Trip to Gatesville

Haven’t wanted to blog about Gatesville in the last several months, since a recent trip to the aria numbed me to the subject. It’s a nice ride south on 35 out of Dallas then back roads from Lake Whitney through the prairies of North Texas into the hills of the northern part of the Edwards plateau. From Crawford Texas it’s a nice hilly swervy road, the Coryell road. This is the road that ran alongside Valley School and diapered into the hills up by the caliches pit. The state put in a Hwy 36 bypass to keep traffic from rolling through the facility on Hwy 36. There is a store at the corner of that road and the bypass. We parked at the store over looking Terrace and Sycamore schools, you could see boot hill down the road. It was creepy. It’s a big TDC complex now, lots of boss’s coming in and out of the store.

There appeared to be a heaviness that overcame me as we were parked at the store. I just shrugged it off as internal weirdness from seeing that place again after 35 years. Later that night the group I was traveling with spoke about how we all had that heavy feeling, from the time we rolled up to the store and especially at the museum to see the state school exhibit, until we left town. We chalked it up to a spiritual darkness that each person with me said they could feel in their very soul. The people with me had never been near this place and yet they could feel that this is a bad place where bad things were allowed to happen to orphans. This town of Gatesville whose people whose ancestors built their wealth on the blood of state boys continues to thrive on the misery of others. This central Texas town, whose claim to fame is the spur capital of Texas cries out with the blood of orphans and widows.
The real history of Gatesville Texas is its 120 year legacy dispensing misery and pain to orphans and widows.

Matron of Memory

Mrs. Ruby was the matron of Terrace dorm 4, my dorm, and she was a very caring lady who looked out for her boys. Don't get me wrong she was no pushover; she was tough, but fair and called it like it is. On Saturday when we got done cleaning and passed the inspection she would buy cigarettes for the whole dorm. She would say "Chef, one smoke we all smoke". I ran the store and she had a difficult time pronouncing my name. I knew that meant to give everyone a cigarette and she would cover the cost. She worked at Gatesville for a long time and was raised in the black community of that backwater little reform school town. Some of the boys were on her dorm at Riverside before that school closed and I think she was also a matron at Live Oak school when it was colored boys only.
When I came back the second time none of the other dorm personnel wanted me on their dorm. I can’t imagine why, but they didn't. Hell the people at Sycamore didn’t want me either and I was too old to go to Valley school. Go figure the last stop for a juvenile delinquent is Gatesville and nobody wanted me there. They were going to Mountain View committee me and be done with it, but Mrs. Ruby, came and said she would take me back on her dorm. I promised I wouldn't run on her shift and I didn't. I waited until a floater dorm man we called booboo, because he looked like booboo, and I went out the clothes room window. 30 days in lockup and I was back on the dorm. I never ran on Mrs. Ruby and Booboo wouldn't let me in the clothes room when he worked our dome, even after I was clothes room boy again.
I hadn't thought about Ruby Brown until the other night at the Denton County Impact Program and seeing the tyc boys from McFadden who come and speak to the first offender kids with their matron. I think she would be offended if I called her a matron and I don't know what her title is but she reminded me a lot of Mrs. Ruby, only this lady is white. It was how she interacted with the boys in her charge and how they responded. I think if tyc had more people like this lady at McFadden and Mrs. Ruby the agency wouldn't be such a failure at its mission.
Anybody out there have any good matron stories or remember Mrs. Ruby Brown please share.

Involve Your Voice of Experience

Today’s Texas Youth Council/Commission is a great example of mischievous legislation that’s resulted in poor management practices and useless programs designed to further destroy a child’s chances at a life outside of state supervision. All the while decreasing public safety and feeding a booming prison industry. Since Morales vs Turman ordered closing the Gatesville State School for Boys this mischievous legislation has attempted to forces tyc to be something it can’t possibly ever achieve. Today’s tyc only stands to fool the public tax payers of this state, that it’s a rehab with resocialization programs that have the capability to civilize the worst of the worst juvenile delinquents in the state of Texas.

The abusive correctional culture that Morales vs Turman attempted to eradicate was just simply redistributed to other facilities around the state. Some say it was a ploy by government officials to turn our old reform school over to the feared Texas Department of Corrections to keep people from nosing around the buried atrocity’s perpetrated by those who ran the old reform school. I suppose one could base this thinking on the premises that no one dare jack with tdc. Look what happened to Bonnie and Clyde. While others may see our Legislators each session continue to look for ways to criminalize freedoms in order to feed its citizenry into the booming prison business. Today’s tyc with its de-socializing programs keeps a continuous feed of bad seeds into our communities that corrupts even more citizenry who are fed into the booming prison business. We have become a society who has found that incarcerating it citizens is good business.

