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Hypocrites In His Midst
A Story About Flawed Human Beings
by
Donnell Wilson
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Synopsis
HYPOCRITES IN HIS MIDST: A Story About Flawed Human
Beings by Donnell Wilson is the fast moving, dialogue-rich
account of Wilton Latso (Willy Lost Soul), a hard-driving, harddrinking and angry street brawler from the St. Louis housing
projects of the forties and fifties. Based on a true story, Wil is a
tough guy with a heart who has a hard time controlling his Irish
temper. He learns that his pugnacious yet caring nature forces him
into a lifetime deciphering the dichotomies between violence all
around him versus the platitudes of organized religion and
governmental values he formerly respected. Wil juggles a young
adulthood on the streets fraught with suicides, petty crimes, rape,
and marijuana-dealing with his constant attempt to keep food on
the table and a roof over the heads of his five children, four of
whom were born by the time he reaches twenty-one.
The son of evangelical Christian parents, Wil rejects the
hyperreligiousity of his Pentecostal upbringing but retains a
lifetime motto to never break his word or lie to a friend. Married to
fifteen-year old Evelyn when he was only seventeen, Wil is too
proud to allow his family to become homeless. He struggles to
balance his desire to hang out with his street gang friends versus
attending trade school and learning the hard-working life of an
auto body repairman, an occupation which only provides an arena
for constant drinking. The economic realities of raising five
children ultimately cause Wil to bury himself in his work and
bankrupts him of the time necessary to nurture his wife and
children and form close, loving relationships with them. Or did
working hard, necessary to keep a family of seven afloat, also
become a substitute for Wil to avoid closeness with his wife and
kids? Did his overly religious, worry-wart mother who raised Wil
with no show of affection and hammered him repeatedly with the
need to be “washed in the blood of Jesus” contribute to his
inability to form healthy relationships and foster a tendency to
binge drink? Did his ineptitude in showing Evelyn affection cause
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her to seek attention and love from Wil’s closest friends? Wil’s
coming to grips with these realities ultimately end in divorce, but
not before he tries to do away with his wife several times and then
ultimately moves his entire family out of Missouri to Colorado
with no job to waiting for him. His journey through the farewell
parties of best friend Merlin’s suicide in the back of Evelyn’s car
and his bipolar, former-minister brother Darwin’s suicide by a
gunshot to the head is gripping, poignant and makes for a pageturning read.
Forced to examine life’s hypocrisies and the values that affect his
existence, Wil turns to writing as a road to self-discovery and
ultimately deciphers his considerable difficulty revealing his true
feelings for his children, whom he desperately loves. The honesty
and hard-work ethic he learns from his father serves Wil very well
throughout his lifetime. He rejects the racist views of his southern
upbringing in favor of a more liberal political viewpoint that
champions society’s hard-working middle class. Wilton Latso is
the voice of the independent, liberal working man who gives no
credence to the uber-wealthy right-wing politicos that threaten to
destroy the middle class with unfair legislation nor to the crimsonrobed figureheads of organized religion who paternalistically
debase women and attempt to control the masses with their selfrighteous dogma. HYPOCRITES IN HIS MIDST: A Story About
Flawed Human Beings is a moving tale that resonates with the
issues of our times while recounting one man’s journey through
great pain but ultimate survival through laughter and
understanding. As Wil says: It’s not where you start out. It’s the
distance you travel.
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Dedicated with love and appreciation:
-To my ever-patient and loving wife Mary, my typist for thirty
years, who put up with me
-To all my dearly loved children and grandchildren, who put up
with me
-And to Nick, who always believed in my writing, and who put up
with me.
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© Copyright 2013 Donnell Wilson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any
form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including
information storage and retrieval systems, without written
permission from the author, except in the case of a reviewer, who
may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a
review.
Trademarked names appear throughout this book. Rather than use
a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a trademarked name,
names are used in an editorial fashion, with no intention of
infringement of the respective owner’s trademark.
The information in this book is distributed on an “as is” basis,
without warranty. Although every precaution has been taken in the
preparation of this work, neither the author nor the publisher shall
have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or
damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the
information contained in this book.
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Table of Contents
Synopsis .......................................................................................... 2
Part I................................................................................................. 8
Chapter One ................................................................................................................... 9
Chapter Two................................................................................................................ 27
Chapter Three ............................................................................................................ 42
Chapter Four............................................................................................................... 57
Chapter Five................................................................................................................ 62
Chapter Six .................................................................................................................. 75
Part II A New Beginning ...................................................... 82
Chapter Seven ............................................................................................................ 83
Chapter Eight ............................................................................................................. 97
Chapter Nine............................................................................................................. 105
Chapter Ten............................................................................................................... 121
Part III Farewell Party........................................................ 141
Chapter Eleven......................................................................................................... 142
Chapter Twelve ........................................................................................................ 150
Chapter Thirteen ..................................................................................................... 160
Chapter Fourteen .................................................................................................... 170
Chapter Fifteen ........................................................................................................ 176
Chapter Sixteen ....................................................................................................... 189
Chapter Seventeen ................................................................................................. 199
Chapter Eighteen .................................................................................................... 212
Chapter Nineteen.................................................................................................... 229
Farewell Party Part Two .................................................... 244
Chapter Nineteen.................................................................................................... 245
Chapter Twenty ....................................................................................................... 252
Part IV Learning the Three R’s – Rita, Reba, and
Rachel ......................................................................................... 275
RITA Chapter Twenty-One ................................................................................ 276
Chapter Twenty-Two ............................................................................................. 289
Chapter Twenty-Three.......................................................................................... 294
Chapter Twenty-Four............................................................................................ 303
Chapter Twenty-Five ............................................................................................. 315
Chapter Twenty-Five ............................................................................................. 339
REBA Chapter Twenty-Six................................................................................. 365
Chapter Twenty-Seven ......................................................................................... 380
Chapter Twenty-Seven ......................................................................................... 393
RACHEL Chapter Twenty-Eight ..................................................................... 404
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Chapter Twenty-Nine............................................................................................ 423
Chapter Thirty.......................................................................................................... 447
Part V Pain, Love, Redemption, and Success ......... 459
PAIN Chapter Thirty-One ................................................................................... 460
LOVE Chapter Thirty-Two................................................................................. 475
Chapter Thirty-Three ............................................................................................ 486
Chapter Thirty-Four .............................................................................................. 503
REDEMPTION Chapter Thirty-Five.............................................................. 512
Chapter Thirty-Six.................................................................................................. 531
Chapter Thirty-Eight ............................................................................................. 549
SUCCESS Chapter Thirty-Seven ..................................................................... 564
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Part I
8
Chapter One
“Hi, Abbie," I said.
“Hi, Dad. What are you doing?”
“Oh, just having a beer,” I said casually.
“You’re drinking again?!” she shouted. “I just may not come
and see you next month when I’m in Florida.”
“It’s just a beer, Abbie. I don’t drink the hard stuff any more.”
“Hard or soft, I don’t care. I still may not come and see you.”
“If you do, you do. If you don’t, you don’t. I don’t care.” That
wasn’t true…..I really did care, but I was reflexively exercising a
lifetime pattern of not allowing anyone to intimidate me. I
always fought back. I also believed that Abbie held me
accountable for all the mistakes that had affected our family
while she exonerated her mother at the same time. Right or
wrong. That's what I thought and how I felt. Call me Mr. Black
and White, that’s the way it was.
“I always wanted a father more like Jimmy Stewart," Abbie
then zinged at me. “Like in It’s a Wonderful Life. You’re too
macho. When I was growing up, I didn’t even know that some
families don’t drink. I thought everyone did." She knew that my
parents didn’t, but that didn’t make any difference. I was an
easy target, and she had always criticized my drinking. “You
didn’t even care enough about us to spank us when we were
kids,” she had told me. I didn't tell her that I had once lost my
temper with my kids and their mother Evelyn had stopped me
before I could hurt any one of them. From then on, I became a
screamer for discipline, but not a hitter.
Years earlier, Abbie and I had gone three years without
speaking to each other. She had once been married to Gilbert,
an alcoholic, who drank every day. I had always been a binge
drinker. At times, I would just totally quit…..for weeks or
months at a time. Abbie’s ex-husband and I never had much to
say to each other and I imagine it's because of what Abbie had
said to him about me. She had never held me in high regard.
That’s something I didn’t know for years. I felt excluded at her
wedding to Gilbert, when his father completely ignored Katie
and me. By the time I finally got to know Gilbert, Abbie was in
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the process of divorcing him. They had been together fifteen
years or so.
It wasn’t Gilbert’s fault that Abbie had married an alcoholic, I
surmised. Abbie was sixteen when I divorced her mother, and
she needed to blame someone. She had tried in vain to change
Gilbert, who also drank a lot of beer. And no one was able to
change her father, so I had to be held responsible for her
unhappiness and mistakes she made because of my attitudes. I
still had a good time with my sons at her wedding. They were
easier for me to talk to and didn’t blame me for their
difficulties in life. I had tried to be a good father. No one went
without food, shelter, clothing or discipline, even though I was
extremely liberal. Yes, I made mistakes. Who hasn't? I knew
some of it was my fault. But was at a loss regarding how to
correct it.
Abbie‘s scream jerked me back to the present. “Do you know
what you did to me as a kid?” she screeched like a wounded
animal. “Do you know what it’s like to be raised by an
alcoholic?”
No, I don’t, I thought. There are worse things, I thought. ”You
sound just like your grandmother.”
My mother Anna would pray in a dark closet, wailing and
screaming out loud for all the family to hear, so she could
smother them with guilt. It was their fault she was so
unhappy. My mother thought we were all responsible for her
misery. ”God help me!” would come her shrill voice. “I wish
Jesus would come and just take me away! Sweet Jesus! Wil, you
must be washed in the blood of the Lord to be saved. If you
don’t, we won’t even remember your name. Our mind will be
wiped clean of the memory of you.” Due to all of my mother’s
histrionics and passive-aggressive ways, I stopped caring a
long time ago.
Once again, Abbie’s words snapped me back to the present.
“Do you know what it’s like to have your father try to kill your
mother, to drown her? Not only that, but you said the word
dick in front of my husband.” She pronounced the word
“husband” like he was a Puritanical icon…..her currant and
second husband, Bert.
“When I said that, Abbie, I was talking about the steroids that I
had to take when I was sick with colitis and they made me
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swell up all over. Everywhere but there…..it was meant to be a
joke.”
“I don’t care, it’s wasn’t right.”
“Maybe you should be in therapy.”
“I am in therapy!” she yelled back at me.” Did you say you
wanted Brenda’s new number? Well, here it is.” Ten curt
numerals were uttered sharply and Abbie slammed the phone
down with a crash.
Therapy, therapy, I thought. Seems everybody needs therapy
nowadays. What the fuck did people do before therapy?
Probably had to solve their own problems. Wonder how that
went? My mother and Abbie sounded so much alike to me, it
pissed me off. Maybe that’s why I reacted so negatively to her
during our conversation.
Abbie had said, “I don’t even want to drink coffee any more. I
don’t want anything in my body that could be bad for me.” And
my mother had always said, “I never want to do anything
wrong. I would be afraid to ever do anything wrong. No one
has had a harder life than I have.”
“Not even the lepers in India? “I had asked my mother.
It wasn’t what Abbie had said. It was the way she had said it.
How could she be so different than me? Abbie sounded like the
victim my mother portrayed herself to be. Back when I was
lost and didn’t give a shit about myself or anyone else, others
who crossed my path became my victims. But I’d be damned if
I became anyone else’s. But you always do, I realized.
