A souvenir. It could be a simple item, perhaps a picture with a loved one on a sun-swept beach during your most recent trip to the Caribbean. Or maybe a collectible like a magnet, one of the hundreds you find in the cheap, stank shops just off the Strip in Las Vegas or on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. It’s something, an object you take home that brings back a memory, elicits a reaction of remembrance from a specific time. It can also be called a memento, but be careful if you’re going to go there. You may not realize what that entails.
In the literal sense, a memento is “something that serves to warn or remind.” That’s the actual definition according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. You don’t normally hear of it being used to notify you of an impending danger. But having to do with a remembrance and warning seems apropos after looking back on how I now see Craig viewing his current path in life.
It’s been almost a year and a half since we began the process of putting his memories, his experiences, his prison sentence into a shareable form for others to review and digest. Hundreds of thoughts, thousands of words. Conversations, emails and texts. When you boil it down, distill it to its most basic essentials, it all comes back to the same ideal: since Day 1, May 22, 2013, there has been a proclivity for Craig to point back to what he knows best – prison life.
And that’s OK.
Now, let’s talk about why.
In many ways, it was inevitable, especially considering the way he started his stay on the farm. There was likely only a minuscule chance that, when he got out, he would try to put it behind him and forget about his time served. But really, why would he? After being down that long, it wasn’t just that he was eliminated from society; it was that nearly half his life to that point was consumed and negated by the grievous mistake he made and that he was paying for. It was like he didn’t have much of anything else to talk about, comprehend or base his decision-making process on because, in reality, he didn’t. His prison sentence began when he was 24 years old. He didn’t get out until he was 42. How could he have anything in common with the rest of the world? It kept moving, kept pushing forward. Advances in medicine, food production and technology. Oh my god, the amount of technologic advances while he was in prison is insane. It nearly drove him insane trying to catch up when he did finally get a chance to jump on the ever-changing merry-go-round we ride with technology.
While he was inside though, the pace was slower. In reality, a snail’s crawl may have actually been faster, but in one particular way, that helped him keep focus.
Right after Craig was transferred from county lockup to the state corrections department in late summer 1995, he came up with an ingenious plan to undermine the whole intent of the penal system. He may not have intended for that to be the purpose – in fact, it wasn’t; I think he’d be honest and say it just happened to work that way – and it might seem too simple once you understand what it is that he did, but the intricacy and effectiveness is in the execution.
So, what was this epiphany that delivered him through 18 years in prison?
A single ink mark a day.
See, I said it was simple. And right now, just like I did the first time I saw the physical embodiment of his process, you’re probably having a hard time getting your head around it. Why would an ink mark on a piece of paper be a salve to the life wound that is incarceration? How could THAT make a difference in his outlook, his well-being?
It’s because he let it.
Everything about getting through a prison sentence is mental. You can’t get through any length of term without being of strong mind. Most of the time, we see pictures and movies and read about stories where the idea we get, what’s most romanticized is that the strongest, the ones most physically advanced are the ones mostly like to survive in prison. And yes, having physical strength can play a role, but day in and day out, through all the conversations, interactions and minutia that goes with that lifestyle, having your wits about you comes in handy a hell of a lot more often than being able to bench press 300 pounds.
That’s where Craig had a head start. We’ve talked about it before how his mind works a little different. He’s more thoughtful in his responses, more cerebral in his correlations. Remember that chapter? I’m not saying he’s a genius or the smartest person you’ve likely met. He could be, but he’s probably not. It’s just that at 6-foot-4, he is physically taller than most human beings, but in prison, his intelligence stood head and shoulders above the vast majority of the clientele. That’s not saying much for them, but the way he used his smarts, well, it was genius, and it made all the difference in him believing that one day he would get out and lead a productive life again.
So, back to his first few days in the pen. Right after he went into custody he got this idea. It was a throw away, menial thought. He had time on his hands, and a lot of it. Eighteen years, to be exact. Mentally, that was almost eternity. He needed to break it down into manageable chunks. Again, we’ve talked about this. Three 6-year blocks. He’d get adjusted in the first block, ride it out comfortably as he could in the second block, and then in the third block, he’d process himself to be ready to rejoin society. But, while that’s a great starting point, those are still 6-year increments. How does he manage that? How does he keep focus for something that far ahead? Isn’t the purpose of prison to break him down and then repurpose him to be able to come out better than he went in? Insert institutionalization joke here, if you like. But seriously, how can he see ahead for 72 months – or 2,190 days – knowing that that’s still only one-third of the time he’s been told he has to be locked up? That’s pretty daunting.
