Uncaged Read online

  Being at juvenile hall didn’t feel like being in jail. We slept behind locked doors, and everything was hard and cold and made of steel, but it wasn’t all that scary to me. I felt more free than I had at home.

  At home, I had been scared all the time. I was always worried. I felt like I was going to get hurt, or that someone was going to kill me—usually Joe. My whole life seemed to revolve around trying to not get hurt, surviving, staying out of physical pain. My whole life felt like shit. Unless I was doing something physical, like playing in the park or doing sports, or getting drunk or getting high, I was just alone in my head and worried. I remember feeling like I needed to be taken care of. I needed my mom. And I couldn’t have my mom, because Joe was there. I was always in trouble with him, and he was always mad at me, and he was always hitting me. I remember lying there at night thinking of ways to kill Joe, and thinking that there had to be some solution. There had to be something I could do. There had to be a way out.

  Juvenile hall seemed like the way out. I was happy there. I was locked up, but I had plenty to eat, and I was free to read all I wanted. I went to classes and did schoolwork. We did arts and crafts, and we had sports, and no one was trying to hurt me.

  So when the counselors said I should probably become a ward of the state, I said that was OK with me. I didn’t really get what it meant. I didn’t understand the long-term implications. Maybe they didn’t explain it to me. But I knew that, whatever it was, it had to be better than my life at home. The state had been good to me. Why wouldn’t I want to be a ward of the state?

  In that moment, I learned a lesson: I made a decision. Up until then, I had been trapped in a place where I had no control and no hope of change. I was just the kid in trouble, who couldn’t stay out of trouble, who was going to get caught and punished. But at that moment I realized that I did have control, that I could create something new, be something new. I had broken the law, but I had taken control of my future. It gave me a weird sense of energy, like I could create whatever I wanted. Now I had the solution. I had a plan. If things got too tough, you grab the girl, grab some stuff, and run—and see what happens. If I didn’t like my life, or my family, or my group, I could break the law in some drastic way and everything would change.

  This became a pattern for me. This is how I lived my life for the next ten years.

  I wasn’t at juvenile hall for very long, but I grew to really love the custodians there. They were gentle and caring and more like a real family than any family I’d ever known. They were only there because they wanted to help kids in trouble. I got that. I didn’t understand it, but I understood it was real. But they didn’t want me to stay there. They wanted to get me placed with a family. They oversaw the paperwork that made me a ward of the court, and then they found me a home.

  I was sent to live in a group home with a Christian Scientist family. They had a big white house in a small town in a rural area somewhere outside of Redding. The house was on two or three acres, and one of the acres was all lawn. I remember a black dog playing on the lawn. There were five or six kids in the group home, plus the mom and pop who were in charge of it. The kids were all boys of varying ages and backgrounds. The parents were loving and kind. The man was very strong in his faith. I was interested in what he believed and I loved to read, so he gave me some books. Before, all I had known was the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Now I started consuming information about Christian Science. The man and I connected over that. I was studious and took it seriously, and we had long talks.

  My information about the Jehovah’s Witnesses was a little spotty. I knew that we didn’t have holidays and we didn’t celebrate birthdays. The deal was we were chosen to work for God, and we were lucky to be chosen, because the world was going to end—any day now, the world was going to explode in a terrible fireball. Then Jesus would rise and we would all be in paradise. After that, we would live together and the animals would talk to us.

  I don’t think this is exactly what Jehovah’s Witnesses believe, but I didn’t know much else about it at the time. I heard someone say we were just “jack J-dubs,” which probably meant we were Jehovah’s Witnesses in name only. But I remember thinking, as I got older, that some of it didn’t make sense. I remember wondering, “If we are all together living with the animals in paradise, what will the animals eat? Will they stop eating each other? Will the lions stop killing other animals and start eating grass, like the cows?” But when I asked questions, I was told to be quiet. At this home, though, there was a man who believed something different, and he was happy to talk to me about it.