I had wanted to holler back at her, “God dammit, Abbie! Look
at what I’ve overcome. Give me credit for what I’ve done. I
really tried to hold our family together. Maybe in the wrong
way, but at least I tried. Your mother was fifteen. I was
seventeen when we got married. It was a mistake - I was
young and stupid. I made a lot of mistakes, but I tried to recover
and make it all work. What more do you want from me? I’m
not a perfect person. I’m not a religious person. If you are, it’s
okay with me. Just leave me alone." I wanted to continue, “I
tried to teach you to stand up for yourself…..not to take bullshit
from anybody. No matter who they were. I’ve lived a very
violent life - that’s why I didn’t spank you. I didn’t want to hurt
you like I’ve been hurt so many times before.”
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My daughter, criticizing me…..she, who’d never, had any
children of her own to raise. And now she thought she had the
right to criticize me.
I thought about that conversation a lot. I hated it when I was
sideways with my children. I'd wake up in middle of the night
weeping, awash in emotional pain. My life. What a fucking life!
It had been great fun a lot of the time. Painful, but fun. What
the fuck, if it was that important, I probably wouldn’t have
been sent here. It was only life, not a big deal. Or was it?
I looked in the mirror one day and pondered upon what I
thought was my interesting but painful life. “It’s not where you
are at, Wilton Latso. It’s the distance you've traveled getting
here,” I told myself out loud. “Hell, I had four kids by the time I
was twenty-one, hadn’t completed high school, and I had been
in trouble with the local constabulary more than a few times. If
you want to do something in life, you can do it. It just takes
moxie.”
Relationships were different…..and mine had often been
difficult. They always seemed to cause me problems. It didn’t
matter if it was with my parents, employers, women, or
children. Even with God. It seemed almost impossible for me to
get them right. I didn’t know if it was me, everyone else, or
merely the way life was. Sometimes relationships were just a
complete pain in the ass!
Experience, what about that? It sometimes meant nothing and
everything to me, even after a half a dozen suicides and a
couple of murders of people I knew. All were drug-related.
Many of those who were now dead had been close to me. Not
that the drugs caused their deaths. Their drug use was merely
symptomatic of their deeper dysfunction, like a cough is to a
cold. At the age of sixty-seven, I realized I was just beginning to
learn, and as I wrote, I came to understand the reasons why I
had had a propensity toward violence. And why there had
been so much anger in my life. Could an ex-street fighter
become a nice or decent person? As dangerous as my life has
been, I had been lucky enough to move several times. But it
had always been done because of conflicts in my troubled life.
Those moves turned out to become very important growth
steps for me. I learned how other people lived.
I would eventually play all the roles: rebellious juvenile, high
school dropout, angry young man, gang member, outlaw, drug
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dealer, tradesman, father, grandfather, business owner, and a
decent husband to Katie one day. I would build a three- story
house on three-and-a-half acres, only to lose it shortly
thereafter in a divorce settlement. "I’ve got a box of bills, my
Jeep, and enough gas to get to town," I'd laugh.
Now retired, I live in a half-million dollar house on a waterway
that leads to the Gulf of Mexico. I had been lucky. Made some
money in real state and a few investments. I had a twin engine
twenty-eight foot boat and Katie had a brand-new car. Life was
good. But then I made that phone call to my oldest daughter,
Abbie, to get a phone number for Brenda, my middle child. I
was going to call Brenda’s son, my oldest grandson, who once
had fun driving my old boat, to tell him about the new one.
Brenda was our third child of five. She and her family had
visited Florida the previous year and since then, she had
moved into to a new home in Colorado. I was in a happy, Iwant-to-kid-you-and bullshit-with-you mood. It would be fun to
call Colorado where I had moved my family years earlier, from
St. Louis, to keep us all together. It would be fun to talk to
Brenda and then later on, to my grandsons. It was after I talked
to Abbie that I started writing this book. It wouldn’t be pretty
but it would be true. Maybe then she would understand why I
was the way I am. Maybe I would also understand.
I was born in a small southern town in that southeastern
corner of Missouri called the bootheel. After my Dad left the
Navy, my parents moved to St. Louis to find work. I was only
five years old at the time. Our family’s move to the big city led
Mom and Dad to the only affordable housing they could find:
the Clinton Peabody housing projects. They were a series of
small, boxy apartments with concrete floors. The first thing I
remembered about the projects was a Christmas when my
mother and father had bought me a cap gun, holster,
neckerchief and cowboy hat. Mom and Dad had gone next
door to visit our neighbors and left me to sit there alone in the
sparsely furnished concrete-floored room with the white
painted walls that we called a living room. A single white light
bulb hung from a ceiling wire, casting a garish glare over my
mother's sparse holiday decorations. I felt really alone. If
anyone tries to come in, I'll shoot ‘em with my gun, I mused.
I had been a talkative kid and it had caused me problems from
the very beginning. A kindergarten teacher once slapped me
across the face because I wouldn't be quiet. I ran out of the
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school, climbed the fence and got lost on the way home. Years
later I saw a Norman Rockwell painting of a child in a high
chair eating ice cream at the police station. And that kid looked
just like me. I couldn't believe it because my life had never
emulated art. At least, not up till that point.
I saw the violence start when I was six. Walking down the
concrete steps to the parking lot, I saw another project kid.
"Hi, Billy," I said. "Whatcha got in the bag?"
"Oh, nothin'." Billy swung the paper sack and hit me in the
back of the head. I fell down the hard concrete steps, was
knocked unconscious, and woke up in the hospital.
"Why did you do it, Billy?" came my question after I had
returned home.
"Just to see what would happen. I didn't mean nothin'."
Another time, I was sitting at the bottom of a hill not far from
the concrete steps that led up to the buildings. I didn't even see
the other kid at the edge of the hill, because my back was
turned. Jeff lobbed a piece of broken concrete in my direction.
As my lousy luck would have it, the cement connected with the
back of my head. Unconscious again!
I connected with Jeff after I got out of the hospital.
"Why did you hurt me like that?" I asked, with seven year-old
innocence.
"Cuz I really don't like you, Wil."
Another day, at a baseball game, it was finally my turn at bat.
An argument broke out. A larger boy grabbed the bat away
from me and hit me square under the left eye. I was knocked
over the fence backwards, out cold again. I had been in the
hospital three times before I was nine with concussions and
mild closed head injuries..
Too many kids in a poor neighborhood full of disappointed
people. My mother, Anna, was bitter. "I don't understand why
we have to struggle so hard. We are Christians, after all. These
actors and actresses in those movies are always sinning, but
yet they have so much. It's just not fair."
Later on, my mother became angry with another project
tenant who had cussed her out. She took me along with her to
the police station a couple of blocks away. "What do you mean,
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you can't do anything?" my mother hollered at the desk officer.
"I'm a Christian woman, and you wouldn't believe how that
woman talked to me! I can't even repeat it!"
"I'm sorry, ma'am," the officer said. "If she didn't threaten you
or hurt you physically, then we can't do anything about it."
My mother dragged me back down the street towards home.
"I've never heard anything so crazy in all my life!" she
muttered. "If these people had half a brain, they could see that
it was wrong," my mother would say to anyone who would
listen. "They don't have brain one. How can they even believe
that she has a right to curse me out? I'm a Christian mother!"
I was nine when we finally moved out of the projects. Under
the GI bill, my father was able to buy a four-family flat on St.
Vincent Street. It was a poor white neighborhood, full of tough
people, located a block and a half from a poor black
neighborhood. But where we moved to was better than the
projects – by just a smidgen, my mother’s word. The whole
area was called The Melting Pot in the newspapers, because it
consisted of first-generation Irish, English, German, and Italian
people. And poor folks from the cotton country down south
like my mother and father.
By the time I was twelve, some of neighborhood men had just
returned from the Korean conflict. The bars were full of exGI's who loved to drink and fight. For me, watching that action
was exciting. Our three scout masters were ex-Marine drill
instructors from Korea. They lived in a better part of town, but
they came down to our neighborhood and gave their time to
us kids to show us the meaning of the words respect and role
model.
My parents had their own problems. Dad was gone a lot,
sometimes working two jobs. He once almost died of walking
pneumonia. I can remember the preacher and his friends
coming to pray for my father. They left me out of it. I was just a
kid, after all. But I went down into our dingy, dark basement
and cried and prayed: Please God, don't let my dad die.
I already knew, but didn't understand, that my parents were
distant from one other. There was never an expression of
affection from either of them to the other. I remember one day
putting on my Dad’s jacket, like boys do. I pulled out a pack of
cigarettes. "What' this?" I asked.
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"They must be Marge's." She was the lady that rode with my
father to work and lived upstairs from us. Because Dad didn't
smoke. My mother just stared at him.
If this was love, I wanted none of it. They didn't even seem to
like each other! I couldn't understand my father's temper but I
had felt the result of it many times. When I was twelve, a man
with a pony came to take photographs of the neighborhood
children on that sweet little horse. My mother had one taken of
me that day while I was playing with a friend, who hung
around during the photography session. Afterwards, the
photographer, wiping his brow, spoke to me.
"Hey kid, can you get some water for me and my pony?" I
brought back two glass quart jars with ice water. The man then
let me ride to pony to the end of the block. I was mesmerized.
My friend and I followed the pony man for many blocks until
my friend’s older brother finally caught up with and took us
home.
My father stood at the top of the stairs snapping his belt in his
hand. He reached down and jerked me up. My father hurt me
badly as I ran in a circle trying to escape the hard strapping
across my back. I never forgot the pain. At least it wasn't the
razor strop of the past, which had left welts of red pain.
My Dad also punished Darwin, my younger brother by six
years. He had been nailed by Dad the same way. After the third
strapping that Darwin got, I couldn't handle it any more and
jumped up and yelled "Stop!" at my father. He did, but then he
reached out for me. "Don’t you ever tell me what to do!" he
yelled at me. From then on, my brother was on his own. Later
on, my brother and I would joke about it. Our younger sister,
Carol Ann, nine years my junior, was the only one who was
totally protected from punishment by either of our parents. No
matter what Carol Ann did or said, it was always okay with our
mother. Carol Ann could do no wrong. My parents were
creating an emotional cripple without knowing or
understanding it.
Carol Ann was just a skinny little kid with black hair. I really
didn’t even know her. She would yell out a sound like, "Ugh,
ugh,” whenever she saw one of us brothers approaching. Then
the predictable holler would come from our father, even when
nothing was going on: “You boys leave her alone!” It was a
great game she played. Even if Darwin or I just looked at her,
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the sound would emerge. I hated how she acted, so I mostly
ignored her. I never felt close to her.
She was always protected because our mother had felt
cheated as a child by her own father who seems to favor her
brothers. My maternal grandfather had given my mother’s
brothers each a piece of their own land to farm, in the custom
of the times. The daughters were given nothing and were
supposed to marry a man with his own piece of property.
"My father,” my mother started, “well, he gave each one of them
boys forty acres to farm. Two of them didn't even farm it, they
just rented it out. Then they bugged our father about a car. So
he went to St. Louis and bought them a brand new car. Us girls
didn't even get to use it. Then after Virgil got married, he took
it with him.”
"I’ll just tell you this much,” Mother continued. “We worked in
those fields just as hard as them boys. Picking and chopping
cotton. I was always the last one to clean up and go to town on
a Saturday. They would leave that old grass mat rug full of mud
and dirt and just take off. I'd have to clean that rug and bring
new hot water that had been warming in the sun from outside.
My best friend Myra would have to wait for me. And I didn't
get thank-you-one. Nary a one, from any of them brothers of
mine. Not one."
My mother’s parents had twelve children, but three had died.
My grandfather’s brother and his wife were killed, so my
grandfather took in their three kids in and raised them as his
own. My mother was the second from the last of all these
children, with the youngest being a boy. She was simply lost in
the mix. She felt she never got much but was too afraid of my
grandfather to ask for what she needed. The seeds of
resentment grew in my mother to make her the unhappy adult
she later became.
