It was during the day in the middle of February when my mother and I arrived in Denver.  As we had come in on the Greyhound bus I had been impressed by the redness of the ground and by how warm it was.  It was so warm I didn't need a coat, all I was wearing was a short-sleeved shirt.
     The first night we stayed in Denver, my mother and I had stayed at the "YMCA."  There was only one bed in the room, which meant my mother and I would have to sleep together.  It would have been the first time since I was four years old, when the night after my dad had died we had laid in a bed together side by side. I had been crying that night so long ago as she laid there beside me trying to comfort me.
     There were two sheets and a blanket on the bed.  My mother pulled the blanket down and then she pulled the sheet partially down on one side.  Then she climbed into bed with her clothes on and pulled the sheet up over her.  She had told me to leave my clothes on and to lay on top of the sheet on the other half of the bed and to cover up with the blanket.  When she had made me sleep that way it seemed as though she had put a wall between us.  What I felt was loss of love, that she didn't want me close to her.  I had a feeling she was keeping me at a distance, and I couldn't understand why.
     She was thirty-eight years old and my mother.  I was sixteen years old and her son and we hardly knew each other.  As though we were strangers to each other.  As I grew up I never heard my mother tell me she loved me.  When we talked to each other she would call me "Son."  It had always made me feel uncomfortable when she called me that.  I could never call her "Mom" or "Mother" when I spoke to her.  I never called her by name.  But some way I had been able to address her without calling her anything.
     The day after we had arrived in Denver, my mother had found an apartment at 242 So. Broadway.  The living room and the bedroom were divided by a divider about five feet high.  The kitchen was large, much larger than was needed.  There was a small bathroom off of the kitchen.
     My mother slept in the bedroom and I slept on the couch in the front room.  Usually I was asleep before she got home at night.  I never thought it was strange she stayed out late most every night.  I can understand now, she needed some sort of life of her own.  She was alone in Denver and she was saddled with a sixteen year old boy.
     We drifted apart, my mother went her way with her life and I went mine.  We very seldom seen each other.  I worked at the May Co. in the lamp department.  I don't know where she worked.
     On my first payday instead of going home I went to a movie.  When that movie was over with I went to another one.  It went on this way until all of the theaters were closed that night.  The next day when the theaters opened I started it all over again.  I kept this up until I was broke.  I realize now it was a form of escape from reality for me.
     Wherever I went, I would walk, I would never take a bus.  From home to downtown and back, to all of the theaters and anywhere I would go, I walked.  I was always alone for I had no friends.  There wasn't one person in Denver I knew.
     There was something terribly wrong and it was inside of me.  I always felt very lonely, very depressed.  Above all I couldn't understand how I was feeling nor why I felt the way I did.  I tried my best to make everyone who came in contact with me think that everything was fine in my life, like, those I worked with, my federal probation officer and my mother.  I was totally and utterly lost.  Yes, that was why I had buried my self in the theaters, to escape thinking, to get away from the terrible feelings I was experiencing.
     Again to put it in as simplest terms as I can, though I nor anyone else knew at that time,  I had been institutionalized.  I couldn't deal with life, not the way I was living it.  I had to have the fear and regimentation I had grown up with, something only given in institutions.  I had been taught to live in institutions, not out of them.
     I hadn't understood all of that then.  Not in the few short years I had lived.  I just knew I was hurting and I didn't know the reason.  I didn't feel love from anyone nor that anyone even cared about me.
     Today I know my mother worried about me.  She has told me how at times when she came home and hadn't found me there she had waited by the window, waiting for me to come home.  How when she saw me walking down the street she had gotten into bed so I wouldn't know she had waited up for me.  I wish then she would have let me known.
     I needed more than a mother, I needed a man in my life one I felt cared about me.  I needed friends in my life, friends my own age.  There was so much I needed for my life was out of control.
     The inevitable happened on March 27, I hadn't been in Denver much more than a month when things started going wrong.  If it hadn't started going wrong long before I had arrived in Denver.
     I had been to see my federal probation officer that day.  I had a bandage around my head to cover a cut on my head I had received when I had fallen down the back stairs to our apartment building.  After I had seen my probation officer, telling him how fine everything was in my life, I had walked home down Broadway.
     As I had been walking on the west side of Broadway, in the 900 block, I happened to glance up at the roof of the "Great Western Auto Co." at 860 Broadway.  What had caught my eye were the roofs of cars that were being stored on the roof of the building.  To me that was an exciting challenge.  To get on the roof of the building and take one of those cars.  I didn't feel I was stealing the car but only proving to myself I could do it.