Unless he breaks it down even farther.
And that’s what Craig did.
He had his big goals. Make it through 18 years, six at a time. Now, he had to get through the six, one day at a time. Each day he started marking off, just a way to remind himself that he’s taking the proper steps, getting closer to the end goal. There was just one problem: how to physically make that mark happen.
In prison, you don’t have much that’s yours. The clothes, they give you. The furniture, the bed and maybe if there is anything like a desk chair, they give that to you. There are only a few items – stinger, TV, radio all come to mind – that can be legally possessed by an inmate, but only if the state gets its hands on it first, meaning it has to be inspected and allowed and your identification number — 114704 in the case of our good friend here — has to be etched into it, virtually making it a state artifact based on the application of its rules. Nothing feels like it belongs to you, that it’s your “personal” possession. Really, it boils down to there are only a handful of papers that corrections officials aren’t allowed to take away from you for any reason. The rest is fair game for them to strip away during a cell check or any other time. Legal documents are the gold standard for personal possessions in prison. And that’s why Craig turned to his committal paperwork as a source of strength and hope.
Right after going into custody, he began marking off the days. A single line for a single day. Over time, it developed. He had a color coding system. He knew when visitors had come to see him, the end of a calendar year, and more. One look at it and it almost seems like a tribal symbol, the type of tattoo you see on islanders and natives to remote areas. Its intricacies hiding the real beauty within the simplicity of the overall design.
“The thought to put it onto that legal paper, it was something they’re not allowed to take away from me. Part of it was a mental thing. The concept of prison is to take away, but if you can have something they can’t take away, that’s the ballgame. I have it, you can’t take it away, and if you try, well, you have it in the rule book that you can’t.”
So Craig won Round 1. He won every day he could mark down on that sheet that he’s one day closer to his 6-year block being finished, one day closer to his 18-year sentence being behind him. Not every day would be easy though. That’s where family – by blood and by association – lifted him up, again.
It’s easy to see how he was supported when he got arrested. We’ve already discussed it in depth. The family spent time and money working to make sure he was represented the best way possible, made it as easy for him to succeed after his sentence was complete as could be expected. It was almost like they had the end goal in mind from the start, taking on that burden at the beginning, and putting the onus on Craig to make it work in the meantime. It was his sentence, but in the end, whether they expected it or not, they bore the weight of it, too.
What was harder to see is how they made it possible for him to get from Point A to Point B to Point C in the interim. The day to day. That is, until you actually see it with your own eyes.
Much like the daily marks sheet he pulled out of his jeans pocket and threw on the table at the hotel the morning after his release in 2013, Craig physically encapsulated the sheer willpower of family through his journal. It’s what started our process of writing about his journey, and what has given it such depth. The fact that he was able to compile his thoughts and ideas and pull in his recollections as physical objects AND get it all out of prison before it was destroyed or removed, well, that’s miraculous. What a keepsake, what a memento.
Seems that thinking ahead runs in the family.
What does this journal look like? That was my first question when he told me about it a few years ago and in all honesty, now that I’ve seen it, it’s easiest to say that it’s taken on several forms. First was his big book. It was personal notes, reminders of things he didn’t want to forget. Maybe a comment someone made, maybe the way he felt that day. Or it was a cartoon that made him laugh, and a quote from a book he read that pushed him to think differently. Put all together in one place, it is as close to an actual diary as you can get. As time went on though, his journaling became something else.
He was perceptive enough to quickly understand the prison system and its values. Even back then, you could send postage stamps, he said. Not something you or I may think of as having much intrinsic value, especially since stamps in 1995 cost 32 cents. Even today, they are only 48 cents. But in prison, they’re a huge commodity. Unlike personal affects, stamps have monetary value on the black market in prison. Why? Because people are willing to pay a premium for the emotional value that is a link to direct contact with family members, people they care about and who care about them.
“So a postage stamp is not only physically important, monetarily and economically. It’s very significant for the emotional value that you have, uh, I, I … well, it’s a conduit for connecting outside the wall.”
