I CRIED FOR A LITTLE BOY
WHO ONCE LIVED THERE ©

Chapter Thirty-Two

Colorado Reform School For Boys
At Buena Vista, Colorado

RAINBOW
    I stayed in jail for almost a month, until the first of May when I was sentenced to the Colorado  Training School for Boys at Buena Vista.  There hadn't been any trial, more like a hearing in a room with several people sitting around a long table.  I don't even know why they had a hearing everyone
pretty much had their minds made up as to what they were going to do to me.  There had been no question of my guilt, if there had been I would have told them I had taken the car.
     I didn't know any of the people.  My mother was there, it sort of surprised me for I didn't see why she had to be there.  She had cried.  The first time I had ever seen her cry.  I had told her, "Don't  worry Mom, I'll be all right."  With tears welling up behind my eyes, not really believing what I had told her.  It had been the first time I had ever called her "Mom."
     I was alone in the back of the car as they drove me to the training school.  There had been no other boy to share my fear with.  I didn't know what kind of place I was going to.  None of the boys who were in jail with me had ever been there nor did they know anything about the training school.  I guess I was sort of expecting a place like the training school back in Iowa.  I guess I couldn't have been more wrong.
     Arriving at the training school the first thing I noticed was the high barbed-wire topped fence with it's gun-towers located every-so-often.  Not a very pleasant sight for a sixteen year old boy to see.  Especially a boy who had never seen nor been in a place like that before.  I had been in institutions most of my life and I knew what could go on in them.  There were some very terrible things going on in my mind as to what I could expect could happen to me behind that fence.
     The car had stopped near a small, one story building near the main gate.  There I got out and was taken in a door to a room that was barren of all furniture except for a bench along one wall.  Here I was told to strip out of all of my clothes.  Doing as I had been told I was then taken to the next room where they had checked me for contraband.  They had looked through my hair and over every inch of my body, even the bottoms of my feet.  They had even embarrassed me by making me bend over and spreading my buttocks.
     Not finding any contraband, I was given a pair of coveralls and a pair of slippers to put on. They had also given me two sacks of tobacco, some cigarette papers and four books of matches. When I had told them, "I don't smoke Sir."  They had told me, "You will here, so keep them."
     Once I was dressed I was taken through a door that led out onto the main compound.  Then to the clothing room where I was issued additional clothing and shoes.  Before the shoes were given to me a boy had notched the leading edges of the heals with "V" notches.  Asking the boy why he had notched the heals that way he told me that it would make it easier for the guards to track me in the mountains if I should run away.  He had also told me that was something I didn't want to do there.  He had told me how a boy had ran away.  The boy had been running for some time and had laid down by a fallen tree to rest.  How a guard had slipped up behind the boy and had shot and killed him.
     That, the high fence topped with barbed-wire, the gun-towers, the rifles the guards carried in plain view, all of it convinced me I didn't want to run away from there.  Even the training school back in Iowa didn't look as bad as the one in Colorado did and the Iowa training school was bad enough.
     From the first day I feared the guards but even worse I feared the boys even more for they seemed to be a much different type of boys than I had ever seen before.  The boys at the Colorado boys training school seemed a lot harder and quite dangerous.  They formed groups based on race which was quite foreign to me.  I knew nothing about racial things.  I wouldn't know about racism even existing for at least two more years and then I thought it was directed towards me.  I was soon to learn, some of the boys carried homemade knives.  So the least of my worries was I would be sexually assaulted by a group of boys and hopefully not stabbed to death.
     My first home here in the training school had been a small cell about eight feet in depth by four feet wide, the ceiling about six and a half feet high.  The ceiling was arched and met the side walls about five feet off of the floor.  The door was made of flat iron bars that crisscrossed horizontally and vertically.  They could only be opened once a guard had pulled a bar at the end of the cell block.
