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. 

REFORM SCHOOLS COME IN ALL SIZES- PART TWO

Soon we were marched into a large dormitory and assigned a bed. One of the boys, Sala, offered to show me how to make mine regulation style, and we became friends-friends for years!

The guard ordered us to bed and the lights were turned out, all but one dim one. I lay there, quiet, not crying like I had in Boys Aid. I was older. I was tougher. I tried to figure out where I was going, but it had been a long day, so soon I was asleep!

The next morning the bell changed at 6:45 waking me up with a start. The routine began. The food, though, was okay. Afterwards I was marched to a tool house, given a hoe and marched to the edge of the highway where, with the other boys, I cut weeds until noon. Then, we marched back to quarters for lunch. In the afternoon, we were marched onto the drill grounds for two and a half hours of drill.

By this time, my hands were blistered from the hoe and my heels were blistered from the big shoes. I don’t yip. I wasn’t going to let these cops see any soft spot in me. I was learning to suffer grimly and though I didn’t know it then, learning to suffer with a stiff upper lip is a great asset to a criminal. He’s got to learn to take it!

The blisters on my hands healed. The blisters on my feet healed. Time passed. When I had been in Whittier for two months I was ready to be assigned to a steady job. I asked to be put on the farm. After all, from my wandering I knew something about farm work and it would be pleasant. But because of my record, I was turned down. That should have been a signal for rebellion and a run-away. But it wasn’t! You see, at Whittier, I had found good food and kindness, and life wasn’t too bad. I worked on the extra gang, and in the afternoon I played football. Jimmy, with whom I had run away from Boys Aid, had also graduated to Whittier. He tried to talk me into running away but I strictly wasn’t interested. Not me. I was playing guard on the second string team. I liked the boys on the team. There was Smithy who played right end. Ray, who played halfback Sala, who played tackle next to me Frankie, Shorty, all little guys who had been in trouble and somehow were trying to find their way out.

Sometimes Mom made the trip to see me. She brought a picnic lunch of sandwiches, cake and ice cream and we sat on the lawn and talked of home, of paul, Miriam and my younger sisters. Why, a boy could believe he was loved and belonged!

One day, after I had been at Whittier about six months, I was told, “Mr. Nellis wants to see you.”

The superintendent himself! What could he want? What had I done that been wrong? I walked, curious-like, to the outer office of Fred c. Nellis. I sat on the edge of a chair, turning from left to right, sweating it out for an hour that seemed like a lifetime. I could see all my privileges, seeing Mom, playing on the team, being taken away from me, and I couldn’t figure out what I had done wrong. I sure hadn’t meant to do anything wrong.

Then out of his office came the big fellow himself. He was tall, about six feet, and dignified. He looked at me with a stern but kindly eye. My bitterness had been battered down by the decent treatment at Whittier and I couldn’t help but admire this man who ran a place that was fit for boys to live in.

REFORM SCHOOLS COME IN ALL SIZES-PART ONE

I wandered from place to place. Sometimes I ate out of garbage pails. Sometimes I broke into a house and stole something to eat. Sometimes I begged at the back door of a farm house. If anyone asked about my parents I told them I was an orphan and had run away from an orphanage. Even those who were kind to me, I didn’t trust. I didn’t dare trust them. I was a twelve-year-old fugitive from justice.

Finally, desperate, I stayed and worked at a farm house and the man and woman didn’t turn me in! After three months I ran across a distant relative and worked for him two months, before word got around that I had run away from reform school and I was arrested!

Back I went to Boys Aid! How I hated the place, the bullies who ran it, the poor food, the dreary surroundings! For the third time, I ran away, back to Mom. But I didn’t dare stay home. It was enough to be free and to be in the neighborhood. I lived in the basement of a girl Friend’s home. After the family had left the house, she would bring me something to eat. To her, I was a hero!

By now, I was 13, looked 15, and stealing had become my business. It was stealing or facing my crimes and paying for them. What it takes to pay for one’s crimes in the general run of reformatories, I didn’t have. One has to be either mealy-mouthed so one can be pushed around or a bully who gloats in tormenting the younger, smaller guy. I was neither. I was an impulsive, bull-headed kid, fighting an unkind world with the few tricks I knew and all of them were the wrong kind, but as long as I could use my wits and dodge the police, I was staying out of jail. Once during those days I was picked up and sent to juvenile hall but the fence wasn’t high enough to hold me. They don’t build them that high!

