This is Part Three of the story of my incarceration. Here are links to Part One and Part Two. I apologize for the two-month gap between Part Two and Part Three. I found this segment of the story very hard to write, because it stirred up in me so many strong feelings — some good — some bad — all intense. I am describing one of the most difficult periods in my long life.
Looking back on the trauma of that time, I can see that it happened at a pivotal point in my life that ultimately headed me in the right direction.
So far, I have not described the events that led up to my arrest, and I may fill in that part of the story in later posts. Of more interest, perhaps, is how my life shaped up after I left the confines of the jail. The lessons I learned about the wider world, and about myself, helped to guide me for years to come, and are still with me after all these years.
In pondering those days in the Pittsfield Jail, I have often thought of that mythical anthropologist from Mars, looking down into my jail cell. That analyst would never have predicted the outcome that became my actual life.
The Year With No Autumn Foliage
Part Two ended in September 1963. My mother, acting as a messenger for the posse of adults who were deciding my fate, informed me that my bail had been withdrawn. So
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.
The “posse” just mentioned consisted of my Scoutmaster, my minister, my lawyer, and probably other people (such as the psychiatrist) who had offered to help my parents. When my mother came to me with bad news, she did not scold or criticize me. During this entire episode, I always felt loved by my parents. At one point, someone told me that my father had cried when he heard I was in jail. I was devastated to think that I had caused him so much grief, and the sorrow I felt was worse than any other imaginable punishment.
The vision I had carefully crafted, of how my life would unfold, was now shattered, and I was too depressed to advocate for myself. My pride at having been accepted to Oberlin College with a full scholarship had turned to anguish that my future had been obliterated.
I will leave aside, for now, any self-analysis of how I might have rationalized my crime spree. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I believe my autism played a large part — I did not understand the world, and the world did not understand me. I was not getting the guidance I needed, even though I was surrounded by loving and concerned people.
Looking back on all of this now, I realize why I had felt abandoned at the time. This posse of adults was making decisions for me about how my life would go. They were deciding whether I should be in or out of jail, and what I should do once I was finally released. In all of this, no one ever consulted with me about how I felt, or discussed possible alternative actions; they simply declared to me what I would do. This sense of disconnection weighed heavily on me, and contributed to my malaise.
I have many vivid memories that remain with me to this day, and I will share some of those here. The overall experience was transformative for me in many ways, and I came out to the jail a different person from the one who went in.
As I left the outside world, in the waning days of summer; the sun was warm. I entered a dark gray world of dim lights and muted sounds. Even the courtyard that served as outdoor exercise space had brick walls so high that only the clouds could be seen overhead. There was no view of the world beyond the high walls surrounding the building.
That month of darkness was a discontinuity that robbed me of the brilliant colors of the autumn foliage season. When I went into the jail at the end of September, the trees were green. When I came out at the end of October, I was shocked to realize that the trees were bare. While I was busy remaking myself as a person, the world was also transforming itself to prepare for the winter ahead. During my time away from it, the world had changed. And so had I.
My earlier stay in the 2nd Street Jail had been brief, but as I was escorted this time through the double set of locked doors, I realized I would have to adjust to the fact that I would be there for a while. Since I was bound over (awaiting trial) for another month, cut off, for the most part, from the outside world, I would have to fend for myself in many ways.
One of my first challenges was to figure out the food situation. On March 23 of that year (1963) I had become a vegetarian, and I was determined to stick with that diet. The kitchen in the jail did not cater to dietary preferences. There was one line, and everyone got the same meal dished out by the inmates who were staffing the food service. On my first trip through the line, I explained my situation, and I was met with a shrug and an unsympathetic statement, “That’s what we got.”
I soon discovered, however, that I could trade some items. The meat I was given could easily be swapped for a baked potato or a couple of slices of bread. Before too long, I had a coterie of buddies who looked out for me, and when it was their turn to work in the kitchen they would slip me some of the items they knew I would eat.
In this and other ways, I began to learn the system of mutual aid that was practiced among the inmates. In those days, before equal opportunity, the inmate population was all male. Since it was drawn from Berkshire County, there was not much diversity of any sort except, perhaps, on the age scale. There were also a wide variety of offenses on display.
The other inmates were sizing me up. I was not their image of a toughened criminal, being somewhat soft-spoken, and keeping to myself. But (like Arlo Guthrie’s Group W Bench routine), once they found out I was being bound over for serious felonies, they warmed up to me.
