Oral History Program Gerald Tuggle Interviewed by Don Cavalli 11 August 1971 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Gerald Tuggle Interviewed by Don Cavalli 11 August 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 University Archives. 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 Kelley Evans, 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: Tuggle, Gerald, an oral history by Don Cavalli, 11 August 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 Gerald Tuggle. The interview was conducted on August 11, 1971, by Don Cavalli, at Weber County Jail. Tuggle discusses his history of passing bad checks, using drugs, and spending time incarcerated in Wisconsin and in Utah. DC: Gerald, if you don't mind me asking, let's go way back into your history. Let's start at the very beginning. Maybe, you could tell me a little bit about your early childhood, where you're from, and where you were raised, etc. GT: I was raised in Madison, Wisconsin—born there. My first offence, I was twenty-three years old—checks. I got probation for it for one year. The charge was checks and the time that is called for insufficient funds is one year. That was my first offence, so I got probation for one year. After that year was up, I believe I wrote some more checks, thon the next charge was prison, of course facing me—up to one year in prison—which they did give me. As far as rehabilitation being in prison, there was none what so ever. They could care less. You did your time and thon you got out. It was a Wisconsin prison at the time. At the time, they did not have any out-of-state school of any type. Psychology helped and so forth like that. It was just doing your time and getting out. I worked in the green house, then they put me in the laundry, which they were doing a lot of laundry work thereabouts for all the institutions around. So I came out of prison. I had a month of furlough. Then I did that. Then I had a charge on me later on of non-support forgery. They gave me a year of time in jail. Before this happened, I had a year in the county jail, right off hand, I can't remember what the charges was, but it was a year in the county jail. I was in a volunteer detail where you assist in the working days where you go to work for the jail in the 1 morning, and come back in the evening after your job was through—this is great. I worked on that for about nine months, I had a little of a month or a month and one-half to go. Then some friends of mine when I had a Sunday off to go out, I was with some friends and wo got drinking quite heavily and I took off with my friends and never came back to the jail. So that was constituted as an escape. At the time I had charge on me with four years’ probation and only one year county jail, which was supposed to start after I finished the county jail sentence. So I knew that they could revoke this probation and give me four years in prison. So I decided to leave with my friends and leave the state—which I did. I went to Missouri and met a fellow there, which from Missouri, I went to Los Angeles. I was in Los Angeles awhile and then went to Las Vegas and was picked up there. They knew my name. I don't know how they knew my name, but they knew who I was. I was a little bit shocked because I knew in Wisconsin, I was wanted for escape. Then all of a sudden, they came in and said, "You're not going back to Wisconsin, you're going back to Kansas City, Missouri for armed robbery. I about blew my cork then. The Missouri authorities came and got me and they took me back to Missouri—Kansas City. I was in the county jail there three months or so. I went to court and the fellow that was held up said I didn't do it so they notified Wisconsin that they could come and get me. I was sitting in jail all this time and Wisconsin came and got me and took me back to Wisconsin. So figured I'd be facing this four years for probation plus one year for escape. As I went before the judge and he was charging me with my escape—it was a municipal court judge. I pleaded guilty to that there—to the escape and so then I went on to the higher court and the judge in the higher court, he took no interest whatsoever in the case. He couldn't give me the four years for probation—send me to prison for four years plus one year for escape because I hadn't 2 even started doing my probation period. The judge didn't even ask me if I was guilty or for some type of plea. He just said, "one year in prison." So I went to prison, and my attorney filed to take it to Supreme Court. It was handed down about ten months later so they cut me loose under four years. My attorney was right and the judge was just arguing because he thought he was right. I put in that I had not pleaded guilty to any charge and I was in prison without being found guilty of charge and he ignored that, but that did come down in the Supreme Court, but I did ten months just because he wanted to throw me in prison, so there you go. I finally got out of there and I came out to this country out here. DC: How long have you been here? GT: Seven years—since '65. So, of course, I wrote some checks out here again. Checks have been a hang up with me. You can put a person in prison for a hundred years and if, he himself, is not going to decide if he is going to burglaries, or write checks or rob anymore. He can decide this himself and then he will quit. But as far as putting a man in prison, after a while, after he has been there two or three times, prison has no shock on you. You take when I went to prison in '68 for checks, I was working quite hard and I wanted probation quite badly because I had a good thing going for myself—business and a wife. My children used to tell me that I'd get probation if I pleaded guilty to it. It went back and forth and it finally came to court and he sentenced me to prison. I asked the judge if I could have forty-eight hours to sell my equipment and straighten things out, and he denied this to me. So I lost money plus everything else. You know, that I could have straightened out in forty-eight hours. I did work hard for it—every bit of it. So I went out to this prison here—they're a lot more advanced than a lot of things in Wisconsin are. You have