During the discovery phases of Morales vs Turman state boys and girls as well as many state employees put their life in jeopardy to testify, only to have legislators build up the monster tyc is today. The child abuse in today’s tyc is worst than before Morales vs turman. Bruises heal but programs implemented that result in mental anguish and the continuance of breeding hopelessness can last a lifetime while its effect on the general public is devastating.

Somehow the public needs to be made aware of what our elected officials are doing, the effects of over criminalizing our freedoms, piling more bureaucracy in its building of our state’s juvenile in-justice system, the effects it has on the children, their parents, the people of this great state of Texas. We state boys are a powerful force, we shut down the most notorious reform school in the history of juvenile justice. If we can survive Gatesville we can do anything. Join me and others for a state boy reunion in Gatesville and we can start to figure a way to bring public awareness to this crucial issue our society faces. Join the mailing list oldschool@ironguardiansnt.org for upcoming information.

Its long over due for a State Boy reunion

I have spoken with Dodi at the Chateau Ville in Gatesville and they are willing to provide accommodations for a fee, off course. Dodi was a matron at Riverside School, her husband worked at Hackberry School. She is also on the board of the local museum where there is exhibits of the old reform school. I suppose that's fitting since much of that area was built from slave labor provided by the reform school.

I know this may sound crazy and any one of us who spent any amount of time in that horrible place knows the last thing we would want to do is go back there. Some of the discussions on the class mates site has been said to be therapeutic. It may be just that therapeutic as well as a hell of a good party. A celebration of freedom.

On another note the State Boy reunion will help bring awareness to the atrocities that have been perpetrated on us and continue to be perpetrated on the unfortunate children who find themselves in tyc today. Those of us who have gone on to become productive citizens could really make a difference in what's going on with tyc today. It could help push legislation for better treatment programs in today's juvenile justice system. There is a history professor who is doing a book on the history of the Juvenile justice system in Texas as well as others who would be there to hear stories. A bunch of us former State Boys getting together in Gatesville Texas, the seed of the juvenile justice system in Texas, could bring such an awareness.

Please respond back to me oldschool@IronGuardiansNT.org and let me know how you can help with putting this thing together. At the very least let me know when a good week end would be for you to attend in the month of July or August of this year. Also keep a watch on the Gatesville State School for Boys blog.

The worst ass whopping ever.

Up to the point of my buddies and I having a float trip on that hot July day in 1975 I really didn't know ass whoppin. I was about to be schooled on Coryell county ex state man ass whoopin style. Recall from the float trip story that I slipped the bell off the dog, well it was in my pocket when we got caught. That's right, I was the idiot who had lulubells bell and for that I was gona pay. Grabbed, thrown to the ground, hand cuffed and beaten was standard protocol for the hillbilly deputy's when apprehending dangerous state boy escapees. While spitting gravel out of my mouth this redneck deputy whom I was told was the kitchen was shining his boots on my belly. Hand cuffed with my hands behind my back, yanked up and made to stand against a state truck kitchens racked, hit in the stomach reputedly, until I could no longer stand. Then those red nicks through me in the back of a state truck and hauled us all off to cic, lockup.
Those were the clumsiest red necks, because as they took me from the truck to a security cell they kept banging my head against the floor and kicking my feet out from under me, careful not to leave any burses. That's when I first met Parker, a heavy set patch lees state shirt wearing red neck that loved to beat up on state boys. This ass hole took great pride in hanging boys on the wall and racking them. Everyone got a kick out of me taking kitchens dog bell, literally. You would have thought the dog was his bitch wife. If Gatesville State School for Boys was under a law suite no one bothered to tell the ass wipes in cic.
CIC was in one of the wings of the old reception center. The boys I ran with were already bedded down which told be they took there time getting me to cic. I was in the shower aria attempting to clean myself up when the kitchen wanted to see me. I made the mistake to take stance and several of them rushed me, took me to one of the empty dorms at the back of the reception center, hand cuffed me to a pole and took turns beating me. The next day after I woke up and someone came to check on me I was taken to the infirmary. I tried to complain about the kitchen and was told that none of that happened. That my injury's were sustained from the escape and the resistance I put up. I told my story several times after that and one day a salty old dorm man we called big t said that if the kitchen got a hold of me I wouldn't be telling this story. Then he said the old basturd must be losing his touch.