But I kept on living a life that was sending me straight toward jail. And why not? What can the police and society expect when they turn a wayward boy loose, back to where he came from, with no more help toward the right than he ever had? At that time, the reformatories offered me the strap and Mom prayed for me, but I needed more than either strap or prayer. No one showed me the right way to go and I couldn’t find it myself. Neither was I as smart as I thought I was. I was arrested again and sentenced to my second reform school the Whittier Industrial School for Boys. With a defiant heart and chip on my shoulder toward the superintendent and guards, I went there, expecting it to be pretty much like Boys Aid.

On arrival, with several other boys, I was ushered into the barber shop and told to sit in the chair. A boy with clippers in his hand asked me, “How do you want your hair cut?”

Before I could answer, he parted my hair right through the center with the clippers, and then ran them across the other way, back and forth, criss-cross, until there was not a hair to be seen! That was service for you.

Next, came my new clothes. I was given long-handled underwear, khaki pants, a jacket with a high collar that buttoned up and shoes two sizes too big for me. The officials weren’t taking any chances on my outgrowing them!

Then we new boys were taken to the receiving cottages. While we sat around a long table, the officer in charge gave us a stiff talk on how to get along while we were at Whittier. Afterwards we were put on silence until dinner. And that’s no fun! Sometime try sitting in a room full of boys without saying anything to any of them. At dinner, we were allowed to speak only if we wanted something passed. But the beans were good, the bread pudding was sweet and a boy could have all the milk he wanted to drink. I began to realize that maybe this place wasn’t so bad.

KEWPIE DOLLS TO CRIME-PART SIX

Soon, it was dark but for their campfire. Down the tracks we could see a couple of flashlights coming toward us.

Cheese it kids, the cops, Murphy, an Irish tramp warned us.

We darted into a clump of willows and threw ourselves flat on our faces. We held our breath, trying to be perfectly still, but also, we peeked and listened.

The beams of flashlights proved to be the constable and one of the railroad police. They stood at the hobo’s fire and the constable asked, have you seen a couple of runaway kids?

Kids, nope. No kids around here, the hobos answered.

What would kids be doing out this time of night? Another one of the men questioned.

Those brats found where a bar had been sawed loose in the jail, knocked the bar out and broke out of jail.

Sure, that must be a fine jail you have there, chuckled Murphy, if it can’t hold a couple of kids!

Shut up or I’ll lock you up, retorted the constable.

I’ve been in worse, Murphy grinned.

Angry, the constable and the police left, their flashlights disappearing down the tracks. Jimmy and I thanked the boss for lying and as soon as we thought it was safe, we walked the tracks until a freight train, headed toward Sacramento, came puffing along. We hopped it, managing to get into an empty box car, and got back to Sacramento, where in the yards, we were picked up again.

The cops took us to the police station and questioned, who are you? And where are you from?

We’re from Rio de Janeiro, we answered.

That, the police knew, was an utter lie, so they fed us and locked us up in the cell for the night. And this time, there was no getting out of it. Boys Aid, with the strap, haunted my dreams. How could I get out of this jail and stay out of all of them?

The next morning, Max Fish, the fingerprint man, took our prints. That is done by pressing one’s fingers, one at a time, on a stamp pad, and then pressing the inky finger on a clean sheet of paper. That morning, it was a new and curious process to me. Afterward Fish asked a lot of foolish questions as if he didn’t know who we were, but he must have had a pretty good idea. Anyway, he opened the jail door, and said, You kids have just twenty minutes to get out of town. Believe me, it didn’t take us that long!

Somehow Jimmy and I got separated. He went back to his dad and soon was back at Boys Aid, but I hiked down the road toward Merced, picking up cigarette butts off the road, knocking at doors to bum something to eat. All too often, the lady of the house would say, wait a minute, and while I waited, I would hear her turn the crank of the old-fashioned phone and I knew she was phoning the police.

When one did, I ducked into an irrigation ditch or a bridge culvert and laid low. No cops were going to catch Phil again! I was twelve years old, an accomplished liar, with a jail break to my credit and a homeless drifter.

During the day I was a tough little guy, bumming my way, lying and stealing. But at night, I would crawl into a hay stack someplace and cry myself to sleep. Or maybe find a horse that would let me pat him, and he’d neigh, giving me a touch of love that my heart craved. And wherever I saw a cur dog I’d stop and play with him we were both a couple of strays!

