Running Away

Memoir by Guy Sutherland

In October of 1947 I was eight years old and had started my third year in grade school. I also had a presumed girlfriend… Pollyanna Butz. Pollyanna was the first girl I ever developed a crush on way back in the first grade. She had gorgeous long blonde hair and large blue eyes. I was immediately smitten.

Polly was the second daughter of our town’s only doctor back in the 1940s: Dr. George Butz. At one point during my first grade year of 1946, my tonsils became inflamed and Dr. Butz diagnosed tonsillitis. Standard treatment at that time was a tonsillectomy with surgical removal of the tonsils and adenoids. This was performed by Dr. Butz at Toledo hospital.

Standard procedure for sedating a patient for surgery back then was ‘putting the patient under’ with inhalation of ether fumes. This was accomplished by attending nurses for the operation putting a cloth mask over the nose and mouth of the patient and slowly dripping ether onto the mask.

I remember lying flat on my back looking up into a very bright light overhead which made the rest of the room around me seem dark. Dr. Butz and the nursing attendants were all dressed in white and seemed like ghosts standing around me with darkness behind them. The nurses were engaging me with idle chit-chat while they dripped the ether onto my mask. No doubt this was to distract me from the overwhelming strong smell of the ether. Perhaps ether is also a kind of relaxer of inhibitions because I was readily answering any questions they asked me.

One of them asked: “Do you have a girlfriend, Guy?”

I groggily responded, “Sure. Pollyanna Butz is my girlfriend!” This immediately caused some delighted giggling between the nurses. I don’t remember Dr. Butz saying anything. But then , he always was a calm, quiet man. I suppose I slipped into unconsciousness shortly thereafter, but I still retain a very strong “dream” memory of that bright overhead light spinning around and around in a tight circle with an annoying whine that rose and fell with each spin. When I awoke I was back in my hospital bed feeling very nauseous with the disagreeable taste and smell of ether still in my mouth… and a throat so sore I couldn’t swallow. But I could vomit; which I did a few times. That ether was nasty stuff!

After my stomach settled down, the only thing I could do for my sore throat was to suck on ice cubes for a few hours. While recovering over the next couple of days, the only food I could tolerate – and look forward to – was ice cream and ginger ale. On the second day the nurse came into my room with a shallow bowl of soup on a bed tray. She did her best to sell it to me. “Ohhh… look, Guy! I’ve got a nice warm bowl of chicken broth for you!”

I tried to warn her in my small, hoarse voice. “I don’t like broth!”.

“Oh nonsense, Guy! This is delicious and very nourishing. It’ll help your throat heal more quickly.” She put a couple pillows behind my back to prop me up into a sitting position. The nurse settled the tray over my lap and dipped a tablespoon into the bowl which had a brothy-smelling steam still rising from it. The odor made my stomach churn.

I tried one last protest in a squeaky whisper, “I don’t like it!”

The nurse; a little more firmly: “Now come on, Guy. This is GOOD for you!” She brought the spoonful up to my mouth. I opened my mouth and honestly tried to swallow it. I immediately puked all over the tray and bed sheets.

“OH!!” The nurse said nothing more but took away the tray with the offending broth and set about silently cleaning up my mess and getting me clean sheets. I wasn’t getting any more kind looks from her. A little later on another nurse brought me some more ice cream and ginger ale. I had no trouble keeping THOSE down.

By the time I recovered and returned to the first grade, word seemed to have gotten around to my classmates that I was sweet on Pollyanna. Not surprising. Swanton is a small town and both families attended the local Methodist church. So I had to endure the usual playground teasing for a while. “Guy loves Polly-AN-na! Guy loves Polly-AN-na!”

In addition to attending the same church, the Butzes and the Sutherlands were pretty good friends because my father was a pharmaceutical salesman and Dr. Butz was a good customer.

As with most churches, ours had a children’s choir. I don’t really recall at what point I was encouraged to join the choir… but the main selling point used by my parents was that Pollyanna was already a member of the choir. So I joined up. It was another way to spend more time in her company after school. However, on warm autumn days I wasn’t really all that fond of spending after-school time at choir practice when I could have otherwise been playing around in the woods.

In 1947 the street I lived on, Woodland Avenue, was pretty much the residential eastern edge of town. A narrow alley ran behind the houses on the east side of the street, but beyond the alley it was corn fields and woods. The alley ended at Church Street which ran east and west. There were just three houses past the alley on the north side of Church Street. On the south side was Swanton’s industrial area which contained factories and a grain-silo complex that I loved roaming around on Sunday afternoons when everything was closed. Some good adventures there… but those are for other chapters. Church Street was paved only as far as the three houses extended. Beyond that it was just a hard-packed dirt road all the way out to the Fulton-Lucas Countyline road about a mile east of Woodland Avenue.

