for a paying gig. I lived near 22nd and P St. It was a duplex and I lived on the bottom floor. I worked around the corner at the newspaper, loading papers on the trucks. One day I noticed a woman sitting on the porch at the house on the corner. She was tall, had dark skin and wavy black hair. I assumed she was Italian or Greek. The more I saw her, the more interested I became. Walking over to her house would take a lot of nerve when we did not even know each other. A friend, who lived a few blocks down the street and she always passed by the house on the corner on her way to the store. Her name was Peggy. One day I stopped her and told her about my interest in the woman who lived on the corner. I asked her if she could mention my interest. She said she would have no problem doing that for me. We were friends who sometimes spent time together...
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The Lady From Amsterdam

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      When the phone rang, Doc was watching football on the television. He almost let it ring, as was his habit. It was a pleasant surprise to hear Eline’s voice when he answered. He and Eline had met some six months earlier while he was in the Netherlands for a Jazz Festival. When she    dropped Doc off   for his return flight back to San Francisco, she told him she would visit   him at his home. At the time he  did not think much of it,  but there she was on the phone asking for a ride from the airport. It was a   typical rainy and foggy San Francisco evening as Doc made his way south on the 101 towards the airport. His dogs had created a fuss when he left his home because they had been waiting for their evening walk. He thought to himself that the dogs would have to wait for their walk on this day. When Doc slowed his car near the KLM terminal, he saw Eline sitting on a suitcase, waiting. His   thought back to the t...
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Lainy Flowers

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      In the fall of 1969, I spent some time in Juvenile Hall for borrowing cars. My social worker got me into a children’s home right outside of Toledo, Ohio. Any place would have made me happy as long as it was not the lockup or back home. I enjoyed going to the baseball field across the road and hitting balls. One day a girl came to the field and suggested we pitch to each other. She told me her name was Elaine. Elaine could play and knew all about the game. She was a breath of fresh air. We talked for hours about baseball, football, boxing, and what we wanted to be when we grew up. It did not matter what the subject was; we were always on the same page. She was a tomboy, but that did not matter at all to me. There was something about her I could not resist. She was my friend. We hung out at the middle school we both attended and most days after school. One day Elaine told me there was something mysterious about me because I was not like the ot...
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