Stars

What I call a star is simply someone who stands out. Like this big Indian I know, Bill Bosun. He was working in the prison furniture factory when a big Negro slipped up behind him and slammed a pair of scissors into his trapezius. What makes Bill a star is that, instead of going down, he pulled those scissors out of his back, chased down his attacker and tried to stab him back When this occurred, (1978) captives had not yet been pinched down into tiny, tennis-court size "yards." The attacker had plenty of running room, and even being at least 100 pounds overweight, his terror of Bill catching him was so great that he was able to shag his fat ass all the way to copcommand central where the gun-guards on the catwalk were able to protect him from paying for his crime. Bill was a big star in prison for a week after this, especially among those of us who saw it occur.

Another son is Buddy Fesmire. I will never forget watching him, almost single-handedly, stop a budding race riot caused by cops planting a weapon in a Nazi's cage and blaming it on the Negroes. Everyone involved, about 40 people on each side, had some type of weapon or two, from sharpened metal blades or shafts, to chains off the sleeping racks, bars or weight-disks off the exercise set, broken, sharpened mop or broom handles, or rocks, bricks, or just handfuls of sand for blinding. The bellowing matches were going full force; only one guy had to step too close, or look away long enough for a sucker-move, to set off the war. This was when Buddy Fesmire and Alan Fulbright dragged the weight bench into the middle of the battle line. Fesmire jumped up on it and talked all the impulsive knuckleheads down to rationality while itchy-fingered tower cops centered their automatic rifles on his back and head. The administration never found out how many thousands of dollars he saved them in medical bills, extra security measures, or lawsuits over negligence and wrongful death. They simply continued to blunder along, letting their low-level cops run amuck smuggling dope, playing hated captives against each other and causing violence, maiming, stabbings, and murder just for the fun of it. Buddy Fesmire is a star whose illumination is mostly obscured by the dust of conviction and the dirt of prison, but his light will eventually break through. I saw it. So did those hotheads on the yard that day. Even those gun cops in the towers caught a glimmer.

One of my close, personal friends is a star. Owen Swaim used to patiently listen to all of us whine and complain about how sorry prison is and how slowly the court mandated reforms were going. OK's politicians, judges, bureaucrats and citizens were able to slow-play and minimize the fix for over 20 years. Owen would wait 'til we wound down, then point out that our 5x7 foot two-man cages had been replaced by 12x7 foot cages. The new cages were not yet permanently infested with cockroaches. The pipes no longer broke, shutting off the water every month or so. The toilets didn't stop up or overflow as often. W e had forced ventilation now. The vicious cops or drunken warden could no longer simply bury people on their many lockups for years at a time, or tear gas us in our cages until we died of heart attacks from coughing our lungs out. Owen told us, "like it or not, this is progress!"

It was the 1973 McAlester riot that cost the citizens $30 million that caused the feds to force these state shits to get right. Owen was telling us this "progress" speech in 1983, at a brand new $45 million prison. He was right, but they were not through. They still had much to learn. The very next day, we had another riot. The only thing left to eat after all the foodhandler inmates had stolen all the meat and cake was beets and greens. I just said "fuck ill" and decided to go hungry again. I had to go beg the chaplain to let me buy a watch battery. On the way down, I saw another star. I never knew his real name. He was an Indian-Italian who went by the name of Blackie. Blackie was coming down the hill from another mini-prison, at the head of a column of angry captives determined to get something to eat. They converged around the kitchen door and began shouting. A brave civilian supervisor actually opened the door and let out a 30 gallon pot filled with KoolAid. Promises were made, the door was re-locked. No one rushed in to eat. Then the yard cops came with their loud, commanding voices full of hatred and abuse. Rocks were thrown. They ran like the cowards they were. The sun eased down. Still no food. A sandstone boulder, a foot in diameter, was used again and again, smashing up against the layers of glass and plastic in the kitchen door. It got dark. Still no cops. Some idiot set fire to the school, I remember seeing their new Apple II in the window. It was too late for me to put out the fire, but not too late to run in and save the computer. I vetoed this idea simply because to do so would likely get me blamed far the fire. The fire spread to the library. The chapel was in this same building too. When I checked, the chaplain was in there with a crowd of people who turned out to be Islamics. I told them all, "the building is on fire; you need to get out." The chaplain just stared, trying to gather a proper response. A surly Negro interrupted with stupidity, saying, inanely, "We be having services heah!"

