Blood, Sweat and Tears Read online

  I was well on my way to spending my life caught in that vicious cycle of recidivism. Here’s how the system works. You accept a parole in order to obtain an early release, so you are released three months early with the stipulation that you are on parole for two years. Coming out of Guelph you got twenty bucks and a bus ticket back to where you were arrested. The police are notified that you are back and then you are picked up for some chump charge like vagrancy. Ah, but here’s the catch … that misdemeanour constitutes a parole violation, and you are returned to the joint to serve out the rest of your parole—two years. Two years for having no visible means of support. Jobs aren’t easy to come by for a reformatory graduate.

  The system works for the cops, another conviction for their records. It looks good on paper: another bad kid off the street, problem solved. And if your father is in league with his buddies on the police force, he doesn’t have to deal with his embarrassing, no-good son for another two years and his problem is solved. Hell, he doesn’t even have to visit him. Out of sight, out of mind. I did two stretches in Guelph and never had a single visit from my family. A few friends from Willowdale visited me occasionally and I received letters from my mother, but Fred had written me off and wouldn’t allow her to visit me, and in Fred Thomsett’s house, Fred’s word was law.

  My first “bit” was nine months for car theft. I was released after six months with a two-year parole and returned to Willowdale. A few weeks later I was caught sleeping in a closed office building at night and charged with breaking and entering, trespassing, vagrancy and, oh yeah … parole violation. No one bothered to call my father. I don’t think he even knew that I was out. A quick court appearance and I was sent back to Guelph to serve out my parole. This time I did the whole bit.

  When a guy returns to the joint he is welcomed back like a hero. My stature in the joint was enhanced by my reputation in the ring, and I did pretty easy time that second stretch. I went right back to my job on the Bull Gang and again joined the boxing squad. Brian Kelly had been released by this time and I took over his role as a trainer on the team. I didn’t fight much anymore. I didn’t need to: my rep was made, no one messed with me and I was developing other interests. I took high school courses and devoured the prison library. I’d always loved books, and in prison not only is there plenty of time to read, but escaping into the fantasy world of literature allowed me to be anywhere but where I was. For a few hours each night I could be in Spain fighting bulls with Hemingway. I could trudge the dust-bowl highways with John Steinbeck and ride the Mississippi riverboats with Mark Twain.

  Contrary to the popular image of inmates scratching off their days on a calendar, that’s just not how it is. Counting down the days makes your time seem interminable, so you put the “street” out of your mind and concentrate on life in the joint one day at a time. The hardest time is the last few months of your bit, when the prospect of freedom is actually becoming a reality and every day seems like an eternity. Some guys actually go “over the wall” with only a few weeks left in their sentence. They just can’t take the waiting, and the idea of life outside the structured environment of the joint is terrifying for them. I was in real danger of becoming “institutionalized” at this point. Life on the street was hard, and I had it pretty good in jail. On the street I was a broke, homeless street kid, but in the joint I had a certain status. Believe it or not, there are guys who are so successful in jail and such a failure on the street that they deliberately keep coming back. They are institutionalized.

  The only thing I couldn’t get in jail was sex, and at eighteen years old my hormones were running wild. Some of the Wheels kept “kids,” young inmates who could be used for sex. Kids were pampered and protected by a Wheel or “old man.” I never understood the twisted code governing sex in the joint. Among the toughest and most macho guys, a homosexual relationship with a kid was winked at. In fact there was a certain status to owning the prettiest kid in the joint. It didn’t mean the old man was gay, and he’d kill you if you suggested he was. He was just doin’ what he had to do to survive. He’d get out and go back to his wife like it never happened. What happens in the joint stays in the joint.

