An Outlaw's Journey

There was no single incident that compelled me to abandon my family and my hometown of Orlando to begin a new life as a runaway outlaw. I was mad at my mother about something, but since I can’t even remember what it was, it must have been trivial. If that incident was the straw that broke the camel’s back, surely there were many other straws that preceded it. Doesn’t matter, because the reason someone becomes an outlaw is not as important as what kind of outlaw they become. Turns out, I was not good at it. I was only ten. 

My journey began when I took four dollars from my mother's pocketbook when it was sitting on her dresser. It required courage to do it because she was somewhere in the house, and I could easily have been caught. I’m not proud of stealing from my mother, but it was exciting. Maybe it was just a simple desire for excitement that explains everything I did that day. Orlando in the 1960s was no magic kingdom. That magic would not appear until 1971. 

My expectation was that four dollars would last a long time on the road, especially if I could develop some new outlaw skills more advanced than sneaking into my mother’s bedroom. That was my plan. I grabbed a wool blanket from my closet, intending to sleep on top of it during my journey rather than under it, because it was August in Florida. 

Not wanting to leave town alone, I walked three blocks to the house of my best friend, Kenny. He wasn't home. I walked two houses further to the house of another friend. His name was Ronnie, and he was home. Ronnie was not a best friend kind of friend. He was just another kid in the neighborhood. Ronnie seemed like he might have been a bit of an outlaw already, but I didn't have any specifics about that; it was just a feeling. The thing I liked most about Ronnie was that he had two sisters, and both of them were pretty.

Ronnie said, "Why should I run away? I'm not mad at my mother."

"Because we're pals," I said, "and it will be an adventure."

That was all it took to convince him. Ronnie got two sleeping bags from his garage, gave one to me, and I abandoned my blanket. He didn't have any money to contribute, so we would both have to survive on my four dollars. 

Our first stop was 'Johnny's Log Cabin,' a small neighborhood market on the corner of Orange Avenue and Page Street. Johnny's Log Cabin was not made of logs, and it was not a cabin. It was a single-story concrete block building with three rooms. The front room was a combination grocery store and mini-hardware store. The back room was private and used for storage. As far as I was concerned, all the action was in the middle room, which was empty except for a regulation-size pool table that cost a quarter to play. During the summer when there was no school, if we could come up with a few quarters, my friends and I often played on that table and hung out with Johnny, the owner. Johnny only had one arm, which made him seem mysterious to ten-year-old boys. He had a dozen stories about how he lost his arm, and they were all funny. We made up a few ourselves.

From Johnny, we bought a loaf of white bread, four cans of Vienna sausages, and a small glass cutter. Johnny put everything in a paper bag. We had never seen a glass cutter before and didn't know if it would work. But if it did, we thought we might have to use it to break into car windows if we got desperate and hungry.

At the checkout counter, Johnny asked, "What's the glass cutter for?"

Not wanting to reveal specific criminal intentions, I said, "Just in case we need it."

That was enough for Johnny. He said in his southern drawl, "You boys be careful."

Ronnie and I walked a quarter mile from Johnny's Log Cabin through a small, wooded area to the railroad tracks, which ran north and south through Orlando. We didn't know how soon our parents might look for us. If we went north, we would head toward the downtown Orlando business district and lots of people. If we went south, we would move away from the city, through a less populated area. We went south, following the railroad tracks.

Walking was hard. Not only was it humid and hot, but we didn't have backpacks, so we had to carry our rolled up sleeping bags in our arms out in front of us as we walked. We each carried our own sleeping bag and took turns carrying the grocery bag. It didn’t take long for our arms to begin to ache. 

After an hour of walking, we came to a small wood-frame house built remarkably close to the railroad tracks. It had never been painted, so it was the gray-brown color of raw wood. Ancient raw wood. On the porch was a litter of six small puppies, romping and playing with each other in a free-for-all. Ronnie and I watched the puppies for a full minute. Then, after a very brief discussion, we walked up the steps to the front door and knocked. A man came to the door in shorts and no shirt. He just looked at us with no greeting. I asked, "Mister, would you sell us one of your puppies?"

"Sell one? How much are you offering?"

Ronnie chimed in. "All we have is one dollar." I'm fairly sure that was Ronnie's first lie of the day, because we had two dollars and a little change left. I didn't know that Ronnie would come up with a bigger lie soon, or that it would be our downfall.

