CHAPTER FOURTEEN


POLAR CIRCLE MEMORIES



Lewisburg Pennsylvania. Stop, not Harrisburg Pennsylvania, the 
horrific nightmare of radioactive fallout which instilled fear and 
rage into the middle and upper middle classes of America. Boy, did 
people really scream about that stuff. Funny thing about that is they 
never said anything about all the miners who died of blacklung in the 
coalmines in earliertimes. Nor was their ever and outcry from the 
middle class about all those Vietnamese who were hit by the fallout 
from DDT and Agent Orange during the war.However let us go back 
Lewisburg,Pennsylvania.

Lewisburg Pa. in the late sixties and earlier seventies was a 
perfectly good example of American middle class life. The American 
middle-class dream in a nutshell. A little house in a small town, 
two cars, a front lawn for the kids to play on. There was plenty of 
jobs and life was just great! Why I almost forgot the most important 
thing of all, the bottom line for the middle class applepie dream.

Security!       


To feel safe and secure in their little dream world. The symbol of 
security for the middle class residents of this quiet little town was 
the Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary. A maximum security federal prison 
with 1700 inmates and surrounded by high grey walls and gun towers. 
And this is where my story begins.

My name is Bob. I will not tell the reader my last name because it 
would only tell them that my dad was a Polack. It certainly would not 
tell the reader anything about my mom, who was from Scotland. Her name 
was McGruder. I was sentenced to a number of years in this prison for 
my actions in protest to the war in Vietnam. I destroyed a bunch of 
government property. I broke the laws of he United States Government. 
It did not make any difference that in my defence I declared that , 
it was my duty to break these American laws, in order to uphold the 
laws and principles of the International Community based on the 
Nuremburg Trials of Nazis after the second world war. That means, 
that if you live in a country which commits war crimes against 
humanity, it is the duty        of every citizen of that country 
to protest, even if it means breaking National laws. However that 
is another story.

After being sentenced to four, three year terms, on four different 
counts (12 years), to be run consecutively which means three years 
in prison, I was sent to the Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary after 
sitting nine months in the local jail in Baltimore Md. Two federal 
marshals were assigned to escort me from Baltimore to Lewisburg.
During the trip, by car, I was chained both hands and feet, normal 
procedure I assume, when being transferred between prisons in America.

I was very afraid, terrified. My only experience with Federal prison 
being Hollywood films about Alcatraz. Besides the F.B.I. had already 
informed me that now that they finally had me, they intended to keep 
me locked up for a long, long time. As we drove over the lovely 
countryside, I was thinking that now I was going to be locked up 
with killers, bankrobbers, drug addicts, the Mafia, other political 
activists, Russian spies, and who knows what else. 

We approached the prison highwalls, at least ten feet high, and gun 
towers sitting atop of this wall in strategic points. Obviously the 
gun towers were there, not for people trying to break in to this place, 
but to keep people like me inside and from breaking out. Both my heart 
and my stomach felt like they had sunk into the bottom of my feet. 

However being a man, raised in a macho society, where men are men 
and hiding your feelings and especially feelings of fear are the norm, 
I put up a good front. Besides I would never have allowed these F.B.I. 
creeps the pleasure of knowing how terrified I really was. The gates 
opened and in I went. When I was taken out of the car, I honestly must 
say that I felt like a piece of Jell-O, but I lifted up my head and 
walked in to face come what may.                                             


In prison, it is the prisoners that do all the work. The guards are     
there to guard you and if necessary keep order and prevent anyone 
from escaping. So I was taken into a room and told to sit by a desk 
where I would be fingerprinted and photographed. Officially being 
prepared to enter the prison.                                                


On the other side of the desk sat another prisoner, who's job was 
to type the necessary papers for my official entry. I looked up and 
almost fell off the chair I was sitting on.! Because on the other 
side of the desk sat a kid I had grown up with on the streets of New 
York City... He looked at me and I looked       at him and we both 
started laughing almost hysterically. The guards not realising what 
was going on broke it off saying " come on, let, get the papers 
typed."  So we got on with the typing, fingerprinting, pictures with 
your prison number on it and the issuing of clothes.

Obs! I had better not forget that this is when my razor came into 
my life! As soon as my friend Tony and I were to one side, away 
from the guards I asked Tony

"What he was doing here?"                                       

He said that he had got "busted" for smuggling hash across state lines.

Tony asked me                           

"why I had gotten busted".              

I said that I                           

"had wripped off the government in protest to the 
war going on in Vietnam".

Then Tony said,                                 

"is there any money in that?"                   

Of course coming from Tony that was a perfectly logical question.
The reader has met Tony earlier in this book. If you have been raised 
in the streets of New York City and your relatives and friends are 
Italians, there is a very good chance that there is some connection 
to the Mafia. Tony turned out to be a streetwise smalltime gangster 
after quitting school at and early age. As it turned out there were 
a number of people at Lewisburg for some reason or another who were 
doing time. Many of them came from the streets of New York City where 
I grew up. So for me going into prison was like coming home to my 
childhood friends. 

