I am continuing to write a semi-regular series of memoir-notes posts. This all started because I realized that it was 20 years ago, in 1997, that I left the mortuary and moved to San Francisco. That led me to realize that 40 years ago, in 1977, my mom left my father and Los Angeles to move to the Central Coast (and appeared on the Merv Griffen Show!). And I have just recently realized that it was in the summer of 1987 that I ran away from home and was arrested. 30 years ago! Wow, time does fly! And wow, years ending in 7 seem to be big moving years…I wonder what big move 2017 may yet have in store for me 😉
But back to 1987, events are hazy –it has been 30 years after all and I spent most of the intervening time trying to forget this stuff!– and a lot of this is pieced together from my own memory, talking to my mom, and my high school transcripts which I recently acquired. I am hoping to fill in some of the details later but it is turning out to be harder than I thought to get any records from this time (and no pictures at all!). By 1987 I was 15 years old and starting the second semester of my sophomore year in high school. I had started 9th grade in the fall of 1985 and had done ok the first year. I was averaging about a C/C+ doing very well in classes I was interested, like Electronics (earning an A), and doing very poorly in classes I did not care about, like World Geography (earning a D). I remember thinking that these places they were telling me about didn’t seem real. I mean I believed they were there but I had never been there my self. I had only been in Los Angeles and the Central Coast of California and I had my own problems to deal with.
1985 is also the year that my mom started ‘studying’ with the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I will come back at some point and talk more about this period (and this post on 1987 is turning out to be on 1985-86!). But I think some of this is important context. My mom had been going to various religious places of worship trying to find a place where she fit in for as long as I can remember. She had always been very spiritual (she tells me now) and had even wanted to be a nun when she was a child (I did not know this in the 1980s). She took us to a synagogue one time and I remember the way they wrote and how they did not write the name of God on the board, or whatever. My mom worked with a women who was a Jehovah’s Witness already and she had told my mom that God’s name was Jehovah and so my mom asked this Rabbi if that was true and he ‘rebuked’ her saying that no one knew the name of God and that it was unpronounceable by humans, etc. My mom was deeply troubled by this and, according to her, she called the local Kingdom Hall demanding to speak with someone. She said that her friend had been lied to and that they had no right to go around telling people that this was God’s name, etc. They asked if they could come and speak with her in person and she agreed. They sent over a woman named Sara (remember I am not using any real names) and they talked for hours and hours. That is how it began.
I had found the things they were saying more reasonable than the stuff I had heard from other places. They did not believe in Hell, for example, because it conflicted with their conception of God as all-loving and I found that reasonable. In fact I had been kicked out of Sunday School for arguing with the teacher about the existence of Hell. I said that I did not think God could love us the way they said if he was willing to have people sent to Hell for any amount of time. They told me to leave and not to come back until I did believe in Hell. Needless to say I never went back! But even though I found the Jehovah’s Witness version of Christianity less objectionable and more logically consistent than others I did not believe what they were saying. At all. At the time what is called the problem of evil was really on my mind (I did not know that is what is was called of course). Why did God allow so much suffering? Jack the Ripper? The Holocaust?! My own life?
The answer? That God was waiting for humans to realize that they could not live without God (as Satan had suggested to Adam and Eve) and then once the scenario had played out, and there could be no doubt by anyone that humans could not live without God, He would step in, smite Satan and restore the Earth to the paradise state in the Garden. Then, there would a 1000 year reign of peace where the dead were resurrected and educated about the true nature of God, and then Satan would be let loose one last time and anyone who abandoned God at that point would be ‘erased from the Book of life’, which they interpreted as just ceasing to exist. It was an interesting story, and the 1,000 year bit at the end seemed fair. After all, God would not be hidden at that point (after the ‘great tribulation’ where Jesus comes back and all) so there would be a total epistemic shift, if any of this were real.
“But, why wait?” I asked. “Why not just smite Satan *now* and stop all the suffering which is currently happening (not to mention all the future suffering before ‘the end of this system of things’)?”
