The Devens Nursery

The first year that I lived with my parents at the House in Shirley I very rarely was taken anywhere else except to be babysat by our retired landlord. My Mother walked me to his house roughly twice a week and I stayed with him and his wife for two or three hours, almost always outside. Other than that I can remember only about a dozen trips during that year to Fort Devens. An average of one a month.

There were trips to the commissary and the PX (post exchange.) I was never allowed to go in with my parents to either one. They left me to wait in the car. That would be the trip. A fifteen or twenty minute ride to the commissary, wait in the car an hour with Koko, 5 minutes to the PX, wait in the car an hour with Koko, a fifteen or twenty minute ride home, done.

There were also trips to the Devens Nursery. I considered the Devens Nursery a new kind of Hell on Earth, different from the ones I'd got used to.

I was still going through the re-toilet training the first time I was taken there. My parents really didn't want to be seen in public with a diapered 4 year-old. They waited as long as they could stand it. But they had to go out for an evening dance, and the old retired farmer didn't want to take care of me evenings. So, not knowing any alternative, they took me to the Nursery, wearing pants over diapers. They brought extras and told the staff my problem and begged them to change me as needed. Then they left, telling me they were going to a party, but they'd be back in a "couple of hours."

I could tell time by then. I also knew a couple meant two, not eight.

They dropped me off at around seven. The institutional clock on the wall said I was still there at just before three in the AM. My parents were liars.

It was my first encounter with a mass of disinterested children, ever. The Devens Nursery was a one-story wooden structure just west of Headquarters, across the road from a big marching field. Once inside there was an administrative counter with staff desks to the left and a big room to the right where the children could be distracted with toys indoors. Beyond the big room was a hallway past bathrooms, janitorial closets and such, which eventually came to a door that opened to a yard that was corraled with the building on one side and a five foot high chain-link fence on the other three sides.

While it was still light out, all of us temporarily abandoned kids (there were at most about forty of us) were marched out to the corral and sat at picnic tables and fed graham crackers with milk. Then we were forced to nap against our wills. As it got darker, we were brought in, and made to play with toys, even though there weren't enough toys to go around. This meant that those of us who weren't bullies got to see the toys hogged by those that were, for a couple of hours, occasionally being threatened with bodily harm if we objected to the status quo.

At some point in all of this I had to go. There was an embarrassing "special" trip to a staff bathroom so one of the women in attendance could change me privately. The other kids figured out what was going on, and I couldn't talk to any of them after that.

Then we were all told it was bedtime. Curtains were set up and children were given wool army blankets and assigned to cots. It was actually long past bedtime by then for most of us. I think the staff put bedtime off as long as possible because it was a pain. Nobody wants to go to bed when they've been abandoned. You're afraid that if you drop off to sleep you'll miss the moment of your rescue. They'll come, but they won't see you because you'll be under covers somewhere, so they'll say, "must have run off," and forget about you. There was a lot of screaming and crying.

With all the rape and beatings, the concussion and all, you're probably wondering why I wanted my parents to rescue me. The truth is, they fed me, and they were the evil I knew. Very little in my experience led me to believe that my parents were unusual. To me, good parents would have been unusual, and I didn't know where any were or how to get any that I found to take me away.

They did rescue me, to take me back to the House in Shirley. Trips like that made me appreciate the isolation of that house. I didn't miss being around other children so much thanks to the occasional overdose.