Just Another Float Trip

It was the summer of 1975, I was 15 years old and had been at Terrace for about 2 months. Terrace was one of the schools at this notorious Gatesville state School for Boys a juvenile training school in Coryell county Texas. The school was in the early stages of compliance with a major class action lawsuit, Morales vs. Truman, filed against the Texas Youth Council the state agency responsible for the the old training school and had recently been ordered to shut down because of the atrocities perpetrated against the boys by their keepers. The place has maintained a history of child abuse since it opened in the 1880's and had provided the surrounding farms with child slave labor for decades. Terrace and Sycamore were the only two schools besides Mountain View left opened at that time. That same summer the last of the boys from the notorious Mountain View school were being moved to Hackberry school.
The facilities had been preparing to close and that summer an influx of boys came into gatesville from the Brownwood reception center filling the dorms to capacity and forcing the reopening of Valley school and talk of reopening Riverside. Some of the 2 timers and the old dorm men who came from Riverside when it closed in 1974 had some stories about that place. All together the facilities were a zoo, and the lawsuit that everyone worked so hard to skirt around was a word we heard while getting our ass kicked.

Anyway about the float trip. Four of us decided we would hop on the morning bus to the shop class's up at Hilltop school. With all the coming and going of so many boys, what appeared to us as unexpected, we figured we had about a 5 minute head start from Terrace and another 10 minutes before they found out we ran from Hilltop. We got off the bus at the vocational shop building and went into the building, then we went right out the other side of the building, climbed a barbed wire fence, crossed hi way 36, climbed another barbed wire fence and headed across a field for the Leon River. Running in state shoes is a bitch but try swimming in those things, one dudes pair disintegrated after a few hours in the water. Some of us had attempted escape before and knew what was ahead if we were caught, CIC, crises intervention center, lockup and the the bust line.
We jumped in that river like kids heading to the swimming hole at summer camp. Although we weren't running from no summer camp, we were still a bunch of kids getting to float down the river on a cool adventure. A cool adventure all right, we figured by floating out of hell on the river the dogs couldn't get us, they would loose our scent. We heard stories about boys who went to the river and were never seen again. We were warned about the underwater ledges where a boy could drown, the poisons snakes, and the vines and underbrush that could grab you. If you didn't know, we must have looked like boys out for a morning swim on a hot July morning in the beautiful Texas hill county. But we were 4 dangerous escapes from the Gatesville State School for Boys, that could be shot on site. We were being perused by the most dangerous men around, Coryell county horsemen and dogmen. These were former state men but because of the law suite they transferred agencies where they could be more brutal.
There was a dogman of whose reputation was grim in nature. Very scary stories were told of this man and where his evil soul might reside. He was called the kitchen and it was said he was a state man but the redneck I saw who I was told to be the kitchen was wearing a deputy shirt not a state shirt with no patches as was the custom among the security personnel, I would first encounter one of kitchens dogs on this float trip. We heard the dogs all around us during the morning hours, it was towards afternoon we felt the dogs getting closer. At one point we hid behind brush at various spots along the river to avoid being seen by the horsemen. We had made our way to what seemed like an island on this river and laid in the brush to rest from swimming. We heard the bells the dogs wore on their collars and before you knew it they were in the water and on that island. We all laid there still and petted the dogs calmly. I was able to slip a bell off of one of the dogs, a suviy from the trip if you will. The dogs were eventually called to return to the dogman and the horsemen unwilling/unable to cross the river to what looked like a nothing of a sand bar talked about going for lunch.
We lied there on that island for what seemed like hours holding our breath, and they were gone. Quietly we slithered back into the river and floated without saying a word for most of the afternoon. Towards dusk we happened upon a more populated part of the river and decide to get out and boost a car. One of the boys was a car thief and said he knew all about boosting a car for our get away. We should have had him be in the name on that one because we never did find a car that fucker could hot wire. And those towns people, they knew who we were, we was state boys. Everybody and their dogs were on us like stink on shit. We were busted and that was the end of a hot July day on the Leon River.

Gatesville State School for Boys former students reunion

It’s time for a long overdue Gatesville State School for Boys former students reunion. It should take place in the lovely town of Gatesville Texas, the birth place of tyc. It could be an opportunity for us to give back for all the love and nurturing that was given to us during those formidable years of our stay at the Gatesville State School for Boys. It will be a celebration of our ability to survive and be free enough to celebrate and perhaps dedicate a memorial, dependent on state government cooperation, to all the boys whose lives were destroyed by tyc. Perhaps a plaque or historical marker in the Boot hill cemetery.
It could be a real interesting time for us and the town of Gatesville.