     There were no magazines, books or even newspapers to read while I was in this cell.  This was to be my home for the first thirty days.  The period of my orientation.
     The only time I could escape my fear was when I was locked in my cell during the night for during the day I had to go out with a work detail of other boys.
     My first job was to cut pine slabs with an ax in a high fenced enclosed area at the base of one of the gun-towers, under the watchful eye of an armed guard.
     Yes, for a sixteen year old boy who had never seen gun-towers and armed guards this was a scary place to be.  I was constantly worried as I would glance up at the tower guard from time to time, thinking he would mistakenly think I was trying to escape and shoot at me.
     The next job I had was to pick up rocks in one of the fields south of the institution and throw them into a truck to be hauled to the rock-crusher.  After a few days of picking up rock we went to the rock-crusher and threw the rocks into it, making gravel for the roads of the institution.
     The guards then took some of us boys east of the institution to clean out the irrigation ditches.  While cleaning out one of the ditches I had seen some shiny stuff in the bottom of the ditch.  I thought I had found gold and I had excitedly yelled at everyone I had found gold.  The guard and some of the of the other boys came over to look.  The guard had laughed and told me all I had found was "Iron Pyrite."  I had asked him what that was, still thinking I had found something valuable.  He told me it was "Fool's Gold" and wasn't worth anything.
     I was embarrassed for how excitedly I had acted.  For I had felt I had been so stupid thinking I had found gold.  The guard and all of the boys had laughed at me.
     My next job took me into the mountains east of Salida to load pine slabs into a truck to be hauled back to the training school for other boys to cut up.  The pine slabs were later used to fire the boilers to generate steam for the institution.
     My last job I had at the training school was to fire the boilers for the institution.  They were about the size of a steam locomotive.  Getting up at 4:00 every morning another boy and I would start a fire in the firebox of one of the large boilers.
     At about 6:00 in the morning one of us boys would go to the mess hall and have breakfast.  Usually scrambled eggs or two eggs well done and bacon and toast.  Sometimes it would be pancakes.
     One morning we had pancakes and after eating the ones I had been served, I ask the supervisor of the mess hall if I could have another one, explaining to him how I had already worked two hours in the powerhouse firing the boiler.  He had told me two was all I could have.
     Two pancakes for breakfast didn't seem fair to me, not after I had already worked two hours firing a boiler so I went to see the superintendent that morning as soon as he was in his office.  I had explained to the superintendent how I had gotten up at 4:00 A.M. and fired the boiler for two hours.  How after breakfast I was still hungry.  How after breakfast I had asked the supervisor in the mess hall if I could have another pancake, explaining to him how I had been working two hours and I was still hungry and how he had told me "No."
     I wasn't upset or anything like that.  I had just explained the situation to the superintendent.  I thought I had a fair complaint.
     The superintendent said we would go over to the mess hall and talk with the supervisor there.  That had sounded good to me for I felt I was right.
     At the mess hall the superintendent had taken the mess hall supervisor and me aside.  He had asked the supervisor what the problem was as to why  I couldn't have more for breakfast since I had
been working for two hours.  The supervisor had turned to me and said something like, "Are you still hungry when you get up from the table?"  I suppose about any other boy would have gotten mad at him for asking such a question for I had told him I was.  But no, not me, tears came to my eyes.  A feeling of hurt came over me then I started crying.  For some reason I couldn't control it.
     I also had the feeling the supervisor felt I was trying to get him into trouble.  Maybe that had something to do with it.  That hadn't been my intent.
     When the supervisor had seen me crying he had said, "Oh let the crybaby have his extra pancake."  One of them asked me if I would like to have something more to eat, I had said, "No."  Not saying anymore I had turned and left the mess hall, feeling bad about how I had cried.  I had felt I was right and it had hurt even worse when he had belittled my feelings.
     Two of us boys would fire the boiler for about four hours then two other boys would take over and fire it for the rest of the day while we did other things in the power house.  Such as cleaning the inside of a boiler that wasn't being used.
