What was my father to do? He rejected the idea that I could be still giggling this long due to too much drugs. He knew all. Next stop was some kind of test center where they told me to enter doors which had different colors on several door frames of rooms. Still don't know what was going on about the door frames. Then I was shown some shapes and ink blots too. The results of that came back. Normal. No luck, for my father's anyway.
I just wanted to be left alone. Back in my room I was free to stay up late and watch TV. I used to do that anyway putting the little black and white on low and watching the unpredictable Jack Parr Tonight Show live from 11:15 to 1 AM I especially enjoyed when he had actor Malacky McCort come on the stage, alone, drunk with funny tales of his life. Malacky's brother Frank at the time was an unknown school teacher, later to win the pulitzer prize for the memoir "Angela' Ashes". But my freedom came with a price. It would have been better to be back in school than to have a new surprise doctors appointment in the morning. I was getting frustrated with it all. I had enough.
So off we go in the morning to a new doctor. This time my father's magical medical tour led to a psychiatrist. What fun, I thought. Bad thought. After some preliminary questions about the broken leg etc the shrink said my father could leave the room. My frustration got me in a Buddy Hackett mood. Big bad mistake. "How do you feel about your injury?" he said. "What do you mean? It's a heavy cast and I'm out for the season. How do you think I feel?"
"Then why have you been laughing so much."
"I'm a happy person"
"Do you hear voices?"
"Sure all the time. I hear you now. Why is that clock ticking so loud?"
"I mean in your head when you are alone"
"Sure, hear voices all the time." The shrink is now writing notes. It is doubtful that the word sarcasm made it into the notes.
"Do you ever feel people are out to get you?"
"Doc, you didn't go to catholic school did you? I don't give it much thought, unless I see they are right behind me, following." Feverishly writing notes.
"What does school have to do with it?" he says.
"I don't like school. Evil is lurking there." said I.
"Evil?"
"Ray Heatherton's son graduated last year from Chaminade. (Ray Heatherton was the "Merry Mailman" a popular New York kids show). Sometimes we are forced to an assembly to listen to the Merry Mailman. I think that mailman delivers subliminal communist messages. That's evil, lurking evil."
The shrink can't write notes fast enough.
This went on for awhile. This 15 year old acting cute thought cute was putting the doctors behind him. A few Ink blots. I think I got more cute with those.
"Anything more you want to tell me?"
"No, just want to go home and watch more cartoons. Whatddya you wan't to do Marty?" He didn't relate to my reference to the Borgnine movie.
"I'd like to talk to your father alone. Would you sit out side Kevin?" I headed outside. In walked my father for a "medical conference".
We drove home slowly with me protesting that I was seeing too many doctors for no reason. The October air felt good mixed with the smell of small wood fires. It was really a close to New York City suburb which was hanging on to that country feel. I was looking forward to maybe a Halloween party where I could garner female sympathy as I arrived on crutches.
My father kept saying I was acting strange and I was "popping", whatever the hell that meant. I slowly crutched to my bedroom and Jack Paar was only two hours away. I could hear my parents talking the the kitchen. Gotta drown that out with "The Defenders" and a new sitcom "The Dick Van Dyke Show".
A few days later we were having dinner. My parents were quiet and uneasy. Who knows, they're nuts anyway I thought. "He Kev, wanna go for a ride to Marie and Jim's?" Marie was my mother's cousin, married to Jim Driscoll, a good natured Met life lifer in New York City. He commuted from wantagh near Jones Beach, a little further out on the Island. I was tired but thought sure, why not. Cousin Jim always gave us quarters as kids on visits throughout the fifties and he had a good record collection. I swung the heavy cast across the back seat of the Cadillac. My father had to get a different car every two years. In his case it was strictly an ego thing. I soon fell asleep.
AMITYVILLE HORROR - AIN'T NO SUNSHINE WHERE I'VE GONE
And hour later it is still dark. The car has stopped at a curb. I wake up to see the car door next to my head open up. My parents initially say nothing as the two muscular men in white order me out of the car and into their white van. Just as I am swinging one of my crutches at one of the orderly's head my father says "It'll be alright son." He thinks he knows this because he had just written them a $1500. check. Somehow I am strong armed into the back of the van. We are driving past an iron gate and headed up a long driveway cutting through a huge manicured lawn.
