The broken people you see in a place like prison often spark memories from before prison, the lessons you’ve learned, and the experiences you’ve had. I’m constantly reminded of my dad and the things he taught me.
It was through my dad that I was introduced to the first homeless person I ever knew. Over the years I’ve known a total of three homeless people – four if you count me, which at the moment, I do.
I always thought my dad’s friend, Joe, was an old guy who worked at his office, an employee. Turns out that Joe was a homeless veteran who lived downtown and would drop by my dad’s office for coffee and donuts. Joe was in his 60’s. My dad was 45, and I was about 15 or 16 at the time.
When I saw him, Joe would ask how I was doing in school, and one time my dad brought him home for dinner, unannounced. My dad didn’t just bring him for a home cooked meal though, I think he also brought him to see the look on my step mom’s face.
The third homeless person I met was standing in front of a Super Walmart on a cold autumn day in East Texas. Margaret was by herself with a duffle bag full of clothes and a sign that read, ‘Will work for food’.
I put my groceries in my Subaru Brat and asked her about her situation. She was a school teacher, laid off due to budget cuts, single, 55-years old, and had just been evicted from her apartment. I told her to hop in my car, and I offered her a job as a nanny/housekeeper. At the age of 32, I was completing the circle my dad taught me to draw twenty years earlier.
My wife and I were expecting our daughter, Cara, and had an extra bedroom. I offered Margaret free room and board plus six dollars an hour to watch over our seven-year-old son and take the load off my very pregnant wife.
She not only did those things, she was also a speech therapist, and she worked with my son who was having trouble pronouncing his words due to an inner ear infection when he was younger. Margaret stayed with us for about six months, until she got a job as a teacher in another school district. I didn’t want her to go, but we all have our paths.
But, it’s the second homeless person I knew that I want to talk about, Dawn. I was 23 years young, attending college, and braver than I am now. I was also my father’s son, so risk became almost second nature, especially when someone was being bullied or manipulated. I have never liked bullies.
I was shooting pool in a dive bar in Arlington, Texas. I was taught by the greatest pool hustler I’ve ever seen, my grandfather. From the time I was able to see over the top of a billiards table, until I moved to Texas in 1979, Grandpa Reed taught me every single trick in the book, and some that weren’t even mentioned in the book (and never will be). So, being twenty-three, I used to set up shop in an old bar or pool hall and make the rent.
One night, I noticed a girl, about nineteen or so, run through the bar and into the women’s restroom. The key to hustling pool is a clear head, so I was drinking Diet Coke and water. My opponents were drinking whiskey and beer. I was up $50 when the girl ran through the bar. She looked like she’d fought and lost a one round bout with the Terminator. As the scene played out, a big white guy in a black trench coat walked into the bar and scanned the crowd.
Ah, the aforementioned Terminator.
I walked over to the bar to order another Diet Coke, and he asked me if I’d seen a short white blonde come into the bar.
Ah, the damsel in distress.
I told him I saw someone fitting that description down at the other bar across the way. He laid a $5 bill on the counter and said, “Thanks, pal.” After he left the bar, I went to the restroom, opened the door and yelled in, “If you want to escape, I can get you safely away.”
The girl looked at me like she’d just won the lottery and came out of the restroom. I grabbed her hand and led her to my car. Once inside, I saw The Terminator coming out of the bar I led him to, and I started my car before creeping out of the lot, unnoticed.
I found out the girl was nineteen, from Tulsa, Oklahoma, and on her way to Houston when she was detained by said Terminator at the bus station. He’d been abusing her for about a week and was planning on pimping her out.
I took her to my apartment and cleaned her up. She had no clothes, no anything, just a lot of bruises and apprehension. My roommate, Eddie, came home and knew I was in rehab mode, so he just went to bed.
The next day I took the $50 and some more cash I had laying around and bought her some clothes and make up. After a few days had passed, I took her to my store manager, Mr. Wright, and got her a job in the floral department. She was a natural. Two months later, she had her own place. Six months later she was the department head. We never saw the Terminator again.
I’ve always wondered why or what makes a bully. After I told my dad what I’d done, he told me all that a bully requires to exist is a willing victim.
