Just When Things Were Going Good

Nanette and I went back to Taylor. Yes, I know, going back there when things go wrong is getting old. I try to explain it in Chapter 50. But for someone who swore he would never go back when he left for the Air Force, I have broken that promise many more times than I ever thought I would. A "real" marriage took place within a few days of our coming back. Nanette was busy getting used to the culture shock of finding herself in the Deep South and I went looking for a job. I found one in a newspaper in a town called Bunkie. I found a tacky apartment and worked for two weeks before moving Nanette down with me, and although she never said anything, I just know her stay in the Bolton house in Taylor was anything but pleasant.

But we were together again. We found a little house and moved out of the apartment as soon as we could and things were going along very well. I liked my job at the Bunkie Record, I liked the publisher, Jim Levy and I even liked the little town of Bunkie. I was beginning to like my life a lot also. This was something very new for me. Although I didn't go around with a frown on my face all the time, my life up until then had not been such a stellar one. Foolishly, I was beginning to share the picket fence mentality with Nanette. I was beginning to believe it could actually be ours if we only put our mind to it and worked hard. I was a hard worker and always have been when I was doing what I liked to do. The Linotype machine opened up so many more doors for me that would not have been there had I not learned the trade.

Sigh. Drat. Crapolla. All of my wonderful thoughts were dashed the day Jim Levy came up to me as I was sitting at the Linotype and said he needed to see me in his office. When I walked through the door of that office I was rousted, handcuffed and hustled off to the Avoyelles Parish Prison in Alexandria, a town about forty miles north of Bunkie. Parole violation! I had not thought about the possibility of going back to prison for some time. I had been happy and I shoved it all aside into the furthest corners of my mind. One thing struck me immediately as they were leading me out of the newspaper.

My mother turned me in.

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

Marriage . . .

After the narrow escape up in Apple Valley with Cecil I found, after returning to the Crystal Apartments both Nanette and I were rived up. The few days away from each other cemented, at least for me and I think her, that we were fated to be man and wife. It took us only a matter of a few short days before we were on a Greyhound Bus hauling ass to Las Vegas, Nevada. There we could be married quick, no waiting, no blood tests, immediately! Why were we in such a hurry? For myself I think I was suddenly, after the weekend disaster, ready to chart a different course. With the quiet, but powerful strength of Nanette I guess I was thinking, wishing, hoping that I could somehow turn my life around from the crime-ridden, hustling, small time bandit that I had become. It sounds terrible to put it in those words, it make it sound like I did not love Nanette. I did love her and that was part of it all. I thought she loved me also and together we could strike out together and make a life we could both be proud of. Ah, but I was getting ready to marry that sweet person in a fraudulent way.

Why did Nanette want to marry me? I was somebody who, until a few weeks before was nobody to her. I can't answer that question. I did sense a feeling of sorrow inside her. I don't know, maybe she was just anxious to find that little house on Main Street, U.S.A., with its white picket fence, the garden, all the trappings of a Norman Rockwell painting. I can only suppose she saw in me a diamond in the rough and she assumed that after the rough edges were whittled away I would be polished and bright and her dream would come true. Like I say, I don't know, it maybe be something as simple as her falling in love with me.

Well, we got to Las Vegas and we were married under my assumed name, the one I had been using since I'd broken parole. Why did I do that? I can only say that the idea of me going back to prison was first and foremost in my thoughts at that time in my life. I'd done four and a half years and did NOT want anymore of it. Still . . . It was a chickenshit thing to do and it has haunted me all these years, although when I finally got around to telling Nanette, she really didn't seem too upset. Then again, maybe she was so stunned she was unable to bring herself to anger. I'm trying to remember, I cannot think of one time Nanette got angry enough with me to raise her voice. I had what I had probably always yearned for. A wife as opposite my mother as was possible. She loved me . . . I loved her . . . What could go wrong?

Plenty . . . Every bit of it my fault . . .

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

Cecil & Casey

No reason for the photo on the left except that she is my daughter Patricia and I love her and I want her with me . . . So there!!!

Cecil, a gruff old man who lived at Crystal Apartments and his girlfriend Casey invited me to Apple Valley for the weekend. I asked Nanette if she wanted to go, but she declined. Cecil was going through a rough divorce and he was afraid his wife was going to take his little place in Apple Valley. He homesteaded a few acres of land and built the a little shack on it so he could say he had made improvements. Cecil was pretty much a drunk, that was probably why his wife was divorcing him. He was also a pretty big executive for Richfield Oil, as was Casey. Nanette also worked for the giant oil firm, but she was stuck down in the basement. Casey was Cecil's girlfriend, but since he never took care of business, and since Casey was quite a bout younger than him, she had been using me for that part of her life. She really was dedicated to old Cecil, but . . .

