Straight Life (23 page)

When I got out, I went to my father's house in Long Beach. It was wonderful seeing Thelma. We talked, and I had a few drinks with my dad. And I remember shaving and bathing and getting all dressed up. At first everything was beautiful, but then, when I started getting cleaned up, I felt these strange vibes from my father and from Thelma a real sadness. I asked my dad if I could use his car. He said, "Yeah, if you take care of it. I don't want you shootin' none of that dope and drivin' it." He said, "Where're you goin'?" I said, "Oh, I want to go uptown." Thelma said, "Where are you going, junior?" And I said, "Well, I wanted to go see Patti." My dad walked out in the backyard. I looked around. I was all dressed up, and I looked marvelous. I'd put perfume on. I looked at Thelma and said, "Well, naturally, I ... " She said, "Well, junior, don't you think it's best that-why don't you start a new life? Why don't you start a new life and try to find happiness? Maybe it just wasn't right." I said, "I'd like to, but I love her. I've got to see her. I'm going to try to win her back." And Thelma said, "Oh, Junior!" I said, "What do you mean? What do you mean 'Oh, Junior!'? What's wrong?" She started getting tears in her eyes and I thought, "Oh, God!" I said, "What's wrong? What's wrong?" And she said, "Oh, you poor baby." She put her arms around me and I thought, "Oh, God, what's happening?" She put her arms around me and she said, she said, "Patti is married."

And I ... I just ... I can't ...If I could have died from heart break and shock I would have died right then. I thought I would come out and visit her and take her out and make love to her and win her back. And we would be married again. Ours was a love that was a lifetime, a mating in heaven. I just couldn't imagine ... Thelma said, "Junior she got married right after the divorce. That's why she got divorced in Nevada." She said, "Patti wants security. She married Remo Belli." I said, "Remo Belli!" He was a drummer, one of my "friends" from back east. He came to town traveling with a band, Tex Benecke I think it was, some stupid band, or Glenn Miller, or somebody. I had invited him out to the house. And as soon as I got busted he "just happened to stop by" Patti's house. She lived in Panorama City, which is way out in the valley. He lived in Hollywood. He couldn't "happen to stop by" there. No way in the world. He'd have to travel thirty miles. And he had invented a drumhead, and it developed into a factory; he's probably close to a millionaire by now. I guess he gave her the money to get the divorce.

Thelma cried. We cried together. I got in my dad's car. I was going to go out to Patti's house and kill her. Then I thought, "Oh, fuck her." I drove the car to East L.A. I found some people I knew, Rachel and Mondo. I went to see Henry. We got together and bought a gram of stuff, and so I fixed. And I thought, "Here I am. I'm finally with people that are cool, that are real, that are happy to see me." It was like a party. I thought, "These are my people. Fuck Patti. Fuck all those kinds of people like that." And that was my homecoming from Fort Worth to my dear, sweet, one and only, lifetime, true love. Women!

(Thelma) The first thing I noticed about Patti was how beautiful she was. She was such a beauty. A perfect shape. And the second thing I noticed was how determined she was. She was always determined to do what she wanted to do.

I don't think Junior should ever have been married. You see, he didn't want a child. He wasn't used to children, and he didn't care nothin' for little kids. Now, they lived with Grandma when he come back, and, you know, a little girl, fifteen, eighteen months old, they ain't got no table manners. She'd be eating peas, for instance, and drop some on the tablecloth, and he'd get so angry and he'd smack her hands until they was as red as blood, caused all kinds of dif-fugue- ality. So we just took Patricia, and we had her until she was six years old.

Patti and junior went on the road with Stan Kenton's band. It was a whole year once that Patricia didn't see either one of 'em. And kids, you know, can be so cruel to other children, and the other kids in the neighborhood would tell her, "You don't have any momma and poppa. You only have a grandma and grandpa." And, ohhhh, she'd cry and cry and cry. But I always made sure that she knew about 'em. I had a picture of each of them and at night when I'd put her to bed I'd say, "Now, you say goodnight to your momma and goodnight to your daddy." So she didn't forget them.

Patti finally stopped going on the road with junior. Kenton, he flew, but they sent the gang in an old bus, no heat, and no cooling system in the summertime. And they must have been going over some awfully rough roads because Patti got a crack in her tailbone. She was sick for quite a while over that. Her doctor told her, "Now, don't you ever ride on that bus ever again.