KEWPIE DOLLS TO CRIME-PART FIVE

The jail, two blocks from the sheriff’s office, was a one-story brick building, consisting of a large room with several small cells at one end. As there was nobody in the jail, we were allowed to stay in the big room.

You’ll stay here, you little punks, until you tell me who you are and where you’re from the officer threatened, mad at being outsmarted by a couple of kids.

Oh, yeah, was as smart an answer as I could think of.

The officer stepped outside and Jimmy and I heard the key turn in the lock.

Lousy place, Jimmy remarked as he wandered around the room.

But it’s not Boys Aid, I reminded. Even the Roseville jail had its points over that place we looked at everything there was to look at, the bunks, mattresses, and the one blanket. I studied the obscene scribbling on the walls and the names of the fellows who had been here before me. There was nothing much to see.

Jimmy and I stood by the window, looking through the bars. Occasionally we could see some people walking by. Across the vacant lot was a house, with a big pile of wood with an ax in the chopping block beside it. Somebody was going to have a lot of wood to cut.

A fellow walked across the lot, and I called out, got a cigarette, Bud? Sort of person. He eyed us up and down, seeing how young we were, he said, I got no cigarettes, but how’d you like to get out of this dump?

How would we like to get out! Jimmy shrieked.

Lead me to the door, and watch me go! Look the man pointed to a place where two of the bars had been sawed and rewelded. He told us, just wrap a blanket around the bar and hit it real hard.

With what? We asked, with the cynicism of tough youth.

Wait. I’ll get you something.

We waited, bug-eyed, while the man walked over to the chopping block and came back with the ax. He passed the ax between the bars and wished us, “Good luck”. Then he sauntered on his way across the lot.

What’ll we use to wrap around the bar? Jimmy asked excitedly. He looked around, ran over to the bunk and grabbed the one blanket in the room. He wrapped it carefully around the bar. Cautiously I tapped the bar with the ax. Nothing happened.

Hit it a little harder, Jimmy urged. I hit the bar harder, and harder. Nothing happened. I grew desperate and whacked the bar as hard as I could. Nothing happened.

You gotta hit it harder, Jimmy insisted. I know, I know, I muttered and by that time I was hitting the bar so loudly, it is a wonder that the men at the sheriff’s office didn’t hear us.

We aint getting no place, Jimmy decided and yanked the blanket off the bar. I struck the bar with all the strength I had. It broke and fell out of the window, landing on the dirt ground with a thud. Lucky for us no one was passing. I shouted, we’re on our way.

We lost all thought of being quiet. I banged and banged on the other bar until it, too, fell out. We climbed through that window but quick I tore my shirt, my face was scratched, but who cared? Bending low, we ran to the railroad tracks and followed them for about a mile until we came to what is called the jungle. That’s where the hobs hang out. Five or six old men, with boney, gangling bodies, in clothes so old they were green, with long hair and in need of a shave, were stewing a couple of chickens in a rusty kettle. The bums were kind to us kids. They welcomed us, fed us and listened with laughter to our tale of escape. These men, the dregs of society, enjoyed seeing a couple of punks outsmart the cops.

KEWPIE DOLLS TO CRIME-PART FOUR

We slipped out of the bed, ripped those old sheets into thirds and tied them together. We were on the third floor and knew it was a long way down. We tied the end of the sheetrope onto the bedpost. Jimmy eased up the window and I pushed the sheet out, trying to peer down in the darkness, but I couldn’t see anything. I gulped, “Them is awful old sheets. Suppose they break? I weigh plenty.”

Well, you’re smaller than I, Jimmy answered, and besides we can’t back out now, if the guard catches us, he’ll give us a whipping for sure for tearing up the sheets.

Yah, he would, I agreed, wishing I had thought of that before, not after, we tore up the sheets.

You go first, Jimmy urged.

Well all right, I said, and grabbing the sheet real tight, feet first, I slid over the window sill. My heart was in my mouth, as, with a prayer, I kept close to the wall, edging down about three feet and then I hit something solid I was on the fire escape with relief, I whispered, Come on, Jimmy, its okay.

Down came Jimmy and we went down that fire escape, with jimmy repeating over and over again, Let’s get out of here.

Let’s I answered, as we helped each other climb over the wall, into the San Francisco fog.