When we got up there to the homestead everything went well f=the first day, it was the second day that all hell broke loose. I was pretty sure Cecil knew what was going on between Casey and myself, but we did not flaunt it. On the second day Casey and I both were ready, but hadn't had a chance to get together. Cecil nodded off in a hammock her had stretched between two trees and we though we could steal a few minutes.

Don't you know Cecil caught us. Whether or not he was faking sleep or just woke up I never knew, but he caught us nonetheless. He didn't say a word, but walked off into the desert for about a hour. Case went back to the picnic table in the back and I stayed in the shack faking sleep on the little bed. Cecil came in and took his twelve-gauge shotgun off the wall and just stared at me. I thought I was a dead man. But the turned and went to confront Casey out back. I have no idea what, if anything, he said to Casey because I never saw her again after that day. I expected to hear the shotgun going off and Casey would be dead, but it didn't happen. We drove back to Los Angeles and I bet there wasn't one word spoken between the three of us the whole time.

The time we spent away from each other kinda made Nanette and I to want to hurry things up insofar as our future plans . . . We will discuss those 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

Watts Riots . . .

The summer of 1965 found me infatuated with an olive-tinted girl from New York City. Nanette Schiavo came into my life and from the very first began to touch me in places never before touched. She had such a quiet aura about her, quiet yet commanding. At least it was to me. I felt like a little boy who found that he liked girls, but didn't know what to say to them yet. That confused me right off, because I was, if anything, not bashful.

However, as things such as this usually do I found my voice and she reciprocated, giving me hope for the future, because the setting wasn't conducive to much more than a few smiles and words. We were in Cecil's apartment in Los Angeles, where he and his girlfriend Casey liked to entertain guests. It was the sixties don't you know, and everything that went on in the sixties went on at The Crystal Apartments where I and Nanette lived. I participated wholeheartedly in the sexual revolution, but I was to find out that Nanette, although she liked to go to these functions because she knew most of the people, she did not avail herself of the fleshly treasures available. Still, Nanette and I managed, over the next week or so, to get acquainted and it seemed that she liked me and I knew I was infatuated with her.

Then came the riots.

For over a week we were hunkered down in groups at the Crystal Apartments, afraid to go out alone for anything! Actually we were afraid to go out . . . period. During this period Nanette and I became more involved, actually seeking one another out to talk about the mess we were living through. And about ourselves. The more I talked to her the more I became awed by her. That she proclaimed to me the very first night we became physical (kissing, feeling) that she was a virgin. I, of course, did not believe her. She was twenty-six, how could she be? I would find out later, after we were married, that she told me the truth. I am "outing" her here, because I personally think it was a spiritual decision that she'd made to remain chaste for her eventual husband. I respected that. In the time we were living in, the mid-sixties, nobody was a virgin. Nanette was, however, and I did not push it, there were no problems getting raw sex if that was what you wanted, and I did want it. To this day I am proud of myself (one of a pitiful few things I am proud of) for not pushing her into sex. Would she have given in if I had? I seriously doubt it.

I wasn't working regularly, day labor mostly. Nanette had a job with Richfield Oil in the mail room. Our was a strange courtship. It was mostly done at the apartment of an old man by the name of Cecil, or my apartment, my roommate was almost always gone getting into trouble. The fact that we began to notice each other just prior to the Watts riots was the reason for out closeness to the apartment. And after the riots, Los Angeles was still smmering and had a few hot spots, so most people went back to work, but when they got off work the usually didn't tary, they went straight home.

I did have some respite from the city, however, and that comes in the next chapter.

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

Nanette . . .

I pulled my time in Lompoc, it was different than El Reno, more mature and more dangerous, but I managed to get through it alive. When I got out I made no pretense of staying in Taylor. I had developed, after four and a half years behind bars one hell of an attitude. Taylor couldn't hold me, Taylor could never hold me.

