The Riverside School at Gatesville Reform School for Boys

  It was sometime during the month of October of 1965 that I was assigned by the Classification Department at Diagnostics Unit to The Riverside School at Gatesville. This remote incredible School was to be my home for the next few months. I had been sentenced to a 6 month stay here, but I picked up extra unacceptable behavior time and was paroled after 9 months stay. Now for those guys who have done recent "Time" let me say respectfully, that doing time now cannot compare to the time served in the 1960's. Please don't get me wrong guys because I am not a bragger, and I have never been. I am a humble person because there are real bad asses out there that take no shit. And I have come across many many of them everywhere on earth. So please let me introduce the setting for Riverside and the Culture there during this time frame. And let me qualify from the start that I am not a historian nor a saint. Although, I am aspiring towards both of these goals, and more now. Riverside had two sections to it because it housed two different age groups. Think and picture of Riverside as the entire School that housed the White kids population at Gatesville reform school. Their schools were the Arizona School that had kids 10 years of age through 12. The Hackberry Unit had kids from 13 through 15. And the Terrace Unit had kids from 16 years of age to 17. At the Hill Top Unit it had older boys that were 17 through 21 years old. All these White kids Schools were on the left side of a two lane road going north away from the town of Gatesville, Texas that was about 2 miles south from the schools. Even The Diagnostic Unit was on The White section. The Riverside School which once was designated as an all Black School was on the right side of this road or two lane highway. There was a big and long nicely built stone wall running parallel to the left of this road marking a division between these two schools. So that accounts for the two sections dividing Riverside. One section on the southside was for the younger Black Kids who remained segregated like all Blacks at Riverside School until 1964, despite The Separate but Equal Law that used to be the Law of The Country having been struck down legally in 1954 in the U.S.. In Texas; especially Gatesville Reform School, the successful win in Brown vs. Board of Education by N.A.A.C.P. was resisted here until 1964 when "The Civil Rights Act Law" was signed. Therefore, I was in the early groups along with Raymond, and Joe Louis to be sent here. Raymond and Joe Louis were placed at the younger boys "E" and "F" Units; and if I am not mistaken, there was a "G" Unit for the very young ones over in that section. Raymond and Joe ended in that area because they had lied about their age at the arrest in Karnes City. Even though Raymond, my uncle, was older than me, he ended at the younger section even than Joe Louis who was more my age. Anyway, it was us three out of the five arriving together from San Marcos that did time here at "El Rio." Now, the reason it was called Riverside school was because a river ran by there just east of this school and it was called the river Leon. The river ran it seemed to me south from the north. The river was a winding river and If my recollection is still intact, I believe it was sort of a muddy looking river. The river was only a few hundred feet away from the west side of the Riverside complex. The E and F units consisted of modern red brick buildings with perhaps 6 or 8 dorms. Each dorm held up to 60 boys each. Over on the north section the setting changed radically. The change was like stepping back in time. The only modern brick building on this side was the "D" Unit which was made from tan bricks. I suppose the  building designers then had decided to keep the old look to this D Unit that was situated at the very end on the north side of the compound looking the same as the ancient ones from the turn of the century. The two story "B'" Unit was old but was built with red bricks from way back. The Kitchen and "A" Unit was in  the center of the compound for both sections. And the younger boys' Kitchen was situated on the far south and west side of the compound. The actual educational school for older boys at Riverside was situated on the north side by the highway. The kids at the young ones section had their own school. The kids at this young ones age section ranged from 10 years old through 15 years. The older boys section ranged from 16 years through 21. The "D" unit was where the oldest boys were and their age ranged from 17 through 21. Later and before I paroled a young friend of ours from San Marcos arrived here at the D unit named Rudy Martinez. There was no chapel at The Black Riverside School. If kids at Riverside wanted to go to Church they had to go to the Hill Top School to attend there on days or nights ascribed. And I was assigned originally to the "B-1" unit. But, because I am honest