I made many friends, which I suppose surprised me. I don’t know what I expected, but I guess I had an image of people who were in jail as being a lower class of people. It finally occurred to me that many of them had stories like mine. Of course, this was a county jail, and did not house the worst criminals. They were sent on to the state prison system, or in some cases to a federal penitentiary. And, it was a more innocent time, compared with the current era’s proliferation of hard drugs and firearms.
A couple of examples I clearly remember:
Carlos came over to me one time while I was watching a card game, and asked if he could speak with me. We found a quiet corner, and he started by asking me if I believed in God. I sensed that he did not want to have a theological dialog, and the answer he wanted was yes, so that’s what I said.
He then told me about someone he knew who had beaten his wife. He wondered if I thought that God would pardon such a person if he prayed for forgiveness. Yes, I responded, but only if that person also promised not to do it again. Carlos was relieved to hear my opinion. “Then I will keep praying,” he said, “because the person I told you about is me.” I had already figured that out.
In a similar vein, Tom shed his tough-guy demeanor and had several private conversations with me. He started out by mentioning the many ways he had managed to get into trouble (this was not his first time in the jail). He had a wife and two children, and he was caught trying to make some money to support them by passing counterfeit bills.
He paused in his storytelling long enough to offer to put me in touch with the suppliers of counterfeit twenties if I wanted to make some easy money. No thanks, I said, I’m not interested in adopting that kind of lifestyle. “Good for you!” he said, and then told me that he was hoping to get sent to the state prison, where he could learn a trade, and break his cycle of petty crimes.
Not too long after I arrived, I encountered Henry, the uncle of one of my best childhood friends. Henry’s brother had been my godfather until he passed away when I was only about four years old. Henry was a regular in the jail, especially at this time of year. In the summer months, he made a modest living by doing odd jobs around town. When he got paid, he went straight to the Wine Cellar to collect his reward for a job well done. He was a charming and friendly man when he was sober, but after he had been drinking, not so much. As the weather turned cold, he was routinely arrested for vagrancy, and sentenced to jail for the winter, more as a kindness to him than because he was a threat to the community.
When Henry saw me, he took me aside to give me the inside story on how things work in the jail. His advice and friendship were key to my safety in the jail. At one point, he asked me if I smoked. When I said no, he told me that each week I would receive a package that included some tobacco, and he would like it if I gave it to him. I said sure, since I didn’t know what else I would do with it. So, each week, he would seek me out and collect his tobacco.
There was frequently a poker game going, and the stakes were cigarettes. Some of the loose cigs were recognizable brands from packs that had been brought by family or friends, and some were hand-rolled from the rations given out in the jail. Every once in a while, a player would light up one of his winnings.
I watched, but since I had given my tobacco to Henry, I couldn’t play. Henry sometimes watched as well, and, after a while, I realized I had never seen him smoke. The next time I turned over my pack of tobacco to him, I asked him what he did with it. He laughed. “Oh, I bet on the horses,” he said.
My cell would have done a monk proud. Three bare walls enclosed just enough space for a few personal belongings, a cot, and a toilet. The fourth side was a metal grate. At night, the door was locked, and during the day it was left open, so that I could come and go as I pleased. I had brought books to read, and I spent a lot of my time with them.
Every day, a guard would come around and announce that it was time to go outside, meaning into the exercise space already described. I took Henry’s advice and did not get involved in any of the stickball or other games; I stood with my back against one of the walls and observed.
One day, a guard came to my cell and told me it was the day for showers. Once a week, every inmate was required to go to the shower room. When I got there, I had to get in line. One of the guards was seated outside the entrance, and every time one inmate came out, he waved another to go in. Once I was admitted, I saw that there were no prison staff inside, only a couple of trusties. One of them sized me up and told me to leave all of my clothes on one of the pegs on the wall. He handed me a towel and pointed to the door to the showers. “Henry said he’s okay,” he said to the trusty monitoring the shower stalls. I later figured out that Henry’s sponsorship had saved me from having to have a romantic relationship with one of the other inmates standing there waiting for a suitable companion. As it was, I got to take a shower without being molested.
A few days after I had returned to jail for the second time, my minister came to visit me. After the requisite small talk, he told me he had one big concern. He had never heard me express remorse for the things I had done. I was flabbergasted. My life was in ruins — I did not know what was going to happen next, and he was worried about that trivial aspect of my situation? Of course I was sorry — couldn’t he see that this whole thing was torturing me?
Given my experience of being covered with night (in grief over the loss of my future), is it any wonder that I would find the idea of expressing remorse quite secondary to my pressing concern of what would happen to me next?
