It was a Wednesday morning and this guy named Bert, who worked for the court,
came into my caged cell and asked me if I wanted to go somewhere special for
Thanksgiving dinner. I told him that I did not want to go outside of the shelter
at all, and that he knew very well why. I liked Bert because he was a nice guy,
besides his brother had made a song which they played on the radio called "The
lion sleeps tonight" and I was really impressed that he knew the man who made
that song. But he just kept on and on about that Thanksgiving dinner and how a
kid should not be locked up on a day of thanks giving. So I finally said that I
would go and he took me down stairs to talk with the judge.
Later on that day this older woman came and talked with me for a while. She told
me that she wanted to take me to her house for Thanksgiving Day dinner and I
made her promised me that she would bring me back the very next day.
She and I walked out of the juvenile hall together, got into her nice car and
drove to her house. It was a nice house too, and right in the middle of where
all the rich folks lived, right next to the big river with the great big silver
iron bridge. I had never been over that bridge before because it was just too
big and scarey to cross. Even when we ran away from the orphanage we only
crossed the little bridges. Never the big ones 'cause they might fall and we
could drown.
We walked into her house and I was really surprised at what I saw. It was real
small inside not like the big house that I had lived in. You could sleep thirty
or forty people in our house at the orphanage. But then I went to their bathroom
and I saw right away that they were not rich at all. They only had one toilet
and one sink in their bathroom! They were really poor and they did not even know
it.
Of course, I had never been in a regular house before and I did not know that
regular people only had one toilet and one sink in their bathrooms. That is one
of the hazards of being raised in a orphanage.
You never get see what it is like in the real world. Then one day when you do
get shoved out into the real world everyone treats you like you are an idiot
because you do not know anything about regular stuff and all.
The Thanksgiving Day dinner thing was very hard on me and I wanted so badly just
to get out of there and be back in my cage at the juvenile hall. Man! There must
have been fifty people going in and out of their house. All getting ready for
that big Thanksgiving day dinner the next day. I was really scared too. I didn't
like people very much, especially grown people. They can do some really bad
things to you when you are a kid. I never hardly move a inch because I was so
scared. I never moved out of that chair, nor did I move in any direction until
almost all those people were gone, late that afternoon. The lady, Mrs.Usher, who
brought me to her house, came in to the living room and asked me if I wanted to
have a coke in the small bottle. I told her "thank you" but that I did not care
for anything.
I really wanted that coke real bad too, but I was to scared to take it. I
thought about that coke all day long and how good it would have tasted. Later
that night, when everyone was asleep, I went into the kitchen, real slow and
quiet like, and I took a cold coca cola out of the refrigerator. I drank the
coke real fast, in about five seconds, and then I hid the bottle cap behind the
refrigerator. Then I warmed the cold bottle against my stomach so that it would
be warm like the other bottles. Then I put it in the bottle carton so that no
one would ever know that I had drunk it. No one ever found out that I had drank
that coke.
The next day was almost as unbearable for me, as was the first day, because of
all the strange people coming for the big dinner. I would have rather died than
to have ever gone through such a horrible experience as was that dinner. All
those big strange people laughing and joking and making all kinds of noise. I
have never been so embarrassed and so scared in all my life and that is the
God's truth. Not scared like you are scared in the dark -- scared in a different
kind of way. I just can not explain it, not even to myself. I know I hardly ate
anything that day and I had never seen so much food in all my life. But I sure
was so glad when it was finally over.
Later that night, after everyone else had gone to bed, Mrs. Usher took me out
onto her front porch and we talked for hours and hours. She was a real nice lady
too, and she let me smoke a cigarette because I liked to smoke. It made me feel
like I could take care of myself. I think I was about thirteen years old at that
time and I had never once just sat and talked with anyone before, in my whole
life. It was my first 'nice and slow time' and I really liked doing that.
It is a day that I will never forget and I will never forget her kindness and
her warm smile. But I just could not understand was why was she doing all of
this for me. So I always kept one eye open on her all the time. Then she got up
and went into the kitchen and brought each of us a small coke in the bottle, and
she handed one to me. I will never forget that either. That was the best coke
that I ever drank in my whole entire life.
The next morning she and I ate some breakfast together and then she told me to
go into the bedroom and get my things together so she could take me back to the
juvenile hall, like she promised. I remember going into the small bedroom and
closing the door behind me. I heard her in the hallway talking on the telephone
to the authorities. I heard her ask them why I was being sent back to the reform
school and what it was that I had done that was so bad that I had to be sent
back there. They told her that I had done nothing wrong but that they had no
where else to put me.
I heard her get very mad at them and she told them that she was not going to
bring me back to the juvenile hall to be locked up again like an animal. I LOVE
THAT WOMAN FOR SAYING THAT! That is the most wonderful thing that anyone ever
did for me as a child. That, of all the things in my life, is the one thing that
made me want to be somebody and I thank you so very much you loving, kind and
wonderful woman.
That one little sentence that came out of her mouth was the one small light that
guided my life for the next forty-five years.
I stayed there for several weeks and then I left to go out on my own at the age
of fourteen. I continued to see the Usher family on and off for the next twenty
or thirty years until their deaths. I know that they would have adopted me, had
I asked. But when it was discussed I told Mrs. Usher that it was too late for
me, and she cried. I told her that I had to make it on my own now, 'cause I was
a man. I just wish that I could have shown them how much I really loved them,
before they died. But I did not know how to show them that because I didn't even
know what that meant.
I hope that now that they are in heaven that they know how much I love and
respect them, with all my heart. I hope they know how much they added to the
life of one lonely little boy that nobody else wanted.
Roger Dean Kiser, Sr.
Trampolineone@webtv.net
Published author and internet writer Roger Dean Kiser's stories take you into
the heart of a child abandoned by his family and abused by the system
responsible for his care. Through his stories he relives the sadness and cruelty
of growing up an orphan in the early 1950s. Today Kiser lives in Brunswick,
Georgia with his wife Judy, where he continues to write. Publishing most of his
work on his internet web site www.rogerdeankiser.com .
It is through his writing that Kiser has begun healing the pain, suffering and
sadness of the orphan within him. Unknowingly at first and by the power of the
internet Kiser's stories have touched millions. In the vain of Mark Twain Roger
Dean Kiser's collection of almost 400 stories have captured the drama and
emotion of not only his childhood but of his current day tales. Kiser's short
stories carry with them strong images and feelings that search out and find that
common thread which connects each of us to our own emotions.
Roger Dean Kiser is the author of the book "Orphan, A True Story of Abandonment,
Abuse and Redemption." Visit his website at:
http://www.rogerdeankiser.com
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