Home Kid Chapter 2 - Three Years Earlier

It was my second week at the Home. I told the girl who sat next to me on the Home bus that the only reason I was there was because my dad was called to Washington on a very important assignment for the government, and that when he got back he was going to pick up me and my younger brother and sister and we were going to go to California to live in a big house with a swimming pool.

Part of it was true. It was 1942 and I had just had my 12th birthday party and the last one with old friends on Dakin Street on the northwest side of Chicago. When the party was over my dad told us (my two younger siblings and myself) that we would be going to live in a kind of private school because he had to go to the west coast (Oh, THAT Washington!) and work on some new houses for people who worked in a shipbuilding yard.

Part of that was true, too. The "school" was private because it was owned by the Lutheran Church. But, the classes held there were in religion and in practical disciplines, such as cooking and cleaning for the girls, farming and woodworking for the boys. The "real" school we attended was five miles away in the village called Edison Park.

The big green bus we were on was owned by the Norwegian Lutheran Children's Home at the end of the Harlem Avenue bus line on the outskirts of town. The area was officially called Park Ridge, but the Home in no way resembled the posh suburban neighborhood where rich kids lived. That Park Ridge was off limits to Home Kids and we soon came to know "our place" in the scheme of things.

The Home's setting was beautiful. Farmlands stretched out for miles over a flat, tree-dotted field. The red brick buildings trimmed in white wood were landscaped in traditional lawns, shrubbery and old Elm trees and stood out against the autumn colors under a bright blue Indian summer sky. An Illinois October is still one of the most beautiful sights in the land.

The laughter of children could be heard as we approached the white fence-bordered driveway. The beginning smells of supper cooking drifted from the big kitchen. All of the senses were involved and my warm glow was enhanced by the larger than life story I just told my new friend. As we got ready to jump off the bus and race to the dormitory to change out of school clothes and go to the dining hall to set tables for 150 children and staff, I felt the excitement rise in my yet-undeveloped chest. One of the boys in the Big Boys' dorm was also assigned to dining room duty that day.

Porky was one of the cutest guys at The Home and just before he got off the bus, he smiled at me and said, "See you later." I read so much more into that passing remark than he ever dreamed!

Such was the beginning of my three-year stay at The Home. It was war time, my folks were divorced, my older brother was staying with my mom at Grandma's, and my younger sister and brother and I were "stuck" out here living in dormitories, getting up, going to school, marching to the dining room for meals, and going to bed by the huge gong of a big brass bell we called Emily.

My new friends and I lied to each other about the good times that would come "some day soon". The kids in the village who were our classmates never believed the lies. The "normal" kids, ones who lived in houses with mothers and fathers and pets and siblings and had their own rooms with ruffled skirts on pink dressing tables and closets full of pleated skirts and big fluffy sweaters, would laugh at us and call us "Home Kids". Everybody knew Home Kids lied...

But it was okay. We had each other and after the humiliation of going to school on an ugly old dark green bus that broke down frequently, carrying identical brown bags with identical dried up bologna sandwiches with light smears of oleomargarine and an apple for dessert, we could ride home and tell stories larger than life to each other. We could find solace in our own made up stories and in doing dining room duty with boys we had crushes on.

I would soon be a teenager with her first pimple to show off to the other girls in the dorm. Such was the beginning of a life filled with determination to never allow a child of hers to ever become a Home Kid where bending the truth was necessary to one's survival. Such was the foundation upon which one little girl's future was built, who loved to spin wild and wonderful tales, but who knew the truth and tried to make up for all the stories she told as a girl by learning to write the truth as she knew it.

I can hardly believe, as I look back through all the years in between that that little girl was me.

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