We drove around the big building to what seemed like a loading dock and the van came to a halt in the darkened driveway. I still didn't know what this was and most of all why it had to be a surprise. One muscular man in white got out of the van an opened the mid door where I sat inside with my leg up. I reached for the crutch as if to guide myself out but instead swung it with all my might, aiming for his head. He ducked and the wodden crutch went past him to the ground. "Bill!" he shouted for help from the driver. I grabbed the other crutch as a present for Bill but he grabbed from the other end and they managed to pull me out of the van and I remained in mid air twisting and shouting all the way in the big double doors. In the start dingy white surroundings which were spinning as I continued to fight I heard them ask the nurse which room they were assigning me. I was carried down the hall. "Fuck you shit head!" I repeated as halfway down the hall we went. They picked up speed. I was only getting myself to the room quicker. It was an empty two bed room. They pinned me down on the bed. Just to show them again how much I cared I told them "Fuck you shit head!"
No warning. No Jack Paar tonight. My parents are the ones who belong in here. How long will I stay? The two muscle interns called for someone to bring them some wide white straps. One guy held me down while the other looped two of the straps around my legs and tied the other ends somewhere under the mattress at the bed frame. Then they each took one of my arms and repeated the process with the straps. I couldn't move anything except my head which I used to spit in their faces. They left the room and closed the door. I lay there strapped to the bed for two hours. I started screaming that I had to take a piss.
Finally they came in with a plastic container and told me how it would be wise not to fight anymore. They un strapped me and watch as I peed. They put me back in the bed and strapped only my legs and told me to sit up and moved the head of the bed up, so I could sit up. They returned with a tray of hot food. I looked down at the food. They were smiling as if I were supposed to be grateful. I said, "You know that's really nice of you." I then picked up the tray and quickly hurled it at them so it was equally distributed over both of their clothes.
They didn't like that. They tied me down again and they weren't gentle as they did it this time. It was a cold room, green empty walls with no windows. The harsh light was a bulb up on the high ceiling. The men returned in fresh uniforms. I recognized immediately the white thing they were carrying. My grandfather, George Murphy, my mothers father, had a favorite movie "Snake Pit" 1948, starring Olivia Dehavilland. The two men undid my restraints, sat me up and forced me into a classic straightjacket. They made me cross my arms after inserting them into the sleeves. They buckled me down the back and buckled the closed end of the sleeves behind me. They left without saying a word after shutting off that overhead light.
. Alone in the dark. This maybe when it all began...the sense of adventure. No one I knew was going through this shit. As helpless as I felt, as sad and desperate as I felt, I wanted to make it out. I wanted to see how the story ended. Call it "The Wizard of Oz Syndrome." I wanted desparately to get home but even if I had ruby slippers I would've tried to make those two orderlies eat them.
Irish temper when blended with lingering massive doses of Demoral apparently multiplies your physical strength by a lot, especially if you are a fit 15 year old. I started to concentrate, expand my chest and maneuver my shoulders. No one can hear me anyway. Grunting groaning, seam let go, just on the left side. I didn't know exactly where but I could feel the slight separation. The pulling grunting in the dark continued. Full separation on that side. Didn't need to work on the other side. A few contortion type moves and I was out of the whole thing. I fell asleep hungry.
When Abbott and Costello entered my room in the morning they were incredulous. They had never seen that happen. "How you feeling? You want breakfast?" one said. "If I wasn't so hungry I'd make you wear it" said I. "We'd just have to tie you up again." One was leaving. "I'll be right back with it." Abbott shook his head as he gathered up what remained of the straight jacket and put it in a large trash can. "When will I get out of here? When will I be able to talk to my parents?" I said. "It will depend on your behaviour and the opinion of your doctor. Your first meeting with your doctor will be this morning."
