Running Away From Home

My brother-in-law… My eleven-year-old brother-in-law asked me not long ago what the worse thing I ever did as a kid was.

Unfortunately, I didn’t need to hesitate with my answer.

My parents kept a vegetable garden and we grudgingly helped weed and harvest. It was my job on one particular summer day to pick one row of green beans before I could play.

Just one row.

It was hot. It was summer. The cool waters of the lake teased me from the bottom of the hill. Man, I had serious summer things to do like swing on our rope, hang out in our tree house or ride my bike.

Our family posing for a picture on and around our
beloved tree house.

Nothing was worse to me at that moment than having to bend over and pick those darn beans. I hated green beans anyway. I conjured up a plan that very well may have been the dumbest thing I have ever done.

I reasoned that if I could make my one row of beans appear as two, I could pick half the number of green beans would be finished in half the time. I carefully bent every other plant so that the even plants tilted to the left of their row and the odd to the right. Despite my suposed ‘care’ I did irreparable harm to those plants. Of course my dad saw my vandalism, the horticultural horror I had wrought right away. He expressed his displeasure briefly but not nearly in proportion to my offense. He did however go alone into the basement where I could hear him yelling and breaking things.

It would have been merciful had he taken me over his knee or screamed at me for an hour.

You have to know my dad. He is the most gentle, sincere, wonderful man I have ever known. Perhaps he was scared to death of his dark angry side the same way that I am and that’s why we never saw it.

I had never seen him like that before or since and it was my stupid scheme and disregard for his hard work that brought it out it.

I was so ashamed. Frankly, I still am.

Of course I did what anyone at that age might do in my position; I ran away.

Perhaps to escape the wrath I imagined when I faced him again, a wrath that of course never came, maybe to rid my family of someone who could do such a horrible thing, yeah, there was surely some self-pity in there too.

As kids, we had a plan for running away—if it was ever called for. It was brilliant, we thought.

To the south of us about ten miles was the town of Naples which is known for its wine country, rolling hills and spectacular views of the lake. Not far from my parent’s house, the hills grow progressively steeper leading down to the long and narrow Canandaigua Lake and grapes become increasingly the crop of choice.

We often took walks in those vineyards and helped ourselves to the plump purple orbs by the handful.

It only made sense to us that this bounty we could feast off of during our trek would continue to the Mason Dixon Line where orange groves and banana trees would begin and sustain us the rest of the way to Florida, our ultimate goal when running away.

Naples was the type of place we went to eat dinner at a restaurant, a rare treat then. There were no bad days in Naples. I'd never had any.

If I didn’t make it to Florida, Naples would do.

A church on Main street. in Naples. I used to think this was the coolest church anywhere.
I wondered if the Flintstones went there.

I made it nearly two miles from home on the day I destroyed the bean plants.

My plan to run away finally became a reality at the age of thirty-three in 1998 when I sold my house and moved to LA.

I missed Florida by over two thousand miles but I found my California born wife precisely.

There were things growing up, things I did that I oughtn’t have done, dangers I faced that I shouldn’t have faced; things that my parents never found out about. That is until all of us kids and grown up and the statute of limitations had long since expired. For years, as adults  we came home for family dinners and delighted in horrifying them with a series of giggling confessions of all those things we had gotten away with. We tried to top ourselves each week and give them reasons for retroactive heart attacks.

An alligator and a moving train were the subjects my favorites, but the time I used my Dad as an unwitting pawn to help Scott Simmons run away from home is right up there.

In Eighth grade, my friend Scott told me he was running away from home. I don’t remember why. I just saw the opportunity to live an adventure through this kid that I didn’t even like him that much. He had once played strip poker with my ‘girlfriend’ in sixth grade. He was a braggart, a bit of a pathological liar and kind-of obnoxious in general.

It was clear my folks were so darned good they were never going to give me cause to run more than a couple miles during part of an afternoon, so if I could help him off on an adventure that was the next best thing.

