Did you ever run away from home?

[Batesmotel]

Found this picture of the first time I ran away. Well, mom kicked me out. I packed my wagon, she locked the doors and I split. Apparently she was shocked a couple hours later when she found out I really left. They had the whole neighborhood out looking for me in the dark. I tried to get to a friends house but took the wrong street which was led to a bunch of dead end residential streets. I got stuck. I was close, just turned one street to soon. This was not the last time. 

[tous]

Keds, Converse or P.F. Flyers?

[Huaco Kid]

Foosball table?

[Huaco Kid]

We were allowed to.

Disappear into the woods for several days at a time, during the summer.

No matter how many canned goods or fishing poles we took, "They'll be back when they're hungry enough."

[Batesmotel]

5 minutes ago, tous said:

Keds, Converse or P.F. Flyers?

Usually Keds or whatever knock off was at K-Mart. 

[Batesmotel]

2 minutes ago, Huaco Kid said:

Foosball table?

It was keeping the BB Gun hidden in the underwear. 

[tous]

I didn't run away, but I was well-known for my occasional walk-abouts.

I'd head out the door in the morning and just start walking, usually in a direction I hadn't tried before.

It got so that the neighborhood knew about me and called my mother to tell her where I was.

<--- usually Keds; black, high tops only

[janice6]

 

When my mother was with us, I would go camping almost each Summer weekend around 15 miles or so out of town.  She would make sure I had the correct provisions and tell me to be careful.   Coming home, she would always ask me if I had a good weekend.  I always did.  I liked being alone and independent.  She made me this way - God bless her!

I would disappear Saturday morning and pick a highway.  I would hitchhike till Sunday morning and turn around to go home. 

Along the St. Croix river I was always picked up by the Minnesota Highway Patrol.  They would ask what I was doing and I would tell them hitchhiking.  They would tell me of the perils of hitchhiking and then give me a ride to the next best place to get a ride. 

I often did this and I got to look forward to the Minnesota Highway Patrol cars.  They were some of the best people I would meet in my travels.

I never had a bad experience, only sometimes when they would have to let me out on a desolate piece of highway.  I always made it home and when I walked in not a soul would ask where I had been.  Of course, this was after my Mother left us so it wasn't unusual that no one cared.

[tous]

This was back in the day where every mom in the neighborhood could yell at you or invite you in for a sandwich if you looked hungry; all kids where their kids.

If you were playing at someone's house and it came around supper time, they just set another place after calling your mom.

If it got dark, often a parent or older kid would walk you home.

We had epic sandlot baseball and football games.

Sad that those days are gone forever.

[Huaco Kid]

My friend's Dad told us of when they jumped a train to go downtown (which they often did).

They'd party around and hitch back, or find a friend to take them home.

But they once miscalculated and the train didn't slow down until, like, Minnesota.

He worked up the guts to call home, but Dad hung up on him.

They picked potatoes for a couple weeks for train fare, and pretty much only ate potatoes the whole time.

When he walked in the door, Dad only said, "You back?"

To that day, he wouldn't eat potatoes.

[janice6]

In a similar vein. 

My wife came from a very poor family.  Her dad drank his paycheck up on the way home.  Her mother never had enough money to go the week. Often she would have to beg the grocer for food for her family. 

As a result of this environment, my wife was very submissive - She gave up on confrontation.  She couldn't handle it.  Her mother cared for me.  I don't know why, but my wife said her mother saw something in me she liked.

That said.  When we married, I have spent our whole 67 (almost 68, in a month or two) years making my wife my equal.  I tell her I don't want a slave, I want her to be with me because she wants to. 

So I simply give her money each chance I get.  She has almost $1,000 in her purse today.  She asks me why I give her money?  I tell her to prove to her that she is not her mother.  And also to give her the means to leave me if she chooses to.

I want to know that she is with me by choice, and not by need.  I love her to death, but I want an equal, not a servant!  Today she is the most fun to go out to dinner with.  She can keep up with my teasing and has responded with a loud, "*******", a time or two.  My response is always a good laugh and a caress.  I'm proud she wont take BS from me or anyone else.