more freedom in this prison here. In Wisconsin, the prison is a 3 strictly a military prison. You’re in your cell, you have nothing in the cell but your earphones. You march to chow and you march back, you march to your job—things like that. DC: What do you use earphones for? GT: We have three buttons on your wall, three plugins and three different radio stations. This was in 1960 or '64. I'm not sure but it's close to the year. Down here, in this prison, you have a radio, you can practically do anything you want to do. This is your own cell, it's your home—that helps, believe me. You have radios—I'm just talking about the good points now—you’re visiting is good here. The visiting runs a little slow but, you can sit by your wife or the people who come to visit you. In the Wisconsin prison, you can't. You have a long table with a board between you and you can shake their hand or kiss them when they come in and shake their hand or kiss them when they go out. That's some of the good points, I don't believe...I'm just generally against prison because what does it do? You can't show how many men has it done good for? It may have made them a little smarter in criminal ways and then they send these young kids in there—that's what really gets me. I know, my own self that when they send these young kids in there—eighteen, nineteen years old in prisons the only thing they are doing is life. They are not doing a thing for them. He is learning right away. It's a school, he is being hired. If he didn't know anything about checks when he went in, he will know about them when he comes out. He is meeting these people in there and he is going to meet them on the street sooner or later and they're going to say....So he might want to try it. He'll do it and he gets busted and back he'll go again. DC: It's just a vicious cycle? 4 GT: That's all it is—a vicious cycle. This has gone through my mind. I can tell you what I have thought of is maybe a man's in jail and he goes before the judge and the judge says well I think this man should go to prison. Why doesn’t the judge say, “I'm going to put you on probation at your home with your family for three months or six months. You go to your job in the morning and you be home at seven o'clock at night, and then you stay there until your job the next morning. Of course, it's going to take a lot and probably people don't see this, but I'm trying to think of something besides locking a man up in prison.” Because when I walked out of prison, I had to that live like an animal there to survive, if somebody doesn't like your looks all the time. It's like I don't know if somebody is going to knife me because he doesn't like my looks or I said something wrong—so you get this animal instinct and you're in the prison. When you come out of that prison, I came out June 16, 1970, and I know that it took three months at least before I was getting over it and I could talk to people more human like. I was like an animal, I would just look at them, stare and walk away. Finally the people get to you and you start letting up. I've talked to several men that was in prison with me after we was out three months and they are completely different than when we were in prison—completely different. It takes so much time to get this here instinct out of you. The prison down here, you have no, you walk down the halls all the time. They call it Main Street. All you do is walk up and down that hall or you sit in the hall there are tin cans laying up and down the hall. It's like the ghetto. One can only sit in a cell for so long and you go out in the yard and what you have in the yard— just a little desert area—it's so damn hot in the summer time that you can't stand it out there. What little shade that you do have is in the building and that is ninety degrees hot. Flies, gosh, flies, I'm telling you, you would never believe it. You can't sleep 5 during the day— no—flies. The guys were stealing these things to kill flies and hanging them in their cells. DC: What types of activities are available at Utah State Prison? GT: Well, I didn't take too much advantage, well, what I wanted was some forestry schooling. I tried to get that but it cost for books which I didn't have at the time. I understand that the University at Logan has a very good forestry school. I tried to get it out they wanted for the books and they wouldn't go for it—That I would have been real interested in and it would have been a help to me. I didn't too anything. I did some schooling at there—math and so forth. As far as recreation, you have basketball, softball and other things too. But those things get so you don't want to do them after a while. Maybe I shouldn't sit here complaining, but the food is terrible. You get so you can't eat it after a while. You can take certain things so long and then you’re hungry and you walk into the chow hall and the smell and blah, there goes your appetite. But that should be expected, you know, a month at a time—the same food. If they have a good store and you have the money, you can buy good stuff up there. DC: Do they have psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers there? GT: Yes, they have them. DC: They're of no value then? GT: I haven't seen too much. DC: They’d do anything for you personally then, in your opinion? GT: No, I was a little upset about my divorce and I went in there and I talked to Green, he was my social worker at the time, and he said he would write her and find out what was happening and straighten a few things out over the divorce, but he never did nothing—I 6 know that. I just got a bunch of lies from him—that's all I got. They had a psychiatrist and I wanted to spend some time with him, but writing checks—I understand it, it was something I had to break myself. I wanted to spend a little time with him but I seen him once and that was the last time I ever saw him again. There are certain people that these people will work with. I don't know what it is. There are certain people who will break their neck to do everything they can for them and the other side—they won't do a thing for them. Maybe, it's because they like the looks of them or something. DC: I've heard a lot of controversy over two areas