“Well, I just got out of prison.” Not exactly the best line to use during a job interview.
Nonetheless, my father was just being honest when he interviewed for a job in print shop in California during the early 1970s.
“I’ll never forget what she said,” the old man said. “She said, ‘Now that’s a hell of a thing to say during an interview.’”
The interviewer was Jean Ann, an ambitious young woman in her 20s who already owned multiple print shops and was well on her way to a successful career and life. She saw something in my father that many people didn’t at the time, and she hired him to run one of her businesses.
Dad did a good job running that shop for several months. He had a steady girlfriend, Debbie, whom he was eventually engaged to, was helping to raise her son, Sean, and seemingly was on the straight and narrow. Seemingly.
Old habits die hard. Even as the old man grinded away at the print shop, he couldn’t stay away from the pull of crime and money. He began pulling burglaries in his free time.
“I had a big score where I went in and this guy had a big safe,” Dad said. “It was locked and had a combination, but I knew from the past that sometimes people worked the code for the first two numbers, so that they only had to go to the last one.”
For several minutes, the old man clicked the number one at a time to the left and pulled on the safe. After trying dozens of times, he painstakingly moved the dial to the left and to one of the last numbers and pulled. The door slowly opened, revealing several hundred dollars in cash, dozens of collectible coins and a gun – a huge score.
“So, I did what I did back in those days, and I went out and partied,” he said.
When he was done partying, at least at the bar, he grabbed a cocktail and left (something you could do a lot more easily back then), climbing into his car with said drink and driving through San Diego with boos in his lap and a briefcase loaded with his stolen loot laying on the backseat.
You probably have a decent idea how this story ends. He got pulled over with a drink in one hand and a plethora of stolen items in the back. Just like that, he was back in prison.
“Yes, it was pretty stupid,” he said. “I did a lot of stupid shit back then.”
With Dad’s record, he probably should have been behind bars for a long, long time. But, his saving grace was his boss. For more than a year, Jean Ann wrote the judge who sentenced my father once a week, telling him he was a good man and just needed a break. The judge finally relented.
“He said, ‘Son, if somebody cares about you this much, it’s worth giving you one more chance,’” the judge said. “You owe his young lady.”
That was the last time my father was incarcerated. He went back to running one of Jean Ann’s print shops, where he met my mother. They were pregnant with me and married not long after. I came along in July 1976, right after my parents moved to Missouri. My brother was born the following year.
I remember seeing Jean Ann just one time, in the early 1980s when we drove to Texas to be there for the birth of her child. But Dad spoke about her often, saying that she saved him. And it all started with the line, “Well, I just got out of prison.”
TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS 2021 SERIES
PART X: The great winter storm of 1987
PART IX: A difficult job that ended up being a great experience
PART VIII: Dad’s craft show was a bond for many of us
PART VII: Dad, prison escapees and a scary week in Southwest Missouri
PART VI: An excerpt from the book I’m writing about Brenda Keller
PART V: Dad, my best friend and jars of baby sh$t
PART IV: Dad, “Big Swede” and hitting a guy in the head with a ladle
PART III: Dad, pinball and arcades