Oral History Program Sharon Kaye May Interviewed by Don Cavalli 01 September 1971 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Sharon Kaye May Interviewed by Don Cavalli 01 September 1971 Copyright © 2014 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in Special Collections. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: May, Sharon Kaye, an oral history by Don Cavalli, 01 September 1971, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Sharon Kaye May. The interview was conducted on September 1st, 1971, by Don Cavalli, in the Weber County Jail, Municipal Building, Ogden, Utah. Ms. May discusses her personal experiences with crime as well as her opinions on the criminal justice system in Utah. DC: Tell me a little bit about your family. SM: Well, I've got a brother that's 27, and my mother just got married about seven months ago. My father died about nine months ago. DC: Is that a second marriage for you? SM: No, that's my fourth. DC: I see. SM: She's a really nice person; we get along real good—more like sisters than mother and daughter. I don't know what to say about them. There's not much to say about them. They're nice people, but they have their problems s just like everybody else. DC: What kind of experiences did you have when you were young? Do you recall (_____) or anything? SM: Trouble or what? DC: Well, yah, trouble or just, you know. SM: OK, I can remember a lot of good times I had when I was fifteen. My girlfriend and I used to smoke grass or just mess around like that on the main drag. And me and her both had more boyfriends than we could handle, really. We had a lot of fun. One time 1 we got loaded on grass and went down to a place called Coochie Corners. And we started back and the car kept feeling like it was going up in the air, and I was behind a semi-truck and I decided I would fly over it. (Laughter) Oh, I got about eight feet from it and decided I couldn't. I remembered that a car can't fly. (Laughter) I stopped. DC: It's a good thing you remembered. SM: It's a good thing really. (Laughter) And she said, after that we was just about home, and she said we got a flat tire. I told her, "We don't have a flat tire, you're lying. So we went a little bit farther, and she kept saying we had a flat and I didn't believe her because the car felt like it was riding on air. So we stopped in a gas station anyway, and it was flat, just as flat as can be. Just flat-flat, and we filled it up with air and it seemed to hold it all right, and then my girlfriend said, "Put me down." And so we talked, and she said "Put me down," I said, "What's wrong with you," and she said, "Oh, I thought I was up on a lift. She had too many. She was really souped, (laughter). We were really gassed. You'd really have to be there to see how funny it was, you know, as a teenager, fourteen, before we moved to Sacramento (_____) as a (_____) and I never would stay home. My mom told me I couldn't go out, I'd go out just to spite her and be gone several days. That was me; then I straightened up after we moved out to Vacaville just before I moved to Sacramento. That's where my little brother died there. DC: What did he die of? SM: He drowned. We lived right close to an irrigation canal. DC: How old was he? 2 SM: Seven. And after that, I don't know, I guess I seen how bad it hurt mom, so to keep from causing her any more grief, I just kind of settled down a little bit. And I got married when I was sixteen. Divorced him when I was sixteen. DC: How long were you with him? SM: Six months, (laughter). DC: Did you get an annulment or just— SM: Well, an annulment. DC: I see. How old was he? SM: He was nineteen. DC: Nineteen. SM: And I found out after the annulment that I was pregnant. And so I had a little girl. And then I met another man and married him. Stayed married to him three years. And he was a dope addict and then an alcoholic. Back to dope addict and back to alcoholic. And in between this time we had another little girl. Then I left him, and divorced him. Then I met Ron. My husband now. DC: At the present time. SM: And then I married him, but I don't know, I just never got pregnant by him. (Laughter) Thank God, I've got two already. I came out here because— DC: He was out here and you came to him from California? SM: Yah. DC: I see. 3 SM: I was here, God, about four days when I met this other person that got me in trouble. The reason they got me in trouble was because the police were going to put them in jail if they didn't help. So they helped them by setting me up, and luckily I don't think they can convict me. But anyway, I was here about two months when they picked me up. And they charged me about four days after I was here. DC: So you had come from California to here and been here four days when you were picked up. SM: No, I was here about four days when this thing happened. DC: I see. You mean the charges that are pending against you. SM: Against me. DC: Oh, against you. SM: I was here four days. DC: OK, that's what I, I see. SM: Um-huh, and they picked me up two months later. So, I was here about two months all together. DC: I see, now. OK, now, what's, let's talk a little bit. Do you recall of any juvenile delinquency? Did you have any encounters with the system? When you were a juvenile? SM: Yah. DC: Well, can you, why don't you tell me about that. 4 SM: Well, when I was fourteen, like I told you, I was pretty mean. Well they picked me up for runaway, truancy, and uncontrollable. I was there for five days. DC: You were in the juvenile detention for five days. SM: Yah. DC: I see. SM: And then I about it and I ran away again, cause my mom had called the police and told them to put me in. So then, I run away again and they put me back in for two days. And that's why my mom moved to Vacaville, really, to get me out. That was the only way she could do it. So I was there just two days and they let me go. Other than that I don't have any record. DC: Now, every time it was because you were a run-away or incorrigible? SM: Yah. DC: And so forth. I see. OK, now tell me about juvenile detention. SM: Oh, they're pretty nice, really. They seemed to have, well where I was at, they seemed to have a tendency to think you were hardened criminals, so they would, they were kind of sassy to you and they would treat you like were criminals. But they never actually were really mean to you. You got good meals, and you slept with in the room with two other girls. And if you didn't like the room that you were in, you could move to a different room. And they were really nice. DC: What was the name of the detention home? SM: I don't know, it was in San Jose. I don't know the name of it. 5 DC: Did they have any recreational activities. SM: Yah. Yah. They had a recreation room and you could play cards. They had games and puzzles. Part of the time during the day you could go out in this little yard they had. They, if you wanted to, you could iron your clothes, and you could wash them, or iron them or whatever you wanted to do. You could do just about what you wanted to during the day. If you wanted to you could go back into your room and sleep. Couldn't smoke (laughter). Other than that it was all right. DC: What age did you start smoking? SM: When I was about fourteen, just barely. DC: Did you, aside from smoking a little bit of grass, what was your environment with liquor, you know, or drugs, or anything like that? SM: Well, before I came out here about two years ago, I took a lot of different things. Reds, oh I guess grass. Once I took speed, oh God, I never took it again (laughter). Oh, it was so terrible. DC: Tell me about it. SM: Well, it was all right, you know, the trip was fine, but like at eleven o'clock at night I really came on good, and I went in the bathroom, and I don't know why, but every time I took uppers I wanted to clean the bathroom, (laughter). So I started cleaning the bathroom, and I was really working hard on it, but, I mean, they could look in the mirror. I got hung up in the mirror, so I stood there from eleven o'clock at night until eight o'clock the next morning putting on eyeliner. That's all, just eyeliner, nothing else, (laughter) And I went to bed for an hour and got back up. And that whole day coming 6 down was terrible. I thought that everybody hated me, and I felt so unwanted, and I just sit and bawled, I set out in my car and bawled all day long, (laughter). DC: Was that the only bad trip you had? SM: Oh, yah, really. I'd taken mescaline, too, and that is really a good trip. I've heard people saying you (_____), but I never shot with (_____) because I was scared to. Scared that if I did I might mess myself up, or, you know, be too much of a thing, or I'd get hooked on the needle like a lot of my friends/ were. And so I never did that, but the trip on mescaline was really good, cause it was weird, but it was good. I was sitting out, like I was sitting out in the car with my boyfriend, and kept seeing car lights go by, but there weren't any cars, just the car lights. And my fence, the big brown fence that was there, wasn't brown, it was green, and I wondered why it was green. Thought that maybe somebody got out there and painted it while 1 wasn't looking, or something, (laughter). But it was, the next day it was brown. And, it gives a lot of colors. It was just nice. And when I came down, there was just no come-down to it, you know, just nothing. As far as drugs goes, when me and my husband, this last one, had been married about a month, we broke up for about a month, and I was pretty upset about it, and I started drinking. And I was going out with my husband's friend, and we used to go out, why at least once a day or once a night, a lot of times I'd buy vodka, Collins Mix, and Maraschino cherries and lime, and make vodka Collins, and I liked them pretty good, but I couldn't get drunk enough on Vodka Collins, so I started on Tequila Collins, and then I really got messed up (laughter). Oh, Christ, I thought I was just tag: going to die several times, but I never passed out, never good enough (laughter). Like one time, I don't remember what, what it was, it was a weekend, a holiday of something kind, taster I think, but anyway, I went 7 over to where my husband lived, and he wasn't there, so I got mad, because he knew I was going to be there, and I went over to his friend's house, so I started drinking there, at his friend's house, Then one other of his friend went out and got drunker than crazy, oh, we were crazy we were so drunk (laughter). And we came back, and on the way back we got some Tequila and some other mixes. Set and drank, and oh, I was so loaded, l couldn't stand up. And this almost wrecked our marriage, too, because, like I went to go to bed at his friend’s house, he had a two-bedroom place. And I went to bed, I remember going to bed and starting to go to sleep. I woke up the next morning and there was another man in bed with me (laughter). And I didn't even know the guy, (laughter). And I said, "Who are you?" and he told me, and I said, "What are you doing here?" He said, "I don't know." And so he got up and I got up and I didn't have any clothes on. I didn't notice this until I started to get out of bed, and then he was still in the room, and I decided I didn't want to get up , because I didn't have any clothes on, wait until he left so I could get them on. Oh, God, I never passed out, but I still, it was so fuzzy I don't exactly remember what happened. I must not, because don't remember him getting in bed with me (laughter). And he found out, my husband found out about that, and he bat got pretty mad about it, and about a week later we went back together. I guess he decided he couldn't trust me all by myself (laughter). DC: How long did you stay split up then? SM: About a month. DC: About a month. Now, you had, several, I mean, you've been high more times than just two or three, haven't you? SM: Oh, yah, I've been high— 8 DC: What other kind of experiences have you had while you, when you get high on drugs? SM: Oh, God, I never really went many places while I was high on drugs; I always tried to stay home, cause I was afraid, especially after smoking that grass and trying to fly over the semi, that, I was afraid I was going to get into a wreck and really get hurt, so I didn't really get out too much. Mostly, I'd take downers. One time I remember smoking grass and I was taking reds, me and my girlfriend. DC: Simultaneously? SM: Yah, all together at one time. And it was at my place, my mother was gone and my grandmother was there, but she was asleep, and me and my girlfriend and our two favorite boyfriends was there. And we got loaded on grass and we decided we was hungry. You really get hungry on grass. So we went down to Cooper's, not Cooper's, La Peru's, that's a drive-in, to get five hamburgers for a dollar. So we went home and ate those five and decided we wanted more, so we went back and got more, five more. We hadn't only ate about three of them, we couldn't eat no more, and we had this little dog, his name was Barney, and so my boyfriend started calling the dog over and telling him, "Here, Barney, here's a Barney-burger for you." And it's not really too funny, but it was so funny at the time, I thought I was going to die. And I already had one little girl then, and she had these little birds, like a mobile, and it was all broke up, the bird's she'd chewed on and stuff, so we had those birds, and he was calling those birds, Barneybirds. Everything was Barney this and Barney that, and I just thought I was going to die laughing. It was really funny. I don't, God, I can't stop on downers, reds, I think I took about five of them at one time. I get sleepy, and lay down, and I woke up and everybody was gone (laughter). 9 DC: How long were you out? SM: About fourteen hours (laughter). DC: Wow, well what was the primary reason why you would take drugs? I mean, were you having kicks or did you feel like you had problems you were— SM: No, I drank a lot when I was young, just because everybody else did, so drinking got boring and it tasted awful, so we started messing around with drugs because everybody else was doing it; not because it was kicks or anything, just because everybody else did it. DC: You really feel that was the only reason then? SM: Yah, well, cause if I'd thought it was really good or something, I'd probably still be on them. DC: Yah. SM: I got loaded, even up till the time I come out here, but maybe once or twice a month, maybe not even that much. DC: Do you ever feel that you were addicted to the other drugs, though? SM: No. Huh-uh. As far as I'm concerned, the only thing you can get addicted on is really hard stuff like heroin or cocaine or something like that. DC: You don't think that it's, that's speed's addicting? SM: No, I don't. Mentally it is, you want it, but you don’t have to have it. I mean, you don't withdraw or anything like that. DC: Have you ever gone through withdrawal on any drug? 10 SM: Oh, no, not except for that speed I took, you know, just a down feeling, that's all. I got sick once on grass, the first time I smoked it I teat got sick on it, because it felt like I had a seed in my throat or something; couldn't swallow it, and I just ate all the time. Guess I ate too much and got sick. DC: When did you start drinking alcohol? How old were you then? SM: Ummm—twenty-one. DC: You id didn't drink until you were twenty-one? SM: Oh, I drank when I was a kid, beer. DC: But not hard stuff. SM: Well, I did a couple times, but usually it was just beer. One time when I got drunk was at my girlfriend’s house. And her mother and her father's hard of hearing, and when they take hearing aids off, they can’t hear nothing (laughter). So when they'd go to bed, we'd have a party. You could get away with murder (laughter). So we got some beer, a case of beer, and there were six of us; me and my fiancé and my girlfriend and her boyfriend and her brother and his friend. And we was all there drinking beer, and there wasn't enough of it to go around, so they went down, my fiancé was twenty-one, and he went down and bought two great big, gigantic bottles of Crème de Menthe, and a bottle of whiskey, pint of why whiskey. Oh, her