Back up the hill, at the cage I shared with Owen, Mr. Progressive told me, "Let's just lock ourselves in and watch The Godfather." I could see Owen trying to keep the hominy prison riot from rubbing off on him, but I look a different view. Knowing that we were all going to pay for it regardless of participation or not, I elected to be an observer. Owen saw my point and kept the door open all night while I watched and tried to mitigate some of the damage. Bobby found me. When the National Guard came, one of their shits stabbed his guitar with his bayonet; a real scumbag move on his part. We blundered into David Hoover, who asked if he could hang with us because he was afraid that ziglar might want to bash him for screwing up his appeal. W e watched a Negro with his own boulder methodically smash it up against the glass of a cops control habitat. There was a new young black female inside, watching, terrified of her impending beating and rape. The glass was tough. The process was slow and boring, but we had to watch. We had to wait about 45 minutes to find out if we were going to have to stomp this Negro. Incredibly, once he got in, he escorted her to where the cops were hiding, waiting until enough real cops came to make them all feel safe enough to attack. When next we saw him, he was bashing his boulder on another Cop's control habitat-this one a new, young white male. To this day I wonder, "why not just tell them your intention and let them unlock the door? Why the stupidity of performing vandalism that is also very hard work?"

A National Guard Huey came by to noisily circle the prison, empty except for the pilot, who gawked down at as from sunset to far into the night. Some poor fool stood too long on the 2nd floor of the mini prison "N," gawking at the cops gathering their forces. An anonymous, uniformed murderer drew a bead on him and blew him away just out of cussedness. When I posted the facts of this, and that this bullet hole was still in the glass 19 years later, they replaced this panel with a new one. The press made a half-hearted attempt to make the cops reveal the psychopathic killer among their ranks. He was let to get away with his cold-blooded murder. The closest we came to finding him was the guards saying the highway patrol cops did it and the cops saying the prison guards did it.

The cops shut off the electricity. Owen came out, agreeing that, since we were all going to pay, he should at least see what he was paying for. Pitch black, under the top layer of cages, we found Bill Miller locked in his cage. He wanted to stay there, despite no juice, no water, and no flush. Somebody handed Owen an aluminum pipe, saying, "we saved one for you," meaning a sliver of glass, five inches wide, between two jams, purely for keeping dust from blowing in. Under the glow of a Bic lighter, Owen bashed it with the pipe several times. It would not break. I took the pipe and jabbed the glass, leaving a circular hole. Owen easily broke the rest out. Some rat in the blackness recognized Owen's voice. Months later I read in the paper that Owen Swaim is being prosecuted as the ringleader of the Hominy Riot! This is your "best legal system in the world!" Take the one guy who wanted nothing to do with this hailstorm of state-caused negligence, incompetence and malice, and make him the target because some rat found an opportunity to grease himself out with the help of some greasier lawyer.

What makes Owen a star is that despite all the nonsense that they've put him through, he still remains dedicated to progress and bears no ill will to any of the vermin who climbed up his back for their own advancement. One of the brightest stars in prison was one of the most obscure. Almost nobody has heard of Frank Chase except those of us who knew him. He was a big guy who never raised his voice. Frank wasn't anyone who craved your attention, and he never competed for conversation. Mostly, he didn't talk to you. When he did speak, it was important, and people listened. He didn't waste your time with nonsense. He said what needed to happen, and then things began to happen, in a subtle, easy-to-miss kind of way that tended to bypass the attention of snitches, blabbermouths, snoopies, and guards.