of State Prisons. One of course, is the drug problem. GT: That's a problem, I'll tell you. It's easier to buy them in there than it is in the street if you use them. I've never used them. I don't believe in drugs. I can't say that I haven't tried grass- most guys in prison will try it once. Drugs—that is one of the biggest problems out there. That's what makes a man so lyri. Here comes some guy off the street stoned and you know he's not thinking right—and that's what fights are obverted on—stabbings and things like that. Homosexual is very.... DC: That was the other one that I was going to ask you about. GT: That is another thing, there is a lot of that in there. In fact, I know one kid who came in there—an example of a really scared kid-a young kid. I told him that he was going to have trouble when he got down there and if you do just get up and fight—to hell with them. And I said, once you fight a guy, he'll leave you alone. To me, what you call a jocker or a punk—to me, they are both the same. DC: Why don't you define a jocker and a punck? GT: A jocker is a guy that has got him a punk. He is the big man. 7 To me, they both look like women. The old saying down there is a jocker is just a punk looking for revenge. I've seen a lot of it. That's what sort of upsets me about these young kids is that they send them in there and they don't know nothing. In the year and one-half that I was down there, this one guy came off fish gear—that's where they keep you six months, I mean six weeks or four weeks while you are analyzed and your records are coming in and what not. I spent about five weeks up there—a little slower then. That is another thing that I don't think is too good either because you can't move around the rest of the prison or you’re in a different part of the prison. It's in the prison but it is blocked away from the rest of the prison. You can go out for chow or movies but you do not intermingle with the rest of the convicts until you period of time is up. I think that they should do away with that. Let them intermingle right away when they come in and it would save them a lot of trouble—let them learn the system right away instead of letting them set up there and worrying because they don't know what is happening, what's going on down there. DC: It's like solitary confinement almost? GT: Just about—-same thing. Maybe I'm wrong but I hear they have a reformatory out here—I don't see where that is going to do any good. That is just getting them ready for the bigger one. From what I've seen is that they've got kids coming in jail, they're worst off than some of us older guys—Their thinking is so mixed up and if they take these young kids like that and send them down there, they've lost right there. I think it is more of their background. DC: Let's go back a little bit farther, just for my sake, and let's talk about your actual childhood. Were you from a large family? 8 GT: I had two brothers and two sisters, a younger brother and a younger sister and an older brother and an older sister. DC: Did they ever have any serious encounters with the law? GT: They don't have any records but speeding records as far as I know. DC: Were your parents divorced? GT: No, they are married quite a few years. DC: Do you consider your family’s middle class? GT: What you are asking me is did my problems start back with my family? DC: Right. GT: Well, I’ve never thought this over. I think it has as I look back. I think it started back in my school days. I remember I had a teacher and I think that something snapped me right about then because I took on, "I don't have to do what you tell me." I think that my trouble started there and I took it on. A man has got to think back on his own life to find out what makes him the way he is. That's when I started—about eighth grade. I never had any encounter with the law until I was about twenty-three. I don't even remember doing anything, not any more than anyone would do , you know, speeding or something like that. I got married when I was eighteen and I had two children. You know, I had a very dominating mother and I've thought it over and it took me thirty-nine years to think back and this has only happened in the last six or seven months. I hate this jail sentence and you are not going to get out unless you decide to stay out of it and find out why you’re in it. I think she started the problem, I got married at eighteen and my wife got pregnant. I didn't want to get married and she said you're going to. When I walked into that marriage, I didn't want it any more than the girl wanted it. Both families get together and you get married. 9 Well, right then and there inside of me, I was going to get rid of that marriage. We did—we got divorced two or three years later. Religion came into this too. See, her family was quite devoted Catholic and, me, I was nothing. If I was going to church, I would believe in going to church. I didn't—that was one of the big problems right there, people are so prejudiced. I got divorced when I was twenty-one or twenty-two. After this divorce, I started not working much. Next thing, I was writing bad checks. I had never written no checks—kept straight. Then all of a sudden, I found out, Hell given a check, I'll cash it payday. It does—it starts that way. Pretty soon, I had $500, $600 writing out checks. All of a sudden, there I was—picked me up. That's where some of my problems started—back there. I have a brother-in-law that is a prison guard. When I went to prison, the only ones that came and visited me were my mother and father. My brother didn't even show up or my sister. Her husband is working as a guard there. There was no way she was going to come and see me when all her friends were prison guards. I think everyone’s problems start back further in life. I was talking to the FBI man and he said and he asked me the same question you asked me. He said that he thought my problem was lack of love and you didn't know it. So I said, well I don't know. But he had the similar thing in his family. I think everyone’s trouble start back. I think that after a person doesn't get attention that he will try to get attention. That's what I think that I was trying to get attention from my