brother latched onto the whiskey, and so we latched onto one of the bottles of Crème de Menthe and went in her bedroom and closed the door and locked it, so nobody could get in. And we drank and we drank and we drank, I didn't pass out I don't think, I must not have, because I remember going to bed. But there was times in there I don't remember. But we woke up the next went 11 morning, and I woke up anyway at six-thirty, and I went into the bathroom vomited. Seven, eight, eight-thirty, probably nine o'clock, I decided to get up. There was Crème de Menthe on the walls. There was Crème de Menthe all over the nice white bedspread, there was Crème de Menthe all over the sheets, the blankets, the pillow cases, all over me, all over her. My hair was all sticky, it was just full of it. She was the same way, and she had, we didn't take time to on our nightgowns, just had our underclothes on. They were soaked in it. And that stuff just doesn't come out. They had to dye the bedspread and paint the walls. That was terrible (laughter). DC: Kind of an expensive night, wasn't it! Expensive drunk! SM: I've never been more sick in my life. I was so sick, oh. DC: Let's talk a little bit about, if you don't mind, you know, if there's, that you decide that you don't want to talk about, you know, shoot, don't, forget it. But you said you'd been married three times, and the one person you said you were married to, you said he addicted to drugs and then he went back to alcohol, and so forth. Can you tell me a little bit about some of the experiences you had with him? SM: Yah, sure. When I met him he was on drugs, and he had taken heroin and he was addicted to it. But he'd take speed and other things when he didn't have heroin. It was kind of hard to get at the time. So, anyway, I told him that he would either have to stop taking the drugs, or I would leave him. And we weren't married yet at this time. So then he stopped taking drugs, but he started drinking alcohol to fill in so he wouldn't get sick. He did anyway, but, to help him, so he a said. Well, he started drinking and he wouldn't quit. So I told him the same thing, he was going to have to stop taking, I mean drinking, or I’m leaving. So he started taking drugs again. Well, I don't know what had happened 12 to him, but somehow the drugs didn't react the same way they did before. Like he took speed one time, and he was up for three days, and he kept taking it to keep up. And when one night I lived, we lived in a court, like, and right across from us was this other house, my friend's, and his friend's house. So, one night I was sitting there watching TV, and he was over there, and she came over and she said, "You better come get your husband, he's cut his wrist." And I thought, oh shit. So I went over there and he had cut his wrist with a glass; he broke the glass and cut his wrist. DC: Accidentally? SM: No! He did it on purpose. And I said, "Why did you cut your wrist you stupid fool?" And he said, "Well, there's people out there and they're trying to shoot me." And he really was paranoid; he was so scared that there was people out there going to shoot him. And so he said that he cut his wrists so that is they thought he was going to die they'd go away and leave him alone. It was so stupid, but well, it's terrible. And just before I left him he was on booze again. And while he'd come home—he never hit me and he'd never hit the kids when he was drunk— but he'd make it really miserable cause he'd wake the kids up and one time he lay down on and get them up and stuff, and we'd, then he'd, and one time he lay down on one of my little girls, passed out on her, you know, and she was laying there screaming and everything, and then blame it on me and be cross with ne. He was, it was just sickening the way he was. I told him to quit drinking or I'd leave him, but he didn't, so I did. I left him about three times, really, but the last time I left him for good. DC: How long did you stick it out with him? SM: Three years. 13 DC: Well, now, how did he support his heroin addiction? SM: He was a pool player, very good. He was a really, really good pool player, and he could win just about anybody, and they'd play for money, and that's how he got his money for drugs. The last year that I was with him, he wouldn't work, and we were on welfare. And he'd take the welfare checks to drink on. And I didn't find out until after I'd left him that he was running around with other women, too. While he'd been gone for three or four days at a time, I never suspected him, of all people (laughter). But he was, I found out later. And I met his girlfriends. That's the reason I left my first husband—he was never home and he was always with other women. He never drank, he never took dope, but he was always with other women. And right after I had it annulled, and after I'd had the baby, he'd come over—just right afterwards—and bring his girlfriends over. And oh, that made me mad: DC: I can imagine. SM: And then he tried to get me to come back with him, after he stole my little girl. He stole her and I got her back through the court. DC: He kidnapped her and (_____)? SM: And I got her back through legal channels. I didn't go back and take her back then, I went and got a court order and got permanent full custody of her. DC: Was he ever charged? SM: No. DC: He was never charged. 14 SM: Because I was married to him that was the legal father that they can do nothing. I don't know if they could or not, but they never did. So, after he stole her, I guess he decided the only way he was going to get her was if he was with me. So he tried to get me back and I wouldn't go back to him. I knew that he would do the same thing that he did before. So I didn't go back to him. He was good about not drinking and taking dope, but he never would work. DC: Is he also on welfare? SM: Yah. Well, as a form of welfare. It wasn't really welfare, it was (_____). He works two or three days a week. DC: I see, that's the better form. SM: Yah (laughter). (_____) not to, and when I finally left him he took the whole welfare check and spent it on his girlfriends and his car. DC: And how did you manage during this time. Apparently both did of your first two husbands spent their welfare checks booze. SM: My mother. DC: (_____). SM: My mother. Mother was always there when I needed her. She was really good about it. She hated both of my husbands. She doesn't hate this one now, but she hated my first two. DC: How old was your second husband when you first married him? SM: Twenty-seven. 15 DC: Twenty-seven; you were— SM: Nineteen. DC: Nineteen. Do you recall any other experiences with your first two husbands that might be of interest? SM: They were pretty dull people (laughter). Oh, they were. Oh-oh, God. DC: (_____) for you, having husbands that drank, and at least the one did, and chasing other women. SM: I thought I was going to go crazy a lot of the time, but evidently I've got a pretty sound mind, cause I'm still here. But it was rough; I really thought I was going to go crazy at times. They were no good. I don't know why I got mixed up with them. Both of them were very, very good looking. And they both knew they were very, very good looking. And, that's what made them, I guess, run around. They knew they could do it. And I guess they thought they wouldn't get caught. DC: Did you over, were you ever employed, have you been employed during your life? SM: Yah, umm, California, right after I turned twenty-one, I worked in beer bars, mostly. I worked in a restaurant here one day, one night, but I couldn’t the pace. DC: (_____). SM: But I worked, let's see, I worked one place, one night. One other place for two nights, and then I went to work and worked for a month, and that's when I came out here. Other than that I haven't worked at all. I worked as a babysitter when I was younger, all girls did, though, I guess (_____). But other than that I never did work. 16 DC: They didn't pay fifty cents in those days, though, did they? SM: I didn't charge fifty cents, (laughter) I charged sixty-five. I was expensive (laughter). DC: You must have been, wow! Because you usually pay about fifty cents now. SM: No, no, they charge a dollar an hour back in California. DC: Is that right? SM: They do. DC: I believe it in California. SM: Seventy-five cents to, well, if they're registered, or something, they have this kind of a program out there. It's a registered child, for child care, they charge about a dollar an hour. If they're not, seventy-five cents an hour. Here you can get them for forty and fifty cents an hour. DC: Well, that seems expensive. SM: Yah. DC: Well, how often, how regularly did you use drugs? SM: When I was really taking them? DC: Yah, when you were really taking them. SM: About once a week, maybe every once every two weeks, something like that. I never really took them heavy. DC: Is it expensive, as, even that kind of, not really a habit, but to support that kind of a— SM: I never paid anything for it. 17 DC: I see, was everything you got free? SM: I always got it free. I was— DC: Who'd you get it free from? SM: God I don't know, just friends, they have some, they'd give us some. DC: How easy was it to obtain drugs? SM: Real easy. DC: Did you have to be in with a certain group, or could you just— SM: Yah. You just about had to be with people that knew where to get it. There's a lot of places even if you really looked for it you couldn't find it. But, like you were just with friends that took dope, you could, you know, you could get it. DC: Well, comparing Utah and California. SM: To drugs? DC: Yah. SM: There's a lot more here. There's a lot more of it here, but they don't I mean, the X laws J are really worse here. I mean they really get out there and they find them, and the people that are doing it. In California, it's not so bad. DC: Pretty loose, huh? SM: Yah. You can do it without much chance of getting caught. But here, God, you don't do anything and you got caught (laughter). DC: Well, now, long have you been here now, did you say four months? 18 SM: No, I haven't been here four months. I've been here, well almost four months, I guess now. Pretty close to four months. DC: I see. Of course, that doesn't, you haven't had too much of a chance to really see what the drug scene is like, maybe, but, what's most prevalent, I mean, what, you know, what's, what are the guy, the kids using? SM: Speed. DC: Speed. SM: Speed and smack, heroin. But mostly speed. DC: Course you don't have your (_____), you can sniff it, you can eat it, SM: I don't know that you can eat it, or not. I imagine you can, but mostly they just shoot it. DC: You can eat it, but you know, you get a better trip if, you know, if you shoot it or if, you know, if you snuff. SM: I've never taken heroin, so I don't really know. But I was scared just, you know, like of the needle. I didn't want to get hooked on the needle and I don't want to get hooked on that heroin. Too expensive. (_____). DC: Now I don't blame you, it's scary. When you sit here and talk to some heroin addicts, like I have, you just, you know, you just thank the good Lord that you don't use drugs, that you use heroin. Especially, I mean, I think every one of them would very gladly give it up, and yet a lot of them, you know, misery likes company, and if they can get someone to go along with them and get them hooked, then they feel, you know, feel better again. It's like, you know, everybody else is doing it, why shouldn't I? 19 SM: Yah. There's a girl in here right now that doesn't want to stop. She's not on heroin, she's on speed, and she came in, oh God, she had sores all over, all over her face, all over her body, everywhere. These little sores, burns, I guess from speed. Too much, not enough vitamins and stuff. But she was really, and her skin is just so yellow and God. She told me her (_____) was crystallized, so she was really, and he doesn't want to stop! She's, oh God, I, if I looked like that, if I had ruined my face and my body like that, I'd quit. DC: You know you, of course I guess you realize that she probably doesn’t care about herself, or else she wouldn't— SM: Evidently she doesn't. If she did, she wouldn't do that. DC: Of course not. SM: She's got scars, you know, from those sores. So many times they've been sores on top of sores. DC: It's like acne? SM: Yah. DC: Scars like that. SM: Worse, I think. DC: That's too bad. How old is she? SM: She's twenty-two; the same age as I am. DC: (_____). Actually, most all the girls back here are about twenty-two, twenty-three, aren't they? 20 SM: Oh— DC: I mean, a couple of older ones, but most of them are. SM: A girl called Hawaiian, I don't know if you interviewed her or not, she's, oh she's really a heavy taker. She's only nineteen, eighteen, nineteen, I think. DC: What's her name, you know, the one I first met? SM: Francine. They call, I don't know her last name, but they call her Hawaiian, because she's half Hawaiian. She's not messed, I mean her face and her body's not all messed up with sores, but on her legs, they're messed up. You know how you get these varicose veins? DC: Right, right. SM: She’s, she's got these little lines all through her legs like she's got varicose veins, but they're from shooting. DC: Oh, yah. I guess those collapse easily, you know, prominent veins SM: (_____) and stuff. DC: Oh boy. You know it's sad. Well new, aside from those two experiences you had in juvenile detention, have you ever been in juvenile detention? SM: Not juvenile detention. DC: (_____). SM: Was in jail. DC: Ok, now how many times have you been incarcerated in jail? 21 SM: All together? (_____). DC: Yah. SM: In jail, not detention. DC: No, not juvenile detention, just jail. SM: Three times. DC: Three times. Now where were the other two? SM: California. DC: California. SM: Sacramento. DC: Ok, -what, do you -want to relate to me what happened? SM: Yah, I was eighteen, and I got picked up for petty theft. I stole some make-up out of a store. And then they put me on three years’ probation for it, and then I met this other man. I went to Iowa and come back, and they reported me again because, you know, I knew they would put me in jail again for violation of probation. So, when I met my husband, the one now, this other one come over and he wanted, he was drunk, and he wanted his daughter. Well, I wasn't about to let him have his daughter, especially in his condition, and I wouldn't anyway. But, anyway, he was going to kill me, and he was going to kill my kids, and he was going to kill my husband, I hadn't married him yet though, my husband. And he was going to kill all of us, and himself, too, and he usually got like that, you know, saying he's going to kill us, me and the kids and himself, and stuff, so, anyway, he and my husband went out into the backyard to fight. And my 22 husband didn't want to fight him because he had broke his leg, not my husband, but my ex-husband, and he didn't feel that he should fight a cripple. But he said if you, that he had just pushed him a little too far. So they went out in the backyard, and I called the police. Police came down, and they picked up my ex-husband, they didn't put him in jail right then, I was trying to get them to put him in jail, and they didn't want to. Cause he worked with the narcotic agents in that town. And, so anyway, I finally said, "Well, just take him home; get him out of here; I don't want him around." So, he said, "You called the police on me and I'm going to tell on you." So he told them that they had a warrant out for my arrest, for that. So then— DC: Probation violation? SM: Yah, yah. So, I just said, "I'm going to make a citizens’ arrest for disturbing the peace." So they put him in jail for disturbing the peace and me in jail for probation violation (laughter). So, they let me out the next day and I went back to court and they just said, "Time served." You know. I just spent the night there. DC: So you just had an overnight stay? What was it like? Was it just like, like when you were kept in the lock-up? SM: NO. Its lock-up there. They have a hall, and all these rooms in the hall, you know, but they don't close the doors. Except once in a while, like they do here. But there you're in a big cell though; it's huge. A great big cell, and there's six, seven, eight, there's ten, ten bunks in each one. DC: Ten bunks. 