Frank's prison job was to empty trash and to keep a shower clean at the back to the tag plant. His personal job was to empty trash and to keep a shower clean at the back of the tag plant. His personal job was to find a few solid convicts to open a hole for him to escape out of. The first one of these men he found was Leroy Tiffey. I wrote about Leroy earlier, but the story of his exploits may have been too graphic and violent for print. His history will appear on jamesbauhaus.org when I am able to arrange typing of the manuscript. Prison Administrators are terrorists about the truth never leaving their hellholes.

Leroy felt that he was never going to leave prison because of the secret, black check marks that he suspected were in his record. Though he had never been charged, he thought the Jeff-city, Kansas prison-crats had told his Oklahoma captors that he had murdered a debtor and three of his bodyguards. So he was with Frank on the open-a-hole business. Leroy worked for maintenance, and was able to take a few minutes out of his schedule to steal a couple bags of concrete for frank to hide in his dumpster. Friday, Leroy came by with a saw and "fixed" a drain in the shower. Alan Livingston and John Engberg distracted the cops, supervisor and inmates while this heavy construction was going on. Nobody involved was a plumber, but they didn't need one. Underneath the drain plate was a handle of re bar for lifting the block out. That shower went inexplicably dry.

Five more people were picked as diggers, and they were determined as they were efficient. Skinny Blond Kid (SBK) was first. In one day, despite all the interruptions and near-caught, he dug down over three feet, using only a metal coffee cup. Just as efficiently, Leroy came by with stakes and a sledge hammer to put up stops for the concrete lid. At the end of each day, Frank camouflaged the seams by smearing them with dirty soap. The dirt took a trip to the dumpster, 30 feet away; where a guard and trustee crew hauled it off once per week. 

The hole quickly became a tunnel. It was a race against discovery. By the end of the first week, SBK had room enough to dig in total darkness with the lid on. By the second week, he needed help. Frank got people in the furniture factory to provide planking to line the tunnel against cave-ins. He grafted a light bulb onto the end of a lantern battery stolen out of a fire alarm. Leroy brought a hammer, chisel, trowel, and sharpshooter shovel. The shovel made the work go so quickly that they had to save some of the dirt back, fearing to put too much into the dumpster at one time. Also, their diggers were getting dizzy, and not because they were tired. Leroy solved one problem by bringing a wheelbarrow around several times a week to stash some of the dirt the furniture factory's dumpster. Soon dirt showed up in the Garment Factory dumpster as well. Frank solved the dizziness problem by sewing trash bags into a tube that he inflated with the fan he brought from his poker-table business. The tunnel was 12 feet deep and 25 feet long. With Frank's setup, the tunnel could be aerated almost as quickly as a digger could drag the tube to the end of the tunnel. About the 3rd time they used it, they simply tacked it to the top left comer of the tunnel and just extended it as they went. The fan-end would be wadded into a nook inside the entrance when not in use.

The work was hard, hot, dirty, and dangerous, but none of the guys were sissies like so many of the inmates are today. After many weeks of stifling, smothering, cramped work, SBK crawled out with great news. He had found the very bottom of the massive concrete wall that surrounded Oklahoma's most insufferable slave labor death camp at McAlester. While the impulsive, short-sighted, ignorant of the ordinary population wasted their lives playing cards and ball, and snitched, fought, stole, and even managed to kill each other over petty disputes at a rate of at least one a month, these 9 men had almost accomplished their goal of freedom.