Because, I was told, in case anyone ever tries to suggest this again in the future God can say, “look we let that play out and it didn’t work,” but I found that unbelievable. Literally I could not believe that response. It used to infuriate me. God was supposed to know everything and so He knew how it was all going to play out, and Satan knew that God knew that; so why is everyone waiting? It made no sense to me at all. A supremely powerful, morally perfect being is trying to prove a point to someone? This doesn’t sound like a fully rational being (and neither is Satan, obviously, if there is no recognition that an all-knowing being already knows how this little rebellion will work out). No, this sounded more like Star Wars to me! That is, this sounded like a man-made story full of all too Human embellishments. In addition I never understood why there should be any consequences for rejecting God. If I am truly made with reason and free will then I should be able to do what I want. ‘But you owe God for your life’ I was told. No I do not. I remember endlessly arguing with these guys about this. How can I owe somebody for a gift that I did not ask for? Little did I know it but I was very close to being an Existentialist back then! I felt ‘condemned to be free’. It was as though someone shows up and says here is this wonderful gift I got you, a new house upstate (say), now to show me how grateful you are devote your life to me or I will burn the house down (while you watch after you have lived there for 50 years or whatever)! Give me a break! That is not rational behavior. That is desperate, moody, needy behavior.
In 1986 I started my sophomore year and did well again. In particular I took a speech class where I met the new English professor who had recently started a speech team at our high school. Due to my performance in the class I ended up joining the speech team. I really enjoyed the speech team, and competed in a couple of events. I vaguely remember one being in Simi Valley, or Moorpark College. I wish I knew when those competitions actually were but I cannot find anything about them online. I competed in several categories including original Oratory and Extemporaneous. There was a girl on the team who did Dramatic Interpretation and was really into Woody Allen. I remember sneaking out at night to see her and getting picked up by the police. The policeman brought me home and stayed to talk to my mom for hours. They ended up dating and as a result I had to join the Police Explorers club, which I hated. I recall having to direct traffic at one of the Strawberry Festivals they had, dressed in the uniform, and seeing some of the kids from school. They laughed and called me a Narc. At the time I wasn’t sure what that meant but I got the feeling it wasn’t good.
I also remember joining the Columbia House Music Club. This was one of those 20 cassette tapes for penny kind of things that could only have happened in the 1980s! I remember ordering all kinds of music. I used to listen to the Casey Cassum countdown and I liked some of the music (like the Beastie Boys) but I wanted some shocking music. Remember getting Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Iron Maiden, and a bunch of others, and not really understanding what all the fuss was about. I listened to Iron Maiden and liked the drawings of Eddy a lot but the music was too much like ordinary rock and roll. The one thing I did get from them was Metallica Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets, which I was an instant fan of. I recall one speech competition that I was not allowed to go to, for some reason, and listening to Master of Puppets. That song, to me, was about being controlled and for me the controller was my mom. Later when I found out it was really about drug use I was surprised. But then again, that is just another form of control. That and Slayer, which I found out about shortly after that. When I heard Reign in Blood I knew I had found what I was looking for. Here was music that sounded as angry as I felt, and was as shocking to the world as I felt shocked by the world. Slayer became my favorite band, followed closely by Metallica.
And now back to 1987. Apparently I was taking books from the local library without checking them out. I had forgotten about this but I am pretty sure my mom is correct about this. She doesn’t remember when she caught me but I think it must have been in April or May of 1987. I had a lot of books that I wanted to keep and so instead of checking them out I would just put them in my bag and take them home. These were mostly books about math and physics that I used during my research for my Original Oratory speech that I gave at the competitions. It was a very basic speech laying out the basics of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and the suggestion that this theory allows for the realistic possibility of time travel (what we now call time dilation and on a side note, I just bought Brian Greene’s kids book about time dilation!). Looking back on it I wish I had also found and read something on quantum mechanics but it was relativity that captured my interest back then. I would soon find out about string theory (in juvenile hall) and That was really fascinating. I was at the time hoping to go to Cal Tech or Harvey Mudd College and study theoretical physics.