Gatesville State Rehab (song)

There's a reform school in Texas.
And I know the tales that they tell are true.
'Cause I've been through it buddy,
And I wanna tell the truth to you.
Well, they'll knock you down and kick you
And they'll beat you till you're black and blue.
But as long as you are there.
Ain't nothing you can do.

Well, I got sent to GatesvilleIn June of 64.
I hadn't been there but five long days.
When I got beat to the floor.
And the man just stood there grinnin',
Thinkin' he was bad.
And the shape his soul was in,
Would make a preacher sad.

Well they'll beat you up in Hackberry,
And they'll stomp you on the Hill.
They'll knock you down on the Riverside,
And kick you in the Valley still.
And the boys up on Terrace,They got spots of blue.
And God bless the boy,Who can live through Mountain View.
I said, God be with you boy,Don't let it happen to you.

Well a group of men from Austin,
Were sent to investigate.
But the evidence was hidden,
And the men just couldn't wait.
So they left there a-thinkin',Everything was OK.'
Cause the boys there in Gatesville,
Were too afraid to say.

That they'll beat you up in Hackberry,
And they'll stomp you on the Hill.
They'll knock you down on the Riverside,
And kick you in the Valley still.
And the boys up on Terrace,
They got spots of blue.
And God bless the boy,
Who can live through Mountain View.
I said, God be with you boy;
Don't let it happen to you.

Jack Olin Hotchkiss © 1968/2009

Gatesville Today

The tyc stopped sending boys to the Gatesville school in 1975 unless they were an escape risk or as in the summer of 1975 the other schools were full, or you wouldn’t have sex with the goat roper caseworker chick in Brownwood who ran was the nazi in charge of who went where. I may have been locked up but she did nothing for me. The school was fully closed down to boys in 1981 and the facilities were transferred back to the department of corrections. Anyone who has ever set foot on that place knew it was never, culturally, transferred to what was called the juvenile training school in 1913. So now the good citizens of Coryell county and the surrounding area have moved on from the economy of abusing children to an economy of abusing women.
See what the state has done to the old Gatesville State School for Boys today.

Reception Center
http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&FORM=LMLTCC&cp=p7bbj66vnkmf&style=b&lvl=1&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=27445427&phx=0&phy=0&phscl=1&encType=1

Terrace
http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&FORM=LMLTCC&cp=p7bydj6vp6s6&style=b&lvl=1&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=27445630&phx=0&phy=0&phscl=1&encType=1

Sycamore
http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&FORM=LMLTCC&cp=p7c28c6vpsqt&style=b&lvl=1&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=27445638&phx=0&phy=0&phscl=1&encType=1

Valley
http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&FORM=LMLTCC&cp=p79hh26vnjv6&style=b&lvl=1&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=27445539&phx=0&phy=0&phscl=1&encType=1

Hackberry
http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&FORM=LMLTCC&cp=p79v1p6vp0bt&style=b&lvl=1&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=27445779&phx=0&phy=0&phscl=1&encType=1

Riverside
http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&FORM=LMLTCC&cp=p7bm3j6vnfrj&style=b&lvl=1&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=27445439&phx=0&phy=0&phscl=1&encType=1

Live Oak
http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&FORM=LMLTCC&cp=p7bv0s6vng40&style=b&lvl=1&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=27445371&phx=0&phy=0&phscl=1&encType=1

Hilltop
http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&FORM=LMLTCC&cp=p7c6ws6vnw39&style=b&lvl=1&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=27445623&phx=0&phy=0&phscl=1&encType=1

Mountainviewhttp://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&FORM=LMLTCC&cp=p7dt026vp8vq&style=b&lvl=1&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=27444520&phx=0&phy=0&phscl=1&encType=1

The Gatesville School was segregated.

Is there anyone who could share some comments about the time when the school was segregated? I found this photo on the web of the old dining hall behind and an old dorm at Live Oak School. I had upholstery shop in the right downstairs dormitory in that building. Most of the guards who were there back during that time did not want to talk about how bad the African American boys were treated. Was Riverside all an black school as well or were the names Live Oak and Riverside given after the school was expanded? I heard that Riverside was used to raise hogs.