ROLL CALL ~ A Prison List (True Prison Story) Read online

  Copyright © 2009 Glenn Langohr

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN: 1-4392-4608-4

  ISBN-13: 9781439246085

  Kindle ISBN: 978-1-61550-644-6

  Visit www.booksurge.com to order more copies.

  In Heavenly memory of Pete and Dorothy

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  CHAPTER 63

  CHAPTER 64

  CHAPTER 65

  CHAPTER 66

  CHAPTER 67

  CHAPTER 68

  CHAPTER 69

  CHAPTER 70

  CHAPTER 71

  CHAPTER 72

  CHAPTER 73

  CHAPTER 74

  CHAPTER 75

  CHAPTER 76

  CHAPTER 77

  CHAPTER 78

  CHAPTER 79

  CHAPTER 80

  CHAPTER 81

  CHAPTER 82

  CHAPTER 83

  CHAPTER 84

  CHAPTER 85

  CHAPTER 86

  CHAPTER 87

  CHAPTER 88

  CHAPTER 89

  CHAPTER 90

  CHAPTER 91

  CHAPTER 92

  CHAPTER 93

  CHAPTER 94

  CHAPTER 95

  CHAPTER 96

  CHAPTER 97

  CHAPTER 98

  CHAPTER 99

  CHAPTER 100

  CHAPTER 101

  CHAPTER 102

  CHAPTER 103

  CHAPTER 104

  CHAPTER 105

  CHAPTER 106

  CHAPTER 107

  CHAPTER 108

  CHAPTER 109

  CHAPTER 110

  CHAPTER 111

  CHAPTER 112

  CHAPTER 113

  CHAPTER 114

  CHAPTER 115

  CHAPTER 116

  CHAPTER 117

  CHAPTER 118

  CHAPTER 119

  CHAPTER 120

  CHAPTER 121

  CHAPTER 122

  CHAPTER 123

  CHAPTER 124

  CHAPTER 125

  CHAPTER 126

  CHAPTER 127

  CHAPTER 128

  CHAPTER 128

  CHAPTER 129

  CHAPTER 130

  CHAPTER 131

  CHAPTER 132

  CHAPTER 133

  CHAPTER 134

  CHAPTER 135

  CHAPTER 136

  CHAPTER 137

  CHAPTER 138

  CHAPTER 139

  CHAPTER 140

  CHAPTER 141

  CHAPTER 142

  CHAPTER 143

  CHAPTER 144

  CHAPTER 145

  CHAPTER 146

  CHAPTER 147

  CHAPTER 148

  CHAPTER 149

  CHAPTER 150

  CHAPTER 151

  CHAPTER 152

  CHAPTER 153

  CHAPTER 154

  CHAPTER 155

  CHAPTER 156

  CHAPTER 157

  CHAPTER 158

  CHAPTER 159

  CHAPTER 160

  CHAPTER 161

  CHAPTER 162

  CHAPTER 163

  CHAPTER 164

  CHAPTER 165

  CHAPTER 166

  CHAPTER 167

  CHAPTER 168

  CHAPTER 169

  CHAPTER 170

  CHAPTER 171

  CHAPTER 172

  CHAPTER 173

  CHAPTER 174

  CHAPTER 175

  CHAPTER 176

  CHAPTER 177

  CHAPTER 178

  CHAPTER 179

  CHAPTER 180

  CHAPTER 181

  CHAPTER 182

  CHAPTER 183

  CHAPTER 184

  CHAPTER 185

  CHAPTER 186

  CHAPTER 187

  EPILOG

  AUTHOR’S NOTES

  CHAPTER 1

  I am Benny Johnson and my childhood got sideways in the eighties. I’m still trying to sort through the detritus my mind has accumulated. Although, some of the trash in there is life’s lessons I do not want to forget about. I fast forward this story into the California Prison system and then bring you back to show you how that journey took me there. It turns out that the saying; “Truth is stranger than fiction” holds a lot of merit.

