When the day came for the hearing, a federal marshal came to the jail and put handcuffs on another boy and me, handcuffing us together.  When he had put them on, he hadn't put my side on very tight, I realized I could easily slip my hand out of them.
     I couldn't slip out of the handcuffs there in the jail nor in the car when the marshal took us to the hearing.  My first chance presented itself when we were in the federal building.
     When we had gotten there, there were about six other boys already there waiting in a room to also go to hearings.  They were also handcuffed together like we were.
     Shortly after we had gotten there the marshal had told all of us boys to go out in the hallway and form a double line.  The boy who I was with and I were the nearest to the door so we went out into the hallway first.  As soon as I was in the hallway I realized I was in the hallway alone.  There was no marshal out there to watch us and the marshal that was with us was still in the room and wasn't able to see anyone in the hallway.  It all happened too fast, I didn't have time to think about it.  If I had waited to think about it the opportunity would have been gone.  No sooner had I cleared the hall doorway I slipped out of the handcuffs and started running down the hallway.
     I had heard a boy yell out behind me, "Hey.  He's escaping!"
     It was a long ways to the end of the hallway where it turned into another hallway.  I didn't know where the elevator or the stairs were.  I was running hard and was about ten feet from the corner of the hallway where I would turn and those behind me would be out of sight when two men in suits came around the corner in front of me.
     I heard a man's voice yell behind me, "Stop him!"
     I was practically on top of the men before they had a chance to respond, but they had enough for both of them grabbed me.  I had tried to pull free and get past them but it was no use for they threw me to the floor as though I was no more than a sack of flour.  Forcing my hands behind me they put another set of handcuffs on me, this time a lot tighter.  The handcuffs weren't removed until after the hearing and I was back in the county jail.
     I don't think trying to take off like that helped my cause any for I had been sentenced to serve two years at the Federal Correctional Institution for Boys in Englewood, Colorado, which was located in the southern suburbs of Denver.
     I had just turned eighteen by about six months when the doors of the institution had closed behind me.  I had been out of the Colorado Training School for Boys only one year, which had been some sort of record for me.
     Like all of the other institutions I had been in, the orientation period was for thirty days.  The cell I had been kept in was very similar to the cell I was in after I had ran away from the Iowa Training School for Boys when I was fifteen.  So similar, I felt I was back in the training school and those fears for several days resurfaced.
     For the first few days, more than a week, I would wake up at night thinking I heard my door being unlocked and the guard would be coming into my room.  I was scared.  I was in a new institution I knew nothing about.  I had no one to turn to, to answer my many questions.  As always I was fearing the worst.  I had regressed so much the first few days I had even laid nude during the night, face down on top of my bed without covers over me, waiting for the guard to come in.  It had been over a week before I had started to wear my pajamas.  Those first few days had been pretty hard for me and I had been willing to do anything to have someone to talk with and to reassure me that everything would be all right.  I have often wondered what the guard must have thought of me for he had looked in on me several times during the night.
     During the orientation period the guard never came in and I was able to adjust as all of the other boys did.  Unlike the rest of the boys though I didn't make friends.  I very seldom spoke to anyone and I spent most of my time reading.
     During the orientation period I went through the usual physical and psychological tests.  I had found that my IQ was 128, which I understand was well above average.  They had asked me what type of work I would like to do while I was in the institution.  I only had first hand experience in two fields, butcher shop and working a few weeks for my uncle as a plumber's helper.  Due to my abhorrence to slaughtering animals and my somewhat interest in plumbing I chose the plumbing shop.
     The insinuation I was given, was that I would be given an education towards a plumbing trade.  That I found out was to be a joke.  There wasn't any classroom study and the only work we did out of the shop was maintenance for the institution and make ash trays out of tin cans.

Larry Eugene, eighteen years old, working in the plumbing shop.
In the Federal Correctional Institution For Boys.

     There were some study courses offered for the general population of the institution.  I signed up for two of them, primary blueprint reading and typing.