That was when Patti went to work for Arlene's of Hollywood. Patricia stayed with us. Patti came down every weekend to see her, never missed a time, but she had to live in L.A. because that was where her job was and she had to work because she was determined that she was going to get enough money together to make a down payment on a house. She was just obsessed with a home of her own.

I remember Patti crying to me, saying she wished junior was a truck driver or anything but ... She wished that he had a job, a steady income, came home nights. I think they would have been ideally happy if he could've done that, but of course he couldn't. You can't put a musician in a position like that. One time when they was livin' in L.A. on Hope Street, when junior got out of the army, he did have a job in a meat-packing place. That was before he went with Kenton, and Patti's always said that that was the happiest time of their lives. He went to work in the morning and came home at night.

Poor Patricia was sick all the time, all the years that we had her. One time I was sure she was going to die. They had her in the contagious ward of the Children's Hospital: she had diphtheria. But when Patti took her, when they moved out to the valley, she stopped getting sick. The doctor told Patti it was the climate in Long Beach that didn't agree with her. Now, we didn't know that.

But that was a heartbreaking thing. When Junior and Patti got their house and moved to the valley and Daddy and I went to see them-of course, to us, Patricia was our little girl, our child. When you take care of a kid for that long, they become just like your own. Poor little thing. She'd get her little suitcase, she'd put some things in there, and she'd say, "I'm ready to go home!" Well, of course, we couldn't take her. And when our car'd start off, well, she'd follow the car, you know, running out in the middle of the street with her suitcase, just a-screamin' and a-bawling her eyes out. Hollerin' at the top of her lungs. Ohhhh. It got so bad, we stopped going. We knew if we stayed away she would realize that that's where she belonged. It was a couple of years before we could even take her home. It was too hard for her and too hard for us.

Millie [Art's mother] was the one who suspected that junior was using drugs because she's the one that told us about it. So the first thing Daddy did, he went to somebody he knew, a lawyer or somebody, to ask how he could help junior, and the lawyer was the one that suggested we put him in that sanitarium over in Garden Grove. So that's where we put him. For a month. But it didn't do no good.

Daddy was just devastated when he found out junior was using drugs. He couldn't hardly stand that. He would have done anything in the world to get him away from that. He couldn't understand how junior could get hooked on it like he did because, Daddy said, "I was exposed to drugs all the time I was sailin'. It was nothin' at all to get drugs." He went all over the world in his shipping days, and it was as easily accessible as a cup of coffee, and he never was tempted to use it, and he never was able to understand why junior took it up.

I never did know how Patti met Remo. I just know that all of a sudden, there he was. She was in the valley then, and she came and left Patricia with us. She told me she was going over to get a divorce. She knew that if she waited until junior came back, she'd go back to him, and she'd had so much grief over him. And it wasn't because she didn't love him. I don't think she'll ever stop loving him. She still loves him. He's like a disease with her. But she knew she couldn't live that way anymore, and she knew treat if she didn't make it final, she'd take him back, and they'd start all over again. And they weren't good for each other. He couldn't live her way of life, and she couldn't live his.

John and Millie Noble

(John) Art and Patti were in school when I went into the service, and they got married before I got back. I can't talk about Patti too well. We never got along real good. Now it's different, but when she was a young girl she was always nosy to the point of being downright personal. She'd be around me for a little bit; it'd be okay for a few minutes; and then I'd try to get away from her because she'd start asking me about my girl friends and what we did and what time I got in and all this stuff, you know, that was absolutely none of her business. And, Christmastime or something, here's my presents all under the tree, and she couldn't wait to just tear 'em all up and see who sent me what. She'd go in my drawers and look at my love letters from my girl friends. She'd say, "I can't help myself." I used to get pretty vocally violent with her. I couldn't stand her for very long at a time.

I don't know how to describe her. Sometimes she was a witch to me. If she wanted to be, if. she applied herself, she had a pleasing personality, but most of the time she didn't apply herself. She was good-looking, and I guess she could have been called a good figure. She did model in San Francisco, I think it was. But it was hard for me to get close to her. She knew she was a nice-looking person. She had real nice eyes if she wanted to look at you and talk to you nice, but if she wanted to probe you, then I didn't like the way she looked. And she tried to probe everyone. But I lost track of them after Art started getting into trouble.

