My Life in St. Anne's Orphanage

I was a little boy in the 4th grade. I went to Middlesex Avenue School and lived on Gordon Street which was half way between Lake Quinsigamond and what we think of as "Grafton Hill". In the summer we would wrap our bathing suit in a towel and walk to the lake with our friends to swim or go to Lake Park to play baseball. This was the year before I had a paper route;that is, made money delivering the Worcester Evening Gazette. That had to wait until grade 5.
There was a young girl who lived at the top of Gordon Street by the name of Jeanny Benoit. Jeanny was from what we thought of as a very strict French-Canadian family. She went to Saint Joseph's parochial school and did not associate with the other kids although she was friendly enough. (The school she went to said, "Fils" on one side and "Garcons" on the other.) One day as Jeanny was walking up the hill I asked her where she disappeared to each summer because from June to September she was nowhere to be seen around the neighborhood. She stopped and replied, "Oh, I go up to St. Anne's Orphanage. It is great up there. You can play baseball, AND THEY GIVE YOU ORANGES!"....."They give you ORANGES!!!" I was astounded. This was something I just had to tell my mother about. I could not remember when I had seen an ORANGE for some time.... You must remember, there was a war on and fresh fruit was very hard to come by. Most of it was going to the troops, and we got what was left over. Rationing, ration books, and shortages were part of the culture. To a child, an ORANGE was pure joy. At this time, my mother was working in a war factory named Cornell Dubilier making radio condensers for the war effort. I counted the minutes until she got home to tell her what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go.
When she got home, I related the story to my mother and she had a good laugh, but I would not relent. I teased and teased. Finally she relented. Why in the world she ever did I will never know! I am glad she did because it turned out to be one of the great lessons of life. She sat me down at the kitchen table and explained the plot to me. She said she would try to get me into the orphanage for a period of two weeks and that she would come to visit me at the end of a week but I could not come home until the two weeks were up. I agreed immediately. My mother telephoned St. Anne's Orphanage and cooked up a story. She told them she was going into the hospital and had nobody to watch her little boy!!. They said they would do it for $7.00 a week and a total of $14.00. Good Lord. They took that $14.00 back out of my hide. What an experience I had in front of me...TO BE CONTINUED