Taking It To The Streets

Her name was Barb and she took me off the streets in New Orleans and I spent a very interesting twelve-fifteen hours with her before she dropped me back where she found me with sixty bucks. I was to find out what "being on the streets" really meat. Up until this point in my life I had not had this experience. I would have it many more times before I was finished trying to destroy myself. Old Barb also gave me two phone numbers, friends of hers she said, older women who would "Take care of me." She lied. I tramped the streets and the bars of New Orleans for a week, getting dirtier and scroungier by the day. Finally, I used my old ace-in-the-hole when things got tough . . . I left it behind me and found myself on the highway, thumb out, headed west.

The week on the street was beginning to settle some unknown, until then, problems. That I had violated parole was a given, but until about the seventh day trying to hook up with some woman to get me out of the mess I was in, I hadn't understood that I was, once more, a wanted man. This time there would be no doubt that when they caught me where I was going, back to the joint. In the back of my mind I almost welcomed it. I used to wonder why men kept coming back time and time again, but I was beginning to see one reason why.

Security. Flat out security. Inside you are given a bed, such as it is, shelter and feel, such as it is. The only thing you have to do is try to stay out of trouble and not get yourself hurt, or killed. Some, I was beginning to see, were willing to take that chance for the security, because life on the outside can be mean and troublesome.

As I thumbed out of New Orleans I thought of Marionette and my daughter. I wondered a lot about them, and finally made up my mind that she had been right back in Memphis to not venture back in my arms. I had nothing to offer her and my child. It looked to me like I was well on my way to become an out-and-out bum. This was nothing like I dreamed of when I left the little town of Taylor, Arkansas and joined the Air Force.

Tomorrow . . . Midland, Texas and California . . . Keeping on chooglin' . . .

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

Paroled into Hell

Haha!!! That's kind the way I felt after I got to Taylor. Mother and daddy and Steve met me when I walked out of the joint a free, but troubled man. The tension in the house I grew up in was almost palatable after we got there.

I know now that a lot of my problem was paranoia on my part, and it all had to do with the fact I thought everyone in Taylor knew about me being adopted. Adopted is a pretty convenient word, I don't think there was anything legal about how mother got me OR my other brothers, but that's done, no use going there.

Paranoia or not, I had major problems with Taylor. I imagined a lot of things, I am sure, people couldn't even look at me without me thinking bad things. Looking back on it I realized what an idiot I was, but still, to this very day, I can't understand why someone, anyone didn't tell me who my mother was. Especially after an incident which happened in the tenth grade when I wrecked the refrigerator because they wouldn't tell me anything but lies. Anyway, I was back home. But not for long.

Mother told me that Marionette was still in Memphis and had a job at the Methodist Hospital as a receptionist. Visions of what had happened to us in Memphis flared up and for a day or so I was angry, but my thoughts turned to Paula and I decided to take off up there to see what could be done to rectify the situation. Nothing could be done, I found out. We were already divorced, she'd gotten that done while I was in the joint. We did talk, but it was obvious she wasn't interested in trying to patch things us. I don't think we could have patched things up, it was only a pipe dream of mine, I suppose. I had to leave Memphis without seeing Paula . . . That hurt.

During those days whenever something hurt I left it. I did this time too, although I knew that leaving would be breaking my parole and I would probably be going back to prison, I . . . did . . . not . . . care at the time and lit out for New Orleans, I liked what I saw there when we took our Senior Trip there . . .

Tomorrow . . .

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

Chapter 40

If there was anything which could make me feel worse that I already was while I was at El Reno, was a visit from Taylor. There were two, maybe three such visits, and although I suppose I should have been grateful they cared enough about me to visit, it was really like a dark cloud hovering over my head after they wrote and said they would be coming up there. Each day I found myself becoming more tense, allowing it to spill over to those around me. It was a normal thing for inmates to have those kind of feelings, for whatever reason, somehow news or visits from home always elicited some kind of overreaction. I am quite sure that my caseworker at El Reno had told my parents that visitation from them would go a long way in determining how soon I would be released. I say this because it is true, and also because of the way my mother acted when she would visit. Georgia Orean Bolton was a vivacious, talkative woman normally, never one to hold back her feelings to anybody. But when they came to see me she actually became almost mute. In the book I describe that unnatural behavior of her because she was in a situation where she could not take center stage in a room full of other people. No on there wanted to hear her views on anything, they were there, like her, to visit someone. To not be able to project her persona, wherever she might be, was a huge comedown for her. The visits was the only time in my memory that my daddy actually did more talking than she did. The one bright spot in the visits? They brought Steve, he would be around five-years-old by then and already I could begin to see the hero-worship her would have for me during his formative years.

After that Saturday visit, the next day I was so wired up about it that I went into the yard and found "my" spot,, away from most of the milling inmates and lay flat on the grass and stared into the Heavens. At some point during my incarceration I found that if I lay on the ground and stared up into the sky for a while I would be able to chase what demons were giving me problems. It was a strange phenomena . . . The vast immensity of the sky, with clouds forming and reshaping into themselves seemed to allow me to push aside negative thoughts and become as one with myself, which given my paranoia was no easy chore. But it always worked and I have often wondered, why, later on in my life when things were "getting to me" that I never found that spot of ground somewhere and challenged myself to come back to reality like I used to do in the joint . . . I would do the same thing when I went to another prison later on, Lompoc, for parole violation.

Chapter 41 coming up . . .