(Millie) We saw him down at Thelma and Moses' a couple of times. Remember, once he saw our little kid dancin', and he got such a big kick out of it, and he tried to talk Johnny into letting Jimmy take music lessons, and Johnny said, "No way in hell is my kid going to take music!"

(John) I followed Art's career, different places, and I associated a lot with those people. I wasn't in with them, but I was right alongside of them. I listened to them; I saw what they did. I just didn't want to encourage Jim to get into that type of entertainment field. There are some fine people, but you need a real straight, hard back and a good head.

You know what? In my opinion Art just didn't know how to say no. If someone'd come up to Art, even some of the times we'd go out together, "Well, John, I'll have to see you later. I'm going off with So-and-so." And I wouldn't argue with him. I'd say, "Okay, Art. See you later." He couldn't say no. Whether it was a man or a woman or what. If they got to talkin' with him and wanted him to do something, they'd keep persisting on him for a little bit, and he'd just break down. Away he'd go. He couldn't say no.

Before he started all that, shortly after he got home from the war, he was playing in San Diego-I can't remember the ballroom-and Patti wanted me to take her down there. So here I was with Patti, and by the time we reached San Diego we was at one another. We went in and I wouldn't dance with her. I danced with other girls around there. And Art was supposed to come back with us, but he went backstage after we talked, and pretty soon he came out and said, "John, do you mind taking Patti back home?" And I says, "No, I won't." He says, "I know you two don't get along too well. I've got some friends that want me to go out to a jam session, and I don't know if Patti'd like it." I said, "That's between you and Patti." And I went back myself.

(Millie) Do you think it would have made any difference if he'd married a different type of woman than Patti?

(John) No.

(Millie) Well, was it Grandma and Moses? They didn't handle him right?

(John) No. He didn't have a chance to be handled right.

2

1954-1966

10

The Los Angeles
County jail: Integration

1954 - 1955

I STAYED in Long Beach for a little while and then moved to a hotel in Hollywood, and I ran into a girl named Didi. I ran into her in a jazz club. She was a chubby, Jewish girl, a hairdresser, and she really dug me. I was getting strung out, and she told me if I'd like I could stay at her place. She had a nice apartment about a quarter of a block off Hollywood Boulevard. I figured it would be good to live with her for a while. I'd have the use of her car, and she made good money. Her mother was married to a guy who was part or whole owner of a huge business. I stayed with her, and it enabled me to spend all the money I made recording and playing in clubs on drugs.

After a while it got to be a drag staying with Didi. She was getting demanding; she wanted me to ball her. I balled her a few times at first, but she didn't appeal to me sexually and finally I couldn't do it at all anymore. I just could not do it. Period. She ignored it as long as she could, and finally she asked me what was wrong. I told her she just didn't move me and that I couldn't help it. That put the handwriting on the wall. I couldn't ball her, so I knew I was going to have to move. I got a room on Hudson above Hollywood Boulevard, Didi drove me over, and I moved in.

The very next day I went to a hotel in Hollywood to see some people, to cop from them. They'd just come in from Detroit. There were three of them. There was a broad, a funky broad, real skinny and ugly, a friend of Tony's, and Tony DiCorpo, who plays tenor saxophone, and he was a dog, just a dog, no morals. I've run into a lot of musicians like that, people that don't care about anybody but themselves. They use people, but more than that, they don't have any warmth; they don't have any honor; they're not kind. Even when I've taken advantage of someone, like with Didi, I was always good to her and honest and I tried to do right. And I was clean. This Tony was dirty, physically dirty, and coarse and shallow and weak. I've always hated people like that, but I went over there. It was just one of those days when nobody that was around that I knew had anything. And I used to cop for these three. They had called me and asked what was happening. They said they could score, but the shit wasn't quite as good. I figured, "Well, I'll go over and get a taste." I went to their apartment and gave them the money, and they went, Tony and the other guy. They left the broad behind with me, and I was in their pad so I figured it would be cool.

They were gone for quite a while. I waited and waited and waited. I said, "What's happening with these guys?" The broad said, "Don't worry about it. Everything's cool." This chick was the kind of person not even a mother could love. She was skinny, no looks, no personality, and nobody in his right mind would give her a nickel to let her give him head. I don't know how these people are made or where they come from or where they go. I've met a lot of them and she was about the worst I've ever seen.

