One lazy summer day in 1949, when I was 4 years old and my two older brothers were 5 and 6, we all decided to talk a long walk to investigate a strange place we were curious about. We had heard whispered stories about a large, forbidding building some distance from our house. We headed out of our residential neighborhood in Fort Wayne, Ind., and down State Street, a busy street lined with many businesses.
Along the way my oldest brother Steve realized he needed a bathroom. We had just passed a store that displayed bathroom fixtures in the window, so he told us to wait for him and he would be right back. My other brother Tom and I waited and waited for a long time, but Steve didn’t return.
Tom and I decided to continue on without him. Eventually we arrived at a sprawling, gated institution. Peering through a hole in the high fence we saw a long line of rather gruff-looking men shuffling between buildings. There was a chain linking them together, with their hands behind their backs, and they were led by a man with a bullwhip.
We glanced along the fence and noticed a place where perhaps a dog had dug under it, leaving just enough space for us to crawl through. We squirmed under and approached the men. “Where are you going?” we boldly asked.
One of the men growled, “Come with us and we’ll give you some candy.”
Wow, I thought, what a deal! So we got in line behind the last man and followed them in.
As soon as we entered the dimly lit, dungeon-like building we were horrified to see a naked man charging down some stairs toward us. At that moment, the man with the whip spied us and roared at the man to go upstairs. He grabbed us by the back of our necks, and demanded to know where we were going.
“We’re going to get candy,” we answered him innocently.
He took us to an office where they proceeded to interrogate Tom. I didn’t want to participate so I plopped myself down on the floor to wait for the candy man to get there. I refused to answer any questions, although Tom kept kicking me to stand up.
They put us in the corner and told us to wait. Then Tom started pinching me. By this time I realized there would be no candy. I called out to the big man in uniform to tattle, “My brother keeps pinching me!”
“Why are you pinching your sister?” he asked.
“She wouldn’t stand up and help me answer all those questions,” he replied.
“Well, you better leave her alone or we’ll lock you up!” the big man threatened. Then I knew I was in a really bad place.
We later learned that the establishment we visited was a state institution for the criminally insane. We were taken to the police station, and to my utter surprise, my older brother Steve was already there. The owner of the plumbing store had called the police on him also.
The three of us waited in dread to hear our fate. Before long, my mother arrived in a taxi. That’s when the police really came down hard. “Why can’t you keep track of your children?” they demanded.
My mother looked so forlorn and beaten.
“Officers,” she said, “I have others at home and I’m pregnant. I try my best, but there are so many more of them than me.”
There were eventually 14 of us, far more than she could keep track of, so we had many more adventures and trips to the police station.
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