My memory is fuzzy as to just when Dr. Butz had a new house built in the rural area outside of Whitehouse, Ohio, but I think it was during the winter of 1946-1947. By early spring of 1947 the Butz family had moved into their new ranch-style house. Not too long afterwards the Butz family invited the Sutherland family over on a Saturday night to check out the new dwelling. I was excited to be doing this, of course, because I would be visiting Pollyanna in her new home. It was a pleasant visit and the Sutherlands were all duly impressed with the relative luxuriousness of the new house.

About 8:00 P.M. my parents were gathering up their coats and thanking the Butzes for having us over. I got up to get my coat, but my mom said, “Never mind, Guy.” I looked up with a puzzled expression to find all four parents looking at me with indulgent smiles. It slowly dawned on me. “You mean I, uhh...” Mom said: “We’ll be back to pick you up after breakfast tomorrow before we all go to church.” Ohh.. MAN! There I was; a grade-school stranger in paradise!! Getting to sleepover as a guest in my girlfriend’s brand new house!!!

The rest of the visit was anti-climatic because both Polly and I had nine-o’clock bed-times and had to bid each other good-night as I retired to the guest room. The following morning I got to enjoy a good breakfast at the Butz table. I vaguely recall that there was a mild argument between Dr. Butz and his wife, Larinda, about cleaning out some weeds around their house so she could put in some flowers she wanted. Their son, Bill Butz, was an upper-classman in high school and impressed me as being a take-charge kind of young man. He listened to a few minutes of his parents discussing who should clean out the weeds and when it should be done. I could tell that neither male had the time or inclination to select or clean out flower bed sites. Then young Bill Butz made a rather curt remark to the effect that no weeds could be cleaned out until his mother chose to go out and mark the sites she wanted around the house. End of discussion.

A short time after the breakfast table was cleared away, I did look out the front window and saw Larinda Butz walking slowly past and looking down… presumably selecting flower bed sites. Not long afterward, my parents arrived to take me back home and get ready for church. That week I got to endure some more: “Guy loves Polly-AN-na!” from my classmates. But this time I kind of reveled in the taunts. It felt like I had officially established Pollyanna Butz as my girlfriend.

Well, that was the spring of 1947 and the last few weeks of my 3rd year in grade school. I turned 8 years old that summer. I don’t recall just when or why, but sometime during that period Pollyanna Butz dropped out of the Methodist Church children’s choir. Not long after that I began to chafe at the prospect of having to “waste” some of my afternoons at choir practice when I could be out in the woods scouting out locations for forts or tree-houses or swinging on vines like Tarzan.

I reached a point of juvenile rebellion on an exceptionally sunny and mild October afternoon. I had just walked home from school and it was a day when children’s choir practice was scheduled for 4:00 P.M. But the woods was calling me. Strongly! I dawdled around the house until my mother happened to notice.

“Guy… Get a move on! Choir practice starts soon.”

I looked up at her peevishly. “I don’t wanna be in the choir anymore! I want to drop out… like Polly did!”

Mom got that stern look in her eyes. “Listen, Young Man, you made a commitment and you’re going to stick to it. Now get yourself over to the church!”

The allure of the woods was clouding my mind… and judgment.

“I don’t wanna go!”

Mom grabbed me and bent me over and gave me several hard smacks on my butt. “We’ll have no more talk like THAT! Now you get going… or do you want me to get the yardstick?!” With me sniffling and my lower lip pouted out, I reluctantly left the house.

The Methodist Church was actually less than a hundred yards from our house if I took a direct path across an empty lot on Woodland Ave. which later became the house lot for the Jim Bushong family. Back then the lot connected with a short alley that ran east and west across Lincoln Street and past the church to Main Street. I slouched my way across the lot and onto the alley. By the time I reached Lincoln Street a radical notion had popped into my mind. I could RUN AWAY! THAT would show Mom that I shouldn’t be in the children’s choir!

I shuffled across Lincoln Street and when I got to the cross alley that ran behind the church I stopped. My 8-year-old mind was filled with a sense of unfairness and resentment against my mother. Also, it was still a relatively warm and sunny day and I was wearing a light jacket that could keep me warm. And the woods was still calling.

At that point my juvenile brain entertained its only consideration of later needs: something to eat. It then occurred to me that if I turned left and went south on the cross alley, there stood the P & G Grille at Church Street. I happened to have a few coins in my pocket and I could buy a full-sized Snickers bar for a nickle! Back then, a full-sized candy bar was actually bigger than the so-called full-sized candy bars of today… which cost over a dollar. Says something about inflation over the past 70 years; doesn’t it?

With an exciting new sense of liberation I set off for the P & G Grille. After purchasing the candy bar I began eating it as I walked east on Church Street. Fueled by sugar and reckless attitude, I made my round-about way into the woods.

