But first there was this pretty young blonde hanging out with some guys, one of which I knew from prison, and I think they steered her my way, knowing I’d just got out. I had a good reputation in state prison and a lot of respect. Anyway the girl’s name was Signey Meeker. Her husband was in the county jail out at Rocky Butte and her boyfriend was in the city jail downtown, so she was on the loose. With a beer in her hand she came right over to my table and introduced herself, friendly as heck. And that night she took me to her apartment and relieved me of my burden. And when I next saw the sweet warm sunlight I cast a taller shadow on the land.
Signey Meeker was a happy girl, just wanted to have fun, so I buddied up with her. Together we broke in to some cigarette distributer buildings around Portland, because that’s what the fence wanted most, cigarettes. She was eighteen, I was twenty-two, and for both of us there was no tomorrow. We were wide open, moving so fast that we must have lived a hundred years in the couple months of Earth-time we were together, taking into consideration Relativity and the speed of light and all that.
And then one night I got busted and then Signey Meeker had a husband in Rocky Butte and two boyfriends in the city jail. And that’s the last I saw of her.
I didn’t stay in jail very long, though, not that time. I noticed that they sort of left the door open when they brought in the chow cart to feed us, and the office guard was doing his morning routine in the kitchen feeding his own face, so I hid behind the lock-box and when they opened the grill, away I went, full blast, down the hallway, into the office and down the elevator.
I hid until dark and then stole a car, hot-wired it like I’d been taught in prison, which was easy because car ignitions only had two or three wires in those days. I drove through the night, crossed the long bridge across the Columbia River into Washington State, where I took side roads till I came to a good place to hide until daylight. I was just about out of gas and would have to figure out how to get some before I went much further.
Having been up all night on the run, and all pumped up on adrenalin, I stayed awake counting my blessings, so far so good considering I didn’t know how to drive. I had never driven an automobile before that night. But they say God watches over idiots.
I waited until well past daylight until I started the car, not wanting to waste gasoline. I cruised down a few farm roads until I spotted a farm house with a big gas tank out by an old wooden shed. I pulled into the yard and knocked on the door of the house, waited, knocked again. No answer. My luck was holding out. I drove back to the shed, got out, looked for the gas cap on the car, couldn’t find it, went around and around the car, still couldn’t find it. Wasting time!
Then I spotted a five-gallon gas can setting beside the tank. I grabbed it and filled it up, set it in the car. I got in and took off. Got out of there and down the road. Pulled off behind some trees. Got out and looked for the gas cap, around and around I went, still couldn’t find it. The fucking car didn’t have a gas cap! Damn!
I dropped down on my belly and looked under the car. It had a gas tank, near the rear. I scooted back there real quick, dropped down and looked underneath again, found the metal hose that went into the tank. Logical. Traced it to…somewhere behind the license plate. Yes, somewhere behind the license plate. I stood up, looked at the license plate. It would have to come off.
No tools. Wasting time. I ran around to the glove compartment, found a screwdriver. I unscrewed the screws in the license plate, took the plate off. Nothing but a frame there. Damn!
I examined the frame, beat on it, tugged on it. Suddenly while I was tugging the frame came down, opened up. It was on some kind of hinge with a spring. And there was the gas cap. I’ll be damn. I looked around me instinctively to see if anybody saw how stupid I was. I grinned, blushed probably, laughed, what a fucking idiot! But I had solved the gas cap riddle and I hurried and screwed the plate back on the frame and poured the gas out of the can and into the tank. And away I went.
I came to a main two-lane highway and turned right. Driving was fun. On-the-job training. More fun than playing in the dirt with toy cars. This was the real thing. I looked for the knobs for the radio.
The engine started making a noise, just a little knock at first, then louder. Then it started bucking like a wild horse. Smoke started pouring out of the back, dark black smoke. I slowed down, but when the engine sounded like it was about to stall, I gunned it and it sounded better. So I went barreling down the highway at seventy miles an hour, bucking and jerking and laying down a dark black smoke screen. All I could do was hang on and hope I could find a place to stop, but no such place was in sight. Other cars swerved to get out of my way. I was gripping the steering wheel with white knuckles, hanging on to a charging automobile that had suddenly gone mad.
Thankfully I came to a little town and turned off on the first side-street I came to. And as soon as I did that the engine stopped. So I let it roll down a little hill and pulled over and stopped in front of a little church. I tried several times to start it again, but nothing happened. It was dead.
I got out and raised the hood, stood looking at the engine. Not that I could do anything about it, I didn’t know a thing about cars, but I didn’t know what else to do, so I stood there and looked hopelessly. I mean I hated to leave it. It was my first car.
After a while a fellow came out of the church and asked me if I was having trouble with my car, so I explained how it had acted going down the road, bucking and smoking and all that, and he walked around the car, flipped down the license plate like it wasn’t nothing, removed the gas cap and sniffed, put the gas cap back on. When he came back he said it smelled like diesel fuel, that diesel fuel would make a car act like what I had described.