  The kids played a dangerous game. They had their own social substructure in the joint and they flirted and played the Wheels off against one another. Guys got stabbed over the ownership of a kid. Masturbation was safer. The screws used to tiptoe down the cellblock at night with a flashlight. It was a game with them, trying to catch a guy jerking off. One night a guard we called “Flashlight Freddie” surprised a young inmate masturbating. The guard jumped out in front of the cell and clicked his flashlight on. “What are you doing?” he demanded. Without missing a beat the young man fired back, “Two years, sir.” Yeah, the inmate was me.

  In 1958 I finished up my two-year stretch in Guelph and again got twenty bucks and a ticket back to Willowdale. I worked odd jobs, from busing tables to delivering telegrams. I lived in cheap rooming houses, bought an old Harley and hung out with Bill and our biker buddies at the drive-in. We joined the Army Reserve for a while, mostly because the legal drinking age in Ontario was twenty-one but if you were in uniform you could get into the Canadian Legion and get a beer at eighteen. So Bill Pugliese and I joined the Reserves, the Irish Regiment of Canada. We took basic training and we went away to boot camp, so I gained some respect for the military. We learned how to march and who to salute and how to clean and fire a rifle, but mostly we hung out at the legion hall and drank beer. That’s where all the older neighbourhood guys hung out. It had pool tables and a bar and we got to wear cool uniforms. (Funny how when you’re young you want to be older and when you’re old you want to be young.) This provided a cover story for me later in life. When I didn’t want to explain where I had been during my teenage years, I could always say, “I was in the army.” Since I’m telling all in this story, it’s time to come clean. It was partly true, but unfortunately, like most lies or half-truths, the story hung with me and even today there are those who believe I had more military experience than I really did.

  Willowdale was the worst place for me to be but I had nowhere else to go. Bill and the only other friends I knew were there. My father wanted nothing to do with me, and his buddies on the police force were tipped off that Fred’s no-good son was back in town so they were watching me, just waiting for me to slip up. And sure enough I did.

  I had gone to school with a guy who I’ll call Pete. I honestly can’t remember his name. I didn’t even know him all that well. Pete got into a fight. Teenage fights were not uncommon in the rough blue-collar suburbs of Toronto. Nothing serious—no guns, knives or anything like that—just an occasional punch-out behind the drive-in. Well, Pete’s father had just paid for some expensive dental work for his son, which ended up all over the parking lot. He made Pete press assault charges against the other kid, who I’ll call Joe. I ran into Pete at the drive-in a few days later, and in the course of our conversation I said to him something like, “You pussy, shit, we been in fights before, no one ever called the cops. If Joe goes to jail you’re gonna deal with me.” Stupid macho teenage bluster, but I honestly didn’t know I had committed a crime. To me it was just bullshit. Two hours later a warrant was issued and I was arrested. The charges were obstruction of justice and intimidating a Crown witness. I spent the night in jail and went to court the next day. I completely believed the charge would be thrown out of court because, after all, in my mind I hadn’t really done anything—it was all just talk. We had all said worse things than that to each other growing up. But I was already an ex-con and the law took it seriously.

  Years later I learned that the public defender had called my father and told him about my arrest. He told Fred, “It’s not a serious offence. If you’ll come to court, I’m sure he’ll be home for dinner.” My father said, “Fuck him,” hung up the phone and called his buddies on the police force. I was taken to court the next morning fully expecting a stern lecture and a warning. The magistrate had also been talki
ng to my father. He read the charges, slammed his gavel down and said, “Two years on each count to run consecutively.” The whole process took less than ten minutes. The public defender never showed up for court. After his brief conversation with Fred he just gave up. I didn’t even know what “consecutively” meant, so I asked the bailiff. He said, “Four years, son—you’re going to Burwash.” An hour later I was shackled and on a bus heading for the dreaded Burwash Industrial Farm in northern Ontario, a hellhole I had heard about in Guelph. This was no summer camp. This was serious time in one of the toughest joints in Canada.

