YOUTH ON THE LAMP-PART LAST

There were other robberies and plenty of them! One night I went to a wild party and the next morning a fellow named George and I were seated in a car we had stolen, in front of the Maryland Apartments at 363 Page Street. I was half asleep when I felt someone step on the running board of one side of the car, and someone on the other. I looked up and there stood Officer Rasmussen of the robbery detail and another officer. I had no chance to draw my gun as they had me and my pal covered. Believe me, it’s a grim felling to look down the barrel of a six-shooter and know that the law is on the side of the man holding it. He can shoot and go free!

Thatcher, do you have a gun? Rasmussen asked. He knew both me and my reputation.

Sure, I answered, in the right-hand pocket of the car. I wondered, how could I make a break? They’d kill me if I resisted, but there must be something I could do.

The other officer opened the car door and got the gun.

Get out of the car, Rasmussen ordered. We did and they patted us to see if we had a them careless, so when Rasmussen searched me, I pulled in my stomach and he missed the gun

I had under my belt. Fine, that was the break I wanted! Rasmussen took the key out of the car and ordered, Get behind the wheel.

I crawled under the wheel and waited while Rasmussen and the other officer put my buddy into the police car. Rasmussen turned and started toward the car. I reached for my gun, determined I was going to get that key from Rasmussen and get away, whatever the cost.

YOUTH ON THE LAMP-PART THREE

There was only one sure way I could get money and get it quickly robbery it became my means of livelihood. I don’t know what turns other men into crooks and robbers. I know only what it took to make me a thief. A combination of being at my wit’s end, a thirst for excitement and bull courage. Of course, I wasn’t alone in my jobs. I ran with a couple of guys and we egged on each other. There’s always a touch of mob bravado in group robbery, as there is in any form of mob violence.

Each robbery had its own pattern. All of them risky I remember when a buddy and I robbed the DuBois garage out on DuBois Street in San Francisco. The attendant must have had an inkling of what we planned to do, because without our noticing him, he managed to turn off the petcock on our gas down underneath the gas tank.

We got the money and started driving down the street, but soon the motor sputtered and stopped. While we were wondering what the matter was, we heard the siren on the police car coming our way. We jumped out of the car, abandoning it, hopped across back fences, and caught a streetcar downtown, where we were safe.

Life was nothing but drunken parties and robberies. Once the police picked me up on suspicion, but I had managed to throw my gun into the weeds before they got me. I was taken to jail and held for several days, but they had nothing on me and had to turn me loose. Did that make me feel cocky? You answer that one!

By this time I was running with the guys and dolls of the Turk, Eddy, Ellis district. I had ideas of bigger and better robberies all the time. I hadn’t served any time for a couple of years and if I was going to be a crook, I was going to be a big-shot crook.

And there was a girl who was just as foolish as I was. She was ambitious for me to be a big-shot as a wife of a hard-working husband is for him to get ahead. Maybe more so, because we were both the kind to whom excitement had a strong appeal, and liked throwing money around. We decided to rob a drug store, at closing time, where the take would be big. She and I cased the joint. That is we looked it over and studied all the angles and set the time. Only, like many another girl before her, she got cold feet and turned me in. I didn’t know it at the time, but the police were staked out with orders to shoot first and ask questions afterwards.

But the guy selling newspapers on the corner was one of the boys from preston State Reform School. He spotted the police cars, and as I started into the store, he brushed by me and whispered, don’t do it, Phil. Cops!

I sat at the counter, drinking a strawberry soda, wondering what to do. The man locked the front door, waiting for me to finish my drink. I ached to take a chance but knew that newsboy knew something I didn’t. While I was waiting, my girl apparently got curious for she came to the door and looked in. I said to the clerk, let my wife in will you?

Why, yes, he said and unlocked the door. She came in, wide-eyed wondering what happened. I looked at her with hatred in my heart. It had to be she who turned me in I grabbed her, and using her as a shield, I went out the side door to my car. I half-pushed, half-pulled her into my car, and glanced around. I could spot cars that looked like cops to me any way I looked. Behind me was a dead-end street, so I gave the car the gas and sped down the street, hoping they wouldn’t dare shoot because of the girl. They didn’t or I wouldn’t be telling this story.

YOUTH ON THE LAM-PART TWO

I slipped quietly out of bed, and taking nothing with me but the clothes I had on, I went down town. I rented a Hertz Drive yourself car and headed south. I had but one objective and that was to get away from the mess I had made of everything; from facing Mom. I knew I was doing wrong and that I stood a good chance of being caught, but I never was the meditative type. I was always more motion than reason. As long as I had the feeling that somehow everything would work out.