people—brothers and sisters maybe. I couldn't get any attention from them and I thought to hell with you people. If I'm in jail you'll come and see me and show some affection to me maybe. I think that was my problem. DC: I wonder if we ever get over that. Because even in my job, in my own personal life, I think we all enjoy a foiling of affection—love—whatever you want to classify it as. 10 GT: I think that everyone needs it. When you feel that someone is taking you, you've got to get back to them someway. DC: You were married once when you were eighteen and then you remarried when you came here to Utah—that's you second marriage? GT: I had a quickie marriage between these two. DC: Then this is your third marriage? How long did this marriage last? GT: I got married in November, but, I was going to be sentenced on December 3, 1968 to prison, so I married her--before I left which was November the 15. She was pregnant when I went to prison. She had the child May 28, 1969 and then she divorced me, started the proceedings in September. She was visiting me steadily, and writing me every day until the child was born. After the child was three months old, she wanted a divorce, I tried to fight it but you can’t fight when you're sitting in prison. Love just doesn't last unless it is true. That's another thing. If they had some more congenial visiting of man and wife—it would save so many divorces. DC: This has been used. Florida used it and it's been used in Mexico and two other states have experimented with it. How can it be done? GT: Why can't they build some little cottage off back of the prison a ways? If nothing else, build these cottages and put a fence around it. Let the families come down and visit for a weekend. Let them eat together, let them sleep together, let his wife and kids come. They could have these small cabins or cottages built—up towards the highway, it's a beautiful area up there. You know, if they did something like that, those men would straighten right up. They come and they visit them in the visiting room, and the guys are all hot and homey and their wife is too. You can pick the kids up a couple of 11 minutes. If you could go stay with your wife for twenty-four hours or a weekend, depends what the prison decides, and let them cook in this cabin, let them stay together as a family for a weekend. A wife goes down there for and so long, for six months, or eight months and she starts thinking, you know, what is he just no good. I really can't set down and tell him my problems and he can't sit down and talk to me about his problems. After he has been in prison for a year or six months, he has got a lot on his chest, if he could just set down with his kids in the other room like a family would and tell his wife his problems, and she could tell him hers, I think it would solve a lot. DC: What about those who are divorced, who don't have families or the married man whose family is unwilling to get involved in that type of situation, or the single man. How would they react to this? GT: Well, I think they...I think that most married men will go for it. Your single man or your divorced man, let's say that the ex-wife want to bring the children to stay with them, that would be a legal question. If a wife divorced a man and she wants to come down and stay with him—that's up to them. I would question those two people. They've been married, they have children, what's the difference if they go to bed together—nothing wrong with that. There is nothing in the bible that says you have to be married to sleep with a woman. It's our law that we've made—society’s law. DC: In Mexico, they tried this system. One of the problems they had was that single men claimed that they had wives and then they would bring in prostitutes and whores. GT: We're getting to that—single men now. I think that the single men of my age or so would appreciate it. The single man of twenty-one, twenty-two, I think they work a different 12 system for him. How can you escape when they let a man go home for nine hours or six hours? I don't think they have had any, have they? DC: They had a few. One fellow was, of course, driving a truck about two and one-half years ago. GT: He was not going home though, was he? DC: No, he was just out on a delivery. GT: That a different thing. I mean you will have one or two along the way, but that's where you have to pick. The social workers or the psychiatrist, who pick, they're going to know pretty well who can go through and who can't. That would be great. You would cut down on the homosexuals. Well, you're never going to cut down, there will always be some in there, but they will cut a certain part. Let's get back to these younger kids—eighteen, nineteen—the first offense. They could slam those doors on them in there and for twenty minutes, I bet some would leave there and never come back. DC: What I hope to do when I get through with all these tapes is to sit down and pull out the recommendations that are made and publish them. Can you kind of reminisce and tell me the dates of your jailing’s, the times you spent in prison and try to get it in chronological order? GT: I think that the first time I was in jail was about July of 1954. I was in jail for just two or three days until I paid them $180. That was in Wisconsin, a little farmer town with a one cell jail. The second time was, I believe, 1956. I was in jail for checks. I was in Madison, Wisconsin. Then in 1958, I was in jail in Madison, Wisconsin for checks, I believe. In 1960, I went to prison in Wisconsin—that was one year for checks. DC: How long was it before you were paroled? 