At any rate my mom tells me that she went into my room and found stacks of books from the library and that some of them were never even checked out! She demanded that I return the books to the library and apologize and at the same time forbade me from going to any further speech competitions. I first went to the speech competition and then I did not go back home when we returned. It may have been a bit earlier and I am misremembering it but if I am right it must have been in May or June of 1987. I had a ten speed bike that I rode a lot (I had wanted to be in the Tour De France back then!) and I just started to ride. I went out through the back roads. I was familiar with the area from exploring plus from when I was going out looking for odd jobs (that is another story but back in junior high my mom would tell me to go out and not come home until I had earned x amount of dollars. I would would go door to door asking for work and end up raking leaves, washing cars, etc). I rode for the rest of the day and by night fall I was somewhere that I did not recognize. I can’t really remember where this was but it was somewhere out between Arroyo Grande and Atascadero. I remember riding my bike though some pretty sketchy and deserted places and along dirt trails through some kinds of hills or something.
Eventually I came to a place that looked like a small town. It was getting dark and there was a kind of crossroads situation. I did not know where I was or which way I was going. I also realized that I had not brought anything with me at all. I had the clothes I had been wearing during the day and my bike. That was it. I had been riding for hours and I suddenly felt very alone and scared. I remember sitting there on the side of the road and finally feeling overwhelmed and I started to cry. After a while though, nothing had changed. I was still sitting in the dirt by the side of the road with no money and no food and no idea where I was. I decided I had to do something. I looked around the little town I was in a bit and I eventually found a little saloon. It was closed by this point but I could see that they had food inside and a cash register on the counter. After a bit of hemming and hawing I eventually broke the window and went in. I had been stealing things for a while now, from mom and grandparents, and from my job as a paper boy and at McDonalds and at school in the coffee shop) but I had not broken into any place before. I was nervous but I was also hungry. I found some soda and some bread and checked the register. Nothing. But then I noticed that there was a lot of money on the ceiling of this place. It had stuff written on it like ‘good luck!’ and so on. But there was a lot of it. I took as much as I could. Most of it was one dollar bills but there were some bigger bills as well. I grabbed as much as I could and got out of there. With the adrenaline I was pumped to get back on the road and I got on my bike and rode out of town as fast as I could. At the time I didn’t quite realize what I had done but when I did I felt bad about it. Those bills were obviously from the opening of this place and I am sure whoever owned it was not happy at all.
A while later I was cold and tired and I needed a place to lay low. I found a movie theatre somewhere off the road I was riding on and thought that would be a good place to hang out for a while. I left my bike outside and went in. I am pretty sure Full Metal Jacket was the movie that I saw and it really blew me away. I knew my uncle had been in Vietnam but he never really talked about it, except very rarely. I came out of that theatre with the Mickey Mouse theme song stuck in my head and realized that my bike was gone. I wondered around a while and eventually, exhausted, found a pile of tires in back of a gas station that I tried to sleep on. I was woken up by some police officers who were asking me what I was doing there. Apparently a 15 year old white kid sleeping on a pile of tires aroused their suspicion. I was very frightened because my mom had told me once (in a fit of rage) that kids like me would be ‘eaten alive’ in jail. But these officers were very nice, asking me what my names was. They did not book me and they apparently had no idea about my earlier B&E. In fact they drove me all the way home. My mom was very angry but had been worried as well. That didn’t stop her from hitting me with a broom but I don’t want to dwell on those kinds of details.
My mom felt powerless and had not had a good upbringing herself. So when she hit me and screamed at me and told me she was sorry I had been born and that she wished she had not been so loyal and stuck by me, I know she was just a desperately scared woman who was reenacting her own childhood abuse. I know that now. But at the time I hated her with all my heart. I also hated the police for bringing me back home. From my point of view they had just taken me right back to the prison I had just escaped from. My grades in school were tanking. I ended up with all Fs that semester, even in the classes I loved most, which were my programming in BASIC class (where I first met ELIZA and dreamed of becoming a programmer and designing the Ultimate Zork-like game), Electronics II (where we built a robot from a kit and programmed to do basic tasks like drive down the aisle), and speech forensics (the speech team). I was required to work (I had been working officially since 1985 according to Social Security (but had been doing so unofficially since 7h or 8th grade) and I had no friends. I was not allowed to go anywhere expect school, work, and then home where I endured what I thought of as mental and physical abuse.
