No one will believe it."

The court tells me I am going to jail again...this time it is for 48 hours. No one can know about this so I have to come up with reasons I will be disappearing. I get out of jail and break my foot while walking. I don’t break it kicking anything. Nothing falls on it. I have no story worth telling. It just breaks. It breaks and my doctor calls me and says, "By the way, you have diabetes!" It breaks weeks before my pregnant wife and I are to move out of our luxurious trailer into an even more luxurious doublewide. Neither of us can lift anything but we do anyway. And when I get my foot back it is just in time to drive my wife to the hospital where she almost dies giving birth to our 3-month-premature 1.6 pound baby boy.

Both live. Both are alive. My foot has healed and I have paid court fines of over a thousand dollars. I am still on probation, but I’m used to that because the last 6 months is really no different than the last 6 years, or 16 years, or 26 years. 26 years ago I was in real trouble for the first time. I was suspended from school . I was 6 years old and I was in 1^st grade.

I hated school. I was sent to a Jewish school and was taught Hebrew the first half of the day and English the second half of the day. I was learning to read from right to left in the morning and from left to right in the afternoon. They served milk so meat was forbidden (not being kosher to mix milk and meat). My mother used to pack my lunch with this in mind.

One day she sent me into this kosher school with a shrimp sandwich. The teacher went around the room and looked at everyone’s food. She saw my shrimp sandwich and it puzzled her. I’ll never forget it. She went to her desk and took out a book. She then whisked back to my chair and told me I had to get rid of my shrimp sandwich. There was no way this was going to happen. I was hungry. I had drunk some milk so my fate was already destined. I was going to be seen as an irritation in God’s eye. Now that I am older, I can see that being something God does not want in His eye is a bad thing.

I was forced to eat my shrimp sandwich outside the classroom so I would not contaminate the others with my foul, non-kosher, food. When I was finished eating I was to return to class.

I didn’t return to class. I went and hid under the stage in the gymnasium. They would never find a 6-year-old under there. I was right. They never found me. So I went into the hall where I might have a better chance of being found. They spotted me and chased me all over the school. The principal was called in and chased me OUTSIDE of the school, into the street, through a red light, where I was almost run over by a series of cars. One car screeched to a halt as my principal quickly backed away from the intersection. It was close. When my principal and his assistants finally caught up to me I was suspended. I was put into the custody of one of my divorced parents.

My father, who had me mostly on weekends, got me. He was upset. He yelled at me and then gave me my punishment. I was to vacuum the carpet of the entire apartment...with my hands! I would crawl around on my hands and knees picking up specs of food and dirt. It was tedious. When I thought I had finished he’d tell me if he found any dirt on the carpet I’d have to start all over. I was cleaning that carpet until my suspension was over.

Weeks later our class went to the school synagogue. The rabbi was on the podium. He had a long white beard and wore a mysterious robe. He moved his hands around and seemed to be talking. There was no one up there but him. I couldn’t figure out who he was talking to. I leaned over and asked my teacher if the man talking to himself was God. She said no. Then she told me to be quiet. I sat and wondered why we were there.

I can tell when I last saw a person by the tragedies they refer to. I had someone ask me about my foot today and figured I saw them about 3 months ago. The people who ask about my jail sentence are about 6 months back. How do they think it went? I was in the worst county jail in the United States. Horseshoe County Jail. It was terrible. I slept on a concrete floor with no blankets, no pillows, no nothing. They crammed 49 men in a room that held 15. I was one of the only inmates who actually committed a "crime"....I drove my drunk friend, Lenny, home and was guilty of driving on a suspended license...which I’ll explain later. I was pulled over because his car didn’t have a license plate light.

Most of the inmates had been set up, framed, or victims of circumstance. Boy were they pissed. I met a real nice embezzler. He said he was guilty but was sure he could beat it. He had stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars with credit card scams. He was going to trial in few days and just waiting to be set free. He told me he had done it. Everyone knew. But no one could prove it. Every once in a while he wound up in jail for suspicion of fraud but he would beat it and be out in a week. He had me convinced. I told him about driving without a license and he said he would NEVER do that. "You can get real time for that," he said. Then he told me I had been too reckless with my generosity. He would have let Lenny crash and burn. I tried to act tough after that and told him, "That’s why you have a driver’s license and are close to being a millionaire without having to pay taxes and I...umm...have a friend named Lenny."

In the 48 hours I was there I slept about 3. I used a roll of toilet paper for a pillow...until a larger inmate needed it for something more important.

Sometimes I get asked about my "legal problems." This is tough because my first run in with the law was only a few years after I almost got the principal of my school run over by a car. I was 9 years old. I was in public school. I was living with my sister and my single mom. I was in a gang.

Our gang was not a gang by today’s standards. There were only four of us. There was Phil, the biggest and meanest. There was Gus, the oldest and smartest. There was Timmy, Phil’s little brother. And there was me. All of us had skateboards and all of us had been beaten up by Phil. That’s what it took to be in our gang.

Our "turf" was the local bowling alley. We would save our pennies, lay them on the cement, take a hammer to them until they flattened out to the size of quarters, go down to the bowling alley, and shove them into the pinball machines. Sometimes they would stick in the machine and we would be able to rack up games by simply banging on the front of the machine. We would then play the games for hours and sell the rest.

Another "game" was playing tag in the local department store. This was loads of fun. But we tired of that and eventually turned to crime.

One day we stole a shopping bag full of candy. We did this by shoving the candy into my jacket. My jacket had holes in all the pockets. This made the jacket a giant pocket. I would go into the store a little skinny kid and come out a looking bloated and lumpy.

After grabbing enough candy for the day we went into the local department store. We were in the toy section when Phil made a move without warning. He took my skateboard from me and traded it for a brand new skateboard...putting my old one on the display table, he handed me the new one saying, "Run Dave run!"

We all usually did whatever Phil said because he was the biggest and he had beaten us all up at one time or another. So I ran out of the store.

I had a brand new skateboard! It wasn’t as good as my old one though, and when I brought that up we started thinking up a plan to get mine back.

We went to the bowling alley...where we did most of out best thinking. Gus figured that he’d go back and say he was me. He had to say he was me because my name and address was written in bold black ink under my skateboard...the one the department store security now had. I had put my name on it so it wouldn’t get stolen.

Gus would go back, say he was me, and that he lost his skateboard. They would give the skateboard to him and he would meet us back at the bowling alley. Gus was very brave. None of us could think of a better way. We told him it was a great idea and that he should do that. We would wait with loyalty for him with our smashed pennies and bag of stolen candy.

Timmy and I were happy with our pennies and candy, but Phil was worried. Phil was so worried he went to "rescue Gus". He was sure Gus was in trouble. What he could do about that is anybody’s guess.

They waited for me.

Timmy and I were at the bowling ally. I knew in the pit of my gut that there was trouble. We had the loot. We were entrusted with a whole day’s worth of candy, smashed pennies, and a new skateboard. Should we go try to find Gus and Phil?

We did. We went to the department store with everything and were immediately apprehended and taken to the security room. We were questioned about the candy. We all swore that we "only stole the skateboard." Everyone was let go but me. I went home in a police car. My name was on the skateboard that had been used to make the switch! My mom was called and I was grounded until she could think of something worse. It took her months. Being grounded meant no TV, no phone, and I had to stay in my room. It was boring but I learned how to play the guitar.

I didn’t really learn how to play the guitar until I was 11 but I started messing around on it in the detention center of my room at age 9. I must have been grounded for two years. I got out for a short time and wound up in jail. I was 10 years old. Gus and I had decided that being beaten up by Phil wasn’t as fun as it had been when we were younger. We also decided to stop stealing and to be best friends. Gus and I were at a loss as to what to do so we started trespassing. It started by breaking into the YMCA when it was closed. I was small enough to fit under a utility crawl space, get in, and open the back door. Once inside we could break out the trampoline or play basketball. There was no alarm system. It was a blast.

One night we were in town and decided we would climb a building to check out the view. There was a billboard on the roof and if we climbed up to the roof we could sit on the billboard and see the whole city. We walked down the alley to the dumpster behind the building. We climbed up onto the dumpster. The dumpster elevated us to the bottom foothold of a telephone pole that stood next to the building. We climbed up the telephone pole until we were high enough to jump down onto the roof of the building with the billboard. This was risky. Gus went first. He pushed himself out from the telephone pole and let gravity carry him down onto the roof. "No problem, Dave," he said. I looked down and saw tiny little ants on the ground 40 feet below. They were tiny little ants...really far away. "It’s easy Dave, just jump," came the voice from the roof. I pushed myself away from the pole and watched myself fall across the 40-foot drop and onto the roof of the building next to me.

Having risked our lives, Gus and I climbed up on the billboard, sat down, and talked of our future - the new path of clean living we had found. No more stealing for us.

By stepping on the roof we had set off a silent alarm and the police had us surrounded. Gus tried to make a run for it and the police pulled out their weapons. I stood as still as the billboard. I walked slow and let them handcuff my 10-year-old wrists. I was in for it this time. I didn’t see Gus until I got to the police station. They put us in a holding cell together and told us not to talk to each other. The arresting officer said there was no hope for Gus but there was hope for me. That was a bad call. Gus became a college graduate and a responsible citizen. I became a mental patient and a felon. The officer also told us how trespassers are often gunned down being mistaken for thieves. We explained that we weren’t thieves. We had given that up. The officer had us thankful to be alive. Then our mothers were called.

Gus was told by his parents never to trespass again. I was grounded until my Mom could think of something worse. It took her months. I learned how to play the guitar...even better. I got good at guitar. I was tired of being grounded so I ran away from home only to be found and taken to my father’s house to live with his new family.