While Tony was gone, I happened to look around the house and I noticed some cottons lying around. Then I noticed an outfit. Then I found another outfit and about three or four dirty spoons all burnt black and with blood, caked blood in them. I said, "Jesus, what is this?" In case the police should come, you know, I was dead. I had marks and I'd been out of jail only four months. I asked this chick, "Is there anything else around?" "No." "Well, let's get rid of this stuff!" She said, "Ohhhh, it's awright." I said, "No, let's get rid of it!" "Ohhhh. Okay." I said, "Take it in the hall or do something with it. Put it somewhere but get it out of the room." Just then there was a knock at the door. She went to the door. She took off the chain. I said, "Don't open the door! Find out who it is!" But before she could get the chain back on, the door was pushed open, and here was the narcs. And here were Tony and his friend. They'd gotten rousted and gotten busted and been brought back to the pad. The narcs find the outfits; there were three altogether. They look around and they find some dollies, some Dolophines. Then the police come.

They took us all to jail, to Lincoln Heights. Tony has twenty dollars of my money. As we're going through this scene I'm trying to get him to hand me the bread. He's acting like he doesn't know what I'm talking about. I couldn't come out and ask him. I didn't want to let them know I had given him money to score with. I wanted him to slip it to me. But he knew what I wanted, and he kept it-played dumb and kept the money.

They booked us on suspicion, marks and outfits and possession with the Dolophine. I'd just gotten out of the federal joint; I had CR, conditional release. Tony and the other guy said, "Well, man, why don't you take ... Why don't you say everything was yours? You're on parole. They're going to send you to jail anyway. Why don't you say everything was yours and we didn't know anything about it?" I said, "Are you kidding?" I said, "You've never been in jail. Why don't you say everything was yours?" They said, "Oh, we can't do that! " And I said, "Oh, man, well, fuck you."

They called their names. They rolled 'em up, and they left, Tony and his friends. I don't know how they cut them loose or why; there's no telling what they must have done to get cut loose. They held me. I had nothing to hide in the little court I was staying at so I gave the key to the police, who went back to my room and searched it. And Didi, when she moved me, had taken some pills of her own and given them to me, put them in my things, and I didn't know it. They were Empirin with codeine. A doctor friend of hers gave them to her on prescription because she had headaches and because she just liked the codeine. They found the pills and dropped the "marks" and filed a possession against me of codeine. And when I heard what it was I couldn't tell them whose they were. All I would have had to do was say they belonged to Didi. They would have got her and she would have explained. But I couldn't do it because that would have been ratting on her.

They moved me to the county jail, and I had no money on the books. Tony had kept the money. Finally Didi came to visit me and I told her, "Man, they've booked me on possession with those pills. Why didn't you tell me you took those pills over to my pad?" She said, "Well, I figured you could use them." I said, "Yeah, I could use them. It was nice of you to give them to me, but I didn't know that they were there. Now all you've got to do is tell them you got 'em on a scrip, right?" It was all legal. But she said that nobody from her family had ever messed with dope and she was afraid to say the pills were hers because her mother would have gotten upset and her stepfather, the businessman, wouldn't have liked it. I said, "But I'll go to prison!" She said, "Well, I just can't help it. I can't do it. I'm afraid I'll get in trouble." And she walked away.

She wouldn't have gotten any time. It would have been a little inconvenient and kind of a drag for her mother to know that her daughter was taking codeine tablets when she had a headache. But I guess that's what I get for using her. You know, I really believe in retribution. I stayed with her, drove her car, took advantage of money from her; she cut my hair. I used her, and I was paid back. She left some money downstairs for me but she wouldn't say that the pills were hers, and for possession of three or four Empirin codeine tablets the judge found me guilty, and I was sentenced to six months in the L.A. County Jail.

(Hersh Hamel) After Art had been in jail a couple of times, Patti flew the coop. We were close during all those years. He had another old lady for a while-Didi, the hairdresser. I knew all his old ladies. Didi was not really a good-looking woman. She was sort of chubby. She loved Art. Art was still a beautiful man, features and body. Didi just took care of him, didn't let him do anything himself, which wasn't very good for him. All Art liked to do was lay back and get stoned and watch TV and go play when he wanted to play. That period was a little strange. I think that was in between some jail ... And he took a bust for her. He wouldn't cop out on Didi. That's the way that went.