Well I just stood there, dumbstruck, realizing what I had done, and I said damn, I must have used the wrong pump at the gas station when I filled it up. He gave me a strange look and said I’d better call a wrecker because that car wasn’t going any further. And then he walked on down the street, left me standing there looking pitiful. I guess my luck had run out.
So to make a sad story short, that night I slept in an old truck, and the next morning just before daylight I went looking for a drink of water. Mistake number ninety-nine. A cop saw me and arrested me on suspicion and hauled me off to jail. Within twenty-four hours they had me identified, within thirty days I was sentenced in federal court to four years in prison for transportation of a stolen car across a state line, and a week after that I was sitting in a cell in the United States Penitentiary at McNeil Island, Washington. Justice was swift in those days. You are who you are, you did what you did and, bang, next case.
So I guess that was the second step on my road to Alcatraz. Third step coming up.
McNeil Island wasn’t too bad. The food was okay and the prison was wide open. You could go anywhere you wanted any time of day and do whatever you wanted to do, as long as you didn’t try to climb over their raggedy fence, which was the first thing I vowed to do as soon as I could figure out a way to cross the water to the mainland. In the meantime, while I was figuring, they must have been figuring, too, must have got my record from the state prison in Oregon, because before I could figure up a good plan to escape, they snatched me off the yard real early one morning and slapped me on a prison transfer bus headed for Leavenworth.
Nowadays they really make a big deal about how I cut my handcuffs off on that bus, make it sound like I’m Houdini or somebody, and they shudder when they read my record, because you just don’t cut your handcuffs off unless you’re the number one escape artist in the whole world. Those handcuffs used by the U.S. Marshalls are made of hardened steel. They don’t cut off.
So let me set the record straight. That was more than a half-century ago. They did things different then. Today, when you are transferred they, the U.S Marshall’s Service, bind each prisoner up like a bale of hay. They cuff each prisoner separately, put on the cuffs, attach the cuffs to a belly chain, and last they put on your leg irons, whi
ch they also attach to your belly chain. And that’s after you get strip-searched and dressed in “sterile” coveralls. You don’t take anything with you except a personal property receipt. Your property is shipped separately by mail. Soggy lunches are packed in paper sacks and consist of maybe a slice of lunchmeat, a slice of cheese and maybe an apple, which you eat on the plane or bus while in route and while fully cuffed and chained. If you have to go to the bathroom, well, you figure it out.
In the Alcatraz days, though, U.S. Marshalls were mainly just baby sitters, but today, thanks to new laws which allow them to pursue and arrest fugitives, they are able to fulfill their Marshall Dillon fantasies to the fullest. And they do.
Anyway, in the old days they did things different. When transferring prisoners by bus, they just used one pair of cuffs with a medium long chain for each two prisoners, attaching one cuff to one prisoner and the other to the other prisoner, so that each man had one arm free, no belly chain and no leg shackles. So it wasn’t necessary at all to cut the cuff itself, off, I saw that right away. All a guy had to do was cut one tiny link in the soft metal chain that connected one prisoner to his partner and you were free.
Well, we rode all day on that bus bound for Leavenworth and stopped to spend the night in a jail in Ogden, Utah. After we were settled in, the jailer passed out soap and razors and things like that. And, like I said, things were different in those days. Significantly, razors were different. Single-blade razors used single-edged blades, and single-edged blades were big enough and sharp enough to cut through kryptonite. And we wore the same clothes out as we wore in, so it was easy to hide several single-edged razor blades in the belt seam in the top of my pants, and just as easy to cut a link in that raggedy hand-cuff chain.
I paired up with a youngster about my age, and just as crazy, who was more than willing to shorten his sentence, and away we went early that morning on the second leg of our journey to Leavenworth. By the time we reached Little America we had the link in the chain cut all the way through. We took a toothbrush handle and pried the link apart, so all we had to do was simply unhook the separated links and take off. The guards wouldn’t notice that the chain was cut as long as we kept the chain stretched tight.
Our plan was to take off in opposite directions when they unloaded us at the jail in Denver. That was our destination for the day. A prisoner who had rode this route before told us we would be unloaded right onto the sidewalk in front of the downtown jail, with pedestrians walking around all over the place, so the guards wouldn’t dare fire their guns for fear of hitting somebody. Me, I didn’t trust the guards for one second when it came to firing a gun in the middle of a crowd, but guns couldn’t shoot around corners, and I was faster than a streak of lightning, so I was all pumped up ready to go.
Great plan, but I guess God had other things to do that day besides watching over idiots, because when we pulled into Denver we didn’t go close to downtown, we just kept right on going around and as my heart dropped to the floor we took a turn out in the country and pulled into a brand new jail with a high fence around it and a shot-gun guard standing on top of a building waiting for us. We pulled into a sally-port and then through a second gate and on into the compound. Man, it was just like a small prison and it was so new we could still smell fresh paint as they ushered us inside in pairs of two.
There was nothing we could do, me and my partner, except keep the chain tight so it wouldn’t come unhooked, which is what we did. Everything went okay for a little while. Once inside they lined us up in twos, and a guard came down the line unlocking handcuffs, which he threw over his shoulder as he came. When he got to us, he unlocked my cuff, so far so good, then he unlocked my partner’s cuff, still okay, the chain held together. But when he went to throw the pair of cuffs over his shoulder one cuff went one way and the other went the other, clanking and bouncing all over the floor. Made one heck of a racket.
