I was sent to the Federal Reform School for Boys at El Reno, Oklahoma to serve a two year term.  I would be twenty one years old when I got out.  To me that was very old.  I don't know if it was that day or shortly after that I decided I was never going to do anything that would cause me to be put in an institution again.
     Arriving at the reform school I was placed in orientation for thirty days.  During the orientation period I heard that this was one place I didn't want to be.  What the guards told me made me feel all of the other places I had been in were only primers for this place.
     Even though I was already scared about having to go to the dormitory, a guard had warned me, some of the boys would take a "new boy" coming into the dormitory and have blanket parties with him.  A blanket party is where several boys would throw a blanket over a boy's head and hold him down while other boys had sex with him.
     I had also been warned that some boys carried home made knives and if they got a chance would make a "new boy," especially young ones, have sex with them and I was one of the youngest there.  To make matters worse, I was light weight with fair complexion, all which made me look even younger than I was.  Even though I was now nineteen I hadn't even started shaving yet, where most boys my age had.  So it is easy to see I didn't want to go on campus when I had to and what frame of mind I was in when I did go, especially after the guard told me I looked like a prime candidate for those boys and I had better watch my hind-end.
     The dormitory I was sent to was divided into two sections, with the day room between the two dormitories.  The wall partitions between the two dormitories and the day room were made out of 8" by 10" glass window panes which went from about four feet off floor to all of the way to the ceiling.
     The first night I was in the dormitory I was laying on my bed reading when four boys came to the side of my bed and told me there was going to be a riot.  I was laying there and they were standing over me in a threatening manner.  Not too good of a position to defend one's self.
     "When the riot starts," one of them had said, "we want you to throw something though one of those windows."  Pointing to the glass partition between the dormitory and the day room.
     I didn't want to get involved in a riot.  "I don't have anything to throw."  I said hoping that would get me out of it.
     One of the boys said as he turned to a table beside him, "Here take this bottle of ink and throw it."  Picking up the bottle he handed it to me.
     Then he went on to say, "Everyone in both dormitories are going to be in on the riot."  Then adding as they walked away, "Wait until the other side starts throwing things first."
     I was sunk.  If I didn't throw something I could get into trouble with those boys.  If I threw something then I could get into trouble with the guards if they saw me.  I was scared, if I threw something and got caught I didn't know what the guards would do to me but if I didn't I was pretty sure what the boys would do.
     I was nervous as I sat there on the edge of my bed, with the bottle of ink in my hand, waiting, hoping the other side wouldn't start a riot.  From my bed I could look across the day room and into the other dormitory.  I could see they were getting up and ready to throw things.  Looking around my dormitory I seen the same preparations being made.
     I again turned my attention to the other dormitory from where I knew the signal would come to start the riot.  Watching, I saw the first boy raise his arm and throw, then another boy and then another.  I had become very hyper as I raised my arm and threw the bottle of ink.  The bottle had left my hand and flew through the window leaving a neat three inch hole in the glass window pane, then on into the day room where it hit the floor and broke, leaving a trail of ink across the floor.
     Then just as quick, the riot was over with.  No one from my side had thrown anything.  I was the only one.
     Five or six guards were there as though they had been standing outside of the building waiting.  They were all carrying night sticks in a threatening manner.  They had both dormitories form up in a circle in the day room.
     One guard, starting at one point of the circle, stopped in front of each boy.  With the end of his night stick at their throat under their chin, he asked, "Were you involved in this?"  Each boy had told him, "No."  If the guard didn't like the way the boy had said it or maybe it was just the look in the boy's eyes, he would tell the boy to stand by the door.  I was one of the last boys he stopped at.  When he had asked me, "Do you want part of this?"  I had replied, "No Sir," and he had walked on to the next boy.
     All of the boys who were told to stand by the door were taken out of the dormitory.  At the time I didn't know where they took them or what they were going to do to them.  I was only thankful I wasn't with them.
     Going back into my dormitory, I laid back down on my bed.  I was still pretty shaken up by what had happened.  I was laying there trying to calm down when the boys who had been at my bed before the riot, came back.  One of the boys had told me, "We want you to go and tell the guard you threw the bottle of ink through the window."  To convince me I had better do what he had told me he said, "If you don't we are going to have a blanket party with you."  The other boys were showing me they were backing him up in everything he was telling me.  One of the boys said, "Yeah, one of our friends from this side was blamed and taken out for what you did."  I didn't know what the guards would do to me but I had no doubt in my mind as to what these boys would do if I didn't do as they told me.  It made no difference that it was they who told me to throw the bottle.
     I got up from my bed and walked into the day room where the dormitory guard was sitting at a table.  Walking up to him, I said, "Sir, I'm the one that threw the ink bottle."  I been so scared I could hardly speak.  But I was sure whatever the guards did to me wouldn't be as bad as having those boys throw a blanket over me.  I knew if I was sexually attacked by any boy, the nest two years of my life wouldn't be worth living.  The guard hadn't said a word as he picked up the telephone.  Within a few minutes four guards were there.