as I can be; and because I have to tell the Truth even when it hurts and causes embarrassment to myself, and as a Vato Firme, I never wanted to be sent to Riverside School. Not because it was for Black kids, but because all we ever dreamed about when we planned to get sent here was for us to do Time in The Hackberry Unit or Terrace Unit. At that time we were too young for the Hill Top Unit and we didn't know nada about Mountain View School. We hadn't even heard of  Mountain View school in San Marcos. And now I am sent to the unknown and unheard of School called Riverside. What was that I thought to myself way back then, all the great romanticized and glorious stories that I was gonna tell my friends about La Corre and having done time where my older brother David had been was blown to smithereens. And this goes to show how ignorant and stupid a six grade drop out, and now at the age of 15, can be. The World and Country's politics and bad Laws are being outlawed by Civil Rights activists everywhere around this Mexican teenager; and he is an oblivious actor in it. And all he can think about is that my great dream is screwed up royally now. And the dress code for the Riverside School is blue jeans, black low quarter shoes, a white T-shirt and Khaki shirt. Guys, I admit that I have always been a very slow learner. I started public school at the age of 7 years old because of my birthday issue. Then I flunked the first grade and almost didn't pass the second because I had no concept of what English was, Everyone in my family was a Ranch Style Bean that only spoke a Spanish language that they invented on their own because they had had the same problems when they encountered the Spanish Conquistadores that forced them into their school programs. Man!, I am glad that I have been educated by The White People, regardless of that cruelty measured out against me. And I will tell you why, did you notice the tiny subliminal discriminatory act in the open when these people at Institutional level at Gatesville issued White cotton shirts for what used to be classified White Schools and Khakis shirts for what used to be Black Schools. These seemingly unnoticed subtleties will be weaved throughout these stories of mine. Things do change on the surface but remain the same under it. Anyhow, back at the B-1 unit, I am there with a mix company of about 60 guys. And whether people like to admit it or not, the ethnic groups stick to their own kind as a general rule in correctional facilities. So there is covert racism in the bloods. And since I was indoctrinated by the bandidos as a kid, I gravitated to the Chicanos there. And I remember approaching some Chicanos that had been there a while and I sat down with a few during T.V. time and started to organize un Indio. Un Indio was code for an escape. It is here where I learn that not all these kids dreamed about getting locked up here. They just screwed up at the wrong place and at the wrong time and found themselves with those with trouble on their minds. The Blacks and Whites called "Un Indio" "Geronimo" when they were planning an escape. And after discussing with these Mexicans if they wanted to escape, they looked at me and walked away. Therefore, I told myself, "Ruben, you take off by yourself. These Locos are not gonna run."  I had only been at Riverside not even two weeks, and I hauled ass into the woods towards the river down hill. There were no fences except old barbed wire fences to keep cows in. And since I took off from class at school it took a long time to traverse all the obstacles just to get to the open field. And here come guards from the D unit and off duty guards that lived in houses right behind B unit and below where I still had to pass by and they jump me. Then the ass whippings begin intensely. Then they dragged me to the main office for the supervisors in my section which was located at the A unit building on the first floor. And those guys acted like they had been cheated out of something and they too commenced to beat me to a pulp. All this time as I saw my body bouncing off the walls and floors I wondered how did those guards seem to be waiting for me before I even got to the river? Later I found out that one of those Chicanos snitched on me and that's how they knew. Nevertheless a white jeep arrived from Hill Top and two guards took me away to Lock-Up. The lock up was called "The Adjustment Center." As I walked into this super quiet place escorted by the two guards, Mr. Winters and Mr. Worthington received me and explained all the rules and what I should expect for the next 30 days. Oh! this place was a living nightmare. I believe Mr. Lovell worked here too? I did like Mr. Lovell, the other guards there were sadistic to the core. Maybe they were good people at their house and with friends and family of theirs, but over here they played out their parts as prison guards like professional killers. If a kid was out of shape physically, those kids came near