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