     Two guards, one on each side of me, twisted my arms up behind my back and marched me out of the dormitory.  They took me to the main building.  Just inside of the main building we stopped in the hallway where I was told to take all of my clothes off.  I did as they had told me.  I stripped completely nude while the guards stood there and watched, smacking their hands with their night sticks.  Once I was naked they took me down the hallway where we turned a corner into another corridor.  As we turned into the corridor, my heart seemed to stop.  I felt as though I was about to faint.  Down the corridor were about ten guards, five standing along each wall, all with night sticks, slapping them in their hands. With about ten guards in front of me and four behind me, I thought, "Oh God, they're going to kill me."  I would have to walk between those in front of me and I thought they would club me as I did.  I was terrified.
    I didn't look at any of the guards in the face as I walked between them.  I kept my eyes to the floor for fear they would think I was being defiant.  Each step I took, I thought a blow from one of their night sticks would land on the back of my head.
     That had been one of the longest walks of my life.  Was I afraid?  I don't think if they had been taking me to be executed I could have been more afraid.  Right then, I didn't think I would live through the night.  Like a person walking to their execution, I knew there was no one there that would help me or stop what I felt was about to happen.  There was no one there to protect me.
     Some way I made it through them without one of them hitting me.  Making it past them without getting hit didn't relieve me any for I still didn't know where they were taking me or what they were going to do to me.  In the position I was in, I was having some very negative thoughts about my immediate future.
     We had made a couple of more turns in the corridor and they had me stop at a metal door with a small window in it with a metal door over it.  They unlocked the door and opening it told me to go in.
     As I was going in the light from the hallway shined into the room, I could see that there was a commode and a lavatory in the room and that was all.  There was nothing to sleep on except the cold floor.
     Then the door was closed behind me and locked.  When the door closed the room was dark, the only light that could be seen was that at the bottom of the door.  I had found out what the boys had called, "The Hole."  There were only three of these cells, I didn't know where they had taken the other boys, maybe to a cell block I was later to be in.
     This had been late March, it was cold outside and there had been no heat in the cell.  I didn't have any blankets or anything to bundle up in to keep warm.  All I could do for the next two weeks was to lay naked on the cold concrete floor and try to sleep.  During that period of time, the only time my door was open was to pass my meals to me, which consisted of bread and milk.  All I could do was to lay there day after day thinking.  Yes, like when I was twelve and thirteen years old back at the juvenile home, I did a lot of crying too.  I was hurting for there seemed to be no end to all of this.
     At the end of two weeks my door was unlocked and opened.  I was given a pair of coveralls to put on.  Then when I was dressed I was taken down a hallway where some other boys were sitting on chairs.  I was told to sit down and wait with the other boys until I was called.
     None of the boys said anything as we sat there.  We were sitting outside of some sort of hearing room.  The door was open and we could hear everything that was being said in the room but because of my hearing I couldn't understand what was being said.  I didn't know what the other boys were there for.  They could have been involved in the riot or for something else.
     When I was called into the room they told me to sit in a chair across the table in front of then where they could all see me.  The door I had came through was only a few feet behind me.
     "How do you like The Hole?"  One of the guards had asked me.
     "I don't Sir."  I replied as meekly as I could.
     "Well you had better tell us who the leader of the riot was or you might be spending some more time there."  Was another guards warning.
     I couldn't tell them even if I had wanted to for the boys sitting in the hallway would have heard me.  "Sir, I just got into the dormitory that day, I don't know anyone here."  That was true, I didn't know any of the boys in my dormitory.  I knew what the boys looked like that had told me to throw the bottle but I didn't know their names.
     "If you were only in the dormitory for a day and didn't know anyone there, why did you throw that bottle of ink?"  Asked one of the guards.
     I was squirming, I thought I would be going back to "The Hole" for another two weeks.  I said.  "I was laying on my bed when some boys came up to me and told me to throw the bottle." Then adding.  "I don't know who the boys were."  I had tried to talk as meekly as I could, I didn't want them to think I was being defiant in any way.  I knew if they thought that, I had nothing to gain and a lot to lose.  A lot to lose.
     Yes, I was squirming and very frighten for I thought I was on my way back to "The Hole."  In all of the institutions I had been in, I had never told on another boy.  Some boys had told on me at times but to me I never thought telling on boys was right.  I always felt there were three sides, the boys, them and me.  I felt if I had to pay the price of not telling, then I would pay it.  I would have gone back to "The Hole" knowing in my own mind what I had done was right.
     They had talked quietly among themselves for a few moments and then turning to me one of them said, "We think that maybe if you spent a little time in the cell block you will think twice the next time someone tells you to throw a bottle of ink."
     The cell block was made up of cells like the ones that are seen in movies, bars across the front of them.  There had only been one boy to each cell which I was thankful for.  We got regular meals and magazines to read.  So it wasn't so bad, I liked it there because I could be alone and didn't have to be around other boys.