     Primary blueprint reading is where I got my first experience in drafting, this was to lead to other interests later in life.  Typing gave me a start towards what I know about typing today.
     Both courses were short, maybe no more than four weeks.  But they did give me a start and an interest, from there I picked up the rest I know about both subjects on my own, with very little  additional schooling or assistance from anyone.
     Here, as they did at the Colorado Training School for Boys, they supplied two sacks of tobacco with papers and four books of matches each week.  Thanks to Colorado, I was now smoking.
     On the covers of the match books was advertising about VD.  Here we were in a boys institution, no girls around and we all had a very thorough physical.  Maybe someone thought down the road we would need that information.  Due to my relationships with girls up until that time in my life I didn't think I would ever need it.
     Here at the correctional institution I was to be in my fourth and last fight.  It was to be with a boy by the name of Green.  After I had left the juvenile home when I was fourteen, I was never again to remember any boy's name nor was I ever to remember any adult's name after Mr. Parker had turned his back on me at the Iowa Training School for Boys.  Green was the only boy who's name I was to remember and that was only because of the fight.  Yet I couldn't remember the boy's name in the Colorado Training School for Boys who I had hurt so badly.
     Green sat directly behind me in the dining hall.  I never did find out why but for some reason he had turned around and poured a glass of milk down my back.
     Everyone around us laughed about it.  I didn't say a thing, I went on and finished my meal.  I didn't want to fight but I knew I couldn't let it go by or I would have every boy in the institution picking on me.  I was a loner and that in it's self was an invite for trouble from other boys.
     When the meal was over with, all of us boys who lived in my dormitory got up from the table and marched back to our dormitory.  I acted as though what Green had done was a forgotten matter.
     Once all of us boys were in the dormitory we broke up, some going to the day room, some to their beds or to the bathroom.  Green, who had entered the dormitory ahead of me was standing near the foot of his bed talking to some boys.  If I wanted to go to the day room or the bathroom I would have to pass Green like a lot of other boys were doing so I wasn't noticed as I approached Green.
     Green didn't know he was in a fight until I had hit him.  Like all of the other fights I had been in he never stood a chance for I had hit without warning.  After punching him several times he stuck his arm out towards me and I grabbed it, twisting his arm I tried to throw him over my shoulder.  I heard a distinct "crack" and knew I had broken his arm.  I quit fighting when I realized what I had done.  The fight had started and ended so quickly only the boys who were near by knew  it had taken place.
     One of the boys got the supervisor for our dormitory.  He had been in the day room and hadn't seen the fight.  They had told the supervisor, Green had slipped and fell and broke his arm.  Whether or not he believed them didn't make any difference for he was stuck with that story and I didn't get into any trouble because of the fight.
     A few weeks later another boy wanted to fight me, I had warned him, "Don't try it, I'll tear your head off."
     Another boy near by had told him, "You don't want to fool with him, he is the one who broke Green's arm."  The boy had backed off and the rest of the time I was there I was never again challenged.
     While I had been in the correctional institution, a boy had committed suicide while he was in the isolation unit.  He had taken one of his sheets and tore it up to make a rope.  Then tying one end of it around his neck he climbed up the bars of his cell and tied the other end of the rope so when he fell his feet wouldn't touch the floor.
     The story was the boy had done it for "attention."  He had waited until he thought he heard a guard coming and then jumped, thinking the guard would be there in time to get him down.  The guard hadn't come and the boy had slowly strangled to death.  So the story went.
     This had been my first experience with suicide since I had been in the orphanage and a girl had jumped off of a bridge a few blocks from the orphanage.  Both events had been very unsettling for me, this one more so, for I now realized more what suicide was and it's finality.
     My last month in the correctional institution was spent in the pre-release unit.  Unlike the dormitories, each boy had his own room and the day room had a TV set that we could watch any time we had no other duties.  We were also allowed to stay up until midnight unlike the dormitories where they had to go to bed at eight.  This was the goal of every boy in the institution.  Well almost every boy, there were a few boys who decided they didn't want to wait that long.
