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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
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/956621Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742
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/956621Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742
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/956621Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742
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/956621Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742
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/956621Margaret and David: A Love Story . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1072842My Mother's Revenge . . . http://www.lulu.com/content/1132742
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
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!