My friend Lenny says that my book about the last 6 months should include my car troubles. I have a car I am trying to own. I bought it used and I am making payments. On one tank of gas the bumper fell off, the transmission went, and the starter broke. All this on one tank of gas. All this causing separate trips to auto shops. In between breakdowns we purchased another car for my wife. We bought this one with cash "as is" from a total stranger. This car made it half way home. The whole cooling system went out on it and had to be replaced. This happened between the transmission and the starter on the other car. Since then I have had two flat tires and have replaced my windshield twice. On her car, the alternator had to be replaced.

I have had so many cars I lost count. I used to let parking tickets pile up on them until they were impounded. Those were the days when I was living in the big city and the only place to park was the sidewalk. Those were the days I had three jobs just to pay rent and utilities. Those were the days I was still considered "sane." Those days are long gone. I now live on a dirt road. There is no sidewalk to park on. But when I was dropped off at my father’s house on a rainy day at age 11, I was dropped into a multidimensional, electrically crowded city. The city where I had been born.

My first year back in San Francisco was tough. I had no friends. Gus was alive but he lived far away. I got two parents, my dad and stepmother, and some supervision. Surprisingly, I was not arrested again until I was 19 years old. In 7^th grade a strange thing happened to me. It was my first year back in San Francisco since 1^st grade. I was going to a school with over 1000 students and I knew no one. I was assigned a locker with a guy in my homeroom class and the first day of school our homeroom needed a homeroom leader. My locker partner nominated me and I was elected homeroom leader by the entire class. I did not campaign. I did not even give a speech.

I became homeroom leader. Homeroom leader was responsible for reading the school news everyday. Being new to the school I didn’t realize that homeroom leader was not a job anyone wanted. Most of the students spoke English as a second language. They saw me and figured I would have no trouble reading our homeroom newsletter to the class. They were right...but I don’t think more than 20 percent of my classmates understood a word I said.

We had school rallies. The students would be told to call out the school letters. The cheerleaders would jump up and down and yell, "Give me P. Give me an O," but no one would respond. Most of these students had come from Asia. To them, learning was considered a privilege. I think they would have rather been studying then watching their fellow students jump up and down in skirts and pom-poms. School "spirit" was a hard thing to comprehend.

It was suggested that the cheerleading squad translate the school rally cry into Mandarin to try to further encourage student participation at rallies. Shortly after, a student was gunned down. It was hard to lift school spirit after that.

In 7^th grade I got into a fight. I never liked fighting. I would rather run away than fight. In grade school it seemed I would get into fights at least once a year. Usually I tied. Tying saved you from future fights because you were not considered a worthy challenge by guys who wanted to prove they were top dog and you proved could hold your own against smaller bullies. This fight lasted two minutes.

Gym class had ended. The whole class lined up at the drinking fountain. One of the Korean kids jumped in front of me. I was thirsty. It was a hot thirst - the kind that makes you go kinda crazy. I said to the line cutter that I didn’t care where he cut in line SO LONG AS IT WAS BEHIND ME!

He got in line right behind me. He had been wise to listen to me for I had a serious after-gym thirst.

from the fountain. This was it... a tall Korean guy and me. He tried to box. I hated boxing. I sucked at boxing. I let him jump up and down with his fists jabbing away for about 5 seconds then I charged him. I knocked him over. He tried to get up and slide away from me but I had him in a headlock and was pounding his head into the cement using my whole body. I was not going to let him up. The whole gym class gathered around us and the gym teachers came over and broke us up.

Later that day many students were saying the Korean had beaten me. This was not true. He had friends at this school. I had no friends. I was prepared to get beaten up for weeks but no one ever touched me. They saw what really happened.

Between the shooting and the fight I was not really happy about school. I felt demoralized and depressed. That summer I went to Camp Farm...a camp for boys and girls. This was supposed to cheer me up.

Camp Farm was one of the strangest places I ever had to live. There were horses, chickens, and a pig - hence the name "Camp Farm". All of the counselors were hippies with names of planets and feelings like Sunshine, Love, and Wonder. Love was the head counselor. He was in charge. He believed we all needed to be vegetarians. Wonder was our tent counselor. Sunshine was Love’s girlfriend. Sunshine and Love had a girl named Flower who would flirt with all us guys. We were not supposed to touch the girls but Flower made out with some of the camp guys in secret. When Love found out about this all hell broke loose. Love told Sunshine who went down to Wonder and asked him to tell us to keep our filthy hands off their Flower. It was ugly. I had never seen this side of Love before. It was very unprofessional. When I called home and told my parents what Love had accused us of doing they were concerned.

Another event at Camp Farm was the night we older boys scared the rest of the camp. There was an old camp story about Wheel Chair Mary. Wheel Chair Mary was a camper who had come to camp in her wheel chair years ago. One day she wheeled herself down to the camp pond and an evil camper pushed her and her chair into the pond. She was never seen again but it was said she haunted the camp every year.

was to become Wheel Chair Mary. The janitor refused to get involved but offered information on where the circuit breakers were for the tents and cabins.

That night, while my fellow tent mates told the story of Wheel Chair Mary to the entire camp, I went around and hit all the circuit breakers to the cabins and tents so the lights wouldn’t work. Then I went to the camp pond and scooped up piles of pond scum and left trails on the steps of the cabins and tents. Then, for the finale, I set all the animals free.

I don’t know how scary that story was but no one could have been as scared as I was when I set a whole stable of horses free. It was dark and all I could see were these huge shadows galloping by me. The pigs were snorting and I thought I’d get trampled for sure.

I wasn’t. And it worked. The whole camp was scared out of their minds. All the campers slept in the cafeteria. In the morning Sunshine rounded up all the horses and Love found out from someone that I had executed the whole thing. Love looked for me and Wonder found me. My parents were notified. They never sent me back to camp and they put me in a special school for my 8^th grade year.

The next year I went to a school for "unhappy children". It was a small private school and there were only 15 people in each class. It was there I learned about alternative learning . My history teacher was a Deadhead. Whenever the Grateful Dead were in town he would call in sick. He was always absent when the Grateful Dead were performing. In fact, most of history had happened so the Grateful Dead would have a place to perform music. The Boston Tea Party was not even a real party. There were no real parties without the Grateful Dead. We learned this in history class.

In 8^th grade history class I realized the influence music has had on our culture. I started bringing my guitar to school. I wrote a song about the cell to pass my biology exam. I passed.

But the most glorious day of my grade school years was the day I convinced four other students to secede from the school, form our own separate government, and get suspended. This was no easy task. This was a private school for "unhappy children." This took planning. It took a written proclamation. We called it the "PREGAMBLE." And we used it to get me suspended and drive our 8^th grade teacher to tears and eventually back home to Wyoming. It was just a joke at first, but many of the students took it seriously. Even a teacher or two went along with it. For a couple days there were some really happy "unhappy children". Excerpts from The Pregamble read as such...

Article 3, Section 4: Hostage Taking

Article 4, Section 1: Foreign Hostages

Article 4, Section 2: Elections

This got us in trouble with the principal . My history teacher was quite impressed with this and stood up for us so that we were not expelled. In high school I was asked if I knew where to get really good cocaine. It was for the principal of Wallaby School. I was not supposed to know who it was for but I knew. It was a good thing I didn’t get expelled. I may have never gotten to high school. The principal of Wallaby Grade School needed drugs and back then you had to be in high school to know where the drugs were.

It was 9^th grade. I was a freshman at Saint Justin’s High School for boys. A Jesuit school. My father had left Jewish life for the Episcopalian faith of my stepmother and I wound up in an all boys Jesuit school. I was the only kid there with a Jewish name. The only Jew... a token Jew. It was obvious. The school was hard and the rituals weird. I guess my dad and stepmother figured I had too much freedom at Wallaby so I wound up in a straight jacket school for boys. At 14, the last thing I wanted to look at all day was boys. We said the Lord’s Prayer before every class and learned about sin.

Once a month we had confession. I remember having trouble at first. I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t clear on what sins were exactly. Once I found out I had no trouble making sure I had a load of them to confess. It was here I started drinking. The "water into wine" teaching made it all biblical in a way. I needed to have as many sins to confess as my brethren. I also started playing music out in nightclubs. This was greatly due to my father, who saw some talent in me and took me to my mother’s ex-boyfriend’s coffeehouse..."Java Ape"... to perform.

I played at "Java Ape." I was nervous. I had only performed for my babysitter and a few friends. I played my best songs and got an overwhelming response. I was referred to another open stage at a restaurant called the Fondue Fountain. They had music and fondue.

I got my first paying gig there at 14 years of age. I was paid $10.00 for two hours of music in the early evening. Word got around and I somehow got into some big shows. I was only 14. I thought I was going to be a big star. I started recording my first album thanks to a local studio and a local backer. I wrote songs every day.

I recorded at a studio called The Woodshed. Neil Jay owned the Woodshed. Neil Jay had had his share of bad luck. This would become a requirement to record me. He had been in an accident which left his limbs paralyzed. He could only move his arms and some of his fingers. His mind was sharp and his ears and musical ideas were extremely clear. He had been a musician before his accident and his love for music exceeded his disability. I never thought of him as disabled. He knew so much about sound equipment, recording techniques, and musical production that I found myself learning more than I could retain at every session. I was his student. Neil Jay produced the better part of five albums of my material. The first one was recorded in a woodshed.

Neil started off with a small woodshed and built it into a full sized professional studio. When I recorded Blooming Grove Valley and Graffiti, my first two albums, I recorded them in Neil’s woodshed. The studio was at his home which was a cabin in a canyon outside the Bay Area. Next to the cabin was a woodshed where he stored firewood. We had to move the wood out into the yard to make room for the recording equipment. Ten years later Neil had a fully equipped studio that was as professional as any in the industry. He went on to win production awards and continues to produce incredible music. When we worked together I was a kid trying to be a rock star and he was a guy who was trying to teach me about music and recording.