At first the fog seemed friendly because it would hide us, but soon, it was only cold and damp, and we had no place to go. We wandered down the streets, this way and that. When dawn came, we found an old sewer pipe and crawled into it to hide. It was a long, cold day, with the wind blowing the fog into the pipe. We shivered, our teeth chattered, we were hungry and lonesome, but we were free and that’s the grandest feeling in the world. We talked about the boys at the home and what chumps they were to stay.

When it was dark again, we crawled out of the pipe, with one thought we had to eat. Jimmy had only a father. He lived in Oakland so we went down to the San Francisco docks, to where the freight cars were ferried across the Bay. We managed to get into a refrigerator car, where, if anything had gone wrong, we would have been suffocated, but lucky for us nothing did. We made it to Oakland and to Jimmy’s home. His dad was at work, so we fixed up about a dozen scrambled eggs, some milk, and other stuff. Then we found some of Jimmy’s old clothes, a coat, shirt and sox, and with all the bravado of a couple of twelve year olds, we were ready to face the world.

We headed for the freight yards where we caught a train to Sacramento. We’d done all right for ourselves at Jimmy’s home, now we’d see what we could do at my home. As soon as I hit Oak Park, I saw some of the old gang and they told me, Phil the police have been here looking for you. Talking to your mom.

That was enough for me I wasn’t going back to Boys Aid. Jimmy and I high-tailed it back to the freight yards and hopped a freight train headed north. We managed to reach Roseville before we were picked up in the freight yards by the R.R. police.

They took us to the police station and asked us plenty of questions to which we gave no answers. Already I had learned one of the most valuable assets of a crook and that was to keep my mouth shut. They threatened us. We sat there and defied the officers. They slapped our faces. We had nothing, but nothing to say. They retaliated by throwing us in jail.

KEWPIE DOLLS TO CRIME PART- THREE

I had seen what happened to other boys who screamed and tried to avoid being struck. They were forced to lie across a bench, with one boy holding down their head, and another their feet. Then, with the naked posterior the highest part of them, the strap was applied. The sting of the lash seemed more than a boy could bear and it seared his soul with bitterness.

Punishment had reached a fine point of cruelty in this reformatory, which could better be called a deformatory. Standing at attention on a line has been dropped by the Army as being too cruel, but at Boys Aid I saw many a boy standing at attention until every muscle in his body ached. One boy steed at attention until his legs went to sleep. He screamed with pain. The guard jeered, Softy, booted him off the line and kicked him around the room until the boy’s body was covered with bruises and so was his soul.

The cruelty was hard to take. The loneliness was worse. The dormitory, about one hundred and fifty beds, was on the top floor. That’s an awful lot of boys without moms or dads in one room! After lights out, I lay there in the darkness listening. At first, it was quiet. All I could hear was the steady breathing of some of the boys. Then, Jimmy, the boy in the bed next to me, would sob with loneliness, and then Fredie, on the other side. Soon boys all around me were sobbing. And me, too.

The guard on duty jerked Jimmy out of bed and made him stand on the guard line in the cold until he stopped crying. Then with a threat to the rest of us, Jimmy was ordered, Get back in bed and is quiet.

Mostly the sobbing stopped. We were too scared to cry. Though oft times I could hear some guy heave a big sigh in his sleep. I’d lie there while the fog clouded the window and the fog was no gloomier than my soul. My hart, and the heart of plenty of the other guys, was crying silently, aching for someone to put his arm around me. I’d pray the prayer Mom had taught me, now I lay me down to sleep but it wasn’t much comfort. Soon I’d drift into a troubled sleep. I wasn’t a bad guy in those days, just a kid with too much energy and no dad to control and direct that energy. I wallowed in my own misery and learned to hate everything about the Boys Aid, everything, that is but one of the teachers.

I think her name was Miss Fishbaum. She was cute looking and kind to all the boys. Only, I thought, she was nicer to me, and so, I fell in love. She became the bright spot in my life. I determined that no one was going to make her any trouble in the classroom. One of the boys did. When we went into the yard at recess, I warned him to treat her right, and to prove my point, I fought with him. The guard separated us, demanding, “Who started this?”

I hung my head and said nothing. The other boy didn’t snitch either. You tell me or the guard threatened.

I knew he meant the strap. By this time I knew there was no justice in this place and decided to run away again, and not back to Mom!

