One Summer at Wernle Children's Home


 

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 cool. I spent a lot of time locked up in the quiet room because we would sneak off somewhere and I would get caught coming back. It was a game for me. Sometimes I got caught, but most times I got away with it.

Dru, yet, made another run at me since Mary was not around. I was getting notes almost every day, but it did not move me. I still wanted nothing to do with her. One day, a couple of girls I knew from school came to visit me. They could not go into the cottage so we went out back to the basketball court was were shooting some hoops.


I kept seeing Dru’s friends looking at us on the basketball court. I can only imagine what they were running back and telling her. After my friends had left, I went out in front of the cottage and sat down on the steps. A half-hour later, Drew comes walking by and gave me a look that I had never seen before. It was a look that destroyed all my defenses. My will to resist vanished, and I found myself not wanting to resist. I had let myself into something I should not have.


A few days later, Dru and I met under the kitchen porch of the main building. The area under the porch was big enough to stand up in and hide you from prying eyes.


It was a warm July evening and I could not believe this beautiful girl wanted to be with me at that place and time. We held each other and kissed. It was the first and only time I ever got high from a kiss. whatever she was selling, I was buying.


This was 1971 Indiana and our relationship was not liked by any staff member. They did everything they could to break up the relationship but could not do so. They tried hard to catch us when we would slip off to spend time together. Sometimes we got caught, but most times we were not.


When we did get caught, I usually ended up in the quiet room for a week or so. The lockup did not bother me one bit and this bothered staff. So much so, that they sent me to a shrink for an evaluation.


In the winter of 72, Dru and a friend of hers planned to run away. They came to my school to get me to go with them. My classmates lost their minds when they found this girl looking for me. The entire school was talking about it. Many approved and many did not. I didn't understand why at the time, but looking back at the time and place, I now know exactly why.


A week later, Dru and I made plans to meet late at night in the rec room to get busy. There was no way around it, it was going to happen. I never told a soul about it. I never told anyone about anything against the rules that I was doing. I found that it usually kept me from getting caught. This time the night watchman outwitted me.


Dru and I meet outside the rec room around 11 pm. We went into a small area where the pool table was. It did not take long for us to begin doing what we went there to do. Just when we were becoming one, I heard the door open and I could hear the night watchman breathing hard. He caught us and there was nothing we could do. He told Dru to get dressed and to go to her room. He was going to lock me up. I got dressed and went with him.


I was certain that I would be in lock up for a good month, but the next evening, the director came by and let me out. Years later, I would ask him why he let me out and he replied that it served no purpose to leave there.


Soon after they sent me to a group home and that spelled the end of my relationship with Dru. She began a relationship with another Donnie who lived at the home. I didn't get mad. Living on the street had taught me that some things you have no control over and he must let them go. Soon after Donnie came to the group home and it was funny to watch him try to avoid me because he was afraid of a beat down. I had no intention of hurting him.


That summer I turned 17, and the judge in my case told me that I would be volunteering for the Marine Corps. I didn't want to join but I was afraid of what the alternative might be. He said I was still pretty wild and that the Corps had turned him around, and he hoped it would do the same for me.


I saw Dru one more time before I left to join the Marines. I found Dru sitting on the front steps of the main building. I asked her why she was sitting there and she told me that she was leaving Wernle for good. she was waiting for her parents to pick her up. I thought it was the last time I would ever see her. My fear of the Marines went away because I finally realized that I too had to move on.


I commented about her knees. The last thing she said to me as her parents pulled up, was that I liked her knees, and smiled at me. I watched her dad put her stuff into the trunk of the car and then pull off. I felt an extreme loss and sadness, which took me some time to get over.

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