As a kid, I never minded work, especially if it was something
that didn’t bother me. I helped my father clean our church
until I was over fifteen. It was my part-time job. Dad had been
doing it for a couple of years, and I really didn't mind it, since
he paid me for my help. I had a close friend named Bob who
would help me from time to time, and we would spend the
afternoon together before the evening service. We took turns
going to one another's homes. There was a noticeable
difference between the two houses and the reactions of the
17
people who lived inside.
Bob’s house was happy and full of laughter. It was quiet
around the table at my home. No one started a conversation
with another. If I chomped on ice with my teeth, I would
receive a stern glance from my father. I would have to stop – or
else. These people - my parents. I didn’t know why they didn’t
like each other.
I can still remember one particular day when my father was
sitting in the car all red-faced and angry with the veins bulging
out on his neck. He would start the car, wait a while, and then
shut it back off. And then honk the horn. We would all finally
emerge from the house.
"You only have to get yourself ready," Mom would tell Dad
angrily. We started the drive to the church.
"Don’t make me have to pull this car over," my Dad would say,
turning around to the occupants making noise in the back seat
and then thumping the perpetrator hard with his index finger.
If my parents had sat any further apart, I think they would
have been on the outside the car! It was so quiet that the turn
signal seemed to reverberate loudly. Tick-tick-tick-tick.
Arriving at church, everybody became all smiles, as the hand
shaking began. "Happy to see you, brother Lloyd. And how is our
sweet sister Anna today?"
Maybe there was a time when my parents were happy, but that
had long since passed. I never saw it, and I didn’t understand
the reasons why for even longer. The negative feeling that my
parents had for each other had affected our family
tremendously. They were Christians. They were supposed to
forgive each other. What could they have possibly done wrong
to each other? Why two people would stay together without
affection was something I never understood. Even when I
didn't understand what affection was all about! And why
people seemed to need it so much.
Friends were easy for me to make. I was outgoing and
gregarious. It was Teddy Grant and his buddies, Clovis and
Irish, who became my fast friends during those few years. We
were all in the Boy Scouts together. Teddy idolized Ernie
Cramer, one of the scout leaders, an ex-Marine who talked
about his sexual exploits and conquests to us boys. Ernie
carried along a set of keys, supposedly to different women’s
18
apartments. Years later he wired a grenade to his bed in his
parent’s house due to paranoia and alcoholism. He died in a VA
hospital. But there was the night that the three scout masters
had saved all of us from a good ass-kicking from a different,
older street gang that had been hanging outside of the Wyman
Grade School during our scout troop meeting.
A bunch of us were walking home. We had been confronted
before the meeting earlier by that gang. Those local bad boys
had waited for us in an alley. When our group crossed the dark
alley, the bad-asses came out and surrounded us. I already
knew most of them and wasn’t afraid of any of them. But there
was going to be a fight, without question.
A car came to a screeching halt right before the alleyway
opening. Ernie Cramer and the other two Scout masters, Frank
and John, jumped out.
“Hey! Come here, punk!” Ernie snarled as he walked towards
the biggest and boldest. ”You want to fight someone? Fight
me!” He slapped the cigarette out of the kid’s mouth. ”These
are my boys here - you leave them alone!”
And they did. It was Teddy that they really wanted: the goodytwo-shoes Eagle Scout who was over six feet tall and thin as a
rail. He looked geeky and nerdy in today's terms. I would have
backed up Teddy but it wasn't me that they wanted. They
already knew I would fight back. This whole incident may have
been Teddy's reason for ultimately becoming a cop.
The violence in this neighborhood didn't scare me. I had
learned in the past, with my father's help, never to show fear.
A year earlier, I had run from the boy next door one too many
times. My father had locked me out of our house and then
opened the window to explain to me, while pointing down the
street, "Wil, you need to stop running and defend yourself.
When you get done, I'll carry you in if you're nearby." Dad
closed the window. I was on my own.
So I fought back, but I lost that one. So, later that same day, I
waited for my attacker's younger brother and proceeded to
knock him around. The boy's father stormed out into his
backyard, right next to ours.
"Wadd'ya mean, beating up on my kid?"
But before I could answer, my father was out of our house. The
19
two parents met in the alley. The neighbor stood flat-footed
while my father stood on the back step leading into the alley,
which made them the same height then. But my father was
broader across the shoulders and generally a bigger man.
"Don't you speak to my son like that" my father shouted, redfaced with anger. He pointed his finger hard at the other man.
"You tell your older boy to leave my son Wil alone, and then I'll
have him leave your other boy alone. The agreement was
struck. I was left alone.
Later on, I remember being in the alley with Irish and Clovis. I
had just completed the sixth grade at the age of thirteen,
probably due to a strong case of attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder in the days before ADHD became a household word. A
kid who had pushed me around the previous school year was
walking down the alley. With my two friends beside me, I felt
empowered. I said something to the effect, "Hey, Dale Byrd, do
you still think you can kick my ass?"
"Yeah."
I was trapped. "You called him out," Irish said. "You hafta fight
him now."
The Byrd kid hit me in the face as hard as he could. I was
amazed – it didn't even hurt. I grabbed him, picked him up,
and slammed him to the ground twice. He began to cry – and
then ran away.
When seventh grade started the following September, Dale met
me in the basement on my way out of school during the first
week.
"Wil!" Dale yelled out. "You still think you can do that?"
He charged towards me. I swung him around, slammed him
into a wall, and bounced him off a bench onto the floor. A male
teacher who had witnessed the whole event ended up calling
me innocent. He told me to go home.
Dale Byrd never bothered me again. He tried to be my friend
but I rejected him. I couldn't warm up to someone who had
pushed me around from the start.
After that, I never backed down from another fight. For the
most part, I was left alone. Although I went through a lot more
fights by the time I was fifteen – I'm guessing a dozen, more or
less - I had never backed away from any of them. Even the
20
fights I ended up losing. I knew I had gained something: a
reputation. And I was damn proud of it.
I didn't see much of Irish after he moved away when we were
both fifteen. So my old compadre Irish wasn’t there with me
the day that Ray Chapel, a new schoolmate, pulled a knife on
me.
I had been teasing Ray. "Yeah, right, Ray. You're tough. You
really scare me." I turned my back on him. Big mistake.
I was wearing a short-sleeved unbuttoned shirt that blew open
away from my white tee shirt. Ray made two quick downward
strokes, cutting my back. A lot of other kids were around at the
time.
"You're bleeding!" one of them said.
My outer shirt was okay. I pulled off the tee shirt. Some other
kid helped me by blotting my lacerated back wound with the
white tee shirt until the bleeding stopped. I threw the bloody
tee shirt away before I got home. Everyone kept their mouth
shut. I never kidded Ray again.
Also around age fifteen, I finally graduated from the eighth
grade. That summer, my street education continued. I asked
Karla, one of my girl classmates, to be my date. Much to my
surprise, she said yes.
I had gotten into a fight over this girl earlier that same year.
Another kid had told one of his friends that he had felt her up,
and it had gotten back to me. I really liked Karla and it pissed
me off. The boy was a lot bigger than me but it didn't matter.
He was standing by the batter’s cage, eating a bag of potato
chips, when I approached him.
"Hey, what's this bullshit I heard you say about Karla?” I
slapped the bag out off his hands. "After school I'm gonna
knock your ass." He ran home and I was the one who got called
into the principle’s office.
"I know what you plan to do after school," Miss Tucker said to
me. "I understand and you are right, but if you do I will
suspend you and you won't graduate this year. His parents
have already been here and he apologized to the girl. So let it
go."
"Okay, I will."
21
So Karla went with me on a dance boat called the Admiral as
my date. I didn't dance - I thought I was too cool to learn.
Stupidity knows no bounds when you're young. The parents
drank while the kids ran around and stole booze. Irish and I
found a drunk that he wanted to roll. I'm sure I didn't make a
great impression on the girl or her parents.
I made one mistake after another during this learning period. I
was told another boy was interested in Karla. "He had better
leave her alone," I said to the boy who told me. "She's my meat."
It was an extremely stupid thing to say and it spread like wild
fire.
"Well, did you say it, Wil?" Karla’s girlfriend asked me angrily.
I didn't know what to say. I felt genuinely embarrassed, like I
wanted to escape out of my skin. It was a mistake I would have
to pay for. I was walking down the ally when the other boy
who liked Karla confronted me with two off his friends. His
two friends held me, while he knocked me around. I was ready
to explode mentally by the time they let me go. I didn't even
remember the remarks they made about me as I turned to
walk home. Other than, "You'd better leave her alone." Just
cold-hearted laughter.
The farther I walked the more pissed off I became I wanted to
kill them. Stick a knife in them. It felt like my head was going
to blow up. I could feel hundreds of needles in my mind putting
pressure on my brain. Like a thousand small electrodes
buzzing around in my head. I could almost hear the noise. I
was in a rage by the time I waked into my front door. I stormed
into the kitchen and took a butcher knife out of a drawer. "I'm
going to kill all three off them!" I hollered, to my mother.
"What happened? What happened?" she asked, worried and
excited."They beat me up."
"Who?"
"These three boys. I'm going to kill every one of them."
"No, no, son! Please wait! Let me call the minister. Please just
wait until I call the minister."
I put the knife back into the drawer and went and lay down on
the living room floor. The minister came they prayed over me. I
didn't feel anything except emotional exhaustion. "These can
be troubling years for young people," the minister said to my
22
mother. "You just have to wait for them to grow out of it."
I fell asleep. It was the first time I really had ever experienced
real rage.
Years later, I saw Karla on a bus, sitting across from me. I still
felt totally embarrassed. After saying hi, I stared at the floor. I
wondered if she could see right through me and tell what a
mess I had made of my life. Years later, I would name my
youngest daughter after that sweet teenage crush.
My family moved again. This time, my parents found a nice
two-story house in a better neighborhood. It wasn't as violent
as the old one unless you looked for it. Violence could be
addictive. The less you feared it, the more contagious it seemed
to become. And it was always easy to find.
My reputation followed me into high school. Not that I didn't
like it, I did. But I felt I always had to prove that I wasn't afraid
to fight. It was the only way I could feel safe. I was walking out
of my advisory class when I saw that Earl Barren, six-footthree, had cornered Jim Weiss, five-foot-four. I always liked
Jim, who was a really nice guy. I could tell he looked up to me. I
jumped in front of Jim with a protective stance. “You wanna to
push some body around? Try me." I stared up at Earl as his
eyes grew bigger. "That’s what I thought. Now leave him
alone!"
Later that year, it was announced that Jim broke his arm. I got
his address and walked to his house. It was a hell of a walk.
"He won't be coming back to school," his mother told me. I
spent a few minutes talking to him and then I headed for
home. I would never see Jim again, not knowing that this
would become the pattern of my life. People coming in, only to
leave forever.
I was always looking for trouble or it was looking for me. It
didn't matter….. it was close by. I seemed to accept it with open
arms. I figured out years later that it was better than the
parental hug I never had.
I was arrested for car theft when I was sixteen. I was caught
riding in a stolen car I didn't take. A different friend named Jim
had stolen the car and bought it to high school. I stole plates for
the car later that evening, trying to show how cool I was. Irish
stopped over the following weekend and I told him about the
car incident.
23
Irish was now living with an uncaring stepfather who did not
treat him kindly, because he was raising a kid who was not his
own. Irish's mother had died when he was fifteen. Irish had
experienced a hard life, but he was my good friend and had a
big heart. He only had one pair of jeans that he washed on
weekends and wore all week.
I remember seeing Irish's mother from our backyard in the old
neighborhood. Once a beautiful blonde woman, she had come
down with cancer and grew pale and so emaciated that it
looked like the bones were sticking out of her skin. Her once
shiny hair had turned thin and stringy. Irish was at his
mother's bedside every day until she died.
"You stole a car?!" he asked me, incredulously.
"I didn't steal it…..I was just riding in it. But I know how to
steal 'em."
"I'd like to steal a car, too."
"Okay, we'll steal one. Let's go."