"Ok, I'll take your dollar. Pick out whichever one you want." The man grabbed the dollar from my hand, turned and walked back into his house without waiting to see which one we chose. Didn't seem like he cared much about his puppies.

Ronnie and I quickly agreed on which puppy was the cutest, and it only took slightly longer to agree on her name. We settled on 'Runaway.'

"Come on Runaway, let's go. Runaway COME!" Maybe it was the heat, or perhaps it was our modest mental capacity as ten-year-olds, but we thought Runaway would happily leave her siblings and her boring life on a porch and join us on our glorious adventures. She wouldn’t.  

Two hours later, it was even hotter. Drenched in sweat and still walking with our arms out in front of us, we carried our sleeping bags, our bag of groceries, and now we also took turns carrying Runaway. Our arms were very close to falling off by now, and we complained to each other often.

In a few more hours, the sun would set, and we hadn't gone far from the city. As we walked south along the tracks, we stayed parallel to Orange Avenue. We knew that the Orlando city buses ran north and south on Orange Avenue, and they were cheap, at only fifteen cents per rider. We made a unanimous decision to walk back to Orange Avenue, find a bus stop, and get on the first bus that was heading south. I suppose it was not fully unanimous because Runaway silently abstained. But Ronnie and I agreed we needed to put more distance between us and a posse of parents who might come looking for us.

We were uncertain if Runaway would be allowed on the bus, but the driver stayed silent and we quickly carried her, and all our possessions, on board. It was a relief to sit for a while and not have to carry our stuff, especially Runaway, who was a bit squirmy. Better still, the bus was well air-conditioned. Even Runaway seemed to appreciate the chilly air streaming from the side vents.

Twenty minutes later, Ronnie told the really big lie. If we had known the bus's end destination was the McCoy Air Force Base, we would have pulled the cord, wrung the bell, and sprinted off the bus at one of several earlier stops. But now the bus was idling at the guardhouse at the entrance to the base. The guard on duty was on the bus, walking down the aisle and checking the military IDs of every passenger. When he got to us, we told him we didn't have military I.D.s. 

In hindsight, I suppose all we had to say was something like, 'Oh, excuse us, we don't want to go on the base. Please let us off here.' Instead of just saying that, Ronnie got inventive. Maybe it was because the guard had a pistol. To my surprise, Ronnie told the guard that Ronnie's sister was dating one of the military guys who lived on the base, and we were meeting his sister and her boyfriend on the base to have dinner together. The guard smiled at us in a friendly manner, probably sensing our nervousness. He reached out and scratched Runaway behind the ears. 

The reason Ronnie's big lie succeeded was because, like most successful lies, it was just about half true. Turned out his sister was dating a guy who lived on the base, and Ronnie could even name the guy and state his rank. After the guard had checked the I.D.s of everyone else on the bus, the guard told the bus driver to wait. He stepped back inside the guardhouse, presumably looking for the boyfriend's name in his notebook. He must have found it because he waved the bus through. That guard was a nice guy, and I hope he didn't get in too much trouble after we got caught.  

Now that we were on the base, we wanted off the base. Neither of us wanted to be in a restricted area that probably had rules we knew nothing about. We got off the bus at the first place it stopped inside the base. There was a small, wooded area nearby, so we headed straight for that, for cover. Once we went into the woods, we could relax a little. We planned to keep walking through the trees so nobody would notice us. When we got to the edge of the base, we would climb the fence and get back on the highway. We had no way of knowing that Mother Nature had a different plan for us.

Inside the woods was a small clearing. In the middle of the clearing, we saw a small skunk. The skunk had not seen us yet. Later, I learned skunks are very nearsighted, and rarely see humans until they are quite close. Ronnie and I had good vision, but neither of us had ever seen a skunk before. This skunk was our first skunk, and one funny thing about our skunk was that, not only did it look ridiculously cute, it also was hopping around ridiculously slow. But the best thing about our skunk by far was that our skunk didn't smell. After conferring we agreed that before this day, both of us thought all skunks smelled bad, all the time. We concluded maybe our skunk was too young to smell bad, like it hadn’t developed its smell-bad gland yet. Being young ourselves, and brave, and adventurous, and very stupid, we decided we should catch our skunk. Later Ronnie would claim that catching the skunk was all my idea. The way I remember it is that it was Ronnie’s idea first. Either way, we both tried to catch it.

