My Lobotomy

by Fleming, Charles

  After he got better, Ron and I started going up to the girls’ dorm together. He became my partner in crime. We’d sneak out and go up there. He had a bunch of girls, like I did.

  He wasn’t my only friend. I also got to be friends with a whole bunch of other guys. We had some good times together—and not just with the girls. We pulled some pranks. One time we figured out that four of us, working together, could pick up a Volkswagen. So we did. We picked one up out of the parking lot and carried it down the driveway, and set it sideways so cars couldn’t pass. I don’t know if they ever figured out who did that, or how.

  The counselors and administrators had this attitude that they didn’t want their school to be a prison. So there were no bars on the windows, and the doors were not locked, even if they were monitored. So we snuck around a lot. We’d sneak into the kitchen and make sandwiches and bring them back to our beds. I found out you could use a butter knife to break into the Coke machine, so we all had Cokes with our sandwiches.

  Remember, a lot of us were troublemakers before we got to Rancho Linda. So a lot of us continued to be troublemakers while we were there.

  I was often homesick. My dad would visit every few weeks. We’d take a walk, or we’d sit and have coffee in the cafeteria. He would ask me about the school. I’d tell him about what went on there—not everything, but some of it. He was critical of the school. He was spending money out of his own pocket to keep me there. Even though I was still a ward of the court, some of the expense came directly from home. There was an official Rancho Linda clothing list, and the family had to buy everything on it. And then the clothing would get lost or damaged in the laundry, and the shirt or the pants or something would have to be replaced. It burned my dad up to spend money on things like that. He was raising three other boys at home, and money didn’t grow on trees—even in Los Altos.

  In the beginning, like at Agnews, I’d ask my dad when he was going to take me home. For a while, he’d say, “Well, maybe pretty soon,” or, “Well, this isn’t really a good time,” or, “We’ll have to wait and see.” Sometimes he’d just say, “Not now.” I got the idea that he didn’t want me asking the question anymore, so again I stopped asking.

  Lou came to visit once. Just once. I was actually happy to see her. I jumped up and tried to give her a hug and a kiss. She pushed me away. She didn’t say anything, but nothing had changed. She didn’t want anything to do with me.

  It hurt me. The funny thing is, even after everything that had happened, I wanted to love her and I wanted her to love me. I wanted a mother, even if it was Lou. I didn’t want to be this angry rebel kid who was locked up because no one could handle him. I wanted to be a normal kid who lived at home with his mom and dad and brothers, who went to school and did all the normal kid stuff. Even after everything that had happened, I still wished I had that kind of family.

  There were things about Rancho Linda that made me less lonely and homesick, like having a girlfriend, or hanging out with Ron or the other guys I was friends with. But there were things about Rancho Linda that made me more lonely and homesick.

  For one thing, the school sat on this hill, way high up, but still close enough to the suburbs that you could see what was going on down there. You could see downtown San Jose from the classrooms. You could see the neon lights showing where the movie theaters were. You could see other schools. You could see kids playing on school playgrounds. If you were in the yard in front of the school, you could actually hear the kids playing. You could see kids riding their bikes in front of their houses. You could see dads coming home from work in the evening.

  I spent a lot of time in that front yard, because that’s where you got sent when you were being punished. You’d get sentenced to two days of weeding, and for the next two afternoons you’d be out there pulling weeds in the sun, looking down the hill and hearing the voices of the kids at the normal school, with the normal lives.

  I got punished a lot. Things weren’t that strict at Rancho Linda, but there were rules, and I had a hard time not breaking the rules. Some of the rules were stupid. You’d get in trouble for coming to class late, or goofing off in class, or being disruptive. You’d get in trouble for little things, too. One time I got in trouble for not making my bed before breakfast.

  There were these male counselors. Some of them were students from San Jose State. Some of them were studying to be doctors. Some of them were just people who needed a job. Some of them were cool, and some of them were not.