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

My Mind Shifted

Pretty good likeness of how a person can feel when he feels it all slipping away from him. That happened, or almost happened to me in El Reno. I'd been there over a year when something happened to send me down that slippery and dangerous road of despair and thinking desperate measures. I wanted out and was thinking about getting out my own way! This pressure to escape devoured me for a couple of intense weeks, and I honestly believe I was about ready to just hit the fence and crawl through the barbed wire, the hell with the rifles aimed at me, I WANTED OUT!

It all came to a head one day and I was saved by books. When I almost was at the end of my tether, I found myself in the prison library and with the Russian classic, Crime and Punishment in my hands. It took me weeks to read the damn thing, but during that reading I found out something about myself, for I was not unlike the main character in the book, I tended to punish myself for what I had done. Maybe not as much as Raskolnikov, but I felt some compassion and understanding of the beleaguered murderer. I think the author tried to give the impression that man would punish himself far worse than the state could, and that I do not believe. But at the time, that was the perfect book for me and it started me on a life-long obsession of reading and eventually to me actually trying my hand at writing.

Along about this time was when I received the divorce papers and I let it bother me more than it should, maybe, but now that I was where I was I was in need of support. Still, after I let it bother me for a few weeks I realized it was for the best. Marionette and I should have never married. Like so many other couples we thought marriage was the cure all for all of our life's problems, we didn't understand until too late that marriage would only add to our problems. Problems what needed two people working hard together to make it work. Marionette and Jerry Pat were not those hard working people.

Life in the joint wasn't great, but I kept my nose clean, except for that one time with Davis and by the last chapter was in the semi-honor unit. I still wanted out, but through the proper channels, not hitting the fence like a crazed bull . . . Tomorrow . . .

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

Doing Time . . . Not Funny

The days roll along slowly when you are inside, none of them roll along fast enough, but such is the life of a convict who wants to breathe the free air. Chapter 38 dealt with some the day-to-day experiences I had while inside. Basically, the whole time I was locked up it was boring. It is difficult to write about boredom, so I picked out a couple of incidents that happened. Surviving in prison, even a medium security one like El Reno has a lot to do with attitude. You need an attitude, but if you carry that attitude too far there is always someone who will attempt to change it. There is a delicate balance of protocol inside, once you overstep or stumble, the wolves will have you for din-din. Except for the constant pressure on you to watch your back, doing time involves a lot of boredom. You are regemented as to when you sleep, awake, and eat, you find yourself waiting, waiting, waiting for your daily routine. When it is disrupted you feel misplaced and scared. I can understand why people keep coming back to prison, there is an order there which is missing in their lives. I understand, because I was paroled twice and twice I came back because of various reasons, but basically because I could not live in Taylor, Arkansas and subsciously I guess I, too, missed the regimentation. One would wonder if I liked regimentation so much why didn't I adapt to the Air Force. Good point and I think it was because I had just left home and wanted to party, party, party . . .

The divorce papers were a downer and put me in a funk for quite a while. I'm very surprised I didn't just snap from that news which was piled atop all the normal day-to-day pressures of being a convict. But I didn't, to my credit, and after awhile I accepted the legal process as something that was inevitable. But then I began to think about my daughter, Paula. I was gone when she was born so I had no idea what she looked like, and although later, after I was paroled I got to see a few photos of her mother had. I truly didn't expect Marionette to not divorce me, but things such as that tend to break the will of people who are locked away and are without anyone they can go to to talk about it and for comfort.

Short post again, but I'm saying what needs to be said without giving much away . . . Tomorrow . . .

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

El Reno

I was twenty-years-old when I walked through the barbed-wire fences which surrounded the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in El Reno, Oklahoma. I didn't just walk into the place of confinement, I strutted in with a HUGE chip on my shoulder, daring anyone to remove it. I am happy to relate to you that no one did. I wasn't all that bad, but I projected myself to be. If you can carry off your persona of a don't-fuck-with-him-because-he'll-hurt-you, doing time comes a whole lot easier. I had a fight the first day I was there. Well, not exactly a fight, a fight means that two, or more people are duking it out. No, what happened that day was over after the first punch. Not because I was so bad, but because there was some outside help in putting a stop to the misunderstanding. And misunderstanding was all it was, which is so true of most of the problems men have behind bars. They are there, crowded up together and not a whole lot you can do to let off steam. So you let it off by taking offense at completely innocent remarks and the blood-letting commences.

El Reno was a medium security facility in those days, somewhere they sent first timers who had a history of running, which I had of course. For a joint it wasn't all that bad. Was there danger? Was there bad, really bad, people there? Yes, on both counts, but for the most part, if you kept your nose out of other peoples business you had no problems. Yes, there were exceptions to the rule, and I had a few of those incidents, but like I said in the beginning of this post, I walked around with a don't-fuck-with-me attitude . . . And it worked because I refused to back down from that attitude.

For the most part everyone in prison is there because they broke the law. So, right off the bat you know you aren't surrounded by people like your kindly old Uncle. Then again, you yourself wern't the leader of the church choir . . . Well, actually I was the director of the First Baptist church of Taylor, Arkansas' Junior Choir. So, there you go . . . I have just reminded myself that I failed to include that bit of resume in my "early years" chapters . . . I'll fix that on the second draft.

By the time I get through with the second draft I hope to have found somebody, preferably somebody good, to go over this book line by line. I really want it to go to the publishers in better shape that some of my other books. It is difficult, almost impossible for me, to proofread my own work, and I think that stands for most writers. We tend to read without seeing because it is our baby and in the back of our minds we know, we just know we didn't make any mistakes. Of course we do and I will.