     I had claustrophobia, a great fear of going inside of the boiler and I didn't want the other boys to know.  I did everything to keep them from knowing, even going into the boiler as though I wasn't  afraid.  But I had been very much afraid they would close the manhole cover while I was in there.
     Each morning we had to add a chemical to the boiler water.  To do this we would turn off the main water supply to the boiler and then open up a valve and pour the chemical in.  Once the chemical had been added we were suppose to turn the supply water back on.
     One morning I had forgotten to do that.  If the boiler starts running low on water, the steam pressure will start to rise.  The lower the water gets, the faster the pressure will rise.  The safety valve is suppose to blow and relieve the pressure long before there is any danger of the boiler blowing up.  My fear was it would be the other way around.
     When I had forgotten to turn the supply water back on the pressure in the boiler started to rise.  At first, not thinking there was any problem, I just closed the vents on the firebox to shut the fire down some.  This didn't help.  The pressure kept rising even at a faster rate.  The higher the pressure went the more frightened I had become.  I thought I was going to blow the boiler up and me with it.
     Running upstairs to the office where my supervisor was sitting at his desk, I yelled, "The boiler is going to blow up!"  Thinking, "Do something or we're all going to get killed!"
     He just sat there calmly and asked, "Did you turn the supply water back on after you added the chemicals?"
     I had said "Yes Sir!"  Realizing as I had said it I hadn't turned the water back on.  Even as I had said, "Yes Sir!"  I was turning to run back down stairs to the boiler to turn the water back on.  I was praying I wasn't too late, as I stood there next to the boiler, hoping it wouldn't blow up while I was turning the water back on.
     Reaching the water supply valve I had opened it as fast as I could.  As soon as the cold water had started going into the boiler the steam pressure started to drop.  I stood there frozen watching the pressure on the gauge drop, praying it wouldn't go back up.
    Only when the steam pressure got back down to it's normal pressure did I start to relax.  Then the pressure started dropping below it's normal pressure.  By closing the vents on the fire box and adding all of the cold water I had, I had made the boiler too cold.  Now I had to get the fire up or I would lose all of my pressure.
     For the next fifteen minutes I worked hard at getting the pressure back up.  Only when the pressure was back to normal was I able to sit down and get my wind.
     Sitting on a chair in front of the boiler I glanced over my right shoulder and up the stairs towards the office.  There was my supervisor standing at the top of the stairs, smiling.  He had watched the whole thing.  I didn't smile but quickly looked away.  I had done something very stupid and then lied about it.  I was feeling very sheepish and was hoping everyone would soon forget what I had done.
     Each morning, once the fire was going good and the pressure was up to normal one of us boys would lay down and sleep until breakfast time.  The one who stayed awake and fired the boiler would go to breakfast first.  We would take turns each day doing this.
     A boy about my age was working with me each morning.  I had laid down and was sleeping on my left side when something had wakened me.  The boy was undoing my zipper on the front of my pants, he already had my belt undone.
     I didn't know what he had in mind for me but I had a pretty good idea by a comment he had made earlier about me looking like a "Sweet Boy."  I told him, "Knock it off.  I don't want anything to do with you."  He had taken my warning and left me be.
     Later in that day when the rest of the boys came in and before I had quit firing the boiler, the boy who had tried to get my pants down came up to me and asked me if I wanted to fight, using the Spanish word for "Fight."
     Not understanding what he had said to me I had only walked past him without saying anything.  But I had been curious as to what he had said to me.
     I walked up the stairs to the office where I knew there was a boy who understood Spanish. When I had gotten there the boy was the only one in the office.  I told him what the boy downstairs had said to me and asked him what it meant.
     "That means to fight.  Go to blows.  You know, to hit."  He told me.
