I haven’t written much about my father’s early years, notably the lost years he endured from his early teens to his late 20s, a period of time in which he spent about 13 years in various juvenile halls, jails and prisons.
It wasn’t something Dad was proud of, to the point that I had no idea about his transgressions until I was a in high school. When he finally did tell me, the question was obvious: “What did you do?”
The answer: He stole. A lot. As in prolific burglary and robbery. One time, as a pre-teen, he took a guy’s motorized scooter in Joplin, Missouri, and drove it all the way to St. Louis. Another time, he took a car. Many times, he broke into houses.
The follow-up question seemed obvious: “Why?” That was a complicated answer, but he answered it simply: “At first, it was to survive after I ran away from home. Then, it was a job. I never learned these things at home. My parents wouldn’t tolerate that, they were very strict. I just had bad blood, son.”
He might have answered it simply, but I sensed the answer was far more complicated. Dad always had a surplus of energy. He was always on the move. He loved to travel. He explored. He liked to see things.
That led to realization, especially when he talked about his parents’ discipline: “They would not let me do anything. It was school, church, my newspaper route, then home for chores. I didn’t get to play baseball, I didn’t get to go out and play. That is why I ran away so many times.”
The aforementioned epiphany: Dad was rebelling. When you combine that rebel streak with a Type A personality … it was a toxic mix for him. From age 13 to his late 20s, he was constantly in trouble.
The other important question among thousands of questions: Did he ever harm someone? Based on my research and his words, which were solid as oak, he did not, at least physically.
Dad didn’t especially enjoy talking about his time incarcerated. He wasn’t embarrassed. He recognized those years not only for the mistakes he made, but also for the maturity and street smarts he gained before he was ready for a “normal” life.
When we did talk about his time behind bars, the stories were rich. One of his favorite movies was “The Shawshank Redemption,” largely because he saw a lot of himself in Morgan Freeman’s Red.
Among many roles he filled in jail, Dad was “the guy who can get it for you.” He also served as a bookie for a while, which he loved to talk about, namely how his run as prison high-roller came to an end.
As the story goes, the old man had quite a business going, racking up hundreds, maybe thousands, of cigarettes — the currency of prison at the time — which were hidden all over the facility.
Each week, he’d take bets, just as Red did on new fish entering Shawshank. In Dad’s case, the bets were on sports, including a series of parlays on several games. Several months into building his empire, one inmate placed a ridiculous bet — a 13-way parlay.
In a parlay, the bettor must pick every game correctly to win. On a 13-way parlay, the biggest Dad took, you had to pick 13 games correctly, including several to cover the point spread.
“I’ll be a son of a bitch if this clown didn’t hit his parlay, every damn game!” Dad said. “I was bankrupt. I had just enough cigarettes, about 50 packs, to cover the bet. I was through.”
Through taking bets, but not making them. Although Dad got much better with money, saving diligently as he struggled to build a small business that became successful years later, he still had the gambling bug.
Once he had a little disposable income in his 50s, he started hitting the casino, trading cigarettes and sports betting for pennies and slot machines. He rarely won, of course, but I have great memories of watching him swear at machines in the circus of neon entertainment that is a casino.
“I’m not lucky at the casino, but I’m lucky in life,” he often said.
A pretty good perspective from somebody who had a rough childhood and lost nearly a fifth of his life to the correctional system, not to mention 1,000 cigarettes on a single bet.
Love these stories and insights! Love that father of yours.
He was one of a kind, for sure.