I changed schools again in 10^th grade. I felt that if I could continue to adapt to new schools I might actually learn something. I also wanted to go to a school with girls.

The new school was the largest I had ever been to. Washington High. It was public. It had thousands of students and was 80% Asian. There were only a few Jews and a dozen black kids. This was different from the Jesuit school. The gangs were all Asian and they hated only other Asian gangs. It was a lot like the school I went to in 7^th grade but for the most part everyone left me alone left alone except Mrs. Mona.

Mrs. Mona taught 10^th grade English. Mrs. Mona never cared what her students had to say as long as the spelling and punctuation were perfect. Shakespeare, as I understand it, would have failed her class. This was before the days of spell check and none of us had home computers. I am a terrible speller. Always have been. I, also, tend to over - or under-punctuate. Sometimes I write run-on sentences and sometimes sentence fragments. To get my point across.... I was failing English.

At first I became despondent. I started to reject her lessons. When she showed us films like "The Importance Of The Period" I would sit in the back of the room with my walkman on. She would walk up and down the rows of desks to make sure we were all watching Mr. Period find his way into a sentence. When she got to me I would yank the headphone cord from below the desk so that they would drop around my neck. Unfortunately, Mrs. Mona would send me to the detention center for any reason. Headphones around the neck was good enough. She was building a case against me. It was her idea that I should fail English. English had always been the only subject I could get an A in. This was war.

I told my Geometry teacher, who could have failed me with just cause. I didn’t understand geometry at all. Mr. Pollywagon, was a quirky fellow who encouraged learning and acknowledged the interests of his students. He would come out and see me play music on his nights off. He told me that Mrs. Mona was a hard case and not even he could save me from her wrath. It looked like I was going to be in the 10^th grade for a long time. Until one day...

Mrs. Mona gave us a final exam on the importance of the Declaration of Independence. It was a writing exam. I wrote out my draft and checked it over. All the spelling problems were there with my improper English and punctuation atrocities. The content made sense, but that was only 20% of the grade. I was doomed. I turned my paper over with 15 minutes left and began to write a poem reflecting my frustration. I called it "Forgotten Thought Remembered". It read like this....

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The next week I got my test back covered in red ink. I had failed. I took my test paper up to Mr. Pollywagon. He read it and shook his head saying that I understood the subject and that there was no reason for Mrs. Mona to fail me. He turned the paper over and read my poem. He asked me where it came from. I said I wrote it. His eyes got big and he said.THIS IS A GREAT EXAMPLE OF DEDUCTIVE REASONING! To this day I don’t know what he was talking about but Mr. Pollywagon took that poem to the dean and the dean had a talk with Mrs. Mona. She changed my F to a D- and I passed. On top of that my geometry grade went from a C to B!

***

In that same school I ran into Rico. I had first met Rico at Camp Farm a few years back. He was one of the guys who made out with Flower - Love and Sunshine’s girl. I, on the other hand, had smoked a joint with Wonder (our counselor). He was impressed. He thought it had taken real guts to smoke a joint with Wonder. I thought it had taken guts to make out with Flower. Our admiration for one another was set early in our lives. Since our Camp Farm days Rico had become an expert on the substance marijuana.

Rico had a logic equated with marijuana that I could not argue with. I was too stoned too argue with him... though I tried. He’d roll a joint and tell me how it was perfectly natural to smoke marijuana. He’d say science had proved marijuana slowed the speed of blood to the brain down. The rest of the world had been sped up by the industrial revolution. Marijuana balanced the difference and allowed a person to function more naturally in this artificial environment. I’d say it wasn’t moral...until we had smoked a whole bag. Then I’d concede that it really didn’t matter.

Rico was a Jew but not the kind who whined a lot. He argued. Like Gus, he too went on to graduate from college...even graduate school, and become a responsible citizen. Me and my morality would go on to live in a Hindu Ashram and deliver Pizza but not before living with folk musicians, and moving to Arizona.

At 15 I got my first real job. My father made me do it. He told me I had slacked off long enough. It was time for me to get a job.

I got my first job at the Golden Towel Sauna Shop. I was in charge of keeping the towels, saunas, and hot tubs clean. It was a dirty job but I didn’t mind. I was happy to have a purpose. What I didn’t like was the fact that they paid me under the minimum wage, which was $3.10 and hour. I made $2.75 an hour. They could do this because I was under age and not supposed to be working.

Next time I lied about my age. I applied for a job at a local ice cream parlor. I told them I was 16. They believed me. It was not that I hated the job at the sauna shop but there were some complaints about me walking through the dressing rooms to clean the saunas while people were having sex. I was told to knock first. This was unacceptable. So I left the sauna shop and went to work in the food industry as a soda jerk.

I was 15. I was in 10^th grade. I was going to Washington High School. My best friend was Rico the marijuana Jew with a straight A average. I had my music gig at the Fondue Fountain. I also had my new job at "Mutsimico’s Ice Cream and American Food shop." I made ice cream cones and shakes and was the only non-Japanese worker in the shop.

Muts treated me like his own. This was a great honor. I was like his son only I didn’t understand a word he said. He would tell me to do things in Japanese. If I guessed right he thought I understood. If I guessed wrong he would get a pained look on his face and struggle with enough English and hand gestures to get his instructions across. It wasn’t that hard. I had all the ice cream I could eat. When things got unbearable I would inhale the NO2 from whip cream cans and try not to pass out.

With all this going for me I was also recording songs I was writing with Neil Jay. Back then record albums were the most popular way to listen to music. My dream was to make a record album. That never happened. By the time I finished my first recordings compact disks had been introduced. Only nationally signed artists from big record companies had compact disks. I was not a nationally signed artist so I planned on making cassette tape copies - in bulk - through a local duplicating company.

One day my father said he was going to move the family to Arizona. He asked if I wanted to go and I said no way. I was going to be a star. I was recording my album, I had my gig at the Fondue Fountain. I even had a gig at the San Francisco Music Hall!

So my dad said I could stay in San Francisco but only if I remained in school and promised to move to Arizona when my 10^th grade year had ended. My reasons for having me stay in San Francisco and his were a little different. My dad didn’t want me to change schools in the middle of the school year. I would find someone to live with and he would help pay my rent. I moved into the house of Jim Fondue...the owner of the Fondue Fountain. Jim Fondue had given me my first paying music job. I moved in with him, his wife, two children, and best friend. His best friend, James, was a veteran of the Korean War. I shared a room with him. He was a hippie and active atheist in that he actively did not believe in God and spent a lot of time talking about it. He liked my music and encouraged me. He was especially fond of my best friend Rico who always had a joint with him and got us stoned regularly.

Jim Fondue was a songwriter. He had seen some success in the music industry back in the 1960s. He owned and booked the Fondue Fountain. A lot of the local musicians thought he was self serving because he would book only the acts he liked, regardless of how good they were. I was one of the acts he liked. I got to hear what an assshole he was from local musicians whom he didn’t hire and I got to have a regular gig at the Fondue Fountain.

Jim was not all that bad. He had a drinking problem and tended to talk about King Solomon when he got drunk. He liked the idea of having a lot of wives. Unfortunately his life was plagued by misfortune. He had been signed to a major record label and had some songs cut by a band called Beautiful Rays. He had toured and been treated like a rock star and now he played once a week at his small fondue restaurant. He drank every day and warned me that talent had nothing to do with "making it in music." How could it? Look where he was.

We lived two blocks from the city zoo and the sounds of wild animals would sometimes keep us awake. The room James and I shared was small. It was an add on next to the garage. Jim Fondue and his wife and two kids lived upstairs right above James and I. Jim and his wife were together but this was after having broken up several times before. They were once a musical duo. Jim, a white male, played guitar and wrote songs. Penny, his wife, was black and had a voice of many souls. She would sing all day and all night and then she would not say a word for days. She loved to sing. She would come down to the room James and I shared and talk almost in an almost poetic way about her life. It was a mixture of confusion and desperation. James and I always thought she had said something different. He would think she meant one thing and I would think she meant another.

James and I pretty much had a set pattern of living together. Our kitchen was the size of an outhouse. Only one of us could fit in it at a time. When the daily newscast was on TV James would cook his dinner and when the sportscast was on I would cook mine. After the news there were two episodes of Mash and one episode of Star Trek. We would watch these shows every afternoon when I wasn’t gigging or working at the ice cream shop. This was our routine. We would also take trips on his motorcycle to views of the bay area. We would ride way up on various hills and smoke joints. Sometimes I’d bring my guitar and showcase a new song. James was always honest and more often then not, enthusiastic. He eventually started to call me his little brother.

I was only in that house for about six months but my friendship with James lasted years until he was killed in a car accident in Mexico. As for Jim Fondue’s wife Penny, she committed suicide weeks after I moved out. She left a note on the door leading up stairs to Jim Fondue’s part of our share house. The note was for her two children and said simply, "Please do not come up stairs. Love mom." She had shot herself in the head. This was just another chapter of bad luck that plagued Jim Fondue. When I am down because of my own misfortune I often think of Jim and realize something worse is probably happening to him that very moment. Jim closed the Fondue Fountain after a fire destroyed the kitchen. After the fire, I performed my biggest gig to date at San Francisco Music Hall. I was to headline the San Francisco Songwriter’s Showcase. It was a great show. I had a band and most of the people I had known from all the different schools I had attended were there. I was a rock star.

