Broken Chains

John Thomson re-read the letter from his sister as he sat on the edge of his bunk. She had heard from his father, whom the family hadn't seen for eight years. John had been only nine at the time his parents separated. Before that he mostly remembered how his dad used to come home raving drunk and beat the family. Once, John was nearly thrown out of the apartment window by his father.




I have been avoiding writing this story for 30 years, now with the horizon of my demise in sight there is no reason not to. It will take some brutal honesty to do so however because I'm not covering nothing no matter how unpalatable it might be.. The year above was 1962. The San Francisco Giants were in the World Series, I remember asking the guard what the score was right before I tried to lasoo him with my tore up mattress. It wasn't much of a rope considering I tore up the mattress with my hands and it sure wasn't going to hold him. In anger as he tore away I grabbed a rock that had fallen on the tier from the workers who earlier in the day were installing speakers on the wall that would monitor what we hollered up and down the tier when the guards were not there. I threw the rock as he ran down the tier in the early hours of the morn.



But the letter said that his father had cirrhosis of the liver, and, before he died, he wanted to visit John in the reformatory. John felt good about that even though he and his dad had never been very close. John wished that he could get out of the "hole" before his dad came. Waiting in his cell without being allowed to work or participate in any recreation and being completely segregated from any of the other boys was hard. The time went so slowly. He wished that he could talk to somebody, Possibly if he behaved himself he would be let out of the hole before his dad came.



"he and his dad had never been very close" The truth was my dad was a beast. While not a big man he was terribly brutal. He'd come home drunk and if my mother had it in for you it was hell to pay. Nobody was spared unless it was my brother Bill. There is always a pet in the family. Somehow Sharon had a forgiving spirit, Sharon being the oldest felt a responsibility for keeping the family together. It seems to be a trait of the abused. I could care less if I was in the "hole" or not, it was just another part of the prison. I wasn't giving any of these guards the slightest hint of what I was really feeling.



Then one day the Captain, a sargent and a Chaplain called John into an office. As John walked in and sat down, he hoped they were going to tell him about a date for the visit.



"John, tell us about your father." one of them said.

"What do you want to know?"

"Well, what kind of a man was he?"

John began to be a little apprehensive. Somewhere, in the back of his mind he had the impression that his dad had been in prison. As a child he remembered sitting in a courtroom once; he thought that had been a domestic fight, but maybe it had been more. If his father did have a record, the authorities at the Illinois Industrial School for Boys in Sheridan might not allow his father to see him. John answered: "Well, I don't know. Okay I guess. What do you mean?"

"When was the last time you saw him?"

"Eight years ago, when my folks separated."

"Did he ever take you on any picnics?"

"No, I can't remember any."

"Well, did he ever take you to a ballgame?"

"Yeah, He took me to one."

"Just one?"

"I only remember one. But so what? I was so small that I can't remember much about it."

"Then you and your dad didn't have a very close relationship, did you?"

"No, I was mostly afraid of him."

"Well good," said the captain. "Since it's been so long since you have seen your father and since he never did anything for you, he obviously didn't love you. So we don't think that you should feel too bad about his being dead."
John sat in silence for a few moments. “Can I go to the funeral?”


“No. That’s what we were saying. We don’t think you should feel bad. Now go back to your cell.”

That night John allowed himself to cry. But they were tears of bitterness and anger, not grief. His life had never been an easy one. Maybe the captain was right, and his dad didn’t love him. His mom had often told him that if he kept getting in trouble, he’d be in prison before he was 21. After his parents had separated, he’d started running away from home, turning in false fire alarms, and shop lifting so often that at the age of nine his mother sent him away to a military school in Glenwood, Illinois. While he was in the school his mother remarried and moved from Chicago to Hazel Crest, a nearby community. But she seldom visited him, and he didn’t know how close she lived to him until he got out of the school at the age of 13. At that time he tried to return to his family, but he couldn’t get along with his step-father.

"I was born and raised for the first nine years of my life in the 1300 east block of 62nd Street. More directly 62nd and Dorchester, in the Woodlawn neighborhood on the south side of Chicago."  . If I had to comment on the first thing I remember learning (and there is a ring of a Merle Haggard song in those words from “Momma Tried”) it would be violence. There is a contradictory dichotomy in the idea that growing up in the 40s and 50s’ was somehow a safer time than now. War was still in the air as the Big One WWII was concluding and the Korean War was beginning. From the fourth floor window of our apartment I could see and hear America’s melting pot.


From the apartment building on the northeast corner emanated the sounds of the blues at night only to be mixed with the sounds of guitars played by Mexicans sitting in their windows on the southeast corner. Other than the clatter of our mothers silverware hitting the pavement below as we threw them at passerbys I don’t think the two apartment buildings occupying the remaining corners was heard anything, unless it was the din of activity from within the apartments minus the cover of air conditioners not yet invented. Big burly blackmen delivered the coal, while another road the horsedrawn wagon selling watermelons, and then there was the ice being delivered to store in our ice boxes.

Rats were prevalent in the basements and the alleys which you were constantly warned to avoid. Little feet ran in terror to hide whenever my father came home. It was almost always the question “would he be drunk or sober”, which I mistook in hearing and thought my mother said silver. “He can’t be silver,” I thought, “that’s the Lone Rangers horse.” Confused nonetheless, I always feigned sleep hoping against the worse, that he wouldn’t be drunk. Drunkeness was the second thing I learned as a child. Whether it be my father (I don’t remember anyone of us calling him dad.) or mother or babysitter, I learned that people took on different forms of drunkenness. There were the silly incoherent type who were funny to watch at a distance as we sat on the floor of the taverns. Was my father working as a bartender or drinking I don’t recall, but I do remember frequenting the taverns on 63rd street. Then there were the violent ones who raised the tension in the air with their threats and knocked over bar stools. My father catered to the later.

Nor were schools a refuge from the pain inflicted from the nuns or brothers as they were sometimes called. I went to both Catholic schools (St. Cyril’s) and public schools (that we called protestant schools with their students with protruding bumps on their heads that would form horns as they got bigger.) I never actually saw any bumps on their heads but you were warned about them and of course believed as well.

You were warned about everything.

Along with the poor home situation, John remembers that he had difficulty adjusting to a non-structured life. He had done well in the institutional environment of the military school and “civilian” life seemed abnormal to him. He couldn’t get along with kids in public school, and drifted into more and more trouble until he stole a car at the age of 14.

At this juncture I need to note that what is written in black is what was written by the Author of Dial 911, a book written 30 years or so ago. The chapter “Broken Chains” was based on an interview between the Author and myself. Much of what the author wrote were his interpretation of what I told him. I don’t remember after all these years what the conversation was that we had. What I do want to point out here however is that many of his assumptions are not very accurate. At the time of the interview I had just arrived here, fresh from prison and doubt I gave the best interview or description of my life to a person I really didn’t even know. You can trust the overall facts of his writings but the opinions of the author are subject to correction which is what I am including in what I write in RED.