El Reno, after I got my bearings wasn't all that bad. Add to that the fact that I scored a coup and got to go to work in the print shop, where I learned to operate the Linotype, which would be a huge help to me as I would later traverse this country looking for the soul of one Jerry Pat Bolton. One bad thing which came out of El Reno, okay, two bad things, were 1) my inability to shed the prison persona once outside in the free world, and 2) my introduction to intravenous drugs. I found it amazingly funny that I had to go to prison before I would shoot up. I suppose it is the sheer boredom of the moment which make prisoners push the limits when they really should be cooling it. It was called beating the man in anyway you could, whether or not the man knew you'd beaten him or not, you knew.

Tomorrow . . .

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

Prisoner

There I am. Behind those bars. Where I knew all along I would be. But where I shouldn't have been if I hadn't ran. What does that say about me and my frame of mind? I'll tell you. To some people, the reason I ran was to escape doing time. And that is what I even told myself. The truth, however, is much more apparent to you if you have been reading this blog, which I doubt anyone is. What has been my all-encompassing complaint since I began this narrative? My mother. Is my motives becoming a bit more clear now? Was I running to escape going to prison? No, because deep within my heart I knew I would get probation, after all, it was my first offense. But I was terrified of probation, that meant I would be stuck with mother overseeing each and every damn thing I did, even if I moved out of the house, she would, in effect, become my warden. Fuck that.

So, there I was, finally back in the Caddo Parish Prison awaiting my day before the judge who was not going to think kindly of me running off like I did. The few months I was incarcerated in the parish prison was a learning time for me. A learning experience that would give me insight on what to expect when I finally was shipped off to federal prison. I was, of course, not a hardened criminal, like some I was thrown into jail with, but from those hardened criminals I learned the proper prison etiquette and jargon which helped keep me out of more trouble than I needed. No one sat me down and said to me they wanted to impart their knowledge of hard knocks to me, I merely kept my mouth shut as much as I could and observed. I only had a few minor problems and one almost bad problem. the bad problem was with an old man who had spent most of his life behind prison bars in Texas and I learned more from him than anyone.

Finally the day came when I was standing before the judge. He pronounced a six-year term on me and within two weeks I was walking past the barbed-wire fence of El Reno, Oklahoma, my home for awhile.

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

Los Angeles

The image on the left is the new Pershing Square. It was a little different looking when I was first there in the early sixties. Setting in the heart of downtown Los Angeles when I first stumbled upon it. It is, I suppose, what I think of when I think of Piccadilly Circus in London. A lot of sidewalk preachers, and other spouting off their beliefs to those within earshot. Pershing Square was kind of an eyesore for some and a movement stayed current to get rid of it, because it attracted undesirables. But I think the police actually wanted it that way, because it kept certain people isolated. The pickpockets, the hustlers of flesh, both the female and male variety. There was a bit of drug trade going on also, but nothing like it would be in a few years when the counterculture movement caught on. No, when I first found Pershing Square it was just a place for people, mostly street people, to hang out.

Chapter 35 has me arriving in Los Angeles, running from the situation back in Shreveport, Louisiana. My first foray into leaving something I didn't want instead of staying and working it out. Over the years I developed a little joke about my rambling, a rambling that even Hank Williams would have been proud of. I would say, I don't bar hop, I state hop. Yeah, I know. Corney. I met Mavis the first of second day in Pershing Square. A middle-aged, slightly plump matronly sex manic. She took me home with her, fed me, gave me whiskey and her body. I was young and full of cum in those days and even the unattractive body of Mavis did not deter me. It was the beginning of an on and off sexual relationship with older women for money. They just seemed to find me, the few times I tried to hustle them it almost always turned out bad.

After Mavis was tired of me, and they all tired of me, that was their nature, they wanted variety, she slipped me some money and I caught the bus for San Francisco. I'd been hearing what a party town it was. San Francisco is a party town, but I didn't have a chance to find out how much it was because I was busted on the very first day I arrived. After spending about two week in the San Francisco County jail I was flown, handcuffed, back to Dallas, Texas, where I was met by a couple of Shreveport detectives and driven to the Caddo Parish jail.

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

On The Road

Yeah, this chapter is the continuation of the education of one Jerry Pat Bolton I will include in Misdemeanors & Felonies: A Memoir. I have left Taylor, Arkansas far behind, and with a slight stop in Dallas I began hitchhiking west toward California. Was given a ride to El Paso, where I stopped long enough to check out Juarez, but the magic just wasn't there for me like it used to be when I was stationed at Biggs AFB and I only stayed there a couple of days. And to think, at one point in time I thought I could walk across that International Bridge and never come back to America, I was so enthralled. It is strange what a couple of years can bring.

So! Here I am, on my way to California, with both my parents -- the original ones -- in my thoughts. What would I do when I arrived there, I had no idea and really didn't spend much time worrying about it. Such is the optimism of youth. I only knew it was important that I set foot in California, the reason did not matter. It was a mental picture of walking up to my mother -- my adopted one told me she was killed in a car wreck going to California, but I didn't believe she was dead -- like Cal, played by James Dean did his own mother in East of Eden. A fantasy and I knew it was a fantasy, but the mind will play strange things on you if you will allow it. I have allowed my mind to entertain strange things most of my life. It is called self-preservation, because if things turned out wrong I could always say, it was just something I had to do, to get it behind me.

