[drawing]

Eheufugaces labuntur anni
Januis clausis

L.A. Juvenile Detention
1977-78-79-80
14 yrs. old

D.V.I. - FOLSOM
1984-85-86-87-88-89
21 years old

CORCORAN SHU - PELICAN BAY - LANCASTER - SP
1997-98-99-2000-01-02-
34 yrs old

P.7 continued

Mom finally took us kids and left dad's emotional abuse after he had me write-up a contract he dictated; an exchange of his soul to the devil for his home-ownership dream. Mom took us kids and moved in with her sister Eileen in Las Vegas, and there they were taken-in on a real estate scam for wilderness property on the Virgin River above Lake Mead. A single ranch house in the middle of nowhere over the mesa from Overton, Nevada.
No electricity and a water tank on the roof pumped-up from the well - real wild west! Eileen's man (Fred), was head of the house of two women and their collective five children, where I was the oldest and only boy. A whole valley to hike around and explore soon bored me enough to look forward to going to school in town. There I was on the track-team jumping hurdles, and on a tennis team, and an active drummer in the school band - which by the way, marched in the Las Vegas bicentennial parade and received a crisp-new 2$ bill.
I remember back in the valley, Fred used to take me out at night with a 30-30, and 306 rifles, to poach cattle. We would drag back the carcass with our tractor and butcher it the next day to stock our freezers and sell to his friends. Other days I would tote a shotgun and hunt rabbits or quail for our table, or I'd clear-cut tamarack off a lot and dig-up a foundation for an A-Frame house plan Fred was building up the ladies imagination with.
This was a pretty adventurous life for a 13 year old lad until Fred had smashed our cat's head in our wells pump house right in front of me, when that cat wouldn't be carried in there with the diesel motor pump was running. Then two of our dogs came up missing and I found their burned carcasses down where I had clear-cut the brush for that foundation. Fred disappeared from our lives soon after that (I think that I may have blocked-out killing him out there in that wilderness), and the ladies packed us up and moved back to Vegas.
There, is yet another new school and insubstantial friendships forged. I remember being a star-swimmer there on that school swim team.
My parents were only separated for about a year or so until they re-united - and soon afterward we moved back to Califelony, into the Mexican ghetto of El Monte. Here is where I particularly noticed how verbally and emotionally abusive my dad was to my sisters and our mother. I'd go to sleep wishing I had a gun.
This is where I began shop-lifting whiskey (and everything else I wanted), and drank a lot. Smoking PCP, snorting cannebanol, O.D.ed on 'ludes, and learned to fight groups of Mexicans. I recall saving my red-headed friend from a group of them once, and breaking a finger in that fight.
I used to spend nights at his house when I would run away from mine. His (Ron's) half dozen siblings and their single parent mother, loved me to death. Once, old mom called me into her bedroom on one of those occasions and offered me a drink of her alcohol and some petting action on her bed. Soon after that I convinced Ron to steal some money from her and run away with me and another friend, and cross the Azura mountain range into Death Valley, just to see if we could. We made it to the mountains and camped under a bridge - where Ron tried to suck me off when we were all supposed to be asleep. Gee! I must have had mighty powerful pheromones back then!
All this occurred in the first 13 years of this life of mine. Granted, the subjective chaos which visibly disturbed my parents certainly left its impressions... but I suppose the unstructured freedoms of an adventurous loner moving from one town to another - leaving a trail of insubstantial - broken friendships, maybe what actually separated me from the herd.

Alas, this is where my career in the criminal justice system begins.