23 SM: Uh-huh. And the food is worse, well, no, it's* not worse, the food was better, but the coffee was worse. And they didn't even, the matrons never even came back in there. They just left you there. Like here, they do at least come back once in a while, if you need something, if they feel like giving it to you (laughter). DC: Well do you, if you were comparing the two jails, you know, which of the two would you prefer? SM: This one. DC: This one. SM: This one. Cause we can, at least, like learn making a poncho, crocheting a poncho. There you couldn't. You know, you didn't have nothing to do, read or smoke cigarettes or talk, and some of them, those were hardened criminals. Not really hardened criminals, they were pretty rough people though, they were prostitutes, they were in there for beating people up, or beating men up, you know, that wouldn't pay them, (laughter), or something. And, oh God, there was really some winos and some, usually they were pretty quiet, but they got beat up sometime by the prostitutes, (laughter) DC: That happens, (laughter) As a matter of fact. Now, did, Ok, that was the second, no, the first time you were in jail, in an adult A jail. Now what about the second time? SM: That was the first and second. Petty theft and then violation of probation. DC: Oh, I see, Ok. And how long did you spend the second time? SM: The first time. Overnight the second time. I stayed two days the first time. 24 DC: Two days the first time. Ok, now this is something you might not know anything about, and if you don't, then fine, but maybe you've also, you know, heard about it, maybe you could, you know, talk a little bit about it, and it's prostitution. SM: I know a little bit, not a whole lot. DC: Shoot at me what you know about it; see if you can teach me, you know (laughter) SM: Well, there's usually the men, the pimp men ( ) and of course that's their ( ) too. But the girls are, they're good, they seem to be pretty nice girls, some of them. As far as you know, you get to know them, you can be friends with them even. But they're perverted, sexual perverted, cause they'll do anything for money, just anything. DC: What do you mean anything? SM: Well, anything you want to do, if it's perverted or not, they'll do it. Like being sadistic, or something like that. They don't mind that; in fact they seem to enjoy it. Just like they were that way, or something, and well, like my brother was living with a prostitute one time, and she was, oh God, she wanted, she wanted to go to bed with him five and six times a day. DC: Holy mackerel! SM: And he said, "Maybe I can handle it once or twice," he says, "but four and five times, that's just too much!" (Laughter) Well, I've had my days like that too, I, God, every day the same thing, oh, he finally got tired, you know, (laughter). DC: I don't think too many men could take that, (laughter). That's why they would have to turn into either a prostitute or a whore, because, you know, now man — Yah, nymphomaniacs is what they are, sure. Over sexed. 25 SM: My boyfriend, after I broke up with him, now, my husband's friend, him and my brother went to Reno, and they won eight hundred dollars at the dice table. And then they went to Lake Tahoe and picked up a couple of girlfriends and rented a motel, or hotel, room. So they all got drunk, and he said that was the most expensive piece of ass he's ever got (laughter). Because he woke up the next morning—eight hundred dollars was gone, (laughter). DC: Oh, no! Oh, man! SM: Four hundred dollars apiece, can you imagine that (laughter)? I might even turn into a prostitute for that kind of money, myself, (laughter). DC: That's not bad, (laughter). SM: God, (laughter). There's one girl up here that was a prostitute. She's in here for murder. They put her back in Salt Lake. But she was living with a colored guy, and she used to talk about fee the men, how used many men he// bring up there, and what kind of men he used to bring up there. And it's usually older men that can't get it any other way. DC: Can't go out and chase it down. SM: No, just too old, (laughter). I got propositioned by one old man one time, he was about eight years old; he must have been all of eighty. And, oh God, kept at me and kept at me, so finally I told him, "It'd take you so long to get it on," I said, "By the time you did get it on you'd be so tired you couldn't do anything, anyway." (Laughter) I didn't, I don't like to be rude, but he just wouldn't leave me alone. DC: Yah. SM: God. 26 DC: Well, was it Chris that was the prostitute? SM: Huh-uh. It was Diane. DC: Oh, Diane. Ok, now, did Diane talk about any of her experiences? SM: Sure. DC: Did she? SM: That was the big thing in the jail. Everybody called her "Shirt." And somebody’d say something stupid, and they would say, "If you don't shut up, we're going to stuff, we're going to have Shirt stuff a shirt in your mouth. And that was what happened to the man, you know, that died. That they killed. DC: Oh, that she was involved with. SM: Yah. DC: Down in Salt Lake, they— SM: Yah, I don't think she really did it. Well, she said she didn't, and excuse me, she said she was there, but there was a shirt stuffed in his mouth. DC: Oh. SM: And that was (laughter). DC: That's why you kidded her. SM: Yah. And she really, you know, acted like it didn't even bother her. She went along with it. But she, she said that she went to bed with mostly older men, colored men. Was she black, or— 27 DC: She was white. SM: Caucasian. DC: She was Caucasian. SM: She didn't have too bad a build, and she didn't really look that bad looking, you know, but she bleached her hair so many times, it was all split, you know, and frizzy, it was really bad. DC: Well, did she— SM: And she was, she looked like a prostitute, (laughter). DC: Is that right? SM: Really. I don't know, that's just about all I know about prostitution, I guess. DC: She didn't talk about any experiences she had with— SM: My, oh, my husband, my second husband, the drug addict and the— DC: Alcoholic. SM: Alcoholic. DC: Right. SM: Was a male prostitute, (laughter). Before I married him. DC: You're putting me on! SM: No, no, he was, (laughter). He was a male; women paid him. DC: I'll be darned. 28 SM: He lived with a forty-five year old woman for two months, I think, and she bought him a brand-new car, and gave him all the money he wanted. You know, he was expensive, (laughter). DC: Wow! SM: Oh, God. And he told me I'd c never leave him, because he was so good that in bed/l couldn't get nobody else, (laughter). DC: Was he that good? SM: He was good, he was, he was really good. But my husband now's a lot better, he was almost a virgin when I married him, (laughter). He was; he'd only went to bed, I think, with four girls, and maybe once or twice with all of them, with all four of them. So he didn't have much experience, but he was really good. The best I've come across so far, (laughter). DC: Ok, now, is there, now you've been in jail then twice for those two things you mentioned. Now, you've been in juvenile detention, about two or three times. SM: Two times. DC: Two times. Ok, now this is the first time you've been in Weber County Jail, is that right? SM: This is the first time I've ever had anything serious against me. DC: How long have you been in up here? SM: Almost two months. DC: Almost two months. Now, have they had your trial yet? SM: Yah, I've been for one charge; I've got another charge in Davis County. 29 DC: I see. SM: And I went to Court here, preliminary and sentencing twice, and the Probation Officer I had died before he could make out a report, Mr. Kerr, then and so I went to Court again and they said three months but then they are going to review it after they find out what is going to happen in Davis County. My lawyer says they will probably just drop charges because the men who were supposed to testify against me, they are prosecuting them now and I don't think he's going to testify and so they will probably drop the charges there and let me go here when they review it. DC: Now, you served two months here, is that a hard time or/does it count as time toward your three months? SM: Yeah, but I've spent a month and a half before they even started counting my time, see more than that, the first of the month my time started. {Pause in interview} DC: Let's take up where we left off a few minutes ago. What were we talking about (laughter from both)? O.K. now I know you have had visual interesting experiences that you haven't told me about, right? SM: With my life? DC: With your life, right. Now think real hard and reminisce a little bit, and just take a couple of seconds SM: It's going to be very personal. DC: No, just anything you want to talk about, just anything at all. 30 SM: I'm a very shy person and I get around people I try to hide my being bit of something, shy so I talk very blunt so if I get a little too personal just stop me. DC: O.K. SM: Now, I can't think of anything to say, God. Well, I'm a bad girl, a very bad little girl. I like, I'm almost—they call me man crazy up here. I'm almost a nymphomaniac, almost not quite. I can't take it four or five times a day, either but one time we got up in the morning and it was pretty hot, hadn't turned the cooler on or nothing that night because it was cool at night so anyway it was about noon we got up and turned the cooler on and me and my husband, we weren't married yet, we went into the bathroom and took a bath, both of us and he washed me and I washed him and one thing led to another and we went into the bedroom soaking wet and right after that we went back and took another bath. We spent the whole day in the bed and the bathtub (laughter from both). The whole day. DC: How many times? SM: Five times in the bathtub and four times in bed (laughter from both), not counting when we first woke up. DC: Now how long had you been married before that? What I should have said was how old were you then? You were married, of course, at 16 the first time. SM: I was 21. DC: You were 21, so actually you had had a lot of experience, relationships, sexual relationships with your other husband and so forth so what I am try to say is (interrupted by SM). 31 SM: I've had more than I can remember. DC: Is that right? SM: Yea. DC: Tell me, of course I'm not— SM: Especially, if you will excuse me for interrupting you, especially between my first and second husband, especially. I went to bed with a lot of men, I would know them for a week or so and I'd go to bed with them. One I had to work on for two months, (laughter) really. I worked on him for two months before I could get him in bed and then I had to get him drunk. DC: It sounds like something conniving men would do, get a girl drunk, you know… SM: Well, it was the other way around, he had just gotten over a marriage that ended quite badly and he was pretty shy of women, he was shy any- way anyway, he was afraid of women so my girlfriends had told me this and before I had met him or after 1 had met him or just barely and after his friends had told me about him that he was very shy, 8nd told me he hadn't went out with a girl in I don't know how long and told me that he wouldn't go to bed with a woman if you paid him so I decided there was a challenge and I worked on him for two months and I got him drunk about ten times and finally I was on my period and I got him drunk and he wanted to do it and I didn't because I was on my period (laughter from both) so I was just seeing how far could get him though and he finally would have if I hadn't been on my period so I really did ah, that was mean of me, I shouldn't have, that was awful mean of me, I know that but I did anyway so then I got him drunk right after that and we did it, well, we weren't in the bedroom we were out by 32 the river in his car, station wagon. He always had such a big front, he'd have a mattress in the back, you know… DC: Thinking that's the way to put the show on in the (_____), just the opposite. Well how many, how long do your relationships usually last? SM: With men? DC: Um huh. SM: Not very long. DC: Usually short? SM: I got tired of them, you know, pretty easy —I don't know, I'm just looking for something, I guess. Never found it in the men, I’ve found something wrong, Virgo, Virgo's always seem to find something wrong with people. Like I noticed the grey in your hair (laughter from both). And I always find fault in people even if they are just little things and know for after I get to them a while I know something else I'd leave them or tell them to get lost of something but very politely because I don't like to hurt people, usually I'd do something make them so mad they'd leave me. DC: Oh. SM: Because I didn't want to hurt them. DC: When did you have, if I'm not getting too personal, when did you have your first relationship? How old were you? SM: Sixteen. DC: You were sixteen. 33 SM: It was when I got married. DC: So then you didn't actually, prior to being sixteen, have any real problem with it then. SM: Yah, I had a, yah I did. I wasn't a virgin when I got married; I was raped when I was fourteen. But it was something I wanted to forget about. It was like, like I went out with this one guy. I thought I knew him, but evidently I didn't. He took me out, and he took me out in the orchard, and there was about twenty-five guys there. And like a freight train, you know, one right after another. And that turned me strictly against sex. DC: I would imagine. SM: So then when I got married at sixteen, I wouldn't let him touch me (laughter). Oh, I was married a month before I did. DC: Before he, before you— SM: Yah, oh I went to bed, but I wouldn’t let him touch me though. DC: Is that right? SM: That's right, and then after that I got to where I liked it, (laughter). And then after I got divorced from him, or we got it annulled, that was one that was a big thing; it was something new. And I wanted to experiment a little bit with it, just like I did with drugs. I experimented with drugs and sex at the same time. DC: Did one pursuit take you to the other, in other words, when you were using drugs, was it easier to get involved with sex? SM: No, it was just better, (laughter). You never really, like on grass, you can do it for hours and hours, and you never get tired. It's really nice. On reds, its 34 DC: You can do for Hours and hours? SM: Just hours, well, I went to bed with one guy, he was on grass too, I went to bed with him for two hours, and we got tired, not really tired, just frustrated more or less, and when we stopped and had a cigarette, we went back and there was three hours more, (laughter). Because you can't concentrate, you know, and pretty soon you think about something else, and here you are making love and you're thinking about something else, (laughter). Oh, God, That's just like mescaline too, I was making love on mescaline and it was, oh, I was just peaking on mescaline, and it was just colors everywhere exploding. And (_____) we started having sex and it was like one continuous climax; it was fabulous, I never reached the complete climax, but it was like one the whole way through. DC: I'll be darned. SM: And then he got a climax, and he said it was fabulous, the most wonderful thing he could have ever had in his life. He said that— DC: Was he also on mescaline? SM: Um-huh. DC: I see. SM: And he said that the scene, you know like your mind wanders you know, when you're on mescaline too, and he said he was imagining himself in a big castle, and when he got his climax it changed and colors exploded everywhere. It was like, like the colors would light up the whole room, and they would explode, and it was just fantastic he said. 35 DC: Now did you feel, did you feel that your relationship then with other, you know, with men, was different when you were on drugs than when you were not on them? SM: Oh yah, it was. DC: You enjoyed it a lot more and— SM: Certain, certain drugs. I didn't like it on speed at all. DC: Did you ever feel, did you ever have any inhibitions when you had relationships with other men? Did