As Craig said this, he struggled. In our hours upon hours of conversations, he rarely was at a loss for words. He liked telling the stories, and liked being asked the questions, even if he had heard all of them 100 times already, which he probably had. I doubt I asked a single question he hadn’t already answered at some point before to someone else. But, this response was different. He really struggled to get the wording. Not just to get it right, but to get it out at all. This whole discussion was emotional because of the depth of his feelings regarding his family and friends who were there for him from start to finish.
Take his parents, Harlan and Karen. In 2018 they celebrated their 57th wedding anniversary. You don’t last that long together without two things: love and understanding. It takes both sides giving and taking to live together, raise a family together, hold a family together. That last one obviously took both of them. And as Craig said, it is “beyond explanation, beyond my ability to express it how incredibly supportive they were.” Even little things meant the world to him, like his parents being able to receive and store items he sent from where ever he was being held at the time, Arizona or Texas or Indiana. He didn’t have the physical space to keep items he wanted to hold onto, like the letters he received, so certain letters from certain people of major importance to him, those were kept by sending them home to mom and dad. But he did want a record of every communication he had with the outside world because it was what lifted him, kept his spirits high, or even just helped him focus on that one day, getting through that one damn day. How to make that happen though, as that many letters, over time, would become unwieldy? Simple solution: instead of keeping the letter or card, keep the cancelled stamp. He could save space by keeping the stamp and logging who it was from and when. Then, when he got home and had time and freedom to do what he wanted, he could organize them into a new kind of journal. It became a binder by person and by year.
One specific part of the binder grew larger than the rest, and the OCD part of Craig got the better of him. He had to know. So he counted, added up all the stamps from her cards and letters over the 18 years he was in prison and amazingly Karen’s pages in the collection had grown to include a total of 821 stamps. Let’s do a little math here: 821 stamps in 18 years. That averages to 45.6 mailed items per year. There are only 52 weeks in a calendar year. But wait. Hold on. She didn’t really miss six weeks during the year, did she? Nope. Because, let’s remember here, mom and dad went to visit Craig on the farm four times every year and she didn’t need to write to him during those weeks. So it was more like 50 out of 52 weeks, over the course of 18 years, that she communicated with her youngest son, who was thousands of miles and a complete world away. In reality, those numbers are probably higher considering that she and Harlan made more trips in a year to visit Craig when he was incarcerated in Indiana simply because it was so much closer to home than Arizona or Texas. As Craig said, that is as close to every week that any human could manage.
“With support like that, how can’t you be successful? It’s beyond the words and vocabulary that I can express the significance of that.”
That right there, asking him how his family and friends played a role in his ability to come out of nearly two decades in prison relatively unscathed, that’s where Craig nearly cracked. It was way more than a struggle for him to answer. I honestly thought I might lose him and he may not answer because it was too difficult, but after almost two minute’s silence from the other end of the phone, he slowly began to speak.
“Priceless. There’s absolutely no quantity or value you could put on it that … it’s … I could not have done any of this without all the support I had. When I say support, everyone had a part. Everybody had a different part they played.”
Some were direct supporters like his parents, but he wouldn’t downplay or degrade the support he received from anyone else. Every single person who made any attempt at all, even just once, to let him know he was being remembered, they earned his gratitude. And that was the thing. From the start, and definitely through the end of his time served, Craig was, like anyone who fucked up that bad and had their freedom taken away, worried that he would be forgotten. I honestly don’t think it was his ego driving the need to be remembered; instead, it was where ever hope comes from. Knowing someone cared enough to think about him, write him, see him, reach out to him, that stoked a flame that helped keep him warm in a cold, harsh existence he’d come to live through daily.
The guys he grew up with, ran through adolescence and into manhood with, they had become an extended family that aided that effort to keep him connected. He said recently that he knew he was always included in our yearly poker weekend, the CCMP, and that provided a comfort. Whether as a member on the first party favor we did – a beer pitcher with all our names on it including Craig’s in 1996 – or adding him to our yearly toast for our missing brothers, we never let him leave us. The bonds we put in place with people who have no direct familial relation can sometimes be just as great – or greater – than those of blood, but only if they are tended to. Our Symposium, our band of brothers always made sure he was tended to in whatever way we could, and thankfully it benefited him.
“Knowing that I was remembered, that I was still a part of the group, the comfort and sense of belonging that I’m still part of the community, is very, very encouraging. I’m not being forgotten and still considered part of the group.