 

By coincidence I picked up a hitch-hiker and he turned out to be a fellow I had known in Sacramento. We soon spent the money I had. By the time we reached Turlock we sold the spare tire to buy gas. Further down the road we sold the tools. That was selling stolen property, but the mere fact of legal ownership didn’t matter now! All that mattered was keeping from being caught.

 

When we were almost to Los Angeles, we blew a tire, left the car sitting at the roadside and started hitch-hiking. We went through to Arizona, and sighed with relief. Maybe the state would not extradite for my offense. But I continued on into Texas, and then to cloud my trail I enlisted in the cavalry under the name of Philip Murray.

 

I was shipped to Fort Riley, Kansas, and I really enjoyed the army. I was used to a disciplined life, and army life was so much easier than jail. The food was good and I became the best welter-weight boxer of my division. But I stayed around too long. One day the Captain called me into his office and I faced my record. Not my criminal record, but my former enlistment, when I’d been discharged on account of my age. The officer thought that was the reason I had enlisted under an assumed name, and suggested, “Phil, you’re doing fine in the army. You finish out your term as Murray and then re-enlist.”

 

Sure, I agreed. That was a simple solution. I figured that I would soon be welterweight champion of my outfit. I’d straighten out. I can’t remember how many times, from the days in Boys’ Aid on up, that I promised myself I’d straighten out. This life, with fear of my record nudging me in the back was no fun, believe me! I might forget for hours at a time, but always the day of reckoning kept coming up. This time, I’d make it for sure! Only I was trying to make it without any help from God, just in the strength of plain old Phil Thatcher.

 

I grew restless, so I applied for a three-day leave. I borrowed a suit from one of my buddies and went to Kansas City. There I decided that the army life was too tame, and I would go over the hill. I bought a pair of coveralls, slipped them over my borrowed suit and caught a freight train. In a few hours I hopped off at a little town in Missouri. I figured no one would think of my being there, so I slipped off the coveralls, hung around the general store for awhile and soon got a job with a farmer.

 

I stayed at that farm only a short time. A man with a record isn’t content any place so I started roaming around the country. In about a year’s time. I was back in Northern California. I was now 22. I went to work for a grocery store, but I didn’t last long because I had sticky fingers. Job after job went in this manner, and I got in with the wrong crowd. And if they weren’t wrong enough, my going with them made them wrong. I drank heavily, couldn’t keep a job and needed money if I were to eat and have anything.

YOUTH ON THE LAM-PART ONE

One day the young manager from another store came to visit our store and see how business was. He and I became acquainted and he invited, “come over to my store after work this Saturday and we’ll go places.”

 

Sure, I replied, always game for anything that was stirring.

 

When I arrived there, I found a card game going on in the back room. I was too impulsive to be a good gambler, but neither could I resist the invitation to join the fellows. I lost my pay fro the week, then desperate to get back what I had lost, I went into debt as far as the fellows would let me.

 

When I got up from that table I felt sick. I had no money to take home to Mom. She needed that money for food, for rent, for the girls. She had been depending upon me and proud of me. How quickly and easily a man could mess up his life! I trudged wearily home, trying to figure out what to tell her. I was eighteen and I had never learned to face life. I lied and ran away from the consequences every time I could. So when I got home and looked into her inquiring face, I mumbled, “The Boss wasn’t there to pay me. I’ll get it Monday.”

 

She put her hand on my arm, a habit of hers, as if to stay me in my wild careen downward, Phil a boss is usually there to pay his men. He considers it his obligation. Now tell mother the truth, and we’ll see what we can do about it.

 

I threw off her hand and stamped out of the house. I couldn’t stand the look on her face, and so I tried to forget by getting drunk. That wasn’t the first time I had been drunk, by a long shot. I had been drunk off and on since before my days at Boys Aid. The other boys and I in the neighborhood used to steal wine from the basements of the Italians living in Sacramento.

 

This time when I staggered home, Mom managed to get me into bed, and was she mad at me! She knew what was coming and so she set an old wash tub by the bed, warning me, “Don’t you miss it!”

 

I didn’t.

 

By Monday I was over my drunk, I arose early and sneaked out to the store. All day long, as I waited on customer, wrapping packages, ringing up the cash register, I worried, how can I get ahold of some money to give Mom to prove to her that I didn’t lie? Face her and admit the truth never even occurred to me. No, I would prove that my wrong was right. There was only one quick answer. I managed to slip twenty dollars into my own pocket. When Ed, the manager, counted up that night, the till was short. Because it was the first time there had been a shortage, Ed put it down to a mistake of some kind. I was relieved and boastful. I took the twenty dollars home and proved to Mom that she had misjudged me!

