Run Eddie Run

By Eddie Clyde

The author has been through a lot of pain regrets disappointments and loneliness but after all of this there becomes hope land love for everyone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jun 9, 2020
• ISBN: 9781663200846

Eddie Clyde

Eddie Clyde is a truthful trustworthy individual as well as a caring person willing to help and give encouragement to everyone in this life. He is a positive person and he truly believes that nothing is impossible. 5/12/20: I'm writing this book for an example for others like boys and girls who have been in similar roles. Some girls as well as boys have been traumatized not knowing who their biological parents are and perhaps feeling lost or even suicidal. Back in those days you were not told a lot who your real parents were and that made it more difficult for the individual. Not all came out like that but yes it was a conundrum for many also. So my advice to all is hopefully you all have benefitted from this ordeal and have kept your sanity but most importantly that you have God to trust and believe. He loves each and everyone the same so whatever is taking place in your life keep the Faith.

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Copyright © 2020 Eddie Clyde.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-6632-0085-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-0084-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020909441

iUniverse rev. date: 05/20/2020

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

1

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Extraordinary how time goes by so quickly. It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was living on the outskirts of Toronto in a town called RR1 New Market Ontario. It was mostly farms.

I would have been around 8 or 9 when I was placed in this foster home. I really didn’t know too much about farming, but that didn’t seem to matter to the people who put me there. They just wanted to place me somewhere as quickly as possible.

I remember being a shy and sad child. I was hurt easily, so therefore, I cried a lot. I can remember that each time I went to bed, I would pray not to cry the next day. It always bothered me, thinking I was a sissy or maybe just a weakling and could never stop this.

On this farm, I was assigned many chores. For example, I was told to go to the well with two pails, fill them up and bring them back to the house without spilling any water. That was a big and heavy chore to do.

The parents had two or three big boys who were muscular and strong. One of them saw me carrying the water, and I was spilling so much that by the time I got back to the house, half of the pails were empty. One of the boys turned around and kicked me in the behind so that I doubled over in pain. I tried so hard not to cry so that nobody would see that I was a sissy.

The boys would say I did something they didn’t like, pull me over to this electrical fence and force my hands onto the fence. I cried for a long time that day. It was just a mean family.

Even at that young age, I ran away from that foster home. I was on a main street hitch-hiking. It wasn’t long before a truck driver pulled up and asked, Where are you going, son?

I said, To the city, sir, to visit my aunt.

Hop in, he said, and away we went.

Of course, the police were out looking for me, as well as Children’s Aid. It wasn’t long before I was apprehended and taken back to the shelter.

This shelter was for boys and girls. The boys’ section was on one side of the street and the girls’ was on the other side. Once you were placed in the shelter, it was up to your worker to get you into another foster home.

I was in a total of thirty-nine foster homes before the age of 12. There were a few already before this one where I ran away. Sometimes I left a foster home because there wasn’t enough room; some were temporary and some were moving out of the city.

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My name is Eddie. I was born on May 25, 1939. It was the day the king and queen came to Toronto to name the Queen Elizabeth Highway. I had a twin sister who was named after the queen. I was named after King Edward.

This one particular night, my mom was on her way to play bingo, and an awful fight broke out between Mom and Dad. My mother had three sisters who were our aunts, so while my parents were fighting, my aunt was holding me and my sister, one in each of her arms.

Then there was this bang on the door, and the police and the Children’s Aid people came to take me and my sister out of that environment. My sister and I became wards of the court, which authorized Children’s Aid to take us and put us into foster homes.

They had a medical doctor evaluate how we were physically. It turned out that my sister was not too bad, but I was diagnosed as having rickets. I was completely undernourished, and my legs were very wobbly. Apparently, it took quite a while to get me on my feet.

I have been told that from this age until I reached the age of 8 or 9, I was in fifteen to twenty foster homes. There are very few that I remember. I always remember the bad ones. But know that there are some good ones in my story too.

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I was playing outside in this sandbox on the grounds of the shelter. Workers would come over from their office to either see a staff member or one of their boys. My worker was a real likeable man. He would take me and sometimes two of us to this restaurant he called the Quick and Dirty, for whatever reason. He would buy me a butterscotch sundae every time we went there and of course talk about how I was adjusting in this place.

This particular day, when I saw him coming over, I thought for sure he was going to tell me that he had a placement for me. Not so, he said to me. Not at this time, Ed.

I began to tell him I was sick and tired of this place and that I wanted out of there.

He said, I am still looking for you as he was walking away.

For some reason, I was so upset that I picked up some stones and started throwing them at him. He turned around, and all I could say to him was, If you are having such a hard time finding me a place, then why not adopt me and be my daddy?

All he could say was, "I really wish I could, Ed.

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Eventually, he found a placement for me. It was 1945, right around when the Second World War was ending. This was a good home, and I stayed with these people until I was 10 or 11. Then I had to return to the shelter. The daughter of that family was getting married, and her husband was moving in with them. There wasn’t enough room for me.

On weekends, the boys in the shelter had visitors coming to see them. To my surprise, it turned out that it was their parents coming to visit them. One day, I was upstairs getting dressed when this kid yelled up at me and asked if I was coming down. I yelled back, Yes.

It wasn’t long before he yelled up to me again, calling my first and last name, and said, When are you coming down?

Before I answered him, I ran down the stairs. When I got to the bottom, a woman grabbed my arm and asked, Is your name Eddie? She added my last name, and I said yes. It turned out this was my aunt.

She asked me if I would like to know where my mom and dad lived. Full of excitement, I said yes. She wrote the address down on a piece of paper and told me to hide it.

When the weekend was over, my first reaction was to get a hold of my worker and tell him the good news. He took me to the restaurant we went to and again got me my favourite butterscotch sundae. Right away, he wanted to know what was on my mind.

I began to tell him, but he didn’t have very good news for me. He basically told me that he had read my file when I was 6 months old, and all he could say was, It’s not a good idea, Ed. I asked him why, and he replied, They will hurt you—not physically, but they will let you down in such a way it will give you a different opinion of your parents. So I would advise you strongly, Ed, to stay away from your family.

Being the age that I was, it didn’t matter what he said. My mind was already made up.

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We all had to have rest periods, like a nap in the afternoon after lunch. The staff would take you to a room and lock the door with their skeleton key.

This one day, I wasn’t feeling like a nap. As I sat staring out the big window in my room, I could see the girls’ shelter on the other side, and I happened to notice a girl waving. Right away, I started waving back. This went on for a while until the staff came by and unlocked our doors to come downstairs.

I was telling a boy what happened, and he said, Well, you know, they come over for their meals. Get in line and see if you can recognize who it was.

I thought that was a great idea. So at the supper hour, I waited, and sure enough, there she was. I looked at her; she smiled back and just walked by me.

Sometime later, she was attending school upstairs here in the shelter. Right away, not letting on about anything, I asked the staff members if I could go to school, and they agreed.

The next day, I attended school, and there she was. I quickly sat behind her and, at times, pulled on her pigtails. Somehow the teacher saw