This chapter, Chapter 33 is also important in that I am quickly picking up the "way of the road." In the years onward I would learn a great deal more about the "way of the road," this was only my first venture into the underbelly of America and I would find that I liked it, no desired it, much more than living as a straight, uptight suburbanite. I was James Dean, but in my way of thinking I was a rebel with a cause. The paths I would take in pursuit of my soul (for want of a better word) would truly be diverse and many. It would both energize my soul, or it would flame it out. I would search for the elusive answers billions and billions of youth have searched throughout the ages. I would find answers, only to rebuff them. I went from a searching young man into my middle thirties, and even beyond a time or two, looking for a way to settle my parnornea and destructive bent, only to finally understand, as so many other had, that what I was running from stared at me each time I looked into a mirror.

Looking forward to Chaper 34. It will lead me to a place I really didn't want to go.

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

Busted!!

What a dunce! My first foray into the criminal mind and I totally was a dumbass. "Criminal mind," isn't that an oxymoron?

At any rate da fuzz busted me in Shreveport, Louisiana. What made it even worse was the fact that I had my cousin, Gail, with me and he was clueless as to what was going down. I screamed loud and long that he had nothing to do with it and they turned him loose without ever locking him up. Whew!

The charge was burglary of a government building (post office), forgery and uttering. Uttering. That still sounds weird. When I asked about the uttering charge I was told that since I passed the check I'd ripped off as mine it was "uttering" that it was mind, whether I actually "said" that it was. Boggles the mind.

This is the chapter which leads me into a few decades of stomping through the highways and alleyways of America looking for whatever was out there to find. I wanted nothing but the freedom to roam, fuck the rest . . . Although, to this day I am sorry for doing what I did, and who I did it to, to get me arrested that morning in Shreveport, it was a blessing, sorta, in disguise. The aftermath of the arrest, my flight to avoid prosecution and eventually my incarceration, would result in me acquiring the skills which made me more than just a road bum, unless that was what I wanted to be.

The strange saga of the love/hate affair of Jerry+mother+Taylor is one for the cards. A lifetime of blame and love and shame bubbled and boiled inside my brain. Add to that cauldron my headlong path toward destruction, and you have a pretty good idea what my life has been for a good chunk of it. I cannot blame everything I have done on someone else, that is foolish, but the fact is some dominate parents are so overwhelming dominate, to the point of being characterized as a bad parent. My mother was that. She could also be loving. But even when she was into her "loving" mood I was always wary. I knew the other shoe would drop, or in my mother's case, the other shoe would be planted square up my butt. Therefore her loving moments were overshadowed by fear of what seethed behind her loving facade.

I hate to dwell on my mother. I feel it make me sound like a spoiled little boy who is whining, but facts are facts and they shall not be denied in the story. How could I write my story without giving Georgia Orean Bolton her just due? I can't . . .

I'll be back tomorrow . . .

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

Stepping Into The Void

An update about Canterbury Apartments "Monkey Cats." After the mother climbed this huge oak tree to deliver her kittens she stayed around enough that she thought they were ready for the world and she came down, expecting them to follow her. they did not. she pestered them for a while and then just disappeared. Now the apartment complex has monkey cats to deal with. and we did. Everyone fed them. They stayed in the tree, refusing to come down. Until yesterday, the grey one came out of the tree and was soon ran over by a vehicle. Her back legs were crushed, but she wasn't dead. The managers had no option except call the Animal Control people. They came and took the hurt kitten, and I'm sure will destroy it. But the woman with Animal Control saw the yellow Tom and wanted to know could she have it. So one of the kittens is gone, but the other one, I'm sure have a nice home. Could have been worse.

Back to Misdemeanors & Felonies: A Memoir. The marriage has completely dissolved, with Marionette leaving one night when I didn't come home, instead I went to the dog races across the Mississippi River in West Memphis, Arkansas. Can't blame her, I guess. Home life for both of us had been miserable almost from the saying of the marriage vows. We had no idea what was in store for us and didn't want to learn, it seems. We'd rather blame the other person for the problems, when in fact, it was pure and simple two spoiled kids who had no clue.

I hung around Memphis, staying drunk for about a week I guess before I broke down and called Taylor, Arkansas for them to come and get me. That hurt. By the time I got back to Taylor I was a changed person. I was developing a lot of hate and animosity in my heart for . . . The world! I was looking to do something, and I have to say that I did that something. Something which would rule my life for the next six years. This step I took was taken without understand what the repercussions would be. I would soon find out, but I went into the penalty phase of my ways with a chip on my shoulders, which, although I got kicked down to the bare earth from time to time, I kept that chip. It was the only thing I had to hold onto.

Things are about to become more interesting for one Jerry Pat Bolton in the coming chapters . . .

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

Chapter 31 In The Can

That's right, I'll smooch sweet thing here because I am finally back on track on the story. Story. I keep calling it a story, and I know that it is a story, the story of my life, but it sounds so artificial to me. Maybe "my book" would be better, huh? What the hell, it really doesn't matter what it is called, the object is getting the sucker done. I feel I am half through with it now, but you never know just how involved I will get when I get into the chapters beyond Marionette.

Right now involves the end of the marriage . . . A great many things went into the dissolving of our union, but basically, it was because we were both too young and much too immature. Marionette became pregnant early on and she got sick almost as soon. I was working, but not happy. We both wanted marriage, but I don't believe either of us were capable of working to make it work. Basically, we were too selfish individuals who wanted the other one to cater to them and when both of us refused that duty sparks began to fly. Silence followed the flying of the sparks. We turned into ourselves and said things we couldn't take back even had we wanted to, and I doubt that we wanted to at the time. Hindsight is one thing, but when two people are living in what they consider as pure hell, taking back hurtful words just wasn't in the cards. We meant for them to hurt, that is the reason we said them.

