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You’ve Got Jail!
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I’ve decided to take a break in writing about my writing career for a week or so, I posted some stuff up on facebook about being in jail and that prompted me to start writing about all four times I’ve been jailed. And surprise of all surprises, they’ve all been alcohol related! I’ll post one a day and then on Friday it’s letter writing day here at TMWS (I’ll explain it on Friday.) Anyway, here’s jail story number one in a series of four. Enjoy!
My First Time in Jail
The first time I got thrown in jail was when I was 18-years-old. I was with some friends, hanging out at a park in Peoria, Illinois. We had been drinking Mad Dog 20/20 wine and beer, smoking pot, and I’m not sure, but I bet we were doing speed or something else as well. Anyway, I was fucked up and stumblebum loaded to the gills. I could hardly talk or walk. In hindsight, I’d have to say it was slightly poor judgement on my part to get in my car and attempt to drive to a bar, but that’s just what I did. And my friends were so fucked up, they not only let me, but they piled in as well. I think I was on the road for about seven minutes when poor judgement on my part, once again reared its ugly head. I sideswiped a car, and decided to leave the scene of the accident by driving over the median in the road, flattening all four of my tires and then hiding on a road in a neighborhood a block from the accident.
Well, it took the cops about five minutes to find us. I think it was the four flat tires that gave us away. Or maybe the contact high that we were sending out to anyone in a four mile radius. I was handcuffed, read my rights and thrown in the back of a cop car. I think it was around eight or nine o’clock at night.
We drove to the Peoria County Jail, where I was processed. It’s all a bit fuzzy because it was so long ago and I was so fucked up, but here’s what happened to the best of my recollection.
I was taken to a desk, where a female officer took all my possessions in my pockets except my cigarettes and matches, which I was allowed to keep. My possessions were put in a brown paper bag, sealed and she wrote my name on it in black magic marker. I was told I would receive it when I got out.
Then I was taken to another room and I had to take off all my clothes in front of a group of about seven cops who were all sitting at desks, kind of oblivious to me and the cop who took my clothes and handed me a bright orange jumpsuit and orange sandals. I put those on, was told to put my cigarettes and matches in my pocket. Then I was taken to a room where I had my mug shot taken. What I would give to see that today! Then it was onwards to yet another room where my fingerprints were taken. And then I was marched through a big double iron door and I was in the jail area.
I was walked down an aisle where there were cells and inmates on either side. The cells were small and identical. They each had one long bench and one toilet and sink in the corner. I later learned these were holding cells for people who were waiting to make bail or who were being transferred from another prison to the Peoria jail and they were waiting for their semi-permanent cell assignment. We stopped at the third cell on the left, the guard opened the door and told me to get in. I walked in and then the cell door slammed behind me. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the sickening feeling in my stomach as the door slammed shut and the guard walked away.
I surveyed the people in the cell. there were three black guys sitting on the bench. I later learned that the rule in a holding cell is that those doing “real” time, got the bench. everyone else gets the floor. Sitting in one corner was a small Mexican guy and in an opposite corner was a skinny white guy, probably in his early twenties.
“Why aren’t you in juvie, honky motherfucker?” One of the black guys on the bench asked me as I went and sat in a corner of the cell. He was a huge guy, bald with scars all over his face.
I didn’t answer him.
“Hey, motherfucker, I asked you a fuckin’ question,” he screamed at me.
“I’m eighteen,” I answered back while taking my cigarettes out of my pocket and lighting one up. I was trying my best to look tough, but in reality I was a pimply faced eighteen-year-old white kid who looked around sixteen-years-old.
This said the huge, black, scarfaced fellow slowly got up and walked over to the corner where I was sitting, smoking my cigarette.
“Give me your cigarettes, white boy,” he said sternly, holding out his hand, which resembled a well-oiled catchers mitt.
Now while I had never been in jail, my older brother Jim had. And when he got out he told me all about it. And the one thing he told me never to do in jail is to act like a pussy. He told me one guy in his cell started crying and two guys beat the shit out of him before a guard got there to stop it. So with that advice and the fact that I still had a lot of booze floating through my system, giving me some drunken courage, I stared right back at him and said, “No.”
Now everyone in the cell was staring at us and I felt like I was going to throw up. There wasn’t a guard in sight and this guy could have turned me into a broken pile of drunken bones in minutes. Instead he just stared at me and I stared back.
