Musings on a Postage Stamp: Part Two
My first incarceration was brief, followed by a short respite.
I ended Part One of this story by remarking on how proud my parents must have been when, at the age of 17, I received a full scholarship to Oberlin College. And how upset they must have been when I was arrested before I could step foot on the Oberlin campus.
Ironically, perhaps, I was arrested by the Stockbridge police as I was on my way to Pittsfield, to board a bus to Washington, on the morning of Wednesday, August 28, 1963, to attend what would become known as the I Have a Dream speech by Martin Luther King. Instead, I was transported to Pittsfield in a police cruiser, to be indicted, which shattered my own dreams, and marked the beginning of a very dark time in my life.
On the ride to Pittsfield, I was in the back seat of the cruiser, with Bill Obanhein driving (yes, the Officer Obie of Alice’s Restaurant fame). He and Louis Peyron were chatting, and laughing about how slowly the driver in front of them was going.
At one point, Louis turned back to look at me, and said, “So, where were you planning on going to college?” Suddenly, the enormity of my situation hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks. With a sharp pang of grief, I realized that from that point on, my life would go in a totally different direction from the one I had imagined for myself. My life was all planned out in my mind (or at least as much as a 17-year-old can do), and suddenly that vision was shattered, with nothing to take its place.
Looking back at that time as one of the low points in my life, I believe the agony I went through also helped shape me for the better.
I cannot know what might have been. Over the years, I have experienced many hardships, disappointments, and heartaches. I have also experienced much joy, love, and success.
My arrest and incarceration ushered in a period in which I was “covered with night” (the Haudenosaunee description of a person in mourning). I was mourning the loss of my vision of the future.
In this post, I will focus on that period of incarceration and its immediate aftermath; not so much on the events leading up to it. Stay tuned for the prequel(s), describing the crime itself as well as my growing up in poverty with an often-absent father, my boredom in school (it was too easy), and my need for stimulation (often satisfied by trying to “game” the system — breaking every rule and norm until I was caught. When I did get caught, I often gloated at how much I had gotten away with up to that point, rather than being alarmed at having been finally found out.) In Part One of these musings, I mentioned my earlier arrest at age 13, which was part of that pattern.
The adults in my life did not seem to focus on those dark elements of my behavior. Instead, they may have written off my misdeeds as unfortunate but forgivable, given my obviously difficult home situation, and in light of my stellar achievements in other areas. I was a bright young student who was a leader in my church youth group and an Eagle Scout.
On that fateful day of my second arrest, the police brought me to the Pittsfield Police Station, where I was booked and fingerprinted. I was told that I would be held overnight in the local jail, waiting to appear before a judge the next morning.
For my second ride that day in a police cruiser, I was handcuffed and escorted by two officers to the Pittsfield Jail on Second Street.
As I was led thought the double set of secure metal doors and heard them click decisively behind me, I quickly decided that jail was not a place I wanted to spend much time. In place of my shattered dreams, however, was only darkness. I was totally at a loss as to what was going to happen next, and I began to sink into a dark hole that I would later recognize as my first experience with deep depression.
That afternoon, I was summoned from my cell by a guard who told me I had a visitor. He took me to the secure area where I was closely watched by an attendant as I spoke through small holes drilled into the thick plate glass that was dividing me from the outside world. My visitor was a man I had never met. He introduced himself as Lincoln Cain, and told me that, at the behest of my parents, he would be representing me in court as my attorney.
If I had given any thought to it, which I am not sure that I did, having already become mired in self-pity, I would have realized that my parents did not have the money to hire a lawyer. I now assume he was acting pro bono, but no one ever shared those details with me.
Mr. Cain explained to me how the proceedings would go in the courthouse, and instructed me that my part would be to say, “Not guilty” when the judge asked me how I would plead.
The next morning, I was brought, again in handcuffs, before a District Court judge in Pittsfield. I heard the charges against me read aloud; breaking and entering in the daytime, and grand larceny. Because of the serious nature of the crimes, my case was transferred to the Superior Court, which was not then in session. I was therefore “bound over” and was sent back to the County Jail to wait until the Superior Court could hear my case.
As I was being led away from the judge to return to the jail, I saw four of my friends, including my cousin Bruce, sitting in the front row. Rick Ryer yelled out, “We know you didn’t do it!” I averted my eyes, looking down at the floor. I was embarrassed because I knew that I had indeed done it, and the feeling swept over me that I had somehow betrayed my friends.
