My Travels as a Teenager

This is a true and factual story that has been written and experienced by the author beginning at age thirteen through age seventeen. He was notorious for running away from home. He traveled in the most unconventional ways, such as hitchhiking, hopping freight trains, and riding his bicycle from Dayton, Ohio to the interior of Windsor, Ontario, Canada. He traveled thousands of miles, from Ohio to Florida, Florida to New York City, and numerous other states. He lived and worked in New York City by himself for about three months before returning home. He had a very frightening and possibly fatal experience while traveling to Kentucky from Ohio with two young female friends. He experienced first hand the travails of hunger, going days without sleep, no place to lie his head down at night time, narrowly escaped with his life from a building fire, traveled unknowingly with a counterfeiter of U.S. currency, interviewed by the F.B.I., and met some wonderful and kind farmers and their wives on many occasions. My sincere thanks to all of them. This book is dedicated to Rita J. Karns, my loving and devoted wife and companion for more than fifty-two years.