Waterloo, Iowa is a small city surrounded by hundreds of miles of farmland peppered with small towns, an oasis where rural folks can drive to a shopping mall. The Cedar River divides the city, not only literally, but also into the have and the have-nots. My brother Daniel entered adolescence on the wrong side of the river, a have-not. At age thirteen, he was consumed by the need to get a head start on adulthood. He probably questioned whether there would be a place for him, a way out of welfare. Daniel took a job at the Red Carpet club, a golf course for those people from the West side, the better side, of the river.
Without a father at home, my brother sought a man to show him the appropriate ways to be an adult man. Daniel listened intently to the words of the owner of the Red Carpet club. This man possessed apparent wealth and obvious wisdom about the whole world of Waterloo, Iowa. Daniel was told that a boy needed to work hard to succeed.
My young brother came to understand the uselessness of school; actually, anyone with sense would have surmised that education was a waste of time. Many of the gray-haired members of the city’s owning class had left school in the eighth grade, and Daniel’s boss was no exception. Daniel could not identify with any of the various people he met who valued learning in a brick building; a real man learned with the wind in his hair and the sun in his eyes.
The man who owned the golf course offered my brother the opportunity to work, and work was a boarding pass for travel upward. His boss reaffirmed the futility of reading books and sitting in classes by providing my young brother with work hours scheduled during the school day.
It took my mother a few days to realize that Daniel’s after school job was transforming into full-time employment. The school had to call her, sharing with my weary, depressed mother that her son starting to be absent on a daily basis. I sat my brother down, emphasized the importance of education for finding secure work, and I intermittently pleaded for agreement that he would continue eighth grade.
Daniel’s face reflected his doubt at first, and his wandering attention as the lecture progressed; there was a trace of smug contempt, because his foolish sister did not realize he had already secured a real job. He couldn’t tell this naïve woman that he would certainly work his way up to ownership of the golf course, because I was sold on this pointless notion of school.
Amidst the controversy created by my mother and the school about whether my brother should be working, my brother turned fourteen years old. He just wanted to work, and the law technically allowed a child of fourteen to drop out of school. As weeks passed, it became clear that Daniel had no intention of returning to junior high. He was being paid money, a tangible reward. Money was the only indication of progress toward independence my brother would believe in. Implicitly, working was a contract between Daniel and a bright future.
My mother interfered with Daniel’s master plan. She made angry calls to my brother’s boss, and tossed around the threat of calling in the local authorities. Daniel’s boss was unmoved by child labor laws, because he was convinced he was in the process of saving a poor welfare child from a life of laziness. Despite my mother’s propensity to stay in bed throughout the day, she crawled up through her depression to seek a lawyer.
Her motions toward suing Daniel’s offending boss for exploiting her son were printed in the local Waterloo Courier newspaper, of course under the cloak of anonymity for my brother’s sake. My brother’s well-connected boss was able to use his influence to set the tone of the newspaper article. My mother was an ungrateful villainess, and my brother was a hostage of both her deviance and the impractical limits of child labor laws.
Daniel was desperate to keep his grasp on the promise of self-sufficiency. In his clouded mind, he bore the burden of living with an ignorant mother. He heard rumors that the school was planning to force his attendance through legal means, bypassing the minimum age for leaving school and using the law that youth must complete eighth grade. Always resourceful, my brother designed a plan that was sure to guarantee him money, work, and security.
As the young siblings of my childhood home left for school one day, and my mother began to run errands, Daniel took his bicycle onto the highway out of town. He pedaled through heat and exhaustion, headed for California. While many young people have boarded a bus for Hollywood or hitch-hiked toward the state where nameless faces become famous, my brother had no desire to become a screen actor. In fact, he sought the very groups that are formed by the people who are discarded from the competition for stardom. They were likely to help set him up with a job and shelter. He had a friend in Utah he’d always had a crush on, too.
Unfortunately, Daniel rode only about one hundred miles of his long trip before succumbing to physical fatigue. His progress toward California had already taken him an entire day; it was the early morning hours when he reached the small Iowa city called Marshalltown, a place where folks don’t lock their houses or their car. Following the tradition of trust, a man left his van running, while he went to do banking in a small enclosure that housed an ATM. Daniel took advantage of the opportunity he encountered. He placed his bicycle in the back of the van, hopped behind the steering wheel, and drove off.
Stealing gas from stations along the freeway, and struggling with the rudimentary skills of driving, my brother proceeded several hundred miles. Daniel crossed the border between Iowa and Nebraska, and he made significant progress in the trek across the mind-numbing landscape of Nebraska. It is difficult to say what drew the attention of the highway patrol. Perhaps it was my brother’s youthful appearance, or maybe Daniel was speeding without realizing how his haste to complete the trip was impacting his driving. It is possible that the attendant at a gas station caught the license plate number of the van whose driver failed to pay for pumped gas. At any rate, my brother quickly noticed the siren and red lights behind him, and he knew that his capture would be the end result of stopping for the officer.
Daniel increased his speed until he was traveling well over 90 miles per hour. He hoped that the police officer would give up the chase, and simply let him continue on. Instead, the patrolman persistently stayed behind him. Daniel saw a freeway exit ramp, and quickly plotted an alternative escape route. With very little knowledge of how driving works, my brother attempted to turn from the exit ramp onto the intersecting highway without reducing his speed. Naturally, the van continued moving forward, traveling onto a grassy embankment, and eventually plunging sideways into a small river.
A bullhorn amplified the order given by authorities demanding that Daniel get out of the van with his hands in the air. Shaken, but unhurt, Daniel slowly climbed up through the window of the driver side door. I imagine that the police officer was shocked by just how young this elusive criminal turned out to be.
After being handcuffed and placed into the back seat of the patrol car, Daniel reluctantly admitted his name and his hometown, but he ended up amazed by the disbelief his admission created. At the same time Daniel was planning his trip west, a young boy who was both native to Nebraska and similar to my brother in appearance, had run away from home. The policemen who listened to my brother explain his story refused to believe that he was not the missing boy. Daniel was taken to a local hospital for observation, and a Sheriff arrived to take over the situation. It was the Sheriff who eventually believed Daniel, and he contacted my apprehensive mother. Arrangements were made to have my brother transported home by airplane.
This episode in my family’s history should have ended at this point, but the story continues on. Daniel was fortunate with regard to the weather conditions on the day his flight left for Iowa. The airplane my brother boarded was headed in the right direction, but storms forced the plane down at another Nebraska city. This unplanned detour left law enforcement unprepared, so no one met the plane to ensure that my brother would remain a passenger. Daniel hopped off the airplane, and he began to hitchhike his way back toward California.
Daniel believed that he had encountered a stroke of luck as a car pulled over to offer him a ride. He was mistaken, because the kindly driver was a police officer operating an unmarked car. The officer had been one of many law enforcers who were alerted to the fact that my brother had escaped. No one trusted that an airplane could safely get my determined brother back to his home state, so a representative of my hometown’s justice system drove down to collect him personally. My brother would end the month with a trip to the inpatient adolescent ward of a local psychiatric hospital, rather than accomplishing his goal of reaching religious fanatics or employment in California. His file created at the adolescent psychiatric program forewarned that without proper intervention, this boy would become a “master criminal”.
In reality, he was given probation and community service. His community service was done at the Humane Society. He was known as an excellent worker, so they hired him on after he put his time in. Eventually, he finished his high school degree from the city’s alternative high school. He worked for many years for a meat packing plant, and then moved into the job he has had for 15 years as an electrician. He never became a criminal of any sort.