We walked the streets until I found the one that would be easy.
I took my cigarettes out and removed the foil from the pack.
"What are you doing?" Irish asked.
"This car has a dash starter. All you have to do is wad up the
tinfoil, place it behind the ignition wires, push the starter
button, and Wham! We're in the wind!"
"Really? That's all?"
Neither one of us could drive very well. We roared around,
scraped against a concrete wall, hit a fire hydrant while we
were trying to get the radio to play, and finally got the forty-six
Chevy stuck in the mud of a vacant lot. Then we left it and
walked home. It was great fun.
The next weekend, Irish was back at my house. "Wil! Let's go
get another car."
"No, man, I don't want to," I told him. I really liked Irish and
didn't want him to get into trouble. He had enough problems as
it was.
Immediately after my family had moved into this new
neighborhood, I joined the Monkey's Athletic Club that played
24
football and rugby. Because of my reputation, I was
automatically voted in. In those days, it only took two votes to
blackball a prospective newcomer out of the club.
The club collected dues and was run like a business with a
sergeant-at-arms. We even owned the bar right next door to
the clubhouse. The seventeen to twenty-one year olds were
part of the Monkeys Juniors' division and were the toughest
guys in the club. They took the city rugby championship
several years in a row. Almost all the members had police
records, mostly from fighting and stealing cars.
Even though the Monkeys were labeled as an athletic club,
most members were risk-taking thrill seekers who were both
perpetrators and victims of violence. The club gave them a
sense of belonging, protection, respect, confidence and
communication. They could go where they wanted, when they
wanted…..and while they were wearing their colors, they
would be left alone. Typically, their parents didn't talk to them,
but their friends always did.
It was around then that I met Evelyn for the first time. I was
put into her English class, after being kicked out of another
one. She sat across from me. I produced two essays that year:
one written, and one oral. The written essay was entitled, How
Too Shoot Eight-Ball. The verbal essay I called, How to Shoot
Snooker. In my oral presentation, I drew a pool table on the
blackboard showing the red balls and explaining that the
player had to sink a red ball before sinking a numbered ball.
"Do you always hang out at the pool hall?" my high school
English teacher asked me.
"Yes," I answered.
This teacher talked to me about my attitude quite often when I
was a sixteen year-old freshman.
"Why, Wil, why?" the teacher had asked. "Why do you hand in
so many book reports, but I can't even get you to do the
homework for class?"
"Because I love to read," I answered proudly. I didn't bother to
tell her how boring I thought the rest of school was, or that
there was one thing I always loved: a book. Actually a lot of
books, the more the better. In school I would turn in ten to
twelve book reports when only two were required. But it’s true
25
that I never did any of the rest of the written work for that
class.
"What do you want to become later in life?" she asked me. I
was wearing my blue club jacket with the orange sleeves. I
loved, no I actually adored this jacket. The letters on the back
spelled MONKEYS in a half circle, with the letters AC for athletic
club below, and CUBS right in the middle. The jacket front
sported a monkey on a tree limb over the left breast and my
name WIL over the right. With this jacket, I always wore
brogans tied with white shoelaces that wrapped across and
under the instep, back behind the heel, and then forward
again. My black gangster-style hat had a white hatband with a
perfectly tilted red feather. I loved to deck out to the max!
I couldn't tell my English teacher that what I really wanted to
be in life was a gangster. To have real power so I wouldn’t be
pushed around - like I thought my father had been. Maybe to
become a bookie - hell, make some money. Be free. I didn’t
understand any of life, but boy, did I ever know it all!
I finally answered my English teacher. “I think diagramming
sentences is a waste of time. I don’t really need to learn how to
do that. Someday I would like to be a writer.” My tone was
almost triumphant with defiance.
“Then you will surely need to know how to diagram a
sentence.”
“I know how to read them and write them, and that’s all I need
to know.”
“There's a whole lot of difference between reading a sentence
and writing one.” But I wasn't listening to Miss English
Teacher. Even as I looked directly at her, I didn’t hear her. She
sounded just like my mother. What did she know? Nothing
about me, that was for sure. In truth, I really knew nothing
about myself. Except confusion - about myself, my family, and
the religion that I was supposed to believe in. And really…..it
was only because they told me so.
26
Chapter Two
That summer, I met Evelyn again at the community swimming
pool and rode home on the bus with her, her mother and her
sister. We started seeing each other regularly after that. I'm
not sure if I knew what love was. I really did like her and
naturally wanted to experience sex with her. We would go to
the movies together and talk on the walk back home. I’d spend
a little time talking to her mother when she would come into
the kitchen. After that, I would head for the pool hall with my
friends who weren’t club members. Sometimes Evelyn would
open her window and look out as I walked away. "Go straight
home, Wil," she would laugh. "You don't need to go to that pool
hall".
"Yeah, okay," I would holler back and go around the block like I
was heading home. But once out of sight, I’d turn and head
towards the pool hall. I hated being at home, and spending
time with Evelyn was a great diversion from my boring home
life.
Evelyn and I had fumbled around at sex a few times during the
three months we were seeing each other but never quite got
the job done. Then one day she was a little sick and was staying
home from school. I decided to skip school and stay with her.
We fumbled around again, but this time it happened. We both
lost our virginity that day. I thought it was great. It was the
best thing I had ever felt in my life. This was worse than any
drug. What an addiction! Evelyn seemed to enjoy it too, and
she was happy and smiling as we lay around together. The
thing about sex is this, once you cross that bridge there isn’t
any going back. To say the urge was really strong was an
understatement.
It was the late fifties, in the days before the pill, and I naively
thought that by pulling out we would be safe. Horny was no
longer a word…..it was the condition of my being. We would
come home from the movies and I would wear my shirt out
over my Levis, so she could play with me under the table as we
sat there, stopping when her mother came in and starting
back up when she left the room. Talk about gutsy!
My father and I had started to grow cross with each other. One
night, when I was walking out the door all decked out in my
colors, he tried to stop me from leaving the house.
27
"Where are you going, Wil?" Dad asked, putting himself
between me and our front door.
"To the pool hall," I answered.
"No, you're not," he said, his fists doubled.
"You hit me, and I'll hit you back, and then you'll never see me
again."
Dad stepped aside. I walked out, all the dumber. My parents
now had lost total control. Control, once lost, is never given
back and is really hard to take back.
Also during this summer, I started my own club called the
Gladiators. Frank, one of the senior members of the Monkeys,
helped me plan my own club. He was also one of the Marine
drill instructors or D.I.'s from my days as a former Boy Scout. I
was vice-president until the Gladiators broke up when I was
arrested for stealing a car. Still, my former gang continued to
run around together.
The following spring, when I had just turned seventeen, Evelyn
told me, “Wil, I’m pregnant. My mother wants to talk to your
mother.” I was making life-altering mistakes, the consequences
of which I had no way to foresee. I had to quit high school. It
didn’t matter to me, since I was failing in four subjects. I had a
smart-assed attitude of I can do what I want, when I want. All of
this put me on a downhill track, rushing full-speed ahead into
a life that didn't have any gears or brakes, headed for a crash. I
was lost and extremely afraid, even though I didn't dare show
it. On top of that, I thought I was going to suffer in hell forever
at the end of my life for sinning so much. My friends called me
Willy Lost Soul instead of Wil Latso, as a joke.
I was afraid to talk to anyone about my fears. My parents didn't
even talk to each other unless my mother wanted to criticize,
with words like, "Lord have mercy! What are we going to do
now?"
Evelyn’s pregnancy meant that we would have to get
married…..it was the right thing to do in those days. I would
have to get a job, but I didn't know how to do anything. I had
worked with my father cleaning the church even after I
stopped going. But a real job, I didn't have a clue. The wedding
was a joke. My street gang was outside the church drinking
whiskey when we emerged from the building after our
28
wedding. My mother was trying to keep it quiet, but something
like that never stays quiet. Human beings can't wait to tell
others about someone else's problems. But I didn't drink with
my friends that day.
Dad gave us his car to drive around in for a while and told me
what time to be home. It was a total letdown, and for Evelyn
too. But covered in my own selfishness and immaturity, I could
only see myself. Evelyn and I didn't know how to hold an adult
conversation. Her mother was divorced and my parents were
who they were. Unfortunately they didn't teach us any of this
in school.
I had to get a job. It wasn't a happy occasion in any way. I
knew I really liked Evelyn, but…..marriage! And a kid! I
couldn't even begin to understand the responsibilities I had put
on Evelyn and myself. I didn't even know how to talk to her
about it. And I didn't realize how we had both trapped
ourselves.
I thought about Irish. He missed my wedding. The last time I
saw Irish he had just turned seventeen. "I've joined the Marine
Corps," he told me proudly. "My stepfather won't let me leave
the house. He says to be home by ten p.m. and if I question it,
he tells me nine-thirty. I want to have my own life. Teddy is
joining, too." It would be more than a few months before I
would see them again. It was my last year in high school as a
seventeen year-old sophomore. The wedding was over and I
didn't know what to do next.
I didn't know why, but I didn't think about the consequences of
my actions. I don't know if it was because I just didn't care or I
just didn't think, or both. Evelyn and I would have to live with
my parents. It was hard for me to think about that. I hated
being there. My mother and I never got along. My mother, the
nervous and frail-looking, constantly worrying insomniac, who
emotionally beat my father down over and over again. I never
understood why he never stood up to her, or why never told
her to just shut up.
My mother wanted Evelyn and I to find our own place but that
couldn't happen until I had a job. "Look,” Mom said one day.
“This ad in the paper here….. they need someone to sell shoes.
You could do that. I want us to go there tomorrow. We can get
you this job.”Well, I got the job…..and what a job! Women could
try on twenty pairs of shoes and still buy the second pair you
29
showed them. On a rainy day, forget about it. They would come
in droves just to get out of the rain. Always looking at shoes
that had the bow in the wrong place. Wedding shoes were a
nightmare, as they were never the right shade of white, bone,
or ecru. I did well selling out-of-date shoes, telling the ladies
that some old style was coming back. I made an extra seventy
five cents a pair. Then there were women who would almost
scream. "My foot can't possibly be that big! Measure it again." I
split many a shoe putting a number nine gunboat into a size
six shoe. Next to Bart's Shoe Store was a J.C. Penney's. I
remember buying a jewelry box for Evelyn and other
gifts…..just because I could. I liked buying her things.
I had been there several months when a new employee had
gotten close to the assistant manager, who was being
transferred to a Baker’s Shoe Store in Chicago. Frank Wilson,
the new person on the block, was also an ex-convict. That part
I didn't know about. “Wil, you and I could go to work for the
manager. We would be on the ground floor." It all turned out to
be a lie, a mistake. I wouldn’t realize until later that Frank was
just running a con on me. He just needed a traveling buddy.
"Listen," Frank said one day. "Bring your shot guns. We’ll go
duck hunting.” So we went to Crab Orchard Lake, stole some
decoys, and went duck hunting. We slept on the edge of the
shoreline. I woke up the next morning hung over, waiting for a
duck to land near the decoys. Out of boredom I shot at one of
the decoys.
Down the bank came some shouting, "Hey, you son-of-abitches! Stop the shooting!" I jumped into the back seat of
Frank’s used Cadillac, with my twelve-gage shotgun. When
Frank drove by their duck blind, I unloaded the shells into it.
The bird shot wouldn't kill any one but it would make them
think how lucky they were. Next time it could be worse.
I always wanted to trust people, and I believe that most
humans feel the same way – at least in the beginning. Frank
dropped me off back home. "We’ll get your guns out later," he
said and drove off. But then Frank went and pawned my guns.
I had met his brother and knew were he lived.