you, did you ever feel like you were abnormal because you enjoyed sex so much? SM: Yah, I did. I worried about myself. After, after I got married to my second husband, I didn't worry about it. Because I didn't want it to seem like more than any other, that anybody else did. So I didn't worry about myself anymore; but I did worry about myself for a while. While I was on drugs or something like that, I didn’t worry about it, I didn't care. Really. Usually I took downers, though, and I really enjoyed it. DC: When you, when you took drugs, and when you were in the presence of a male, was it, I mean was it easy to get involved? Easier than normal? SM: No, I don't think so. DC: You don't, you don't really think the drugs had anything to do— SM: I never took, I never took drugs with anybody that I didn't know real well, and that I wouldn't go to bed with anyway. DC: I see. 36 SM: And then, I don't know, alcohol's the same way. At least I didn't remember any other, (laughter). The time I got in bed with a guy, I don't know who might have been there before I got in bed or who might have got in there after I went to sleep, but I don't remember any of them being there. DC: Wishful thinking, (laughter). SM: I went, oh God, I thought maybe he was colored (laughter). Jesus Christ, because I was just waking up, but he was, God what was how he, Israel, Israelite, or whatever they are. From Israel, and he was really dark complected. DC: Yah, (laughter), I'll be darned. SM: That's one thing I never would do is go to bed with a colored man. DC: You never have— SM: I never have. DC: Associated with the other races, then. SM: No. And I've never went to bed with anybody dark complected, either. I don't think, I don't know if I did anything that night or not. I don't remember, but I don't think I did. DC: How do you think, Sharon, how do you think that experience you had when you were fourteen, is that when you had the experience when you were raped? SM: Yah. DC: How, how has that affected your life? Honestly, how has, how has it affected, how do you— 37 SM: Until my, until I got married, and had sex and started to enjoy it, it affected me a great deal. I was scared to death of men, you know, I might, I'd like to go out with me, I'd like to sit and kiss and kiss and make out with them, you know, but I wouldn't, I never wanted a man to touch me, anywhere. DC: Hmmm. SM: Until I got married. And then I was scared to death of it even then, but I knew that that was what being married wanted, things that made marriage, and I knew that I had to or else lose my husband. So I did, and I enjoyed it. DC: But you still lost him, right? SM: Yah, but he never went out with another woman until he was supposed to go in the service and I went back to, I went back to my mother. And lived with my mother. And he never went in no service, and he started messing around when he was living with his mother. And when he got back to me, he kept messing around. I don't know any boys around here, and that's rough, because when I get out. DC: I was going to say, you're going to be out probably in about probably, oh, in about, oh, what, oh, in about a month and a half, two months— SM: Oh, I'll be out before that. DC: Before that. SM: Probably about the 23rd or 24th. DC: When do you know for certain when you're going to be released? SM: When I go to the preliminary in Davis County. 38 DC: When is that, when is that apt to take place? SM: Seventeenth. DC: The seventeenth. SM: And they'll probably review my case in aw week. DC: You probably will then be placed on probation, I would assume. SM: Um-huh. But then he said I'd have to leave the state. DC: You'd have to leave the state. SM: I think what I'll do is go to Virginia. I've got a boyfriend there. And we'll probably drive back to California with him. It's going to be cold out there, I know, but I have girls, girlfriends going, also, one I met up here—the one that's always saying those things. And she's going to Missouri, and she said she might even take me up to Virginia. And if I don't go with her, I'm going to have to hitchhike back to California. And I don't want to hitchhike alone. I hitchhiked out here once with a guy. Well, the guy that’s in Virginia. But I don't want to have to hitchhike by myself. So, I'll go, I thought I'd go there with her, since she's going out there, and— DC: Now why do you have to leave the state? Is that because of the problem your husband was in? SM: Really, I think the whole thing is because of my husband. I think they're trying to get rid of me, because I've caused them trouble, for them. DC: What kind of trouble? 39 SM: Like one time he wanted to go to the doctor; they wouldn't do it for him, so I kind of made a little bit of trouble, you know, raised a little bit of hell here and there, and they took him. Like, I'm always bugging Mr. Moss to have a personal visit with him. And, I'm always bugging the police down there, really, I'm always doing something. I'm mischievous and ornery all the time. DC: Well you haven't been for this interview, I'm surprised. You've been very congenial. SM: I'm a nice girl when it comes to (____) (laughter). Especially talking to you. I used to talk to the jailer and the guy on dispatch for an hour afterwards, after I'd see my husband. It was fun. One of them I told, he was really cute, he was a little German guy, blond hair and blue eyes, he was really cute, and he was on dispatch, and I'd been reading these witchcraft books, and I told him I was going to put a spell on him, and seduce him (laughter). And he told me that if he wasn't on duty, he'd take me home and let me try to seduce him. (Laughter) he was really cute. DC: I know quite a few of them out there, but I don't know all of them. SM: Do you know (_____), the blond? DC: No. Un-un. SM: Do you know Gary? DC: Yah. SM: Taylor? I used to talk to him all the time. DC: I know Brad Johnson real well. SM: Brad Johnson.... 40 DC: He's the chief deputy. Real tall, good looking guy, about 6'3, I guess. SM: Don't say that (laughter). Mr. Ross is good looking, oh God, tall, dark and handsome, with deep blue eyes. DC: I don't know, I (_____) (laughter) (_____) too much attention, (laughter). SM: No, I don't guess you would, (laughter) I do. DC: Tell me, ok, tell me, can you tell me anything else, that we haven’t covered. Now, there are occasionally reports, let me ask you anyway, you probably don't know much about it. Now, I asked you about prostitution. SM: I don't know too much. DC: You don't know much about that, but I am very interested in that, by the way. I haven't asked you about homosexuality. SM: My brother is. DC: Your brother is a homo. SM: Well, he isn't really homosexual, he's bisexual. DC: Bisexual. Now tell me, what kind of problems does that kind of person have? Tell me a little bit about it, you know, whatever you know. SM: Well, they just like men, too. They have sexual, sex acts with men like they would with another woman. I knew one guy that was, that looked more like a girl, rather, that looked more like a guy than any guy you've ever seen. Dressed like a guy, and had a hair, you know, styled like a guy. I thought he was; I thought he was very good looking, and I asked my friends about him, and they said, well, that's not no guy, that's a girl. I 41 couldn't believe it, (laughter). He was, or she was, or whatever, was really very good looking. DC: Do you see much of this in California? SM: Yah, quite a bit. DC: Is it mostly guys, or is it girls? Or equal? SM: I don't know; I guess it's about even. My girlfriend was married to a bisexual, and he used to go over his friend's house, and she never thought anything of it, until he used to come home with money all the time, (laughter). And, she couldn't figure it out; but she finally found out, to thought, what he was doing. She saw his picture one time in a gay book. DC: Oh, no. Oh, no! (Laughter). SM: Oh, man. DC: Why does a person get involved with that kind of thing? SM: I don't know. DC: Why is your brother, why is your brother involved in it? Did you ever sit down and talk to him about it? SM: Not too much, mostly because he's been in, well before he was eighteen in jails, in boys schools, and after he was eighteen, in prison, he's been in an institution all of his life. DC: How serious were the crimes, has he committed? SM: Usually nothing much till now. DC: What's he in for now? 42 SM: It's usually just drugs or something like that. He's in for murder now. DC: In California? SM: Here. DC: Oh. SM: Davis County. DC: Oh, that's your brother. Oh, so it's your brother and your—oh, I see, I'm sorry, I didn't know, see, I didn't know that. I see. SM: I don't know; I've never seen him do anything like that. He's not, he's not the pushy type, you know, but he'd go out with other men and do his thing. And he'd go out with drag queens. DC: With what? SM: Drag queens; colored prostitutes… DC: Colored prostitutes. I see. SM: And, he had girlfriends too, but usually it was just the drag queens and the men, you know. He was about--well, he just got married, too, matter of fact. But I, I've never seen his wife. I've seen pictures of her, that's all. DC: Do you feel that's too abnormal? SM: Yah, I do. I think that they're mental, mentally something wrong with them. DC: Turn on some air conditioning. Cool, cool it down a little bit for you, (laughter). A little room like this gets so hot and stuffy, it's really bad. Ok, you think it's abnormal, you say? You don't think it's a normal relationship? 43 SM: No, I think it's something different in their minds. DC: What about women? Have you ever had any girlfriends? SM: Well, this one, this one she was raped, and she said that's what caused her to go the other way. She has a very nice looking girlfriend. As a matter of fact, she's a topless dancer at one of the bars in California. DC: Is that right. And yet, she's not bisexual, she's a lesbian. SM: Oh, yah. Both of them. She's got a little girl, too. Being raped, she got pregnant. DC: Did she have the baby of the guy that raped her? SM: She's still got it. I guess she's about five now. DC: Did she ever talk to you about that kind of a relationship? SM: No. Everybody treats her just like she's a guy. She used to, God, she used to tear cars apart and put them back together. Well, I like that kind of thing myself, but I never had any desire for another woman. And I hope to God I never will, (laughter). God, I couldn't see it. DC: You don't dig that too much, then. SM: Girls just don't turn me on, whatsoever, not at all. DC: I think, I think that homosexuality, homosexuality, it, you know, I think that it's a problem that's gotten greater. SM: There's a bar in California that's called Off-Key. It's a Lesbian bar. And, God, the girls go in there, and it a* looks like girls and guys going in there, you know. My brother used to get a really big k kick out of going in there, because he's really thin and feminine type. 44 You know, he's got really small bones. And they used to think he was a girl, and oh, he used to like to take them out and really shock them, (laughter). DC: Yah, I guess that would shock them a little, (laughter). SM: Yah, really, (laughter) God, take him to bed or something, and find out that he's a man, (laughter). He hasn't got a hair on his chest or nothing. DC: What, you know, what, you don't have to answer this question, either. But what’s your attitude now, I mean, you've had a lot happen to you, and of course some very serious things. It's no joke to have a brother who's, you know, facing the death chamber or life in prison, and also a husband at the same time, so this is quite a blow, I'm sure. SM: Yah. DC: How has it affected you? How do you feel emotionally? SM: Well, I'm worried, of course; it makes me nervous. I'm x nervous all the time, because I'm worried that they're going to be killed. And that's one thing they're really going to (_____) to, me and my brother have been really close all of our lives. And I really, I know he's crazy, but I still don't want it to happen to him. So, it's, it's been pretty rough at times, you know, mental, but myself, it hasn't changed me any. As far as that goes, maybe I'm learning a little bit more about how people feel that have these problems, that I do look for it. Like you hear it on the radio or TV, somebody kills somebody else, and big deal. But now, I guess I've been able to learn just how it does feel, and it's something that you really can't explain too much about. You don't like it, but there's nothing you can do about it. I don't dislike the police because they put him in jail; I don't, 45 I don't have anybody, really. And I don't put him, dislike any policeman because they put him there, because he really, he put himself there. But I don't dislike him, I can't. DC: Is there any way that he could have been helped before, you know, you say trouble he's been in all his life. Apparently, he's probably been consulted by psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers? SM: He's been in, he's been in mental hospitals. He's definitely, you know, crazy. He's like a split personality, one to one extreme and one to the other. One is completely, just do anything for you, and the other one is a real— DC: Schizo? SM: Belligerent. He's never attempted even to hurt me, though. I guess I've been lucky with men, altogether, even my brother, because I've never had a man hit me, except once accidentally. DC: You have been lucky. SM: Yah, (laughter). DC: You're the exception; probably if you were to poll the girls that were there, you would probably find out you were probably the only one that hasn't been knocked around by guys. SM: Well, that's one thing, I guess I'm too proud to have a man hit me, I've told everybody, every, all my husbands if they ever hit me, they'd never live to regret it (laughter). Because I would, that would kill somebody. I guess I'm just too proud to be hit. One guy hit me and hurt me more, you know, just being hit, than it did because it hurt. That didn't make much sense (laughter). It hurt me more really than it did physically. 