  A Visit from the Blues

  Somebody passed outside my window

  Somebody knocked at my front door

  Come on in, make yourself at home, old friend

  I been waitin’ up for you

  It’s just a visit from the blues

  Well just like you said, my baby left me

  And just like you told me, I’m so blue

  Well old friend, I guess it’s me and you again

  And there ain’t nothin’ I can do

  It’s just a visit from the blues

  Hey Mister Blues, you said the sun’s gonna shine someday

  And everything would be all right

  Accordin’ to you, we’re just waitin’ on the judgment day

  So how come you come callin’ late at night

  Come right on in, the door’s wide open

  Somehow I knew that you would call

  It’s four a.m.and look who’s back in town again

  Just an old friend passin’ through

  It’s just a visit from the blues

  Lyrics by David Clayton-Thomas. Copyright © Clayton-Thomas Music Publishing Inc., 2005.

  3

  BURWASH

  Burwash Industrial Farm was situated in the rugged bush country of northern Ontario about thirty miles from Sudbury and a thousand miles from nowhere. There were few bars and fences at Burwash. The first thing you were told in your induction speech was, “If you want to run, go ahead. There’s thirty miles of bush between you and the first sign of civilization. In the summer the blackflies will blind you before you get five miles. In the winter it’s twenty below zero with ten feet of snow. Go ahead … run.” Burwash was no reform school. It was populated by some of the most violent and dangerous prisoners in Canada. There would be little recreation at Burwash. You worked twelve hours a day, six days a week. The prison was self-supporting and the inmates did all of the work. You cleared brush, built fences through mosquito-ridden swamps, worked on the prison farm—heavy, back-breaking work under shotgun-toting guards.

  The introduction to Burwash was brutally simple. Everything was a privilege and all privileges must be earned. You start by having your head shaved and deloused, whether you need it or not, and are thrown into a six-by-eight-foot windowless cell. This is “the Hole,” and everything begins and ends here. You must earn your way out of the hole and any infraction of prison rules, no matter how slight, means you start all over again. For starters you are in that concrete box for thirty days. You wear a one-piece smock made of straitjacket material. At night you are given a tick mattress about two inches thick, with no blanket, and the mattress is removed every morning. You are fed a sickening pasty block of nutritionally correct food called “meat loaf” once a day and given a paper cup of water three times a day. The light is harsh and is never turned off. There is a steel mesh–covered air vent about eight feet up on the wall. The solid steel door is seldom opened. Food and water are pushed through a slot. The toilet is a hole in the floor that flushes itself several times a day. A few sheets of coarse brown toilet paper are supplied each day and you are taken to a shower room twice a week. There is no contact and no communication with guards or any other inmates. All conversation is forbidden and any attempt to communicate is punished by a high-pressure water hose poked through the door slot and unleashed on the prisoner.

  After ten days you earn your first privileges. You are given prison denims, socks and a blanket at night. The mattress stays in the cell and you are given a Gideon Bible to read. In the last ten days you graduate from meat loaf to regular prison food three times a day, and the lights are dimmed at night. The slightest infraction at any time during this initiation period and you begin your time in the hole all over again. I know of some guys who spent close to a year in the hole.

  After thirty days you are moved to “isolation.” These are open cells with bars and a window, and you can talk to other inmates. You’re allowed thirty minutes a day in the yard for exercise, ten men at a time. You are given reading and writing materials, and for the first time you receive mail. You still have no visits and are not permitted to work—these privileges must be earned. Thirty days in isolation and you go into the general population and are given a work assignment, hard field labour at first, and if you are well-behaved or can afford to bribe the screws, you might advance to a cushy job like the kitchen or the laundry. People don’t want to know what goes on in these joints as long as the bad guys are off the street. You are told right off, “You are no longer a person, you are a number. You have no rights in here unless we give them to you. If you have problems or complaints, write them down in a letter, roll it cylindrically and stick it up your ass. Have a nice day.”

