There was a time at the Children's Home Society (orphanage) when we children were receiving beatings almost on a daily basis, especially when we were being taken care of by a Mr. and Mrs. Ball. He was a very cruel and harsh man who had no compassion in his heart for children, none whatsoever. This man was one mean son-of-a-bitch. Sorry, but there can be no other words to describe a man like him.
No matter how small the infractions, the children would be taken into the sewing room and beaten within an inch of their lives--and I mean within an inch of their lives. THIS MAN WAS A VERY CRUEL PERSON. Evidently he got some form of joy out of beating small children. One could see it in his eyes and in the smile on his face. As I look back on these beatings today, I think it was a sexual thing with him. Of course, we did not know about those types of things back then. After all, we were only eight, nine, and ten years old.
Finally we children could take no more of his beatings. We talked about running away together but decided that it would be better to beat him to death before he killed one of us. We all got together one night and discussed what would be the best thing to do. I will never forget my little heart beating really fast as we talked about killing him and how we would do it. I will never forget feeling my heart beating on the side of my neck. "THUMP, THUMP, THUMP," it went. I even got dizzy because I was so scared. I really didn't want to hurt anybody but I was not going to say anything at all, because I was not going to be the chicken.
On Saturday morning Mr. Ball called all of us kids onto the front porch and told us all to line up at the sewing-room door. After we lined up, Mr. Ball went into the sewing-room and closed the door behind him. We heard him sliding the big table around so that we could lay across it while he on beat us. None of us kids even spoke a word; we just stood there real quiet, staring at one another, shaking all over, all wondering if we could really kill this evil man before he killed us. But no one moved or did anything. We just stood there huddled in a tight group, all scared and horrified like.
Then the door opened and Mr. Ball called the first boy into the room and then he closed the door behind him. It was really quiet for about a minute; then we heard the boy start to scream and yell as he was being beaten. You could hear the large wooden table scraping and sliding across the floor with each and every hit.
All us boys started backing up from the sewing-room door and began moving down the hallway, still huddled in a very tight group, towards the television room at the other end of the hallway. The boy being beaten just kept on yelling and screaming, hollering and begging for us--by name--to come in and help him.
( NOTE:I will use no names other than my own.)
Then one of the older boys yelled out, "Let's go," and we all started running towards the sewing-room door, yelling and screaming at the top of our voices like a bunch of crazed lunatics or manics.
As the door opened, all of the boys grabbed hold of Mr. Ball, threw him to the floor and began beating him with their fists, ping-pong paddles and with anything that they could get their hands on. I grabbed a large pair of scissors and ran towards Mr. Ball, trying to stab him, but I could not get close enough to wound him because of all the boys who were beating on him. They were yelling over and over, "Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!" I just stood there, looking and yelling along with them to kill him, and I kept stabbing that sewing-room table, over, and over, and over as hard as I could. I must have stabbed that darn table a hundred thousand times before it was all over. Then Mr. Ball did not move anymore and he quit making those awful gurgle sounds. So the boys got up off him, closed the sewing room door and we left him for dead.
Well, we did not kill Mr. Ball, but we thought we had--and we wished we had. We watched them cart him out of the sewing-room and off to the hospital, where he was treated for many deserved injuries. I never saw him again after that day, and I thank God for small miracles. I thank God for giving us enough nine-, ten-, eleven-, and twelve-year-old little balls to save our own lives.
This was a really bad time for all of us kids in the orphanage. It is no wonder that so many of us ended up in jails and prisons. It is an absolute miracle that any of us even made it out alive. Maybe some of us survived because we hated the world so badly that we just could not give up. But the little kids that it really destroyed inside are the ones who do not think that what happened to them is important at all.
Those are the orphan kids, now adults, who are really dead inside. They just do not understand what they are missing in their lives today because of what happened to them just yesterday, and that is very sad.
Roger Dean Kiser, Sr.
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Roger Dean Kiser, Sr.