46 DC: Just the idea, just the idea of being hit, it wasn't the actual physical blow that hurt. SM: It wasn't the pain that hurt. DC: Just your feelings. SM: Matter of fact, it, it, just when he hit me it hurt, it got kind of numb then, you know, so it didn't hurt too much. But it sure hurt me mentally, and, oh God, I hated him, I didn't hate, but I disliked him intensely after that. Even though it was an accident; he just come up, he was joking around, he always come up and slug me on the shoulder, or something, you know, hard. Playing around, and he come up one day and started like to walk by me, like that, just, he was going to go like that, and I went like that to dodge it, and went right into it, and he hit me solid and hard. God. DC: When you were younger were you disciplined very severely by your parents? SM: Not by my mother. By my father, yes, but not by my mother. My mother's never hit me; she's never hit me. DC: What was your father like; do you remember? SM: He's an alcoholic, and he'd get pretty, he'd never mistreat us kids, really, when he was drunk, except when we did something, then he would get a little bit rough when he whipped us. I mean a little bit too rough, he’d get carried away. But, most of the time, my mom, because he was an alcoholic, she left him; you know, she'd leave him, and I'd go with my mother, of course, and there was certain years that I wasn't with my father. And my mother never disciplined me. DC: Just separations then? SM: Yah, she divorced him finally, and then went back to him. 47 DC: How long was she married to him before she divorced him? SM: God, about twenty-five or six years, DC: Wow. SM: She was married to him for a long time. DC: What would she do when you would leave him, I mean, how would she find a place? How would she— SM: She got on welfare somehow. Or, a lot of times, she'd get live-in jobs. Like baby-sitting or something, and we'd be there with her. DC: Do you think that this might have had a negative am effect upon your brother? Do you think this has anything to do with the reason he's the way he is? SM: No. DC: What do you—? SM: He's been, well, I don't know, he's always been like that. Always, even when he was a little baby. I wasn't (_____). DC: You think maybe it was inherited, then? (_____). SM: Yes, I think he was born like that. Because my mom's told me things that has happened, you know, before I was born. He's done, really, you know, just— DC: Do you recall what kinds of things he used to do? SM: Yah, one time, well they bought him this little sailor suit. And my parents were well off when my little, my big brother was born. And they bought him this little sailor suit, and they were walking downtown with him, and he was quite spoiled because they'd give 48 him anything he wanted. So one time he wanted to go down the street one way, and my parents didn't want him to go down that way, so he, right there, took off his sailor suit threw it on the ground, stomped on it, and then sit on it and would not get up. DC: How old was he? SM: About three or four. And he would not get up. Now they kept, he was still, he just wouldn't get up; that's all. There was just no way he would get up. And he's just been doing things like that. Like, God, my parents would tell him to do things and he wouldn't do it, and he'd just get so stubborn he wouldn't do it. DC: So you honestly believe it started a long time ago, and it's, he was born perhaps (_____)? SM: Or maybe because they spoiled him, I don't know. And my father wasn't an alcoholic then. And maybe the alcoholic, after he became an alcoholic, you know, maybe that was it. But he's always been like that, as far back as I can remember. And he's always been so, I don't know, he'd get these certain ways, he just wouldn't do something. And he'd get mean about it, you know, if people tried to make him do it, he'd just get mean about it. DC: I'll be darned. SM: Oh, I'm that way kind of, too. If somebody asks me to do something, if I feel like doing it, I'll break my neck to do it, if I don't, I just flat won't do it. DC: Antisocial behavior, huh? (Laughter) (_____). SM: But if they tell me, there is, there's just no way I'm going to do it. If I want to so bad I can't stand it, I won't if they tell me. Cause I just hate being told. 49 DC: Well I, I don't think that's abnormal, Sharon. I think that there are a lot of people, you know, that are that way; they think we're all a little bit spoiled, we're all a little bit— SM: I'm spoiled. DC: Bit that way. SM: I've never had to do anything in my life that I didn't want to do. DC: You've always kind of had your own way, then? SM: Just about. DC: Even with your husbands, would you say? SM: Well, no (laughter). No, not with my husbands, (laughter). They've all been pretty overbearing, you know. They'd tell me to do things, and I wouldn’t do it. Maybe, I guess that's a lot of the reason we didn't get along. Cause they'd tell me to do something, and because they told me, just for the fact that they told me, they said it wrong, you know, I wouldn't do it, (laughter). If they'd say, "Would you please do something?" I'd do it, usually. Not always, but usually. Cause if they told me, I'd rather die than do it, (laughter). DC: How's, how's this crime, or what's happening in Davis County, affected your mother? Is she aware of what's happened? SM: She doesn't seem to be upset about it at all. When she came back out here to get my kids, she could have very easily, but she had to go that way to Salt Lake to catch the bus, and she could have stopped in Farmington to see my brother, but she didn't. And (_____) have got pretty upset about it, but she acts like she don't even care. With me, she's, she's got me a lawyer, or the state appointed me a lawyer, and she's paying him 50 for this other charge, now. And she's, she hasn't sent, she's only sent me two dollars. But, well, she hasn't got a lot of money anyway. But she could afford more than she, I don't know, I think she just sent my brother five dollars since he's been here. And she doesn't seem to care about him at all. I don't know why. DC: How many years has he actually spent in an institution? Do you know? Have you ever sat down to figure it out? SM: Oh, probably about ten out of his twenty-seven. DC: Ten out of twenty-seven years. SM: Maybe more. DC: Long time. SM: Really. DC: Prison most of it, I guess? And mental institutions? SM: Yah, mostly prisons I guess. I think he's been in two mental institutions. DC: So, what you’re actually telling me, Sharon, is that you don't think that there's anything that really could have been done for him to change him from what he is, what he is today. SM: No, I don't know. You might have been able to if he stayed in the mental institutions long enough, maybe. But he was only kept maybe one or two years. And I think he's far more mentally deranged than just a couple of years. So I don't know if he could have or not, but I imagine he might have been able to have been helped. DC: Was he ever married? 51 SM: Yah, he was married one time for two weeks. DC: For two weeks, (laughter). SM: Yah, this crazy girl, about as crazy as he is, I guess, he was living with her for a while, and she come home and she says, and he was living in Los Angeles, and she come home and she says, "Danny, guess what I've done, today.'' And he says, "What have you done today?" And she says, "I went down and I applied for a marriage license." And he says, "Yah? Who you going to marry?" And she says, "You." And he says, "Oh, yah, you so?" And he did; he married her, (laughter). And she kept doing nutty things like that, so he divorced her, or got an annulment. Then he got married this other time. He became a reverend and the whole bit. DC: He became a reverend! SM: Yah, right? DC: Is that right. SM: He's got papers that says he's a reverend. DC: How many, how far did he progress in school? And also, how far did you progress in school? SM: I think he went through the eighth, and I went through the eleventh. DC: Through the eleventh. So neither one of you graduated from high school. SM: I could have, I imagine. It'd take me four years, though, after the eleventh, cause like I got married and stuff, and I quit school for two years, I think. And they lost my records. My whole high school records they lost, so I had two credits for four years. 52 DC: Do you ever anticipate going back, or— SM: Yah. DC: What are your, what are your plans? SM: I'd like to, to tell you the truth, I'd like to be an auto mechanic, really, (laughter). DC: Sharon (laughter). SM: I've become aware of the fact that I can't become an auto mechanic, cause even if I did know the (laughter). So I've decided maybe I'll become a secretary. Take, I've taken typing in school, and I might go back and take typing and take shorthand, and maybe become a secretary. DC: What are you, are you going to go back to California, you think, after you go back to, what was it, Virginia? SM: Virginia. Yah. I don't know any other men. (Laughter) Got to find somebody. DC: You know quite a few in California, though, don't you? SM: No. DC: Are they all, they've all gone? SM: They're all married and stuff. DC: What's going to happen to your two children? Now your mother's taking care of them present, at the present time? SM: Until I get back. 53 DC: Then, so when you get back, then you'll just assume that responsibility, then. Was it two girls, or one boy and a girl? SM: Two girls. DC: Two girls. How old are they now? SM: Two and four. DC: Quite a responsibility, huh? SM: Yah, really, I didn't know how much, till I got out here where I didn't have anybody to help me. DC: Yah. It's nice to have relatives to help you, though. That's, that means a lot, doesn't it? SM: Yah, it means a lot to have somebody around. Like the way I've got my crocheting yarn and the needles, and everything, is through one of the other girls. DC: One of the other girls that were in here, huh? SM: I had a hundred and fifty dollars, with my lawyer. He brought me twenty of it, and I bought it, but I gave them money, they gave it to their husbands and they brought it up. Their husbands brought it up. DC: I'll be darned. That's great. SM: It's hard though, you know, because I don't like to ask people to do things for me. DC: Well, you've got to learn someday that that's what people are all about. That's what they're here for, you know, to help one another. Not all people think that way, but a lot do. A lot do. 54 SM: There are some pretty nice girls up here, and one, I think, is a little bit mentally deranged too. She's the one that's helping me, but she is, she takes (_____). God, she'd tackle the world and (_____). She's very, really weird. DC: What’s her first name? SM: Geraldine, they call her Gerry. DC: Yah, Geraldine. Do you think that a lot of it, though, is because of their addiction to drugs? Doesn't, does that have— SM: She's forty-one years old (laughter). DC: Oh is she? SM: Yah. DC: She's the, she is the old gray-haired one back there. SM: No, she's, she's got salt-and-pepper hair. DC: Oh, yah. SM: She's a weird old (_____), really, but she's pretty, she's just, she acts like, well, she loves kids, and she treats me a like a little baby, (laughter). DC: Like her little girl, huh? SM: She really does. I get depressed and I'll cry or something, and she'll come over and she says, "Oh, baby, don't cry," (laughter). God. DC: Well. 55 SM: (_____) I do, just strangle her sometime. She just, she come over and she started petting my hair yesterday. I got mad at the matron, I (_____) too. And so I was crying, because I was mad, and she come over and she pet my hair. I felt like jumping, slugging her. I said, "Please, don't treat me like a baby," (laughter). "Stop, don't treat me like a baby." DC: What do you, what do you think about the Weber County Jail? Now that you've been— SM: I hate it! I absolutely hate it. I'd rather be in Davis County any day. The food is rotten; it's just terrible. Well, it's all starch, and look how fat I've got, (laughter). I was under a hundred pounds when I came in, and I weigh about a hundred and twenty now. And I try to, I've been trying to lose weight, but instead of losing, I'm gaining. The food is really, you can't hardly eat it anyway. But you have to eat it, because you get hungry, and then it's all starch and you get fat. And there's no exercise, so it all turns to flab. And there's nothing to do up there. You get bored to death; there's just nothing, and the rooms are so small, God. This would be maybe four rooms, this room here, (laughter). God, they're so small. You, maybe you've seen it in the paper. DC: I've been in there; I've been through the entire jail. Is there an article in the paper tonight, you said? SM: No. It's, what time is it? DC: Why, what time do you eat? It's five to five. SM: At five o'clock there's going to be a deal on the news; I'm going to be in it. (Laughter). DC: You're going to be in it? Is that right? 56 SM: Yah, I was in the paper, too. It's showing the conditions of the jail. They're trying to get a new jail. DC: Yah. You might be interested in knowing that every bit of that is going to be done through me. In other words, I'm heading, heading it up. I'm the one that's— SM: Good, I can tell you all the bad things. DC: That's right, that's right, that's why I want to know. SM: It is really bad back there. You don't get segregated from the older and the younger people, and the colored, and the drunks, and whatever. They all go in this one place, and if you happen to get a drunk or a colored person, or an older person in your room, it's just too bad. You know, you're stuck with them. And it's, I don't know about a lot of people, but I'd rather be in with somebody, in a room with somebody my own race and age. The colored girls in there, have one room luckily, and I don't know, they're a little prejudiced. DC: Are they really? SM: Yah, and I just, I don't know, they seem to be nice enough, but then they will stick together. They'll, if they decide they want to do something dirty, they'll do it to one of the white girls. DC: What do you mean, something dirty? SM: Oh, like squirt you with water, or something, you know, be mischievous. DC: Yan. Did, now is there any, have you ever seen anything go on in the jails and all that you didn't agree with? Of course now I, well just anything, you know, that you think ought to be changed. Maybe, administration, for example. 57 SM: I think, well they don't let us in the day room enough. I think we should be able to go in the day room. DC: You can't go in there whenever you want to then. SM: Hm-un. DC: When can you go in there? SM: Whenever they decide they want to let you in there. If they decide they don't want to let you in there, you don't go in there. They have it locked. But I think we should be able to go in the day room, and I think they should supply us with things to do. You know, recreation like—puzzles or games of some kind. Something to keep our mind occupied. You know, I think they should have some kind of a, well, it's too small there; but like I think they should have a jail with a recreation room for, like, they have a pool table. By the way, I love to play pool. And, I don't know, tennis games, or something, ping pong. DC: Now why should they have it? SM: To, to keep, not only your mind occupied, but your body. Have something to do with your body; your body gets flabby here. There's nothing, you know, no recreation whatsoever to do. You lay around, you sit around, you eat, you sleep, and that's it. DC: Are you telling me that it makes people who are hostile? SM: Yah, you're, you get, I get very angry with people and I want to bite their head off, and I really, I've never had a tendency to want to fight anybody, really, I mean, really get belligerent to people to any degree, I have once in a while, but not like here. Like all the time I want to just beat somebody up, you know just to have something to do, I get angry real easy. 58 DC: And you think it's because of the jail here. SM: Yah, I don't think, there isn't anything to do. DC: Are you being rehabilitated? SM: No. DC: Is this going to deter you from committing more crimes? SM: Not me, but there are other girls who want to get out and do things. Like one girl up here says, "Well, wow, I've learned all kinds of weird things to do. Now I know how to break the law and get away with it.” DC: Do you think then there's a degree of becoming more professional in criminology? SM: (Laughter) maybe so. We, I sit back there and think of all kinds of ways to break out. I've thought of all kinds of ways to get out of there, (laughter). But I wouldn't try because I know I'd really get a lot of time if I did. DC: Oh, yah, you've got it made. SM: Like, I, God, it's really, it'd be easy. Get out the window; they got, you know, the screen on the window. It wouldn't take too much to take it off. And it's a long way down, but God, there's enough sheets to tie together to get down. DC: Did you know that about two and a half years ago, a girl did try it. SM: Yah, but she was stupid. She used a Venetian blind cord which was old. DC: Is that right? SM: And rotten. 