  But it didn’t get me to straighten out. I had a regular life with these nice people and these other kids. We went to school. We had activities. We were well fed. We were loved. But I kept getting into trouble. I got into a fight on the football field with a kid who tried to bully me, and there was zero tolerance for violence at this place. The dad at the home went to bat for me. He said he would smooth it all over, but I’d have to mow the lawn—the whole lawn, the whole acre of lawn. I did that, and everything was forgiven.

  One of the activities at this home was boxing. Thursday night was boxing night. The boys would put on the gloves and everyone would box. Most of us were just goofing around, but there was one kid who really knew what he was doing. One Thursday night, he kicked my ass. He hit me really hard and gave me a bloody nose. It hurt, but more than that it was embarrassing. I was so humiliated. He made me cry! It was the first time it had ever happened, that I was embarrassed by an ass-kicking. It made a huge impression on me. Maybe it made too big of an impression, because soon after that I did something else stupid at school. I don’t remember what it was, but it must have been pretty serious. Suddenly, after I had been there for three or four months, I got sent back to juvenile hall.

  I saw all my old friends. I was with the kindly counselors again. I stayed a month or so. I was happy to be back. But I got a reevaluation. The thing that got me sent back must have been serious, because my security level went up a notch. When I was sent to another home, it was a higher-security one.

  These people were also Christians, but they were more mainstream—not Jehovah’s Witnesses, not Christian Scientists. They were a husband and wife, with a young baby girl, in a different rural area. They were very kind and sweet, and when they took us to church it was full of other people who were kind and sweet, too. We were surrounded by kindness.

  The house had a fence around it. The school they sent us to had a fence around it, too. This was a school for troubled kids, and there was security. We were driven to school every morning in the dad’s van. He had to escort us in. Then we had to check in, and in the afternoon we had to check out. Going to the bathroom was a serious deal. You had to punch out and punch back in. It felt almost like being in jail, I thought.

  There were lots of activities there, and I was interested in that. One of them was waterskiing. I had never seen anything like that before. The only water sport I knew was tubing. Waterskiing was amazing. The speed of it blew me away. But I didn’t like living under such tight security, so I hatched a plan to run away. There were three or four other kids in the home. I pitched them my plan and rallied the troops. They went along with it. I told the kids to pack up some clothes.

  I had been a thief for a long time. I had gotten good at going around on tiptoe in the dark and finding things to steal. Back home I had stolen a lot of money from Joe’s wallet. So I snuck into the foster parents’ room and stole some money from the man’s wallet. I found the keys to the family van.

  I knew how to drive a little; my mom had taught me, in our old 1962 Dodge van with a three-on-the-tree manual transmission. But there was an older kid in the home, and he wanted to drive. So I was the ringleader, but he was the driver. We all snuck out of the house and got into the van, and away we went. One by one, we started dropping kids off. Then the driver and I headed for Sacramento.

  Why Sacramento, I don’t know. I think there was some field trip we’d wanted to g
o on, maybe a concert, that we hadn’t been allowed to attend. We had this crackpot plan to head to the big city. We were going to meet some other guys and get some money and have a big party.

  We almost made it. We got all the way to Sacramento. But we were running out of gas, and we didn’t have much money. One of the other guys, not the one who was driving, thought he was a big hoodlum. He said, “We gotta find some people to rob.” This guy said he knew the area and knew where to go. On some level, I knew this was a bad idea. These guys were older than me, and this was a little more severe than what I was used to. I tiptoed around in the dark and stole pocket change. But now we were driving around the city looking for someone to mug.

  For better or for worse, we never found them. We were still driving around trying to locate some victims when the cops pulled us over. They asked, “What are you guys doing?” We were three underage guys in a stolen van, driving around in the middle of Sacramento. We must have looked out of place. They took us in. I don’t know what happened to the other guys, but I got sent to the huge juvenile hall in Sacramento. This was a big deal. I had to walk the line. I knew I was in real trouble. When they locked me up there, I knew I was in big, big shit.