  After a month in isolation I was given my first work assignment, building a cattle fence across a swamp. It was hot, gruelling work. We smeared our faces and arms with kerosene to protect against the swarms of mosquitoes and blackflies that tortured us constantly. The kerosene mixed with sweat and ran into our eyes. My hands blistered and then calloused over. The work was backbreaking but we were just glad to be outdoors and able to talk to someone.

  The men lived in bunkhouse-style dormitories. This was a more social environment than a cellblock but also less supervised and far more dangerous. I found that my status at Guelph meant nothing at Burwash. Here I was just a green kid in a world of seriously tough men. One evening after dinner in the mess hall I was walking back to my bunk when I passed a small group of men, the Wheels of Burwash, led by a huge black guy named Joe Paterson. He was only maybe six feet tall but he weighed around 250 pounds. His biceps were bigger than my thighs. He was a vicious fighter and was feared by everyone. Everybody in the joint paid tribute to him in one form or another. Even the guards walked softly around Joe Paterson. As I passed the group one of them made kissing noises and someone said, “Hey, sweet thing, you need an old man?” My time at Guelph had taught me that I couldn’t let this pass or word would be all over the joint that I was a pussy and life wouldn’t be worth living. I knew the code of the joint and I knew what I had to do. Even though he outweighed me by maybe 70 pounds, I walked straight up to Joe Paterson and threw my best sucker punch, a big looping overhand right that had racked up a half-dozen knockouts in the ring at Guelph. It nailed him right on the button. Joe Paterson didn’t even blink. He just smiled at me. I remember thinking, “Oh shit,” and the lights went out. I never even saw the left hook that hit me. As I lay on the floor with the room spinning around me someone buried a boot in my side and I heard Joe Paterson say, “Hey, leave him alone. The kid’s all right, he’s a fighter.” The guards swarmed into the dorm and dragged me out. I was charged with fighting. Not much of a fight—all I did was get knocked out cold—but I was hustled back to the hole. Since no one appeared to know who hit me, nothing happened to Joe Paterson. I suspect that the screws were not too eager to bust him anyway.

  Back to the hole and the thirty-day initiation process began all over again. I strutted out of the dorm with my best cocky jailbird walk, like I didn’t give a shit. You don’t dare show a sign of weakness in the joint. “Fuck ’em,” I bragged. “I can do this standin’ on my head.” It was all false bravado. Inside I was shaking. It’s a good thing I couldn’t get any sharp objects because this story might have ended right then and there. I didn’t know if I could do another thirty days in that six-by-eight-foot hell.

  A man survives the sensor
y deprivation and loneliness of the hole by finding all sorts of ways to occupy his time. Push-ups, sit-ups, rolling your socks into a ball and playing catch off the wall … You withdraw into a fantasy world where you’re not really in solitary confinement anymore. You’re outside the walls of the joint and you’re a big shot on the street. You have a Corvette and hot chicks and lots of money. I fantasized about being a rock star like Elvis. But sooner or later reality comes crashing in and there you are back in the hole at Burwash and it seems like you’ll never get out of there.

  I occupied my time by singing. I discovered that the little concrete room was a natural echo chamber and I began to sing to myself. It was a habit I had picked up from my mother, who always sang. Doing the dishes, vacuuming or driving her car, Mum always sang. She had a pretty, clear voice and her music-school training gave her perfect pitch and a great melodic sense.

  One day, through the vent high on the wall, I could hear the men in the exercise yard. One’s memory is a strange thing, but of all the thousands of songs I’ve sung in my life I will always remember the song I was singing that day. It was an old New Orleans tune called “St. James Infirmary Blues.” I was singing at the top of my lungs, bouncing my voice off the concrete walls, when I suddenly noticed that the yard was silent. The men were all gathered around the vent and I heard someone say, “Who the hell is that?” Someone else replied, “I don’t know, but damn he sure can sing.” Looking back I realize that it was a turning point. Someone actually said I did something well. My father’s favourite name for me was “Useless,” and I had come to accept that as a fact. Now someone had actually said I was good at something.