By the summer things with me and my mom were coming to a head as well. She was taking me and my sister out to Fresno to attend a big Jehovah’s Witness convention which was held July 4th 1987. This was when my mom was baptized and officially became a Jehovah’s Witness. I am pretty sure my sister was as well. I was not. I absolutely refused to be baptized. I remember that we were all getting into the car and the car would not start. My mom started crying and saying that Satan was trying to stop us from getting to the convention and I thought that was malarkey. Why would Satan care about us getting there I asked? My mom told me that we were special and that we had a lot of power and could a lot of good for God, especially me she said. I must admit that I liked the idea of being the special chosen one battling the forces of evil. It had a very Star Wars feel to it but I just could not believe that our car didn’t start because of that. My mom prayed and tried again. The car started.
She turned to me and said, smugly, “see, Richard God is more powerful than Satan” and I remember feeling overwhelmed with rage at how stupid that very idea was! I was sure it was something mechanical that had failed in the car and it was just luck that it started after she prayed! Maybe she had flooded it and it just needed to rest. There were a million more likely explanations besides Satan’s special interest in my family! I don’t really remember too much about the convention itself except that someone there had a really new computer and I was really interested in it. Whoever it was that owned it was impressed by how much I knew (I was really into BASIC programming back then).
The details of all of this are hazy but it must have been a couple of weeks after her baptism that ran away again. I remember she was sitting in the bathtub, like she liked to do, and she was yelling at me about something I had done. She was screaming that I needed to study the bible and that this was her house and as long as she paid the bills I would follow her rules and I suddenly broke. I interrupted her and screamed “no! I need to start living MY LIFE” and I stormed out of the house. I am pretty sure I went to the library, which is where I spent a lot of time. I wanted to be a little smarter this time since I had been so easily caught the few times I had snuck out/ran away before.
At this time I remember I was working at a local minimart in a gas station. I wasn’t there for very long but I definitely did work there. I was going to work, going to the library and then sneaking into my room at night. The apartment we had at that time was upstairs and had a downstairs shed that we had turned into a separate room for me. I would sneak in late at night and then sneak out early in the morning. The only bathroom was upstairs and I did not go into the main house but there was a bathroom at the gas station I worked at and I remember brushing my teeth and washing up in there. I think I did that for a few days though I don’t really remember. My mom has told me since then that she saw the signs of my having slept there and felt comforted by that, knowing I was still around somewhere.
One morning as I was sneaking out I happened to see a motorcycle sitting in a drive way with the keys in the ignition. It was a big bike, and Honda 750 or something like that, with a dragon decal on the side and I wanted it. It had the keys in it so I decided to take it. I pushed it out of the driveway and down to the end of the block to try and start it. I remember it was very hard to start with the kick-starter and I did not know how to shift the gears so once I did get it started I kept stalling it out. But I did figure it out. I don’t know how long I had that motorcycle but I drove it to work, parked it out back and then worked. I am pretty sure I drove it to school and parked it in the main parking lot and everyone was looking at me. I have a feeling that this may have been for registration for the upcoming 1987-1988 year. My transcripts say that I was a no-show for that year so I don’t think I actually made it to any classes.
I wish I had more of these dates down! I don’t even remember how long I had this motorcycle for. Anyway, I remember at some point wanting a book from the library (yes I drove the motorcycle there) and they did not have it. They said they did have it at the bigger library in Santa Maria so I decided to drive up there. It was down the freeway about 20 minutes or so and I remember driving in my shorts and a tee-shirt on the freeway. The ground was moving so fast it looked like it was standing still! I think I made it to the library and was in there for a while and on my way home I noticed a cop car start following me. I tried to keep my cool and turned into a parking structure to see what they would do. They turned as well and I knew I was busted.