The band I put together for the Songwriter’s Showcase rehearsed at our drummer’s mother’s house. She made a marshmallow, Jello, and Wonder Bread sandwich that was out of this world. She put Cool Whip on the bread like mayonnaise. I’ve never had anything like it since. I remember it whenever I smell really strong hairspray.

We worked out the songs knowing we would have one gig and then break up. It was sad. We were going our separate ways. I was going to Arizona to finish high school. The others were going to college. I think the drummer’s mother was the only one who didn’t have any plans. Last I heard the drummer was a TV weatherman in Montana.

When I had first moved to Arizona it was to finish High School. Within a few weeks I had some gigs and continued to record in San Francisco with Neil Jay. I was flying back and forth. In high school I didn’t get many As’. I got Bs’,Cs’, &Ds’. I passed auto shop by writing a song, as I had done at Wallaby School. The song was called "Johnny Chrome Engine". I performed it for the class. I passed auto shop. I couldn’t change a tire back then.

I was working at a local department store selling shoes, furniture, and video games. I was almost out of high school. I took some music gigs during this time, which helped supplement the gas money I needed to get to work. I was making $3.10 an hour. I had a Chevy Truck with a 454 stock engine. It got 8 miles to the gallon. It cost me $10.00 to get to work and back. This was a problem. I was making about $20.00 a shift. Lucky for me I was an expert in automotive repair, having written a song about it in school. One inspired morning I traded my dependable gas hog for a Volkswagen Lamborghini kit car. This was really stupid.

I would love to tell you the adventures of me and this car, but it would be too painful. The car would not run. It was like a go-cart. It was like a bad go-cart. Almost as painful were the gigs I had at this time. I performed at a cowboy bar called The Hangover. The Hangover was a country bar full of contractors and construction workers. I was fired when a fight broke out and I wouldn’t stop singing American Pie. The next day I heard it had burnt down.

I was rehired by a hairdresser who wanted me to perform at his salon. I played 3 hours for $50.00 in the evenings. He let me play anything as long as I performed American Pie. Most of the customers had dome shaped hair dryers over their heads. I doubt they could even hear me.

Stranger still was the day the department store asked me to play music in the video game department. We were having a big sale. My boss asked that I perform a song I had written called "Video Games". I performed the song for 6 hours over and over in a suit and tie. I was given a choice... sing the song or take inventory.

When I graduated high school I got another car - a 1976 Ford Maverick with blue and white plaid interior. This was the car I would get my first speeding tickets with. This was the car I would live in for over a year.

The summer after I graduated High School I released my first recording. Even though I had moved Neil Jay had continued to work on my songs. The cassette tape was called Graffiti. It was shrink-wrapped with a brown J. Card that had a hand drawn picture of an old man sitting on a park bench feeding pigeons. Neil and I had recorded two albums worth of songs and picked 14 of them to represent my best writing.

Although I sold literally thousands of copies of the tape no record company was interested. I sent my tape to all the big record companies and they all said I was too acoustic. I was dated. They said my songs were good but I did not have the current sound.

They all said this except for a publisher in Nashville who heard something he liked and signed me to an exclusive deal.

Lot of Faith Music was owned by Rick Turn. Rick was a musician in the 1950’s. He liked my tape. He thought I was going to be a big star. He wanted to help. He signed me to an exclusive contract and told me I’d "set the world on fire". I was ready. I had my lighter. I even started smoking. I wanted the world and I wanted it up in flames. I was going to sing until the cows were cooked.

was going to be as hot as the inferno he envisioned. I believe he tried. I got calls from some celebrities, who would rather I not use their names in this book, encouraging me to continue to write and record, but I never got a record deal. I never got an invitation to Nashville. I never got a phone call from him. Three years later I hired an attorney and got out of the exclusive contract with Mr. Turn. The attorney was expensive but I felt better

I was driving my Maverick between Phoenix and San Francisco regularly. I finally settled back in the San Francisco Bay Area. I settled in a Hindu Ashram called the Cosmic Temple. I received room & board for $200.00 a month. Little did I know I was about to be converted. I became a true believer - and found peace... studying religions. That is what we did in the Ashram. We learned how to find an inner balance. To maintain my own sense of balance I joined a punk band. I thought I might go soft if I didn’t keep one foot in the street. I also enrolled in college because you never know where you might learn something.

At this time I was finding the "free spirit within me." The Ashram was in Oakland, California. I would go on small pilgrimages 30 miles away to San Francisco. I wrote about my adventures, which were "quests for enlightenment." Here is a typical writing depicting one such quest from my journal.

By day I was a mild mannered communications major at the local community collage who lived in an Ashram, and by night I delivered pizza and played electric guitar in a punk rock band. It was 1986. I was on the flip side of my spiritual path. I had read Henry Miller, Krishnamurti, Yogananda, Satchitananda, and Woody Allen and was trying to tie them all together. I never smoked in the Ashram. That was a holy place. I smoked on the way to the Ashram. I became a strict vegetarian but one day my job delivering pizza got the best of me and I fell from grace....this time by the lure of pepperoni. Pepperoni led to harder meats until I was driving through Taco Bell with a Burrito Supreme and an extreme guilt complex. Every Sunday morning the folks of the Ashram would chant together. This was great for the rest of the Ashram, but I was in a Punk Rock band and really needed to sleep in on Sundays.

Guilt got the best of me and I moved out of the Ashram. It was a bad move. I had not finished my training. Meanwhile the band was breaking up.

Our band, The Salamanders, did not go anywhere and we were not going to go anywhere. This became the criterion for all my bands. You also had to be in it for the music. In the case of our trio, "The Salamanders", we were not in it for the music. We did our gigs so we could make out with bisexual women who hung out in the clubs where we performed. One of the clubs was The 32^nd Note. We recorded a live show there. The next day the club was in ashes. Bad luck. We loved that room. I actually never got anywhere with any of the women who hung out with us and I don’t think the other two guys did either. This lead to our frustration as band. We were the most frustrated band in the city of San Francisco . The Salamanders would have been great but the frustration grew to be too intense for us to handle.

The band ended but not on a musical note. It ended with game of keep away.

I was putting on my shoes and noticed a sock was missing. We were all crashing at the drummer’s mother’s house, which was three stories high. The bass player looked at me and asked what I was looking for. Before I could answer he exposed the sock. He had it in his hands and he held it with a most evil grin. This was the grin of a guy who had been necking with a bisexual woman for weeks without removing one article of clothing.

He threw the sock over to the drummer. I leapt, but was no match for the speed of the passing sock. This was more than just a game. This was a symbol of dominance. I was going to wear my sock out of there.

The drummer took the sock and ran down three flights of stairs into the street. I almost had him. Once in the street I was able to corner him against the garage. But then the bass player shouted out "over here" from the window three flights up. The drummer tossed the sock, with alarming accuracy, right into the hands of the bass player.

I had no choice but to follow my sock up three flights of stairs only to have the bass player drop the sock back down. This went on until I couldn’t climb the stairs anymore.

At this point I grabbed the drummer in the street and used him as ransom. He begged and pleaded for the sock to be released to me. I had him in a neck hold. My sock was thrown down. I was triumphant. I took the drummer and threw him in the back seat of my Maverick and locked the door while I put on my sock. I was going to take the drummer down to the bay and dump him off a pier - only I underestimated him. He unlocked the door from the other side of the Maverick and pulled out the entire blue and white, plaid, backseat. He pulled it out and carried it into the house up three fights of stairs. I never saw it again.

***

I was too tired to fight for the seat. Weeks later the drummer and I met up again and he expressed great sorrow over the fact that I had just an extended floor in the back of my Maverick. He said that he didn’t have the seat but he had stolen some leopard skin beanbag chairs from the local community college and they would fit nicely where my seat had been.

They did. They were great but the car died shortly after this happened. The car died right in front of the largest Porno Theater in Oakland. I left it there. It was the only Ford Maverick with blue and white plaid interior and no back seat in town. It was towed six months later. For six months people thought I was spending a lot of time in that porno

I picked up a music gig on the waterfront playing 5 forty-minute sets 5 nights a week for 1 month as a soloist. It was at a steak and lobster restaurant called The Lobsteak. The Lobsteak had no sound system. I had no sound system and no car to carry one. I was still in between places to live and was sleeping in the backyard of my friend Bobby Burn. He let me shower. I gave him money to gamble with. If Bobby had a good day at the card table we would eat out. If he had a bad day I would steal something. I had decided two things were okay to steal because they were necessary for survival...food and cassette tapes. I may have been wrong about the cassette tapes.

I was in Berkeley when I went to jail the second time. I got caught stealing cassette tapes of John Fogerty, Neil Young, and Don McLean. I was stealing them because a friend of mine had heard every Michael Jackson record but had never heard any of these artists and it bothered me morally. So I went to the store and swiped them. I was caught, handcuffed, and taken to Berkeley prison. My old pal Gus came down and made my bail. They let me out the next day. It was my first offense as an adult. I got out just in time to start my new gig at Lobsteak.

Bob Burn found a PA system I could rent for the month. I could deduct the rent from my paycheck which wouldn’t come until the end of the entire month. I had no car so I would be walking through Oakland with my guitar at 3 am. This was a bit dangerous.

One night I was walking down Broadway at 3AM with my guitar when man pulled up beside me and offered me a lift. I accepted. He drove down the road asking me if I had a girlfriend. I told him that I dated girls. He wanted details. I told him I liked the ones who were real girls . Then he started offering his own graphic details. I got out of the car.

***

I lived off my tips. I’d give my tips to Bob Burn and he’d gamble them away. He was on a loosing streak but was just one hand away...as they say. One day he won back most of the tips and I made him buy us enough food to last the rest of the month. I told him he could sell me his part of the food for five bucks a day so he’d be able to continue at the cards. He liked the arrangement. Besides our home rations, the Lobsteak fed me.