The last night we were together as man and wife had me taking off, without telling Marionette, to the dog races across the river in West Memphis, Arkansas. I went with a guy who came to the service station I worked at for gas and whatever. I think he made out with a woman while we were there and for whatever reason left me high and dry and broke a long way from home. Try walking across the Mississippi River Bridge back into Memphis and then walking to Euclid Street where we lived. By the time I got there Marionette was gone. That was it. She'd called her parents and they came for her . . . I saw her once before I left Memphis and went back to Taylor with my tails tucked between my legs, somehow like I did when I came home from the Air Force. My, my, if I could have just looked at myself in those days . . . I was bound for hard times and determined to find them . . . And I most certainly did find them . . .

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

Production Is Down

As my title says, for the last few days my production has been down. The lazy hound to the left is not the reason, I haven't been lazy, it is just things get in the way. Some people call it life. And life has kept my inspiration at bay and I haven't written what I feel I should have.

Also, I am getting into the part of the book which deals with Marionette and my first disastrous first marriage. Here is really where the writing become . . . difficult and trying. To attempt to capture the trials and woes and lovers spats so long ago is almost impossible, so I have decided that I will probably forgo the minute details of what happened. I prefer to keep much what went on between Marionette and myself -- two kids, although I had been in the Air Force, I wasn't by any means an adult -- on a more psychological level. I find it is much easier to deal with personal relationships by, not glossing over it, but putting in perspective from an old man who can look back and see things I could have never seen then. My quirks and inbred paranoia came full circle when I began dealing with women -- or in the case of Marionette a girl -- it was almost impossible for her to have understood why I was the way I was. Even I, at that time, had no idea. It is only have my "mellowing" have I been able to see things much, much clearer qnd with a non-judmental eye than I could ever have in those days.

Okay, Chapter 31 of Misdemeanors & Felonies: A Memoir is almost finished. If nothing happens tomorrow will finish it up. I imagine there will be at least two more chapters before I go on to find myself in other places. This book is going to be large I'm thinking. At least the first draft certainly will be, who know what will happen to the second on? Will I slash and cut and burn or will I add more of what I remembered and make the damn thing boring and unreadable? NO! NO! NO! I will never do that, I am too experienced a writer to walk into that trap. I hope.

Later . . .

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

Storm Clouds Brewing

Marriage is the theme of Chapter 29 . . . So why are the storm clouds warning? Because I am writing this and I know what is coming. Marionette and I would not have very much of what is usually said with a gleam in the eye, "marriage bliss." I don't know how long it took Marionette to figure out that we had just walked into a big lake of do-do. I don't think I ever figured it out until that night in Memphis when I got back from being somewhere I shouldn't have been and found my not-so-blushing bride gone.

But that is to come. Chapter 29 is all about getting married and waking up to find that, hell, this ain't what it is supposed to be like. Is it? Hell, the marriage began all wrong, why chance did it have? I had nothing. The future was only the day after the day I was in, nothing in my makeup at this point in time let me look further than then. How many men have their mothers drive them to a courthouse so they can be married? Not many I'm thinking. But I did. At least I didn't resist her offer, that was how immature I was and my growing, but still weak testosterone went for the deal. She drove us back to a motel in Springhill to cement the marriage and came and picked us up the next day. Jeez!

The job I managed to land with a construction company didn't last over a day. Nope. Wasn't my thing. So how did I think money would begin to flow for my new wife and my living expenses. I didn't. I guess she did, but by then, although the novelty of unabashed sex (well, not quite unabashed) was quite new and delicious to us, the novelty of marriage was beginning to quickly dawn on us that maybe it wasn't exactly what we had in mind. What, pray tell, did we have in mind? Damned if I know, even now. I think both of us were blinded by lust and love and just assumed that when people got married life just naturally got better. I should have known better coming from where I came from.

By the end of Chapter 29 we would be on our way to Memphis, Tennessee, where Marionette's parents had moved to. Things would only get worse . . .

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Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

Falling In Love

You would be correct in thinking that I would not have an uneventful trip home. It seems I was developing a habit of finding bizarre situations to seek me out and my trip back to Arkansas was no exception.

I'd been up with Dorothy most of the night and I was beat, so I went to the rear of the bus and lay down across two seats and flaked out. My fitful sleep was interrupted, however, by what looked like hundreds of Colorado State Police. It seems they had erected a roadblock between Cheyenne and Denver and was looking for the serial killer Charles Starkweather. Although it took some convincing, I guess I resembled Starkweather a bit, we were back on our way to Arkansas.

For someone who vowed never to return to the little south Arkansas town when I left for the Air Force, I had broken that promise twice. I would break it many, many more times over the next fifty years. The first days back in Taylor was fraught with paranoia and self consciousness. Small towns are very gossipy and I had no doubt that I was the topic of many a supper table conversation. (I don't know to this day if dinner has replaced supper in Taylor for the name of that last meal of the day.) When I ran out of what little money I had from my Air Force pay I went to work at the Nations Brothers Packing Plant in Springhill, Louisiana, about seven miles from Taylor. Nasty and cold work, and beside it being a meat packing company, they also slaughtered what meat they packed. I didn't last long. Have you noticed I am finding something wrong with most jobs I have, not that there have been many. Actually, I don't think it was the job so much as me being back in Taylor.

