Hilltop Dorms and Live Oak Dorm

Found these photos on the web and had to share. Im sure it will bring back memorys for some. May it be healing.












I remember having to go clean these empty old dorms. The cages that were on the third floor of that one building not shown. I cant remember if there were 2 dorms or 4 per building.











I think this is looking out from the the Dairy barn up the Hill. My last summer at Gatesville I spent removing the stalls from that barn to be sold for scrap money.









This apears to be taken with back to the river not the hiway. The chow hall is to the left and behind is a dorm. This is from the days of racial segregation where the caption reads Harris Hall Dusky populace Gatesville State School for Boys. I took Upholstery Shop in that old Live Oak dorm.

The Man

Hey, hay check out the man
He will do it to you
If you aint got no stand.

Hey, hay check out the man
He’ll kick your ass
If he get the chance.

The man have no regrets
The man have no sorrows
If he don’t get you today
He will get you tomorrow.

By a State Boy who testified in federal Court against the state of Texas for beating children.

Anti Gay sign in Gatesville Texas

Shortly after my trip through the prison economic based community of Gatesville Texas I saw this recent picture of this billboard on main street. The article had plenty of commentary regarding how backwards the thinking is in this prison built town and just as many arguments for the message it sends. But what struck me as significant is how that thinking effected us during those impressionable times in our lives while at the reform school. In this age of tolerance towards lifestyles that are different from our own how much closed mindedness did we acquire under that influence.
We shunned homosexuals who were placed in separate dorms just like we shunned other races. Many who have left notes on this blog talk about times when the segregation of races was in place and the slow desegregation. I was there when we all slept, ate, schooled, and worked in the same facility. However dropping a race was a serious offence. You didn’t go to the cloths room and ask for black shoe polish. I’m curious how much of that culture from back then effects how we relate to homosexuals as well as other races today. I sometimes wonder about some of those kids who passionately hated white people if they are still like that. And what about this kid who was on my dorm for a short time who could write his name on the glass using a bar of soap tucked in his butt checks. We thought it great entertainment until he was moved to the punk dorm.
As human beings we’re tribal by nature. Studies have shown that desegregating lock ups have increased organized gangs. But in a country that forces societal swirl in a state like Texas how much influence did the thinking of a backwoods town like Gatesville have on shaping our young impressionable minds.
I don’t think I would want any of my current gay or non white friends to know how I would have treated them while I was in Gatesville. Borrowing a line from Clint Eastwood’s movie Unforgiven “I aint like that no more”. Or am I?

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.