59 DC: She fell how many stories, I don't know, several. SM: Five. DC: Five. I fell down the elevator shaft one time, and— SM: Did you? DC: Yah, but anyway, and so I, doesn't feel good, (laughter). SM: (_____). DC: No, no, no, it didn't. I just, I lucked out. Most people would get killed if they fell that far, (laughter). SM: My brother fell down two stories, two of them. Skylight. DC: Is that right. How old was he then? SM: Oh, I think he was seven or something like that, (laughter). DC: Gee, I wonder if that had anything to do with his problem. SM: Maybe so, (laughter). Well, I think the reason he lived, he must have landed on his head, (laughter). He didn't, he didn't get hurt too bad; nothing broke. DC: Nothing broke at all, is that right? SM: I think he's only had a couple of broken bones, and I haven't had any. Lucked out, again. DC: What other kinds of recommendations could you make as far as this jail is concerned? SM: Oh, the food I think they should have more meat in it, less starch. DC: Ok, now, why should they? Is there a reason why they should? Being humane, or what? 60 SM: Well it tastes better, for one thing, (laughter). DC: (_____). Let's face it, Sharon, there's two kinds of people? SM: Not enough vitamins, too. DC: There's one person, there's the kind of person who wants to see, you know, a beautiful, luxurious rehabilitation center established here in Ogden City. What we call a regional correctional facility. This is the concept that I'm fighting for, by the way. There is also the other person who is opposed to that, and says a jail should be as miserable as possible, because then it's going to deter a person from committing crime. They're ever going to say, under no circumstance do I want to go back to that jail. They'll either do one of two things. They'll either push them out of the area, push him into another city, or another county, somewhere else, or else it’s going to deter them from committing crimes. How, how do you feel about that? SM: I don't think it will; I don't think it’ll lessen the crimes at all. There's all kinds of girls up here that think of what they're going to do when they get out. They've got more time to think, more time to, that's all they got is time to think, and they think about ways to do it without being caught. That's, they don't want to stop doing crimes, they just want to not be caught. And they’re, they come up with some pretty good ideas too. DC: Now what kind of things, now you say you have plenty of time to think. You have plenty of time to talk, I guess. What kinds of things do you talk about? SM: Where, what we, what has happened in the past, what we're going to do when we get out, or just thinks like that. Like, I think everyone of the girls knows every one of the other girls' histories, from birth to now. 61 DC: Like kind of, the kind of things we're talking about now. SM: Yah. Everything. God, those girls back there know more about me than I know about me, (laughter). Really. And there’s, you just sit around; there's nothing to do. And I'll lay in my bunk all day, usually when we don't eat, (_____), even when I'm crocheting, or whatever I'm doing, just laying there, and I'll have daydreams. I love to daydream, and I'll just love, I'll just lay and daydream all day long. Now, you know it doesn't do any good; it just wastes time and makes me sleepy, (laughter). But that's all I do; there's nothing to do. DC: You have television there, so you can watch television. SM: They have two, two of the girls have television. DC: You don't have a television? SM: I don't have television; I don't have a radio. I've got a deck of cards, (laughter). They're all worn out. DC: Who else rooms with you, anybody else? SM: Yah, there's Geraldine and this girl that had those sores all over her, speed sores. DC: So you're all in the same cell then. Do you all have bunks, or does someone, do girls sleep on the floor? SM: It's three bunks in there. There's one, the bigger room, has one mattress on the floor. Gerry, Geraldine, has a bad back, and she takes her mattress off the top bunk, she puts it on the floor. And then if I have to go to the bathroom during the night, I have to walk all over her, (laughter). 62 DC: Well, can you think of anything that we missed, Sharon? Any interesting experiences that you had that we, that we haven't talked about? SM: Not now, but when I get back in there (_____). DC: You'll think of all kinds of them, won't you? SM: Yah. (Pause) Oh, God. DC: You're out? SM: Yah. Well, I've got some more in my purse. I'm smoking a lot because I'm nervous. DC: Well, that's ok. You shouldn't be nervous. No reason to be nervous. SM: Well, it's, it's not usual that, like I told you, I haven't been around men, talked to men, so long that I'm nervous around men. DC: Well— SM: I don't know what I'm going to do when I get out there, (laughter). God, there's going to be all kinds of men around, and— DC: You better send a notice out. (Laughter) Stay away from me, I'm dangerous. SM: I'm not. You know, oh, Mr. Moore won't go back there in the girl’s cells, back there, alone. DC: Oh, is that right? SM: That's right. DC: How come? 63 SM: Cause the girls'll attack him, (laughter). Oh, those colored girls back there would love nothing more than to get ahold of Mr. Moore. DC: Is that right. SM: Really. DC: Who is he? I don't— SM: He's a young cop here; he's really good looking. He's really a nice looking guy. You better not go back there, (laughter). And he's, he's, he's small boned. He's really, I don't know, good looking. He really is. DC: I'll be darned. SM: And he was on the goody cart for a while, that comes here. And all those girls, one of them, especially Brenda, she used to say, "You girls grab the goody cart and I’ll grab Mr. Moore, and we'll have it made," (laughter). DC: Brenda's a character. SM: Yah. She doesn't care about the goodies, she just wants Mr. Moore, (laughter). Oh, God, something is very interesting that happened up here. We're all bored to death, nothing ever happens. So one day we got up in the dayroom, and Brenda got up there, and she's got the jail shirt on, and she hasn't got a bra underneath. And like across the street there's a fire department, and the men sit out on the roof over there with binoculars (laughter). And she stood in front of the window, she pulled the window as far down as it would go, and she takes her tits out and flops them on the window, and she's bouncing around, (laughter). DC: Oh, no, (laughter). Is that right, (laughter)? 64 SM: Oh, some of the things she did, I, oh, God, it embarrassed me just to tell you what she did. (Laughter) God, and those men are over there with their binoculars, you know, and there's about ten of them (_____) it was all over with, God. DC: How come they have the binoculars out, are they just— SM: I, I don't know. I guess they're for looking for fire, or something, I don't know. But they have it, quite a few of them. DC: (Laughter). SM: And there's some out there that didn't have binoculars, and they grabbed binoculars away from the other men (laughter). DC: Oh, no. SM: Oh, it was a funny night; sit there and laugh. It was about the most exciting thing that's happened ever since we've been in here. DC: A lot of exciting things happen up here, don't they? SM: Really, I think the most exciting thing that ever happens is when we get up out of bed. God, somebody got out of bed in room four, we better go up and see them. DC: What's your daily schedule? Can you just kind of give me an idea what the routine's like? SM: What I do, or what everybody does? DC: Yah, what everybody, well, what you do. SM: What I do, I just, they get us up at seven, and I get up and I'll eat my breakfast, go wash my tray, and I'll come back, and get dressed, and crawl back in bed and go to sleep 65 again till nine or ten. Get back up, and I'll walk around the hall for a while, see if there's anything s to do, and there's nothing to do. DC: Can you walk through, through the jail here? SM: No, just in the women's part. DC: Just in the women's part, Ok. SM: And, you can't see men around here, (laughter). Anyway, I get up wander and around, and see if there's anything to do, which there isn't. So I go back in my room, and l sit there and smoke, maybe have a candy bar or something to wake up. Because the coffee, there's no sugar for the coffee. DC: Where do you get your money for smokes? SM: The twenty dollars my lawyer gave me. DC: That's, that's, if you didn't have that twenty dollars, then what would you do? SM: Without. I'd do without. My mom sent me two dollars for cigarettes once. When, let's see. When I get awake, I'll sit in my room when I get awake, and I'll do crocheting, and maybe I'll play a game of solitaire, or something, and then we'll eat lunch, and I'll sit around, and do nothing, and crochet, and talk, and lay on my bunk and think, and then we'll eat dinner. The same thing, and then we'll go to bed at night. DC: What time do you have to go to bed at night? SM: Well, the lights in our rooms go out about ten. The lights in the halls go out at eleven. And I stay up until lights go off in the hall. I stay up until eleven, and more than that, 66 usually, I toss and turn in my bed, and I get up and go in the washroom, and turn the light on in the washroom, and play cards, or crochet, or something, till I get sleepy. DC: What about showering and things like that. Do you have to shower every day, or is that— SM: Yah, if you don't shower every day, the girls will throw you in the shower, (laughter). DC: Is that right, (laughter)? SM: And one girl, oh man, talk about stink, Jesus, big old fat woman, God. And she's nuts, she really, well, is crazy. She'd lay out in the hall right between four and five, my room's four and this other one's five, and she'd lay there and she'd stink, you know. And we'd tell her, "Get out of here. We don't want you in the hall." And Betty, the one with the white hair— DC: Yes. SM: Gets so, just thoroughly pissed off at her, and she'd take cupfuls of water and throw on her. And finally, she wouldn't, after a while, she'd leave. But finally she wouldn't leave, even with the water thrown on her. So she got, she politely went in her room, filled up her pitcher, her coffee pitcher of water, went out there to pour it on her. She left then, (laughter). DC: Did she (laughter)? SM: And then, then, she, oh, she was nuts. She'd say, "I'm waiting out here to air out my female organs. I have a sexual problem." Ohhhhhh this is, (laughter). And Gerry, Oh this is really hilarious. She said, "I got this, this sex, sexual problem." And Gerry said, "Yah, your problem with sex is that you don't get any." And I said, "God, a man couldn't 67 even get close to you with all that fat,” that's why she, she you know, really got belligerent about that. DC: Do you have many problems over, you know, just— SM: Just had a fight a couple of days ago with that fat woman. DC: Is that right? SM: Yah. She, she set her tray there; we're supposed to rinse off our trays, and then lay them on the cart, and she didn't do it, she just laid it out there. And nobody gonna wash it for her. So they, so this, I think it was Brenda, said, "Wash your tray." And so she just politely picked up the garbage can lid and hit her over the head with it. DC: Wow. SM: So Brenda, Carol Jean, and Alitha jumped on her. And so, who was it, Dixie grabbed Brenda to pull her back, and she just threw her feet up in the air and kicked her right in the face, (laughter). DC: Wow. SM: God. DC: Did the matron come in, or was there any big deal made of it? SM: Yah, the matron came in and locked the fat woman up in the drunk tank. We lock, we'd locked her in at night; she'd roam around the hall and stuff. Just close the door; there's no handle on the inside. DC: What charge is she in there on? SM: She went, some restaurant she went and ordered a meal and ate it and didn't pay for it. 68 DC: Do you think she's got an eating problem there, (laughter)? SM: She said that she, she didn't think she was supposed to pay for it. She said, "There was men in that restaurant, why should I pay for it?" (Laughter) God I couldn't believe it. She was really nuts. DC: You, you mentioned earlier that you don't have any hard feelings toward, towards the police. SM: No. I like the police very much. I could sit and talk to them for hours just like I am with you. DC: What about the judicial system? You've had a little bit of experience with it. How do you feel about it? Is it wrong? Is it wrong that you had to be up here a month and a half before a decision was made as to what ( _____)? SM: I, I think so. I think so. In Sacramento they take you to court the next day. And, God, if you have, if you know, if you have to spend, I mean, you know, if you've got court or something, they try to make it just as quick as possible. Get you either sentenced or out of there. You don't have very much dead time, like you do here. I've never seen anything like it. One girl was here about a month, and she, she didn't get sentenced or nothing. All she did was break a window. And, God, it's stupid. DC: A month; one month. SM: Yah, for breaking a window, and that was all dead time; she's still got to go back to court. 69 DC: You might be interested to know that we've done something to try to alleviate that problem. You're probably somewhat familiar with it; we've had it here for about a month and a half now. And anyway that's these interns; we've hired three interns. SM: Interns? DC: Um-huh. All they are is seniors at the Weber State College in Sociology or psychology, and they come up here and they, they have a questionnaire that I and Jed Ziegler, who's the Municipal Court Judge, sat down and designed. And this, they fill out the questionnaire, and then, you know, it's on a point basis, and then if they get a certain number of points, you know, they call up the judge and make a recommendation to him, and they base it on their findings, you know, from this questionnaire. And then, if they found to be, have close ties to the community, and not to have, you know, serious problems, you know, that would perhaps cause them to go out and rob again when they're out, you know, out in society, then they, they go out on an O.R. And there are a number of people released so far on this. SM: I wish they'd let me out, on that, (laughter). I swear, I've been in here so long. DC: Well, see now, you know, this was not ongoing when you were brought up here at the very beginning. Now had you been, had it been ongoing, what would have happened is they would have, you know, looked at your, you know, background and your ties to the community, and all these other criteria. SM: I don't have any ties to the community, though. DC: No, you don't. You know, that would have been a few points against you because you don't live here; you live in California. And that, of course, would give you, you know, you 70 might be more inclined to run away than a person would who lived here, you know, in the state of Utah. And so they take all this into consideration, and then they make a decision. SM: I, I've talked to some of the narcotic police, and tried to get them to let me help them by letting me out. And they won't do it, (laughter). Evidently, they never told me that they wouldn’t, but they never was back. They come up here, one guy, and then another, two guys, and then they had to run, so they told me they'd let me know, but they still haven't let me know. But I'd, I mean, God, there are some people in this town there, that need to be put in jail, and I know they do. And I could get them put in jail. They need it worse than I do to be put in jail. DC: Who'd you talk to; do you recall? SM: That blond guy that was out here. DC: Hank? SM: Yah, I talked to him. DC: Hank Bolden. SM: Yah. And I talked to, I don't, Stettler I think was one of them. DC: Yah. Ogden City Police Department. SM: And I talked to Hammond. DC: And they never did get back to you; they never did tell you anything? SM: No. DC: That's interesting. Well, I'll just check into it. 71 SM: Which is really bad because I never can find out anything, there is, sit back there, and you worry, like, you know you was supposed to be here yesterday, well, I don't know if you was or not. DC: Yes, I was, I was. Well, I'll tell you what happened, so I can make my apology now. There was a meeting; I had a three hour meeting. A guy from Salt Lake walked into an office just as I was coming up stairs, and he is the information systems specialists for the state of Utah, and he was, wanted to talk with Chief Jacobson, and so we had a three-hour powwow about putting in a new record system; It's about a hundred and twenty-eight thousand dollar project. And so I spent three hours talking with them, you know, when I should have been up here talking with you. And so I apologize. SM: Well, I— DC: I called, I did call them though, by the way. SM: They came back, and they said that you'd be here today, and, but it's hard to find out anything, you know, back here, back there. You can't, if, like you want to talk to your lawyer, or something, you have ask them to see, if they talk to your lawyer to come up and see you. And they never will tell you whether they have (laughter). If they come back and say your persons here that you wanted to talk to. DC: I think one, one problem they have, and, you know, and I'm not for them, but, I think there are two problems they have really. One is a lack of manpower, and we're trying to change that. SM: Really, they don't have enough people. 