Straight Life - Art Pepper [82]
My father helped get me out on bail, and I went back to plead. I thought they would leave me out until sentencing, but I pleaded nolo contendere so they jerked me otf bail and put me back in the county jail. I was sentenced to two years. At that time I could have gotten probation by the feds or I could have gotten a year. They gave me two years and sent me to Forth Worth.
9
The U.S. Public Health
Service Hospital at
Fort Worth
1953 - 1954
THERE WERE THREE PEOPLE from the L.A. County jail and a couple of people from San Diego, five of us altogether, that went on the chain. The U.S. marshals took us. We went down to the Union Station and they put us on the train. We had a pullman; it was the law; they had to give you a pullman if you were going to be traveling more than twenty-four hours. They paired us off. I drew a dope fiend from San Diego named Kantola; his name came before mine alphabetically. We were put together in one bunk. They had leg irons on us and we had to sleep that way, in a top bunk, and Kantola was sick.
When we went to eat they took the leg irons off and put us in handcuffs. We walked into the dining car and sat down; one of us had to eat with our left hand and the other with our right. People were staring at us so I played the role, like I was a big gangster. I had a double-breasted suit on with a white shirt, and I took my tie off, and I was very handsome. I gave people cold looks, the porters, and if chicks would stare at us I'd give them evil looks. You could act any way you wanted because nobody could bother you-you had the guards there. So you'd glare at people and they'd look away because they'd be scared.
We got off the train at Fort Worth, and they lined us up and put chains around our stomachs and handcuffs on our wrists. They drove us out to the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital, a little ways out of town on a big hill. We went into a building and down in an elevator, and that was the last time I would be outside for nine months. It was nine months before I got an outdoors pass. You walked to the different buildings through underground tunnels. There were three hundred addicts and eight hundred mental patients who were connected with the coast guard, their families-people who had lost their minds or were in the process of losing them.
We got there on a Sunday. There was no activity and nobody around. We went through the different stages of getting booked in and of course it was nothing like the county jail. I thought, "Maybe this will be good for me." I had messed up everything, and as far as my playing, nothing was happening right anyway, so I started thinking, "Maybe I'll be able to straighten out, and when I get out everything will be like it was before. Again. And I'll be back with Patti. And I'll enjoy playing." Two years seemed like an awful long time, but I'd spent three and a half years in the army. And there was always a chance of making parole after a part of my time was up.
The buildings were tall and there were about seven of them. One big building had all the administration offices in it and the doctors' offices, where the psychiatrists did their work. There was a building for the women and three for the extreme mental patients. Part of one building was a school, and part of another had a regular hospital in it. These buildings were spread out over a large area and were joined by the tunnels. We went to 201, the place they took the newcomers to see what kind of shape we were in. Me and Kantola told them we were sick. They really didn't believe me. I didn't appear to be sick. But I wanted to get some dope and if you were sick they took you off with liquid methadone, liquid Dolophine they called it, and they had chloral hydrate to make you sleep at night. If you were really in bad shape they'd give you morphine a few