I don’t know about the willing part. I’ll always be on the victim’s side of things.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR ‘Shipwrecked, Abandoned, Misunderstood’, but he still has the things his father instilled in him – humility, respect and love. In spite of 25 years behind bars, he continues to wake up every day holding on to his humanity and on a mission to change the world for the better.
John Green #671771
C.T. Terrell Unit A346
1300 FM655
Rosharon, TX 77583
My earliest memories are from when I was five or six, maybe younger. We had a side porch and when it was raining outside, my brother, cousins, and I would sing out at the rain, “Rain, rain, go away, come again another day.” There is a smell that rain gives off, and I can’t name it, but it is the same scent I can smell when it rains where I am now.
Travis Runnels has been a writer for this site for a long time. He is scheduled to be executed on December 11, 2019. You can sign a petition showing you are against his execution 
Most prisoners housed in solitary confinement for extensive periods of time, at some point, will see in the mirror an almost unrecognizable Dr. Frankenstein like creation. Their own disfigured features are the result of the institution’s mode of dismembering faculties and a person’s natural resistance to being tortured.
All those years in prison,
Imagine coming home from a hard day of work, kicking off your shoes, and dropping your coat and bag at the front door. You make your way through your own home, seeking the arms of your significant other. In warm anticipation you open your bedroom door, hoping to surprise your lover. But, when it swings open you are shocked to discover them making love to a stranger in your bed.
These shoes are too harsh for the average person to walk in for very long, especially when I’ve already worn the ‘soul’ out of them. I apologize for asking anyone to walk in them, nobody should have to. Help me get rid of ‘em, by throwing them on the highest telephone line and leaving them there as a symbol of shoes that no one will ever have to wear again. Imagine that…
The windows here at the MCI Norfolk Security Housing Unit extend from floor to ceiling, about eight feet high, and only five inches wide, impossible for anyone to escape through. The Plexiglas is clear. That surprised me, because most segregation units I’ve landed in have cell windows that are frosted over from the outside, making them impossible to look through. Here, there are trees and lots of wildlife. I see the occasional hawk looking for a bite to eat or a blue pickup truck driving ever so slowly along the perimeter fence. Here, we’ve got a view.
About halfway up the window pane, he slipped and fell, dropping a few hundred of his own body lengths and smacking his tiny self against the sill. Yet, within a matter of seconds, he was back up and remounting the glass. The fall didn’t even daze him, though it would certainly have bruised the life out of me. Extremely interested now, I sat watching him scale the glass again, even cheering for him, as each attempt ended in disaster. He climbed, slipped, and his plunge ended, once again, on cold steel. I couldn’t help but smile at how stupid the little bug was. As I watched him try, yet again, my vision refocused onto a blue pickup truck driving by, past the electric barbed wired fence perimeter, driven by a prison guard making good money for driving in circles all day. Maybe we’re not so much better than the ant? At least he was trying. At least he was moving forward. Quitting wasn’t a part of his vocabulary, I realized, as I watched the blue pickup disappear from view. The idea of giving up wouldn’t make sense to the ant. He was programmed to always keep going, keep trying… How come we humans don’t share the ant’s drive to conquer the hurdles in our own lives?
It didn’t make sense. He had fallen about a dozen times and reached the top twice since I ate. But he still kept on climbing. Shouldn’t he have, by now, figured out that there’s nothing up there for him? ‘Why does he keep climbing?’ I wondered. I stood looking at him, my face just inches from his. At one point he stopped moving and twittered his antennae at me. It was as if he were saying, ‘I just like to climb, buddy! It’s all about the climb!’
So, the powers that be would come in and shake the dorm down for said contraband, usually finding extra underwear, rubber bands, and paper clips – no drugs, no weapons. Bring in the dogs!
The blonde lab, who looked to be about three or four years old and about 75 pounds, walked up to my cubicle and stopped for a second before coming in, jumping on my bunk, and laying down with his head on my lap. His handler, an officer I had known for fourteen years and who had been promoted to the SERT team, asked the dog to step out.
First, I must apologize for the picture I am about to share because of what it has done to me and what it will likely do to you. I’ve carefully searched through my stack of pictures to find the one that would vividly illustrate the loss that violence brings, but there were no photos to properly convey the gravity of what I’d like to share. So, I have no choice but to paint one, a picture painted in words.
At a visit the other day