I crisscrossed the nation a few times, from Los Angeles to New York and back again looking for whatever there was to find. The country was hip deep in the free love era and I was getting my share and then some. Everything was up for grabs, if it moved, take it to bed. Added to that was my insatiable appetite for drugs, mostly amphetamines and acid, although I experimented with heroin and other more dangerous drugs. And, of course, my old friend booze. Finally I decided to stop my running and I made Los Angeles my home, for want of another word. I lucked out, I suppose you could say, when I chanced upon Ginger. Ginger was a blowsy, blond-headed woman well into her forties and she took it upon herself to pay me for sex. That took care of my immediate problem of case, because I was still wanted by the feds for violating my parole. This little arrangement went on for about three or four months, with Ginger meeting me one to three times a week in the hotel where I stayed. Then one day she was gone. O never saw her again.

I got a job at a small print shop and moved into the Crystal Apartments with a guy by the name of Richard LaSalle sharing rent. The Crystal Apartments were geared for the young and it was a swinging place, living up to the free love which was sweeping the country. It was there that I met Nanette Schiavo, who would very soon become my wife. Nanette was unlike anybody I had ever met. At once sweet and timid and so quiet you hardly knew she was in the room. But Nanette was in the room and she would soon be in my heart. As all of this was going on, there was something about to break loose in Los Angeles which would put us all in peril, and it was just around the corner.

More 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

Short-Lived Freedom

Whew! Life is about to get into the fast lane it seems. The Caddo Parish Prison wasn't like I had last seen it. Well, hell, neither was I for that matter. The jail itself hadn't changed, there was still the stink of cleaning deordorant in the cellblock, and the trap door where they used to hang the prisoners, and the guards were the same, but something was in the air.

That something kept the cellblock stirred up to the point that there were fights almost every day. Some were hurt bad, most were not. I only had one fight, I was learning how to avoid them if possible . . . Sometimes it is not possible.

I laid up there in the hellhole for three months before the marshals came to take me to El Reno, only El Reno wasn't where they had in mind to take me. I was being sent clear across the country to California and a joint upstate near the Vandenberg AFB (Air Force, funny, huh?) called Lompoc.

There were me and two other prisoners in the car and they made a beeline for El Paso, Texas first. Ah, memories of Juarez came to mind, but of course I would never get across that border, although I actually did, at one point, start thinking about how I could get the hell away from them. I also began thinking about me walking away from the jail in Midland. That was technically an escape, was it not? I had a sinking feeling they would file charges on me and after I finished my time for the feds they'd try me in Texas for escaping and put me down in Huntsville. I didn't want that, but the possiblility was huge that it would happen.

After we left one of the prisoners in El Paso we hightailed it across New Mexico to Tuscon, Arizona where we dropped off the other prisoner. That left just me. When they finally got me to Los Angeles I was ready, riding in that damn car for three days was hard.

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 43

After leaving New Orleans beaten and broken I fought the highway for the first, but of course not the last time. I was heading west, back to California. California kept a continuing, siren-like call to me for many, many years. It was like the women in Greek mythology who lured ships toward them with their beautiful songs, but much too late the sailors realized they were old hags and the ships were headed onto jagged rocks where they would sink to the bottom of the sea.

I had associated California with this mystical feeling ever since I was told that my real mother died in a car wreck going there. I didn't believe the story, it was much too convenient. Somewhere in my thoughts, however, I made myself believe that my mother actually did go to California, and was still living there, waiting for me to find her. Silly? Yes, but there was a great deal of silliness going on in my life in those very unproductive years. Anyway, I kept going back, but never tried to look for my mother. How could I, I didn't know her given name, never mind her last one.

During my little trip across Texas, (that's the reason for the gunslinger graphic) my God that's a huge state, my thoughts rambled around inside my head about everything under the sun. I did a lot of walking, a lot of standing with my thumb out at cars on Interstate 20. After a couple of days of this I was weary, hungry and beat down about as much as I've ever been up until that point. I would find out that there were a few more degrees of being beaten down that I hadn't touched yet, but that was later on in my life. Even so, I was angry at everything. I even picked up rocks and threw them at passing cars who would not stop for me. Late of the first night I was dropped off near some kind of construction site and I saw a Jim Walter model home they use to show prospective buyers. No one was around so I broke a window on the back side so you couldn't see it from the road and slept on the hardwood floor the best I could.

The next day my luck (what luck?) played out when I was walking through Midland, Texas and was stopped and arrested for "no visible means of support," or vagrancy they called it then. Thrown in the clink. They found out about me being wanted in Shreveport, but a miracle happened and, through a mistake, I was sent to the police garage to work as a trusty. Wow! I had leaving on my mind the moment I walked through the door. It seems I would get a little help.

See ya . . .

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