During the time I lived at the Tiffin Jr. Home, it was a standard that at approximately the age of 12 a young boy became a big boy. He shed his knickers and black stockings and wore the badge of a big boy, blue overalls and wide belt fastened around his middle. While I still wore knickers and black stockings, I became a big boy at a much earlier age. How?

I was very much a loner at Tiffin. In fact, I was so much so that I remember very few names of children who were my age in those long ago days. I remember Jack and Gene Tolson, Billy Brown, Frankie Neel, J. C. Henson, Billy Blackstone, and a few others. Often, I have tried to remember the three older boys who initiated me to the level of "Big Boy" at the tender age of eight the summer and autumn of 1942.

During warm weather, I often walked along the creek that ran through the home grounds. There was a wild grape vine that formed a bower over the path which ran most of the way to the gravel pit. I often went there to get away from the numerous children that swam and played on the play grounds. On this day, I had been swimming at the pool, but decided I would trek the path. I had never been as far as the gravel pit before, but when I heard some boys swimming on ahead of where I was walking, I sprinted up to the gavel pit.

One of the boys saw me and said, "Get back where you belong little boy." I told him I wasn't going anywhere. He swam over to the edge of the pit, but couldn't get up the bank to chase me. Two of the boys who were in swimming got out on the other side and began chasing me. I ran back to the swimming pool just as they caught up with me. Two of the boys grabbed me and threw me into the deep end of the pool.

I struggled out using the dog paddle method most of the younger children were accustomed to using. They let me swim out but caught me and took me back to the deep end. Before they threw me in this time, they told me to swing my arms and kick. In I went and did as I was told, but each time I swung an arm, my face would go under water. Then, I would revert to dog paddling. The third time I was thrown into the pool, one of the boys jumped in with me and held me up to show me how I should swim. He stayed in the pool with me until I could execute a good showing for his effort. From that day until this, I can swim. Yet, it bothers me to get my head under water.

From then until the following autumn, these boys would come by and take me with them when they were going to get into any kind of meanness. In late autumn they came by and said they were going to the apple orchard. I tagged along until we came to a fence that enclosed a Jr. Home neighbor's orchard. I was told to climb up and throw them some apples. They had filled their pockets and the tops of their bib overalls with apples until a shot gun went off and the seat of my pants began to burn. The three older boys ran like the wind. I was left with the neighbor who shot me. Although he verbally abused me with language I had never heard before, I wasn't afraid of him. I asked him, "What did you shoot me with?" "Salt and pepper, and it will be worse the next time I catch you in my apple orchard."

The next time I saw the boys, they asked me to go sledding with them over behind the grade school hill. I told them that was where the big boys went to sled. I was told that I was a big boy and I could go anywhere that a matron told me not to go. I still wore my knickers and black stockings, but from that time on, I considered myself a big boy. I went back to the Kentucky mountains June of 1943. The swimming pool opened a short time before I left. There were the three boys and I was the only boy my age who was allowed to swim in the deep end. I had two older boys who told the lifeguard I was a big boy. The life guard was the third boy I found swimming in the gravel pit the summer of 1942.