I HAD a federal parole hold, but they don't tell you until you get out whether you're going to be reinstated on parole or whether you're going to have to do more time for your violation. I knew I was going to be in the county jail for about six months.

They put me in 11-B-1. That was the white hype tank at that time. They'd changed it from 12-B-1 because the women had been right above on the thirteenth floor, and guys would talk to the chicks through the air vents. Guys would holler up and say, "There's a little broad up there named Louise; she just came in; this is her old man, Richie. Call her to the phone." And some chick would go call her to that particular cell, and they'd run their cases. "I ran this story to them-did you cop out?" Aside from that guys would just flirt with chicks, "Yeah, baby, I'm Soand-so. I'm getting out on bail soon. What's happening with you?" "I'm waiting to get out on bail, too." "Well, where do you hang out at? Why don't we get together?"

They'd line things up. Maybe the chick's a hustler, or they can pull some robberies together, or maybe it's just the contact, talking to a chick, because you get very horny when you get clean. There were water pipes going from floor to floor, and they dug out the hole around the pipes, so there was a spot where a chick could send down a note on a string. The chick would take a piece of paper, rub it around her cunt, pull out some pubic hairs, fold them up in this paper, and send it down. Then the guy would get it and smell it and talk to the chick on the phone, you know, "I got your paper; you sure smell good. Boy, I sure wish I could be lickin' on you now." And he would jerk off at night with the paper, and the guys would pass it around.

In order to stop all that, the bulls moved the hypes from the twelfth floor to the eleventh floor and onto the twelfth floor they moved the regular convicts who were nothing, just regular . people in for traffic violations. They might have some armed robbers in there but no dopefiends, and the dopefiends were the ones that were the hustlers, the people that were playing at being gangsters and real hep and all that. When I went back to the county jail I noticed that on my legal status they'd stamped 11-B-1, and I said to the first officer I could find, "Man, what's happening? I'm a dopefiend. I want to go to the hype tank." He said, "That is the hype tank. We moved you assholes so you wouldn't be fuckin' around with the broads upstairs." I said, "Well, that's okay then." I just wanted to be sure I was with the dopefiends so that if any action came down I'd be with people that were cool. People that were like me.

I went through the thing of saying hello to everybody, bull shitting with everybody, and I got word that people were hollering about integration. That was in '54, '55. The guys had said, "Never, man! Never! We're never going to have any spooks or greasers in our cells." The Mexicans had their own tank and the blacks had their own tank. But you never called them black then. You respectfully called them colored or suedes. If you called them black they'd fight you. And we called the Mexicans Chicanos.

I was in the tank for several months, and then I was sent out to the farm, Wayside Honor Ranch. But after I'd been there for a week they found out I had a federal hold on me and sent me back to the county jail, and when I got back I noticed that everybody was uptight. I asked someone what was happening and he told me they were trying to integrate the tanks and these guys weren't going to allow it. He said, "It's really been a scene; they're putting down ultimatums, the police, and they've taken a couple of guys out and put them in solitary confinement, in the hole."

It's afternoon and everybody's kind of lazy, laying around, and there's three or four guys walking up and down the freeway. I'm lying in my cell when all of a sudden the gates start racking and "Clear the gates!" Bam! They close them. Usually they shake them a while for a warning because if you get caught going in or out the gates will break your leg. This time they closed them all of a sudden, and here are these four guys locked outside on the freeway, and here comes the goon squad. They ran in and grabbed these four. I think they got Tubby Whitman, who was just a monster, one of those guys that looked like he could punch a hole through solid iron, and they got Jew Bill Irving and Jim van Eyck, and they might have got Blackie Levinson. All tough guys, bad-acting cats. They threw them against the bars and started beating them up. It was like a free-for-all. They dragged them out of the cell block and opened the gates again. All of a sudden these guys were gone. I said, "What's happening, man?" I hit on a guy that had been there a while, and he told me, "They're trying to break the power of the white hype tank so they can integrate it." The bulls had to get the tough guys out; they took them and put them in Siberia. They'd been ordered to integrate, and that's what they were going to do, and the guys were saying, "It's a battle to the death!" And I'm thinking, "Oh, God!" They're refusing the food! Doing time is hard enough without all of that. We couldn't get visits, and all we ate was emergency rations. There was no telling what might happen; the guys were getting crazier and crazier every day. I'm thinking, "Oh, man, all I want to do is get out of here." All I wanted was something nice to eat and peace and quiet.