The return of the native son Feb. 1, 1986
I was still living in Portland when 1972 began, but already
making plans to come back east again after almost a year.
Things had turned sour. I had lost (had it stolen) my wallet
with my alternative identification, and could not risk being stopped by the
police.
I had caught a little of the paranoia Mike and Marie lived
with as the FBI began closing in on them. It got so bad, the two of them
abandoned us, trying to find a way to get out of the country. Mike kept talking
about getting to India before the feds finally busted him again.
Worse still, Louise and I had angered a local police captain
by allowing his niece to sleep with her boyfriend in our spare bedroom.
The mother of the girl had grilled the girl, even dragging
out her dusty Bible to make the girl swear on it, eventually causing her to
break down and tell the truth.
The police captain was looking for a way to get at me, and we
knew we would have to get out of town before he did.
The mood of the country had changed, too. Portland had clung
to the last vestiges of the 1960s longer than LA, San Francisco and New York had,
but by the end of 1971, even there it has become a movement of drug addicts and
prostitution.
We went our dog out by plane ahead of us – in the same way we
had sent Louise’s cat Bitsy from Colorado to LA years earlier, never to see the
animal again. We took the bus, arriving at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in
New York City three days later, met by Pauly, Garrick, Jane and Hank.
Hoping to throw my family off our scent, I had mailed them a
letter from Portland just prior to our leaving.
The prospect of living in New Jersey again scared the crap
out of me., living practically on top of my family with the risk of them
stumbling into me by accident. This wasn’t like our living in the Lower East
Side in 1970, where we had the Hudson River between us. My uncles rarely
crossed it, except early on when they came looking for me.
Hank was supposed to have found an apartment for us and a
job for me, and as it turned out, he hadn’t. So, Louise and our baby had to go
live with Garrick and Jean, while Pauly and Jane took me in until I could find
a place of our own myself.
I think that’s what finally made me decide to turn myself
in.
Or perhaps I was just sick and tired of being on the run,
waiting for the hand of the man to fall on my shoulder and tell me, “You’re
under arrest, son.”
But first I had to meet up with my family. We arranged to meet my uncles at the Columbus
Circle Coliseum where they were attending the annual boat show. It seemed like
a safer place than meeting them anywhere in New Jersey.
Hank drove with Pauly in the passenger seat, and Garrick beside
me, Louise and the baby in the back. My friends decided to come with me to make
sure my uncles didn’t shoot me on sight.
We saw my uncle Harold first, then Ted, and Rich, and
finally Frank. I introduced them to my “wife” and child.
After that I got caught up in a whirlwind and the dismantling
of my old way of life: New York, Portland, LA, and the other places I had been
do over the previous three years all faded into a hazy memory, as I faced the
imminent fate of impending justice.
I was taken back to the old home where I grew up, the rest
of my relatives waiting to greet me there, each of them blaming themselves for
why I had left, each of them trying to offer me comfort about what was to
transpire next.
My Aunt Alice (my mother’s sister) took Louise and the baby
to her house, where she began to tell Louise all of my deepest and darkest secrets
from my troubled life as a teenager, suggesting I was lucky I didn’t want up in
jail back then.
The next morning, my uncles dragged me to the barbershop for
a haircut, warning me that I would not fair well in lock up with my golden
locks still intact. Then, after a quick visit to a lawyer, we went to Clifton
Police Headquarters where I was processed and spent the night. Those cops transferred
me to the county jail the next day – at which time the real horror started, doors
closing behind me as they led me into the inner sanctum, first to a bull pen
full of the vilest thugs imaginable, then to a cell block where I had to wait
for the legal system to award me bail.
Since I was a flight risk, this took time and more than a
few bribes.
I spent most of the next three days and nights curled up in
a corner away from the rest of the people, hoping to remain unnoticed, scared
that I might have to fight.
I had been in a few jails out west, including a holding cell
in the rough Wilcox station in Hollywood. This was different. This was Paterson,
New Jersey, and this jail held the kind of characters I always avoided as a
kid.
Maybe it was the
haircut that made me look like a U.S. Marine. Maybe everybody else was too concerned
with their own survival. Nobody bothered me, and finally on the third day, the
jail guards called my name, telling me I had made bail.
I thought I was reprieved. But it was really the end of
something. My family would force me to marry Louise (we were already on the verge
of breaking up, and she only married me to keep me out of jail, she said). I
went to court where the properly bribed judge reamed me out but left me off with
four years probation. Two months later, Louise with our baby left for Pennsylvania,
leaving me empty and hollow inside, but not surprised.
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