72 DC: No they don't. This monitoring system is going to help, you know. In a way, I don't know if they're going to put one on the female side; I don't think they are. SM: That would be the most (_____). DC: They would (laughter). SM: That would be the most— DC: They would (_____) (laughter). SM: They would be the most, they could sit and laugh for hours, because of the things, to get the girls so bored they— DC: Is that right? SM: They sit and like, I'll sit in my bunk and I'll get thoroughly disgusted with the whole thing, and I'll say, "Ohhhhhhhh” real loud, or something like that, and all the girls'll look at me, and say, "What's wrong with you?" "I don't know, just felt like saying it," you know, (laughter). And the other girls, well I cuss once in a while too. I'll get up out of my bunk and I'll just sit, stand there and cuss. And they ask me what's wrong. I don’t know; just bored, felt like saying it. Just six do it you know, something to do (laughter). And they could sit and laugh at some of the things the girls say. You know, they, like we sit back there and talk about men all the time. And some of the things the girls say they've done, just (laughter) wow. DC: Well, like what? SM: Oh, I don't know, like running through the forest naked, or something. Making love on pine needles. I guess it's, I don't, I've never done that. I'll have to try it sometime, (laughter) 73 DC: Making love on pine needles? SM: Yah. I imagine that kind of hurts. DC: Yah, it would, (laughter). SM: I had a boyfriend that was a nut about something like that; never would go out with him. I mean to do something like that. He wasn't really a boyfriend, just went out with him a few times. He wanted to go out in the hills and make love on pine needles. I don't think I'd want to, (laughter). It'd just be too, it'd hurt, it really would. It would hurt; all those pine needles sticking me in the ass (laughter). DC: Well, can you, can you think any other point that we haven't covered; any other experiences that you've had that, that might be pertinent to what we've discussed? SM: What do you, what, what are the things you would like to know? I mean, you know, mainly. DC: Well, you know, any way that you perceive the system, you know, as your attitude towards particular aspects of the system. Experiences— SM: Pertaining to the jail? DC: Yah, the jail. No, anything, just anything, you know, any experiences that you know, you might have had. Now for example it was only about, oh, fifteen minutes ago when you told me about being raped. To me that might very well have had a real impact upon the way you are today, I'm sure that it has. SM: You're a psychologist, (Notes there is a great deal of disgust in her voice.) DC: No, I'm not; not in the least. 74 SM: You're not. DC: No, I haven't even had a psychology, I've had a child psychology class. And that's the extent of it. SM: Well that's me; I'm a child. I really, I swear to God I am. More of a child than anything; I am, I feel tied down with my kids. I love them very much, but I feel tied down with them and, being free from them for maybe a weekend or something, I just, oh, I just love to do things that I've never done before. Just things, childish. But it come, I don't know. Like that one weekend, you know, I did more running around in that one weekend than I've ever done, which— DC: Which one, weekend was that? SM: The weekend I was, woke up (laughter). DC: Oh, right, with— SM: Israelite. DC: Right. SM: Oh, that, that was some weekend. I just did everything. I just, I got drunk, and I smoked some grass. DC: When you get out, do you feel like you're going to go back on drugs? SM: No. DC: Do you have a desire to? Honestly. SM: I don't know; I might if I get a, all depends, all depends on what happens. Like if somebody offers me some and I feel like taking it, I will. I mean I'm not going to say I 75 won't if I'm going to. I don't know; I might. I can really get, get myself together like on speed or mescaline, I can really think of things as they really are, you know. Analyze myself more or so less. DC: Do you honestly think you can analyze, does it, do you think it really helps you, or— SM: It does. DC: Or do you think that you— SM: On certain points it has. DC: Do you think that sometimes we use drugs and alcohol, you know, alcohol— SM: Alcohol doesn't help me any. DC: Yah. SM: Just gets me drunk. DC: Well a lot of people use it as a crutch. SM: Yah. DC: As you well know because you've had a lot of experiences with— SM: It helps, but then, you come down if you're sick, even if you're not, it's still there; there’s nothing— DC: In fact, isn't it usually twice as bad when you come down? You finally realize the problem's still there, and you finally— SM: The problem's still there and you haven't done anything about it. DC: Yah. 76 SM: Then I took, I took mescaline one, one time, by myself, and that's something nobody should ever do, is take something by themselves. But I did, and I found out what I wanted to do, what I should do, what would be the best for me. And it would have been the best for me, but I didn't take my own advice. I (laughter) God. I had it all figured out what I was going to do, and then if I would have followed it through I wouldn't be here, I wouldn't be in this mess, I would be in California, and I would probably be doing just fine. But, I didn't take my own advice, and I really fouled myself up. It would have worked out fine if I had. DC: If you want to, you know, something we haven't covered, and you don't have to if you don't want to, you could talk about your husband. We haven't even said a word about your present husband. SM: We've said a little bit, not much. DC: Not much, though. Primarily we've talked about your brother and your other two husbands, (laughter). We haven't given the third one a fair shake. SM: He's a, he's a different type person than either of my first two husbands. I told you that they were very good looking and knew it. Well, he's good looking, but he doesn't think so. That helps because he's not conceited. But, he's a Leo. And they say Leo's, if they can't have any of their own kids, they will, you know, be content with an adopted child. And he loves my kids, you know, just like they were his. They really mean a lot to him, and he's a really good with them. He takes, he takes better care of them than I do, you know, really. God, everything has to be just perfect. 77 DC: What kind of a life has he lived, I mean, has he had the same kind of problem as your brother had? SM: MMMMMMM, well, he's been in prison twice. DC: Utah State Prison, or— SM: No, California, I think, in Lompoc. DC: I see. SM: Both times for interstate transportation. DC: Of a stolen vehicle. SM: And he was running cars from state to state. DC: Kind of a business? SM: Yah, it was, it was to another man. He never told anybody who it was, and so I guess they never caught the guy. But he was taking cars, they, the guy'd say “Well I want such and such a car.” He'd go and get it and take it to him. Steal it and take it to him, (laughter). So they had a pretty good business going there; he got caught, and— DC: Was this (_____) before you knew him? SM: Yah. DC: Yah. SM: He was quite heavy on drugs before I met him. DC: What kind of drugs? Hard drugs? SM: No. Speed, Mescaline, acid, things like that. I've never taken acid. 78 DC: Is that right? SM: Really. I'd kind of like to try it sometime, really, just to see what t's like. DC: Is it similar to Mescaline? SM: Yah. DC: Some of the same effects. SM: Mescaline is just one step down. I had some acid, here, right here in this town, but I gave to Sam, or Sweeten, whatever you want to call him. That's why, you know the charge about (_____). DC: Yah. SM: And I had some STP which is stronger than acid, and I gave it away, (laughter). I wanted it, and then I didn't want to try it, I was too scared. It's strange, you know, to have it and then not to use it, like that. It's great, I mean, you know, I'm glad, but don't get me wrong. DC: You know, well, now when he, when you met him, how long ago that you were married? SM: Seven months ago. DC: Seven months ago. And then you lived in California for how long? SM: Seven years, DC: Together? SM: Oh, in California together? DC: Yah, with your present husband. 79 SM: About two months all together. DC: About two months. And then how long was he, how long were you separated you know, then from the time he came to Utah? SM: Now? DC: Well, see now, now he came to, to Utah, and he lived here for a while? SM: Hm-huh. DC: He didn't. He's never lived here. SM: They caught him in Wyoming. DC: He was just going through Utah then, and so. Oh. Were you separated at any time though? SM: Well, we were separated for the month that time. DC: I see. SM: And then, my brother and him, I think this is, my brother did this on purpose. They shot a man in Marysville, where he has lived all of his life. DC: Your, your— SM: Husband. DC: Husband. SM: And, so, they thought they'd killed him. So they run. DC: And they were running from that, I see. SM: But, anyway— 80 DC: Did the guy live in Marysville? Do you know? SM: Yah. He's all right. He didn't press charges either. It was awful nice of him. DC: Yah, great, (laughter). It's not going to help out that much, maybe, but— SM: Yah, well, they're not going, he's not pressing charges, they're not even going to, they haven't even got a hold for him for that, or the if robberies they pulled. Just murder. And he's really lucky, it may get dropped to a manslaughter, voluntary, but I don't think he's that lucky, (laughter). But, anyway, he's, he's a real shy person, and, I don't know, he's, he tried to kill himself one time before he met me. Some girl, this is, oh, I guess about a year before I met a him, some girl, no not quite a year, he was in love with her and she, he caught her in bed with some other man. So he had a rifle; he did a lot of hunting. So he took the rifle and he put it, he couldn't put it up to his head because he couldn't reach the trigger then, but he put it in his stomach and bent over and pulled it, and he was in pretty bad shape for a long time. DC: Wow. SM: He couldn't, he couldn't even, he couldn't have sex because he couldn't do anything, you know, he couldn't get— DC: He couldn't have a sex? SM: He couldn't get an erection— DC: Is that right? SM: For a long time. DC: Because, because of the gun? 81 SM: Yah. He was still in trouble with it when I met him. DC: I'll be darned. SM: But that quickly subsided, (laughter). DC: You turned him on, then, (laughter). SM: I guess. DC: I'll be darned. How, how long did that last, I mean, you know, from the time that he shot himself till the, till he married you then? SM: Oh, God, I don't know. DC: How many years elapsed? SM: Not any years, just, I don't know, seven, eight months, something like that. DC: Is that right? So it hadn't been that long, long before, I'll be darned. Well, what kind of life did you lead when he was living with you? Was it happy for you, or— SM: The first month that we were married, before we got married, we lived, we got along just beautiful. DC: Any trouble? (Laughter). SM: Actually (laughter). DC: You tell me a couple (_____) (laughter). SM: And after we had married, we didn't get along at all, his fault. We didn't fight; we never did have a fight, really, just didn't agree on things. We never even argued, or raised our 82 voice, we just didn't agree on things. Like I didn't agree onto him having friends that were females. He didn't agree on me having friends that were males. DC: Yah, I can see that, (laughter). SM: And, well, he had, he had a friend that was female, and I had two or three men friends, but they were, they were just friends. But still, neither one of us agreed each other having them. That was one of the things we didn't agree on, (laughter). So we broke up for a month, and I started, well, I started going with his friend. This one in Sacramento. He went back to Marysville with his mother. And, well, we, and when I went to see him, he'd been down to see me, I was going out with boy, his friend. And that's the one in Virginia. And we got quite a relationship going. And he wanted me to marry him. Divorce my husband and marry him. And because— that, I didn't. That's what I should have done. What I should, he wouldn't even be here now, you know. But— DC: You would have both been better off. SM: Yah. {End of tape} SM: (_____) you asked me if I needed a little. I say how many times have I told you I don't ever need a little, I need a lot (laughter). He was, he was pretty, God he was a maniac, a sex maniac of some kind. That was his thing several times a day, maybe. Uh, I don't know, I'm just not that sexual or something sexy. I just can't go four, five times a day. DC: You don't like it that many times a day? SM: Well… DC: How come? 83 SM: I don't know. Just takes up so much time. After a while it's not the same. DC: It's not the same? SM: I don't know, It's just not a like a… if you do it once and it's been maybe two weeks, you do it once. And then all day you do it… Maybe seven times...alright, the seventh time isn't going to be as good as the first time. It gets kind of… after a while… it's not... any fun anymore. Course it's fun to try to experiment with different positions and stuff like that... but then that gets boring after a while 'cause you run outta things to do (laughter). DC: I don't know... I read a book one time that said there was a... something like a thousand different positions, you know... SM: Oh really? DC: I've only discovered a handful of them... (Laughter). SM: Me too (laughter). We had seven in the magazine we got back here and God, I've tried more than those seven. I didn’t really realize how many times, I mean, different ones I've tried. And there are already, already some pretty interesting ones but I’ve tried those already. And I really tried to teach him something. But I've experimented so many times with so many different positions... after a while, you know, during one day, it's just too much. DC: Well, you know something that I find interesting about you’re ah, sex life, is that apparently ah, you know, you've indicated, you've indicated that ah, you usually don't have ah, any sex one day, you know, just do it once and then have sex maybe you know, three or four days later and you know... SM: No, when I'm married I don’t (laughter). 84 DC: So, wh… what's usually your routine, you know in your married life and that? What’s the…? SM: Oh, when I’m married? DC: Yeah. Well, when you say you're married, you know... SM: Oh, once or twice a day, maybe skip a day, ah but it's usually, usually once a day, anyway, yeah. DC: But the several times you've done it several times in one day. SM: (_____). DC: Is that right? SM: (_____). DC: (_____). SM: Never gets tiring. DC: Never get tired of sex, really, then. SM: No, not really, but after...I don't know....I don't like to do it that many times a day. The most I guess, is that one day we spent you know, the biggest part of the day in the bathtub and in bed. That's about it DC: Except when people first get married I guess that's a... SM: Well, that's different. DC: (_____) THAT'S a (laughter)… SM: That's a little different...You're finding out about each other. 