AUTOBIOGRAPHY
I was born just outside the state prison in Florence, Arizona in 1945. I was the youngest
of five boys including one set of twins until one twin died of pneumonia. He died before I
was born. I don't remember if my father worked at the prison or not. I do remember a
Mexican neighbor named Lupe who owned a black stallion that jumped the corral fence
regularly to mate with mares pastured down the road. My brothers and I would help
Lupe haze the stallion back to the corral and Lupe would feed us chili-beans wrapped in a
tortilla. I was too little to really be of help in the hazing, but not too little to do my duty
by the tortilla-wrapped beans.
We moved to Eloy, Arizona where my parents helped relatives run a cotton camp full of
migrant workers composed of Indians, Mexicans, blacks and whites. Mom ran a
chuck-wagon mounted in the back of a pickup truck and dad kept peace in the camp.
Sketchy memories of: rattlesnakes in the cotton fields; finding a whole dollar bill and a
quarter at the same time; sandstorms stripping paint from cars and skin from people;
catching pigeons to furnish our hutch, and my best friend's father getting shot
point-blank in the head and mom running with the sugar-bowl to stop the bleeding of
this dead man.
We moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma when I was seven, where dad got drunk and bought a
TV on credit. A new TV (the first TV ever); a new house with no furniture other than a
card table, an old rocking chair, and crates holding our clothing, but that TV was
fascinating, even though the only thing televised was the presidential convention--a box
full of living images. Remarkable!
This was an era just after national Prohibition and the dust bowl of Oklahoma when
thumbing your nose at the government was cheered instead of jeered at. The folk
heroes of the day were outlaws (outlaws, not criminals) like John Dillinger and Pretty Boy
Floyd who robbed banks and shared their loot with family and neighboring friends.
Saving foreclosure on farms. Robin Hoods of the day.
Due to dad's drinking my parents were divorced and remarried several times during the
early years in Tulsa. Dad was an alcoholic who drifted from one job to another and
eventually drifted back to Arizona and out of our lives. Mom was an honest,
hard-working woman who found a job as an accountant for a pie company so she could
support our family. She could not work and care for us two youngest boys, and we were
too young to care for ourselves, so she paid a monthly fee and we were placed in a
Children's Home. This was before the concept of day care centers. My two oldest
brothers continued to live at home since they could take care of themselves.
When my brother and I became too old for the Children's Home we were transferred to
the Tulsa Boys Home where mom continued to pay a monthly fee until we were released
to live at home. I was eleven years old at that time.
I remember the first time I saw the cops come to my house, handcuff my oldest brother
and take him to jail. I was angry they would invade our household and treat my big
brother so harshly. Later the cops would be coming to the house regularly for one
reason or another. Once my brother and his friends had a running gun battle with the
cops when the cops happened upon them as they were loading a safe containing a
quarter million dollars worth of diamonds and one hundred thousand dollars in cash
into a pickup truck. My brother and his friends beat the cops to our house, but the cops
surrounded the house, cut the phone wires and broke down the front door. The cops
took everyone in the house to jail except myself, a friend of mine who was spending the
night and mom. My oldest brother taught me to bypass burglar alarms, hot-wire cars,
and crack safes.
At age seventeen I married, fathered a son, and a year later, a daughter.
I graduated to prison. My first day in prison I was escorted up a set of narrow stairs
which switched back and forth until we had traversed five stories, and at each landing
there was a crowd of mean looking convicts making disparaging remarks about what
they'd like to do to a "young'un" like myself. The whole place was dingy and dim and had
a smell of violence and hopelessness to it. I was nineteen years old. After all my
personal belongings were confiscated I was told to wade through a foot bath, run
through a shower, sprayed with some sort of powdered pesticide and inspected by a
guard in places on my body where the sun never shines, I was placed in a cell and the
door clanged shut.