The in house shrink's office was about the same as the first one where I played the wise guy. The decor however was much more homey. Cushy wall to wall carpeting, elegant drapes and classy low lighting made you feel like you were in a luxury resort if not home. He was short, slight of build and seemed very old to me. What little hair left was white on the side of his shiny bald dome. Dr. Goldfarb seemed preoccuppied. He had a sheet in front of him. "How are you feeling Kevin?" "Incarcerated" "Why do you think you are here?" "I really have nothing to say." "You know we can let you mingle with the rest of the patients if you are more calm and less combative."
"I want to go home that's all." "How is your leg?" "The same." I aked when I would be released. That was up to my behavior an how well "they" though I was getting. He was quite detached as he wrote his notes. I was not to see my parents for two weeks. That was the rule for everyone. However he said with paternal benevelance that I would be allowed to mingle with the general population if I didn't throw my crutches or my meals at the orderlies. The meeting with Goldfarb was less than 20 minutes. He pointed me down the long hall to the common area. I shuffled down there on the crutches. Goldfarb had done his duty and had a whole page of notes to prove it.
I got to the end of the hall which opened up into a big room . One of my orderly victims was the first to give me the evil eye. A smug looking short dark haired nurse was picking up some food trays from the large wooden table. Her dour glance at me told all I needed to know about how she felt about patients. Three "inmates" sat quietly at the table. I could only think they were no longer really with us. I sat in a worn stuffed chair to survey nutsville. There were nine patients in the room plus me. The walls were an insignificant lime color. The ceiling was high. The rotary fan up there was still, brown and dusty.
The tallest oldest patient at the table suddenly jumped to his feet. All the others in the room didn't react. He starded to walk around the table at a moderate gate. He let out a steady painful yelp. No words just a moaning, pleading sound. He continued this nonstop for the next hour. My thoughts went to my grandfather George Murphy, who died seven years before and physically resembled Carroll O'Conner and philosophically matched Archie Bunker. For some reason George's favorite movie was the 1948 film "Snake Pit" starring Olivia de Havilland. (Describe) . Was he watching me, his favorite grandson, aged 15, unceremoniously deposited into the snake pit?
I notice there was a guy sitting in chair a couple of feet from me, checking me out. He wasn't smiling. Immediately I realized who he reminded me of. About 10 months prior I had seen the great musical "Fiorello" about the "Little Flower" Mayor Fiorello La Guardia of New York. The lead role played by Tom Bosley (years later the father on "Happy Days") won Mr. Bosley a Best Actor tony in 1960.
"You know you look like the guy who plays LaGuardia on broadway in "Fiorello". "Yes I know" almost in a whisper. He stares into my eyes. "Why are you here?"
"Good question. I was at football practice at Chaminade. I went out for a short pass. It's turned into a long journey."
This gets a half grin from the Bosley clone.. "I'm being blocked out of a big inheritance. I will probably never get out. The seven fifty a week here is a good investment for my siblings. I've given up fighting it. " What do I say to that? What about me? The shouting man begins to circle the table again. "He was here when i got here 8 months ago. Somehow you get used to it. I never get used to how bad the food is. That $750 a week they will charge your parents. A 20 minute session with the quack, a midday vitamin they call medication and lousy food. A good racquet."
One of the orderlies enters from the hall escorting a slight young boy in jeans and a polo shirt. All of 14 with a defiant look in his eyes.
I see a few walking outside. I get up and walk to the sliding glass door. The yard is run down, the grass barren, the bird bath cracked. It's a pretty rural setting. Not amenable to a long range escape. At least there was fresh air and a respite from the man circling that table inside. Still, how long will I be here?
The dark middle aged nurse barks from the sliding door. "Medication Time! Come in!" Inside the inmates are lined up by an window/counter. The nurse is monitoring the line. Behind the window is one of the orderlies. Each one gets a pill and a paper cup with water. Each pill is the same color. Each patient is made to consume the pill in full view right at the counter. I get to the counter. "Name?" "Conway" "Take this. " After moaning man takes his pill he resumes his wailing around the table.
I sat back down next to the Bosley look alike.
