There is something to be said for being an airhead. I’ve had this certain naivety for most of my life and somehow, in the long run, it’s this naivety that seems to have kept me safe. I may wander into dangerous situations as a result of my cloudy headed kind of thinking, but at the same time, it is this cloudy-headed-ness that keeps me surviving as I manage to float right out of dangerous situations just as easily as I’d floated into them, sometimes not realizing the danger I’d escaped until long after. So many times it seems that it was only by grace that I was saved.
This would be the case during the months I spent in Hollywood as a 16 year old runaway. It seems I drifted through an obstacle course of propositions and “me too” moments and managed to get back home safe and unharmed, with the exception of a minor eating disorder it took a few years to shake. I could not bear for anyone to see hunger on my face, so I managed to eat alone whenever I could. My heart froze in my chest when i had to eat in front of anyone, including my siblings.
When I was transported to Hollywood, California, I was dropped off, with a bag full of cash, into the hands of a new caretaker, a nice young woman who worked as a seamstress in Hollywood and who took good care of me and my big sister until the bag of cash ran out, at which point I had to move out and find my own way and my big sister disappeared,never to be seen again for the next two years. The bag of cash had come from the police chief of Terrell Hills in San Antonio, Texas.
This would be my third and last time to run away successfully.
The first time that I’d run away, I was cornered into riding along with my big sister when she made the spontaneous decision to take off for California and I was in the car with her. I, myself, didn’t need to run away. I’d already dropped out of school and finished a keypunch certification class. I was ready to get a job and move out and I had my mother’s permission to boot, not to mention her efforts to find me a place. She couldn’t wait to get me out of her hair.
I had no interest in going to California, but I feared my sister, and rarely resisted whatever plans it was she had cooked up for us. For that cowardly choice, I was incarcerated, along with my big sister, by our mother, with the assistance of her attorney boyfriend, once we’d been caught in California and returned to her.
While my sister managed to break free from incarceration before me, being always the bolder of the two of us, I continued to be incarcerated for several months more, once breaking free and making it to Chicago with my own friends for a couple of months, until we were caught and returned for a little more incarceration before I made it out of the institution for a final time.
This final time that I ran away, friends of my sister, who I had never met before, picked me up and took me to California, taking a few months to stop off in San Antonio while they planned a caper before our cross country trip.
The men who helped me escape found a friend of theirs to keep me while they worked on an insurance scam that they would eventually pull off successfully, with the help of my older sister and her boyfriend. Scamming for money was not how I rolled, so I wasn’t a fan of their idea and not the least bit impressed with the meticulous planning they did of their dishonest deed. But I was fortunate the friend that they found to help me was not like them.
The young man who took me in to his household happened to be the son of the Terrell Hills Police chief. He brought me home to his parent’s house to stay in the empty bedroom that his newly married sister had just vacated, where I was instructed to start practicing the forgery of her name. Now that she was married and had changed her last name, we could use her old ID card so that I could get jobs and not be picked up as a runaway, once we got to California. My name was going to be Carol and I was going to live in Hollywood.
The young man told his parents that I was an adult aged friend, needing a room to rent, and somehow they believed his story until they found the pages of their daughter’s forged signature in the trashcan of her room, at which point they demanded the truth from us.
After hearing my story, the police chief and his wife decided that I was someone who needed protection, so they continued to take care of me and keep me hidden for weeks as plans were being made for the trip to California.
After I’d made it to California and had been there a while, feeling a bit lonely and distressed over the frequent homelessness, I received two comforting gifts from the police chief’s wife, a book and a poster, two gifts that were a critical next step to my ongoing spiritual enlightenment.
The book was a white faux leather copy of Kahlil Gibran’s book, “The Prophet”, with gold embossed lettering. The poster was a copy of “The Desiderata”.
When I’d gotten to California I literally got there with nothing but the clothes on my back that I’d been wearing when I’d made my escape from the institution, and one new flower print dress that the young men had picked out for me just before the trip, so these gifts were a special treasure and the only things I managed to keep with me as I moved from one temporary shelter to another.
Both “The Prophet” and “The Desiderata” are pieces that ring eternally of spiritual truth and wisdom …
Low and behold, I’ve found a very generous person who has provided a free copy of The Prophet on line, with no ads jumping in your face.
The words of wisdom throughout this piece of work are profound: https://the-prophet.com/#link7
Oikos 