Ah, but things were about to pick up for the better shortly I would find out. I got to bumming around with Billy Willis at this time and he had a Hillman Mink and one night we drove to Magnolia, the country seat of Columbia County where Taylor was located. There, on the floor of a skating rink I lost my heart to Marionette Slaughter. (That is her in the picture, with me and Steve, my brother.) She, in turn, blessed me by falling in love with me also and life was good. I didn't have a vehicle so Billy and myself would double-date quite often. Eventually I managed to talk my parents into letting me borrow their Mercury and I'd drive the nineteen miles to Magnolia to see Marionette.

We were so young and inexperienced. Both of us wanted to get out of our respective situation. Me, because that seemed to be my life's ambition, getting out of my situation, and it took me many years to realize that all the running I was doing was really myself running away from me, not mother or daddy or Taylor. I finally figured that out years and years later with the help of a very special person, Dorothy Jean Bridges, who would eventually become Mrs. Jerry Pat Bolton. Marionette was wanting to leave her home, like, I suppose, most teenagers do, and there I was, more than ready, more than willing. By the end of Chapter 29 I will have asked her to marry me. She squealed and said, "Yes."

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Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

Lot Of Stuff Going Down

I managed to stay in the shitter for the reminder of my "career" in the United States Air Force. Misdemeanors & Felonies: A Memoir is moving right along at a faster pace than even I anticipated, although I am a fairly speedy writer. I think the reason for this is that I have found that I don''t need to be so concerned with too much intimate detail in this, the first draft. It is, as I have said before, serving as a blueprint or outline for what comes next in the rewrite. I suppose all first drafts could be described in that way. Some writers say they just rush through the story the first time, leaving obvious errors and all kinds of problems with the story. It is the second draft, they maintain, that really matters. I agree to an extent, however I cannot for the life of me leave misspelled words and other errors I see, they must be corrected.

I have just been discharged (kicked out) of the Air Force in Chapter 27, the last chapter. I have decided in just these couple of years away from Taylor, Arkansas, that I am a badass. I wasn't one, but I struck the pose and talk the talk . . . Enough so that I could bluff my way through most situations. Oh, I wasn't afraid of a fight and could hold my own in most of them, but I was far from being a badass. I suppose it was eventual I would strive toward that dubious honor after I left Taylor. I had been so beaten down and formed so many fucking hangups concerning my relationships with people, that I would have been surprised if I hadn't went into the badass stance.

In Chapter 27 I have managed to go AWOL, get caught and locked up in Trinidad, Colorado and eventually brought back to Cheyenne to face court martial and discharged with a Bad Conduct Discharge. That discharge only accuntuated my psyche into thinking I was a tough guy. It would be many years before I would know what a tough guy was really all about and became one out of necessity. As of the time frame of the last chapter, however, I was play acting the part.

I have good memories of Cheyenne, Wyoming, and it is a wonder I never went back during my eventual ramblling across America. The closest I came to going there was Denver, about ninety miles away. Although Cheyenne was hwere I truly began my downward spirial insofar as my morals and consciouence goes, it was a place where I forever have regarded fondly, probably because of Dorothy Coninne, who I still see in my thoughts from time to time. But now I am on my way back to Arkansas after I have been discharged. For someone who was going to leave and never return, I'm not making too good on that empty promise and will never fulfill it compelety.

Chapter 28 coming . . .

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Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

I'm Back . . .

With a cup of java sitting beside me . . . I am back from two days of malingering. I felt guilty taking those days off, but felt they were needed. I am getting to the point in the story where things,, bad thing and good things happen to me. I am still in Cheyenne. I'm finding it difficult leaving that blasted place. It was much more important to me that I ever realized I guess. I hope to be able to move on after today''s chapter, which will be number 27. Moving right along much better than I ever thought I would. I have a sneaking suspicion that when I began the rewrite that is going to be the killer. Misdemeanors & Felonies: A Memoir is surprising me in the way I am writing it. Except for the very early years, the years which took place up until I graduated from high school, the chapters have been, on the whole, smooth going. The chapters which will concern Marionette, my first wife, is not far away and I have no idea how I am going to feel as I write about those days which should have never happened. I am not sorry they did happen, because we produced out daughter Paula, but like so many people who marry too young, it was a union not meant to survive. If I had been stronger maybe it could have, but I wasn't and that is that.

One thing. Chapter 26 that I wrote yesterday? I have changed my "voice" for it, and I assume for the rest of the book, so I believe the couple of days I took off more or less gave me the input to change the voice. Because I have been knowing, as I worked the previous chapters that my voice might have been a little to passive. Passive writing is not my style. I usually go for the jugular, the hell with it. I wasn't doing that in the other chapters and subconsciously I think I knew it and that was why I made the decision to goof off for a few days. When I rewrite it I will need to pick up the "voice," to make it more dramatic and forceful. For even if you are writing about things which are tender moments, you can still do it with a forceful voice. Otherwise, you'll put the reader to sleep and I don't want to do that unless they have red so far into the night that sleep just overcomes them. That will be acceptable . . . Gotta love it!

Misdemeanors & Felonies: A Memoir is going to be the book I was meant to write. I keep saying that because it is so obvious to me. Sometimes things are just meant to be. Whether or not you believe in God, predestined events, or just accidental happenings, humans are selected by some great cosmos to do particular things. some are meant to discover life-savings drugs, some are meant to lead great nations. I have been selected to write this story . . .

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Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

Taking off

Okay, I need a couple of days off . . . I'm taking them . . . If nothing happens I'll be back to work Monday . . .