My special pal at Boys Aid was Jimmy. He and I talked over how unfair the place was and we made our plans. We took strong yellow soap and held it tightly under our arm pits to the hospital ward, where at night the watchman came around only about every three hours. The guards thought we were safe, as they had taken away all our clothes but our shoes and given us sort of a half-nightgown. But another buddy had stolen a couple pairs of jeans and smuggled them in to us. After the lights went out, Jimmy and I waited until the night watchman made his rounds, and then we were ready.

KEWPIE DOLLS TO CRIME- PART TWO

I was surprised when; a couple of days later, two policemen came and took Tom, Al and me to juvenile Hall. Everyone treated us as if we were little criminals and the judge was serious when he considered our cases. The solution was simple. Tom and Al had a complete set of parents, who promised to supervise the boys better and so the boys were released in their custody.

But what could my Mom promise the judge? Her work-worn hands were full already. Somehow she would find more time to pray but prayer counts only with God! At the ripe old age of eleven I was sent to a reformatory old age of eleven I was sent to a reformatory, called the Boys Aid Society. It might better have been called The boys Aid to crime. High walls, rules, coarse, unfeeling guards were to make of me the man my Mother’s love couldn’t or so the judge reasoned.

The Boys Aid was a big house on the corner of Baker and Grove streets in San Francisco. Each morning the boys, most of them under fourteen, dressed in the cold of the dormitory and then lined up in the fog in the play yard until they were called to breakfast. The yard was about one hundred and fifty feet long and fifty feet wide, with five or six swings and a large sand box at one end. Around it was a fence of solid boards, thirty feet high. That was so no one could look in at the forlorn boys and the boys could not see out at a cheerful world. We didn’t talk much as we waited in the early morning. It was too cold and lonely in the misty fog.

When we were called to breakfast I ate because I was a boy and hungry, not because the food was appetizing. The cooked dried fruit tasted like the sulphur that had been used to cure it. The fried much and dark syrup wasn’t too bad. But the hot chocolate was an excuse for nothing.

And the grim day matched the breakfast. The rules and the surly guards gave everything a sulphur-like taste. If only someone had cared for us, even a little. I missed Dad and the warmth of his voice. I missed Mom with her gentle touch. Mostly I missed the felling of belonging so I decided to run away. I was a sturdy boy and made it over the wall. Then I bummed my way to where Mom and Paul and my sisters lived. It felt good to be home!

Mom wept over me, and fed me, then she sat in a straight chair, with me standing in front of her. She looked at me, with a sad expression on her dear face, and said, “Now phil, you know you don’t want to make trouble for Mother. And you know that I’m not able to watch you as I’d like to. The law has provided this place for you, and the judge will be cross at you and Mom because you ran away. Phil, won’t you go back, to please Mom?”

But mom, honest, it’s awful, I fumbled, just sick at the thought of going back to the dreary place.

But phil, if you stay there, you’ll go to school regularly, and you won’t have to play on the streets and get into trouble when Mom is late nights and I know you’re being taken care of right. Phil,

She kept on talking to me until I couldn’t say no to Mom. I know Mom would never have sent me back if she had understood what she was sending me into. But she couldn’t hurt anyone and she didn’t expect anyone to hurt her little guy. I went back and learned what punishment really was!

The guard. A big, burly man, took a strap about three feet long with holes in it about the size of my little finger. Those holes could raise blood blisters on a boys hand I was forced to hold out my hand while he gave me thirty-five licks with that strap. Hatred seethed within me and I flinched with pain but I took the whipping.

KEWPIE DOLLS TO CRIME PART- ONE

I remember when I was a little guy and was arrested for the first time. I was eleven years old and living in the Oak Park district near Third Avenue and Thirty-Fifth Street in Sacramento.

There were six of us children. Lydia, one, Ruth, five, Ester, eight, myself, eleven, Miriam, thirteen, and paul, who was fifteen. He worked earning about twelve dollars a week, and was away a lot at nights because he was beginning to fight professionally.

Mom was a pretty, slim woman, with eyes that looked at a fellow as if she had faith in him. She was still in her teens when she and my Dad were married. I know they were happy together, and his death was a shock to her. In her gather, and his death was a shock to her. In her early thirties, with six children, she was not trained to earn a living for us. She had to work as domestic, scrubbing floors, washing windows for rich folks. She had to leave the house early in the morning, before we kids were half awake, and if the folks she worked for had a party, it was after midnight before she got back to her brood.