His brother went to college while Frank had gone to the joint
and was still on parole. I took a few friends with me and got
my guns back. But I did learn about ducks that day on Crab
Orchard Lake. They were amazing. There was a barrier that
30
ran through the park. On one side was a game preserve. The
ducks would land just over the fence in a safe area. A person
could walk up to the fence, and the ducks would look up from
their eating and almost seemed to smile. Underneath the
bridge over the lake, there were hundreds of ducks, all wearing
their different tribal colors, swimming and quacking happily. It
was too bad that human beings couldn't learn from the ducks.
It was easier to like a duck more than a lot of people I had
already met.
I went back to get my last check from the shoe store. "Why
didn't you come back to work when you got back?" the
manager asked me.
"You told me that if I left with Frank not to come back." People
were really hard to figure out. I would have come back but he
told me not to. I needed that job.
The next job Dad got me involved working for a person he
really liked and trusted, a man who worked on his car. They
were friends and I worked there with another kid named
George. We worked the island, pumping gas, checking oil, and
washing windows. It was a full service gas station. George's
father was a member of the Syrian Mafia. George called me
over to help out in a fight. But I made him fight this kid much
bigger than he was.
"If you don't kick his ass, I’ll kick yours." And George almost
won. It was close enough that the kid would never bother him
again.
His father Ray really liked me after that, until one day when I
went over to George's house to get him. He wasn't there and I
hit on Ray's beautiful red-headed ex-stripper wife who used to
walk around in sheer negligees. Ray had been married several
times, at least five or six, I was told. I knew that George was
doing her - everybody knew. She would drop George off at the
station then climb over from the back seat and drive away.
Why not me? Sex can make some people really stupid.
Especially men. "My Dad said you need to grow up," George
told me. "If you ever do, you can go to work for him."
It was almost fun working for a friend of my father’s at a
Standard service station. At times the owner would cook up a
large amount of potatoes and onions, and each of us would get
some. I was also learning different and very important lessons
31
about the ways of the world. Money came up missing one day.
Brownie, the owner, hired a detective agency to investigate. I
was the only one not hitting the till. The others would take cash
in and give change back, but would not ring the register. The
main mechanic had been hitting it hard. He had a mistress on
the side, which meant he was trying to support two women at
the same time. The detective came, followed by the police.
Everyone was called into Brownie’s office except me.
The main mechanic walked out of Brownie's office with his
wife, very pale. He agreed to pay all the money back. I was
eighteen by this time and was just beginning to learn about
people. I never saw the man again.
George quit working there and I left a year later. I didn’t know
where he went and was curious about him from time to time. I
didn’t see him for a couple of years. He pulled over next to me
one day. “Hey Wil, I'm in the Army," he said. "I'm engaged to
this school teacher. We’re getting married after I get out."
"You didn't go to work for your dad?" I asked.
"No, I really didn't want to do that," he smiled. "You know
anyone who wants to buy a pistol? It’s a twenty-two automatic
high standard. It may be lukewarm. I'm doing this for a friend."
I bought the gun to sell later for a profit.
It was after this period that I moved away from everything I
felt was right and into a period of hopelessness, doubt, and
anger. I became a follower. The honesty I had within was lost
after my first betrayal of Evelyn. I had gotten together with a
bunch of my gang members because I was the only one with a
car.
They picked up one of the neighborhood girls that always did
everybody. I had always turned it down. During a moment of
weakness and not wanting to be put down, I joined them. I told
Evelyn about the gang bang that I had been involved in
because of my own guilt. It hurt her badly and made her cry. I
felt awful about it, but found out that after that, it was easier
to lie. She was, after all, my wife, not one of my friends. I didn’t
understand.....I thought this was the way things were supposed
to be.
Before I had fallen, my friends would chastise me. “Man, you’re
stupid. She's never gonna find out." The naked girl lay in the
back seat of my car. It had not been the first time I was in this
32
predicament. I always had said no. "This is the way it is, and is
supposed to be,” they kept taunting me. "They’re only women,
after all." And if I lied, at least Evelyn wouldn’t cry. It would also
keep her safe from knowing something that could hurt her.
I was young and inexperienced in life. I listened to the wrong
people because I wanted to be liked. Years before, the minister
had told me in a threatening tone, “You will be seven times
worse than you were before if you ever backslide away from
our faith.” Unintentionally, I obliged the minister, just as he
had predicted. The worse I became the worse I was. Guilt piled
onto guilt. I no longer cared about myself. Then I no longer
cared about anyone else. I really didn’t care if I lived or died.
The hatred grew into hating myself. And inside, I was unable to
show my true feelings. Even to myself.
It made me feel like a coward - the one thing I really despised.
Why was it so difficult for me? Other people had it tough and
came out okay. Too many children, one right after the other. It
was like I had lost all control of any common sense. I think I
didn’t have any during this time. I don’t know why I didn’t care
or think. All of my children that I had created. They were my
responsibility. No where else to turn. My parents had helped,
but I didn’t know how to talk to them. I wouldn’t have listened,
anyway. I was too blinded by my own pride. It was like
swimming too far out, and then realizing only when it was
almost too late that I would drown in a situation of my own
making with out fully understanding the reason why.
My example at home was my parents, and their arguments
always started and ended the same way. My father hated the
TV evangelical ministers. “They are all blowhards and
salesmen,” my Dad said. “I saw my father pick and load
watermelons all day long, wet with sweat, and then he’d come
home and wipe down. Put on an old thread-barren suit, white
shirt, and tie. And because someone was sick, he felt the need
to visit that person. He worked in the cotton gin during
harvest to get by. Had that little congregation at Mount Hope.
No more than sixty or eighty people…..they had no more than
he did and many a lot less. Sometimes he had to take his own
money to pay their electric or heating bills. Compared to him,
those TV preachers are nothing but crooks. I can’t stand that
Pat Robertson or any of the rest of them. They are all about
money and nothing more.”
“No, they’re not!” my mother would shriek. ”They are chosen
33
by God just as Moses was, to lead us. That’s who they are. Just
like your father was, Lloyd. They are chosen - you know that.
Why else would they be so successful if not by God's hand? I
don’t understand why those actors make so much money living
in sin. But these men know the Bible and they are chosen."
My mother went on and on, never giving any ground until one
day my father said, “Okay, okay, Anna. You’re right. Okay? You
win, you’re right. You're always right.” My father would never
talk about it to her again. I didn’t understand why my father
always gave in. Why did my mother always get her way? I
hated that my father always capitulated. He was the one who
worked two jobs to give our family a little extra. He also never
judged anyone about the way they thought. It was their
business, not his. My parents didn’t really talk to each other,
and oddly enough, it felt like no one else should, either. Just
accept what was laid down and ask no questions. That didn’t
work for any of their children. We all rebelled, each in our own
way. I couldn't understand my parents. If what they had was
love, I wanted no part of it.
My Dad got me a job where he worked, at a company that
made conveyer systems and counting machines. My father
would always leave home an hour early. I would sleep in the car
until we got there. He would go drink coffee with his coworker
friends and I would find a place to lie down until the bell rang.
I was a tow motor driver. The tow motor was a round bucket
the size of a fifty-five gallon drum. The operator stood on the
front of it. It had two forks in the back that would go either
front wards or backwards. The forks slid under the skid. You
picked one up and away you went, moving different loads of
steel from one place to another. It was great fun and I loved it.
My mother wanted Evelyn and me in our own place. She found
a place a few blocks from them on Castleman Avenue. The
people were moving out of town and wanted to also sell their
used furniture for two hundred and fifty dollars. The following
weekend Evelyn and I moved into our own place with our little
boy Dean. Evelyn was also pregnant again.
The tow motor job had its drawbacks for me. I would
practically run its wheels off to get as much done as quickly as
I could. When I was caught up, I would talk to different workers
that I liked. My father was an electrician and was in a separate
corner of the building.
34
I was whizzing down between the aisles one day and almost
ran over Fred, the personnel manager. "Wil, you have to slow
that thing down,” my Dad said on the way home that day. "You
also need to stop talking to all those guys. They have their own
work to do and you have yours."
I wanted to drive myself to work so I could sleep longer in the
morning. I bought a nineteen-fifty Mercury two-door coup
with pleated and rolled leather interior that a friend really
needed to sell. It was dark blue metallic like the car James Dean
drove in Rebel without a Cause. It was absolutely perfect!
Our new apartment meant that my friends and I could drink
whenever we wanted. It was great to have freedom but I was
too young to handle this much responsibility. My parents didn't
have clue, but I would have just blown them off anyway.
I was working one day when the tow motor took off without
me. It went to the repair shop and when it came back, each
department moved their own steel. I was put on a grinding
machine, grinding the comers off of pieces of steel. I stood
there in a leather apron and hot gloves with protective glasses
for eight hours a day. It was boring and I felt stupid. It didn't
take me long to no longer be needed because I simply didn’t
show up.
I guess I was lucky this time, because I found the next job
myself at the Chevrolet assembly plant. I was now nineteen
and our daughter Abbie was born. She was a such a beautiful
dark-haired little girl. We were now a family of four. But I was
working fourteen hours a day, seven days a week to make a
living for my family. I worked twenty-eight days straight and
finally took off a day. I was called into the office. "What, you
don't want to work here?" the supervisor asked.
"No, I do." I couldn't believe the money I was making. Over
three hundred dollars a week in 1959. That was really good
money. We paid bills off and bought shoes for the kids. I
worked in the repair mill and finished the work that the line
missed. I was leaning against the front of a car one day, trying
to read the repair ticket, when the supervisor approached. I
hadn't seen him coming due to my concentration on the ticket.
"What are you doing?' he asked.
"Thinking," I said, foolishly.
"You're not paid to think. Get back to work."
35
I was put down in the pit to tighten body bolts that had been
missed. I loved it. The supervisors didn't come down there for
fear of getting their suits dirty. Later, I drove cars onto the
storage lot as the company began to lay men off. After eightynine working days you were laid off. Ninety days and you were
required to join the union and the company would have to pay
benefits. I was able to get unemployment for thirteen weeks.
But too much free time wasn't good for me. I wrecked the
Mercury when it was snowing and I was driving too fast,
trying to catch a friend. It was like common sense went out the
window, replaced by moxie and a feeling of indestructibility. I
got drunk and sick and then repeated the same actions over
and over.
My Dad had a friend who worked at a biscuit plant. I went to
the plant and they hired me. Brenda, our third daughter, our
pretty little red-headed girl, was born. I was twenty with three
kids. I really didn't like the biscuit plant and some of the
hillbillies I worked with. In fact, I couldn't stand it. So much so,
that it was all I could do to keep my mouth shut, so I didn't say
much.
There were times the pressure got to be too much and I
wished my life was over. But that was not my way. I would
fight back. It was the only way I knew, or understood.
Another coworker was an asshole, a hog-raising part-time
minister who had always tried to preach to me, any and every
chance he got.
"You may be too intelligent to understand,” he’d say smoothly.
“You will be lost for all eternity," he had crooned in a
monotone to me. Like, I hadn't heard it all before.
"Fuck you," I answered. I knew profanity really upset him.
"Do you know how long eternity is? You will burn forever and
there will be a wailing and gnashing of teeth and unbearable
pain."
"Yeah, sure. And you, you asshole, should take your Bible's own
advice. Isn't it, ‘Judge not, that you be not judged?’”
It was all I could do to not strangle the son of a bitch, as we ate
lunch in the plant's break room. I hated the factory even more
than this preacher, but it was the only job I could get, due to
my lack of education. I was twenty and Evelyn was now
36
pregnant for the fourth time. I was smart enough to know that
I had done this all to myself but knowing didn't make the living
any easier.
The wannabe preacher resumed his droning. "That is why so
many scientists don’t understand The Word. They are too
smart."
We barely make enough to eat, I thought. Yeah, right, makes a
lot of sense! You work your ass off and just make enough to
keep the rich happy from your sweat – but yet, if you believe
in The Word, everything will be okay. Bet me!
"Well, The Word never made my parents happy," I countered,
"and they are devout Christians."