dying at this inferno called The Adjustment Center. Mr. Worthington was shaped like an insane Marine. He looked German or Scandinavian to me. He had a short crew cut and was over six feet tall. Mr. Winters was German looking but with black hair and wore eye glasses and was tall too. There were other guards here but I cannot recall their names now. Anyway they would wake us up around 5 a.m. and we started the morning with one hour of P.T. inside the building on the first floor. I'll never forget the cramps I suffered here. The second floor was for bedding area and first floor was where we were arranged sitting in school desk waiting for next commands. The only restroom on first floor had a passageway opening with commode in front of it. So when we went do our our business everybody took a whiff and look at us until we were done. All shower areas and commodes upstairs were wide in the open too. Afterwards we were rapidly marched to the kitchen to eat our breakfast. Then after that we were marched back to Lock up and then we would grab 15 pound sledge hammers, shovels, picks, and we'd  marched up to Caliche Pits on the north side of the hills behind Mountain View which was a two mile trek there. The morning sun would just be peeking out over the eastern horizon as we walked on that gravel road to the pit which was the origin of this road; and to many of the roads of the guards and farmers' houses too. I am sure the Sun didn't find our scene curious at all because he'd seen this picture many times before. As for the sun..., he'd seen worse gaping wounds on hills and mountains and on humans too. To him, really, it was nothing new. The guards would drive their 6 ton trucks behind us and guards riding on horses back also. The dogs would always be close behind. I will never forget how my brother David reacted to the time when I arrived at Lock up. He was at Hill Top then and he worked at The Laundry which was about 100 feet away from The Adjustment Center. All his friends were there watching the day after my beating as I walked to the Kitchen to eat. My whole face looked like a basketball. My eyes were almost shut and my face was a big bruise.  David shouted at me in surprise because I was already in Lock Up, and so early in my sentence, and asked, "Ruben, what happened?" And I just gave him a big smile and couldn't talk in the formation that I was in. Man, who would have thought that things would turn out so bad here at The Adjustment Center.. And after we had grabbed all the tools in hand we started to break boulders into gravel and then shovel the gravel into the back of the trucks. For those who know the woods here in central Texas, they know that there are a lot of shrubs, trees, and cedar trees especially. Well, back then out in this area where human beings hardly frequent, it seemed that everywhere one stepped there were venomous snakes, especially Rattlers out there. The whole setting here on this hillside was out of a Prison Chain Gang scene, but it was real for us. At the end of the day we were beat by the extreme non stop work. And the two mile march back was depressing because we could see as we passed back to Hill Top, the poor guys in white coveralls behind the fences on the east side at Mountain View, shoveling three huge mounds of black dirt from one spot to another in an area the size of an acre, all day. And unbeknown to me, I'll be in those white coveralls one day in the near future too. However, I remember that I met several unforgettable characters here at lock up my first time there. The first ones are three Black guys from Dallas, Texas from South Oak Cliff. One was called Slim, the other was La India; he is straight but that was his nickname. The third one was Happy Skull. All these guys are big and tall guys. Unbeknown to me, I will meet them again at Mountain View much later. Then there was "Fidel" from Houston, Texas. Fidel was medium height, skinny, and wuero. But this guy was all Chuco, even to his walk and talk, and he was fearless. And one week into my lock up Fidel approached me at the kitchen table as we sat together at a four seat metal table and he proposed a plan to escape from lock up to me. This was insane, no one tried to escape from here. All the buildings inside had wired walls and it was caged tightly secured, especially the bedding area. So he whispered and handed me a map that he had sketched out for the escape from the Caliche Pit. And like a fool I said, "Okay." And one day as we circled with the shovels to fill the back of a truck, Fidel said let's go. We knew that the horsemen and dogs were set back away from us back up on the thickets. So we had to run like the jack rabbit again. However, this time a young Black guy shouts at the guards and screams, "There they go!." And all I could hear as I ran through the thickets was all the noise of the commotion of the guards herding all the kids together and the loud stomping sound of horses running right after me. Fidel