Again, with perfect hindsight, I can see that this misunderstanding was related to my autism, and was to be a common problem for me for most of my life. I was eventually to learn that many (if not all) of my autistic friends shared this inability to see the neurotypical need to have emotions confessed out loud. Autistic people typically have such a highly-developed sense of empathy that we assume other people can also read our emotions. Not so, I have learned, to my chagrin; they need to be told.
In any case, this encounter left me with a very sour sense of having been scolded for something of which I was not guilty. The next time he came to visit me, a guard came to tell me I had a visitor. I asked who it was, and when he told me it was my minister, I told the guard I did not want to see him.
That may be the moment I became an adult. I took charge of my own life. I instantly felt free — liberated! I did not have to do what I was told. I could make decisions. In that jail, I knew the rules, and I was safe. I was getting by, and I had made friends. From that moment on, being in jail felt to me like a vacation. I had discovered the peace and freedom that came with self-direction.
Part Four of this story will be entitled Incarceration: The Aftermath, in which I will tell of my post-release struggles, caught between being told what to do and what was expected of me on the one hand, and setting my own course on the other.
Before winding up this segment, I will mention a couple of other positive highlights of my time in the lockup,
One such interaction was a visit from my friend Dale. He reminded me of that visit many years later, when he wrote me a glowing letter of how much our friendship had meant to him in his high school years. ASFAT
The other is a wonderful letter (reproduced in full here) from Myron Niedzwiecki, who had been my math teacher in high school. I took all four of the school’s math offerings in my first three years, and he taught three of them. In my senior year, he left teaching to become the school’s guidance counselor, and he was terrific in that role.
I was sorry when my time was up. I left the jail and was escorted to the courtroom, where the judge told me I had been found guilty of my crimes, sentenced to probation, and ordered to make full restitution. I was then released.
I had gone into the jail as an adolescent — I came out as an adult. In my time there, I had developed a sense of peace and security. I had come to know that I could control my destiny. I resolved to become successful, although I did not have a clear vision of what that meant. I knew that I wanted to escape the poverty of my childhood, and I would find a way.
Every year since then, I have celebrated the brilliant autumn foliage, because of its natural glory, and also because of its symbolism. As I left the world I had known to enter my confinement, I was as green as the leaves on the trees. When I came out to witness the bare trees, I knew that my childhood had also fallen away and rested in the past like so many leaves on the forest floor.
The Year With No Autumn Foliage
The Year With No Autumn Foliage
The Year With No Autumn Foliage
This is Part Three of the story of my incarceration. Here are links to Part One and Part Two. I apologize for the two-month gap between Part Two and Part Three. I found this segment of the story very hard to write, because it stirred up in me so many strong feelings — some good — some bad — all intense. I am describing one of the most difficult periods in my long life.
Looking back on the trauma of that time, I can see that it happened at a pivotal point in my life that ultimately headed me in the right direction.
So far, I have not described the events that led up to my arrest, and I may fill in that part of the story in later posts. Of more interest, perhaps, is how my life shaped up after I left the confines of the jail. The lessons I learned about the wider world, and about myself, helped to guide me for years to come, and are still with me after all these years.
In pondering those days in the Pittsfield Jail, I have often thought of that mythical anthropologist from Mars, looking down into my jail cell. That analyst would never have predicted the outcome that became my actual life.
The Year With No Autumn Foliage
Part Two ended in September 1963. My mother, acting as a messenger for the posse of adults who were deciding my fate, informed me that my bail had been withdrawn. So
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.
The “posse” just mentioned consisted of my Scoutmaster, my minister, my lawyer, and probably other people (such as the psychiatrist) who had offered to help my parents. When my mother came to me with bad news, she did not scold or criticize me. During this entire episode, I always felt loved by my parents. At one point, someone told me that my father had cried when he heard I was in jail. I was devastated to think that I had caused him so much grief, and the sorrow I felt was worse than any other imaginable punishment.
The vision I had carefully crafted, of how my life would unfold, was now shattered, and I was too depressed to advocate for myself. My pride at having been accepted to Oberlin College with a full scholarship had turned to anguish that my future had been obliterated.
I will leave aside, for now, any self-analysis of how I might have rationalized my crime spree. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I believe my autism played a large part — I did not understand the world, and the world did not understand me. I was not getting the guidance I needed, even though I was surrounded by loving and concerned people.
Looking back on all of this now, I realize why I had felt abandoned at the time. This posse of adults was making decisions for me about how my life would go. They were deciding whether I should be in or out of jail, and what I should do once I was finally released. In all of this, no one ever consulted with me about how I felt, or discussed possible alternative actions; they simply declared to me what I would do. This sense of disconnection weighed heavily on me, and contributed to my malaise.
