Entering the Child City

Memories of living at Mooseheart, The Child City

Entering the Child City

 

 

Comment from reader:

 

Hector " I enjoyed this trip down memory lane; I never realized the Moose Lodge had such a place. I too grew up during the sixties in Chicago's worst neighborhoods for lack of adequate funds and an inadequate father. Thanks.

 

Ruth " I like this article very much. My second husband belonged to the Loyal Order of Moose and I belonged to the auxiliary for ten or fifteen years. There is so much drinking in organizations of that kind. Some people just belong for the cheap drinks. But the organization also has some great programs, Mooseheart being the best. I'm so glad to read such a good testimonial of appreciation.

 

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The only income my mother had was welfare and my father’s social security she began receiving shortly after he passed away in October of 1961. I was twelve years old at the time. One might imagine the difficulty raising eleven children ranging in ages from two to sixteen on not much money. Wearing hand-me-downs and not having enough food in the house to feed everyone on a regular basis were the way things were in those days. Those times were difficult but we were young and resilient, thus able to cope with most anything only because we didn’t know any other way to be.

My mother got her driver’s license for the first time at the age of thirty-six so she could go out and search for a job to supplement her meager income. Her efforts in trying to hold the family together was heroic, but the reality of having less and less became more evident as time went along.

I have no doubt she had a lot on her mind, one time dealing with her problems seeking relief in an unorthodox manner. Don’t misunderstand; she was very dedicated to raising her children. But when she began dating a particular individual of less adulation, the situation at home created an unfortunate collage of emotion in her children. Besides possibly seeking financial help, it also seemed she was seeking relief from her loneliness.

 

Besides this gentleman giving the type of personal attention to her that her children could not, he seemed very arrogant and manipulative to my siblings and I, not good personality qualities to own and then openly display when getting to know someone. It was obvious to me that he was using her, a trait she seemed to ignore because she was so lonely for that kind of admiration.

 

He was just paroled from prison. At the time my mother was not aware of it. And after a few months of dating him she realized this person brought absolutely nothing to the table for her and her family. Good thing, we got word a few months later that he was back in prison " for murder.

The idea of attending Mooseheart " The Child City was brought up by my father’s side of the family. It was and remains an orphanage financed by The Moose Fraternity, back in those days a male only member organization.

 

The Moose Fraternity provides children a chance to live in a wholesome home-like environment and receive the best possible education " for free but only if your father was a member of The Moose. It’s a relative small community sitting on a thousand acres located thirty-eight miles southwest of Chicago.

It has a school campus atmosphere to it, making it conducive toward young people. Some of the children are there because they have lost one or both parents, while others were living in environments that are simply not conducive to healthy growth and development.

 

As the stakes to survive got higher and higher, my mother eventually came to terms with her plight of not being able to fulfill her motherly responsibilities. And we all agreed to pack our bags and move there, all except Connie, the oldest. She didn’t want to start over in a new high school and have to make friends all over again.

But before we got on that bus to leave our home we had become local celebrities. A photographer from the Sandusky Register, a local newspaper, came to the house one day to take pictures of the family. And within a few days a large picture that showed everyone standing along side the house was posted on the front page with a title caption that read, New Herd to Enter Mooseheart. It clearly showed a group of kids who did not know how to respond to such notoriety because not one person was smiling.

During our trip, I thought about the freckled face of Barbara Goss, a girl that lived down the street. She was about my age. She aspired to attempts at kissing me numerous times, which I disgustingly refused. I wasn’t into that kind of stuff. And I was afraid of her liking me.

And I also accepted there would be no more climbing the maple tree that stood in front of our home. Many times I would hide among its leafy branches to belly excruciatingly a loud make-believe fire engine siren that sounded like the real thing, or so I always thought. I did it just to get people across the street to step out onto their front porches to think they were hoping to catch a glimpse of a fire engine going by. But in looking back, surely they must have known it was that incorrigible goofy kid across the street making that obtrusive noise once again.

I also knew there would be no more gathering dried leaves from the tree in the back yard, crunching them up to stuff the make believe tobacco into a rolled up piece of paper to form a cigarette. I only smoked the homemade cancer ‘sticks’ when no one was around. Inhaling the harsh smoke caused me to choke and cough like I was never going to be able to stop. It was my way of attempting to act like an adult, an experiment I gave up on but only after several ‘cigarettes’. 

After arriving at The Child City to begin life anew, little did I understand how my life was going to be different. I suddenly had ‘house parents’ giving me advice and direction in my adolescent life instead of my mother who I think sometimes unconscionably fell short of that responsibility. God bless her " too many kids pulled her in too many directions at once.

 

‘Ma’am and ‘Sir’ were salutations that were demanded whenever speaking to a house parent. This respect, among with other maturing aspirations (some of which bit me in the a*s by learning things the hard way) was an emotional bridge that aided in my adjustment to a social setting for the next four years. Adolescence turned into having an ability to reason and think, thus to understand many things that would have been slower in coming if I hadn’t come to this place. I remain forever grateful to the people who aided me in becoming an adult.

 

One of my personal highlights while living there was getting my first-ever grown-up kiss from Betsy on prom night. It was nothing but a peck on the cheek but it gave me such a thrill that I was changed forever. I suddenly had a much greater appreciation for the opposite sex. I viewed girls as being pretty lame up to that point.

 

I attended drafting classes as my choice of vocation. And in my senior year I took third place in the architectural division of a drawing contest sponsored by the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, giving me a sense of great accomplishment. I envisioned a career in the drafting field.

 

Upon graduation from high school, all members of the senior class leave The Child City to begin life on the ‘outside’. Most of them had friends or relatives who assisted them when they once again have to adjust to another chapter in their lives " the chapter of adulthood. As for me, I moved in temporarily with my mother and siblings who lived in a nearby town.  

A special appreciation for Mooseheart has always remained within me for what they gave my siblings and I back in 1963, when they saved our family from a situation that was financially bleak, and where we were well on our way to severe poverty and strife.

Thank you, Dad, for being a member of the Moose.

 

The End