  There was a hearing. I was sentenced to four months in a juvenile facility. They gave me an orange jumpsuit that didn’t fit. Until then, as a ward of the court, when I did something wrong the counselors were upset but their attitude was that we could give it another shot. But this time I was being given a sentence. I was being punished. I was a prisoner.

  I got sent to a rural facility near Red Bluff, California. The kids were not as tough as in Sacramento, not as jacked up. It wasn’t as scary, and the staff was nicer. But it was like jail, no doubt about it. I was given a set of blues and whites—blue pants, blue shoes, white shirt—and sent to a special school inside a mobile trailer. I had a job in the kitchen. Part of my job was going to Costco in my blues and whites with this stoner dude, this hippie refugee from the 1970s, for supplies.

  I may have been a prisoner, but I was only twelve years old. I didn’t see my family during this period. My mom visited me once, when I was first in juvenile hall in Redding, I guess to say good-bye or make sure I was OK. But I never saw Joe or my brother or sisters. After I was sent to the first group home, I never saw my mother. They were doing their thing. I wasn’t part of that anymore.

  That was hard for me. I always loved my mom and now I really missed her, and I missed my brother and sisters. But I didn’t want to go home. If I had been given the choice of moving back with my family and Joe or staying at the facility on Red Bluff, or going to a group home, or staying at the juvenile hall in Redding, I would have chosen anything except moving back home. I never wanted to go there again.

  I was happy in the Red Bluff facility. I really enjoyed learning, reading, going to school, and hanging out with people my own age. But soon my term was up. I had to go back into the system, back to Redding. I started being interviewed again to be placed in a home. Now, though, where I could go was classified differently. It wasn’t just moms and dads looking for a few boys. Now it was camps and ranches, higher-security places, people who were in the business of running group homes.

  I had a few interviews, but nothing happened for a while. I stayed at the juvenile hall in Redding. Then one day a guy came in and I was sent to interview with him. He had a boys’ home outside of Susanville, California. His name was Bob Shamrock.

  This guy was incredible! I had never met anyone like him. He wore a bright, flowery shirt and rings—tons of rings. He was very polite, very gentle. He smiled and shook my hand, and then he asked questions and actually listened to the answers. He seemed to have strong opinions about things, and he was very passionate about the work he was doing. He gave me a big spiel about his ranch. He made it sound like summer camp, like the Hardy Boys.

  So I made my usual pitch, too. I told him about how I had been having a hard time, but I wanted to do better. I had made mistakes, but I now was—he just cut me off. He said, “That’s all fine, but I don’t want to hear any bullshit. This is about doing things differently. This is a home where you can change, where you can build yourself up and live differently.”

  It was a fatherly pep talk. He called me on my bullshit, but he wasn’t angry. He was just telling me how it was.

  I liked him instantly. I wanted to go with him. I would have done anything to get into his ranch. But I felt sure he wouldn’t take me. I had screwed up too much. When he left, I just knew I’d never see him again.

  But two weeks later, one of the counselors took me aside and said I had been assigned to Shamrock Boys Ranch.

  3

  SHAMROCK BOYS RANCH

  Bob Shamrock came and got me a couple of days later, and he drove me from Redding to Susanville. He was dressed up nicely and he had a big Cadillac, one of several: he had a ’56 and a ’57 and a ’62, all of those beautiful and shiny Cadillacs from the grand sweeping years, with the big fins.

  The house was a huge compound, out in the country a few miles from Susanville. There was one main building and lots of little outbuildings surrounded by fields and trees. Across the street was a golf course.