  One of them was named Billy Cooper. He was a black guy from San Jose State. He wore sharkskin suits and was always flirting with the ladies—the other counselors, and even the students. He was cool.

  Another was Napoleon Murphy Brock, the counselor I spoke to years after I left Rancho Linda. He was black, too, and he was a musician. He played all kinds of instruments. He was studying psychology and music at San Jose State. A few years after I knew him, he was hired by Frank Zappa to join his band, The Mothers of Invention. (He still tours today with Frank’s son Dweezil.) He was cool.

  Another was an ex–Olympic boxer named Lou Rawls, just like the singer. He wasn’t too bad.

  Another was Frank Schuler. He was German. He had also been an Olympic athlete, a fast walker, back in Germany. He was tough. He would make you run around the basketball courts for hours as punishment. He’d make you stand outside with your hands outstretched. You couldn’t move them. After twenty or thirty minutes that is hard to do, and it hurts. He was not cool.

  Worst of all was a redheaded guy named Doug.

  One morning Doug stopped me on the way to breakfast and told me I had to make my bed. I didn’t want to. I wanted breakfast. I was hungry. But he stopped me and said I wasn’t leaving until I made my bed.

  It wasn’t the first time we’d had a problem. He was always ragging me, telling me he was going to teach me a lesson or straighten me out. So this time I said, “Go ahead. Right here.”

  We started fighting, and I got him in a headlock, and then I started punching him in the face. That’s how the other counselors found us.

  Lou Rawls was the administrator that day. He took me and Doug down to this exercise room where there was a sort of boxing ring. He made us put on boxing gloves—just like Lou did years before with me and George—and told us to get in there and settle our differences like men.

  It didn’t last long. Doug charged me and I hit him in the stomach. He went down. And even though this was supposed to be a private thing, there was a cheer from a bunch of students who had gathered outside the window and seen me knock Doug down.

  Lou Rawls took Doug out of the ring, and put the gloves on Frank Schuler. I think he wanted me to learn a lesson, and the lesson wasn’t supposed to be me beating up Doug inside the ring and outside the ring. So I had to go a few rounds with Schuler. Unfortunately he was a better fighter than Doug. He knocked me down once, and I got up. He knocked me down a second time, and I got up again. But the third time he knocked me down, I decided to stay down. I wasn’t stupid. I stayed on the ground.

  That made Schuler mad. He started yelling at me, and then he kicked me. Lou Rawls jumped in and stopped the fight. He said if he ever saw Schuler kick another man when he was down, he’d put on the gloves and show him what real fighting was.

  Lou Rawls was an ex-boxer. You didn’t want to mess with him. It impressed me that he stood up for me that way, and Schuler backed down at once.

  I don’t remember being very unhappy at Rancho Linda. Not happy, either, but not miserable. I had the thing going with Annette. That was important to me. I guess I was in love with her. I certainly thought about her all the time. I never thought about being with other girls when I could be with her.

  But we never talked about the future. We never talked about what would happen when we got out of Rancho Linda. I don’t know if that’s being a teenager, or being a teenager in a place like Rancho Linda, but you lived only for the day, or only for the moment. It was all about getting through whatever was happ
ening right now. You didn’t worry too much about what was coming later, because right now was all you could deal with.

  It was like you were in a river, caught in the current, and you were going whatever way it took you. You knew you had no control over your own destiny. So you didn’t dream, and you didn’t plan. There was no reason to plan. You knew you had to survive what you were going through, and the way to make it survivable was to try to have fun.

  I had some fun. My dad bought me an electric guitar, a Fender copy that came from Sears. I loved that guitar. I played it for hours and hours. I was really into music. I didn’t perform, and I didn’t want to perform, even though I fantasized about being a pop star. I would sing to myself, in my room, for hours, but I would never sing in public. I didn’t have the voice for it, and I knew it. But when I was alone, I was Paul Anka and I sang beautifully.