I had no I.D. on me and I was not from Santa Maria. I also remembered that the last time I was picked up by the cops they simply brought me back home and made my life worse (so I thought at the time anyway). So when they asked me my name I told them that it was Alex Wolfe. I had been reading the Ken Follett novel Key to Rebecca and I thought that was a great name (I had also previously written to the CIA requesting to become a sleeper agent so as to get away from my mom…this was after I read a book on how to apply to the CIA). So they booked me under that name and took me the holding room. I used to think they took me to the general jail but now I don’t remember. They may have taken me to a juvenile facility. I am not sure. I do remember being in with a lot of other people at some point and I obviously stood out. I was pretty much the only scrawny white teenager in the place. Some people asked me what I was in for and I told them steeling a motor cycle and resisting arrest and they all laughed. They said ‘yeah right! You?’. I remember feeling really angry at the time. Of course me, what the fuck were they talking about? Of course looking back on it now I can see that I was the beneficiary of white privilege. People looked at me and assumed I was innocent. After all didn’t I look that way? Blond hair, blue eyes with a twinkle? Check. Seemingly intelligent and inquisitive? Check. Seemingly outgoing and personable? Check. Couldn’t have been me. Of course I didn’t feel like any of those things but that is what people saw when they looked at me.
They asked me for an address and I gave them a made up one (I think I told them Lompoc or something, again not sure). I waited in lockup while they went to contact my parents. Remember that they were going to contact the parents of Alex Wolfe at a made up address. Obviously they found no such address and they came back to me and told me as much. I told them that the house was in the back of another house and that you could not see it from the road. I based the whole story on the way that my mom’s boyfriend’s property had had a guest house, with its own address, in the back of the property. So it was kind of true, at least it was true that there were places like this! But obviously they did not find that place either. I don’t know what my plan was but I kept to my story. I was Alex Wolfe from Santa Maria or, er, uh, Lompoc (or whatever). I was used to interrogation from my mom. She would question me for hours trying to get me to admit to doing something (stealing or sneaking out) and I would never do so. She tells me now that my silence drove her to a frenzy and she just wanted some kind of reaction from me. She would hit me and scream at me and I would try me best to just stand there and take it. Glaring at her but taking it. So when these guys were asking me questions in a friendly manner without any hitting or yelling about how they were sorry I was born and that they should drop me off somewhere, I felt like it was a cake walk.
As I remember the story it was a receptionist in the juvenile hall that finally recognized me. Believe it or not she was a Jehovah’s Witness and she had been at the convention where my mom was baptized and she had met both my sister and I. Somehow she contacted my mom and when she found out that I had just vanished recently she knew that it was me they had in custody. My mom came out and IDed me. I tried to insist that I did not recognize her but she had no problem establishing my identity. So now they knew I was not Alex Wolfe. And the only way they had ever known was through a random Jehovah’s Witness connection! At the time I remember the psychologist telling me that I had lied so convincingly that perhaps I had multiple personalities and asking me if I ever ‘lost time’…I remember thinking this guy was a jackass. I didn’t have multiple personalities, I just knew how to lie really well. And I was used to having to do it while resisting physical and verbal abuse. Sitting in a chair, comfortable and fed, the game was easy to play! I really wish I could see what those guys were writing down. This was the first of many encounters I had with ‘child psychologists’ and I always had the feeling of messing with them but I sometimes wonder if they knew that and were just playing along. I tried contacting the places I was at and they told me those records were long ago destroyed. I guess I’ll never know.
I really do not remember how long I was locked up in Santa Maria but I remember standing trial for Grand Theft Auto there. Someday I hope to get my arrest record and maybe even a transcript of this trial. Since no one took me seriously when I said that I had taken the motorcycle when I went into court and they asked for my plea, I pleaded Not Guilty. And so the whole thing went to trial. The owner of the motorcycle had to come and testify. The arresting officer testified. I had to testify. It was obvious that I had done it. They had caught me riding the bike! I was ultimately convicted and sent back to San Luis Obispo for sentencing. I wish I could find the transcripts of those proceedings!