"Maybe they weren’t really Christians," the graying, heavy-set
man said.
"Listen, asshole," I retorted. "I've never lied or broken my word
to a friend, and my father is more honest than I ever thought
about being! He won't even lie to his enemies."
"Yes, but you must be washed in the blood of Jesus to be saved.
Nothing else matters. Do you know how long eternity is?" This
dude was on a roll – no way to stop him now. "You take a steel
ball the size of the earth and an eagle passing by once a year
dips down and rubs his wing across it. When it has worn away
to the size of a marble, eternity will just be starting. That is
how long you will suffer in misery and pain."
"For sinning seventy years?" I responded. "How fair is that?
That doesn’t even begin to make sense. It's bullshit. This
fundamentalist religion crap has been nothing but a curse for
my family. Maybe not for my grandfather. He was a minister,
and he was great. He believed in helping people. It wasn’t
Hooray for me and screw you like so many preachers are today.
He believed in the real Christian stuff – like that do unto others
good shit. He even lived by it. He told me a story about how
once he was preaching hellfire and brimstone. There were
some young tough guys drinking whiskey in the last pew,
during prohibition.
“They were gonna whip up on him," I stated to laugh. "Oh yeah,
God led Grandpa out the back door of the church, and through
the woods to safety. Yeah, right! But for the rest of my family,
this religion stuff has been a curse. And I'll tell you something
37
else," I asserted. "The Bible can’t possibly be absolute. It was
written by a bunch of aborigines in the middle of a desert. It
can't possibly all be true – it just doesn’t make sense.”
Now I was on a roll. “Not only that. Saint Paul didn’t even know
Christ. They never even met each other. The rest of the
Christians were totally against Paul's teachings. He was just a
tax collector guy that went out with Caesar's daughter. He got
sun-blinded in the desert, fell off a horse, and thought he had
received a message. Probably got a concussion was all!" I
chuckled. It always felt great to piss that man off. "Paul just got
tired of collecting taxes, just like some people decide they get
tired of working and become entertainers or preachers. If
everyone in this world would just leave the rest of us alone in
our beliefs, it would be great. We kill each other because we
think we have The Answer. Only a fool would believe that."
"You will be sorry on your Judgment Day, Wil. Every knee will
bow or you will burn in hell."
"I'm already sorry I met you," I said with a gleam in my eye. "I
have no problem bowing or kneeling to a good and benevolent
king. If hell is as bad as you think, I'll just start up a union
when I get there. Fuck the devil! And fuck you, too. If you're the
type of person who is gonna be in heaven, they sure as hell
don’t need me there. I'd just want to kick your ass, anyway."
I saw nothing Christ-like about most of the people who said
they were Christians. I was a risk-taker and thrill-seeker. I
liked to live on the edge, like most gang members. Easily
excited, easily bored. Risk-takers, who have a hard time sitting
around, always looking for some type of action, who not only
just need it, but absolutely require it. Rich kids race their cars
and do anything money can buy. Poor kids fight a lot and join
together in gangs to protect each other. That’s the back-up
system in their life. Just as Christianity is to the straight world.
I saw most Christians as blind hypocrites, visionless about
their own hypocrisy. I firmly believed if all Christians were
really true to their faith, there wouldn’t be any hungry or
homeless in our country. They seem to be more worried about
passing laws of control instead of helping other people. I still
feel that way. I simply didn’t understand their personal
selfishness. All religions I view the same way. It’s not God I
have a problem with. It’s the so-called true believers that know
they’re right and everyone else is wrong.
38
I had come close to losing my life, more than once. I didn't
know why, but I liked the excitement – it was just the way I
was. I knew I had not been a great parent – not even close,
although I did provide for my family. The one thing I regret,
and that I didn't understand and at the time, was my inability
to show my tender feelings for my family. I know now that I
was unable to show my true feelings out of fear of being hurt. I
believe now that it would have made a difference, although I've
seen families that looked great on the outside and their
children still turned against their parents. I didn’t have a magic
wand and couldn't just flip things back and change it all.
Unfortunately, back then, my hiding my true feelings was the
only way I knew to exist in the world, simple as that.
Unwittingly, I felt that everyone should automatically know
that I cared. It was extremely hard for me, especially in the
beginning. When it came to my ex-wife and some of my
children, I could only hope I was not the only father
experiencing these problems. Or maybe it was because of my
outlaw-like, rebellious attitude and my own anger at myself
that made me take so long to understand.
Back to the future: I felt good, alive, and happy to be living in
the warm Florida sunshine. But by using poor judgment and
lacking of a sense of timing, I would make a mistake that day
while talking to Abbie. A very significant day, one that would
make me look back, revisit the past, and face all of my
mistakes head-on. The day that would make me examine the
way things had been and feel the pain and disappointments
that had guided so much of my earlier life.
I was thinking about that day in the doctor's office. Don’t get
the wrong idea about me. I'm very proud of my
accomplishments and what I've overcome in life. But there are
much easier ways to do the same thing, if you slow down and
sometimes listen. It took me a long time to do both. Perhaps it
was who was doing the talking and the way it was said to me.
That threatening attitude of you better watch out that it drew
out the worst in me: my fuck you attitude.
“Where did you grow up?” the doctor had asked.
“Inner-city St. Louis.”
“I went to school for my internship there. I asked people, 'Why
the big fence around the hospital?' And they would only point,
39
'Walk two blocks that way and you may not come back.'"
“I grew up in a mixed neighborhood that was pretty tough. But
all in all, at the time, I liked it - for the most part. I was a tough
street kid who didn’t like to fight but wasn’t afraid to do it. I
didn’t like hurting anyone and I didn’t like being hurt. But I
could not – and I would not - run. I would rather be dead than
have someone intimidate me. I didn’t know why I was that way
- I just was," I explained to the doctor after he had asked me if
I’d ever had any head injuries.
I laughed. Yeah, many times…..a beer bottle, a baseball bat, a
concrete slab, and a brick. I've been knocked out at least four
times." I didn't tell him that I had been afraid to ask for advice.
Pride and fear - I owned them both. Sometimes I couldn’t tell
the difference. But I believed it was my own fault and for the
most part it was.
Four children by the time I was twenty-one. I was still a kid
myself when I had to learn how to go and make a living for
them. Finally, out of an accident came a glimmer of hope.
Back In 1962, when I was twenty-two, my right hand was
crushed on the job, by a pair of steel rollers used to flatten out
biscuit dough. Out of that pain and recovery came a chance. I
received twenty-two hundred dollars from workers
compensation for the injury. I bought a car, the first I had had
in over a year. And what a thing of beauty she was! A black
nineteen fifty-seven Olds convertible: white top, black and
white leather interior, chrome dash and wire hubcaps. Five
hundred down and the rest in payments, so I owed another
thousand on it.
What to do with the rest of the money? I had to do something
or it would vanish like vapor. I knew that once gone, it was
gone for good and I would be stuck in the same place, maybe
forever. An auto body repairman lived next door. The guy was
divorced but was living with another woman and her two
sons. His boys always had the latest toys. My neighbor had
money, a nice ride, and they went out often but never seemed
to worry about the cost of anything.
I talked to him often. I wanted to learn something. Anything.
An occupation that I could become good at, that would be
mine. Make a good living like my neighbor did.
Speedy pulled up in front of his rented house. I walked out to
40
meet him.
"Hey, Speedy, you think I could make a living doing what you
do?”
“Sure, Wil,” he replied, a short, square man with dark hair who
looked thirty-something.
“How? How would I learn to do it?”
“There are all kinds of trade schools around,” Speedy told me.
“You might check out Rankin. They have a good school and it
will give you the basics to start with. The rest you learn by
doing the work at a body shop.”
That very moment, I decided to call Rankin Trade School as
soon as possible. I'd go over to the school and find out what
they had to offer me. I would do something with my life. No
one could stop me now.
41
Chapter Three
I had been working evenings, three to eleven for two years at
the biscuit factory. I went to school from eight in the morning
until noon. School actually was great, but work sucked. I would
come home from school all excited. “Hey Ev, I had to cut this
piece of metal out and weld it back in,” I would tell Evelyn.
“Then take a hammer and slowly tap it up and file it till you
couldn’t see any welding marks. Tomorrow, I get to sand and
primer the area and then they’ll show me how to spot the
paint. It’s really neat.”
There were days when I got home after school but had a
couple of hours before I had to go to work. Teddy Grant, the
friend I had grown up with, was now out of the Marine Corps.
Sometimes he would be leaving my house as I arrived home
from school. “Just stopped by to see how you guys were doing,”
he would say to me. I never thought much of it.
Teddy was a police officer. Even though I saw him as a friend, I
also saw him as a typical cop. In all of our years together at
school, Teddy hadn't been a tough guy. His father was dead and
his oldest sister ruled the roost, along with his two other
sisters. He seemed to be afraid of the oldest. Teddy always
appeared to try and do the right thing. During grade school he
had been an Eagle Scout and a school crossing guard, later he
became a Marine MP.
My parents thought Teddy was great – a real nice boy. But Mom
and Dad, like most people, only saw what was presented to
them. And that was not necessarily the truth.
I never confronted Teddy when he was leaving my apartment. I
always wondered why he never had time to talk to me but I
needed to trust someone. Most cops and crooks were the same
in my opinion. And both had kicked my ass and lied to me in
the past. Like the cops who worked me over with a blackjack
when I was seventeen when I wouldn’t tell them who had
bought the beer or the crooks who hit me with anything they
could pick up.
I had become like them for awhile. It seemed to rub off. It was
all about power: guns and violence. They both had a passion
for it and even dressed alike. Crooks had been the toughs and
cops had been the punks in school. The way I figured, it was
42
good they both had a calling.
“Don’t worry about Teddy,” Evelyn said. “He’s your friend. “ I
never asked. I had no evidence; however, I would always
wonder about it.
But it wasn’t Teddy that I mistrusted. It was Evelyn. After all,
she was a woman; she was better than I was. I had hurt her
and I knew it. I felt that I was the one making all the mistakes.
She was not a member of a gang. She didn’t whore, gamble or
fuck around. She was a woman, and women weren’t supposed
to do those things. But I had been unfaithful more than once.
I grew up believing that was expected. It was what men did. If
you didn't do it, you were a wuss. I was twenty when I met
Sylvia and her sister Pat in the red light district. A wanna-be
hooker. She was tall - five feet ten inches, one hundred seventy
pounds, big breasts, and twenty-three years old. She loved to
fuck and was probably a true nymphomaniac. She and her
sister Pat did, both of them, together or separately. Sylvia
would buy me beer. At first, my cheating bothered me, but in
time the excitement covered it up. It was fun to have someone
try to fuck your brains out, but that was all.
I knew I loved Evelyn, though I no longer told her so. Those
words got lost in the worry of the survival of life and the
confusion of my youth. I loved Evelyn because she was
beautiful and was a good mother to our children.
Sylvia had sex with every member of my gang. There were
times she would be doing one of us in the same room we were
drinking in, sometimes tickling the guy’s balls with a feather or
whatever to make him lose his concentration. None of us seem
to really care about anything in those days.
Pat was in love with one of the gang members named Jack,
even though she, like her sister Sylvia, was a whore. Jack with
his blond hair and blue eyes - everybody loved Jack. And Larry:
one-time friend who was tall with a dark complexion, receding
hairline, and pompadour DA. The girls always seemed to take
to both of these guys. Both of them knew it and used it to their
advantage. They had started the game. If you love me, screw
my friends. It was a cruel game that we all had played. Larry
and I were both married; Jack was still single. The three of us
had hung around since high school along with Jim Quinn and
Smooth. By this time, four of the five were married but still
43
acted like gang members, drinking together and covering each
other's back.
