I PLEIADES - An Autobiographical Work - Imprisoned At 10 Years Of A...

Hampden County Training School, a reform school for delinquent boys from 1917 until it was closed in 1972.

The year was 1967 in the USA. I was 10 Years old… Handcuffed to a heating pipe in the basement of the courthouse…

How did I get here…?

Where did it all begin? How did I end up incarcerated/in reform school/child prison/child jail when I was only 10 years old?

A little background...
I think it probably all started when I was just very little…

I was around 3 years old… (At the time of this writing I am not exactly remembering my age but most likely 3 is correct.)

Before my birth my mother had fallen down some stairs and received a concussion and in time, that head injury led to hallucinations etc…

Sometimes I would awake from my nap and she would be gone… I would then leave the apartment and go out into the world to find her… It very rapidly reached a point where I would try not to sleep because I wasn’t sure if she would be there when I awoke…

Sometimes I would find her and sometimes I would not. Sometimes it was easy to bring her home but mostly it was not… Sometimes I felt she was in some kind of danger and the struggle to bring her home became even more imperative than ever before…

When I began school I was very worried about her because I wasn’t home anymore to “Find” her when she wandered off on an adventure… So I decided to just stand and wait in the doorway that led out of the apartment downstairs, from there I thought that if she were to leave the building, I could follow her and I could try to protect her from any misadventures…

(There is more to this part of the story but I guess this paints enough background for understanding where this adventure shall lead us next.)

And so jumping ahead in time…

A pattern of skipping school was long ago established…

From very early on I decided that I hated school…

But I loved museums and sculpture and painting etc… I loved reading and big libraries…

Instead of going to school I would visit the places that I loved. I would wander through the museums and libraries in my city, and one of the museums had a planetarium! I Loved it so much! :-)

Also I would just walk and explore the city… Find different streets and walk, and walk, and walk… I found it enjoyable and interesting….

Long story short… when I was 10 years old the government brought me to court. It seems that children are not allowed to educate themselves. I had broken the law by my lack of attendance at school.

I was 10 years old… The sentence I received from the judge was to serve 6 years in what they called a “Training School”…

What? Hey wait a minute!!! This can’t be right!!!

But it was… I really didn’t expect it… I didn’t think they would really do it… I mean what had I done? I had visited museums and libraries and had long interesting and enjoyable walks of contemplation instead of going to their old boring and confining schools…!

But here I was … it was apparently really happening… I was handcuffed to a heating pipe in the cellar of the courthouse while awaiting transport to the “Training Facility”…

Maybe this is all just designed to scare me… Yeah that’s it… Well it’s working! I’m crying my eyes out…

Maybe soon they will just let me go home when they know that they have scared me enough…

Nope… They were just waiting for a few other kids to ride in the same transport to be taken to the “Training Facility”…

JD’s that’s what we were called. J.D. Was the acronym for “Juvenile Delinquent”.

Okay wanna hear something kinda funny?

My crime was skipping school remember…?

Well I was the ONLY one that was locked up in this place for such a ridiculous reason…

The other inmates were in there for real crimes such as bank robbery, assault and battery, etc…

This place had kids from around 8 – 16 years old. When a kid turned 16 they would ship them to another facility with older kids… Oh my god… I was actually sentenced for the whole term…!?

I soon discovered that most of the other children were sentenced for varying and much shorter periods of time… 3 weeks. 1 month. 3 Months. 1 year etc…

How could I be sentenced to be here for so long when my crime was so small? I did not understand…

I stopped crying in the transport on my way there… I was now once again very much alone in the world and I had no room for tears… I had to observe my situation and learn the new rules as quickly as I could. I was now in survival mode…

I don’t remember very much about my arrival… I remember being driven up to the large institutional type building… It had a large, cold and foreboding feeling to it… (I learned later that it had once been a police training facility)

The first morning that I was there I was already trying to figure out how I could escape.

All the windows were closed, locked and fenced in. There was going to be no climbing out of a window…

Everyone was always accounted for and in a large group in the main room…

But I was still figuring this all out… I learned all this little by little, bit by bit, like on that first day when they said we were going out for a work detail…

This place was a large farm and they used us as child labor to tend the fields…

They lined us up to go out to work in the cabbage fields and I became excited thinking that this could be my chance to escape…

But then… I noticed that they lined us all up and counted us before we left the building… Hmmm… That’s not helpful…

Okay it’s a cold fall day and now we’re out in a cabbage field. My job is to pick up the heads of cabbage after they have been cut with a machete.

I know they counted our bodies before we left the building, which means that they will probably count again before heading back inside… But if I can just work my way to the far end of the field I may be able to get to the woods before they finish and notice that I’m gone…

So slowly… slowly, slowly I begin working my way towards the far end of the field… I don’t want to attract any attention… I just have to somehow get to the woods… Thoughts are rushing through my mind… How to do it…? Get far enough away and try to hide by laying down in the field…? I think they will see me before I can get to the woods…

If I do somehow manage to escape where will I go…? I don’t even really know where I am… And it’s so cold…

It doesn’t matter… The only thing that matters is that I must escape...!

Slowly… slowly, slowly… Keep moving towards the woods and just figure it out as I go…

I’m getting pretty far now from the main part of the group when one of the older boys stops me and questions whether I should be out that far since this is my first day… I tell him that it’s alright and the officers sent me to work in that area… but I don’t think he believes me and he shouts to the officers to question my presence that far from the group…

*Sigh… I am called back to join the main group… So much for my escaping by way of the first work detail…

Shortly after that we are lined up and counted again and go back into the facility…

Always a body count. Wherever and whenever we would go and do anything. Even just moving from one section of the building to another section of the same building… Body count… How can you hide and then escape when they never leave until the 2nd body count matches the 1st body count…?

I guess that’s the point. You can’t. I later discovered that anytime someone tries to escape, that everyone is punished for it… That way the other inmates are also watching to make sure no one escapes because they know that they will suffer if anyone gets away…

But actually even an attempted escape would cause everyone to be punished…

On my first morning there, one of the officers had me clean the little windows in the “French Doors” that were between the “Main Holding Area” and the corridor into the rest of the building…

This turned out to be a very good thing because when the “Housekeeping Supervisor” sends word downstairs that she needs a new “Houseboy” that officer sends me to go because he liked the job that I did on the windows…

Being “Houseboy” I was soon to learn was a very BIG job… but it kept me for the most part, away from working in the fields...

Working in the fields was a very rough and dirty job… and the old man… I won’t mention any names in this story… but he was mean… he was one of the officers and while most of the officers could be mean to varying degrees, this old man was especially cruel and unpredictable...

E.g. he would walk along the fields where the children were working… and when he found a nice big branch… (which he usually did) he would tear the leaves off of it so it was bare and he would walk up and down the rows yelling “Faster! Faster!” as he beat the children on their backs prompting them to work faster and faster…

The nightmares followed me for many years even after I left this place... We all have our own stories... Our own histories, and in their way they have made us who we are today... This is just a part of my story...