  Bob lived in the house with his staff and about twenty boys of all ages and sizes and backgrounds. The staffers were all men, helpful young guys, former military or group-home kids who had graduated from the youth system. The boys slept two or four to a room all over the compound. For meals we got together in one giant dining room. Places were laid at the table and we had pewter goblets. Bob would preside over these massive meals, huge productions put on by an old woman we called Granny. She lived in town with her husband, T-Bone, and she loved Bob and she loved the kids. She was very sweet, and I saw right away that everyone treated her with respect. No one ever talked back to her. It was forbidden. She would bring out the food, and everyone would sit politely and wait. We sat down as a family. Bob stood up and said grace.

  I was just shy of my thirteenth birthday when I got there, and it was obvious to me that I was the youngest. I felt really small. Some of the kids were already seventeen or eighteen, and they were massive. They seemed like grown men. They drove cars and had jobs in town. I felt really little, and I was intimidated by them. But I felt really protected by Bob, and I fell in love with the whole scene. Bob was our mom and dad. Bob’s attitude was “We believe in working hard and doing sports and kicking ass and having fun!” It seemed like fun, and it seemed like a challenge. I really wanted to fit in and do it right.

  But it was strict. There were lots of rules. Bob ran the place like a business because it was his business. He had some tough kids sent to him, and he was determined to do right by them. He was a strict Catholic and had very strong ideas about right and wrong. The difference from everything I’d grown up with so far was that he was fair, and his ideas were actually about right and wrong. Before that, the rules in my life had just been the rules. We do this because Jehovah’s Witnesses do this, or because Christian Scientists do this. The church says so, or Joe says so. Now Bob was offering another voice, but one without the guilt or anger or force. Or shame. His word was final, but it didn’t feel severe. He talked the talk, but he walked the walk, too. He never cursed. He never got drunk. He never got angry. He just told you how it was, and that’s how it was.

  You’d see him every day at breakfast. You had to be up on time and dressed and presentable. If you weren’t up, or if you were late to breakfast, someone would come shake you. If it happened twice, Bob would come to your bed with a pitcher of ice water and dump it on you.

  Most of the boys went to school in Susanville. I started in there right away, too. Every morning we’d get into a white van with one of our counselors behind the wheel, and we’d all ride to school and go to our classes. In the afternoon we’d get in the van again and come back to the ranch, where we’d hang out and play sports. On the weekend, Bob would arrange big games of football and baseball with the boys and local teams. Physical fitness was very big w
ith him. He thought that was how you took wild city kids and calmed them down—by putting them out in the country, taking them away from whatever was making them crazy, and giving them a safe place to spend all that energy. You played sports, or you worked, or you did both. And you did your chores.

  Bob was a huge force in the community. He was involved with the church and with the town. He’d drive down the street in his Cadillac, which was always shiny and perfect, and wave at everybody. He was a snappy dresser, and he was always smiling and friendly like he was the mayor. He went to the same restaurant for breakfast every day, and would eat the same meal: eggs Benedict, wheat toast, and coffee, black (at which point he would announce, “hot and black, like my women”). He was very social and would hold court over those three cups, volunteering his boys for whatever the town needed.

  At the house, things were very orderly. There were rules and there were consequences. If you were supposed to be somewhere at seven o’clock, it had to be seven o’clock. If you screwed up, you got work duty. You had to clean something or fix something. Bob had a road crew, and the kids who had screwed up had to go into town and clean up a park or pick up trash by the side of the highway.

  If a kid had done something worse than just being late, Bob would bring out the belt. He’d say, “Come here, kid,” and you knew what was coming. But he wasn’t angry, even then. He was the king of cool. You could cry, you could scream and yell, you could whine—it didn’t matter. He had his rules and he had his consequences, and that was it.

  If you had a beef with another kid, you could tell someone. If you were being picked on, you could talk to Bob or to one of the counselors, and you wouldn’t get punished for asking for help. Bob always told us that we were a family. We were his family. He was the dad, and we were his sons, which meant we were all supposed to be brothers, just like in a real family. If a kid was bullying someone, Bob would take one of the older boys aside, one of the popular boys, and say, “That guy’s got a problem picking on the younger kids. Maybe you could have a talk with him.”