I have many vivid memories that remain with me to this day, and I will share some of those here. The overall experience was transformative for me in many ways, and I came out to the jail a different person from the one who went in.
As I left the outside world, in the waning days of summer; the sun was warm. I entered a dark gray world of dim lights and muted sounds. Even the courtyard that served as outdoor exercise space had brick walls so high that only the clouds could be seen overhead. There was no view of the world beyond the high walls surrounding the building.
That month of darkness was a discontinuity that robbed me of the brilliant colors of the autumn foliage season. When I went into the jail at the end of September, the trees were green. When I came out at the end of October, I was shocked to realize that the trees were bare. While I was busy remaking myself as a person, the world was also transforming itself to prepare for the winter ahead. During my time away from it, the world had changed. And so had I.
My earlier stay in the 2nd Street Jail had been brief, but as I was escorted this time through the double set of locked doors, I realized I would have to adjust to the fact that I would be there for a while. Since I was bound over (awaiting trial) for another month, cut off, for the most part, from the outside world, I would have to fend for myself in many ways.
One of my first challenges was to figure out the food situation. On March 23 of that year (1963) I had become a vegetarian, and I was determined to stick with that diet. The kitchen in the jail did not cater to dietary preferences. There was one line, and everyone got the same meal dished out by the inmates who were staffing the food service. On my first trip through the line, I explained my situation, and I was met with a shrug and an unsympathetic statement, “That’s what we got.”
I soon discovered, however, that I could trade some items. The meat I was given could easily be swapped for a baked potato or a couple of slices of bread. Before too long, I had a coterie of buddies who looked out for me, and when it was their turn to work in the kitchen they would slip me some of the items they knew I would eat.
In this and other ways, I began to learn the system of mutual aid that was practiced among the inmates. In those days, before equal opportunity, the inmate population was all male. Since it was drawn from Berkshire County, there was not much diversity of any sort except, perhaps, on the age scale. There were also a wide variety of offenses on display.
The other inmates were sizing me up. I was not their image of a toughened criminal, being somewhat soft-spoken, and keeping to myself. But (like Arlo Guthrie’s Group W Bench routine), once they found out I was being bound over for serious felonies, they warmed up to me.
I made many friends, which I suppose surprised me. I don’t know what I expected, but I guess I had an image of people who were in jail as being a lower class of people. It finally occurred to me that many of them had stories like mine. Of course, this was a county jail, and did not house the worst criminals. They were sent on to the state prison system, or in some cases to a federal penitentiary. And, it was a more innocent time, compared with the current era’s proliferation of hard drugs and firearms.
A couple of examples I clearly remember:
Carlos came over to me one time while I was watching a card game, and asked if he could speak with me. We found a quiet corner, and he started by asking me if I believed in God. I sensed that he did not want to have a theological dialog, and the answer he wanted was yes, so that’s what I said.
He then told me about someone he knew who had beaten his wife. He wondered if I thought that God would pardon such a person if he prayed for forgiveness. Yes, I responded, but only if that person also promised not to do it again. Carlos was relieved to hear my opinion. “Then I will keep praying,” he said, “because the person I told you about is me.” I had already figured that out.
In a similar vein, Tom shed his tough-guy demeanor and had several private conversations with me. He started out by mentioning the many ways he had managed to get into trouble (this was not his first time in the jail). He had a wife and two children, and he was caught trying to make some money to support them by passing counterfeit bills.
He paused in his storytelling long enough to offer to put me in touch with the suppliers of counterfeit twenties if I wanted to make some easy money. No thanks, I said, I’m not interested in adopting that kind of lifestyle. “Good for you!” he said, and then told me that he was hoping to get sent to the state prison, where he could learn a trade, and break his cycle of petty crimes.
Not too long after I arrived, I encountered Henry, the uncle of one of my best childhood friends. Henry’s brother had been my godfather until he passed away when I was only about four years old. Henry was a regular in the jail, especially at this time of year. In the summer months, he made a modest living by doing odd jobs around town. When he got paid, he went straight to the Wine Cellar to collect his reward for a job well done. He was a charming and friendly man when he was sober, but after he had been drinking, not so much. As the weather turned cold, he was routinely arrested for vagrancy, and sentenced to jail for the winter, more as a kindness to him than because he was a threat to the community.
When Henry saw me, he took me aside to give me the inside story on how things work in the jail. His advice and friendship were key to my safety in the jail. At one point, he asked me if I smoked. When I said no, he told me that each week I would receive a package that included some tobacco, and he would like it if I gave it to him. I said sure, since I didn’t know what else I would do with it. So, each week, he would seek me out and collect his tobacco.