Racial Ugliness in Cheyenne

After the integration of Central High School in 1957 in Little Rock, Arkansas the country could hardly contain itself. It was a year later, but Central High played a part in some drama which involved me. Wrongly accused for hurling a racial slur at someone, I was put in a position which caused me to fear for my very life, or, at the very minimum a severe beating. I would admit it here if I had been the one who screamed out the nigger word, but it was someone else.

I had been, for the longest time, been getting "looks" from some of the black airmen I came into contact with. The fact that I was from Arkansas played right into their hands in thinking I was a racist. Well, I was a racist! I knew no other way to be. Everything we are comes down ultimately on who our parents were and what part of the world we were raised. If our culture, we find out later, does not fit in with civilized society's idea's of what is right most people with make amends and adjustments to better live with themselves. Some, of course, never do. Even so, I was wrongly accused and for a tense few moments, downstairs in the day room I feared for my life. I managed to extricate myself from a dire predicament, and it took a few days to defuse the situation. That was about the time I began running with a clique . . . Protection was important in those uneasy days.

I was making friends in Cheyenne not only for the protection it afforded us, but because I was finding out that I, Jerry Pat Bolton, could measure up to most anyone in terms of intellect and physical strength AND sexual prowess. This last trait was important to me because it meant I was pulling away from the feelings of being inferior to other people. I no longer was in a place where I thought everyone knew I was a literal bastard, they were accepting me on my own merits how I conducted myself. To learn that women were attracted to me was a boost in confidence big time and I, of course, reveled in it. The two girls in Taylor who had given themselves to me never made me feel the power in my true self. On the contrary, it was as though they were allowing me to take them in order to consider them attractive (they were) to themselves. Even in Juarez where I had many women, they were not women who felt anything for me, at least I never felt they did. It was merely sex they wanted, as did I. But in Cheyenne I was finding out a few things about women, they weren't as infallible as I used to think of them, and they, for the most part, wanted a man to be strong for them. It was a revelation to me. I had been raised in a household where the reverse was prevalent.

I was nineteen by now and my education was commencing quite nicely. I hardly even thought about Juarez anymore. Too much was happening. Even so, my rebelling nature would find a way to get me in trouble time and time again . . . And then I met Dorothy Connine.

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Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

Return To Cheyenne

I kicked and screamed and pulled a couple of hissy fits, but the United States Air Force decided, in their infinite wisdom, to cut the orders which would take me back to Francis E. Warren AFB in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Drat!

Drat wasn't what I was saying at the time, I'm sure you realize that. Looking back, I suppose it was for the best, I have a strong feeling that had I stayed at Biggs I would have found a way to get myself killed in Juarez some dark, dark night and would be found the next day floating face down in one of the canals which ran through that Sodom of the Enlightened Age. "They" say everything happens for a reason. Maybe. You can make the case either way. My transfer to FEW AFB set the wheels in motion for what would come next, that is for sure. At Cheyenne I began to make friends, something I hadn't got around to in my short career in the Air Force. In fact there was about four or five of us who formed sort of a clique. This was the year of the Little Rock, Arkansas segregation case and racial tension ran high on the base, as it did in the rest of the country.

Although my orders were to take over duties of teletype instructor, after I arrived at FEW they were changed and I began work in the Com Center as an operator, rather than instructor. And cold. Never had I been subjected to minus twenty degrees temperature. Still, life being what it is I settle down into my routine and began to have fun. Not the fun which I had left in Juarez, but for some reason it was more fulfilling. It seems that my addiction to Juarez and what was offered there was like the old story of eating Chinese food . . . It never satisfied and I needed to keep going back for more. Sound like a drug addict and I was becoming an addict . . . An addict of flesh and uppers, the little white truck driver bennies.

Still, as I adjusted myself to the less dramatic and learned to take life as it came more or less, there was still a nagging something inside of me which made me do stupid things. I just had to press my luck wherever I was, it seemed. Francis E. Warren AFB would be the place where when I pressed, it pressed back. I learned that there were just somethings I was unable to go up against, but my hard-headiness kept on pushing until something had to give. It would not be the United State Air Force. Beside all of my internal struggle there was a small matter of racial tension and downright kickass fights to deal with that Cheyenne and its wild and whooly Frontier Days (a western Mardi Gras) could not contain.

We are moving on . . . Lots more to go . . . Keep on chooglin' as Credence Clearwater would say . . .

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

Ciudad Juárez

Old Yosemite Sam comes to mind when I think of Ciudad Juárez, from now on simply Juarez. The wild, wild west . . . Even wilder than the real wild west was . . . Mr. Dillon would have had a lot of trouble "settling down" Juarez, even with his trust sidekick Chester. I, the num-nutted hick from Arkansas could never have dreamed of such a place. Caliqula would have been shocked. Well, maybe not Caliqula, he might have set it up the way it was, however.

Biggs AFB and my job took a backseat to the goings on in Juarez, Mexico. Biggs was about drudgery work, Juarez was about S-E-X!!! Pure and simple. The border town thrived on sex and everything which went with it. I smoked my first joint there. Didn't like it, it just made me sleepy. Still, I persisted trying because that was the hip thing to do. I never learned to like it though, and found my niche when I popped my very first truckers' Bennie . . . Amphetamines . . .

I realize I was a prime candidate to fall headlong into the super sin city of the world. For that is what Juarez was . . . At least to moi. But nobody put a gun to my head and made me set up residence in that stink-hole of a place, I was more than ready and willing to have at it. Even if I hadn't been raised in a little, dusty south Arkansas town, where for the longest there weren't even any sidewalks to roll up at nighttime, I am sure the delights of the town's wares would still have titillated me.