With Mom gone all day long I had the inward felling that no one cared what I did. Breakfast was cold cereal and milk. At school sometimes I studied and sometimes I didn’t. After school, I played with the other boys in the neighborhood, mostly older than I. My special pals were Tom and Al. One day, on the prowl for something to do, we noticed a deserted garage. The windows were dirty but we rubbed a place until it was clean enough to peek in. Our eyes grew big-there were kewpie dolls, cheap boxes of chocolates and other trinkets to be used as prizes at the joy land Amusement park!

Let’s snitch the stuff, someone suggested.

Sure, no one is using it, the other two agreed. I don’t remember who made the first suggestion but probably we all thought it. And I was as game as the next one.

We tried to get the window open. It was locked we tried the door. It was locked the more we tried, the more determined we grew. Finally we found a loose board. One of the boys held it back while the other two crawled in. Sure, I was one of the two that went in and got the stuff.

Soon we were big shots all over the neighborhood, giving kewpie dolls to our girlfriends, trinkets to the other boys and stuffing ourselves with the chocolates. It was a real spree and I enjoyed the excitement of it. I knew Mom would be cross if she found out but farther than that I didn’t think. I was always more of a doer than a thinker. In those days, I was a restless and unhappy kid. I had been ever since my Dad died. Another kid in the neighborhood had taught me to snitch pennies and nickels from Mom’s purse for candy and ice cream. Mom had been troubled about me and had me live on ranches at a couple of foster homes. But I didn’t like them and had insisted on coming home. I was really looking for someone to take Dad’s place and love me like he did; only I didn’t know what I wanted, so I gave kewpie dolls to the girls in the neighborhood to make myself feel big.

SAMPSELL DIES IN GAS CHAMBER

 SAMPSELL DIES IN GAS CHAMBER

San Quentin, April 25 the long criminal career of Lloyd E Sampsell, 52, came to an end in san Quentin prison’s gas chamber today.

Convicted of killing Arthur W. smith, an innocent bystander, during the robbery of the seaboard Finance company, san Diego, in 198, Sampsell unsuccessfully used every legal avenue in an effort to escape the death penalty.

The cyanide gas pellets which snuffed out the life of the erstwhile yacht Bandit of the 1920’s were dropped at 10.03 a.m. At 10:13, 10 minutes after he breathed the lethal fumes, Sampsell was pronounced dead by the prison physician.

Prior to his death, sampsell directed the warden tosend all of his effects to his wife, Bernardine, who lives near Sacramento.

Arrangements for his burial are being made in san Rafael, under the direction of his father, W. A. sampsell, of Los Angeles.

And there was sala of whom the newspapers said:

“OAKLAND FELON DOOMED TO DIE”

Attorneys for Albert E. sala, 37, of Oakland, former san Quentin inmate, have made no move to appeal his death sentence for the hammer slaying in Northeastern Nevada last September of Alfred Mccullom of Los angeles, a dispatch from Elko, Nevada said today.

Sala, now in Death Row at the state penitentiary at Carson City was sentenced Saturday to die in Nevada’s gas chamber. The sentence was imposed by District judge Milton Badt.

Sala was accused of beating Mccullom to death with a hammer on the Ely-Wendover highway. After his escape from a san Quentin prison farm near Gridley, sala was believed to have hitch-hiked a ride with Mccullom. Nevada suthorities said the man was arrested in Mccullom’s automobile.

Authorities said records showed sala was sentenced to san Quentin in 1943 on grand theft charges.

He first served a sentence in Whittier reformatory in 1924, the authorities said. He served a sentence for robbery in Nebraska in 1929, and a term in san Quentin in 1934 for auto theft, they reported and then in 1940 was sentenced to san Quentin again on charges growing out of a series of purse snatching incidents.

So ended the lives of my three friends. I walked down off the gallows, alive, and with the rest of the bosses, I left the prison. As I did so, I wondered, why had my friends had to die? Why had they continued, almost as if by compulsion, on the downward path, until they paid the supreme penalty? Why, on the other hand had none of these bosses with me committed crime? What made the difference? And I, who had traveled the downward path for so many years was now a free man. Perhaps in the rethinking of my life I would find a key to the difference, for certainly I had chosen the hard way.