I tell her it's "bus money!".  Enough money to take her so far away from me she won't have to think of coming back.  I love her to death.  I know she's with me by choice, not by need.

[Batesmotel]

46 minutes ago, tous said:

This was back in the day where every mom in the neighborhood could yell at you or invite you in for a sandwich if you looked hungry; all kids where their kids.

If you were playing at someone's house and it came around supper time, they just set another place after calling your mom.

If it got dark, often a parent or older kid would walk you home.

We had epic sandlot baseball and football games.

Sad that those days are gone forever.

I work with a childhood friend. I still call his mom, mom. She is in her 80s. She still tries to feed me when I go over. It was a great time to be a kid. 

[Al Czervik]

Looks like my usual load out for "running away."  I'd load up the Radio Flyer with some canned goods, water, my Nylon 66, a few thousand rounds of .22, a change of clothes, flashlights, and a blanket, a shovel, some tp, and head out.  It was about 6-7 miles to the nearest real road.  I never made it that far, but I had a few provisional forts hidden in the woods that I'd hang out at for a couple days.  

Sometimes, I just hid out in a barn for a day or two.

If it was a critical time of the year, pops would find me post haste and get my ass on a tractor, combine, swather, or post hole digger.  There was no running away from that.

[Valmet]

I don’t think I ever did. Talked about it a time or three, but never pulled the trigger. 

[Wyzz Kydd]

Several times. I lived in a treehouse in a friends yard for a few weeks, lived in the gas station where I worked for a few weeks and lived out of my car for a while. Skipped 40+ days of school my senior year and was told to leave the day I turned 18, so I joined the Navy and didn’t step foot into my parents home again until I was almost 30.

I’ll be sixty next week and still will not sleep under the same roof as my father.

[DAKA]

I never really "ran away from home" but I did ride my bike from Brooklyn to Lindenhurst LI (40+ miles) to grandma and grandpa's one morning when I got pissed at my parents (Took all day)

I think I was about 10 

They had to come and bring me back...it was a long trip on Sunrise highway 

[minderasr]

11 hours ago, tous said:

Keds, Converse or P.F. Flyers?

We were too poor for the fancy labels.  So we got a Converse All-Star knock-off from Kinney Shoes called NBAs.  Remember when PF Flyers could make you run faster and jump higher?

I never really ran away, but did get kicked out a few times as a kid.  My father was mean and stubborn.  Guess I can be too, so we clashed...a lot.  Usually crashed at a friend's house until I got the "all clear" from Mom.

[Maser]

I didn't have to run away.  I could pretty much come and go as I please so long as the cops don't catch me at night.  At 17 I ran away for good with my 1 year old son and my wife (girlfriend at the time) soon followed after she turned 18.  I never looked back. 

[railfancwb]

There is a difference between being a sperm donor and a father.

And not all egg suppliers are mothers even if they give birth.

I remember being very disturbed by “Honor Your Mother” signs on churches when the “mother” who ran a carload of her small children into a water-filled quarry was still prominent in the news. 

[Walt Longmire]

As a kid I ran away a lot but usually came home the same night. When I was a teenager, I would disappear for days on end with no explanation. Usually staying with a friend. One of my long time boyhood friends lived mostly alone by the time we were Freshmen. His mother died when we were very little and then his dad started dating a woman that lived a couple hundred miles away. We rarely ever saw him (the dad) after grade school.

[misterfox]

One morning before breakfast my father said that I had to have my hair cut before he got home from work, 'or else'.

Or else what?

You'll see.....

I didn't want any more abuse, so I spent the next week and a half floating between differenet friend's houses....

Eventually, my mother found out where I was and said it was safe to come home.

Nothing was ever said about my hair, or my 'absence'.

[Mrs.Cicero]

I was 3.  It was 9PM in the middle of winter in Cleveland, OH.  I packed my itty bitty suitcase with my Weebles, grabbed my security blanket, and walked out the door into the snow barefoot and dressed in a flannel nightgown.  My mother thought it was so funny, she took a photo.  Then I was informed my bed was warmer than sleeping in a snow bank and I could run away tomorrow if I still wanted to then.  By then I had gotten over whatever my snit was about and I didn’t pack again til I was 7.  LOL.