took off in one direction and I in another. To hell with the stupid map because we had no sense of where we were in the first place. Then a horseman got in front of me and then another and that was it for that escapade. Again I only got about half a mile away both times. The next morning after the guards had whipped Fidel and me a couple inches from death again, the whole crew at lock up was taken to the Riverside School where The Cesspools were located behind the older boys' Kitchen. What was out of the ordinary on this day was that we were given cut off Army O.D. green shorts and boots and green T-shirts to wear. And we were given two empty one gallon tin cans where food had been, one for each hand. We had no idea what special delivery was coming just for us up ahead . So, we arrived at the Cesspools at Riverside, of which I hadn't been there long enough to realize that these pools were the grand front yard vista for the B-I and 2 unit building and for the D-1 and 2 units building also. Keep in mind that the same troop force is escorting us continually. And when we settle near the pools the guards instruct us to go into one pool at a time and scoop up the waste treated feces that was about to our waist high and place our arms and hands until it reached the top of our shoulders and fill the gallon cans full and then walk out of the pool. Once we were all out  of the pool we had to walk to the rivers bank and spread the shit evenly on top of the grass. I believe that there were 6 to 8 pools that were the size of a large swimming pool each and all of them were full. It took us about 3 to 4 days to clean them all out. The smells here had us all vomiting until we gagged and gagged like being in a Gas Chamber. And the maggots were crawling all over us by the hundreds. It seemed all our bodies were covered in shit. At lunch time we had to eat in the Kitchen with everyone there including the Black civilian cooks. What the guards did was line us up in rows behind the kitchen where a fire hydrant was with a hose attached to it. Then they would turn it on full blast and spray us down until most of the crap was off of us. Then we would be filed into the Kitchen and be served our food. We would sit at the tables and eat the great food served here but it was messed up by those guys not from lock up when no sooner they smelled us began to puke all over the kitchen. Even after the wash we stunk for days. Well needless to say we did that for a few days. But the worst was still to come for Fidel and me. As extra punishment for our attempted escape from there, the guards would wake me up about 3 or 4 in the morning and give me Army O.D. green coveralls that were always over sized for me and told to put them on. They gave me combat boots to wear and led me away out of the building and walked me between the old buildings through a paved section and it felt so lonely and eerie as we heard only the sounds of our steps walking sluggishly to a place behind the kitchen at Hill Top. Please forgive me if I keep repeating the word "Providence," but in less than a year after I am paroled from Riverside; and I don't even have a clue about what my future holds for me, nonetheless, I will be housed in the old building facing this Grease Trap for eleven months which is The Louisiana Hall." And when we came to the edge of the kitchen on the east side, one of the guards told me to stop. So I stopped and he looked at the ground in front of us. It was dark so I strained my eyes to focus on what he was looking at. Then the guard reached down with his right hand and arm and pulled up a metal lid from over a large metal container buried in the ground and stood far back. No sooner he pulled up the lid the smell was more violent than the cesspool smell. And I started to puke uncontrollably and my whole body was shaking because whatever was there had rotted badly. Then the guard gave me two empty tin one gallon cans, one for each hand, and told me to get inside this contraption. I puked all the way inside, and as I stood almost chest deep in this thing he told me to squat all the way under and clean out all the grease and rotted out food particles that had been trapped here for some plumbing reason. The stuff in here had been collected over months and I had to clean it all by myself. Again I was told to carry this waste in the cans over to the north side of the hill and spread it out there about 300 feet away from the buildings. I hope you can picture my whole body covered from head to toe in this awful stinking soaking crap. There was so much grease on my head and face, so how can a person not help but to eat that crap. But the guards never made fun of me while punishing me. They were dead serious and took their jobs seriously because this was the mentality of the time. And after the grease trap was clean I was taken back to the building and told to strip and give them all my clothing in a big black plastic bag and told to shower. The guards