     As I had turned and walked towards the door that would take me back downstairs, I wasn't mad.  I had no feelings at all about the boy who had challenged me.  I couldn't have cared less about him.  But I knew I couldn't let the challenge go or I would have every boy in the training school challenging me.  Making my life miserable.
     As I had done most of my life, I avoided most of the boys there, very few would I even talk to.  There wasn't one boy there, I could call my friend.
     Walking back downstairs I wasn't angry or scared, I didn't have any feelings about what I knew was about to happen.  I wasn't worried about getting into trouble nor getting hurt.  I knew, I was going to have to fight and I had accepted that.  By the time I had gotten to the bottom of the stairs my muscles had tightened and became hard, ready for combat as I had turned and walked towards the boy.
     The boy was standing with the other boys who worked there in the powerhouse.  I don't know what they were saying among themselves as I had approached them but they had been talking, laughing and glancing my way.  I can only assume what they were thinking and talking about.  First off, I don't believe they knew I didn't understand the Spanish word for "Fight."  Secondly, they must have thought I had gone upstairs to complain to the supervisor I was being picked on.
     There were four or five of them in the group.  My age or older.  My size or bigger, none smaller than I was.  I was clean shaven and most of them were shaving every day.  I didn't associate with other boys, that made me a loner, easy pickings, with no one to back me up.  To them I was a "Sweet Boy" who could be easily strong-armed.
     The two worst things a boy can be considered in a boys' training school is a "Rat" a boy who tells on other boys to the guards or  a "Sweet Boy," being a boy who is sexually treated like a girl by other boys.  A girl would get better treatment, at least she would get some sort of protection.
     As I approached the boys I didn't do it in a threatening manner but as though I was going to the sink behind them.  The boy I wanted was the biggest boy of the group and he was facing me.
     The course I had chosen would put him to the right of me, if I passed him.  When I was about two feet from him my fist came up and straight out.  Putting all of my body weight behind my punch I drove him backwards and off of his feet.  Taking him and all of the other boys by surprise.  As my punch had landed I had said, "Yeah, I want to fight!"  Using the Spanish for "fight."
     He had come off of the floor dazed.  I didn't give him a chance to get things sorted out.  I was on top of him as soon as he was on his feet.
     I was wearing heavy canvas work gloves that were heavily laden with gritty ashes.  Every punch I sent at him, went directly to his face, with all of my weight behind it.  He attempted to hit me several times but his punches were aimed at my stomach and had no effect on me for my stomach had been tight and absorbed the blows easily without causing any pain.
     His ineffective punches to my stomach had surprised me so much that it wasn't hurting me I had dropped my hands at one point and let him take a couple of punches at me.
     There was no emotional feelings in me.  I was a fighting machine and my intent was to make the boy give up.  I had hit him seven or eight solid blows, directly to his face when he had cried, "Enough!  Enough!  Please.  Enough!"
     Stepping backwards, with my fists still up in front of me, I gave him some room.  I had accomplished my goal.  There wasn't any doubt in anyone's mind as to whether or not I would fight.  They had seen how vicious I could be.
     The other boys hadn't lifted a hand in helping the boy I had been fighting.  My attack had been so sudden and it had ended so quick they really didn't have time to respond.
     As I had backed off the boy had started swinging again.  None of his punches had landed.  He had made a couple of swings at me and was starting his third one when my punch hit him again, square in the face.
     Then, something terrible had happened to me.  I had lost all control of the vicious person who  dwelled within me.  I had let him come out and he had taken over.  I was no longer a fighting machine, I was now a killing machine.  He had faked his giving up.  What had followed was the most vicious attack I ever made on anyone at anytime in my life.  My punches had hit him, time and time again, always directly to his face, with all of my weight behind each punch.  I was unmerciful as I had drove my attack into him.  My intent now wasn't just to win but to put the boy down where he couldn't get back up and to do it in any manner or by any means I could.