There was frequently a poker game going, and the stakes were cigarettes. Some of the loose cigs were recognizable brands from packs that had been brought by family or friends, and some were hand-rolled from the rations given out in the jail. Every once in a while, a player would light up one of his winnings.
I watched, but since I had given my tobacco to Henry, I couldn’t play. Henry sometimes watched as well, and, after a while, I realized I had never seen him smoke. The next time I turned over my pack of tobacco to him, I asked him what he did with it. He laughed. “Oh, I bet on the horses,” he said.
My cell would have done a monk proud. Three bare walls enclosed just enough space for a few personal belongings, a cot, and a toilet. The fourth side was a metal grate. At night, the door was locked, and during the day it was left open, so that I could come and go as I pleased. I had brought books to read, and I spent a lot of my time with them.
Every day, a guard would come around and announce that it was time to go outside, meaning into the exercise space already described. I took Henry’s advice and did not get involved in any of the stickball or other games; I stood with my back against one of the walls and observed.
One day, a guard came to my cell and told me it was the day for showers. Once a week, every inmate was required to go to the shower room. When I got there, I had to get in line. One of the guards was seated outside the entrance, and every time one inmate came out, he waved another to go in. Once I was admitted, I saw that there were no prison staff inside, only a couple of trusties. One of them sized me up and told me to leave all of my clothes on one of the pegs on the wall. He handed me a towel and pointed to the door to the showers. “Henry said he’s okay,” he said to the trusty monitoring the shower stalls. I later figured out that Henry’s sponsorship had saved me from having to have a romantic relationship with one of the other inmates standing there waiting for a suitable companion. As it was, I got to take a shower without being molested.
A few days after I had returned to jail for the second time, my minister came to visit me. After the requisite small talk, he told me he had one big concern. He had never heard me express remorse for the things I had done. I was flabbergasted. My life was in ruins — I did not know what was going to happen next, and he was worried about that trivial aspect of my situation? Of course I was sorry — couldn’t he see that this whole thing was torturing me?
Given my experience of being covered with night (in grief over the loss of my future), is it any wonder that I would find the idea of expressing remorse quite secondary to my pressing concern of what would happen to me next?
Again, with perfect hindsight, I can see that this misunderstanding was related to my autism, and was to be a common problem for me for most of my life. I was eventually to learn that many (if not all) of my autistic friends shared this inability to see the neurotypical need to have emotions confessed out loud. Autistic people typically have such a highly-developed sense of empathy that we assume other people can also read our emotions. Not so, I have learned, to my chagrin; they need to be told.
In any case, this encounter left me with a very sour sense of having been scolded for something of which I was not guilty. The next time he came to visit me, a guard came to tell me I had a visitor. I asked who it was, and when he told me it was my minister, I told the guard I did not want to see him.
That may be the moment I became an adult. I took charge of my own life. I instantly felt free — liberated! I did not have to do what I was told. I could make decisions. In that jail, I knew the rules, and I was safe. I was getting by, and I had made friends. From that moment on, being in jail felt to me like a vacation. I had discovered the peace and freedom that came with self-direction.
Part Four of this story will be entitled Incarceration: The Aftermath, in which I will tell of my post-release struggles, caught between being told what to do and what was expected of me on the one hand, and setting my own course on the other.
Before winding up this segment, I will mention a couple of other positive highlights of my time in the lockup,
One such interaction was a visit from my friend Dale. He reminded me of that visit many years later, when he wrote me a glowing letter of how much our friendship had meant to him in his high school years. ASFAT
The other is a wonderful letter (reproduced in full here) from Myron Niedzwiecki, who had been my math teacher in high school. I took all four of the school’s math offerings in my first three years, and he taught three of them. In my senior year, he left teaching to become the school’s guidance counselor, and he was terrific in that role.
I was sorry when my time was up. I left the jail and was escorted to the courtroom, where the judge told me I had been found guilty of my crimes, sentenced to probation, and ordered to make full restitution. I was then released.
I had gone into the jail as an adolescent — I came out as an adult. In my time there, I had developed a sense of peace and security. I had come to know that I could control my destiny. I resolved to become successful, although I did not have a clear vision of what that meant. I knew that I wanted to escape the poverty of my childhood, and I would find a way.
Every year since then, I have celebrated the brilliant autumn foliage, because of its natural glory, and also because of its symbolism. As I left the world I had known to enter my confinement, I was as green as the leaves on the trees. When I came out to witness the bare trees, I knew that my childhood had also fallen away and rested in the past like so many leaves on the forest floor.