I looked around the cell. There was a mattress with a black color to it where endless
sweating bodies had lain, a round sink which was also filthy, a commode with a stinking
brown fungus of some sort growing in it, a light bulb you had to screw in and out to turn
on and off, four steel walls and a concrete floor painted at one time but was then worn
bare. There were no linens, no pillow, the light bulb was burnt out and the commode
flushed incessantly without disturbing the stinking fungus in the least.
A convict came by and told me that someone had been stabbed in the corridor between
the cellhouse where we were and the rotunda and they didn't expect him to live.
About three hours later the door racked open and the guard hollered "Chow". Down
the switchback stairs and into the corridor leading to the rotunda. Three hours had
passed and there was still blood all over the walls of this ten foot wide corridor and pools
of blood which had been tracked through by shuffling convicts leaving bloody trails
up and down the floor. I was frightened and disgusted by the cold-hearted
indifference of others around me. I continued to the messhall, but had no appetite.
I was able to send word by another convict to two of my brothers already serving time
there that I'd arrived and my cell address. I returned to that sordid, stinking cell, threw
myself onto the filthy mattress in the darkness, stared at the ceiling and asked myself,
"Tim, what have you gotten yourself into now?"
If I had been released from prison the next day I know I would never have returned
and would've been a law-abiding citizen the rest of my life. But thirty days later I had
lost most of my fear and started adjusting to prison life. I still hated the place, but
adjusted to survive.
After completing the three year burglary sentence I was serving I was released, but was
rearrested within ninety days and returned with a twelve year sentence for burglary of a
parking meter. Twelve, 12 year sentences for twelve separate parking meters for a
total of one hundred forty-four years. The twelve sentences were running concurrent so
actually I only had to serve twelve years. I decided to escape and did so four separate
times, but committed crimes while on escape and kept piling sentence upon sentence on
myself till I had so much time I'd never be free again.
My wife divorced me.
I was bitter, filled with hate and dangerous to be around.
During one of my escapes the cops surrounded the house I was in and I had an
altercation with them and was shot in the back with a twelve gage shotgun. The wound
severed several ribs and when the ribs healed they did so by attaching themselves to ribs
next to them instead of growing across where the ends could reattach to the severed
ends. This resulted in floating ribs and back problems.
One day something snapped in my neck during a ball game and the next morning I
couldn't get out of bed because of severe pain in my lower back. I was placed in the
prison infirmary and remained there for the next five months until my back healed itself.
I became so bored while bedridden that I tried drawing some of the nurses' children
from photos they would bring to me and discovered I had a talent for drawing. A convict
orderly worked at the infirmary and he brought me some paints to try out. He was an
artist and he would critique and help me learn to manipulate the colors. I could paint
and draw and was good at it! It was incredible!
I started doing yoga and meditating. Yoga to strengthen my back and the rest of my
body and meditation to release the hate and bitterness from my thinking, and continued
my artwork/artplay. All of a sudden my whole life turned around and those things that
were previously negative were transformed into positive actions. I didn't have time any
longer to make weapons, saw on the bars, or plan an escape. I escaped each time I sat
down in front of a canvas. When I had a paintbrush in my hands and a canvas in front
of me, bars and concrete no longer existed around me. I discovered how to escape
and it didn't matter if I was caught in the act because there was no law against it! In
fact it was encouraged. The energy within me became tuned toward positive things and
I attracted positive people to me.
Since discovering I'm an artist I've been transferred to a sentence in Kansas, and later
paroled from the sentences in Oklahoma. Since transferring I've met, fell in love with
and married a loving, understanding woman, been accepted at a prestigious college for
artists, the Kansas City Art Institute, and have a goal of attending there upon my
release. I'm working towards that goal by taking college courses that will be applicable
to the art college after my release. I also continue to paint, do yoga and meditate.
After twenty-three years in prison I no longer worry about being released from prison
for there is now a knowing within me that does not doubt release from prison, and until
that day arrives I'll continue enjoying the opportunity every day to paint and express
myself through my art.