     Only once did I have any problems in the cell block.  That was when the boy who delivered magazines to each cell stopped at my cell and said I looked like a "Sweet Boy" and that he wanted me when I got back on the compound.  I told him I wasn't a "Sweet Boy" and I didn't want anything to do with him.  He then told me, "Well it will be blood on my knife or shit on my dick."  As he grabbed a hold of the bars of my cell.
     The cell door was locked and I didn't feel threaten he could do anything right at that moment and I replied, "You might try that but I'll guarantee you one thing, you won't go away smiling when I am done with you.  I'll tear your head off." I had said, sounding just a tough as I could.
     I was thankful there were bars between us and I didn't have to prove what I had told him for I hadn't felt that brave or rough.  I was sort of scared but I didn't know any other way to handle it but head-on.
     It was a month after I had been put in the cell block I was allowed to return to my dormitory.  When I got there I was treated as some sort of a hero for not telling on anyone involved in the riot. I guess that sort of had a lot to do with how well things went for me after that.  That and the fact I was pretty quite and stayed mostly to myself.
     I was assigned to the plumbing shop per my request.  Here I was allowed to accumulate schooling and shop experience towards hours in a plumbing apprenticeship.
     Two of my most memorial experiences here happened in the plumbing shop.
     One time I had cut the heads off of several matches, then threading a nut about halfway on a three-quarter inch bolt I filled the nut with the match heads and then turned another bolt into the other half of the nut, trapping the match heads between the ends of the two bolts.  After carefully snubbing the two bolts together I threw them off of the balcony in the plumbing shop.  When they had hit the floor there was a terrific bang as it exploded.  One of the bolts hit a boy in the leg but didn't do any damage, thankfully.
     The noise had been so loud, it had even startled me and I knew it was going to happen.  No on else in the shop knew I was going to do it, so I can imagine what they felt and thought when it had exploded.
     I don't know but it might have been because I was always so quite my supervisor was very surprised when he found out who did it.  I was sort of feeling pretty sheepish, I wanted to laugh but I didn't think it was too good of an idea.  My supervisor hadn't thought too much about my stunt though but other than to tell me how dangerous it was to do and he expected better of me he didn't do anything else about it.  I know I had sort of felt bad about it after he had talked with me for he had made me feel I had let him down.
     I read a lot while I had been there, practically a library book a day.  Airplanes, submarines, all war stories.  I was a great one for quietly reading.  I guess someone would say it was a form of escape.
     There was one book I liked, it was "The Great Escape."  A book about digging a tunnel to escape from a W.W. II POW camp.  I had liked the book so much, I decided I would dig a tunnel and escape from the reform school.
     I decided to start the tunnel under a table in the plumbing shop.  I figured by cutting through the floor I could drop into the steam tunnel beneath the building and hide there until night when they  thought I had gotten away and quit looking for me.  The plumbing shop was in an industrial area of the institution that had gun towers and a fence but the towers were empty and all of the perimeter lights were off at night and I knew I could go over the fence then.  It wasn't that I wanted to run away but more like I wanted to prove I could do it.
     I could only work on the hole in the floor when no one else was around.  I didn't even trust the other boys as to what I was doing.  This all meant I had to be left in the plumbing shop alone, something I was able to arrange to happened about an hour or so, two or three times a week.  With a cold chisel and a heavy hammer I started chipping away at the floor under the storage table in the corner of the shop, in an area of the floor I knew was directly over the steam tunnel.  Each time I was done I would sweep up all of the concrete chips from the floor and put the a heavy metal plate back over my work.
     On about the forth day of my labors, after I had gouged out and area of about one square foot and almost two inches deep, my supervisor came in un-expectantly.   Even though I denied I was trying to escape he had a pretty good idea that was exactly what I was trying to do.  He didn't turn me in but he could have for attempted escape.  Again I guess I sort of let him down.  But he had done me a favor by catching me for I later found out the tunnel was one place they looked when a boy disappeared and also the perimeter lights were left on and the guard towers were manned throughout the night until the escaping boy was found.
     From there on my supervisor didn't leave me in the shop alone.  If he had to go somewhere and was not able to take me with him he would drop me off at the guard shack for the guard to watch.
      I guess I did "pull easy time" while I had been there.  I was quiet, stayed very much to my self.  I was respected by the boys who knew me.  I think there may have been a time or two they had protected me from other boys.  I know once when a couple of boys tried to "strong arm" me, there were about four boys standing right behind them, explaining how unhealthy it was for them to be bothering me.
     Strange, I have never been able to remember any of the boys' names or the names of any of the staff members that were there with me.  I guess what is even stranger, I can't remember anyone's names since I had left the juvenile home when I was fourteen years old.  Except for a few staff members names at the Iowa Training School for Boys and the boy I had my last fight with.  I guess after losing so much, so often, you sort of start blocking those things out.
     In September of my twenty-first year, I said good-by to my last institution.  It should have all ended there, or by now, was there really any chance of anything ever being right?