  Like a bunch of us in these times, I grew up through a ruptured home. Standard issue these days, right? Through my parents’ divorce all these years later I have come to realize how blessed I am. I had two good parents. My Dad came from a family of athletes. He himself was a pro golfer, and his father was a pro baseball player. Too bad they didn’t make the kind of money they do now because money has always been a focal issue and a weapon in my family. Actually that wouldn’t have changed it, only magnified it. My Dad comes from one generation after another where negativity rules, or rather dictates the family into submission, or better yet, subservience. It’s that unhealthy kind of competition where they have to win at everything to earn your respect. That means they’ll set you up to fall just short of expectations, and put you down in the process to keep their title. The only time I measured up in my Dad’s eyes was playing baseball. I was a natural with God given talent. He couldn’t hit a ball by me, but he took it as his duty to break me and the rest of my family down in all of the other areas of our lives. I now realize he was just doing what his father bred in him, and his father bred in him. It was a multi- generational curse that had to be broken.

  My Mom was the opposite spectrum. She comes from an Italian family that migrated from Sicily a couple of generations ago. From generation to generation, her family made it through the hard times with love and support. There were some hard times. Her father earned the nickname Pistol Pete and had one of those last names that end in a vowel. He raised my Mom as a single father while owning and running his own bar in New Orleans, Louisiana. He literally had to live at the bar and work it almost twenty-four/seven to stay on top of things. My Mom’s mothe
r took off for an easier life, leaving Pete to handle it solo. The D.A. made it their business to intrude on those kinds of living arrangements and took my Mom from her father. My mother also had a medical condition in her early childhood that had to do with weak tendons and ligaments. For a while, she couldn’t walk any better than a fawn taking their first few steps. My grandfather did what he could. He put her in foster homes and found some nuns to raise her. He realized that the foster homes he put her in were after the money the state provided. Every time he noticed she wasn’t getting the same milk, food, or anything else that resembled caring, he stepped in and tried another home! This kind of powerful love that acknowledges your circumstances and pain, along with the love the nuns showed her comes from God, was bred into her and she blessed me with it. Now I understand that, like a diamond has to go through a lot of fire to become one, the depth of real love is proven by how far it’s been tested.

  Prohibition put my grandfather out of work. Facing poverty even harder he continued his trade in the alcohol business. He began to associate with others whose last names end in a vowel. He facilitated liquor in a ring of facilitators who took care of the elite who still wanted to sip. Among those were the same D.A.’s who separated his daughter from him, judges, police, feds and underground establishments. The feds got pressured into pushing the prohibition issue and people had to fall to make it look like business was getting handled. My grandfather was one of the most recent to enter the ring with a racquet in his hand so he earned some points by taking a fall for the benefit of the whole. The judge that sentenced him to a year and a day was another component who sipped from my grandfather’s deliveries. How could you not appreciate these kinds of genes?

  My parents moved to Orange County, California in 1979 and bought a house in Lake Forest. I realize now that the only influence my Mom had in her marriage had to do with her three kids getting into a Christian school similar to how her Daddy had done for her. Everything else in her marriage with my Dad was all him. Her opinion didn’t matter because he was the bread winner and provider and he held her under an iron fist, and squeezed. He told her what to cook for dinner, where to go during the day for errands and like I said, nothing was ever good enough. He was like a drill sergeant. Just like an addiction, it was a progression that just got worse.

  I saw and felt all of this in so much detail because my Mom was such an affectionate angel. Her love was so pure and strong; you felt it in hugs, kisses, deep smiles and the need to feed you such good food. She even wrote songs for each of her kids. The song she wrote for me goes like this: “Benny is a boy, he loves his toys, and lots of good things to eat. He goes Yum Yum Yum give me some, sweet little Benny.” It might sound corny but I can still hear her voice. My heart was being filled with something so pure it was overflowing and I was all ears for her best advice. “Everything is in God’s Hands honey and everything happens for a reason and He has a purpose for you. He will get you out of any darkness you wander into… Just ask Him for help and He will be there… Help others in need and He is using you as His instrument… He will never give you more than you can carry… Always stay grateful for what you have because all you have to do is look around and you can see those who have it worse than you do.” As a kid hearing this advice being whispered with more passion and frequency, I knew my Dad was going to lose my Mom. At first I thought this was a good thing because I’d surely be going with her. That’s not how it worked out.

