Another Day in the Country: Run away!
By PAT WICK
© Another Day in the Country
I was thinking this morning about dear old Doc, a friend of mine who I took care of for the last 15 years of his life. His name was actually Dr. Shaw, Dr. Horace Shaw, whose name tells you that he came from a certain era — the early 1900s. Horace was a popular name then.
Doc was on my mind, partly because it's been six years since he died, just short of his 92nd birthday. And also because of a book I just finished reading called "A Memory of Running."
The book is about a whole family running after a loved one, running from mental illness, running from guilt and finally running toward life. I finished the book yesterday, because I was sick and had taken myself to bed — reading was the best thing to do. So, I read and read and read myself out, right down to the last period. And then I pondered what I'd read.
That's when Doc came to mind. He had run away several times in his long life. The first was when he was only 14 years old. He worked for a lovely lady (who, by the way was President Harding's sister) doing handyman jobs and one day she asked him to clean the front porch. Young Horace, wanting to please her so much and do an excellent job, took Dutch Cleanser to the porch and scrubbed so hard that it took up a lot of the paint. When Horace's employer, whom he wanted so much to please, came to check out the job she was horrified and he was chagrined, humiliated, and embarrassed. So, he ran away from home.
He only had 97 cents when he set out walking from Takoma Park, Washington, D.C., toward Colorado Springs, Colo., where his beloved aunt and uncle had Eames Dairy Farm. That farm always had been a safe haven for a city kid and what he was most in need of, now, was a safe haven.
When Doc told me this story, I tried to imagine running away like that with less than a dollar in my pocket — I'd never had the nerve. But young Horace did and that desperate, reckless bravado set the tone for the rest of his life. From then on, he was the intrepid adventurer.
He ran away in 1923. He was in St. Louis, Mo., when he spent the last of his 97 cents on a hunk of bread. By this time everyone was looking for him — his parents, the police. He offered to wash dishes for food and he recalled with distaste the grimy, greasy dishwater that ruined even a hungry teen-ager's appetite. He walked, he hitchhiked, he walked some more, sleeping in ditches or park benches. His last ride was with a group of teen-agers in a convertible with the top down — reckless drivers they were, with one extra reckless teenager scrunched into the backseat. They dropped him at the lane to his uncle's farm.
"I've never seen such a welcome sight in my entire life," he said. "I wonder if even heaven could compare."
By contrast, I've never run away. My stance in life was hanging in, facing the music, standing steady, making calm, calculated, wise decisions — usually, and then I ran to Ramona. In today's currency exchange I had a little more than 97 cents; but not much more. I didn't just disappear, either — it was a calculated running, with plans and projected dates and calls forwarded.
Running to Ramona was not a running away. It was a running toward something. And guess who was cheering me on? It was Doc. "You should do this, Pat," he said when I found the Ramona House. "If your heart calls, you should answer."
In 2000 — the year he died — I finally ran away to spend another day in the country.
