Ruben J. Ciriacks personal page

Tot Of Three Goes A W O L,
Gets Welcome From Beltonians

BELTON, June 16--A 3-year old tot who went AWOL from his Killeen home Saturday morning and caught an east-bound bus for a sight seeing trip, found Belton a land of ice cream and soda water Saturday afternoon. The lad slept on the knee of a soldier on the bus trip to Belton, awakened at the station here at 12:30 and leisurely got off the bus to look around. The soldier thought the child was with a woman on the bus and forgot the incident until later in the afternoon.
The blue eyed child played around the bus station and attracted no attention until he asked for a candy bar. The ticket man asked him if his mother was willing for him to eat the candy. The boy replied that she was at home asleep. The ticket manager asked where his father was and he said he did not know.
City officials, were notified that a lost child was there and a policeman with a uniform came for him. The child went along, highly pleased at seeing more of the town. At the city hall he took over. He played with office equipment and consumed all the ice cream and soda water the city manager bought him.

The word spread around town that a lost child was there and several women called in wanting to keep him until his people were located.

Apparently he was not too interested in telling where home was, but under questioning said he could see the camp from his home and that his dad was a soldier who had come home on a train.
     He had the time of his life on a car ride with Frank Hamner, city manager, and was not at all concerned about Mr. Hamner's almost frantic efforts to locate his parents. [ Another Frank Hamer, without the 'n', was one of the last of the honest, two fisted lawmen of the old west. He was one of four brothers who served as Texas Rangers. There's a new display at the Texas Rangers Hall of Fame in nearby Waco dedicated to Frank. He's the one who stopped Bonnie & Clyde in 1934. ]
     Finally Mr. Hamner made a door to door inquiry in the business section to see if anyone recognized the lad. The soldier upon whose knee he had slept was in one of the places of business and the holiday began to draw to a close. Killeen officials were contacted and said a child had been reported missing.
     The ride to Killeen in Fire Chief Hamner's red car had lost novelty and excitement and the traveller was asleep on the back seat before they got out of the city limits. His older brother was on hand at the bus station at Killeen to receive the sleeping lad.

My mother, pregnant with my twin sisters (who were born 80 days later in Riverside, California) slept through it all. Our family had just traveled cross country from Georgia to Texas, staying at various motels along the way - at the age of 3 1/2, Killeen was just another of those stops to me -- almost all of my first 3 years were spent traveling through the south from one army camp to another while my mother tried to keep up with my father as he trained and trained and trained for WWII duty - (the army may have been 'training' quite a few family men to keep them and the bad publicity associated with their deaths away from the fighting) --- I doubt if I ever knew where I lived until we finally settled in Riverside, California from July 1946 to July 1950.
In Killeen, we lived in a small shack of a house kitty-corner from the fire station (and municipal building). According to my oldest brother (the one referenced in the last paragraph who remembers it, too), our mother had apparently been taking a nap while all this was happening - us 4 boys tiring her out very quickly each day, no doubt.
Immediately adjacent to our side yard were the rear doors of the various shops comprising a mini-mall which faced the next street away from the main street on which the municipal & fire house building was located. I remember that the front area, where the bus stopped, had a wooden plank sidewalk. One of the shops contained barbers, one of whom would tease me by shaking a straght razor toward me when I got too close to peek inside the rear door to see what was happening.

I remember getting on the bus with other passengers without anyone asking whether I was with the soldier in front or the woman behind - everyone trusted each other more in those days. I very faintly remember the bus station and ride with Mr. Hamner but do remember the city office with an almost 3 foot high wooden, gated, L-shaped balustrade that kept visitors outside the open area full of desks and files - all very dark, wooden and impressive to my first witnessing of such. (Movies of the day had similar scenarios, but those movies were in 'black and white' - seeing it all in real life color was impressive.)
The office was even probably more impressive because of the ice cream, soda and who knows what other sweets were provided to me as inducements to get me to tell them where I lived - those worried, anxious folks not realizing that I wasn't anywhere long enough to know where I lived at that stage of my life. The life of constant traveling during my first 3 years was an adventure that pretty much made me fearless of strangers and new situations that survives as a greater part of my character to this day.

Another article is notable for the way the last name is spelled. It comes from the November 24-30, 1993 issue of our weekly Milwaukee Times newspaper. It also indicates somewhat obliquely that this great nation of ours has been ignoring children for too many decades. We've been especially negligent about how families raise children and about how the rest of us (DO NOT) support those families.

Website link/location/URL: http://Ben.Ciriacks.com or http://www.jamrent.com/ben/index.html