Then things came to a complete stop. I tried to look surprised, tried not to laugh, held my breath till I must have turned blue. The guard looked one way, looked the other, looked back, then back again. I wish I could have taken a picture of the expression on his face. Somebody finally figured it out and let loose a snicker. I still tried to be cool but I was about to choke. So was my partner. Finally everybody started laughing so I couldn’t hold it any longer. I laughed till tears ran out of my eyes and snot ran out of my nose.
Well, the guards didn’t say anything that day, but when we resumed our trip the next day me and my buddy were in leg irons and chains, and when we arrived in Leavenworth we were marched straight to the hole where I remained for about six months until very late one night when they bundled me and three other guys up, and the rest is history.
My buddy wasn’t shipped to Alcatraz because I told them it was my idea, which it was.
So there you have it, three easy steps on the road to Alcatraz, every word the truth.
CHAPTER TEN
One Saturday morning at Alcatraz I went down to band practice. I went out of guilt, mainly, because I had missed two or three weeks in a row so I figured I’d better show up. Forest Tucker had been giving me some pitiful looks in the mess hall.
Our little band room was in the basement just off the shower room and it was one of the few places in the whole prison where a bunch of guys could go without any supervision by a guard. They just locked us in and took off—I guess they couldn’t stand the noise we made, otherwise they would have had somebody watching us.
Forest Tucker was visibly pleased by my presence, as were most everybody else, except maybe the other guitar player; he greeted me politely but didn’t seem overjoyed.
Everything started off good. We set up and went through a Duke Ellington arrangement. We went over and over it at least a dozen times, stopping frequently because of its difficulty for some of the horn players. It was hard for me, impossible for the other guitar player who was really getting frustrated. So we gave it a break and played something easy, I forgot what but it was one of those stock arrangements by Benny Goodman or somebody, had a country flavor—one of those songs you can play the chords to just by ear, anticipating when and where to change chords long before it was time to change. I just naturally zipped through it without even thinking, got it right the first time.
Well that did it. At first the other guitar player sat there burning while we played the song again, didn’t touch his guitar. And again I played it effortlessly. Then he started talking, not looking at me, just talking in a monotone, said he spent hours every night practicing his guitar, working on songs we were scheduled to work on at the next band practice, and he said I never practiced and just showed up whenever I took a notion and right off the bat played perfectly the songs he had busted his balls all week on and sometimes the week before and the week before that, and I just showed up out of nowhere and played those songs perfectly, he said without slowing down, “You could be a great guitar player you have a gift and you’re too lazy to take advantage of it why don’t you just stay the fuck away and quit fucking with me.”
That’s what he said.
Well everybody was surprised, including me. Poor old Forest Tucker almost fainted. But I figured it out quickly because I knew what was wrong with him, the guitar player, and he didn’t, and you can’t tell a musician with no talent that he has no talent because he truly doesn’t know he has no talent, and he can never know. So I just shrugged it off and gave him a good natured smile and said, “Sorry ‘bout that, let’s play it again, you’ll catch on.”
Forest Tucker was obviously relieved, for he did not like violence at all, or at least that’s what I figured then, and he quickly said let’s try it again and he counted it off.
Again I played it perfectly, for it was too easy to mess up, and while I was willing to shrug off the other guitar player’s frustration, I was not willing to compromise whatever little talent I had by catering to him musically. That I would not do.
Well, I guess he couldn’t stand it anymore, for when th
e song was over he jumped up, grabbed his guitar by the neck and swung it in a wide arc right at my head. It’s a good thing our guitars were hollow-body acoustics and a good thing I threw up my hand or I would have had one hell of a headache. As it was I was able to fend off the guitar enough so that it only gave me a glancing blow before it smashed into the back of my chair with a sound that could only mean the twanging end to that guitar.
Enough. I came out of that chair, handed my guitar to the trumpet player, and tore into that stupid son of a bitch faster than a streak of lightning, tore his raggedy ass up. And a couple of seconds later he was on the floor and I was standing over him with clenched fists. I didn’t kick him, because in those days you didn’t kick a man when he was down, well usually not, I didn’t, unless he was a child molester or a snitch or a—never mind I didn’t kick him.
He shook his head, felt his jaw. His nose was bloody, that I could see. I shouted at him, “You stupid son of a bitch! You broke a goddam guitar!” That’s all I could think of. We only had two guitars and this dumb son of a bitch broke one all to pieces. Now we only had one.
Well he surprised the hell out of me. He rolled over on his back and made no attempt to get up. He just laid there gazing at me like he’d just made a new discovery. Then he said, “Well at least I found out you really do care about a guitar. You really had me wondering.” That’s what he said. And that’s all he said.
Maybe nobody else knew what he meant, but I did. I said, “Yes I do.” And I relaxed and gave him a hand up. Forest Tucker let out a sigh of relief. He had watched the whole thing, probably wringing his hands. At least he hadn’t thrown a roll of toilet paper at me.
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