85 DC: Right. SM: Well, I never did that except with my first husband. Uh, I think with my second and third husband, I went to bed with them before I ever married them. DC: You lived common law with a couple, two or three guys, is that correct? SM: Two. Before I married them. DC: I guess that happens quite a bit now, I think it's much more common than it ever used to be. SM: I think I'd rather live with a man if I was ever going to you know... if I was going to marry them, I'd rather just live with them. DC: Sweden, of course, you know, they allow that. In fact, they encourage it. And they do in a lot of the Scandinavian Countries, so it's not unusual over there at all. SM: I think I'd rather. We got along just beautiful before we got married...he didn't have any holds on me and I didn't have any on him. We were more comfortable with each other. That's interesting. DC: You say you really did feel more comfortable in a common law relationship? Than you did when you actually got married? SM: Enjoyed it more. DC: Enjoyed sex and everything. SM: Everything. DC: How? 86 SM: More, I don't… more comfortable I guess. Uh, you don’t have to worry about impressing the person, you don’t have to worry about doing something wrong… DC: You know you can always pack your bags and… SM: Uh huh. You're not worried about talkin' to someone you know that your husband might not agree with, you know like a sit and talk to a man about different things... (_____) talked with men about sex in front of my husband before we got married of course and ah, you know nothing was said about it. After we got married it was different altogether. DC: I’ll be darned. SM: The difference is... I don't know, mainly sex with other men: I needed them more I guess (laughter). I could've done anything before we got married and he didn't care. DC: Well, do you think your husband, with your ah, with your husband, your relationship with your present husband uh, was it kind of shaky towards the end? SM: No. DC: It never was shaky...it was always… SM: When we broke up uh we started getting along better and we went back together and everything was just fine. We had our arguments, you know, but nothing really bad. Just like before, we got along better. DC: Was he working or was he on welfare...? SM: He was working part of the time… when we broke up he quit his job. DC: I see. It's meal time, huh (laughter)? SM: Big deal. If you don't mind I'd rather not go. They'll save it for me... unfortunately. 87 DC: It's a twenty five to five. What time do they eat...four-thirty? SM: Usually it’s around close to five. It's supposed to be four-thirty, (laughter). The reason I asked you about what you wanted to know… I might be around maybe a few weeks you know after I get out. If there's anything I can help you with... just... I will if I can. DC: Great. Appreciate that… The only that we're concerned about is ah, you know, the drug scene. The reason were concerned about it is because you know, I wonder what we can do. We've had about, oh, I'd say about a dozen suicides in the last two years by young people here in the state of Utah. A number of them were in this area and two of them I knew quite well and ah it’s rather disturbing to me because you know, because they were pretty sound people. SM: Yeah, I heard something on the radio the other day about suicide call line or something. DC: We have a drug abuse center...the Weber Health Center and ah, it’s ah I guess it's a… helps… there’s no way of measuring the success of that kind of program. SM: If you feel like killing yourself, call em. DC: Yeah, right. SM: I tried to kill myself before, But not because of drugs. DC: Why? SM: Felt like ... I guess I was upset and I felt it was the best thing to do at the time. But I...I thought about killing myself many, many times but I've never tried lots of times because I set and think, I said well, I feel like killing myself now but when I'm… later on, I won't be mad at myself, and I won't feel like killing myself, and if I try to kill myself right then I won’t be able to forgive (laughter). 88 DC: (_____) rational, (laughter). SM: I celebrate things like that sometimes but really, that's the way it was. I just think about it before I killed myself and felt that later on, I won't feel like killing myself....I'll stay alive and I won't think about killing myself. I won't be dead, (laughter). DC: Sharon, is there anything that could have been done, as far as your life is concerned to maybe straighten things out a little bit better? Because you know, I'm sure you realize that you've been involved with some pretty rough guys really, and you've been through a lot… SM: I wouldn't change it. DC: ...twenty-two years of age... SM: I wouldn't change it. I know mare now than… definitely than I did when I was sixteen...And I wouldn't change it for anything. DC: There's nothing that's happened in your life that you really regret then? SM: Yeah, yeah there is...I had the children. And I'm not old enough, I don't think to really take on the responsibility of the children... I do because they are my responsibility, but I don't, I wouldn't have them… I’d wait… DC: How, how’s all this going to affect them, do you think? You know having different fathers, I guess they… SM: I don't know, I don't think it should affect them. Well, they should have a father and I feel that they are girls you know, just having a mother would a be better than a nothing a t all or having somebody that would mistreat them. Cause, I could have stayed with my second husband, but really when he'd get drunk he wasn't really being physically mean 89 to them, but mentally mistreating and I felt the whole thing was too much for the kids. I felt that they could live with their mother a lot happier than they could live with somebody like that. DC: Well, if you had, let’s say that ah, you had the power in your hands to make changes in the criminal justice system and the establishment or whatever, now how would you go about doing that? SM: I never really thought about it. I don't know, I guess... In anything? DC: Anything... SM: Well, I would arrange to have my kids like I said… (Tape distorted)… It's killing too many people, too many young people...too many people of my generation and too many people altogether. Alright I don't like just young people… I like everybody and I think the war should be abolished. I think that… I think we could live happily...everybody in the world...and maybe I'm one of those hippy nuts or something, know, "peace" and "free love"… I don't think there should be any real regulation, any rules.... you can't do this, and you can't do that, you're looked down on because you do this or that, I don't think that people should really look down on anybody else. They... if they wanna do something, just let um. As long as they don't hurt you. And a ... God... and I think I would put everybody that's nuts...and they put people up here in the jail that really need help... they don't need to be stuck off in a jail...they need help. I would put them in a mental institution instead of throwing them in jail and when their time's up, put um back out in the street to do more, because if they're really deranged, they're gonna do it again anyway. 90 DC: Do you really think the majority of people you know that are ah, that commit crimes are at least to a certain degree mentally deranged? Especially crimes against persons? SM: Like rape or…? DC: Rape, or robbery ah, you know, assault and battery uh, murder... SM: No... No. Something that's nasty like murder it wasn't done on purpose and I don't think that they're mentally deranged. DC: Yeah....I don't mean accidental, I mean... SM: Rape and murder... I think that that is a ...there's something wrong with them there. And a lot of them are looking for excitement… they just want something to do...They're bored, so they do it. DC: You know what I feel on this, Sharon, I feel that I'd say probably, oh a 95% of all those that I've interviewed, that you're an exception. You really haven't been involved with a crime… crime that I’ve interviewed… That 95% of them committed the crime they committed either while they were under the influence of alcohol or drugs or they needed the money to purchase drugs or alcohol. SM: Yeah, a lot of the, a lot of them are that way… but… I don’t know… DC: Don't you think that's probably why your brother... SM: No. DC: (_____). SM: No, huh unh. DC: He didn't have a drug problem...your brother didn't? 91 SM: No, uh huh. He took drugs once in a while, about like me but not real bad. And my husband either. DC: He didn't have...he never had a heroin addiction of any kind either? SM: Um huh. DC: Had he ever taken heroin? Yeah...but he wasn't addicted to it? SM: Not that, no. I don't know if he ever has been… I’m not at home that much. So you can’t really tell. But uh, my husband… I think the reason he was robbing because he felt the responsibility and he wasn’t working. DC: Well, couldn't he...couldn't you live on welfare? SM: Yeah. I was on welfare...but he didn't like it, I mean he was too proud. He didn't like the fact that I was on welfare and a so he… I don't know what he thought he could gain by it, except maybe a jail sentence. I got a letter from him, he said that ah, I'd told him many times not to do it...he said that he wished he'd listened to me, but no, he said he thought he knew it all. He was caught, I knew he would be… eventually. DC: It always catches up to you...there's no doubt of that. I never knew anyone who lead a life of crime and never been caught. SM: It's usually the things I do that I don't get caught for...it the things I don't do that I get caught for, (laughter. Oh, God. DC: I know that’s why sometimes we can rationalize, being punished when we don't really think we're committing crime because ah there's been, you know like traffic violations, I know I committed many, many traffic violations and never been caught very few times. 92 SM: I been caught once. Oh man… I was goin’ 135 on the freeway… at least that. They said ah that’s what they were going when they caught me. But I think I slowed down… (Laughter). DC: Down to 135, (laughter). SM: 135. That’s what they had. They gave me a ticket for 100 plus. I was really flying down the freeway. I didn't have a speedometer so I don't know how fast I was going. I know I was going at least a hundred. But I was flying down that freeway and they caught me (laughter). DC: Well, Sharon, I think...I think that a maybe we ought to try and end it... Maybe I ought to ask you the last question and just see if there's anything else that we've left unsaid that you'd like to say. Anything at all that hasn't been said. SM: God...I can't think of anything. I know there's a lot...I could sit and talk all day probably, but and that thing there distracts me and... I'll think of lots of different things when I get back in my cell. DC: Well...why don't we do this...a why don't you sit down and think of anything else that we might have missed and I could came back another time and follow it up... also what I plan on doing is having this tape ...these two tapes (laughter) transcribed and when they're transcribed I'll bring a copy over to you and then we'll sit down and I'll let you read through it and you can delete anything you don't agree with you know that you might have said inadvertently. SM: I don't care.... 93 DC: But you haven't said anything as far as I'm concerned that's been out of place. You've said nothing that is incriminating, you know. I tried to make certain that you won't. I wouldn’t want you to. Cause that's of course the purpose of this interview. SM: Well, they...the only thing I could think of that they might be... I would want you to... was the thing I was just… drugs, but I've already talked to other people about it and it's not incriminating, so they can't do a thing about it. DC: It's not incriminating...it's nothing to be ashamed of and ah, you know, if anything it's just an experience and maybe it’ll help someone else. You know I… There’s good things about drugs and really bad things and I don’t say they’re all bad, I don’t say they’re all right. I just a… that’s a decision that every individual has to make. SM: Well, one thing I would legalize is marijuana... It's no more harmful than... it's better than drugs...I mean, not drugs but alcohol. Alcohol pickles your liver (laughter) drugs doesn’t… well drugs does but the weed doesn’t do anything to you. Except you get high like alcohol. DC: Don't you build up a tolerance for marijuana though? Like you do alcohol and pretty soon you have to smoke more marijuana to get high or you have to go to another drug to get high? SM: Huh...I don't think so. Course... I’ve never really smoked it all the time but I don't think so. My second husband used to smoke it all the time and I know a man live across the street... old man... God he was in his eighties anyway... he had a white beard, white hair down to his shoulders and he used to go around… walk around all the time with a joint hanging out of his mouth....all the time. 94 DC: I'll be darned. SM: And it seemed like he was loaded all the time… I don't know... It didn't seem to take him… my husband any more to get high than it did me. DC: I'll be darned. You're not saying anything negative about marijuana then? SM: Hum um. It’s all right. It makes me sleepy. After a while. First I'll eat and laugh and laugh and eat, then I'll get like I just you know… like I just wanna go to sleep and I'll just lay back and go to sleep. DC: Of course you realize the problem with legalizing marijuana with law enforcement. Is that a there's no way that you can measure the quality of marijuana in a person's body. You can alcohol. We have what we call breathalyzers now and so we can tell you how much alcohol you get. We know when you're drunk. But we don't have a machine that has been built as yet that will tell you how much marijuana you have. And what it means... you know, how much they have in order to become intoxicated or how much I have to have. SM: Well, you don't know how much it takes a person... one person from another person to get drunk. DC: Well, they pretty well got it down... It's quite scientific as far as alcohol is concerned. SM: Well, you can tell when people are loaded on marijuana as far as that goes. You can't tell how much. DC: (_____) THAT'S THE PROBLEM FOR LAW enforcement. Now I think the day that they a do come up with a machine that will measure a that maybe there will be a different attitude... I don't know. I'm not here to say whether or not it's possible, I don't know. 95 SM: Well, you can. It's just, it's dangerous as far as driving as much as alcohol is. DC: True. SM: But...it’s very dangerous. DC: I was going to say that it’s alcohol usually a guy knows that a well if I have two drinks, I know how it’s going to affect me. Uh, but there are a lot of people who I think could pick up a joint and smoke it not realizing you know what effect it's going to have on you. And of course it varies. If you haven't eaten, that makes a difference, if you have eaten then of course it doesn’t work quite as fast in your system. SM: I don't know. Alcohol, yeah, but I don't think you’re drugs, I mean your grass. Grass, a it all depends on the strength of the grass, too...what it’s been cut with and so on. DC: Right. SM: But, I don't know. It's instant. It’s all of a sudden you know and a where drinking it builds up. And when you smoke grass it’s right there all of a sudden like sniffing some other drugs...it hits you all at once. So you don't really have to sit there while (_____). Is this as much as I'm going to get loaded, or am I going to get loaded more? Usually when I drink, I get so drunk, I'll sit and get drunker yet just not drinking. DC: Yeah cause that depends. Well, you never know what effects it’s gonna have. Even alcohol. It’s hard to know. If you become an alcoholic you know how much you know...a bottle of wine might do it (laughter). SM: Oh god, I hate wine. Except for champagne. I really like pink champagne. DC: Well, what I'll do as I mentioned, I will transcribe this. Now it's gonna take a number of weeks so when you do leave here now make certain that you know that you make me 96 aware of where you go or else leave a note here so I can find out. So I can get a copy of it. If you want to know where I'm stationed… SM: I'll write it down. DC: Well, O.K. (_____) Hotel. It’s really easy to remember. Just over here. SM: How long will you be there? DC: ...on the corner. Oh I don't know. For years, (laughter) I don't know. But we’re open from eight until five and you're welcome any time. Any time. (_____) Hotel. Right on the corner. Right on the corner, just straight across. SM: I may come over smashed on reds or something sometime... Oh help me. DC: We've lost another one (laughter). No, don't do that to me. SM: No, I couldn't. DC: No, I know you're… SM: I don't get too smashed when I do, I just stay at home. {End of tape} 97