I had left New York City when I was seventeen years. I had enlisted 
in the Navy. For kids growing up in poor and working class 
neighbourhoods usually are confronted at and early age with two 
choices - join the military and see the world or go to jail. I 
had chosen the former and Tony the latter. Funny thing about that 
is we both wound up in jail. However because of my background on 
the one hand being imprisoned with a minimum amount of political 
consciousness, on the other hand, I could communicate with the 
various different kinds of groups that populated the Lewisburg 
prison at this particular time in history.

The prison population was about 60 percent black and 40 percent white. 
There were as I said earlier killers, bankrobbers, drugsmugglers, 
Russian spies, anti-war activists like Phil Berrigan, labour leaders 
like Jimmy Hoffa, black panthers, black nationalists, and not in the 
least Mafia people, both soldiers and chiefs from the families. This 
made up the core of the prison population. However there were also 
crazies, maniacs and madmen who for various reasons were doing time in 
Lewisburg. People got killed in Lewisburg and at times the situation 
could become really dangerous. You can not lock people up for long 
periods of time and expect less. 

By the way there was also F.B.I. informers at Lewisburg, sent in to 
spy on people. They would, sometimes very successfully, infiltrate 
various groupings i.e. political activists, the Mafia, Black 
Nationalists, etc. in order to get information the F.B.I. and the 
government could use.

For 27 months I would live here and I thought that perhaps the reader 
would like to hear about some of the more interesting events that were 
going on at Lewisburg. 25 years have past and 23 years of those I have 
been living in exile in another part of the world. Still today the 
government can put me away for a long time, if I were to put my foot 
on American soil. Among the horrific crimes, I have publicly taken 
responsibility for, is the destruction of the International computer 
network of the Dow Chemical Corporation in Washington D.C. in protest 
of this companies production of Napalm and Agent Orange during the 
Vietnam War. I am still charged with conspiracy to destroy public 
buildings etc. However this is another story.

As I said earlier, I felt like I was coming home to all my childhood 
friends on entering Lewisburg. Instead of fear, that was still there, 
because there are very dangerous people in prison. Numerous people had 
been killed in this prison, because of fights over money, gays, 
family feuds and so on.

I no longer felt paralysed in any way. The fact that I could move 
around and talk to quite a lot of people in Lewisburg made life much 
easier. Most of my childhood friends, in fact all of them, were locked 
up for either robbing banks or drug smuggling. In prison, life goes 
on and most of my friends were doing in prison exactly the same 
things they had been doing outside on the streets. Making money 
and doing drugs. At Lewisburg, money was cigarettes, plus money 
which usually was smuggled in to the prison some sort of way.                

Drugs were in the form of just about everything found out on the 
streets. From Heroin on one side of the spectrum to LSD on poststamps 
the other side of the spectrum. Although the guards were always 
trying to find drugs in prison, I never believed that their hearts 
were really in to it. It helped keep the prisoners calm and life for 
the guards was made easier. 

Also food was money, for example you could buy a hardboiled egg 
for two cigarettes and a beef steak for 6 cigarettes and so on 
in adictum. For everything in prison turned around money. Sort of 
like a little capitalist structure of America prison was. I worked 
in the prison laundry and inmates could have their clothes pressed 
or tailored for money. You could get a shave for money. A blowjob 
for money. A bodyguard for money. You name it, you could get it. 
There were two exceptions that I can think of, women and freedom!            



Now to some of the more interesting characters and spectacular 
events of the time. R.G. Thompson. Occupation Russian spy. Serving 
life. Today probably dead. His story just must be told.

For myself just the term Russian made my backbone shiver. I mean 
once a week in Public School on Staten Island in New York City, 
we had Atomic Air Raid Drills, once a week  during the fifties. 
If you had a teacher who screamed at you               


"the Russians are coming,the Russians are coming" 

during those drills you would shiver in your backbone also.It,s sort 
of like Pavlov,s experiment with dogs, where after being stimulated 
in a certain way, the dogs began foaming at the mouth. Well for 
children of the McCarthy era the pinko threat mean,t that you were 
surpose to begin foaming at the mouth when hearing the word Russian.         


R.G. was a Russian spy, the most evil thing one could be and sitting 
in Lewisburg. Well, it turned out that R.G. was an incredible 
personality and a warm, kind, thoughtful man who's history of survival 
being extraordinary! I met R.G. because he was a prison lawyer. R.G. 
devoted much of his time doing legal work, especially legal work, 
for the poor people without money or lawyers in Lewisburg. He would 
write legal petitions too courts and other authorities for the 
inmates. Usually, he never charged people for his services.                  


However, he had heard about me, the prison grapevine makes it 
difficult to keep any secrets. R.G. and I became good friends during 
these years.                                                                 


He even tried to recruit me!