would trash all the clothing and hand me my lock up clothes. And I remember that when I first walked up to the big wide open bedding area on the second floor, everybody woke up gagging and puking and getting violently sick. And even after the shower when I was filed into the kitchen for breakfast the poor guys in there would turn around and look to see if a lost angry skunk had come in and started choking and throwing up. Then they would look at me and they knew then that it wasn't a skunk but me. I stunk worse than a skunk, and not even soap and shower could wash this smell away for days. Good grief guys, I am still at lock up and haven't gotten to unit A-3 Unit yet. The people at A-3 where my new house will be when I am released from what Los Chicanos called, "La Subida", is the A-3 unit. And there I will meet some great characters. The guards will  continue to exhibit the usual sadistic characters as well as some of the Black guards. Nevertheless, let's stop here now and take notice at how much harder The Black People suffered and endured way back then compared to the Whites suffering. And did you notice that Mexicans were classified as Whites back then. And did you notice where the Cesspools were located, just a few feet away from the kitchen where I will eat great tasting foods. Something different besides the great Mexican food from  back home. Again Providence has ways of helping us see the good in what was intended to be bad and I am extremely glad that I didn't get sentenced to the Hackberry or Terrace Units. Because as I see it now, Riverside was meant to be for me. The knowledge that I attain here will serve me well down the road where only few can see. At this point in my life I didn't have the capacity to understand what was happening psychologically or spiritually to me. And to be honest, I think that none of those guys understood either. All I knew was that I had no concept of Philosophies or Religious Theologies, or ideas about the natures of humans, especially of man. And I still haven't mastered all aspects of my life. Especially on  how to master the Self and this Duality thing. To be honest I believe that self cannot be mastered, only controlled or tamed a bit now and then. And finding a Balance to establish a blissful Harmony, well, that to me is a Pipe Dream. But there is nothing wrong with working at being Self Disciplined. Power comes from these Arts of self introspection and allowing for changing the bad habits into good ones because there is value in adhering to the good behavior that life requires. There are many benefits to being self disciplined. For example, Power comes through sacrifice, and a willingness to learn, and Obeying the teachings that you have dedicated your whole life to. The Mind is a powerful thing and if you're disciplined in reading and seeking Truth and the Right Path, you will find it. But before I close, I want to say that The experience at Riverside was not at all dull as I thought it would be. And I am extremely glad that I got to do time there in 1965 through 1966. As I said in the beginning, I would like to leave a legacy before I exit this world. And that legacy is that I want to be remembered as an Activist and an advocate for Justice. And to be honest I have suffered a lot. But I want to say that The Black People have been wronged the worst in America and the World. My suffering compared to theirs is a drop in the bucket. And as for The proverbial Balance and Harmony thing, it can be attained momentarily. But mastery of the mind is a Sanctification Life Time Process. But anyhow, the journey through the Gatesville experiences is  part of my personal historical repertoire now, and a repository of truth and not lies because I was there. My journey at this place continues as I said, and it is a disturbing and shocking thing. However, for those guys like me who have done Time, I just adapted and acclimated to this new found lifestyle and made my house there. In my mind I just had to Compartmentalize and rearrange the way I remembered things. I simply blocked out the outside World and lived only in this reality that I was in just to stay Sane. It is really a "Mind Thing." The Federal Government didn't shut this place down because they were like Mr. Roger's Neighborhood at Gatesville Reform School though. I am tired now so let us sleep on that, Amigos. And Last, I can relate to you old guys who want to write your stories down before the sunsets. Your stories affirm and give credence to ours. And people need to know about Punishment that is real. Don't do the Crime if you can't do the Time. I love it! And I believe in "Mr. Rogers" because he was a great man! Let's hope for better days for everybody. Peace in the Middle East!.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Respectfully,                                                                                                                                                

Ruben N. Gutierrez