We slowly lowered Runaway and the bag of groceries to the ground. We zipped open our sleeping bags and held them out in front of us. Ronnie circled to the left, and I went right. Then we charged the skunk at full speed.

Next, we thought we were going to die as our odor-free skunk raised its tail and sprayed us. It must have been terrified because it didn't just hit us with a light mist of skunk essence, it hit us with large droplets the size of raindrops. Only they were like acid raindrops. I thought I would be blinded forever. 

I screamed, then wretched twice, too self-involved to know what Ronnie's first reaction had been. After a minute or two, I went from no vision to blurry vision. Despite barely being able to breathe, Ronnie and I sat on the ground and cried together. Hard. A long time. Maybe fifteen minutes of serious crying. Our eyes were bright red and stayed that way all day. The odor was all over us, and it wasn't going away, possibly ever.

I'm not sure what Runaway did during the skunk rodeo, but at least she didn't run away. Fortunately, she didn’t take a direct hit, but she got some skunk odor that rubbed off our clothes when we picked her up again.

The new game plan was to get the hell off the base. That was the same as the old game plan, but this time we meant it with more vigor. We hated this place. Peeking out from the edge of the woods, we saw that the shortest way to the fence was going to involve crossing a runway. To be clear, I'm saying we would cross a runway, nothing about crossing Runaway.

We didn't see or hear the two fighter jets until they shot down the runway practically on top of us. Later, we learned the jets were F-104s, which those in the know called 'A missile with a man in it.' One of the missile men radioed the control tower that they might have hit pedestrians on the runway. We didn't think they were that close, but I guess they were travelling so fast they weren't sure. 

Out came an ambulance, running full speed with lights and siren going. Driving beside the ambulance were two open top military police jeeps, with a couple of military guys in each of them. The three vehicles stopped about thirty yards away. Two men hopped out of the closest jeep, one of them with a large German Sheppard on a leash. It was a large unhappy German Shepard on a leash. The guy with the dog shouted, "Don't run, I won't hold the dog." Or, maybe he said, "Don't run, I can't hold the dog." We didn't want to find out what he meant, so we didn't run. I think Runaway thought about running, but only briefly. 

After hardly much questioning at all, we immediately admitted we had run away from home, but we would be happy to go back. They put the three of us in the back of a jeep. It was the one that did not have the unhappy German Shepard in it. They drove us to the military police station somewhere on the base and called our parents. We were not under arrest, not put in handcuffs, and not placed in a cell, although I think that would have made a better story. Instead, the military guys made fun of us because we smelled so bad. They made us wait for our parents inside a large storage closet because they couldn't stand the smell of us. They gave us a couple of chairs which made waiting more comfortable, but it didn't make being confined to a storage closet any less humiliating. 

Ronnie's parents picked him up first, which was a streak of good luck. Ronnie wanted to keep Runaway, but his parents said no, and she stayed in the closet with me. It was a couple of hours later before my mother arrived. She was perfectly willing to take me, but she did not want to take Runaway home. Fortunately, the military guys were adamant Runaway had to go.  

It was a long silent uncomfortably ride home. Instead of being scolded, which I would have preferred, I got the silent treatment. She spoke only when we pulled into our home driveway. Then all she said was, "Go into the garage, take off your clothes, and put them in the garbage can. Then get in the bath and scrub." 

That was it. Until I said, "What about Runaway?"

"What did you call her?"

"We named her Runaway."

"She can stay in the garage until I figure out what to do with her tomorrow. Get going."

It took me four or five baths over the next few days to make a dent in the skunk smell. Runaway only needed one or two baths. 

I have two brothers and a sister. When this adventure occurred, we had an aging family cat, but no family dog. We four siblings started lobbying immediately, and eventually, it worked. We got to keep Runaway, with the only condition being that we had to change her name. My sister came up with "Pooh," as in 'Winnie the Pooh,' and it stuck. Pooh became our family pet, mostly mine, for sixteen years.

My outlaw journey began and ended in a single day, but one small matter has lingered. Even now, decades later, my older brother sometimes claims he can smell skunk when he's around me. I keep telling myself he's just teasing.