The base was 6 feet thick. Soon as the diggers got past it, they dug straight up, 12 feet, to the surface, pounding in stakes as steps. SBK cut a peephole of sunlight at the lop, then quit for the day. Since access to the tunnel was cut off at 5pm extensive preparations had to be made and put into the hands of people who may not have been as competent as these 9 far-thinking men. Out of 2,200 men who needed to be counted after supper, many of them would be sleeping, and 9 of them would be dummies. Frank lowered the entrance slab over himself and a friend applied the camouflaging soap and dirt paste. Next, he crawled over eight associates and took his place below the peephole. It seemed to take forever for twilight to occur. They couldn't wait, It was just too hot and smothering in the hole together. The hacked out the roof and crawled out to lay quietly at the base of the wall, barely hidden by stantions from tower guards on both sides.

Finally, the sun went down; Frank said "go" over his shoulder as he ran for the cover of a building near the power plant. Behind that was a 14 foot fence. One of the diggers broke his foot jumping down. Everyone else ran in one of 3 directions: over a field into the woods; toward the highway; towards McAlester.

In the cages, the plan began breaking down too. One of the guys tending a dummy was paid in marijuana. He was smoking it when a cop walked by his cage unexpectedly. This stupidity caused a special, "stand up" count that uncovered all the dummies by 9pm. As per their secret policy, the administrators kept this information concealed while they set their cops to searching inside the walls and fences of the prison. Meanwhile, in town, a car was quietly stolen and driven to Oklahoma City, home to one of the 3 diggers riding within it. A gaggle of cops were hiding across the street when they pulled into his mother's driveway.

By 10pm the warden gave up and called the cops in McAlester to warn them of the impending crime wave. At approximately the same time their dogs towed the dog-cops to the digger with the broken foot. He had only managed to hop and crawl half a mile, to Lake McAlester. A fifth digger chose to thumb a ride from the highway at two in the morning. The guy who picked him up gave him a ride to the city jail. John and Alan gravitated toward a farmhouse, but it had some noisy dogs to scare them away. They wound up near Eufala, where they broke into one of the lake cabins. The rich guy who owned it had it well stocked with food, fishing poles, a boat and many pawn-able valuables. John and Alan lived there for about a month before a suspicious local followed them "home" and called the cops. When the cops broke the door down, they found Alan passed out on old crow. John blundered into them with a stringer of fish and had to be chased through the woods. Two days later, they dragged him out from under a house in the city proper after being seen trying to steal a truck.

Frank and Leroy robbed a clothesline in town for shirts that were not prison blue. Both were older, and smarter than their associates. Instead of causing crime waves that could be followed back to them, they only traveled by night. When headlights could be seen converging on their position, they didn't stick their thumbs out and smile, they hid in the ditch until the vehicle passed. Sometimes, when the road didn't go their way, they cut across the country. Don't need a road when you have a direction. While everyone else had taken turns digging, Frank and Leroy had been studying books on Spanish and developing weird accents (in 1971, there were very few Hispanics in Oklahoma's shiniest prison). They'd also converted much of their gambling operations assets into "green," which is why they didn't have to waste time having to steal or rob. Inside of two weeks they'd made it to El Paso after a bus trip from Dallas. From there it was a short, nervous wail for a crowd of commuters and tourists to hide in as they walked across the border; Leroy first, then Frank, after seeing him succeed.

They worked their way down the coast because they both loved to fish and dreamed of sailing. It turned out that they were good at shrimping, working harder and more efficiently than most at laying and hauling nets, pulling the heads off shrimp quickly and maintaining the equipment. After the first six weeks at sea, however, all that pay was too much for Leroy. Against Frank's advice, he went to a bar, got drunk, got into a brawl over a woman, and then got dragged off by the Federals. Eventually they puzzled out his broken Spanish with the atrocious accent. His Picture got shown north, and then his fingerprints confirmed it He got shuffled back to McAlester, after a good beating,

Frank didn't let his vices take over. Instead, he joined a group of Catholics in spreading the word of God far and wide. He married one of the widows within the flock and forsook the sea almost as soon as he found it. He was welcomed on this lady's land by her former husband's family to help work it as a Campesino. Now it and more belongs to him and their combined families.

Of all the stars I've known, the one who burns the longest is Frank Chase. He's been at it for about forty years now.