  When you truly love someone, you walk in their shoes and feel their pain and frustration. I can remember waking up suddenly one morning at about four a.m. I felt my Mom’s anguish before I heard the coffee cup drop on the floor and walked down the hall from my bedroom to see her having a nervous breakdown. She was crying and shaking uncontrollably and I kept asking her what was wrong. She shushed me and told me nothing was wrong and she knew I wasn’t buying it but she wasn’t ready to tell me anything. Being powerless to help someone I loved planted an angry seed inside of me. My Dad had plenty of water for it.

  CHAPTER 2

  My Dad had controlled my Mom so strictly, for so long that she was like a bird without wings. The straw that broke the camel’s back and brought on that nervous breakdown was his refusal to let her get a part time job. The excitement she had for getting one must have scared him into thinking he’d lose control of her and then lose her. With that nervous breakdown also came her decision to leave him. When she told my father she was leaving him he analyzed and strategized. He treated it impersonally as you would if you were a business acquiring another business. The dictator pattern that took everything for granted, didn’t allow an opinion without shooting it down with patronizing tones, and always had to win was magnified further and drove the nail in the coffin with even more clarity. He tried to compromise without recognizing anything and came up with a list of his pro’s to represent himself as a good provider, father, and husband. He bartered with her until he was blue in the face, betting on the fact that she wouldn’t actually leave. He knew how much she loved her kids and there wasn’t any way she’d break that up. Therefore, he played on that strategy and made it even worse by telling her if she wanted out that bad, she’d have to leave without the kids. He convinced her that she couldn’t provide since she’d never worked and didn’t have any job skills. My sister was already in high school and getting straight A’s and was heading for Berkeley, so how was she going to provide for that expense? My Dad convinced her that if she tried to take care of us on her own we’d live in a dirt shack, and is that what she wanted? When my Mom brought up visitation rights, he convinced her it would be better for us if there were a clean break so we could get on with our lives.

  She left with a small car with over a hundred thousand miles on it and some clothes. Just before she left she talked to me. She explained that she just couldn’t win with my Dad and that she’d lost her identity and had to get away to find herself. She explained that my father told her that she couldn’t have any contact with us at all or he’d take drastic measures to insure that she never saw us again. Those were the conditions. He was betting that her love for us would pull her back to him within the week.

  Once our Mom was gone, I couldn’t help but study my Dad through angry eyes. He’d just made an angel flee from our house. From that point on every time the phone would ring my younger brother and I would look at each other wondering if that was her. We’d run to the phone expecting to hear her voice telling us she was right down the street asking us if we wanted to live with her. When we got to the phone and it was one of those crank calls we’d be left wondering if that was her. I can remember that Lionel Ritchie song with the lyrics that went, “Hello… Is it me you’re looking for? Because I wonder where you are, and I wonder what you do, are you somewhere feeling lonely, or is someone loving you.” It was okay for me to feel the tears running down my face because I could grit my teeth and feel the pain building something that felt indestructible. It wasn’t okay to see my brother crying himself to sleep at night. My Mom had showed me some Christmas presents she’d left for us under her bed hoping my Dad would soften his heart, so I brought my brother to see them the next morning. They were gone.

  The next day a U.P.S. deliveryman came to our door. My brother and I stood there looking at a package with our Mom’s handwriting on it. I grabbed the pen to sign for it right as my Dad got to the door. He took the pen out of my hand and sent the deliveryman on his way. As the door closed my Dad yelled,

  “This is my house! I pay the bills, feed, and clothe you and what I say goes or you can hit the road! You’re not to have any contact with your mother or you’ll never see her again!”