TO BE CONTINUED
I was born just outside the state prison in Florence, Arizona in 1945. I was the youngest
of five boys including one set of twins until one twin died of pneumonia. He died before I
was born. I don't remember if my father worked at the prison or not. I do remember a
Mexican neighbor named Lupe who owned a black stallion that jumped the corral fence
regularly to mate with mares pastured down the road. My brothers and I would help
Lupe haze the stallion back to the corral and Lupe would feed us chili-beans wrapped in a
tortilla. I was too little to really be of help in the hazing, but not too little to do my duty
by the tortilla-wrapped beans.
We moved to Eloy, Arizona where my parents helped relatives run a cotton camp full of
migrant workers composed of Indians, Mexicans, blacks and whites. Mom ran a
chuck-wagon mounted in the back of a pickup truck and dad kept peace in the camp.
Sketchy memories of: rattlesnakes in the cotton fields; finding a whole dollar bill and a
quarter at the same time; sandstorms stripping paint from cars and skin from people;
catching pigeons to furnish our hutch, and my best friend's father getting shot
point-blank in the head and mom running with the sugar-bowl to stop the bleeding of
this dead man.
We moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma when I was seven, where dad got drunk and bought a
TV on credit. A new TV (the first TV ever); a new house with no furniture other than a
card table, an old rocking chair, and crates holding our clothing, but that TV was
fascinating, even though the only thing televised was the presidential convention--a box
full of living images. Remarkable!
This was an era just after national Prohibition and the dust bowl of Oklahoma when
thumbing your nose at the government was cheered instead of jeered at. The folk
heroes of the day were outlaws (outlaws, not criminals) like John Dillinger and Pretty Boy
Floyd who robbed banks and shared their loot with family and neighboring friends.
Saving foreclosure on farms. Robin Hoods of the day.
Due to dad's drinking my parents were divorced and remarried several times during the
early years in Tulsa. Dad was an alcoholic who drifted from one job to another and
eventually drifted back to Arizona and out of our lives. Mom was an honest,
hard-working woman who found a job as an accountant for a pie company so she could
support our family. She could not work and care for us two youngest boys, and we were
too young to care for ourselves, so she paid a monthly fee and we were placed in a
Children's Home. This was before the concept of day care centers. My two oldest
brothers continued to live at home since they could take care of themselves.
When my brother and I became too old for the Children's Home we were transferred to
the Tulsa Boys Home where mom continued to pay a monthly fee until we were released
to live at home. I was eleven years old at that time.
I remember the first time I saw the cops come to my house, handcuff my oldest brother
and take him to jail. I was angry they would invade our household and treat my big
brother so harshly. Later the cops would be coming to the house regularly for one
reason or another. Once my brother and his friends had a running gun battle with the
cops when the cops happened upon them as they were loading a safe containing a
quarter million dollars worth of diamonds and one hundred thousand dollars in cash
into a pickup truck. My brother and his friends beat the cops to our house, but the cops
surrounded the house, cut the phone wires and broke down the front door. The cops
took everyone in the house to jail except myself, a friend of mine who was spending the
night and mom. My oldest brother taught me to bypass burglar alarms, hot-wire cars,
and crack safes.
At age seventeen I married, fathered a son, and a year later, a daughter.
I graduated to prison. My first day in prison I was escorted up a set of narrow stairs
which switched back and forth until we had traversed five stories, and at each landing
there was a crowd of mean looking convicts making disparaging remarks about what
they'd like to do to a "young'un" like myself. The whole place was dingy and dim and had
a smell of violence and hopelessness to it. I was nineteen years old. After all my
personal belongings were confiscated I was told to wade through a foot bath, run
through a shower, sprayed with some sort of powdered pesticide and inspected by a
guard in places on my body where the sun never shines, I was placed in a cell and the
door clanged shut.
I looked around the cell. There was a mattress with a black color to it where endless
sweating bodies had lain, a round sink which was also filthy, a commode with a stinking
brown fungus of some sort growing in it, a light bulb you had to screw in and out to turn
on and off, four steel walls and a concrete floor painted at one time but was then worn
bare. There were no linens, no pillow, the light bulb was burnt out and the commode
flushed incessantly without disturbing the stinking fungus in the least.