He was clean cut, wearing jeans and a pale green polo shirt which matched the drab green walls of the room. Bosley smiles. "Here comes trouble. He was ordered here by the court. He put his baby sister in the washing machine, killed her. He may look small but I wouldn't get on his bad side. Security here isn't the greatest."
The young man was taken to a card table where he began to play solitaire. No one came near him. Most others in the room were sitting in chairs spread out in the large open room. They stared. A few read.
I should've been more frightened than I was. Something in me felt it was horrific but an adventure. A trait I was to inhabit for the rest of my years. How was I to get out of this. When I walked outside I could see an escape route. Beyond the orderlies there wasn't much security but South Oaks Psychiatric hospital seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. In the distance I could see the Long Island Railroad but it was a good 4 miles across open fields. I would probably be caught, returned and tied up again. So there I sat listening to daytime soap operas on the community TV and the moaning man doing his slow rings around the lunch table.
So it continued for 12 more days. Two more ridiculous 20 minute sessions with the bored and boring Dr. Goldfarb. When I strolled outside the autumn chill at least reminded me what part of the year it was. I was still tempted by the long island rail road in the distance. What was to become of my sophomore year in high school? What did my parents tell the high school? "We threw Kevin in a loony bin out in suffolk and he's not coming back"??
If it's tuesday it must be two weeks into my incarceration. Old cranky nurse at the vitamin dispensary window tells me my parents will be visiting me today. It's the first time I notice there is a small window where you can see into the lobby. When my parents enter the lobby and the bosely look alike gets a look at my mother he alerts the others. Marilyn Monroe still had a year left of life and my blond mother was about the same age.
An orderly came to take me from the room and I shuffled behind him crutches cast and all. My parents were seated in my room near my bed. The stark room was quite different from the luxurious lobby. They were seeing some of where their money went. My first words were "I don't know why you did this but please get me out of here." My father looked befuddled. My mother began to cry. Against the protests of Goldfarb and my mother on the verge of threatening the castration of my father with a kitchen knife we got in the car heading west back to Baldwin.
My father and I heatedly argued about his dramatic, dangerous quest for a mysterious diagnosis. His heart was in the right place but his ego was also in that place. We calmed down as we rolled through freeport, scene of the magical mystery diagnosis tour that led to the looney bin.
We drove a little past Baldwin, to a chinese restaurant in Rockville Center. Was this a liberation dinner? I guess. It turned out to be a rare sit down dinner and discussion with just me and my parents. Heartfelt but weird. What else was new?
How the subject came around to my grandfather Georgie I can't remember.
George Murphy was my mother's father and to her there was no equal in all the world while he walked amongst us. So she proceeded to tell me the story of Georgie, the felon. But to her it was an endearing tale of a great rogue of Brooklyn. And I should know the story. After all I was the first born boy grandchild and his favorite till the night he died in 1954.
That night he and my grandmother Ann had been entertaining cousin Lily Datson and her husband Harry. My parents were out somewhere and I was visiting Ann and Georgie for the night. I had learned to play with a do it yourself toy. I took an empty spool of thread, placed a rubber band through the hole in the spool. On one end of the rubber band you put a pencil through the loop. On the other end you put a large button and tied the rubberband to the button. Then you wound the pencil several times, placed the whole contraption on the floor, and it ran around like an out of control little chariot.
The more I ran it around the floor the more my grandfather laughed at my genius. And the two couples laughed, enjoying each others company through dinner.
Lilly and Harry left and as was the custom I went to bed with Georgie so he might tell me some stories. He used to say when you die they put you in a deep black hole. My mother and grandmother didn't like that. This night he was just saying to his 8 year old grandson that I should just close my eyes and the "sandman" would come. "Mr. Sandman" the song was referenced a lot in the neighborhood because one of the Chordettes lived nearby. I closed my eyes and Mr. Sandman came.
When I woke up Georgie wasn't in the bed. My mother and grandmother were standing there and told me the paramedics were removing Georgie's body.