Maybe not to the extent it did, however. Maybe I wouldn't have let the town and its vices overwhelm me as it did if I had been a bit more cosmopolitan. Other guys from the base partook from Juarez's delights and didn't allow it to become absorbed into their skin. I did though. I never had enough money and that meant borrowing from people who wanted half as much back as you borrowed. These bastards were on-the-job-training-shysters.

By the time the Air Force, in all its undefinable wisdom decided to send me back to whence I'd came . . . Francis E. Warren AFB, Cheyenne, I was doomed to follow the road paved with feel good intentions and physical satisfaction with the notion that I was the only one in the world. Juarez was a stepping stone to that inglorious realization of my life. But let us not forget the presence of Georgia Orean Bolton, which was embedded within my psyche, which caused me to rebuff any woman who wanted to get close. Her face and her words and her meanness came between any sort of a real relationship with a woman I might have wanted. I fought her, however, by marrying much too young to someone who was probably as fucked up about life and what it was about as I was . . . It wouldn't bee too much longer before that would happen.

Tomorrow . . . Leaving Sodom . . .

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Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

Biggs AFB

This graphic has nothing to do with either Biggs AFB or El Paso where it is located. What is has to do is the fact that my transfer to Biggs opened a door to Sodom to me and I walked into it grinning and awe-struck. It opened up, to me, a vast world so immense it seemed like I was in another galaxy . . . Therefore the orbiting world to above.

Ah, yes indeed, what would evolve in El Paso/Juarez would widen my eyes and dim my morals, something I will readily admit was instilled in me by my parents -- both of them, although my mother's contribution to the education of right and wrong was Do as I say, not as I do, for she had no qualms about breaking the Ten Commandants if it benefited her, or her faux standing in the community. I can't repeat it enough times about how the bonfires of the secular and flesh-seeking desires were kindled in the border town across the Rio Grande. It whetted my appetite for my complete disregard for the time-honored standards I grew up with, i.e., God was replaced with insatiable cravings for the flesh and drugs, although both of these pursuits would eventually become my all, the Juarez experience was the catalyst for all the rest. I was metamorphosed into something akin to the Jekyll-Hyde scenario.

I recall even the smell of Juarez had a lingering, strange scent to it, which if you were so inclined you might say you smelled a tinge of brimstone. Actually, I have a feeling that it was the smell of poverty and bad sewage lines, if there were even any such lines. The city relied almost completely in those days on tourists. There were two different kinds of tourists; those who walked the main drag, Sixteenth of Septembre, to "bargain," or (for those who might take offense, get a life) "Jew-down" the many street vendors and shops selling everything from sombreros to worthless trinkets . . . To the tourists who wandered the back streets where the whore houses and other assorted immoral acts were taking place for the price of a meal across the border in El Paso.

That was where you could find me, wallowing in Juarez's cesspool and loving every single minute of it. It soon became my base of operations, not the Biggs AFB, where I began to screw up and screw up badly. It would become a pattern of how I would conduct my life for many, many years. Was I a bad guy? Did I renounce my Christian upbringing in order to dwell in the slime of the forbidden? Was I on my way to a path which would lead me into more trouble than I could take care of?

Yes, I was a bad guy, or at least I was a bad guy in the making, although my Christian upbringing never left me, I just managed to find dark places within myself to hide from them. I was definitely on my way to trouble which would land me in a place I did not want to be. Or did I?

Tomorrow, more from Biggs AFB/Juarez . . .

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742

Taylor Was A Bust

Going back to Taylor on leave was like walking into a house with one very irate alligator, my mother. I don't know why it surprised me, I have known how she was all my life. Why did I go back to Taylor? I'm not sure, but it probably had something to do with garnering some respect. Right. Lotsa luck. And why in the hell would I even care about gaining this respect from her and the rest of Taylor? I'm not sure, maybe because for eighteen years of constant harassment by mother and inattentive reaction by my father, that, plus the fact that I had shoved my insecurities and had actually replaced them with positive thoughts and pride of something accomplished, i.e., the communications/teletype school. But since the teletype had a keyboard on it, mother only said, "Oh, you're a secretary."

The conquering hero was a dud back in his hometown, much like he was before he left. There are just places certain people are not meant to live . . . Taylor, Arkansas is that place for me. Conquering hero. Big joke. I had no illusions in that directions, of course, but I did have disillusions that the school I had gone through, passed with flying colors, kept my nose-to-the-grindstone more or less, which had filled me with pride, would somehow correlate into more acceptance. It didn't. It was never brought up after the first initial conversation. I have to admit, even now, that I loved the school. I was learning something no one in Taylor knew and I was damn good at it, but I found out, to Taylor, it meant less than nothing. That would be all right. El Paso was calling. What I would learn there isn't taught in any kind of school, except maybe you could say it was a primer for the underside of society, which is an offshoot of the School of Hard Knocks, something I would embrace wholeheartedly, realizing as I did, that the good folks in Taylor would be shaking their heads and tsk, tsking, saying things like, "We knew he was like that, we've known it all along."

Maybe they had. Whether they had known it all along or not, I would be back in Taylor in a few years to give them reason to nod and cluck some more . . . I would bring it home to them. But in the meantime, I was headed for Biggs AFB with an even a bigger chip on my shoulder and a willing nature to taste the forbidden . . . Tomorrow . . .

My Novels:

Write To Murder . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/956621

Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842

My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742