 

All went well for a week, then, again I went over to the other store and lost my week’s pay. I couldn’t go home and face Mom. What could I do? Well, I had ruined everything again might as well do a thorough job of it. I returned to the store where I worked, broke a lock on the back door and stole about a hundred and fifty dollars that was kept hidden for change. Ed would know that I had stolen it because no one else would have known where to look.

 

It was about one o’clock when I arrived home. Mom was waiting for me, a worried expression on her face. She knew something was wrong. Too wrong! I gave her the regular amount of money and went to bed, but not to sleep. I tossed and turned, knowing that by Monday we would all be questioned and that my police record would come to light. I couldn’t face it.

YOUTH ON THE LAM

I really made an effort to go straight. I enlisted in the Army but was son discharged because I was too young. I hung around Mom and the girls, and was arrested. This time I happened to be innocent of the crime of which I was accused. But with my record, no one would believe me. Even Mom wasn’t too sure I was innocent. And so at seventeen I was sentenced to serve a year in the country Jail at Sacramento, under the shadow of the Capital.

What a joint! And the people of the state of California are supposed to be proud of it! This is where they lock up their criminals to reform them, or to set them firmer in the mold of evil. Sacramento County Jail was, and still is, one of the filthiest jails in the state of California. I know. I’ve been in a number of them and I worked in the kitchen in Sacramento, helping to prepare the slop the men were expected to eat. It was cooked like slop and dished out like slop into utensils that weren’t even clean.

Breakfast was coffee and mush with dark syrup. The coffee was burnt barley or something like that. Often there were weevils in the mush, but the dark syrup helped to hide them.

There were only two meals a day. That made a man hungry enough to eat the stuff. The other meal, served in the late afternoon, was stew without meat, beans boiled without much flavoring, or macaroni boiled with salt. On Sunday came the meatloaf with very little meat. Treatment like that doesn’t reform a man. He would grimly determine never to be caught again, but that’s as far as he goes. Bitterness burned deeper and deeper into my soul.

After six months, with one month off for good behavior, I was released; mad at the world, swearing under my breath to get even.

Mother met me at the door. Her shoulders were stooped from hard work, her hands rough and calloused, and her eyes deeper with sorrow, but she held her little round chin just a little higher. She put her hand on my arm and she asked, “Phil, won’t you come home and live with us?”

She meant herself, and my four sisters (Paul was working away from home), and I answered, “Sure.”

When we reached the rather shabby house in which she and the girls lived, she bravely said, Phil as far as the world is concerned, you haven’t been a very good boy, and I’ve faith.

Faith I repeated, thinking of the joint in which I spent the last year. How could a man believe in anything in a place like that? But I didn’t tell her what the jail had been like.

Yes, faith. God is on my side. Your father and I gave you to the Lord at the altar for His service when you were fifteen days old. And God has promised, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive. And I believe.

I didn’t answer her. Vaguely I knew what she believed, but fresh from my boiled beans and hard mattress, and the rough talk of the men, it seemed far away.

I stayed home for awhile, and then I worked with my brother, Paul, in San Leandro. I met a Mr. Chaddock and he got me a job in Oakland at the piggly Wiggly. Ed, the manager, was good to me. Mom worked and we kept the home for my sisters. Some of my hardness seemed to wear off. Mom and I even went to church a few times and Mom was rejoicing in the Lord. Her son was going to straighten out at last! Such high hopes!

REFORM SCHOOLS COME IN ALL SIZES- PART FOUR

Not too many days later I stood in the courtroom. The judge rifled through my record. It didn’t look so good. Boys Aid, Whittier State School, and the assorted jails I had been in and out of. No special help from outside. Only the prayers of Mom and they didn’t move the judge. He sentenced me to the preston school of Industry located at Ione, in Amador country, California. At 15, I was sentenced to my third reform school.

 

Here again, my hair was clipped and I was given a new outfit of clothes. Only now I received a shirt with a number on it and pants with a white stripe down the leg. The food was class D and the treatment, well.

 

The boys were divided into companies, ranging in size from thirty-five to seventy. At the head of each company was a boy who was captain and below him was a first and second lieutenant. Those three ran the company, and the boy who was the toughest and the quickest with his fists was captain. If a boy disobeyed rules, or tried to run away, the guard never laid a hand on him. With a sneer, he turned the boy over to the captain of the company, and the captain took the unlucky boy into the shower room and let him have it. The boy would come out beaten, with a black eye, or loose teeth. Just the kind of treatment that made a boy determines to learn to fight better so he could be the captain, and beat up the other boys!