I was not starving.

When the end of the month came The Lobsteak was being remolded because of fire damage. They gave me my check, I paid for the PA, and left. I left and bought a 1969 VW bus.

The VW Bus was a great vehicle for me. I had gotten many speeding tickets delivering pizza in my Maverick. I felt very strongly about bringing a hot pizza to my customers and would often speed to accomplish this goal. I was getting creative in my responses to officers who pulled me over. One time I was pulled over and the officer asked why I was speeding. I told him I had a pizza in rout to Kaiser Hospital. It was going to the nursing staff. I showed the officer the address and said that these nurses were starving and could not take proper care of their patients until they were fed. This was a "medical emergency" - which was why I felt it necessary to speed.

***

The VW bus couldn’t speed. The ‘69 bus couldn’t go over 45 miles an hour. I lived in it for about a week and then moved into a house I would live in for 4 years. 4 years was longest time I had lived anywhere in my life. It was a share house with a bunch of students. They are all responsible citizens now. I have no communication with any of them.

Not long after I moved in they all moved out. I was the only smoker. I was the only one who was not a full time student. I was the only one who had more than one girlfriend. I was the only one who had one of these girlfriends move in with me. Other than this I don’t see how I disturbed my roommates.

This is not a book about my love life. I had sex. I’m not going to make sex a big part of this story. But it was a big part of this story.

***

My first love was very intense. She left me for a man who then became gay and left her for a man. Even after he left her she still didn’t want to see me.

***

I dated a girl from 3000 miles away. Our phone bills combined could have put me though college.

***

Another girl I became too strange for. I told her I thought I was the Messiah. I had to fast 40 days and 40 nights. If I did that I would acquire great powers. It was very sad. I would never fast that long. There was too much to eat. To this day I wish I had not thought I was the Messiah. I will go so far as to urge people to resist the temptation of thinking themselves as the Messiah ... especially when dating.

***

When I returned back into a mere mortal I went out with a "large" female singer who also dated a guy I played music with in a duo. She dated us at the same time. She slept with both of us in the same week. She didn’t tell us. I told my partner I had gotten together with her and that she had told me she had herpes. She insisted we use protection. He looked at me in shock and blurted out, "She didn’t tell ME that!" Our duo broke up shortly after that.

She was working at a coffee house called Feather & the Ape. Feather & the Ape featured live music every night. This is what brought me in. I was living the life of a free spirit. I had just changed community colleges and had moved into the share house full of students. I was driving around in my ‘69, VW Bus. I started driving her home from her job at Feather & the Ape. Often she would lose her key and we would spend the night in my VW bus. I never made a pass at her. One night she made a pass at me. The next morning I figured it was time to settle down. All I had to do was convince her. This was not going to be easy. I was 20 and she was 19. She wanted a child but didn’t want a husband. After a while we were spending every night together and she said she would move in with me so she could stop working and go to school. That was good enough for me. While she was making that decision my life was trucking along. Here is an excerpt from 1986....the year I met Cee Gee.

As you can see, I was just a little obsessed with Cee Gee. But I was determined our life was going to be happy and normal. We never got to be normal but we had moments when we were happy. I quit school and found a full time job. My fellow student roommates, who let me move in with them, were disturbed. They could tolerate my smoking but they couldn’t stand to see a woman living with me... that...or we were too loud. Either way when Cee Gee moved in they left. This was great news for my old pals Gus and Bob Burn. They were looking for a place to live. Cee Gee quit her job at The Feather & the Ape, moved in, and enrolled in school. We were one big happy "share house" family.

***

Cee Gee wouldn’t drive. She thought it was bad for the environment. She didn’t mind if other people drove and, if they were going her way, she would accept a ride.

***

I would drive Cee Gee to school and work my new job. This took up all my time so I stopped playing music for a while.

I got a job at a TV station. I was in charge of traffic, scheduling, and audio carts. I handled the mail and screened programs submitted to the station. I also taped all the on air introductions and station announcements.

One month later I became Director of Community Access at the local Cable Company. When I got this job I dropped out of college. I had the job one-year. I liked the job. The station aired programs from the community. For a small fee anyone could air their program on the cable television channel. Most of the programs I aired came from local churches. Although the pastors preached forgiveness many of them had a difficult time forgiving me when their programs went on the air late.

Our station ran on automated broadcasters. Sometimes the broadcasters would stick and I would have to go in and manually air the program. When this happened a program could begin up to 10 minutes late. This infuriated some of the pastors. They would show up at the security gate and preach hell fire. I was accused of being Satan’s right hand man for not airing the program as scheduled. Luckily the automated broadcasters worked 70% of the time.

***

One day I got a chest cold and wound up at the local pharmacy. There was a little girl in front of me in line. She looked up at me and said, "Hi, my name is Nancy and I have chicken pox." I was 24 years old and I and never had chicken pox.

I had to leave my job until I fully recovered from chicken pox, which was estimated at three months. The pox left no part of me un-poxed. It was painful. It made me want to die. Cee Gee took care off me and kept me company. She stuck with me even though I looked like a monster.

My mother came over and took photographs. She couldn’t believe the size of the boils. She had me lift my shirt and display my back while Cee Gee helped adjust the lamp just right for lighting. She sent me copies and made copies for her scrapbook, which she passed around to family at Thanksgiving.

When I returned to work my job at the community access channel was no longer there. They had eliminated it - renamed it, and given it to someone else. They offered me a job in converter repair. The job of converter repair was to fix the cable boxes that convert TV sets to cable. Those little boxes on top of the TV set needed fixing. I took the job.

There were four of us in converter repair. There was Du Sing (my boss) from North Korea, Kun from North Korea, and Tan from Cambodia. Tan had escaped from Cambodia and lived in the jungle for months - making his way to Thailand. He was really happy to be in the United States even if he was in a dead end job. He was happy be able to take a shower. Kun was a quiet guy who kept an ever-changing supply of porno pictures in his repair manual. My boss, Du Sing, had been at the company for 10 years. He was a loyal employee. None of them spoke English but I was used to this having attended pubic schools in San Francisco. Du Sing had a Korean to English dictionary he kept on his desk. He used it to communicate to the workers outside our station. Tan spoke French, Cambodian, and some English. The one thing all these guys had in common was their love of World Federation Wrestling. They watched it all day. On their days off they would go to Vegas and bet on it. I tried to tell them it wasn’t real but they didn’t care.

I was in charge of handing out decoders to our cable installers. Decoders allow people to receive "pay channels." The installers would try to bribe me into giving them the decoders without marking them on the inventory sheets. Since I was in charge of inventory as well as issuing decoders I had license to do this without the company noticing. I wouldn’t take money because that would be wrong. I took drugs instead.

***

Cee Gee didn’t like to take drugs but she found drugs romantic. She liked to rent movies about drug addicts. She liked musicians who were known for taking drugs. She thought drug addicts were sexy. Later, when I was on drugs all the time, she wished I hadn’t listened to her. She blamed herself for influencing me. I never blamed her for my drug use.

***

One day, after living together for 4 years, Cee Gee left me. We had just moved into an apartment. Cee Gee had dropped out of school and went back to work. We were living in our own apartment and sharing the rent. This was new. I had always paid all the bills. Cee Gee wanted us to have our own place and she was willing to help make it happen. She quit school and took a job in a local cafe. Then she changed her mind. She decided she wanted to go back to school again. She moved in with her Dad. I got stuck with an apartment I couldn’t afford. Weeks later I woke up to an eviction notice posted on the door of our apartment . I took the eviction notice off the door, put it in my car, and went to work. On my way to work I was shot at by a car full of teenagers. This caused me to run off the road. By the time I collected myself and made sure there was no damage to myself and my car I was late for work. I arrived at work and Du Sing looked at me shaking his head. He picked up his translation book and said, "Sorry you late. I have a bad news. We cut....no we....work is small. No work for people. Time for you change. .." He went on like this for twenty minutes. I was fired. I had worked there for 4 years. In one month I had lost my girlfriend, my job, my car, and I was about to lose my sanity.

I wish I could honestly say that the two years I spent on dangerous drugs was the darkest time of my life. It wasn’t. I was having fun. What it led up to was the darkest time of my life. A time darker than I could ever imagine.

Before I preach, and I might, I want to say that this is not for people who can handle drugs. Contrary to popular opinion there are such people out there. So if you can handle your drugs you might want to skip this part of the book.

***

I moved in with a guy from my old job. He worked in another department and was still employed. He let me move in until I could get back on my feet. He meant well.

***

As for my car...I had acquired many parking tickets. Parking was always impossible in the Bay Area. I would come home late and find row to row cars walled along the curb. Rather than park miles away and take a cab I used to park on the sidewalk. One night I came home from an evening of "excessive consumption" and my spot on the sidewalk was taken. The neighbor had parked there. It may have been a full moon... or all the drugs and booze I had ingested. I don’t recall. My space on the sidewalk was taken but it didn’t faze me...there was one right next to it... only the neighbor’s fence was in the way. I drove through the fence and parked in his yard. The next morning my car was gone and I was asked to find a new place to live.

***

Of the drugs I took, methanphetamine was the one that almost killed me. It didn’t happen over night. I took it every day for two years. I have acquired permanent physical damage caused by the drug. I loved the drug. With the drug I could drink bottles of booze and stay up for days. This was hard on me. I gained weight. Some people loose weight on methanphetamine. I gained weight. Then I overdosed.

The morning I overdosed all I had was a few hundred dollars and rented room. That morning I took some meth and was heading to pay off one of my many debts. I took this meth and got on the BART rail system. Suddenly I was unable to control my breathing. I got off the rail and jumped in front of a cab...the cab had a passenger in it but stopped, almost running me over. I told him my problem they took me to the hospital. The rest is unclear. I couldn’t catch my breath. I was hyperventilating and when I came to I was drenched...they said I had been bawling.