     Later I had gone back downtown and seen a movie.  It had been dark as I had come out of the theater, I could still have gone and seen another movie but that night I had other plans.
     That night, looking in the window as I walked past the front of the auto company, the only light I could see in the building was the light coming from the street.  It looked safe to go after the car.  Continuing on down Broadway to Eighth Street, I turned east towards the ally that ran behind the auto company.  At the ally I turned north towards the auto company, now located at the far end of the ally.  Once in the ally I went into a dead run until I had gotten to a telephone pole at the southeast corner of the building I wanted to get onto.
     Squatting low between the pole and the building I checked both directions of the ally.  It was all clear and no one had seen me running.  Shinnying up the pole I got onto the roof of the building next to the one I wanted to get onto.  It was a lower roof of the two at the ally but in the middle of the buildings the two roofs were of an equal height from the ground but an eight to ten foot wall separated the two roofs from each other.  Jumping up I was able to grasp the top of the wall and pull myself up and over, dropping to the roof of the building I wanted.
     There were about ten cars on the roof.  The latest model car was a Buick and it was sitting nearest the overhead door I would have to use to get the car down to the street.
     Trying the overhead door I found it locked.  That was no problem for I had opened those kind of doors before.  Breaking a pane of glass out with my leather punch I reached in and unlocked the door.  Shoving it up I seen another car parked in my way on the ramp leading to the ally door.
     Walking down the ramp to the car I could see it was an older model car and it had a flat tire. Walking past the car I went to the ally door, unlocking it I shoved it up.  Going back to the car on the ramp I opened it's door, started the engine and drove it out into the ally.  Turning south in the ally I had left the car parked in the ally just clear of the door.
     Right now I was very calm.  I wasn't in any hurry.  It was almost as if I had the right to be doing what I was doing.  Everything was going better than I had planed.  I had assumed the keys would be in the cars, I had never gave it a thought otherwise.
     Walking back up the ramp onto the roof and to the car I wanted I opened the door then getting in I started the engine.  The car was a used car but it sounded good and still had the smell of a new car.  It must have been one or two years old.
     This was the forth time in my life I had driven a car, the first time had been a little over two years before so my driving skills were based on those experiences, all mostly highway driving.  But in my mind, as I drove down the ramp to the ally below, I felt I could drive any car safely.
     The front of the car was about seven or eight feet from the ally door when I heard someone off to my left inside of the building, some forty to fifty feet away yell, "Hey!"  It was a man's voice.  That had jolted me out of my self-confidence, fear shot through me as I drove the rest of the way down the ramp.
     From later information I had gotten, this man had been working late in one of the offices, presumably one whose light I couldn't see from the street.  I had broken a glass window, open two overhead doors and drove one car out of the building into the ally.  But he hadn't responded until I was driving the car off of the roof.
     As I was coming out the ally door I had to make a sharp left turn to go north in the ally but as I came out of the turn the tires of the Buick were screaming.  Not hesitating at the street I turned left towards Broadway.  I wasn't in the proper frame of mind to stop for the red stop light at Broadway either, which at that time was a two-way street.  I had drove several blocks south on Broadway before I had brought the speed of the car back down to a normal speed.
     If I had been smart I would have gotten out of the car and went home.  But looking back, I can see I was never too smart of getting out of trouble once I was in it.  I wouldn't give up what I had started until I had accomplished my goal and my goal had been to take the car for a ride around town.
     Driving south about thirty blocks I turned west on Evens, where I drove one block west to Acoma and turned north again.
     I guess it had been about the corner of Evens and Acoma the police had spotted me, I didn't notice them until two blocks later after I had ran the stop sign at Acoma and Iowa.  At Iowa I hadn't even hesitated.  I was practically across Iowa Ave. before noticing the police car behind me.  That is when they had turned on their red light and siren.  When I glanced into the mirror all I could see was a lot of red light and that meant trouble for me if I stopped.
     When the red light and siren came on I followed my instinct to run.  I put the gas pedal all of the way to the floor.  This must have taken them by surprise for I had quickly left them behind.
     I continued north on S. Acoma for three blocks where it ended and W. Louisiana intercepted it, there I could turn left over the railroad tracks or right towards S. Broadway.  I chose to turn right.  The Buick was a heavy car but as I turned the corner to go east towards S. Broadway I was going so fast I felt the car was going to roll over.
     Once the car was straightened out and under control again I could see the traffic light at south  Broadway about a half block away.  It had been green as I had crossed S. Broadway going east.  It wouldn't have made any difference if it had been red for I would have ignored it anyway.  My fear was more on what was behind me than what was in front of me.