After getting there, I really didn’t spend that much time in the woods. I prowled a few familiar trails for about an hour. As the afternoon sun was getting low on the horizon, the temperature was also getting lower. I zipped up my jacket and cautiously emerged from the southwest corner of the woods and crept along an overgrown fence-line that extended between fields to the Church Street entrance of the alley that ran behind Woodland Avenue. That entire fence-line was readily visible from the rear kitchen window of my house. I crawled into a section of that fence-line that was heavily over-grown by vines. It could serve as a sort of natural tent. I was about 50 yards away from the rear of my house. Today that area is part of the Crestwood School grounds. And the entire woods and fields area all the way to Fulton-Lucas Countyline Rd. is residential development.

As I lay there on my stomach beneath my vine ‘tent’, more somber thoughts crept into my mind. Even though I had run away from a church choir practice, I still wanted to think of myself as a “Christian”. So I looked around my cramped space and located two little twigs, one about 2 inches long and the other about an inch and a half. I could fashion these into a symbolic cross if I had some string. I didn’t have any string but I noticed the thicker vines all around me had a profusion of thin, flexible strips that could be easily peeled off the surface of the vines. I spent about a half-hour pulling off vine ‘stringers’ to use tying my two little twigs together to form a cross. When I finally succeeded in getting my makeshift little cross to hold together, I stuck it into the ground near my head. I suppose I was sub-consciously trying to establish forgiveness for my rash behavior.

As twilight settled in, the air was getting decidedly colder. So was I. I could also hear that there was activity going on at the rear door of the Sutherland house. People were coming and going. After it got really dark, I became aware of a group of older kids walking past my position towards the woods with flashlights. As they neared the woods, they started calling out my name. “GUY!” “Where are you, Guy?” One or two of the kids were my older siblings. “C’mon, Guy! This isn’t funny anymore!”

Funny?! Oh, Man, I knew it wasn’t funny! I was now frozen with fright. Look at all the hubbub I was causing. If I gave in and went home, I was bound to get the business end of that yardstick! I continued lying there on my belly in a state of mental turmoil. After a while I heard the group of older kids returning from the woods. There wasn’t much talk and they weren’t calling out my name anymore. They reported in at the Sutherland rear door and, except for my siblings, left for their own homes.

I was getting really cold and my teeth started chattering. I knew I could not stay where I was all night. The image of my cozy, warm bed started appearing in my head. I stared longingly through the tangled vines of my hideout at the rear door of the Sutherland house. The outdoor light overhead had been turned on at twilight and stayed on. For several minutes after the older kids had left there were no more callers. I needed to get warmer; but I still feared the shame – and the yardstick – of going home.

The rear door light also shed a very dim shine over the back yard of the Klein house next door. During the 40s and well into the 50s our next door neighbors were the family of Leon “Red” Klein, who was the proprietor of the Swanton Hardware store. Red handled numerous large items that came in large, heavy-duty, cardboard boxes. I suppose disposal of these boxes was a continual problem for Red because they tended to accumulate in his back yard. This was actually a boon to me and neighborhood kids because on nice days we loved to descend on his back yard and play with those cardboard boxes. Red didn’t seem to mind.

So... on this chilly night in 1947 I spotted several of these boxes in Red Klein’s back yard. Some were flattened out in a thin pile. I figured lying down between two or more of these flattened boxes would be warmer than laying on the cold ground beneath a bunch of airy vines. After a few minutes with no more activity at the Sutherland rear door, I crawled out from my vine nest and shiveringly creeped into Red Klein’s back yard. As cautiously and quietly as I could, I slipped in between a few of the flattened boxes and lay there with my head pointed toward the Sutherland house. I know, in retrospect, that all I was doing was incrementally working up the courage to turn myself in. The image of my own bed kept popping into my head.

I’m not sure how long I laid there in my makeshift cardboard bed. Probably no more than a few minutes. But it seemed like the warm, sunny afternoon of my runaway was a loooong time ago! The cold, hard conditions of independence had become unbearable. Time to face the music… and the yardstick. I reluctantly shoved aside my cardboard cover and got to my feet. Shivering with cold and dread I slowly walked to the back door. I stopped and stood there a moment while feelings of doubt and guilt washed over me. I felt like I no longer had the right to just walk into my family’s house. Timidly, I knocked on the door.

I only had to wait a few seconds before the door was opened by my mother. Her eyes were red-rimmed. “Ohh!” She immediately grabbed me and hugged me tightly to her bosom. “Oh, Honey, I...” She started crying again. The warmth of her body felt so good. I started bawling like a baby.

The rest of the evening is rather a blur in my memory. Mom rushed to fix me some soft-boiled eggs; the cure-all food for upset tummies and stressful times. I remember getting some annoyed looks from my older siblings. Dad didn’t say much but assured me that we would have a serious talk in the morning after I was well rested. There was no mention of yardsticks or punishment. Apparently they were just glad to have me back safe and sound. Feelings of relief flooded over me.

As I snuggled into my own warm, cozy bed that night, I was happy to be back in the family fold. I was ready to be a good boy… for awhile.