I stopped for good very soon after that.

Without the drug I was unable to feel anything at all. Amphetamine increases the portions of a natural chemical in the brain called dopamine. Dopamine allows the brain to feel pleasure. This is done when the chemical is received by receptors in the brain.

Unfortunately these receptors get numb and as time goes by virtually inactive.

Not only that but my metabolism was all messed up. I felt nothing. I felt no pleasure. I wasn’t even depressed. I was a zombie. I was like people sleeping in doorways or living in dumpsters...only I couldn’t get it together to do that.

I had one thing going for me. I had built a reputation around the bay area as a musician. When I started to work in converter repair I had got back into music. I performed 5 night a week as well as my doing my day job...converter repair. I had recorded a CD called "Words & Miles" which was produced by Paul Bedford. The recording of that CD was the only positive thing I had going at that time. I had no money but all the musicians were into the music and when I offered to take them all out to breakfast they were up for recording.

We recorded in two separate studios, both donated. Neil Jay lent us his talents and new studio. It was far nicer than the old woodshed. I thought it was a really good recording. We all thought we were going to be able to play music full time. The CD got a 5 star rating in a large music magazine.

***

Here are some liner notes from the CD:

To this day I have made 9 full-length recordings and written well over 300 songs. They are scattered about my room and scattered around the world.

***

In 1991 I was admitted to Herrick Hospital in Berkeley for mental illness. My symptoms were a poking sensation that was very uncomfortable coming from my gut. The doctors diagnosed that as "Physical Hallucinations". They also asked me what I did besides take drugs and I said I was a musician, I performed 5 nights a week, and I had a CD available. They didn’t believe me. CD’s were still competing with record albums in stores and very few local musicians, if any, had their own CD. I was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic. It is difficult to get out of a locked mental institution with that diagnosis. They gave me very strong sedatives and anti psychotics. This would continue in several hospitals from California to Arizona until 1995 when they discovered the truth.

They had me convinced on the surface but I knew somewhere in me that I was as sane as the people working in the mental institution. I felt closer to the staff then I did the patients as far as my sanity was concerned. That is not to say the staff liked me. They didn’t like me at all. I performed music for the patients. I played piano and guitar and we all sang songs. These were not "scheduled" activities and I was often in trouble for entertaining these people.

***

In group we all sat in a circle. A counselor would ask each patient to share their individual problems with the group. The lesson? We were not alone. It seemed everyone would start their story and half way through burst out in tears or start screaming.

When they got to me I became nervous. My problem was I couldn’t focus on a job because my gut bothered me. That didn’t take up much time in group. Worse... I couldn’t cry on cue like the other patients. One day I couldn’t come up with anything new to say. I was having a good day and that is not good material for group. Everyone else in the group had serious problems and my turn was coming up. I had to think of something. When I was called to "share" I told the counselor and the group that I felt alienated because I couldn’t cry and scream on cue like everyone else. The counselor said I had a bad attitude and I was quickly dismissed to the streets. I slept on busses, in doorways, ate in churches... until one day a friend introduced me to a 90 year old woman. She ran the International Artist Company.

The International Artist Company was designed to put on shows around the world. My friend got me a room underneath a 90-year-old woman. She was the founder of the International Artist Company. She needed her meals cooked for her. She needed someone to get her newspaper. She needed someone to share church with. She was lonely. Every morning she would perform nude yoga on her porch.

It got strange when she moved all her dead husbands’ clothes into the room I was renting. She said I could wear them. She wanted me to wear them. She invited me to dinner and asked if I would wear her dead husband’s clothes. She told me to be ready for church on Sunday mornings as we were to attend together. I wanted to leave but I had no money. I tried to get a job but to no avail. My unemployment checks were dwindling down to a very few. I was afraid the old woman was falling in love with me. I was a perfect fit in her dead husband’s clothes. He too had been a musician. I wanted to die. I got one of my last unemployment checks and flew back to Arizona. I took my guitar, a change of clothes, and a bag of journals. All I had owned I left scattered about the Bay Area in the trust of friends and family who had become no longer happy to see me. I was now a mental case. A mental case on the road.

The baby is now weeks away from coming home. He is in the second unit of the baby place in the premature section of the hospital. My wife’s car is not running. She suspects the transmission. This is a Ford Taurus. Looks a lot like the old Skylark I had in ‘87. That car had so many dents it looked wrinkled. It looked like it just came out of the dryer. I wanted to iron it out. That too had the transmission go out. I had the transmission fixed and it ran for about a month. Then it died for good. I’m getting ready to have the Taurus towed. I know most of the tow truck guys in town by name and they all know where I live.

***

When I arrived back in Arizona I had no such problems. I had no car. I was at Sky Harbor airport in Phoenix with my guitar, change of clothes, and bag of journals. I was having trouble carrying these things. It took me weeks to get up enough nerve to take the flight.

It was 1992. I had been in several jails and drunk tanks, lost everything, and been in two mental institutions on three separate occasions. I had stopped taking methanphetamine but I felt nothing and nothing much mattered. I left the International Artist Company, the old woman, and her dead husband’s clothes. I arrived in Arizona, unexpected, and called my friend Gramponias. I had known Gramponias since high school. That was 7 years ago. He was a musician and performed in local clubs regularly. He picked me up at the airport. He had two roommates but there was room on his couch.

I slept on Gramponias’ couch and tried to get a job. I went to a temporary agency and was called to work at a food plant. The plant manufactured processed cheese. I would hold the boxes steady while a giant machine oozed cheese food into the plastic lined boxes. This lasted about two nights. I left and didn’t ask for my check. I left and went to a club where Gramponias performed music and sat in with him. He was a good sport for taking me in and letting me share his gig. I was broke and depressed. I knew this was hard on Gramponias. One day he said he had to leave for a while because his father died. I thought he was trying to get rid of me. Later I learned his father really did die. I felt like shit.

I went to my Arizona family’s house. They didn’t recognize me. I looked like I just got out of bed all the time. They thought I was a burglar and had me arrested. Once it was all straightened out that I was one of the kids they had raised they looked to find help.

This time I wound up in a boarding house for the mentally handicapped. While I was there I was told to apply for SSD. The social worker at the home explained it to me like this. By working, I had contributed to Social Security...now I was a certified schizophrenic. I was entitled to some money. When my SSD check arrived the care home would take their cut and leave me the rest. The check wouldn’t come unless I was approved but they felt, by looking at my medical records, and me that there was no way I would not be approved.

***

The mental home was called Haldol House. At Haldol House each room contained four people. The food was terrible. The rooms were worse. But nothing compared to the people. I was roomed with a guy who thought he was Chubakka, a guy they called, Solo, and a guy who masturbated openly ...he was taken to a hospital.... and replaced by a guy who wore woman’s underclothes and said he was a Nazi.

One day my after-shave lotion ( a gift from Goodwill ) was gone. Chubakka had sold it to someone on the street. That is how they could afford it .

***

The staff consisted of a cook and the "Keepers." The Keepers would give you your medications and make sure you were in bed at a certain time. When I was first admitted I never slept there. I never ate there. I lived on the street.

***

One night I went to a bowling alley wanting to play pinball. Before I could deposit my coin into the machine I was asked to leave by the manager. There was no reason given other than, "You can’t come in here." They didn’t like the way I looked. I smelled pretty bad too. Being kicked out of a bowling alley was one of the worst humiliations I had ever suffered. I was crushed. I went back to the Haldol House and said I was ready to work with them. I would go to the hospital to be reevaluated. It was my fourth trip to the mental ward.

I was admitted the next day. My records were sent from California. My Arizona family came to visit. They brought me my guitar, I had dropped it off with them to hold onto while I was homeless. There were several patients who were not nearly as crazy as the ones I had seen in California. There was a rich girl named Amber, and an Indian who swore he was a descendent of Geronimo. There were young and old and no one seemed that crazy. I guess once you share a room with a chronic masturbator the rest of humanity looks normal.

One day a woman was admitted. Geronimo said I should talk to her. She didn’t look like she wanted to talk. We watched TV. As time passed we talked. I found out she lived on a small ranch. She lived there alone. She said I should come out sometime. She said her name was Kriss.

Kriss was in the hospital because her medications and been changed. She was BI-Polar. This means depressed in an up and down sort of way. As I was reevaluated they said I was BI-Polar. We had something in common. I remember jokingly saying to her at that point, "Let’s get married." I was kidding.

I had her phone number but I had problems and nothing but problems. There was a guy who I used to talk to who was getting his GED. He was one of the only people at Haldol House who wanted to get out. He told me that he would call her if he were me.

I called her the next day. Kriss came out and picked me up and took me to her ranch.

Kriss lived in a trailer on a remote piece of land. The area was lacking some of the luxuries I had been accustom to in the big city. There was no running water. Water had to be hauled and stored in a huge tank. There was no garbage collection. She had to take her garbage to the dump. She did this by loading her car up with bags of garbage and driving to the town dump. Her car had a distinct odor. There was no washer and dryer. Clothes were washed in the bathtub.

The trailer was falling apart. It was held together with boards and coffee cans. Kriss lived there with her three cats, eight horses, and one hundred-pound ridgeback dog. The day I came over the dog had just had stitches put in and was walking around with a garbage can over his head so he wouldn’t pull them out. There were hundreds of books and magazines sprawled out all over the place. There were dishes she had used from the day she moved in...still in the sink. Kriss had lived alone for a year and a half and never washed a dish.