 

The work was tougher, too. I worked with a pick and shovel or spent long hours in the hot sun building rock retaining walls. Those walls are still standing. And part of the time, I worked on a ranch for a Mr. Stack.

 

I met some of my old friends there. From Whittier there were both Ray and Sala who had been on the football team. At nights, we’d sit around in the dormitory and talk about what we’d do when we were released.

 

Ray got his release the hard way. He was put into F Company or the cell block room. He decided he was going to run away from the place. And so, one afternoon when Pop Dooley was making his rounds, Ray hit him over the head with a heavy shoe. Pop whipped his gun out of his holster and shot him. Not quite seventeen, Ray was dead.

 

After fourteen months of back-breaking work, poor food and plenty of fights, I was released from preston. I was seventeen and a graduate of the two best reform schools in the state of California. I had learned many things in those schools. True, I had attended school only a few weeks out of the three years I had spent in the two of them, but at Whittier, I had learned how to steal a car without a key, and in preston I had learned how to crack a safe. The boys taught me what they knew and I taught them what I knew, and if what we knew was wrong, we didn’t have anything else to teach other.

 

As a Whittier and preston graduate, with my accumulated knowledge of crime, I went back to Sacramento to Mom, determined to go straight!

REFORM SCHOOLS COME IN ALL SIZES- PART THREE

He walked over to me, gripped my shoulder with his hand an asked, “Son, would you stay on the farm if I let you go out there to work?”

 

My heart skipped a beat. Not because he had suggested my going to the farm. No, but because he had put his hand on my shoulder. I thought, maybe this guy is an okay guy, maybe he does like me!

 

“Look, son, I asked you a question. Your record tells me not to send you to the ranch, but I’m going to take a chance on you.” And he squeezed my shoulder.

 

That did it! I wasn’t a tough guy any more. Tears came to my eyes and streamed down my face, and I promised, “I won’t run away, honest, I won’t. You can trust me.”

 

I thought you had it in you, he said.

 

And proud of that hand on my shoulder and his trust in me, I went off to the farm. That touch kept me straight for the two years I was in Whittier, for Fred C. Nellis was the only man who ever showed any real love and interest in me all during the years I was in trouble. He put his faith in me and you can bet I didn’t run away. I couldn’t. The Big Guy trusted me!

 

At the end of the two years, I was put on parole and allowed to go home to my Mom in Sacramento. It was grand to be home. I was full of promises to Mom and myself. And I did all right for a while. I worked as an usher at the Victory Theater. I worked in the rice fields where my brother Paul worked. At the same time, I started going around with the old gang. After all, they were the only Friends I had. I started staying out late at night, smoking, drinking, and taking things to help pay my share of our good time.

 

I remember one night when I didn’t get home until late; about 2a.m. I took off my shoes to sneak in. As I opened the back door, I stopped still. I could hear a voice in the living room. I peeked around the door, and there was Mom, kneeling in front of the old rocking chair. She prayed, something like this, “Oh God, I don’t know where Phil is tonight but you do. Please won’t you save him and bring him back home so I can have some rest?”

 

I waited until she finished praying and went to bed. I hardened my heart so God couldn’t answer her prayer. I knew I was running with the wrong gang but I didn’t want to give up my friends for what? As far as I could see for nothing. I kept on going with the gang, and we burglarized a garage and I was arrested again. By this time, I had lost count of how many times I’d been picked up.

 

While awaiting sentence, because I was fifteen and too old for juvenile hall, I was put in jail. One night while I was there, the police brought in a woman and locked her in a cell close to mine. She was a drug addict, shooting heroin. She didn’t suffer much the first night but sat quietly in her cell, waiting for the effects of the heroine to wear off.

 

But the next day and night were a nightmare for the woman, myself and those in the other cells! She screamed, cried and cursed the police, begging for a shot of heroin. Her nerves were raw. Her body felt as if a thousand bugs were crawling up and down each nerve. No one paid any attention to her cry. Not even an aspirin was given to her. Finally, unable to stand the pain any longer, she began butting her head against the bars. She cracked her scalp and blood gushed out, running down the aisle. By standing close to my cell bars, I could see the blood as it formed a little pool on the cement floor. She stopped screaming and fell to the floor. The guards came and carried her out. I don’t know if she was dead or not, but seeing her suffer made me fear and hate dope. I never touched the stuff.