“When you do something like this and end up going to prison, the punishment of prison is being isolated from society. Every day you wake up with a prison roof over your head. You wake up and open your eyes with the prison ceiling overhead, and it reminds you of what you did to get there. There’s just no getting around it. Being there means you’re isolated from where you really want to be or where you should be. So having those reminders and connections that I’m still part of the group, part of the community, is very encouraging and gives you something to live for.”
Those letters, those remembrances all built into a sort of coping mechanism that helped Craig to not only focus on a better future, but to keep out the bad thoughts swirling in his head daily. He said being in that sort of a place, it’s easy to fall into the idea and belief that you are a mean and really bad person. It’s an environment that, because of the constant pressure, constant reminders, it can mindfuck you into believing that it’s not a really, really bad place. Spoiler alert: it is a really, really bad place. Being included in a group in society that didn’t consider him that way, he said it kept him going, helped him think, “Hey maybe I’m not this horrible human being.”
“Having that support, it allowed me to keep dreaming, dreaming not in the pie in the sky fantasy, things that are never going to happen. But dreaming like doing my bucket list, camping trips, hiking trips, going to see this trip, that trip, just to ride my motorcycle down a road for no reason whatsoever. Those kind of dreams, making plans for the future … that there IS going to be a future.”
He was lucky. A lot of people he ran into weren’t as fortunate, didn’t have that support system. Many of them didn’t have that mental ability to keep going, couldn’t envision a better future, or any future other than being in prison. They didn’t have anyone helping them get through the ugly days, and know there are better days coming. They could only see being back in the lifestyle that brings them back to prison. There’s that damn recidivism rate again. Everything about it, it’s absolutely true. It’s a vicious circle because none of it is easy, none of it. Without a support system though, it’s damn near impossible.
When Craig got out, the support his system was about to provide him was beyond his expectations. He had conversations with several people who said that he had a place to live if he needed it. On more than one occasion, that came down to a discussion with a spouse that sounded a little like this: “I know he’s a good guy. He can stay here, and if you don’t like it, you can go stay with your mother. Him and I will stay here.” Having that type of support was comforting and reassuring. It was practical support. It told Craig that it doesn’t matter what happens, he’ll have a roof over his head for a short period of time, and he had the emotional support of someone willing to do that for him. He never had to take advantage as the way things worked out, he was able to implement his original plan, but knowing and having that as a fallback was emotionally uplifting. He said if it was one person, it was a dozen who offered a place to stay, and it left him joking that he could like stay 2 weeks at each place and have somewhere to stay for 6 months. That allowed him to confidently move forward even though he was on tentative ground in those early months after release and then again with the ensuing change after his parole ended and he moved back to the Midwest.
That was fabulous that everyone understood his need now that he was out, free. What he would have liked even more while he was in prison was if people were more understanding as to why it was so important to him to stay connected. He had many people express that they wanted to write, but didn’t know what to write about. They felt guilty talking about their life on the outside. To Craig, that didn’t matter. He actually wanted it to be a normal letter, even boring. To tell him about going to the park, seeing a concert, going car shopping, buying a pair of new shoes, anything, all the things, they all were equally uplifting to him.
“Just to receive the letter and know you took time out of your busy life to write and be included, to know I’m being thought of, having that connection is the encouragement and the mental and emotional support that allows me to keep going, keep working, keep striving.”
After he got out, there were a couple people, not more than handful, who he heard from for the first time since he went in. Fair-weather friends as he called it, and it didn’t go over well. He questioned why there was a big rush to reconnect now when they hadn’t taken the time to create an urgency to be together for the past 18 years. Since he was dying to get a letter from home and they hadn’t bothered to send one, he wasn’t inclined to bother with their requests now. Some people were pissed that he called them on it, that he would question their offering now that it was easy and convenient, but that wasn’t something he worried about. He moved on with his life, as he had been planning all along.
“I don’t have a lot of time for that right now. I have the people that were supportive, and I owe them a lot. What I owe them is my time. Whether it’s a picnic, dinner, a phone call, whatever. Those are the people that are worthy and deserve my time because they’ve been there the whole time.”
The ones who were there, who showed their support over his 18 years in prison are the ones Craig is going to pour his energy into now that he has his freedom again. But does that mean that he should forget about it and move on?