She made up for this in other ways. When it rained the whole trailer... which was like a tent ....or trent....the trent would leak. Water would spill all over an area we called the living room. This blew up two television sets.

One time it rained a few days. I had been dumping buckets of water every half-hour. Finally, I became exhausted and went to bed. Kriss went into the living room. It was her turn to dump the buckets. When I woke up she was sleeping on the couch and the buckets were gone. The water was pouring in but the floor was not flooding. She had drilled holes in the floor and the water was running straight through.

Even though I was living with Kriss in the trent I maintained my room at Haldol House for medical reasons. Without that room I could not get my medications. I also owed the hospital and Haldol House money. I had to stay at Haldol House to qualify for SSD so I could pay everyone.

In 1992 the President of the United States extended unemployment because of the Gulf War. I was able to reinstate my unemployment benefits. I did. I had more money than any of my fellow crazies at Haldol House. I became the Don of Haldol House.

There was a new patient named Jim. Jim was a recovering alcoholic who attended AA meetings. He had been sober for 7 years only... he drank everyday. No one in his whole network knew. He sponsored many recovering alcoholics and was a great inspiration in the local chapter...only he drank, smoked dope, and was perfectly at peace with it all.

Jim became my pal. We would drink and hang out together. I would buy Jim pizza and margaritas. We would play guitar (Jim played guitar). Jim helped me back into the club scene. Kriss would pick us both up and all three of us certified crazies would go to an open mic. I’d play music while they drank beer and talked. We would leave and make fun of the "norms." Norms were able to live without medication. It was at one such open mic that I met Jay. Jay was new in town. He had come from the East Coast. Like Jim, he liked to drink. Jay also liked to play guitar. He was co hosting the open mic that we went to. He asked how I was doing and I told him about how I left my stuff in San Francisco. He had never been there and was up for a road trip.

Jay and I went to San Francisco and brought my things back. We took his truck. On the way there his truck broke down. We were not even half way there. I thought, "What is this? I thought this shit only happened to me!" I was wrong because this shit happened to him just as often. We decided to start a band.

***

Before our band played out my SSD came in. I paid my back rent at Haldol House, bought a 1976 Dodge Van, and moved in with Kriss full time. Things were looking up but soon I would be back in the drunk tank, and then Arizona State Prison.

I was invited to appear on a local cable TV show. The show was taped at a blues club called Stew’s. Stew’s was a cool hang out and it came with a complete bar. That night I had a real bad cough. I told the bartender about my cough and he said I needed a drink. He said it about 12 times. I got plastered.

At this time I was very uncomfortable with my life. I thought I was crazy. Every time my innards spasmed I thought I was imagining things. The doctors told me I was imagining things. Alcohol was a form of self-medication.

This was the way Jim had me explain it to my medication counselor when I told her I had been arrested for DUI. I had blown a 2.4. after my TV appearance at Stew’s. I was guilty. I had been driving 95 MPH in a 45-MPH zone. I was directed by the court to take driving classes and my license was suspended. I also paid fines and spent 24 hours in the drunk tank .

***

When I was released I started playing gigs with the new band. Our band was called The Woodband. We were never recognized as a real band but we played out every night. Our band was destined to great things even if no one heard us. We played as if we were playing our first stadium gig every night... for all 3 people...but we made a living at it. As for recognition...I’d say we couldn’t get arrested...but I was arrested twice in two months and couldn’t STOP getting arrested.

***

I was pulled over again. This time I was charged with an aggravated DUI (class 4 felony). I thought there would be no problem since this time I wasn’t very drunk. My first two blow tests came up negative. On my third test the machine registered 1.0. I spent a year in court. I had three different lawyers. I wound up in the Arizona State Prison system for 4 months with 3 years of probation.

***

Before my prison sentence, The Woodband went on the road. The Woodband went to play in Los Angeles. The Woodband also had a tour lined up that covered most of he United States. Our trio...Jay, Frosty, and myself, were going to play music until we dropped.

Between the three of us there were two marriages and one divorce. We had several cars: stolen, broken, and rebuilt. Three guitars were stolen and one guitar fell out of the car and was run over by the car behind us! All this happened in two years.

***

Our trip to Los Angeles was typical. On our way to California I was pulled over and cited for driving on a suspended license. I was given a court date. We changed drivers and went on our way.

We got to LA and played a private party. The party went fine. We stayed in a hotel. Everything was fine. The next night we played on the Sunset Strip. We were the last act. The room had emptied by the time we went on stage. Those who stayed for our set were blown out. We were loud and in a groove. The room was small and we banged away until there were sweat stains all over the stage.

We needed to get back to Arizona so we left right after our set. As I pulled the van out of the parking garage I tore off the left rear view mirror on a cement pillar. Oops. This didn’t matter much. We were heading home. .

***

In the town of Banning there is a Del Taco. We agreed to stop there for an after gig bite when the van stopped running. We were stuck under an overpass.

Frosty, without thinking, blurted out, "It could be worse. Could be an earthquake." As if on cue the ground started shaking. To this day I blame Frosty for that quake and I never let him finish a sentence that starts with "It could be worse."

The news said it was a 6.3 quake. The whole overpass seemed to rumble. The van still wouldn’t start. A ton of cement was right over our heads as we waited for an aftershock. One more shake would bury the band. We cranked the starter over and over trying to start the van until the battery died. We then pushed the van out from under the overpass and called for a tow truck.

***

The town of Banning has one tow truck and one tow truck guy. There was one garage open. Before he towed us to the garage he asked how much money we had. We didn’t have enough for him to get out of his tow truck. He wished us well and I called Otto. Otto fixed my brakes in an earlier chapter. Since then Otto married, had some kids, and moved to Los Angeles. Otto drove out that day and towed the Van back to his shop in LA. His "shop" was a shack attached to his home. Since we had last seen each other he had gotten married, had 7 kids, and 12 dogs. We stayed the night sleeping in Otto’s yard.

The next day he took a look at the problem. It was the timing chain. By cranking it over we had ruined the valves and the whole head had to be replaced. Otto went to get parts and worked on the van. Jay, Frosty, and I stayed and played with his 7 kids and 12 dogs. He said he’d have it fixed in no time. We waited two more days. By the third day we were out of time. We had gigs to do and I had court appearances make. Otto loaned us a running car and said he’d trade the van back to me as soon as it was ready. That turned out to be 8 months later. Jay, Frosty, and I headed back to Arizona and played some gigs while I waited to be sentenced.

We got back just in time to play at The Cajun Fish. This was a great gig. There were more people in the audience then in our trio (for a change). They liked us so much they asked us to play there every week. Two days later The Cajun Fish burned down. We lost the gig.

Before my final court date I saw my future in two ways. One way had Jay, Frosty, and I traveling around the country playing music. The other was with me in Prison. My lawyer told me I had no real case. I should plea bargain. That day I started to see my future in one way. I was going to prison and I had no idea what was going to happen. I had my last drink around this time. I don’t remember the exact day. I didn’t struggle to stop. If I were caught drinking I would be going to jail for a very long time. Drinking never meant that much to me.

I was sentenced to 4 months in Arizona State Prison and 3 years probation. I lost my freedom and The Woodband lost its first tour. The promoter bailed out on us when he found out there was no bail set for my sentence. We were going to perform for 4 months in 30 states. Instead, Kriss dropped me off at the state prison and I was put into maximum security until I could be classified by law enforcement. Law enforcement lost my paper work. I was in maximum security for 26 days.

The first thing they gave me when I got to state prison was a box of tobacco. Each prisoner was allowed ONE box. I was moved around for about a week. Since they had lost my paperwork they didn’t know what I had done. They kept me in maximum security with inmates who were down for 9 years and more. These guys didn’t care a whole lot about what happened to them. They were in a maximum-security prison. They were going to be there a long time. Most of them had so many years that there was not much more punishment left to deal them. They understood this. They were not afraid of breaking rules.

Eventually I was sent to the DUI room. The DUI room contained drug dealers and DUI offenders. We were all on the floor. There were about 20 of us. Each of us had a box of tobacco. Officer Huffy came in and asked me why I had two boxes of tobacco. I said I only had one. He said I was talking back and said he would have to shake down the entire room. He would do a strip search and confiscate all the tobacco in the room because of me.

We all stripped down and were searched. He gave our tobacco back to us in about 15 minutes. He had done this just to see what would happen. Being a prison guard can get pretty dull. If I got killed he would have something to do.

The inmates did not like this one bit. Officer Huffy had set me up. The inmates played right into it. They created a committee to watch me day and night. I would not sleep again until I was transferred. If was seen to fall asleep the inmates would throw spitballs at me. All burping and farting by my fellow inmates was blamed on me. I was the reason everyone in prison was having a bad time.

My defense was to stand on my head, as I had learned to do in the Ashram, and repeat mantras. I did this until I was moved to Alpine DUI Prison. It worked.

I was too strange to beat up.

At Alpine DUI prison I lived in an army tent. It was August in Arizona and it was hot. When it rained the tents fell apart and we slept on the cafeteria floor. We had commissary and we were fed three meals each day. Eventually a bunk opened up in D quad. I got a bunk and started my DUI education classes. I took every class. I still have my graduation certificates. I remember some of the educational videos we were instructed to watch. They would show us these...drug videos. The video would show alcohol and cocaine close up...and then show someone using it. The announcer would say, "This is pure cocaine and this is how it is ingested into the system. And here is Wendy, she is an alcoholic...notice how she savors every last drop of this pint of whisky."

Showing us videos of alcohol and drugs was like showing sex offenders porno movies. The guys in the class were drooling. I don’t think those videos were helping anyone. But I wasn’t much help either. I wrote to Black Sparrow Press and asked for Bukowski books. Black Sparrow sent me a whole box of Bukowski - with titles like "Dirty Old Man" and "Women." Everyone wanted to read those books. Before I knew it they were all calling each other "Chinanski". Chinanski is a Bukowski character who gets drunk a lot. It was like a club. The Chinanski club of incarcerated drunks.