“Really? You going to Florida maybe?” Everyone talked about going to Florida back then. “Boy, do I have the route for you! I’ll help you get started. You’ll have 10 miles behind you by tonight!”

After school, Scott and I walked to the high school where my dad taught science. I went into my father’s classroom to inform my dad I was riding home with him while Scott lurked around the faculty parking lot as I had instructed. I told my Dad I’d wait for him in the van and “could I have the keys please?”

I hid Scott under a seat when I saw my dad approaching. We picked my brother up from the elementary school where he was in sixth grade. I flashed my brother the ‘sshh’ sign when he got in the back and noticed some kid hiding under the bench.

My younger brother was often like an older voice of reason when I was on the verge of doing something stupid; like taking a stick and taunting a live un-caged alligator that was sitting beside a pond in a park near St. Peterburg, Florida (no I'm not kidding), or hopping in an open box car of an accelerating train in Minneapolis or one a ten thousand stupid things I tried or almost tried in the barn across the road from us. All great fodder for those family dinner confessions later in life.

In those situations, my little brother was usually a few feet behind me and several years beyond.

“Um, Joel, I don’t think this is a good idea,” he would usually say.

He was no snitch either. In the “Free Scotty Mission”, it was clear we were already beyond the point of turning back.

When we arrived home, a house ten miles out in the country, I whispered to Scott to hang tight in the van for a few minutes then make a break for the woods where I would bring him some food when I could.

He seemed nervous. I hope he wasn’t backing out on our plan for him to run away.

After dinner I snuck him some food as promised. I talked excitedly about his upcoming adventure. He didn’t say much.

As luck would have it, my parents were going out that night and I had recently been promoted to the family babysitter. When our folks left for the evening I brought Scott in the house and fed him proper. We watched TV while we planned his escape to Florida.

I knew I was being dishonest to my parents and then there was that little rule about not having friends over while my parents were away, but I could see the higher good was being served here. Obviously, if he was willing go this far to run away, Scott’s parents must be horrible. It was like I was freeing a slave on my own little underground railroad… just one that ran South instead of North.

My brother and sister looked on with cautious enthusiasm. They felt sure I was going to get into trouble, but at least it was an evening that was out of the ordinary, kinda cool for a Friday night. We all just kept watching TV; way beyond our one hour limit.

The phone rang. We all looked at each other. I answered it carefully. It was an unfamiliar adult voice. He was blunt and annoyed. “Is Scott there?”

I was stunned. The success of the whole plan rested on my next words but they wouldn’t come. First of all I was thrown off by the fact that the adults I was ready to believe were slave-driving abusers out of the cast of Oliver and celebrating around in Scott’s absence, maybe weren’t such rotten parents after all. Apparently missed the kid enough to him dig up our phone number.

Scott and I didn’t hang that much and I’m not sure he had ever even been to my house before. I still have no idea how they knew who I was and how they tracked him down.

“Hang on,” I bluffed, stalling for time. Not thinking about the fact that I had effectively answered his question.

I covered the phone tightly.

“Scott, it’s your parents,” I said. I threw in a desperate look of inquiry as if to say, “what are we going to do now?”

Scott surprised me by calmly getting to his feet and taking the phone from me. His answers were subdued, monosyllabic.

Little was said after he hung up. I realized I was actually relieved. The sound of an adult voice reminded me that I would eventually face some sort of interrogation. You can imagine, in the midst of all this confession. How tight-lipped I am.

Not.

Twenty minutes later an unfamiliar car pulled into the driveway. No one got out.

Scott said good bye, walked to the car and got in. I imagined the what was going on inside the car; screaming silence, I couldn’t tell. I wondered what kind of trouble Scott would get in. I wondered for about a minute and haven’t really thought about it till just now.

My parents came home about an hour later. With an oath from my siblings, they were never the wiser until a Sunday dinner when I was in my twenties.

You should have seen the look on their faces.