13 GT: Just the one year. Both my sentences were canceled after one year. Next one was in 1964. I should go back. In 1963, I was in Los Angeles County Jail—30 days before I went back to Kansas City, Missouri, then from there, Wisconsin. DC: How many weeks were you in Kansas City? GT: Six months waiting. DC: Then in 1964, you were in prison in Wisconsin? GT: Approximately eleven months. DC: Then you came out to the state of Utah? GT: Yeah, I came to Utah in 1965, then I did commute back to Denver and Omaha. I worked around there in ‘66, then I came back down here. So I have been here since 1966, I spend more time here than anyplace. I had run after I wrote these checks in '68 and ‘69. In 1968, they took me to Pocatello and I was in that jail for two or three weeks, then I was in this jail for a couple of weeks—-then I went to prison in 1968-for a year and one-half down here. That's one good thing they have at this prison. You go to the board and you say and I don't think they really give out a lot of the time compared to other states—a lot of prison time. They don't from what I've seen. If Wisconsin sentences you to ten years, you are sentenced before you can go to the parole board so that is three years and something before you go the parole board to get a parole. Now here, you go in six months and they'll tell you to come back in two years but you know you're going to get out in two years—you can put that into a date if you want. So that is one good thing to have. It gives a man hope. When a man knows when he is going to get out, he knows how much he has to do. I think it helps a man an awful lot. 14 DC: A lot of times too, they will sentence you to one to ten—here in the state of Utah—or five to one. On the other hand, you may get a parole in one year, six months, or two years. Would it be better if they say, “Okay, because of your past record, based on such and such, we are going to sentence you to exactly two years if you are able to comply to the rules of the prison." GT: That would be great. Because these guys are going to the board and the board says two years or three years and then come back. They think why should I? Three years ahead of me. You know without knowing, they have to do three more. But if they would say, we are going to release you in January, February, March, or something of '75, then I know what I have to do and how much time I have to do it in. Then I can start working to get myself toward work release, the Halfway House. You're careful, you don't want to mess parole up by dope or anything. Then he tries to think, think about the outside. But when you're sitting in there and you don't know whether it's three years or two years or what you’re going to do, then you think to hell with it—it takes your hope away. DC: That is what we are striving for. We have a criminal code revision project. Davis county attorney plus several other people are involved in this and that is exactly what they are trying to set up. They are saying, "Okay, the sentence is from two to five." The idea is that you are going to be sentenced to two years but if you don't live the rules, it might extend to as much as five. GT: Say you have a sentence from one to ten. DC: From now on, he won't sentence you from one to ten. There won't be that large of a disparity. He will sentence you from two to five but the idea being that you are really only 15 sentenced to two years in prison-but it could go as long as five if you don't abide by the rules. GT: He will give you his first sentence of two to ten, you will take the two. That's very good. DC: Do you think it would help out? GT: I think it would. I think that might be all right. Of course if a judge is-- DC: No, we are trying to solve that problem, too, by saying, "okay, on a felony, you have a first degree, second degree, and third degree felony. The sentence for a first degree felony is such and such time. So actually, he is not sentencing you on the years. All he is saying is you're being charged with a first degree felony and you've got to pay the pen of guilty on a first degree felony. Therefore, the charge for that is such and such. They're trying to lessen the penalty for offenses against property and increase maybe the crime offenses against persons. GT: My trial starts tomorrow—buying or transferring a stolen vehicle. I bought a car that was hot. Do you want to know why I bought that car? I can tell you why. I come out of prison and I looked everywhere to get somebody to help me buy a truck--anything to do my work in. I called and called and nobody wanted to finance it. I wasn't asking for much—-just something to work with a tool, and they wouldn't do it. So I bought this car and now here I sit. See, they don't realize that's the way it is. I didn't want to buy this damn car to begin with but I had to go to work for myself--I wanted to haul my tools and stuff in the trunk. They came down with the charge of taking this car and put me in jail. Then they took the car which I had equity in for another truck. So they took that then I had nothing again. So I went over to the bank and he loaned me the money cause he 16 knew I worked. So he loaned me the money to buy the truck. So here I am back in here and the truck is in Wyoming. DC: Who is your probation officer? GT: Richard Youngberg. DC: Have you talked to him about the Halfway Home? GT: The only time I saw him was I was under bail when I left and my trial was coming up. I saw him the first day that he brought me back here and he brought me to the room and said "Looks like you're going in front of the board.” DC: Of course the only help they can be to you now is if you have a strong desire to be in the Halfway Home. GT: That's it, he has never come and talked to me. I'll go to court tomorrow and either be guilty or not guilty. I'd like to talk to him. I would like to tell him a few things, of course, he had probably got a load of people over there. I don't know what his load is. What can a man do? I understand. DC: You understand because it is a real problem. But, we are trying to alleviate that problem. They have several projects. One of these is a misdemeanant project, which mean now they provide probation services to one who commits a misdemeanor. This means that they are trying to do it from the very beginning like your first offense. Instead of just saying, "Okay, spend a week in jail," they have somebody working with you trying to work out the problems. GT: I think it would help a lot. I would like to work with them—sit right down with them, you see these kids coming in and they’re in trouble and they're acting real tough—inside they're scared to death. Get ahold of a few of them and shake them up a little bit. Just tell them 17 what to look forward to. That's what they need. They don't need to be thrown in jail. There's