A Life Wasted

Texas County Jail

The county jail in Brownsville Texas was an interesting place. I was there six months, from May 5, 1975 until November 1975. I could write a book about these six months, but in the interest of moving the story along I'll keep it brief and touch only the highlights. First and foremost, it was the strangest jail I have ever been in, and I've been in more than a few. It was more like a third world jail than a U.S. one. In my brief time in Mexico a month earlier I spent the night in a Matamoros jail after a street fight, so I can say with authority that the Brownsville jail was more like a Mexican jail than a U.S. one. Few spoke English. It was not a surprise that few of the inmates spoke English, but that few of the guards did was a shocker. I felt as much on foreign soil there as I had in Mexico. The next surprise was how much I was hated because I was a gringo. Hated by inmates and guards alike. Inmates hated me enough to hurt me for no reason and the guards hated me enough to not notice.

I was there for less than an hour before my first fight. In every jail I've been in meals are delivered to the cell, or cell block which is where you eat and spend all your time. In Brownsville the meals were served in an outdoor courtyard in the center of the jail. You got your food from a serving line, then set at picnic tables and ate under the hot sun. In my first hour there I went to lunch. At the serving line I was handed a heavy stainless steel tray and a metal spoon. The food was a stew of meat and vegetables served from a pot half the size of a fifty-five gallon drum, but I did notice plenty of food put on the tray of the inmates in front of me. When it was my turn the big Mexican inmate serving the food skimmed his ladle across the top of the pot then filled my tray with greasy water. I said, "This isn't going to work out well." He responded with a fast string of Spanish that I didn't understand and a big smile.

Bob had taught me not to hit anyone with my hands when it could be avoided. I always followed Bob's advice when it came to fighting so I hit the big Mexican with the hot grease filled tray. I punched him with the narrow edge of the tray, using it like a sword and caught him just above the eye. It didn't knock him out, but it did put him out of the fight. I was surprised that no one else jumped in, the guards just watched. But when I reached for another tray a guard told me I'd already eaten, so I sat down alone and waited for chow to end. I wasn't hungry anyway. Anywhere else I would have went to the hole for fighting, but here fighting was a normal part of the day. At the most they would separate guys into different units, but they rarely did even that.

There weren't cells here, but a crowded dorm with forty beds. As I was trying to make my bed, which was difficult because of the new cast on my hand (they recast my hand in Florida), I noticed everyone had stopped talking. One consistent thing about jails and prisons everywhere is that it gets quiet before trouble. I turned around to see three Mexicans standing five feet behind me. "You want something," I asked. They said something in Spanish I didn't understand but I understood they wanted trouble. Didn't seem like something I could talk my way out of so I attacked, only I did it with a bit of finesse. I raised both of my hands, a sign of surrender and said I didn't want any trouble. As I spoke I took two easy steps towards them. The head of the guy on my right was about a foot from my newly casted right hand when I hit him in the face. The cast was thick and hard, and my swing perfect. He went down and didn't move. While everyone watched the first guy drop I kicked the middle guy below his knee. I kicked as I had been taught to, using speed, weight and power. Everyone in the dorm heard bones break. The third guy turned and ran. He couldn't go far, but he got as far from me as he could. Less than a minute had passed from when I turned around.

Other than moans from the guy with the broken leg the dorm was quiet. I thought they were all going to jump me, but they just stood there debating. It looked like it could go either way. At that point a Hispanic man of about forty stepped forward and clapped his hands. "Bravo, Gringo," he said. "Very good, but you need more training." He put his arm around my shoulder in a fatherly way and said: "Come, Tlacuache Blanco, I will train you." And he did. He had one of those proud Hispanic names, the part I recall is: Marcus Marquis Antonio Tubisio. That's half of it, and I never knew how to spell it.