In all of this, I was treated politely and gently by everyone I encountered, from the police to the judge and the court officials, to the guards who escorted me to and from the jail. Still, it was an extremely disconcerting experience, having had to spend the night in such a harsh environment, not really knowing what to expect next.
I did not have to linger long, however, since later that day a guard came to me and told me that I was being released. My Scoutmaster Pete Gajewski had posted my bail (I believe it was $1,000), and someone was coming to give me a ride home. I don’t remember who it was; it could have been my minister or the lawyer (my family did not have a car). I was already deep into the black hole of my collapsed life, and was barely able to relate to anyone in the outside world.
When I got home, I retreated into my room, listening to my radio, reading books and magazines, and feeling sorry for myself. I came out for meals, and that was about it. No one came to bother me, and that was okay with me. I spent a few days like this, until one day my mother came to tell me that she would like me to go see a Doctor Miner at Riggs.
I welcomed this opportunity, since it was the first gesture that anyone had made to help me delve into my inner feelings. My mother explained that Dr. Miner had counseled my father at one point (something I had not known about), and he offered to help when he heard about my troubles.
I went to visit Dr. Miner in his office on the campus of the Austen Riggs Center, and he spent an hour listening to my story and asking me questions. He speculated that I might have gotten myself into trouble in order to avoid going to college. I thought that was a totally wrong idea, since I had been very much looking forward to it.
But he was the expert, so I pondered his statement. If he was right (and I did not — and still do not — believe he was), I offered that maybe it was because I was afraid of showing up my father, who had never attended college. I dearly loved my father, despite his many flaws, so this seemed like a possible explanation.
“No,” — he disagreed. “You are nothing like your father,” he told me, in dismissing the suggestion I had made.
Thirty-five years later, my father was spending his last days in the local nursing home. I had a new woman in my life, and I took Joan with me to visit my father. She was very distressed by his behavior. “All he cares about is himself,” she complained. “Joan, he’s dying,” I said, by way of apologizing for him.
Later that day, my friend Brooke came to visit, and Joan told him of her concern. “Brooke, you’ve know Michael a long time — do you think he will become like his father?” Without a moment’s hesitation, Brooke said, “Joan, Michael IS his father.”
I think that is the most wonderful compliment I have ever received.
After some more discussion, Dr. Miner concluded, “I really don’t know what is causing your impulsive behavior; you will need to work that out in counseling. But I can tell that you suffer from delusions of grandeur.”
I was not familiar with that term, so I asked. “You think that the rules do not apply to you, and that you can do whatever you like,” he explained. That didn’t strike me as being true. It was many years later that I would figure out why my behavior was so puzzling to the adults in my life. I have written extensively about my autism, and will just repeat here a passage I quoted.
Tim Page, a music critic who was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his writing, discovered, as I did, late in life, his autism. He wrote a memoir, Parallel Play, and this is taken from that book:
In the years since the phrase became a cliché, I have received any number of compliments for my supposed ability to “think outside the box.” Actually, it has been a struggle for me to perceive just what these “boxes” were—why they were there, why other people regarded them as important, where their borderlines might be, how to live safely within and without them. My efforts have been only partly successful: after fifty-two years, I am left with the melancholy sensation that my life has been spent in a perpetual state of parallel play, alongside, but distinctly apart from, the rest of humanity.
My encounter with the psychiatrist was not very helpful, and I continued to smolder in the darkness of my own mind. One day my mother came to me with an announcement. “You’re going back to jail,” she told me. It seems that Pete had second thoughts about providing my bail. “He said you have not thanked him for bailing you out,” she explained. I was so disoriented that I was not thankful for anything.
I packed a bag and waited to be taken back to the jail. There was still a month to go before my Superior Court trial was scheduled.
I will interrupt this story here, because this post is already long, and I have much more to relate. I will continue, and tell of my month in jail, though I will not call that Part Three of Musings on a Postage Stamp, since we left the postal aspect of the story long ago. For reasons that you can probably figure out, I will call it
The month that I spent in jail was one of the most formative periods of my life. In many ways, I came into my own as a person. It is as good a marker as any of the moment my adolescence ended and I became an adult.
Please write the next chapter.
I am wide open to reading and deep understanding your truth