It’s an interesting question, and one that Craig has spent a fair amount of time thinking about. The only thing he may think about more is the question of whether he wasted 20 years of his life.
To the first, his answer is pretty clear. If he had spent 3 or 4 years in prison, he could just skip it, like working at a bad job and not telling your next employer about it. You can make it work. But 18 years, that’s a long damn time, so long you can’t just cast it aside and never mention it again. It’s too wide of a gulf to bridge. Think about what you did from 1995 to 2013. Could you explain that time away? How you changed? What happened in your life between those years that was so insignificant that you don’t even bring it up? No, no one can do that. So why should Craig? Why should we expect him to not bring it up when he meets someone new or if he’s asked about something that he can’t talk around? He shouldn’t. Now, he doesn’t need to go up to every person he meets for the rest of his life and the first thing out of his mouth is, “Hi, I’m Craig. I fix motorcycles for a living, you know, since I got out of prison after 18 years.” No, that’s obviously a bit over the top. But anyone who wants him to bottle it up and throw out those years simply because they’re uncomfortable with how it sounds when he tells people he fucked up, got caught, and served his time, well, I have a question for them: What does it matter to you? Are you embarrassed of him? Then don’t associate with him. Otherwise, let him live his life his way.
Speaking of which, he has. And does. That’s where the interesting question of whether he wasted 20 years of his life comes into play. The short answer he says is, that’s not true. He didn’t allow it to be a waste of time. Yes, he was incarcerated. Yes, he was limited in his options as to what he could do with his time. But he used that time as productively as he could, mentally, physically and emotionally. He even preached to his fellow inmates at camp on how they have an incredible opportunity because they have all this free time. They can do anything they want if they put their mind to it. They can practice living, literally live a new lifestyle for a month and see who they become and how they like it. And if it doesn’t work? Try a new lifestyle. And another. Hell, they could try 60 lifestyles in 5 years and make themselves a better person because one of them has to be right.
Having the ability and time to do that is easy for anyone in prison who chooses to. On the outside, it’s a bit more complicated, especially when it comes to what you choose to do with your time. It’s a philosophical position that Craig holds that too many people in free society choose not do anything with their life. He says God woke you up this morning but everything else is your choice. Don’t like where you live? Move. Don’t like your job? Get a new one. We all have things that we feel paint us into a corner – spouses, families, jobs, mortgages, emotional baggage, confidence issues, and on and on – but none of them are unchangeable. You are enough of the change that you need to make your life go right. But people too often don’t. They’re not willing. And it’s sad seeing people just slog along miserable in life.
Making a difference in somebody else’s life, that’s about the only joy we get as human beings, if you really boil it down. You can entertain yourself fairly well, but that’s pretty empty. Make a difference in someone else’s life, now that’s wondrous. And you never know how it will affect, that’s thanks to the butterfly effect. Read up on it if you’re not sure how that one works, but in essence, you never know how or what influence you will have on someone else somewhere in the world just by the things you do here right now. Your action may seem small and insignificant in this moment here and not even noticed, but everything is noticed, somewhere, by someone. Somebody does see it, and it does have a ripple effect all the way through so many different lives. Because everyone is connected.
And now each of you is connected to Craig, whether you know him or not. Some of you are relatives. Some may be old friends. Many are new friends and family. Ohana even. Someone somewhere in the world may even be reading this story and have never met any of us, such is the Internet. But just by being here, reading this, you are connected to him, and I hope you’ll take his final thoughts here to heart:
“The words thank you are kind of hallow, kind of weak for the amount of, to express the appreciation I have for everything that everyone did, including the stuff people don’t realize they did when they were just being them. So, the only way you can repay that is by continuing to pay it forward, by spending time together, doing those small things. I don’t know what influence I’m going to have in other people’s lives, but I hope it’s good. I hope it’s significant, especially toward those that were significant for me even though they may not know it. On one hand I would like to have a sit-down over a beer and repay all them at once but that’s not the way it works. It’s just gotta be small doses over a long period of time and I may or may not see the results of that, and that’s OK. Because I know I make a difference. I just hope I’m making a good difference.”
Go back to that first thought in this blog. Having a memento, something that is not only a reminder but a warning, isn’t such a bad thing after all. And here you have it, brother.
Walk in My Park 