Carbon County news., 1937-09-10
OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES
WHO'S NEWS
THIS WEEK
BY Lemuel +. Parton
VvVVVVVVVVvvvYVVVVvV7VVY

II SSSIn LaaI the pest way TO become
= >>,;= !, =: e, =, :> writer is to go
Felons Type to jail in califor.
Their Way mia. Ernest Booth,
Out Of Jail in prison ss of. and d
the latest to typewrite his way to
freedom. His many attempts to es-
cape swept away his credits, but a
manuscript, snuggled out Of the
prison, was more effective. His
short story, Ladies of the Mob"
was made into a film.
Folsom prison officials relented.
His Stealing Through Life" at
tracted wide attention. He became
model prisoner, with the first sue
cess of his writing efforts. Now he
is free, after serving II years of a
25-year sentence. The total of all
his sentences would have stretched
beyond a life term.
He is now thirty-nine years old.
His criminal career began in Oak
land in 1914, with petty thievery,
which kept him pretty steadily. in
jail thereafter. In 1914, he was the
notorious ammonia bandit" of Oak
land, finally taken in a daring bank
robbery. His loss of credits barred
him from writing for a long time,
but this was lifted after his numer-
GUS fiction stories began to get at
tention.
Most of California's prison writer's
came to grief, after they were re-
leased, as I recall it. There was
only one who made a "clean
break" He is a bit of mystery
man, his real name carefully con-
cealed by the prison authorities. He
is now living happily in California,
his past forgotten, earning his liv-
ing and highly respected in the COM
munity.
In his writing, he used only the
name Douglas" which was not his
-. real name. It was
otr0v Foen1 a random poem,
by Prisoner waited over the
0na,,. ruxo. prison wall, which
found him friends
and swung open the prison doors.
Having been standing by at the
time-somewhere around 20 years
ago-this writer remembers a few
lines of the poem, called "Garden
of Death:
In old San Quentin garden,
The morn is StUeet tUith bloom.
A little square of Gods pure air,
Amid thousand tOnlbs.
And in the fountains mirrOred depths,
As you are passing BY,
Bare, naoching tUalls on either hand
Seem reaching to the sky.
4nd through that glimpse of Paradise |
n youth tUGs led to die.
Donald Lowrie, a native of Texas, /
literally pried himself out of prison |
with a fountain pen. His was the I
most authentic gift of the prison I
writer's, barring Jack Black, whom |
New York knows well for his book /
''You Can't Win" /
Outside, Lowrie found friends, F
obs, money and understanding. But
= >1;... -. :, he was hopeless
fetafes the recidivist, physi-
Snd Tale of cally and mentally f
E1,,,I pIaoL i'll. He died alone
= and destitute in
Texas. Jack Black is sad story. T
lie succeeded as a writer, lived hon
'stly and usefully for years, won
riends everywhere and disappeared
few years ago-unquestionably a
suicide.
Abe Ruef, fallen San Francisco
loss, wrote admirably in prison,
Ielped win freedom with his type
writer, and is now doing well. But
le is in a different category.
To go back to Douglas, the poet,
e was saved by his sweetheart.
he waited years for him and mar
led him the day he came out. They
ave one child.
There have been thousand yari-
nts of the Ballad Of Reading
taol," written in California pris-
MS.
EVERYBODY talkin' about China
= amt goin' there. That seems
) be the attitude of the State de-
artnent and the attorney generals
49,. Office toward
learns Army General Russell
} StuyHon1e Hearn's volunteer
: cna.:,Jo. army. It is hinted
that Mr.. Hearn's
1000 eager recruits are more like
to 60 to Jail than China. His j
aadquarters are in Los Angeles.
A Camden, N. J., boy, young
earn boarded a cattleship, when
2 was fifteen, and went to the
'orld war in the French ambu-
nee service. He took hand in
Ie Mexican revolution, under Huer-
!! and Escobar, and campaigned
Nicaragua under Sandino. He
as an intelligence officer for Mar
lal Chang Tso-Lin, the "old mar