I remember that when the time came to take me back to San Luis Obispo I had to be shackled and handcuffed. I was taken to a van with a bunch of inmates. These were people going either to prison or the California Youth Authority, which was were serious criminal offenders went. I remember being in there and being really scared. I did not know what to expect once I got to San Luis. So far things had not been like my mom told me but it was still new to me. At some point we pulled over to use the restroom and I remember them taking us one by one into the bathroom. I saw an elderly woman watching me shuffle by in my shackles and orange jump suit and she looked very shocked to see me. I have a memory of sitting there in the van, waiting for someone else to use the restroom, and talking with the driver who was watching me and someone else in the back. he started bragging about what a good shot he was and telling me how he could hit a deer from this or that far away and I said “bet you couldn’t hit someone running away”. He looked at me and said that he could hit me from across the street. I said “what?” and he said “yeah, I’ll unlock your shackles and cuffs and give you a head start. I’ll wait until you are across the street and the hit you in the leg. That’ll show you what a good shot I am”. I looked at the gas station. Could I make it to the pumps and hide and then dart across the street. I looked back and saw him eyeing me. Was he serious I wondered? I laughed nervously and said something like ‘yeah ok, right’ and the moment passed.
Again I do not have access to the exact dates but my high school transcript says that I was in juvenile hall in September of 1987 in San luis Obispo. I vaguely remember getting to the place that was called Juvenile Services Facility. It was a place I would come to know well over the next couple of years. I spent my 16th and 17th birthday in that place. Ironically it was located right next door (I mean literally) to Cuesta Community College, which I would attend 1994-1997, though I didn’t know it then. I was in the back of the van when we pulled up and when they took me in for processing I was very scared.
But this wasn’t the worst place in the world. It was coed and people mostly had their own rooms. Each room had a window, a bed, a toilet and that was it. I actually enjoyed it and did a lot of reading. We could also play chess and watch movies in the common area. For our time outside we had a volley ball court and we could play wife ball (no real bats for us angry kids!). I remember we used to play cards a lot and would play Speed for push ups. The in-house school had a computer and they even let me play Where in the World is carmen San Diego, which I actually liked a lot. It wasn’t Zork but it was still ok. All in all this place was ok, except for the occasional scuffle things were mostly orderly and there were no killings or extremely brutal beatings during my time there.
I remember watching Ferris Bueller on movie night for the first time and having a crush on two of the girls who came in and out. Nothing happened between us, I was way too shy back then to even think of trying to have sex in the bathroom of juvenile hall, but I heard that others did. This place was unique, I found out later, because it had private bathrooms. Of course they weren’t really private because they did not lock from the inside but they had a door and only one person at a time would be in there. What I remember most was having a massive crush on a girl, whose name was Sabra, and then she was sent home. That night I lay in my room and cried myself to sleep. It was so frustrating not being able to see her any more or even know if I would ever see her again. She was back in the next week.
I had a couple of incidents, one of which was over chess. My mom had taught me how to play and I used to play all the time. I never studied it and even though I was on the chess club in high school I was not very good. But I was ok. I beat some guy and talked shit about it and that started a fight. I held my own and was surprised how being hit in a fight was mostly the same as being hit at home. It didn’t really faze me. I could take a punch and not miss a beat, which comes in handy in a fight! That was the first time I experienced “the burrito” which was the technique used by the staff to subdue unruly teenagers. They had this thick fire blanket that they kept in the back. They would take it out and rush you and wrap you up in this blanket like a burrito, more like a rolled carpet, but then they would carry you to your room for solitary confinement.
Aside from that it was mostly school during the day and lights out by 9. I did really well in school and excellent on the standardized tests. At some point they bought me a calculus book and let me work on it at my own pace. I remember going to court while here and confronting my mom. She wanted me to come home and the judge was inclined to grant her request. He wanted to send me home. I could not believe it! After all this and they just wanted to send me home? I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if i had not been a blond hair blue eyed, semi-bright kid. At any rate I was made a ward of the court and assigned a case worker who was going to find me a group home. The one down side was that being a vegetarian made it hard to eat. We all ate in a giant mess hall area with benches. We were served the same meal and there was no negotiating. If you didn’t eat meat, and if they were serving ribs, or hamburger, then you either ate it or starved. I chose to starve and traded my meat to met eaters for extra milk, and veggie side dishes. This had the added benefit of making me popular with many different ‘kinds’ of people. There were people in gangs in there but I was not associated with any of them. When people asked me where I was from or ‘what I claimed’ (code words for a potential fight about to happen) I used to joke that I was from wherever my skateboard was at the moment or that I was from California. And it is true that for most of my life I primarily identified as a California (as opposed to an American, or whatever) I had moved around enough to not really feel like any place was truly home and I had not really left California at all at that point in my life. I will talk about some of this more but I found that being a skater definitely helped me in the group homes. Skating had a kind of rebellious-individual-who-can-take-pain image about it and that allowed me to stay neutral in the various clicks and ganges that I encountered, which on the whole was a good thing!