My grandfather, the lovable Archie Bunker, looked like he was Archie's twin. He was funny. He was gregarious and he hated blacks and Italians. When I was growing up he was a security guard in Long Beach Long Island. He and my grandmother Ann were not rich by any means but every winter they would drive down to West Palm Beach for a vacation. On one such vacation they returned with a pure bred black cocker spaniel puppy. Georgie had been driving along a road near some large expensive compounds near the ocean. We never found out if it was the Kennedy compound but we have no proof it wasn't. As Georgie rode along the puppy came running under a big gate of one of the compounds. Georgie thought that would be a good puppy for the grand kids. He jumped out grabbed the puppy and that's how "Inky" made it's way to New York. He never got paper trained so our living room in Long Island never smelled good again. One time we were at a house which sold antiques and had a small pond which was only half frozen. Inky ran out and repeatedly sunk each time he tried to walk up on the ice. I never saw Georgie laugh so hard.
Georgie had fought in World War I. He was the son of a New York State trooper. By 1942 he was a bailiff in the Brooklyn courts. The most traumatic thing to happen to my mother in her life was in 1942 was the morning Georgie had to leave for Riker's Island. Not as part of law enforcement but as an inmate sentenced to a year and a day. He was told by some shady characters (Italian) to pass a cash bribe in a brown paper bag to a judge (Italian). Georgie could be heard crying as he big goodbye to my grandmother Ann. He had already bid farewell to his daughters Muriel (my mother) and my aunt Dorothy. He was able not to cry until right before he left the house. Outside a car and driver awaited him. And 12 state trooper motorcycle officers led by Georgie's father. That was the escort he got all the way to Riker's. In my great grandfather's mind he and his 11 associates riding along they were at least making a statement that Georgie got screwed.
So here we are in November 1961 after the worst two weeks in my life. We were not reviewing that. As we waited for the great chinese food to come my mother felt the need to tell me where I got the long Johns that I always wore to play hockey on Loft's Lake. I had always asked about the name printed on the long johns. "What is Riker's Island? I would ask and never got the answer. My mother picked this dinner to reveal, still with some of her high school shame, that Georgie went to Riker's Island because of a "guinea" and when he was being processed out, stole three sets of long johns, somehow hidden in his clothes as he walked out. Georgie never told me what was keeping me warm on Loft's lake.
My father needed me to have one more trip to a doctor. He just had to have an answer and he got it. Back to Freeport we went. Dr. Polito was a noted neurologist and he seemed to have some knowledge of South Oaks Hospital. He looked over all the records, Xrays, everything. He spoke to my father and I together, then just me alone so I could tell him what happened. Then he called in my father. "Mr. Conway, your son has a broken leg - and too many doctors, including you."
I returned to school, and managed to catch up. I found out that while I was gone, my father had yelled at Brother Kozar, the principal because no one from the school called expressing concern for me and although he didn't tell Kozar where I wound up he said I was near death from a drug reaction and while I was ripping bed restraints at the cuckoo's nest the entire student body of Chaminade was asked to say the rosary for me. When I came back it was the end of the season and I was invited, still with full cast, to watch the last game from the bench. In the second half a kid named Cavanaugh sprained his ankle and came out of the game finding himself next to me. After a while the assistant coach came over to see how Cavanaugh was doing. Cavanaugh looked up at the coach, looked at me and began to cry. "I don't want to die!" I tried not to laugh.
Posts
This was the field. We were in junior varsity football at Chaminade High School, Mineola, Long Island, October 1961. We were in those red uniforms but it was a weekday practice scrimmage...
By the fourth day I was really enjoying my time with hospital roommate Jim. As juiced as I was how could I not be having fun. That night my cousin Richard Cooney came to visit. He was a bit of a hero to me. Four years older and captain of the nearby Hofstra College football team. He was the son of my mother's uncle Rody Cooney. Rody was a member of the original Boston Celtics and a winning coach for St. Francis College in Brooklyn in the 1930's and early 1940's. Richard talked warmly for a while. I was somewhere between pain and floating above the bed in exctacy. Whether I was exaggerating how I felt I can't remember but Richard proceeded to bully the nurses on duty to give me more demoral. I was now in day four of ingesting this happy juice. The news on TV got me giggling. My roommate was quiet during the news. Such a young man, in his forties, to be struck down this way.