not one that feels confident inside. I don't give a damn if he is four years old or sixty, he is scared inside. The criminal code—I'm so tough—that's old time, that is Dillinger and those guys. It isn't now, but these guys won't wake up to it. DC: Let's talk about the Weber County Jail. I don't know if you are aware of it or not but we are presently studying and proposing a feasibility study to determine exactly what the needs are here in Weber County and to construct a brand new metropolitan Hall of Justice with a very elaborate county jail. How elaborate should that be? GT: The main thing that it should have is exercise yard. There are nine fellows in an area that is fifteen by fifteen. Plus it has a table in it, a shower stall at the north and there is nowhere to exercise—you just lay there. I've been there for two months, and one guy has been there for five months. I've lost weight because of the lack of exercise. The food is not too bad here—it’s all starch but more important to me than food is exercise. You get locked here in the room aid you just deteriorate. I think of all the jails I have been into, not because it's my home, but, I'll say that the city and county jail that they have there is set up fairly ideal. It has separate cells. It's a square block with your cells facing and a table in the middle. Your cells are opened and you can walk around and exercise in the daytime--very good set up. DC: What about the multiple purpose room where you can have a basketball court? GT: That would be very good. I think another thing that we should have is a counselor or some guy to pick one guy out of the tank where he is at and send him down to meet once a week—what they call tier blocks. Like one guy who has been here five months has somebody come down and talk to him. There's a lot of vicious violence here. This is a 18 dirty, filthy jail. They have a cleanup crew come in but they let us clean it two or three times a week, but we clean it. We clean the box and everything. Each individual block should clean up their own block. They do that back there and the jail is spic and span all the time. The lieutenant, every morning up there, will make his rounds. He'll come in with a pad and pencil in his hand and he will say, "okay, so and so, what's your problem today? Do you have a problem?" You tell him and he'll do it for you. If you say I would like to call my wife or I'd like to call my brother or my attorney. He'll write it down on there and he'll say okay, and he'll do it. He'll say to me, "What's your problem?" "What about a clean shirt and a clean towel?” "Alright." And he'll put it down. He'll take care of all your problems. The first thing that man does in the morning is make his rounds to every block, talks to every individual. He knows what they want, what their problem is and he goes out and he does it. I've been expecting to see my attorney. I've seen him twice in the last two months. He said, "I'll see you tomorrow." and a week later, I said, "was a long tomorrow. I thought you had left." DC: Is he prepared with a good case? GT: I don't know what he's got. If he doesn't come today, I'll go cold turkey in the court tomorrow. DC: Is there any way of contacting him? GT: I've called his legal aid, Lynn Brown. I've called him a couple of times, but I hope to see him the day before the trial to see what he's got. I got a couple things on mind that I would like to tell him. I think that a criminal case should have a criminal attorney. I know what I've got and I know what's going to happen. I'm not denouncing the man for not having any criminal experience. I read my horoscope for July and August and I was supposed to talk 19 to an individual today—here you are, I kept wondering who that individual is because it was an important individual in my life. It's funny, I really don't believe deeply in this stuff. It said the twelfth and the thirteenth are very bad days for me. That's my trial day. DC: I plan on contacting Mr. Youngberg and make him aware of the fact that you are interested in the Halfway Home. I understand that they might have some additional spots opened and it is really hard to tell you what they are going to do, but they just bend over backwards to get the kind of people in there that they think are able to be rehabilitated. GT: I've been in prison three times. What has prison done for me? I've said over and over. What has the prison done for me but give me misery. If I did go to the Halfway House, I'd like to keep hold of my business and build it. DC: That is exactly the opportunity you would be having. You would be able to continue on with your employment. GT: It's been good, but the kind of person that money means nothing to. I can take a hundred dollar bill and throw it away or give it to somebody and I have a lot of people owing me money out there. I have a weakness for people, I think. I've had a couple of guys working for me, and they needed money for rent or for food or something. I give it to them and just never take it off. If I was someplace like a halfway house where I had someone to help me work these things out, I could set some books up or something. If I was in the Halfway House six months out of my year I could probably walk out of there pretty damn good with an understanding of it. I have the ability to make it but not the ability to handle money—to have it work for me. I realize this. You are not giving me false hope, I feel that what happens to me is a, they say he is thirty-nine years old and this is his fourth time down. That is the way I look at it. 20 DC: Who is your judge? GT: Hyde. I can't stand up before a judge and tell him what I told you here. If a judge were to call a man in his chambers before he sentenced him and then asked if he had anything to say before he was sentenced. DC: What do you think of the judicial process now that you have had a chance to look at it, be involved with it, aside from these things we have already mentioned? Is the judge fair? Is he neutral? GT: Well, the thing is here that the judge is, he's got to go by the prescribed law. I think if the judge had a little more leeway to give a man two, four, or five years, then you might see a difference, But now, he