Sick of Gibault and tired of waiting, I ran away. Naturally I went straight to Mom’s. I thought I could show her how grown up I was and how I could help her. There was no guilt trip in my mind about running away; I was sure my mom would throw her arms around me, as glad to see me as I was to be there with her. She’d take me down to the judge and tell him she was in a position to take care of us. Everything would be all right. God, was I dreaming! She turned me in and the next day I was back at the Home for Boys. But I didn’t feel like a boy any longer. There were no tears. At least, none that ran down my cheeks. I didn’t feel weak or sick, but I also knew I could no longer smile or be happy. I was bitter and I knew real hate.
The trip back to Gibault was a waste of gas and time. I split the very first chance I got. Goodbye Gibault. Goodbye Mom.
CHAPTER 2
I HAD LEARNED my lesson. Thanks to the memory of my own mother rejecting me and turning me in, my philosophy was trust no one and depend on no one. As for a place to run to, I felt my chances of staying lost and out of sight of the police would be better in a big city rather than a small town. Indianapolis was my choice.
Terre Haute and the Gibault School for Boys are about a hundred and sixty miles from Indianapolis. Once safely away from the school, I knew better than to try reaching my destination by way of the roads and highways. I trudged through fields and over hills, staying out of sight. I walked the railroad tracks some and hopped a freight train for a short way. I slept in the woods and under bridges. I met bums, winos and hobos, who shared their meals with me. Most people place all those derelicts in the same category, but I found there is a definite distinction between them. A bum is a guy who is down and out, maybe one who is too lazy to work and survives by begging. A wino has become so hooked on his booze that he is a social outcast, he cares for nothing but the lush and how to acquire it. A hobo is on the road because that is his chosen lifestyle. Some are honest and survive by their wits, also doing a little work here and there. Others are into doing anything that will provide for the day’s needs, and stealing and lying are as natural as breathing to them. I lived and ate with these guys until reaching Indianapolis, and through them I learned an awful lot about survival without the luxuries of a house and modern conveniences.
When I got to Indy I slept in the alleys and old sheds until the night I got a bonus while burglarizing a grocery store for something to eat. The cash register change for the next morning was in a cigar box under the counter. When I opened the box and saw the money I thought I was rich and didn’t even bother to cart out any of the groceries I was stealing. It was a little over a hundred dollars, more money than I’d ever had in my hands before. I rented a room in skid row, bought me some clothes, ate as much as I liked and spent the money like there was no tomorrow. A few days later I was broke and hungry. I started making my way on the streets any way I could. I’d sweep store fronts, wash windows, clean garbage cans, anything that might earn me a few cents. I’d also steal whatever I could get my hands on, and sell the goods to anybody for any kind of price. I doubt if I averaged a penny on the dollar for the value of what I sold, but for a snot-nosed kid, I was feeling pretty chesty and thought I was getting up in the world. I was getting by without starving, had my own room and was my own boss.
I had accumulated a wealth of experience and I thought I really knew what the world was all about, but my run-away from Gibault only lasted a few weeks. I had stolen a bike for the joy of having one, as well as for transportation. It was that bike that got me caught. When the police arrested me, the juvenile authorities couldn’t believe that a twelve-year-old kid could be living by himself. It took them a few days to discover that I was a runaway from a home for boys. Once they knew that, they located my mom. She appeared in juvenile court with me, but she was still unable to tell the judge that she could take me back to a good home.
The judge was a sympathetic guy who really didn’t want to send me to a reform school. He arranged for Father Flanagan’s Boys Town to accept me. I didn’t stick around long enough for the results they got with Mickey Rooney in the film Boys Town. No fault of the school’s; I just wasn’t into the discipline, and running away had become as much a part of my nature as stealing. Four days after being checked in at Boys Town, me and another guy split. We stole a car, wrecked it, pulled a couple of armed robberies and finally made it back to Indianapolis. At Indianapolis, we went to my new partner’s uncle’s house. The uncle was a World War II vet who was living on disability. He was also a thief, and his nephew and I fit right into his program. He was as glad we showed up as we were to have a place to stay. In no time at all he had lined up places for us to burglarize. It was kind of a one-way street, since my partner and I did all the dirty work but the uncle took the big end of the money.
We got caught going through the skylight of the third place he had cased for us. When the cops arrested us they took me to the Indianapolis City Juvenile Home. I spent a day and part of a night there. As fate would have it, the same day I was put in juvie hall, a maintenance man was doing some work around the place. He turned his back on his toolbox and I stole a pair of wire cutters. That night, after we were counted and the lights were out, I got busy with the wire cutters. In about twenty minutes’ time, some thirty to thirty-five juvenile delinquents were loose on the streets of Indianapolis.
Some of the guys may have stayed on the loose for a lengthy period of time, but for me it was wasted effort. I was picked up less than two hours later driving a stolen car—I hardly knew how to shift it and could barely see over the dashboard. I was back in custody by the time the morning paper hit the newsstands with a front page spread, complete with photo, that wrote me up as the “ringleader.” Instead of keeping me in juvenile hall, they booked me in the county jail. The youngest offender ever, they told me.
That was in 1948; I was thirteen years old and almost a year had passed since the day I entered the Gibault School for Boys, the beginning of my life in institutions. I had been a frightened little boy when I went there, and I had resented it with an indescribable passion, but I have to admit the administration at Gibault had the boys’ interest and future as their top priority. That is more than I can say for the place I spent the next three years of my life.
The escapes from Gibault and Boys Town and my escapades on the run left the judge very little to do but sentence me to a bona fide reform school: the Indiana School for Boys at Plainfield, Indiana. And let me say, Plainfield was a real beauty! It has to have changed since I was there; too many human rights groups and concerned citizens have appeared for a place like that to continue to operate in the manner it did then. I know the school is still in operation, but I hope all the warped, sadistic bastards I met there are now dead.
While most who get sentenced to those places do need to be separated from the honest element of society, Plainfield has turned out more hard-core criminals than honest citizens. That’s because of the type of person who seeks employment in prisons. For every person whose heart is in the right place, for every person who is dedicated to constructive rehabilitation, there are ten status-seekers out to prove something to themselves. Some are frustrated policemen who, couldn’t qualify for the police force. Others are without the ambition or skills to maintain a job in a competitive trade. Believe it or not, a great many of them are there to obtain an outlet for their own perversion. Confinement and punishment are necessary in the present society, but having sadistic, perverted assholes working in an institution that is supposed to rehabilitate is the biggest bunch of bullshit going. You can’t expect to straighten out an offender’s life when the people in charge of him have worse hang-ups than he does.
At Plainfield I was in trouble from the very beginning. The probation officer who took me there left me standing in the hallway while he went to the administrator’s office to sign me in. I had already noticed