     To me, what I was hitting wasn't another boy but something I hated.  I had no compassion in me.  All things around me had become void.  All I could see was the boy's face directly in front of me.  That boy was going to have to go down and not get back up if it meant I would have to kill him, I would have killed him.  At this point I had lost all control of my viciousness.
     The boy again begged, throwing his hands up about his head, "Enough!  Enough! Please! Enough!"
     Yelling at him in an angry voice, "I'll tell you when you have had enough!"  Not easing my attack, I kept driving in at him.  He had given up once now he didn't have that choice.
     The other boys, hearing him beg me to quit hitting him and seeing I wasn't going to quit, grabbed me by the arms and pulled me off.  "He gave up!"  One of the boys yelled at me.
     "He told me that once before, now I'll tell him when he has had enough."  Was my angry reply as I resisted the boys, trying to get at the boy again.
     "He's given up.  Stop or you are going to kill him!"  Was the frighten cry of one of the boys as they held me back.
     I was ten feet tall and I felt I had the strength to move a mountain but as the boys yelled at me and held me back I started to come down off of my high and calm down.
     When the boys had seen I was calming down and was no longer resisting them, they had let loose of me.  Not looking at the boy I had been fighting, I turned and went in front of the boilers and sat down on a chair out of sight of all of the boys.  By now, inwardly, I was shaking.
     The other boys had helped the boy I had been fighting to get to the nurses' station in the main  building.  I don't know what they said had happened but no one would have believed that the boy had fallen down.  Whatever they had told about the fight I never got into any trouble over it.  And no boy ever tried me again at that reform school for word had gotten out among the other boys as to what I had done.
     The boy never came back to the powerhouse to work again.  But I saw him the next day.  He was going in the opposite direction I was.  As I had approached him I saw what I had done to his face.  It had been cut to ribbons, he had several stitches and his face was badly swollen.  Compassion flowed through me as I looked upon what I had done to the boy.  I stopped and as he came up to me I held out my hand and said, "I'm sorry for what I did to you."  He looked at me and without a word walked past me, on to wherever he was going.  I couldn't read any expression on his face, that is how badly his face was torn up.
     To this day, that boy is probably still carrying marks on his face from what I did to him.  I know every since that day I have carried a very large scar on my mind.  I don't know if that boy ever learned anything from that fight, I know I did.  I have never been able to  talk about the fight nor have I ever felt good about it.  It was the most vicious attack I was to ever make on another human being and to me the most shameful.  I had let my vicious side out and I had lost control of it.  I was only to do that one more time in my life, thankfully not with the same terrible results.
     Anger had always been an emotion that was hard for me to show, from the day of that terrible fight it even became harder.
     After the fight I stayed pretty much to myself.  No one ever challenged me again.  Most of the boys stayed clear of me.  It was as though they knew there was a vicious streak in me that could erupt violently without warning.
     That had been my third fight.  I was to have one more fight a little over a year later.  That would be the last one I was to have in my life.
     Each fight I had fought, I had never warned the boy I was going to hit him, I had hit without warning.  If that had been unfair, then that was the only part of any of my fights that had been unfair.  I had never hit a boy while he was down.  I only fought when I felt there was no other option open to me.  I fought to win but not necessarily to hurt.  I never felt good about any fight I had been in.  To me there was no pleasure in hurting another boy.
     I was seventeen years old then.  I was about five feet nine or ten.  Weighing about a hundred, thirty pounds.  I really wasn't built for fighting.  I didn't even know how to fight.  But the viciousness of all my attacks had been devastating to the boys who had been on the receiving end of them.  It isn't a pleasant memory to have.
     I spent all that summer in the training school, not getting out until early November, three days over six months.  In all of the time I had been there my mother had not come and seen me even though I knew she was going out with guys who had cars.  But for some reason I didn't expect her to come.

RAINBOW
Have I Stayed Away Too Long
MIDI By the courtesy of the MIDI Picking Harry Todd The best on the NET.

 Chapter Thirty-Three