says, the law prescribes one year so that's what I give you is one year. I feel that the judge has a heavy load on his shoulders or his mind. When they lay a man's record by a judge, before he sentences a man, he looks at that record and I believe that is what sentences a man—his record. He makes it easy on himself. He thinks well this man has been in prison two or three times so he sends you to prison. This man has been in prison one time and he's been to jail three times, well, I send him to jail. There are judges that are hard they can give you ten, twenty, thirty years and not think anything about it. DC: I think that they usually soften up after they've been on the bench three to six months or so. GT: Who knows? It is the individual. It takes a man with so many years behind him to really see something. As he goes over and he can think back, he understands more things. You've got a younger generation here now that the judge probably can't cope with because they are still taking a different line. With drags and rioting, it is completely 21 different than it was twenty years ago. When the judge sentenced me to prison in 1960, he was a very good judge. I had never heard a bad thing about him. When a drunk came before him, he was way ahead of the people. He knew that the man was sick-it was a disease. He wouldn't say all this jail time. He would say, Mental State Hospital for thirty days. Ho would try to help the man by sending him out there. When he sentenced me, he said, I'm going to do you a favor, I'm going to give you one year in prison. He could have given me five or fifty. He understood the human being. It's hard for me to set here and have you ask me to make a decision on it—I just can't do it. DC: Of course, the interesting thing will be to sit down and to analyze, what everyone says and see if we can get a consensus. If consensus, you know that it almost has to be fact. There are a couple of things that I did want to just briefly talk to you about. One area is on drugs. How extensive is the use of drugs out to the state prison, in your opinion. Is it ten percent, twenty percent? Then what types of drugs are being used? GT: I've thought about this and I would say that it is about 40 percent. DC: What kinds of drugs are available? GT: Well, they have speed, heroin, oh just about anything, they've got out there. DC: Marijuana is used more extensively I presume? GT: No, speed is more. Marijuana is used, but from what I've seen from being out there, they are more interested in pills than they are anything. DC: Well, it's easier to smuggle in than the rest of them. GT: Yeah, mostly. Like I say, I've seen young kids come out there, eighteen, nineteen years old and never had a needle in their arms, never had a pill, and the next thing you know, 22 here is someone sticking a needle in their arm, and the next thing you know, they are sticking their own needle in their arm. I've seen it. I know that I have seen eight or nine of them. That’s what I'm against. I'm against drugs. I am definitely against drugs. DC: When they are on speed, they don't know what they are doing. GT: That's right and then they make a punk out of them see. DC: What happens if they resist? GT: Well for one example, one kid started on fish gear and we started talking about it. Well, he was off fish gear about a week and they caught him up in the fourth deck, three of them did, and put a knife through him and screwed him or raped him, whatever you want to call it. Then the guy comes out and takes him to the hospital. The hospital put a couple of stitches in him, took him out of population for two or three weeks, and then put him back in population and the guy who did it went free now. What he should have done was cut their God damn throat—that's what I would have done because they are not human beings, they are just a bunch of punks themselves. That's drugs again see, they're on drugs. See, they're still animals. They'll act that way the rest of their lives. I've seen drugs come in that place, and it's not only convicts who have them brought in but its guards who have them brought in. DC: Where do they get their money to pay for it? GT: There is a lot of money in that prison. If I walked in this morning with a thousand dollars’ worth of drugs in my pocket, I'd have a $1000 by tonight. DC: Is there any chance of them being confiscated or do they just let it happen? GT: You get talking about guards again. Here is the thing about guards, ninety percent of the guards don't give a damn. They get like a convict after a while because how many of them 23 are educated or trained for the responsibility of a guard. One guy told me that he put fifty-one applications in between Provo and Logan looking for a job and found the prison hired him. Imagine, he was telling me something all this time all the applications he put in trying to get a job. He put fifty-one in and then the prison hired him. Those men have no more psychology to handle a man. They have a little more power over a man and he knows it. There's a lot of good guys too, don't get me wrong. That's another thing, if a guy has something in common with you a little bit then he likes you. And this other guy next year, he might write him up for the same thing you did. Otherwise, rules are made for some and not for others. DC: You've never committed a crime against persons have you? GT: No, my biggest problem is drinking. I get emotionally upset and I start drinking. I’ve never stole really. I get drinking somewhere and I write a check off for $50—there is my problem and I know that. DC: That is a big step though. Once you realize what your problem is, you know under AA, they say the whole key to AA is realizing that you have a liquor problem. GT: See, I’m not the type of drinker that drinks every day—I drink a can of beer every day—maybe two. I might go a week and then I'll think, oh, hell, I'll buy me one. I'll walk in there and start drinking and the first thing you know, I've spent a hundred dollars. I'll tell you what cured me on checks—they had me on the charge of rape in October. I was picked up and couldn't get out on bail and that was my best season—October and November—so there I sat. Meantime, while I was in