DAD GOES TO PRISON

            When I was but eight years old and in the third grade, in the school year of 1952-1953, my Dad Frank Switzer was arrested by the Arkansas State Police and the Arkansas Alcohol Beverage Commission.  The circumstances of the arrest were particularly brutal, as both Mother and I witnessed a State Trooper viciously beating my already handcuffed father with the barrel of a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson revolver, smashing his theretofore perfect teeth and breaking his jaw.  At the time, I was but a little boy who loved his mother and father and had no idea why my Dad had been arrested, nor any concept as to how any human being could do such despicable things to my Daddy as did Governor Faubus’ Arkansas State Police.  

 

I was unspeakably traumatized; more importantly, this was truly the first emotional “scar” of my young life.  Daddy was tried, found guilty of an untaxed liquor sales violation before District Judge Golden in Star City, Arkansas, who, in open court in that small town (but for all the newspaper reporters to hear) referred to my Dad as a “despicable career criminal who has no place in society.”  The Honorable Judge Golden made certain everyone in the courtroom heard that if the Legislature “had any sense,” they would have allowed him to triple the maximum five year sentence he had meted out.  Dad was then incarcerated at the “Cummins Unit” of the Arkansas State Correctional System near Varner, Arkansas.  Images of the arrest and the untoward brutality of the State Police have always haunted me.  But my older brother Barry had not been home at the time of the raid and the arrest.  

 

I will also always remember the first and likely only visit that I took to Varner to see Dad, although Barry and Mom had gone on a number of other visits.  As we all got closer and closer to the prison I began to see a number of different “chain gangs,” literally men with shackles and chains on all of their ankles holding them together as they worked in the ditches beside the highway.  Then as Mom turned off the main highway onto the long but narrow paved road leading from the actual hamlet of “Varner” up to the main gate of Cummins, I saw more prisoners, without chains, working in fields tending to some crop, probably soybeans, although it could have been something like green beans, almost anything other than cotton or corn.  I know it could not have been either of the latter crops, as I recall thinking to myself that if they had been growing cotton or corn, particularly corn, the guards, even on horseback and even with those shotguns, would have had difficulty finding any prisoner trying to hide among tall, thick rows of corn as prelude to a planned escape.      

 

          When we got to the main gate and Mom parked the car, I assume Mom identified us to the prison officials, whatever she had to do, as after a short while the three of us were escorted into the prison itself.  It was not anything like what I might have expected, for the prisons I had seen in motion pictures, typically with Edward G. Robinson or James Cagney, all had tall concrete or brick walls with guard towers and guards holding Thompson sub-machine guns with round magazines.  The Cummins Unit, by contrast, was surrounded by two rows of metal fence, with each row topped by extremely sharp-looking razor wire—which I now know is sometimes called concertina wire.  And there were several guard towers with uniformed men in them holding guns, although I could not be sure of what kind of weapons they were.  Inside the wire fences there were a number of barracks-like buildings scattered about, which made me think it looked more like a military camp than a prison.  But it had to be a prison because all of the men, other than the guards, were wearing those black and white striped “pajamas.”

 

          We were escorted into one of the barracks-like buildings, and it turned out to be a large lunch room, probably called the “mess hall” or something like that, with tables all around for people to sit at and eat and a kitchen at one end.  But on this visiting day there was no food; there were lots of people seated at every table talking, and guards with holstered weapons spaced in some sort of ordered geometrical pattern around the outside of the large room.  At one of the tables I saw my Dad, Frank Mays Switzer.   I ran up and hugged his neck, and after a while of all of us standing up, hugging and all of that, we sat down.  We were just visiting, not really talking about the prison or such as that; I supposed they we were just trying to enjoy seeing one another and not think of where we were and what it represented.  After a while I began to look around the room at some of the other tables and the people seated and talking with one another.  After no more than a minute, I became transfixed and sat there motionless and speechless.   I was so shocked and frightened that I do not believe I was breathing.  There, not more than ten feet away from me was a boy who was in my third grade school class in Crossett!  Looking right at me!