     There was only one gun tower on the west side of the institution and some of the boys had noticed that at precisely eight o'clock for about ten minutes every morning the guard would disappear from the tower.  It also happened to be the fence in that part of the institution was the lowest.  They could throw a blanket up over the barbed wire on top to the fence and be over it in a couple of minutes.
     They had waited their chance and went over the fence.  But instead of going west off of the  institution and make good their escape they went south and within five hundred feet came in view of the main gun tower on the southeast corner of the institution.  The main tower had opened fire on them and warned the west tower over the radio of the boys' attempted escape.  So now they had two towers firing at them.  Wisely, all of the boys dropped to the ground and waited for some guards to come for them
     I was nineteen years old when around the first of August, about a week before my release from the correctional institution, I and about a half dozen boys were taken to the Rocky Mountain Arsenal on the northeast outskirts of Denver to build a barbed wire fence for I presume cattle.
     My job was to drive a simi-truck with a flat bed trailer down a line in the field and drop off the metal fence posts.  I would drive the truck a few feet and then get up on the trailer and throw a bundle of posts off then drive a few more feet and throw another bundle off.
     It had been pretty exciting for me to be driving the truck.  I didn't care too much about stopping and having to throw the bundles of posts off but I would quickly throw off a bundle, jump down off of the trailer and run up to the cab and move the truck a few more feet.
     I had done this five or six times when in a hurry I had picked up another bundle to throw off the back of the trailer, a metal spade on one of the posts tore into my left wrist and for a moment the whole bundle hung there.
     I didn't have anything to wrap around my wrist, all I could do was to get back in the truck, turn it around in the field and drive back to where my supervisor was.  That sort of got a lot of blood on the left side of the cab as I held my arm out the window as I was driving.
     The supervisor had taken my belt and wrapping it around my arm had stopped the bleeding then he used his handkerchief to wrapped around my wrist.  Telling me he could only leave the belt on my arm for a short time, then he told me to get into his car and then he rushed me to the medical center there on the arsenal.
     The way he had talked and drove scared me.  I had gotten the impression if I didn't get some  attention within minutes I would bleed to death.  At the medical center they had calmly removed the belt and handkerchief, cleaned the wound out and sutured it shut then dressed it.
     Returning to the correctional institution later that day it was examined and dressed again, which they did from thereon, on a daily basis.
     Two or three days later it was noticed my wound had become infected.  It was decided I would stay in the hospital where they could open the wound up and let it drain.  Which involved me soaking my wrist to draw the poison out.
     I found out that didn't mean just for an hour or two but also I had to sit up throughout the night with my wrist submerged in a pan of a warm water solution.
     Needless to say, I became fairly tired in the middle of the night and pulled my arm out of the water, to take just a short nap.  The nurse coming in to change the water had caught me sleeping.  Boy was she mad as she bawled me out, telling me how the doctor had left strict instructions as to how I was to leave my arm in the water.
     I was still wearing a bandage on my left wrist when I was released to go to New Ellington, South Carolina to live with my mother and step-father.  Other than never having been in the eastern part of the Untied States, I wasn't too thrilled about going back to live with them, knowing my stepfather would be there. I hadn't known my mother had gone to South Carolina for she had never written to me in all of the months I had been in the institution.  But that wasn't unusual for she had never written to me before.  My mother had come to visit me only once while I had been in the federal correctional institution.  That had been shortly after I had gone there.  Well, anyway she didn't have to worry about me for the next fourteen months I was there.
     Before leaving the institution they had handed me a new draft card.  Seeing I was over eighteen they had registered me with the South Carolina draft board.  I had noticed I was classified as "4F."  Which they had told me meant morally and/or physically unfit for military service but they couldn't tell me whether it was because of my hearing or because I had been in the correctional institution.
     When I had first gone to Denver, I had changed my age on my birth certificate from sixteen to eighteen hoping I could enlist in one of the military services.  I had gone to the Navy, Marines and the Army, each one turned me down when they noticed I had altered my birth certificate.
     This draft card was also to block me when I later tried to join the services, the only type of life I felt I could live.