here, Sears and Roebuck’s fixes a car for me back in July, and for $168, I stopped the check. They didn't put the shock stop, they didn't put the freight hubs on like they said they would. So I went down and I stopped 24 payment on the check—I had money in the bank—I had $320 in the bank. So I went in front of the judge, I don't have right to stop the check because I'm an ex-convict. They had the guy from the bank come over and here was my statement— I had $320 in the bank when I wrote the check out. So I had to set here and worry for a week. They take it down and dismiss it. So I thought I'm not writing no more god damn checks out and I ain’t. I'm not. That solves it right there. When I get an honest check called and they bust me for it, that did it right there. DC: Can you think of anything that we haven't covered that I should know about that we should be interested in looking at? GT: Well, one more thing about prison could be done is that the men should talk to the warden more. They sometimes have an inmate council. You never see a warden down here mingling with the men, and being able to talk to them. You respect your warden in a prison like that and you can talk to them but not to the inmate council. I think that a man should be able to talk to his warden and give him some of the problems. Now you take the deputy warden, I think the year and one-half that I was in there, I seen him twice. I went to talk to them once and the guard wouldn't let me through the fences, and one guard told the warden that I looked like I was going to escape. There is one more thing that I would like to say, I did have an escape on my records. They called it an escape when I left Wisconsin—that was on my records. I think that they should look into a man’s escape a little bit closer when he wants to get to a farm. That escape held me back and sort of made me a little hot. I tried to certainly explain to them three or four times, I explained to them—still in their mind, it was an escape. That's one thing, they have a small board down 25 there and it meets to determine if a man should go to a farm room or shouldn't—stay in the building. I think they should investigate the escapes a little bit more. DC: In other words, you might have been eligible to go work on a farm? GT: I was available except for that escape and I think I would have had the possibility of staying with my marriage, if I could have had that visiting and freedom that you have on a farm. They have quite a bit of freedom on the farm. They let families bring in picnic lunches. You also get more help on the farm from social workers and people like that than you do in the prison. Every dorm has its social worker and if you have a bitch, you can go see him. DC: They are trying to extend that more. Those that are on work release have been on a farm. The Halfway Home in Salt Lake is an extension of the work release program in the prison. The Halfway Home here is for a person who might be able to make the transition of becoming a useful productive citizen and really didn't need to go to prison. GT: That's very very good. Not only myself but other men that have been in prison more than once, people should know that prison isn't going to do those men any good. You're ready to do time. DC: You've accepted that? GT: You've accepted that in your life. You walk to jail and you say well, I've got to do two or three years. Let's start doing that time and get it over with so I can get out. This Halfway Horne is a great idea. DC: I've interviewed three from the Halfway Home and they think it's a great opportunity. GT: That's the first place I stayed when I came into this town—I like staying there. You think back about your past in your life. When I was staying there, I went to Arizona, and I drove 26 by that prison down there and I said to myself, "Boy, I hope I don't end up in that messed up looking place. Think back in history, the first place I stayed in was the Halfway Home, and I drove by the prison and I've been in that. What's wrong? What Happened? DC: Well, I would hope that we probably have a lot to do about our own destiny. GT: You do, I can honestly say that when I wrote these checks out, not all of them, one check I cashed that I wasn't drinking because I was drinking all the time I did it—that's got to show something. It's got to give me nerve or something. I never would have done it if I had been sober. The psychiatrist on the parole board classified me as an alcoholic. When he said that to me, I said to myself, well maybe I am. I don't know at the time, but, I knew everything I had done was based on drinking. I've never set in jail more contended than I am right now, because I know what I am going do in life. I have no fear now at all. I'm contended. It's like a big weight being lifted off me—first time that I've sat in jail and not worried about a thing, because I know in life what I am going to do. DC: You're quite a guy—you really are. I'm quite impressed. You are very intelligent. I can't see a person with your intelligence thinking any other way than the way you think right now. You know what you are going to do and I think that is probably the GT: It took so much time for me to make my mind up—it's something that I probably had to go through. I knew that I had a problem in life making a living—I love to work. I don't think you can contact a person out here that knows that I'm not out stealing. They all knew I was working—I had no difficulty in making money. I had difficulty in keeping it—paying bills. Maybe I had to have the feeling of that money in my pocket. I hope I can solve it. DC: I think you will. I really appreciate you letting me take your time. GT: I appreciated being able to say what I wished too—I hope it helps someone. 27 DC: It very well might, because like I said, I'm going to transcribe this—you're going to get a copy of it, I don't care where you're at, I want you to go through it and red line it and cross out whatever you want to cross out or maybe even add too. There may be points that we haven't brought out here today when you go over the transcription you might want to write it out. GT: I would like to talk to you again and see how things did work out with me, 28