578
FRANK CONROY
a milk shake at the soda fountain in the Administration building.
I roamed freely through the public rooms. In a scaled-down bowling
alley I used to set up the pins for myself after each frame. Sometimes
there were movies in the auditorium. I'd wait for a group of boys to
come_across the lawn behind their counselor and tag along at the
end. I remember a conversation I had one day before a Gene Autry
picture with a boy who attracted my attention because I thought he
looked exactly like myself.
"Who're you?" he asked. "Are you new?"
"No. I'm Mr. Trudeau's son."
"He takes our cottage at night sometimes. He's O.K. He never
hits you."
"Do the others?"
"Some of them."
(Whistles and applause as Mr. Miller, the director of the school,
climbs on stage to make a few announcements before the picture.
I laugh at the wildness of the audience. They're having a great
time.)
"I'm going home next week," the boy says.
"If
you're around
you'll see the car. It's a red Buick."
"We have a Ford."
"My pop's a policeman. He carries a gun."
(More whistles and cheers as the house lights go down and the
picture begins. I watch the boy. There's no way to tell anything
is
wrong with
him.)
The Southbury School affected me more deeply than I realized
at the time. Most immediately
it
was a place in which being different
was a good thing. I was different only because I wasn't feebleminded.
My general loneliness in the world was dramatized microcosmically,
in terms favorable to myself.
I believed I was intelligent. For a long time that thought had
been important to me. At the school I felt for the first time that my
intelligence was worth something to someone else besides myself.
Here was a huge organization, an immense, powerful world existing
for the inmate, but existing for me as well. I was the other extreme.
At last I'd found someplace where my only possession would be rele–
vant! (To picture myself as being aware of all this would be a
mis-
