David E. Stuart - The Morganza

ISBN for this digital edition: 978-0-8263-4642-1

2009 by David E. Stuart

All rights reserved. Published 2009

Printed in the United States of America

13 12 11 10 09 1 2 3 4 5

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Stuart, David E.

The Morganza, 1967 : life in a legendary reform school / David E. Stuart.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-8263-4641-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. ReformatoriesPennsylvaniaCanonsburg.

2. Youth workersPennsylvaniaCanonsburg.

I. Title.

HV9105.P22M677 2009

365'.42dc22

2009012648

All photos Cynthia M. Stuart

Book design and type composition by Melissa Tandysh

For the Stuart girls

descendants of the South Philadelphia half of my family

Mary Stuart Spangler

(and her daughter Erica)

Madge Stuart Pelz

Janet Stuart Lake

(deceased, and survived by her daughters Elizabeth and Rebecca)

Chrissa Stuart Osborn

My thanks to Elise McHugh, Christie Chisholm, Anne Egger, and Dawn Davis of Albuquerque, who read and made suggestions to improve this memoir.

I write my books at the Flying Star Caf on Central Avenue / Route 66, in Albuquerque. Its a great place, and the staff there is very writer friendly. My special thanks to counter workers Mazen, Jess, Jadira, Mikey, Paul, Jaime, Matt, Jonathan, Bernadette, and Dave; bus staff Efran, Carlos, and Nilka; and managers Leo, Jesse, and Roger.

In this book, as in The Guaymas Chronicles I wrote a few years ago, I have novelized parts of this narrative to protect the identities of the youths who were once students, as well as many of the staff members portrayed. The liberties taken allow me to both simplify events at the Morganza, tell a crisper story, and reduce the confusion created by the different versions of narratives that seemed to dominate. There was always an official version, as well as student and staff versions. Here, I have simply written my version, with all its limitations of perspective.

Still, I hope the personal stories found herein will in some small way stir reflection on livesheroes, villains, victimsseldom written about.

David Stuart

Flying Star Caf

Albuquerque

March 2, 2008

Goddammit! Where are you taking me? squeaked the balding man from his wheelchair.

Shut the fuck upyou aint people. You mutha-fuckin Honkey. We tired of your there you go actin like a nigger again uppity cracker-ass voice.

The cripple turned to Crazy Kamenskythe only white guy in the group of reform-school students who surrounded him, and begged, his voice ending in a tortured shriek, Ive never called anyone names. Never !

Sinbad smiled and nodded at Sugarbear, who slapped the man hard. His skinny neck twisted. The cripple attempted to protect his face with an upstretched arm. Then Sugarbear laughed and smacked him again, hard upside his head, as the boy known as Rabbit later explained. Kamensky helped push him into the billiard room, crying like a baby. Then they busted the window and threw him out.

Out ?

Yeah... out the window, wheelchair and all. Rabbits ordinarily unresponsive eyes glistened as he continued, He bounced... his head hit first. Made the same kind of crack that a roach does when you stomp on it just right. Rabbit batted his long eyelashes and furtively caressed his crotch. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as if ready to beat a hasty retreat.

I left Rabbit to his creepy crotch polishing, caught Palco in the downstairs kitchen, and asked about the incident. He scoffed. I had the day off, Mr. College Boy. If Id been here it wouldnta happened. There are two different stories, one written up by those liberal pussies in charge up there on the Hill. In the official report it was an accident, but Charlie, the janitor, told me different. His version is the one I buy. Worse yet, the two doofuses who took the fall for it werent even the ringleaders.

Palco rattled the huge key ring he carried on his belt as he spoke. Those maggots threw Trezise out the third story onto the bricks. I didnt like the little crip any more than the boys didthey never should have hired himbut it pissed me off anyway. They turned the chair upside down. He went down headfirst. Splat ! Palco spit a fetid stream of tobacco juice onto the steaming tray of fresh meatloaf cooling next to us marked 62, for Cottage 6, Floor 2, my assigned cottage and floor, and home of the boys whod either killed, or not killed, Trezise.

Jesus, Palcothe kids have got to eat that! I winced.

Yep. Thats the idea, College Boy, he grinned and aimed another stream of tobacco at the meatloaf. It left a dark stain on the crust of the meat.

I first reported for temporary statuswork on July 1, 1967, at 2:30 p.m. My father had died nine days earlier. He suffered an infarct on June 19, his forty-seventh birthday, and perished three days later.

A widow at forty-five, my mother was devastated. She had always hopedeven convinced herselfthat the old man would, before he died, settle down, fall in love with her a second time, and quit working eighty-hour weeks. Her faith was both monumental and, it now seemed, magical.

She got precisely one-third of her dream. Once dead, he worked far fewer hours. It would take her years to deal with the other two thirds. His tombstone, high on a breezy West Virginia hill, would read, when later erected, Faith is the substance of things hoped for... and the proof of things not seen. This seemed more an epitaph for her than for my father, who was a scientist.

I never knew him well enough to know what he actually hoped for, and neither his nor my mothers faith had so far delivered proof of anything of substance. But other folks, especially those who worked for him, found him delightful, as they were irritatingly fond of commenting. They probably imagined he was the same person with me. It was an ordinary enough assumption; catch was, behind closed doors the old man just wasnt comfortable.

He was turbulent, tormented, and had just lost a desperate long-term campaign to hide his paranoid tendencies, deep insecurities, and raw, sweat-soaked fear. He would self-medicate with cigarettes, old-fashioned glasses filled with Makers Mark and industrial-strength painkillers.

I reckon he was one of the most frightened sons of bitches I ever knew. I feel deeply sorry for him nowliving in his skin must have been painful and exhaustingbut the day I stepped into the Morganza to report for work, I was twenty-two and still angry with him. I knew that I should have been mourning him, but I was too surprised by his death to react to anything beyond the stunning realization that hed no longer be on my case. Oddly, to me our turbulent relationship had become normal, in a twisted sort of way.

Somewhere along the line, Id transformed from a sweet little boy into your basic pain in the ass: edgy, sometimes irascible, a totally bent sense of humor, and waryhyper-vigilant, a shrink had once called it. Some days I was damn near as tormented as the old man had been. Maybe his problems were genetic after all, in spite of my mothers whispered explanations of He was different before the war, or I think his mothers deafness had a negative effect on him... a bonding issue.