Mrs. Guy Kelsey
'Man Under Bed' Not Just Old Story to Kelsey Family
What used to be a standard joke now almost forgotten in its various versions -- the "man under the bed" story and warning -- came to life in a very realistic way for the Guy Kelseys Sunday morning when shoes betrayed a sleeping visitor in the spare bedroom of family home at 302 East Porter Street.The story started, Mrs. Kelsey can now "piece out," when she was awakened by the simultaneous sound of an opening back door and her husband's shaking the furnace about 1 o'clock Sunday morning. Nothing occurred to her then except the thought that Guy's television program had kept him up late.
Sunday morning went as usual in the Kelsey household. Home from church, Mrs. Kelsey set about getting the noontime dinner. She did rest a bit in the big chair by the window in the living room and, glancing up from the paper she was reading, saw a pair of shoes at the foot of the guest room bed. "Chuckle's," she thought, her mind turning at once to her grandson, Charles Patz. Guy came home, Robert came home and unexpectedly Mr. and Mrs. Julius Hooley, a brother-in-law and sister, stopped in. They all sat down for a few minutes to talk -- and this time Bobby sat in "the big chair."
"I'll never forget his face," his mother said. "When Bob saw the shoes he knew they weren't Chuckle's."
The story then came out, blue stockinged feet first. Hurried looks under the bed proved the man was not known -- that he was sound asleep on his back, with one hand, ghastly white like his face, on his chest. In the other was a beer can.
In the belief that he was dead Mrs. Kelsey called the police station and with Chief George Knight went a pulmotor squad in case it was a matter of first aid and resuscitation.
Chief Knight understood the situation at once because he had heard the District 3 broadcast that told of the escape of a mental patient, a man 28 years old, from the Dundee hospital at Dundee, Illinois, Friday. He had, information later dovetailed to show, boarded a train in Chicago, been locked up by the conductor when discovered, jumped through a window when [the] train halted at Crown Point and found asylum under the Kelseys' bed. Patrolmen Louis Kerr and Boyd Seramur took him later in the day to the state line near Dyer and turned him over the Illinois State police.
Mrs. Kelsey is grateful for the way it turned out -- she wasn't prompted either the night before or when she saw the shoes to investigate and so, perhaps, create a dilemma for herself, no one was harmed in any way, the patient is back in his right place -- and characteristic of her good heart -- "the poor man didn't have to sleep out in the cold."
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