  There was real music at Rancho Linda sometimes. One of the directors of the school knew Connie Stevens, the singer. The director’s name was Stevens, and he said he was her cousin or something. I don’t think he was. Connie Stevens is Italian, and her real name isn’t even Stevens. But he knew her, and he somehow got her to come and perform at Rancho Linda. It’s funny that I don’t remember what songs she sang, because it was a pretty big thing. She had starred on the TV detective show Hawaiian Eye, and she had a big radio hit with Edd “Kookie” Byrnes, called “Kookie, Kookie (Lend Me Your Comb),” after Edd became a star on 77 Sunset Strip. I don’t remember if she sang that, but I do remember she was beautiful, and I got her autograph.

  Sometimes the fun we had was at the expense of someone else. We used to make fun of some of the kids, or tease them, or even bully them. George Pezzolo, for example, had a stamp collection—a huge stamp collection. He kept it hidden in his room, but everyone knew where it was. It was very precious to him. Sometimes when he was being obnoxious I’d tell him I was going to go get his stamp collection and make paper airplanes out of it. He’d get upset and tell the teacher, and the teacher would let him go back to his room to guard his stamp collection. We teased him so much that in the end, he built this huge wooden box, with a big lock on it, big enough to hold his entire stamp collection. He carried it around with him all the time, because he thought we were going to break into it.

  Other guys, if they gave us too much difficulty, we’d have a “blanket party” for them. We’d wait for the guy to come into one of the bedrooms. Then we’d throw a blanket over his head and beat him. We never really hurt anyone. We never sent anyone to the hospital, or even to the nurse. But we must have scared some guys pretty bad.

  This was my life. I grew up a little. I got taller. I felt a little more like a man. There’s a picture of me from that period at a Friday night dance, in the Rancho Linda courtyard, dancing with Annette. I’m wearing a sport coat, and I’m about four feet taller than her. She has a dress on, and her hair is up, and we look good together.

  Eventually, I got bored enough to get into some real trouble. That’s what happened with my big plan for the prison break.

  Like I’ve already said, I was a big fan of the TV show Mission: Impossible. I can hear that theme music now, and I can remember dreaming about having those kinds of top-secret adventures myself. So, I invented one.

  I created this plan to take over Rancho Linda and make an escape. I started drawing up plans. I sketched a blueprint of the dormitory and the administration building. I figured out how we could overpower the counselors. We would take the wooden curtain rods out of our closets, and use them to club the counselors into submission. We’d tie them up, the ones in the boys’ dorm and the ones in the girls’ dorm. Then we’d bust out. Everyone was going to escape.

  Except me. I had a secret secret plan. The other guys would bust out, but I would stay behind with the girls who didn’t want to go. I would have them all to myself.

  I was never serious about this plan. It was just a goof. But once the other guys found out about it, it got serious. They thought it was a real plan. I couldn’t tell them it was all a joke, or I’d look like an idiot. So I let them think it was real, even though I never thought it was.

  We drew up plans. I had them hidden under my mattress. We picked a night, and the night was approaching. We all had our instructions. This kid was going to be posted here, and this kid was going to be posted there. Everyone had his job. It would be just like the TV show. “Your mission, should you choose to accept it…”

  Then one of the kids snitched. We got called on the carpet by the administrators. They knew the whole plan. They knew the date. They knew the details. They hadn’t found the plans, though, and they didn’t know who the ringleader was. But they knew who was involved, and they were going to throw the book at the whole bunch of us.

  So I stepped forward and admitted I was behind the whole thing. I didn’t want to do that, but I also didn’t want the whole school to go down because of me.

  I got three weeks of pulling weeds on the front hill. Some of the other guys got two weeks, or one week. But I got three—since I was the brains behind the operation!

  I wanted to tell them it was all a joke, but I couldn’t risk looking bad in front of the whole school. It would be better to take the three weeks and look like I was cool.