 

          Even as I think back upon that incident as an adult, and even though that other boy’s presence had to mean that he had a relative there as well, I have to believe that one event, and due to my naiveté, that additional “scar” has had almost as much hurtful and lasting emotional impact upon me as anything that has ever happened in my life.  For the very first time, I  realized the facts causing me all of the fear and unease that I had personally felt upon Dad’s arrest, and then his trial and imprisonment, were not my own personal secret!  The shame, vicarious ignobility and my lack of “worthiness,” which had been growing as I had begun to understand why Dad had been arrested, were there for all to see!  And, I did not then know how to cope with it.  I felt as though that other boy’s gaze had suddenly stripped me naked for all the world to see.

 

          After a few days of trying to confront what had happened, I resolved to himself that no matter what happened in my life, no one, no one EVER was going to have cause to question my honesty or integrity as the State had Dad’s.  I would do the right and honorable thing always, no matter what.  And, too, I developed an unshakeable compulsion that he had to be the “very best” at anything and everything I pursued during my life—and to be recognized as special and worthy of acclaim.  In fact, by creating this naïve and, truly, illusory, psychological defense against the challenges the world would pose to me, I had, as a child, forged two major emotional underpinnings for my entire life, without either one of which I believed I would, literally, come crashing to the ground.  And, on occasion, as the years passed by, I did…because of the impossible standards I had set for myself.  

         

          It was in this “Mess Hall” visit that my soul, or life view, changed forever.

 

My brother Barry was fourteen at the time of his first of many trips to Varner.  While it was a tragic experience for him as well and he certainly hurt for Dad, I believe he was already mature enough not to be so severely affected in the emotional sense—even though he had seen a classmate there too!  When he learned years later that I had been traumatized by the event, Barry told me I had to “suck it up and be tough.”  Mom’s entire life, already hopelessly ill-starred, was made more so, as step by inexorable step she slipped into an incurable major clinical depression and related alcohol and barbiturate addictions. 

 

Ironically, after thirty months in prison the Supreme Court ordered that Dad be released, for the State had wrongfully charged and convicted him.  The State’s Prosecuting Attorney had made a “technical” error which led to the reversal of the conviction; but no one apologized for ruining Dad perfect face, taking his freedom away or for laying waste to my naïve innocence. 

 

Barry told me some time later that Dad had shared with him during one of their visits that he had been very “lucky” relative to other prisoners at Varner in that due to the fact that he was older than most of the other prisoners, he was given the best “work assignment” at the prison.  Dad was the “rabbit keeper.” He was in charge of raising and caring for the rabbits which were eventually part of the stew the prisoners ate.  That kept him out of the chain gangs. 

 

There was one somewhat humorous occasion, at least to Barry and  Mom, when Dad had made a point of Mom being sure to purchase a leather handbag from another inmate who had made it in a prison shop.  Dad said it two or three times, so Mom bought it—thinking all the while that there must be some secret hidden message in the bag.  No sooner than our car arrived at some secluded point after leaving the prison than Mom stopped and cut the handbag into shreds, looking for the message.  As it turned out, Dad had just wanted to do a favor for the other inmate so that he would have a few dollars to buy cigarettes!  

 

Many years later, but before Dad died, the full extent of the brutality and disregard for human life within the Arkansas State Correctional System was revealed to the World when dozens of bodies were found buried outside the razor wire fences but within the System’s property at Varner, all of whom were presumed to be prisoners the guards had murdered over the years.  While most of the world was understandably shocked at the revelation, none of the Switzers was at all surprised. 

 

A news release from the Department of Corrections or the Office of the Governor came out some few days later to the effect that the bodies were part of a very old, unmarked potter’s field!  But I have always figured, and Dad “knew,” the original news release had it right.  The second story was, to their minds, merely another attempt by the wealthy and powerful to carry out another, typical, traditional Arkansas political “cover-up.”

 

 

 

Don Switzer

Rogers, Arkansas 72758

(c) January 5, 2010

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tags: .38 caliber Smith & Wesson, Alcohol Beverage Commission, Arkansas State Correctional System, Arkansas Syate Police, barracks-like, Barry, Brubaker; Star City, Chain Gangs, concertina wire, Cummins Unit, Donnie, Edward G. Robinson, Faubus, Governor. anonymous graves, horseback shotguns, horses, James Cagney, leather purse, Mess Hall, military base, pajamas, Prison, smash jaw, sub-machine guns, Vrner

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 at 6:10 pm © and is filed under Human Interest and Whimsey, Political and Constitutional Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.