A convict came by and told me that someone had been stabbed in the corridor between
the cellhouse where we were and the rotunda and they didn't expect him to live.
About three hours later the door racked open and the guard hollered "Chow". Down
the switchback stairs and into the corridor leading to the rotunda. Three hours had
passed and there was still blood all over the walls of this ten foot wide corridor and pools
of blood which had been tracked through by shuffling convicts leaving bloody trails
up and down the floor. I was frightened and disgusted by the cold-hearted
indifference of others around me. I continued to the messhall, but had no appetite.
I was able to send word by another convict to two of my brothers already serving time
there that I'd arrived and my cell address. I returned to that sordid, stinking cell, threw
myself onto the filthy mattress in the darkness, stared at the ceiling and asked myself,
"Tim, what have you gotten yourself into now?"
If I had been released from prison the next day I know I would never have returned
and would've been a law-abiding citizen the rest of my life. But thirty days later I had
lost most of my fear and started adjusting to prison life. I still hated the place, but
adjusted to survive.
After completing the three year burglary sentence I was serving I was released, but was
rearrested within ninety days and returned with a twelve year sentence for burglary of a
parking meter. Twelve, 12 year sentences for twelve separate parking meters for a
total of one hundred forty-four years. The twelve sentences were running concurrent so
actually I only had to serve twelve years. I decided to escape and did so four separate
times, but committed crimes while on escape and kept piling sentence upon sentence on
myself till I had so much time I'd never be free again.
My wife divorced me.
I was bitter, filled with hate and dangerous to be around.
During one of my escapes the cops surrounded the house I was in and I had an
altercation with them and was shot in the back with a twelve gage shotgun. The wound
severed several ribs and when the ribs healed they did so by attaching themselves to ribs
next to them instead of growing across where the ends could reattach to the severed
ends. This resulted in floating ribs and back problems.
One day something snapped in my neck during a ball game and the next morning I
couldn't get out of bed because of severe pain in my lower back. I was placed in the
prison infirmary and remained there for the next five months until my back healed itself.
I became so bored while bedridden that I tried drawing some of the nurses' children
from photos they would bring to me and discovered I had a talent for drawing. A convict
orderly worked at the infirmary and he brought me some paints to try out. He was an
artist and he would critique and help me learn to manipulate the colors. I could paint
and draw and was good at it! It was incredible!
I started doing yoga and meditating. Yoga to strengthen my back and the rest of my
body and meditation to release the hate and bitterness from my thinking, and continued
my artwork/artplay. All of a sudden my whole life turned around and those things that
were previously negative were transformed into positive actions. I didn't have time any
longer to make weapons, saw on the bars, or plan an escape. I escaped each time I sat
down in front of a canvas. When I had a paintbrush in my hands and a canvas in front
of me, bars and concrete no longer existed around me. I discovered how to escape
and it didn't matter if I was caught in the act because there was no law against it! In
fact it was encouraged. The energy within me became tuned toward positive things and
I attracted positive people to me.
Since discovering I'm an artist I've been transferred to a sentence in Kansas, and later
paroled from the sentences in Oklahoma. Since transferring I've met, fell in love with
and married a loving, understanding woman, been accepted at a prestigious college for
artists, the Kansas City Art Institute, and have a goal of attending there upon my
release. I'm working towards that goal by taking college courses that will be applicable
to the art college after my release. I also continue to paint, do yoga and meditate.
After twenty-three years in prison I no longer worry about being released from prison
for there is now a knowing within me that does not doubt release from prison, and until
that day arrives I'll continue enjoying the opportunity every day to paint and express
myself through my art.
TO BE CONTINUED
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| Copyright 2008 Tim Prock - All Rights Reserved Service provided by myks.biz |
| Escape Artist Size 30 x 40 Oil on Canvas |
| T I M P R O C K |