I’ve written at length about my father’s early transgressions. Needless to say, he fought the law a lot, and the law ultimately won. What began with stealing BBs from a hardware store in Baldwin, Kansas, steadily escalated.
First, as a pre-teen, he began burglarizing the houses of the people on his newspaper route. Then, he mixed it shoplifting. By the time he was a teen, he’d stolen a motorized scooter and driven it all the way to St. Louis, then to Arkansas, where he spent his first night in jail at age 13.
“Baldwin was the happiest two years of my life before you guys (my brother and I came along),” Dad said. “I had a job, a girlfriend, things were good. But that was also when I started doing bad things, like stealing, and I didn’t get in trouble.”
The old man’s parents moved the family to Coffeyville, Kansas, and “that’s where I went downhill, things went to hell.”
It was in Coffeyville that another theme, at least in his younger years, began: Fighting.
“It seemed like I was in a fight every time I turned around,” he said. “One of my fingers is crooked because a kid slammed my locker door, and I think he broke it, and I got into a fight with him.”
That and strict parents who “wouldn’t let me do anything,” led to running away consistently. First, he took the motor scooter all the way across the state, then back, before being busted in Bentonville, Arkansas. During that three-week period, the old man slept in barns and broke into houses for food … when he wasn’t driving 45 miles per hour on Route 66.
“I will never forget my father coming down to pick me up from jail,” Dad said. “I was scared. I thought he’d be pissed. But it was the first time I saw him cry, and I only saw him cry twice.”
Dad didn’t stay out of trouble for long, spending several months in a boys home near Baxter Springs shortly after the escapade on the motor scooter. Not long after returning home, he was on the run again at age 14.
“That was my epic runaway all the way to Carson City, Nevada,” he said. “I ran into a kid there sitting at the bus station, and for some reason I got a ticket to California. We got to talking, and he’d run off. He had a Pontiac, so we teamed up. I don’t even remember his name.”
When Dad came back, he got busted again, this time stealing a Rambler and driving to Webb City, Missouri. That stunt resulted in more than a year in an informatory in Boonville, Missouri.
“I despised it. I was fighting all the time. Every time I turned around, there was a fight,” he said. “Anytime somebody (messed) with you, if you didn’t fight back, you were (his), and you had to carry shoes for him. You were his slave. So, I had to fight to keep that from happening.”
That was the old man’s pattern for more than another decade. He’d get out for a while, go right back to stealing and end up behind bars, including multiple stints in prison beginning at age 16.
“Son, I pulled hundreds of burglaries through the years. It’s not something I’m proud of. It was just the easy way out,” he said. “I really thought I was a gangster when I was young.”
His last stint as an inmate came in the early 1970s in California. At the time, he had a good job managing a print shop for his friend Jean Ann, but he was still moonlighting as a cat burglar. He would have been in the California Correctional Institution in Tehachapi for a decade or longer if not for Jean Ann.
“When I interviewed with Jean Ann, I told her that I probably wasn’t going to get the job because I’d just gotten out of prison,” he said. “She said, ‘That’s one hell of a thing to say in an interview.’ Well, she hired me anyway. She’s probably the best friend I’ve ever had.”
Less than two years into his sentence, Dad stood before a judge in a courtroom, hoping his sentence would be modified. That seemed unlikely given his criminal record at that point, even though he wasn’t even 30 years old.
“Young man, there is somebody out there who cares about you an awful lot,” the judge said. “This lady has written me every week for the last two years about giving you another shot. I’m going to give you another chance. I don’t want to see you back here, or you’ll be gone for a long time.”
That somebody was Jean Ann, who also gave my father another job at one of her printing businesses. Within a few months, Dad met Mom. A year later, I came along, followed by my brother in late 1977. Dad’s life was finally just beginning.
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