Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade by Edward Bunker Read Free Book Online Page A

the counter handed me a
letter. On Los Angeles Unified School District stationery, and signed by the
Superintendent and the chief psychiatrist, it notified all concerned that
Edward Bunker was not required to attend school. A phone number was included if
anyone had questions. It had a seal of some kind. Nobody has ever heard of it
happening to anyone else in LA. It was great, for although I loved learning, I
loathed school. Already I knew that true education depends on the individual
and can be found in books.
    The
night streets beckoned. Pals from reform school, most older than me, were on
the streets and into things. It was exciting to make the after-hours joints
along 42 nd and Central, where booze was sold in teacups under the
table, and you could get great ham and eggs and grits and hear some music, and
nobody asked for identification. I had some if needed. It stretched things, but
what the hell, who cares.
    My aunt disliked my hours and prophesied that I'd be
back in trouble again. She was right. I would have disputed it. Then again, I
lived entirely in the time being. I never planned more than two days ahead. I
woke up in a new world every morning. The differences between how my aunt and I
saw the world began to poison our relationship.
    I came upon a little less than $2,000 by helping a
Chicano, Black Sugar from Hazard, dig up a bunch of head-high marijuana plants
that were being grown between rows of corn up in Happy Valley. It was a nice
score. Nobody would know. Nobody would go to the police.
    I emancipated myself from my aunt and my parole
officer. For three months I was having fun. I rented a room, bought a '40 Ford
coupe for $300, and was on my own. Then I got arrested when I was visiting two
buddies out of reform school who had been sticking up supermarkets. They were
eighteen years old and they lived in a house on the east side of Alvarado just
south of Temple Street. Someone's mother owned the house but the room under the
back porch was where "anything goes." It was a clubhouse for
incipient convicts. It was a great place to hang out waiting for something to
happen, someone to come by, someone to call, someone to think of something. It
was a great place to raid. And they did. They found some pistols, some illegal
pills and some pot. It was enough to get everyone booked until it got sorted
out. They mainly wanted to take all of us to lineups for robberies. Nobody
picked me out, but my fingerprints came back with an outstanding parole
violator warrant issued by the Youth Authority.

Chapter3
     
    Among the Condemned
     
    The Superintendent of the Preston School of Industry
threatened to quit if I was returned to his institution, or so I was told by
the man who drove me from the LA county jail to the prison for youthful
offenders in the town of Lancaster. It was on the edge of the vast Mojave
Desert, but still in the County of Los Angeles. Built during World War II as a
training base for Canadian flyers, it was now operated by the California
Department of Corrections. They'd built a double fence topped with rolled
barbed wire around the buildings. Every hundred yards was a gun tower on
stilts. Presto! A prison.
    Except for a couple of dozen skilled inmate workers
brought from San Quentin or Folsom (surgical nurse, expert stenographer/typist
for the Associate Warden and so forth), the convicts of Lancaster were aged
between eighteen and twenty-five. Ninety percent of those were between eighteen
and twenty-one. When the transporting officer removed my chains in Receiving
and Release, I was fifteen years old.
    While I was being processed, a sergeant arrived to
take me to the Captain. Wearing white overalls and then walking across the
prison with the Sergeant, I was self-conscious. Heads turned to scan the
newcomer. One or two knew me from other places and called out: "Hey,
Bunker! What's up?"
    Inside the custody office, which was somewhat
reminiscent of an urban newspaper's city room, was a door with frosted