But back to the point, although I can’t be sure I think this may have been in October of 1987. I remember spending my 16th birthday in juvenile hall. My High School transcripts say that I earned credits from the San Luis Juvenile Court 9/87-3/88 and I am not sure if that means that the initial stay was six months long. At this point the dates become very hazy. I know that I was sent to four different group homes. Two I stayed at for very short durations. The shortest was a group home in Santa Barbara. This place was beautiful and I remember the house parents taking us out to the park and showing us around downtown Santa Barbara but somehow the other boys there didn’t like me. I was into skating at the time, I had just started getting into it before running away, after losing my ten speed. I think we got into a fight over some kind of surfer versus skater bullshit. All I remember is that it was four against one and I was getting my ass kicked. I managed to break away from them and ran to the bathroom. I locked the door and then they grabbed a screwdriver and were trying to get the handle off to get into the room. I panicked and jumped out of the window. I was totally paranoid that they would be after me and so I hid out for the rest of the day in Santa Barbara trying to figure out what to do. I decided to head back to San Luis and so I started walking. I walked all day and all night until someone pulled over and offered me a ride. I got in (stupid but I was desperate!). Luckily this person was actually nice and drove me to San Luis. I ended up staying with someone I had known from high school and who used to be a neighbor of mine at some point. The next morning I went to the police station and turned myself in.
You see, at that point I had started to like it in juvenile hall. I understood how it worked in there and I felt like I had more freedom to be myself there than I did at home. When I was brought back I found out that this was a typical pattern. There was a few kids that were regulars in juvy. You went back in, went before the judge, they added more time onto your ‘suspended sentence’ and then they started to look for another group home. There was a saying in Juvy that when you got out you could tell if you were coming back by whether you looked over your shoulder or not on the car ride out. I very often did find myself looking over my shoulder as I left (I must have been in and out at least 4 times). I would wonder what they were doing tonight, and miss my ‘friends’. How fucked up is that?
I didn’t know it at the time but there were basically three ‘tracts’ in the juvenile justice system. The first was your basic drug offender. These people came in and were sent to some kind of rehab. I never had any drug-related charges. I had, of course, been exposed to drugs via my mom and her boyfriends (it was the 70s! and then it was the 80s! I mean, C’mon!) but I did not really use any (I tried alcohol, and cigarettes and marijuana but I did not use them regularly like some kids did. My mom was way too strict for me to get away with anything like that!). The second was violent crimes. Depending on the seriousness these people could be sent to the California Youth Authority, which was the ‘big leagues’ for juvenile offenders. There were a few kids who came through who were ultimately sentenced to CYA, or “see ya!” as we called it, and they were kept out of the general population area. Though I got into occasional fights I was not classified as a violent offender and I never had any assault related charges as a juvenile (that I know of).
I was in a different ‘tract’ classified as a kid with ‘behavioral problems’. What this meant is that the kinds of group homes they looked for for me were all geared towards helping kids deal with behavioral issues. Each one was different. One was a large camp-like place focusing on discipline, (in Mendocino Ca), another was run by a single family and more like a foster home (Santa Barbara), another was more like a mental institution and had regular 9-5, 5-2, 2-10 shifts (San Luis Obispo), another was a bunch of different houses with live-in staff and group counseling (Fresno). I don’t really remember the order that I was in these group homes but I think after my initial processing into the system I was sent to the group home in Santa Barbara (in late 1987?), and then up to Mendocino California (in January 1988), and then in San Luis Obispo (in March/April of 1988). The final one was in Fresno and I am pretty sure I got there in the late summer of 1988 (and was released in 1989) but I will have to get to all of that later.