     Driving east on E. Louisiana the traffic was light, not seeing any traffic for almost a mile as I approached Buchtel Blvd. where I could see the traffic light was against me.  Not slowing down as I had approached the intersection, I had slammed into the intersection just as another car was going through it.  If I hadn't hit my brakes when I did I would have hit him dead center.  By hitting my brakes I had been able to narrowly miss the car and pass closely behind it.
     Hitting my brakes just enough to allow the other car to clear the intersection but not so much as to cause me to lose control and spin-out.  At the speed I was going I hadn't tried to swerve the car.
     Clearing the intersection, I continued on east at a high rate of speed.  I knew back there, less than a block behind me, was a police car.  I didn't know how far for I was afraid to glance even momentarily up into the rear-view mirror taking my attention off of the road for I was driving way too fast for that.
     Somewhere between Buchtel Blvd. and University Blvd. they started shooting at me.  There is no mistaking the "Womp" of a gun when it is being fired at you.  When the first bullet had hit the car somewhere, my foot went all of the way to the floor.  If I had any intention in stopping before, which I didn't, I wasn't going to stop now.
     If I hadn't been traveling at top speed then this is were the chase really got fast.  For I opened the Buick up for all it was worth.  A few blocks later I went across University Blvd. as though it wasn't there.  If there had been a traffic light at University Blvd. I didn't see it for my mind was more on the bullets hitting the car than anything else.  To put it mildly, I was more afraid of being hit and killed by a bullet than I was of being killed in a car wreck.
     Continuing east on E. Louisiana at a speed in excess of eighty miles an hour, I slammed through one intersection after another not looking to the left nor to the right.  I was within two blocks of S. Steel before I realized E. Louisiana ended where it intersected with S. Steel.  Very little warning at the speed I was going.
     I had only enough time to slam on my brakes before I overshot the intersection.  When I had come to a complete stop I was in the intersection and facing south on S. Steel.
     Off to my right I could see the police car bearing down on me.  I had quickly restarted the engine and with a squeal of tires I headed south, once again with my foot holding the gas pedal all of the way to the floor.
     After I had turned south there had been no more shots fired at me but by now the police car was no more than a quarter of a block behind me.
     I don't know what speed the Buick could have been doing in the four blocks I traveled before I hit the intersection of S. Steel Street and E. Mexico Avenue but whatever it could possibly do I was doing it when I realized S. Steel ended at E. Mexico.  The first I had realized it was when I had entered the intersection and seen a four foot embankment on the other side of the intersection, with about a twenty degree slope upwards.
     The car had bottomed out as I hit the embankment and shot upwards.  As I cleared the top of the embankment the car was completely off of the ground and flying through the air.  As I arched up and then down I glanced in the rear-view mirror and seen the police car had been following me too close for it was also airborne with it's red light still flashing.
     The front end of the Buick dropped as the car arched downward.  Everything was happening very fast.  I could see the ground rushing up at me.  The car hit the ground on it's front bumper with such a force the hood of the Buick was torn off of the car and went flying only an instant before I was thrown to the right and under the dash to be pinned there by the seat when it had been torn loose from the floor.
     The next thing I remembered was one of the policemen dragging me out of the car, placing me by the left rear wheel and commenced beating me up, angrily saying something like, "You've just ruined a brand new police car."
     I had tried telling him I was hurt but he had kept on hitting me, only stopping when the other policeman ran up and pulled him off of me.  Yelling at him, I was only a kid.
     When they had gotten me up out of the land fill and placed me in the back of another police car for the trip to the hospital, I had looked around and seen police cars everywhere.  It looked like all of the police cars in Denver were there with their red lights flashing.
     I was examined at the hospital, my ribs were taped and a few cuts and bruises I didn't get in the wreck were tended to.
     Everything from the time the chase had started seemed to be in a blur.  It didn't seem possible that it was all happening to me.  I don't know what it was but all of my senses seemed to shut down and I withdrew into my own world.  I wouldn't talk to anyone not even to tell my name.  Maybe it was, I knew I was in a lot of trouble and I just didn't want to face it.
     The trip to the jail had been quiet.  Maybe the policemen had talked between themselves but I didn't hear them.  I know I didn't hear them say anything to me.
     Once I was in jail a boy told me he had been riding in another police car and had heard the chase over the radio.  He told me the police who were chasing me had asked several times for permission to shoot at me, each time being denied permission.  They must have gotten that permission after I had almost rammed the car at Buchtel Blvd. and the kid hadn't heard.