  Since they didn’t know it was a joke, the administrators didn’t know it wouldn’t happen again. They had the cops positioned outside the school for several weeks after that. Night after night, we’d see them walking the grounds, standing outside our windows, wearing their SWAT-type gear, waiting for the riot that never came.

  That was the summer of 1965, I think. I was a tough guy. I was sixteen and a half years old.

  During my time at the school, I didn’t see too much of Freeman. According to his notes, he came to visit me once. I don’t remember it, but he wrote it up for his files.

  “I saw Howard this evening at Rancho Linda School,” Freeman wrote on April 23, 1964.

  He is certainly the tallest and, maybe, one of the older among the boys. It is said that he is making very good progress in the matter of self control and keeping the younger boys in line. He is visited by his father and step-mother about every week, but seldom gets home. There has been a big change in the home situation…since, now that Howard is out of the picture, his disruptive influence has allowed the family to come back together. The older boy is doing much better work in school and the younger boy has stopped wetting his bed and having nightmares. Mr. and Mrs. Dully seem to be getting along much more peaceably than they were.

  Lou visited Freeman in October, 1965. He wrote,

  Mrs. Dully tells me that Howard is now 6'4'', a regular bean pole, two inches taller than her husband, and has not been home since Christmas time which was pretty upsetting to him and to the family. He is to be allowed out for November 24 and 25. His father goes to see him twice a month on visiting days, and his reports are pretty good, although sometimes he is marked down for his deportment. His latest desire is to get more English—ordinarily, Howard could not care less. He spends a good deal of time in his dormitory [where] his formidable size makes it easy for him to become somewhat of a peace keeper. He has had no convulsions. He eats and sleeps well. Howard says he likes it at school and wants to stay there.

  I guess I would have stayed there, too, at least until I finished high school. But something happened and Rancho Linda ended just like that.

  One morning I was getting ready for breakfast when a counselor came into the room. He said, “Pack your stuff. You’re leaving.”

  I didn’t find out right away what had happened. I was too busy worrying about me. What was going to happen to me? Where was I going? Home? If not home, where? I packed my stuff and waited.

  What happened was, after all the nightly dorm visits, someone had snitched. One of the girls had complained. Maybe she told her family. Maybe her family told the school officials—or threatened to make an official complaint. Either way, some students were caught having sex in the dorms.

  It turned into a
big story. The headline from one San Jose paper read, SEX PARTY AT SCHOOL—FOUR HELD. The headline from another paper read, EIGHT HELD FOLLOWING RANCHO LINDA “ORGY.” The details were the same, except for the number.

  “Four teenage couples were booked at Juvenile Hall yesterday in the wake of what sheriff ’s investigators called a sex party in the girls’ dormitory at the Rancho Linda school for disturbed children,” the second account said. “The four boys and four girls range from 13 to 17 years old.

  “Officers said the boys climbed in a window of the dormitory…. The party broke up when a counselor discovered the couples in bed. Three of the girls admitted having sexual relations with their partners.”

  That was March 10, 1966. On March 22, 1966, it was over. JUVENILE SCHOOL GIVES UP LICENSE AFTER SEX PARTY, the headline read.

  “Rancho Linda School, where authorities reportedly discovered a teenage sex party in a girls’ dormitory two weeks ago, voluntarily has surrendered its license to the State Department of Mental Hygiene and today has transferred all but seven of its 150 wards to other institutions.”

  I think the counselors may have known all along that some of the kids were messing around. They certainly had known something was going on with me and Annette. They had fun with it. One time I was sick in bed with tonsillitis and a high fever. I couldn’t get up to eat my meals, so they sent Annette down with my dinner on a tray. It was torture! We were alone, but we couldn’t do anything. In the end, though, the joke was on them. My fever broke and I felt much better, but I didn’t tell anyone. They kept sending Annette down with that tray, but now I was feeling good enough to do something when she got there.

  I never found out who snitched, or got caught, but I heard later that thirty of the thirty-two teenage girls at Rancho Linda were discovered to be pregnant. At the time, all I could think was, How did we miss those two?