Once I started screwing around and everything became fair
game, my life changed. I changed. I no longer cared. Something
died inside of me - perhaps it was guilt. Maybe I really did care
about Evelyn even more than I realized – but I no longer felt
those really good feelings. And when they did surface, I hid
them with the same intensity as before. It was before I got the
factory job or had planned to go to trade school. I had nothing
and felt like I was nothing.
This was truly the worst period in my life. I was unemployed
and drinking too much. No job, no future, no conscience, no
feelings other than anger. I was lost and losing more still. Then
the job at the biscuit plant that was as bad as being
unemployed or even worse. I came home from work one
evening.
“Sylvia called," Evelyn said, snidely.
“What?!”
“Yes, she asked me when I was going to divorce you because
you two wanted to get married." Our heated argument came
and went. Later on, I still couldn’t believe that Sylvia had called
my home. No way would I ever marry a gang-bang! I never saw
Sylvia again. I didn't realize till many years later that my gang
friends had put her up to calling Evelyn as a cruel joke on me.
My friend Irish had also stopped by. I answered the door with
a pistol in my hand, as a joke. He would tell me years later.
"Wil, I couldn't stand those guys you were running around with
at the time. I didn't like or trust them." Everybody saw what I
refused to see.
I was trying to change my life slowly. I was going to do better,
no matter what it took or how long. It didn't matter. But it was
hard for me. I am not a patient person by nature. I had to keep
building myself up constantly. You can DO this body-shop-school
thing, just keep going! I kept repeating to myself. My neighbor
Speedy, the body man who lived next door, had moved on. It
was too bad, because I could have talked to him for moral
support, like a good role model of a responsible adult. My gang
just laughed at me for going to school but somehow, it didn’t
really matter. I loved school, for the first time in my life.
44
I had been in school now for five months and still working. It
was getting harder and harder to do them both. I have to work
at a shit job but at least I get to go to a trade school that I enjoy,
because they let me do auto body repair work. After work one
night a friend and I went drinking. My friend owed another
worker ten bucks and wanted to pay it back, so after we had
downed a bunch of beers, we both headed back to the biscuit
factory with extra beer and whiskey. One of the employees
grabbed me from behind. A mistake on his part, but I reacted
automatically.
"Hey!" I yelled as I struggled myself loose. "Get your fuckin’
hands off of me!"
I turned, almost instinctively, and knocked the worker over the
glue machine. Then I went into the lab and threw up. Next, I
found my way to the bathroom and passed out in right in front
of the door, which opened inward. The other workers paid hell
trying to get it open, with me lying out cold in front of it, but
they finally did.
My so-called coworker friend and drinking buddy wrecked his
car that night; neither one of us knew what we had hit. My
parents found me in back seat of his car near the waterfront. I
didn’t know how they found me and I didn’t ask. I was really
sick when my father opened the car door and the bright sun
bore a hole into my head.
I was called into the office at work. My plant manager was a
large man. Although almost every man was bigger than my
five-foot nine, one hundred sixty- pound frame. John Gate was
over six feet tall and two hundred pounds. Dark blue suit with
a nice tie and easy to talk to, although I didn’t talk to him. He
was, after all, the boss. But it was more than that. It was a selfesteem problem. I didn't have any.
“Come on in, Wil, and sit down,” John Gate said as he looked at
me. He leaned across the desk. “Wil, I don’t know if you know
this, but your mother used to baby sit for us.”
“No, I didn’t know that.”
“Wil, when you’re here, you’re a great worker. But we never
know when you’re going to show up. You have one of the
worst work records around. That’s why I didn’t hire your
friend - I didn’t need two guys like you around.
45
“Wil,” he continued, “you may not understand this, but I used to
be a lot like you. Ed, your foreman, was even worse. He got into
a fight one night, was stabbed and he almost bled to death. His
wife heard something at the front door and found him passed
out and bleeding. We are both Christians now and have
changed. Well, anyway, back to why I’ve asked you here. I’ve
got to do something because of what you did.
“You knocked Clarence all the way across the glue machine.
There was blood and vomit all over the lab. You poured beer
into the pizza tubes and we had to clear them before
production could begin.” I didn’t dare tell him I was just trying
to improve the taste. Sometimes it’s better to keep your month
shut, I realized. “I know that you’re going to school and that’s
really good. You need to finish.”
“I will, believe me. I have to do something else for a living or I’ll
end up in prison or dead. I know that.”
“Okay, good. Maybe you’re learning how to turn a negative into
a positive. But ’m going to have to give you two weeks off. I
can’t just let it slide.”
I had always been lucky. I was looking for an angle, to make
extra money. The streets were a strong draw for me. I went to
East St Louis one of those nights I was off work. I saw a wallet
on the floor near the bar. I went over to this table closer to the
bar and bent over to talk to two women as I put my foot on the
wallet and pushed it under my table. “We’re going to the Four
Hundred Club after we leave here if you want to come with
us?”
“Maybe after we finish these drinks,” she said. I didn’t care if
they went; I just needed to be close to that wallet. I sat down,
leaned over, picked it up and put it into my front pocket. I
leaned over towards my friend. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“What about our beers?”
“Leave them - we need to go now.” I justified what I was doing
with the fact that every one in there would have done it to me.
I wasn’t my father’s son during this period. There were
seventeen tens in the wallet. I gave my friend eighty and kept
ninety for myself. We left and went to the Four Hundred Club.
It was another East St. Louis organized crime and gang
hangout. I met a gangster who wanted his boss killed. The man
was drinking and talking out of his ass.
46
“I’ll give you five grand down and ten to carry later. I’ll furnish
the guns and instructions,” the Dutchman had told me. Later
that evening, I posed the plan to Evelyn, after I gave her sixty
of the ninety I had taken.
“Damn it, Wil! What happens to the kids and me if you’re killed
or go to prison?” I almost had to scrape her down off the
ceiling because she blew up so high. Weeks later, the
Dutchman and his friend were found in the trunk of a car with
a severe case of red bodily fluid leakage.
The two weeks without pay would hurt. The next week Jack,
the only single guy of the original four in our hell-raising
group, stopped by to see me.
“Hey Wil, my old man and mother are moving out to the
county. I don’t want to move with them - it’s too far from my
job. Shit, I don’t know anybody out there and I want to stay
around here. Can I stay with you guys? I’ll give you fifteen
bucks a week.”
“I don’t know, man. We don’t have much room.”
“I could sleep in,” Jack started to crack up. ”In your bed, that is,
while you’re gone.”
“Yeah, right, asshole.”
“No, no, take it easy, Wil. I’m just kidding. I could sleep on the
couch. That would work until I find someplace else.”
I had run around with Jack and his brother Pete for years. Pete
and I had enlisted in the Marine Corps together when I was
seventeen, out of work, and unable to find a job. Evelyn was
pregnant at the time with Dean, our first child. I had convinced
Pete to join the ranks of those proud combatants who lived
and breathed Simper Fidelis. He agreed. My parents signed the
papers that allowed a minor like me to join the Marines, but
not the other branches of the military, at seventeen.
Then my firstborn son Dean arrived two weeks early, which
gave me one too many dependents. Pete left for the Marines
without me. I would realize much later on that if just this one
plan had not been altered by fate at that point in my life, I
would have been a different person. Maybe not completely, but
decidedly different, just the same. I would have been a Marine.
Maybe my children wouldn’t have been born so close together.
Maybe I would have gotten an education sooner. The whole
47
progression of my life’s history from that time forward might
have been different. But on the other hand, I may not have
become the person I came to be later in life.
I agreed to let Jack move in. I needed the money because of my
own foolishness at the biscuit factory. And I would be helping a
friend.
I went back to work after my two week suspension without
pay. Jack sat on the couch and laughed. “Don’t worry about a
thing, Wil. I’ll take care of Evelyn while you’re gone.” The
remark bothered me, but I didn’t say anything. It was easy for
Jack and me to joke together. I liked having him around and
liked playing jokes on him and other members of our group.
Years earlier, when Jack and I had decided to get free chest xrays from the health department, Jack had his results sent to
my apartment.
“How was the x-ray?” Jack asked.
“Mine came out okay,” I answered. “But I don’t know about
yours.”
“What d’ya mean, you don’t know about mine?”
“Listen, I’ll read it to you, that’s all I can do,” I said. “They think
your film might be bad and they want you to come in for
another x-ray. Something about you being post-operative. I
don’t know what post-operative means. I guess it means you
just need to get another x-ray.”
“You're kidding,” Jack said seriously.
“No, no, man. I wouldn’t kid about something like this. I don’t
even know what it means. I shouldn’t have said anything
because I might be reading it wrong.”
Jack threw away a full pack of cigarettes and told his parents of
the results. Two days later he came over to my house and read
the card, which advised him that everything was okay.
“Wil, you fuckin’ asshole! You owe me a pack of cigarettes.”
The money for school ran out, but I still had two more months
to go to get my certificate of completion from Rankin Trade
School. I had stopped going to work. I truly just couldn’t do it
any longer. The plant foreman had put me back on the machine
that had smashed my hand. The machine had pulled me in up
48
to my wrist, because here had not been much adjustment on
the rollers.
My hand had swollen a little and the only way they could get
my hand out was to put it in reverse and roll my hand back
out. It was really painful. I was told by the doctors that one
quarter of an inch closer and it would have started to shatter
bones. It then almost nailed me twice later: once when it pulled
a white shop rag out of my hand, and once when it caught onto
my wedding ring.
I was having attacks of rapid breathing and a fast heartbeat
every day before leaving home for work. It must be asthma, I
thought. My sister had asthma. I knew nothing of panic attacks
at the time - as did few doctors back then. I just knew I was
afraid of the machine. I became sick every day as I got ready
for work until ultimately, I just stopped going.
I went back to get my last paycheck. John Gate came out to
meet me.
“Wil,” he said, handing me the check. “I went ahead and paid
you for two weeks vacation. I know you really didn’t have it
coming. But I wanted to help you out.”
The generosity of the man almost knocked me over. “Wow!
Thanks!” I exclaimed.
“You can do it, Will, you can make it. I want to see you make it."
That was the last time I ever saw John Gate. I had always
figured him wrong. And I had never expected him to extend
that kindness to me in the form of two weeks’ pay. I realized
later in life that he was one of the few Christians I had
encountered that fit the meaning of the word Christ-like.
Still, the money ran out, and I had to move my little family back
in with my parents. A move that nobody on either side wanted.
When we had lived there earlier, my father had asked me,
“Son, haven’t you ever heard of protection?” I didn’t answer. I
had always done what I wanted, good, bad, or indifferent. It
was the way I was. Sometimes I felt nothing and cared less
about anything else. This feeling was always in conflict with
what I knew was right, but I didn't care and didn't know why I
felt so utterly divided. It was the same reason I couldn’t work
where my Dad had worked for so many years. In my mind, it
was simple: I just didn't want to. But my stubbornness didn’t
49
serve me well. I would need to learn how to use it for my
benefit in the future. It could be a positive or a totally harmful
negative, given the circumstances. For me and my
stubbornness, it turned out to be a slow process.
So my family and I moved back into my parents’ already
unhappy home. My younger brother Darwin was gone at the
time, serving nine months in reform school for stealing a
police car, so at least we had his room to use. My mother
always directly and indirectly blamed me for my younger
brother’s problems.
My mother had two brothers that had been bootleggers, and
she absolutely detested the mere mention of this. “Those boys
didn’t need money that bad,” she said. One of my uncles
became a farmer and church deacon, and the other a salonpool-hall owner. ”If you had been different, Wil, then Darwin
probably would have been okay. You and those boys you run
around with, they’re no good.” She looked up at me as she sat
on the bottom step of the staircase, her feet over the heat
register, reading Darwin’s latest letter. "I can see here that the
Lord is working with him. That he’s sorry for the pain he has
caused us and sorry for what he has done.”
“He’s sorry, all right. He’s sorry he got caught, not for what he
did,” I retorted. It couldn’t be our mother’s fault. It never was.