***

I worked in the kitchen. Sometimes they would bus me back to the maximum-security prison where I would work the food line. This enabled me to eat as much as I wanted. When I worked at Alpine I was head dishwasher. Head dishwasher washed ALL the dishes, pans, floors, and everything else in the kitchen. It was one of the dirtiest jobs in the prison. The Spanish speaking Mexicans saw me do this everyday and they began to accept me. They knew the real dirty work went to minorities, immigrants, and, in my case, prisoners with a mental history. So they put me in their basketball league.

I’m 5’9", weigh well over 200 pounds, and I don’t speak any Spanish. I had played basketball in grade school but I was never very good. The Mexicans insisted I play with them. I was flattered. They would direct me in Spanish. At first I didn’t know who was on my team and who was on the other team. Everyone spoke Spanish and we all wore the same prison clothes. They would say, "I’m open amigo!" and I would pass the ball to them and my teammates would laugh and yell, "Wrong team!" ...and then add a few things in Spanish. When I would try to shoot baskets the other team didn’t even guard me. I wasn’t much of a threat. I’d dribble the ball to the basket...shoot a lay-up... miss. Everyone on both teams laughed so hard they would keel over. I had a lumbering ballet approach as I ran to the basket. A mixture of grace and awkwardness. If my team would have ignored me we could have beaten the other teams. Unfortunately, my team would laugh so hard at my attempts to win that we lost two thirds of our games. No one really cared. They all respected the fact that it only took me one hour to clean the dishes of five hundred inmates. I did it with no help. I was head dishwasher.

***

Kriss would visit me every weekend. She would accept all my calls. When I was freaking out she was there for me. Sometimes I would call her five times a day. By the fifth call we wouldn’t have that much to talk about so I would sit there with the receiver and between long pauses we would connect.

She was certified crazy and I was certified crazy. We had that going for us.

Kriss saw me in prison every week. She took all my calls. And when I got out she took me back to the ranch. I went right to work. The first thing I did was try to make up for the lost Woodband tour. I booked the band in San Francisco.

This was to be the end of the Woodband as a working band. We had several gigs lined up. We got to San Francisco and I did a solo gig at the Feather & the Ape. It was weird being back there... the place I met Cee Gee. I was in another world. I was in bad shape. The next night was the first of several Woodband dates and I missed them all. I was having the worst bout of internal spasms I ever encountered only... I didn’t know it was my intestines... I thought it was all in my head. Doctors had told me for five years my internal spasms were all in my head.

The morning of our first Woodband show in San Francisco I got on a plane back to Phoenix. I left the van, Jay, and Frosty in San Francisco. I didn’t tell them I was leaving. This was not something I would normally do. They did not take it lightly. When Jay realized I had split he was upset. He slammed his fist into the van. The van was fine but he broke his wrist. He and Frosty then drove the van, with all the gear, back to Arizona.

I checked into St. Luka psychiatric. It was there I would find out what was wrong with me. They ran me through an upper GI test and found I had hyperporistalisis of the intestines. I wasn’t imagining those spasms. I had a real physical abnormality. What a relief. I had a rare physical problem but I wasn’t crazy. My spasms were real. I was elated.

When Jay and Frosty came back to Phoenix from San Francisco they were a little pissed off. I told them the doctors had found a physical reason I was feeling the spasms. That the spasms I had been complaining about were not my imagination. Jay and Frosty were not convinced. Jay pointed out that there was a physical reason his wrist was broken. I didn’t see them again for quite a while.

Kriss was trying to accept that I was not as crazy as we originally thought. This was hard. Our sickness was one of the biggest things we had in common. For me to not be mentally ill anymore was a serious threat to our relationship. Like Jay & Frosty she, upon reflection, was not convinced I wasn’t crazy. We would argue about it. She would say I was still crazy even though I had this intestine problem. One day she dropped me of at St. Luka. She told the psyche ward that I didn’t think I was crazy any more. The hospital had found something physically wrong with me but she was sure I was in denial about my sanity. She suggested they give me a second look.

I had my guitar, change of clothes, and few notebooks. Whenever something tragic happens I have my guitar, a change of clothes, and a few notebooks. I was sad but I still couldn’t cry on cue. I played guitar. I was popular with the female patients. There is something about me and women on the ward... I wish I could bottle it.

***

Since I thought I was sane I decided to think of my years in institutions as "research." I started to write about my experience. Here is a journal entry from the time titled "On The Ward Again."

I was to rise above the idea I was a mental case. I didn’t want to believe I had any psychiatric problems. I would leave the ward and go on long walks. I’d climb out over a wall or jump through a window to escape from the ward and walk all over town. Hospital security would spot me upon my return to the hospital grounds - usually at dinner or breakfast - and carry me back. I impressed a great many of the paranoids by doing this.

The hospital got tired of my escapades and released me. I wasn’t out for long.

My guitar was stolen. I had been out of the hospital two days. The guitar was stolen while I slept. I woke up. It was gone. I called the police. I was still on probation so I figured I would have no trouble getting an officer to come see me. I called the police and was put on hold. When they answered I told them I had been robbed. I told them the item in question was worth thousands of dollars and was my only treasured possession. I needed to see an officer right away.

They told me they did not dispatch police officers for thefts. They would report it to the pawnshops and if anything came up they would notify me. No finger prints, no written statement, no scene of the crime, no nothing. I went right back to the mental ward.

When I got back to the ward I met Hayden Smithers. He was in for depression. His girlfriend dropped him off just like mine had only he was renting an apartment with her and was going to need a roommate now that they were through. We agreed to be roommates when we were released.

I wanted to gig and move in with Hayden. I had no car. I was still convinced I wasn’t crazy. The doctors put me on Respiradol (Haldol Light) just to be safe. I took the drug when I felt like it. At this point I was going to experiment.

The days creep closer to seven months...

***

Currently I am preparing for a songwriting competition. I am a finalist. When I learned I was a finalist in a national songwriting competition I was very excited. I thought about how I would whip those other songwriters. I have never been in a songwriting competition before and the preparation is exhausting. I go to the gym. I don’t think the gym is making me a better songwriter but they gave me a free bath towel.

***

Songwriting is not a real sport and it is stupid to think you can train for it as a competition...that is what my trainer says.

`Hayden and I moved in together. Hayden liked to drink. He was without a job and needed money. I liked to play music in bars. He would drive me to the clubs and get drunk while I got on stage and played music. One of our hangouts was the Library Diner. They had a great stage. We would go there every other night. One night we went there and it was nothing but smoky ashes. We were forced to find another place for me to play.

***

By driving me around Hayden was doing me a favor. I couldn’t drive because my license was still suspended. Hayden would get sloppy drunk and drive us home. I had stopped drinking years ago when I was getting ready to be sentenced for my felony DUI. I should have driven him home but I didn’t want to go back to prison. I was still on probation. Even though I was sober the penalty for him driving drunk with a driver’s license was far less than having me drive. If we were pulled over with him driving drunk he would get his license suspended, spend 24 hours in jail, and pay some fines. If I were caught driving I would have violated my probation which would be a minimum of 48 hours in jail, fines, and tougher probation terms. I could even be sent back to state prison.

So I would wake him up at the red lights and hold the wheel while he sped us to his apartment. After a few weeks of this we got a call from the Phoenix Police Department. They were looking for me.

***

The call stated that there was a warrant out for my arrest for failure to appear in court. The charge was "driving on a suspended license." I thought back and couldn’t figure out what they were talking about. The message from the police department said that all I had to do was come to the court houses and make payment arrangements. I had $50.00. That didn’t sound too hard. It would be better than going to jail.

Hayden agreed and drove me to the courthouse. He dropped me off and said he’d pick me up in an hour. I was to meet him on the corner.

Once again I walked through the Halls Of Justice where you are presumed guilty until you get through the metal detector.

I walked into the courthouse and remembered what I had done. I was pulled over driving to Los Angeles with the Woodband. They cited me for driving on a suspended license. It seemed like 100 years ago but there was warrant to the warrant. My plan was to see the judge, plea guilty, give the court my last $50.00, and make arrangements to pay the rest.

I made my appearance and the judge said the fine was $500.00 or 10 days in the county jail system. I told him I had $50.00 and would like to arrange to pay the rest. That was not good enough. I had to have ALL the money then and there. I didn’t have it so I was taken into custody. This was to be the worst incarceration ever.

I have never gotten used to being taken into custody. This time I had no warning. I told the judge I didn’t have $500 and an officer handcuffed me and took me to a holding cell. I got one phone call and called Hayden. He was not home. I left him a message on his machine explaining what had happened.

The first day I spent in various holding cells. I was finger printed, photographed, and given jail clothes. The cells were all over crowded. The second day I was chained to group of prisoners and we were taken to another location. Once there we were put in a giant pod and questioned.

***

I answered yes. That was the wrong answer - but I was on medications. I had just gotten out of the hospital.

***

I was sent to the prison nurse. She asked me what medications I was taking I told her Resperodol & Lithium. She said they would have to send me back to the original jail...the one I had just come from...so I could be evaluated. They strapped me in a restraining chair and I waited.

A few hours later I was put in the back of a van, alone, and taken to the 6^th floor of Horseshoe County Jail. I was told that the doctor was out for the weekend and that they would have to "four point" me until the doctor returned....for my own safety.

I wish I could somehow recreate that scene. There was a control booth in the center of this giant octagon shaped auditorium. There were four pods in this auditorium that surrounded th