After all she was a Christian woman.
It was so hard for me to think about living with my parents. I
absolutely hated being there. My mother and I never got along
and I felt there was nothing I could do to please her. She had
been unhappy as long as I could remember.
She never smiled or showed any warmth of personality to us
kids or my Dad, except around her church friends. But never,
ever at home, where she was always cold and distant.
After we and moved back in, I still went to school but stayed
away as much as possible. If I was late or drunk when I arrived
home, I knew I was going to hear it. ”I didn’t sleep at all last
night,” Mother would start. “I had pains in my chest all night,
couldn’t hardly catch my breath. I just wish Jesus would come
and take me away from this wicked world. I’m so tired of not
being able to sleep. I’m just a nervous wreck. I don’t know how
much longer I can go on. It’s going to take me a long time to get
over this last stunt you just pulled. I even take that sleeping
50
medicine the doctor gives me, but it don't help. I don’t want to
take too much of it because it's habit-forming. Nothing ever
seems to help me and you certainly don't help, coming in at all
hours!"
It was wrong for me to be gone and leave Evelyn there, stuck
alone with our kids and worst of all, my mother. And I knew it,
but I simply decided not to think about it.
I had never seen my mother, Anna, happy. This couldn't
possibly be all of our faults. I had heard the same story over
and over again until it fell on deaf ears. Everybody was
responsible, according to my sweet mother, which is what
others called her…..sweet. Sweet Anna. Her father was to
blame; because he never told her he cared about her. Her older
brother - well, he simply took the family car when he left home
to be married, because their father didn’t drive. Then there
were the shares of land my grandfather gave to his sons but
not to his daughters. Anna’s mother-in-law once said to my
Dad in front of my mother. ”Son, you’re going to find out that
there’s a whole lot of difference between a mother and a wife.”
Whatever, that meant. My mother took it as being a total
negative against her, which I actually could understand. My
mother would say, “I know that Mrs. Latso (as Mom would
forever refer to my paternal grandmother) never liked me as
much as she did Penny," (my uncle’s wife). My mother would
joke a little now and then with a friend, but that was about it.
My parents were not the same people in a crowd or around
their church friends. Absolutely anything the minister said, my
mother believed, no matter how biased or ridiculous it
seemed.
“And this wicked, wicked world!” the minister would shout
with great emphasis, as he paced the stage behind the podium,
waving his arms in the air. ”This is the worst time of all the
times in the history of mankind. Salvation is right around the
corner. It could be tonight. No period has been more sinful.”
Why now? I thought. What about the Second World War when
seventy million people died in five years? The First World War
took ten million because some asshole archduke was shot.
What about the genocide of the native American Indians? Oh,
yeah, that’s right, I thought, the Bible teaches that genocide
and murder are okay under certain conditions. How full of
bullshit is that? To believe anything totally was as naive as
anyone could be, including me.
51
My mother wouldn’t like the fact that I thought about the
world as one big asshole. She viewed cursing as worse than all
of these deaths.
I looked at almost everyone, even myself, with suspicious eyes.
I had failed, at times a lot. At least I knew.....maybe....some of the
reasons why I was such a shithead. I knew I wasn’t a perfect
person, not even close. Nor did I want to be. I remember what
the Romans did to that last Guy the people thought was
perfect. Perfection in human beings doesn't exist. After all,
Christ was human and anger is a human emotion.
“Why is it,” I thought, mentally drowning out the screaming
minister, “that Christians don’t remember any of their bloody
mistakes but are so quick to point out everyone else’s?” I didn’t
understand any of it and felt pulled in different directions
much of the time, but still always learning what I felt I should
have known all along. Perhaps it was easier not to look at
things as they really were. Denial can be a lot longer than that
river in Egypt but totally invisible if you are unaware of how to
recognize it. Denial described me so perfectly then, but I didn’t
even know it.
So rather than argue with my mother, I just stayed away. It
wasn’t fair that I left Evelyn with the children alone at Mother
and Dad’s and although I realized this, I just couldn’t help
myself. I felt extremely nervous and hyperactive sitting around
at home. It was hard for me to sit still. I didn’t explain to Evelyn
and say, “Hey, I’m sorry, but I can‘t handle being around Mom.”
I didn’t know I was even supposed to say that to Evelyn. I
simply had not yet learned those skills.
I went to auto body repair school in the morning and then
disappeared the rest of the afternoon - sometimes with
another woman. I hated coming home for dinner. Unless I had
been drinking- now that made me feel good. It made me
unafraid and carefree, as if I had the world by the butt on a
downhill pull. How great were those beers, sometimes. One
evening, I was cheerful leaving the bar with two big fish that I
had purchased from a bar patron who wanted the dollar
seventy-five to buy more beer. Each fish weighed in at three to
four pounds. I bought them home actually believing it would
be a nice thing to do. Bring home something for dinner.
Sometimes my thinking wasn’t up to par.
“Look what I’ve got!” I said proudly, unwrapping the
52
newspaper on the kitchen sink.
“What are you going to do with those?” my mother asked. ”I
hope you don’t think that I’m going to chop their heads off and
cut them up!” she hollered.
“I’ll take care of it, just gimmee a sharp knife." I cut the heads
off, then skinned and degutted the two fish. ”We’ll have them
tomorrow. A little flour, salt and pepper, and Bang! They’re
done. Okay?”
So many mistakes and such a long time to learn from them. To
this day, I've met up with and seen some of my Christian exfriends who really know very little about me and exaggerate
what they think they do know, like I'm the same person five
decades later. In some respects I still am, but not totally.
Now at the age of seventy-two, when I look back at all the
different aspects of my life, I know without a doubt that I'm
lucky to still be alive. And I’ll be even older by the time this
book is published. Sometimes something I forget springs to
mind. One thing is certain: my life hasn't been a boring trip. I
recall the time in East St. Louis some guy put a gun to my head
and I calmly told the asshole, “Either shoot or shut up. I wanna
drink my beer.”
I often wondered why I've have done the things I have. Why
some people, like my mother, are afraid to do anything. And
why others are just the opposite. Then there are those who
fall in the middle: the maybe I should, or maybe I shouldn't. It’s
all about degrees. With me it was probably as simple as
because I wanted to. I never intended to hurt anyone but my
actions resulted in hurting a lot of people, including Evelyn, my
children, my parents, and even myself. But despite my general
sense of disagreement with my parents and in-laws, my little
family and I would have been lost without the help of my
parents and Evelyn’s mother.
My father knew an executive from his church who worked for
G.M.A.C. in the repossession department. The executive had
multiple dealings with a body shop in St. Louis County and had
asked the shop, at my father’s request, if it was in a position to
take on apprentices.
Thanks to Dad’s intervention, I got my first job in a real body
shop. I still had six weeks of trade school left to finish. "Don't
worry about it," the shop owner said. "You’re going to learn
53
more doing hands-on work every day in an actual shop than
you can ever learn in school."
Again, my mother and father wanted me and my family to
move out of their home and into our own place. I could really
pick up this attitude from my mother. I didn’t blame them - hell,
I wanted it myself. My mother would not have to see her son
screw up multiple times and my poor father would not have to
hear about it over and over and over again. Evelyn and the kids
could still go to church with my parents so that, in their eyes,
all would not be lost. At least their souls would be okay…..only
mine would be “lost.”
I was given a job in the paint department, sanding and
masking cars. It was great to be learning something that I
actually liked doing. I watched with amazement how the body
men took a twisted, bent-up, almost destroyed piece of junk
and recreate it into a car. I made up my mind that someday I
would be able to do that.
“Someday, I’ll even own a house,” I bragged to my friend.
“These guys I work with can make three hundred bucks a
week. Can you believe that? Three hundred a week! You could
do almost anything with that kind of money. Buy a new car!” I
said excitedly.
My family moved into a second-story apartment on a corner.
Across the street and down the block was a bar called Queeny's
owned by an ex-con's wife. Her husband couldn’t have a liquor
license due to his criminal record. In the same distance but
going the other way was Barney’s, another bar. Across the
street on the corner was a laundromat, the former Monkeys’
club house. It made me recall their disbanding in 1957 after a
rumble that put a dozen people in the hospital. The big M was
plainly visible in the middle of the triangle before the door.
I started at work for a dollar and twenty-five cents an hour. I
had to transfer twice on a bus, and then walk five blocks to get
to work. It was okay, though. I was learning something! And I
was absolutely thrilled about it. Someday I would be a
“regular,” a real person, I thought. It would all be worth it. After
nine months I was given a twenty-five cent per hour raise. For
thirty-five dollars, my boss sold me an old Plymouth sedan that
still ran. Life was good.
I became friends with Chris, the shop’s painter, who drove an
54
old Rolls Royce, owned a boat, and had a mistress. We went to
lunch together at the tavern a half-block down from the shop.
Chris was around thirty-two, stocky, an inch shorter than my
five-foot-nine, with a ruddy complexion and light brown hair.
We liked each other immediately and Chris had been, and still
was, a little loose with his life style. He understood me and how
I felt. It was starting to be a good friendship.
Chris introduced me to Roger, another friend, at the bar one
day. Roger McQueen was tall, cocky, and dark-haired and knew
how nice-looking an asshole he was. He loved conning women
out of their money and laughed about it. He was also a pill
popper. I didn’t like him from the first, long before there was
even any conversation. There was something about
Roger.....the arrogance.....the I’m the smartest person around
attitude. He leaned across the table staring at me.
“Would you kill your best friend”?
“What?! No," I said, nervously.
“Then you’re a fool,” he stated.
A few months later, Roger McQueen killed four people while
robbing a bank. He who suffered no fools had lost his street life
forever, never to be free again. I was sure that the deaths of
four innocent people didn’t bother Roger. To kill those who
would kill you, I understood, but to kill the innocent didn’t
make sense. In spite of all the wrongs I had done, I knew that
Roger was amoral.
While involved with his mistress, Chris the painter was caught
by his wife. He had to change jobs to get closer to home or lose
his marriage. Newell, the body shop owner, was a Christian.
And I was a still just a kid who had nothing to say that the
shop owner wanted to hear. Everyone in the shop was a lot
older than me. Hopefully they would hire another younger guy
like Chris so that I would have someone to talk to.
As it turned out, Chris’s replacement was a sixty-year-old
wrinkled, stoop- shouldered man. Thin, with a ruddy
complexion, about five-eight. He always wore a white painter’s
hat and overalls. It didn’t take me long to figure him out. Maybe
they all had ruddy faces, I thought. Must be the paint. The older
man was set in his ways and attitudes and preached that his
way was the only way. “You will need to unlearn what the
other painter taught you and learn my way - the right way,” he
55
told me.
“Bet me,” I thought. “Yeah right.” This is gonna be great fun.
Apprentices were merely the old man’s butt boys to run here
and there and not even allowed to use what they already knew.
All of us were shown little or no respect.
“No, Wil, I don’t want you to primer things. You’re not ready
yet,” he said, grabbing the paint gun from my hands.
“But Chris let me primer some things and was about to teach
me how to spot paint.” “Chris is not here anymore. I told you
once already, I have my own way of doing things and I want
you to do it my way. Hell, when I started in this business, we
painted cars with fine brushes…..with very fine bristles. Then
had to do two hours sanding them out to go over them again,
and then sand them even another time with really fine paper
so we could hand-buff them. It could take a month to get it
right. I spent years just sanding cars before I was allowed to do
anything else,” he laughed. “I even worked on the purple gang’s
limo’s, in the thirties. That’s how long I’ve been doing this
work.” He held up his index finger to me. ”I’ll tell you when its
time to prime something.”
So my life had just been changed again. My hope began to
vanish. I had worked there a little over a year and had learned
a lot. It was a beginning. There was so much more that I didn’t
know. Now this old man wanted my learning to come to a
screeching halt. Maybe I could find another job. I would start
checking the want ads.
56