After about a minute (but it seemed like nine minutes beyond eternity to me), he kind of laughed, pulled out a pack of Kools, lit up a cigarette and asked me what I was in for.
“Hit and run and drunk driving,” I answered relieved that I wasn’t being hit and run upon at that moment.
“Fuckin’ white boy’s a criminal,” he said to his pals on the bench and they all laughed. He walked back to the bench, sat down and started talking to his pals how he was going to, “beat the shit out of his old lady when he got out.”
The three of them talked with each other while I, the Mexican and the other white guy just sat on the floor and smoked cigarettes. You don’t get to make your bail phone call till a bond is set. Till then, you wait and smoke and wait.
After about five hours, the other white guy got his call and never came back. Two hours after that, a guard came and called my name. I put my hand up and he opened the door and I walked out. It was around five o’clock in the morning.
“See ya killer,” one of the guys on the bench said to me but I never looked back.
I was taken to a desk and said I could make one local call or a collect long distance call.
“Your bail’s one hundred dollars,” the guard told me.
“Okay,” I said as I dialed my parents phone number. After about three rings, my mom sleepily answered.
“Hi mom, it’s Marty, I’m in jail,” I told her.
“Marty, I told you to quit messing around on the phone,” my mom said in half asleep tones.
When I was around sixteen-years-old, someone told me of a number you could call that would make your own phone ring, while you were on the line. Well, once I discovered this worked, I constantly would prank call my mom from home. I would say I was an exterminator, from the I.R.S., a pizza deliveryman and my mom would always fall for it and then I would crack up laughing and her reply was always the same, “Aw, Marty, knock it off!” But it would always crack her up and I did it all the time. So that’s why she thought I was messing around on the phone. But this time instead of laughing, I gravely repeated myself.
“Mom, listen, I’m not joking, I’m in jail and I have to make bail to get out,” I told her seriously.
This woke her up and she said, “What?”
“I’m in jail for drunk driving,” I told her. I let off the hit and run portion and figured I’d tell them about that later.
She then did what all mom’s do when their sons call them from jail. She handed the phone to my dad. I told him I was in jail and my bail was a hundred bucks. He said he’d be there as quick as he could.
I told the guard my dad was driving down to bail me out. The guard asked if I was sure I was going to make bail. I told him I was positive and he took me to a small room with a couple folding metal chairs and said he’d be back with my stuff. The he shut the door and locked it. About five minutes later he came back with my clothes and the brown bag with my personal stuff in it. I happily took off that sickening orange jumpsuit and put my clothes back on. It felt so good to have my familiar clothes on. He told me to take a seat and he’d be back to get me when my bail was posted. He told me to take a seat and to stay put. And then he walked out and didn’t shut the door. I remember it was such a good feeling to sit in a room that I wasn’t locked in to.
About fifteen minutes later the guard came back to the room and motioned for me to follow him. I followed him through the office area and he told me I could exit through the two double doors in front of me. I opened them and saw my dad standing in the room that led to the outside. He looked worried and asked if I was okay. I told him I was and he said the car was outside.
We walked to the car, got in and he said, “So what happened?”
I just looked at him and said, “I’ve been up all night long, can I just go home and go to sleep and we’ll talk about it later?”
My parents are really cool people. Where a lot of parents would’ve jumped all over me for not talking, my dad just started the car, and said, “Yeah, I’m just glad you’re okay.”
Postscript
I went home and slept all day and when I got up I told my mom and dad what had happened. As I mentioned, my folks are really cool. My dad said he hoped I learned a lesson and I told him I did. Then he told me he called my uncle Bill while I was sleeping and if I wanted to call him and tell him what had happened, maybe he could help me. My uncle was an attorney (later a Judge) in Peoria and knew lots of people, including judges. He was also known to like a drink or two every now and again. And he was really a funny guy, probably the funniest Wombacher there ever was. He could always crack me up. Kind of a mix between Jackie Gleason and W.C. Fields with a little of Jack Benny’s timing thrown in.
So I called him and told him what had happened. After telling him my tale of woe, he said, “For the love of God, next time you want to go out and drink that much, call a cab and then come over here and get me and we’ll make a night of it!”
After he was done kidding, he told me he’d help me out this time and make a few calls and see what he could do. But he told me if it happened again, he wouldn’t help me out. I agreed and a couple weeks later I had to go to court. I stood up in front of the judge and the arresting cop and prosecuting attorney were standing on the opposite side.
The judge was an older man with salt and pepper hair and kind of looked like a hefty, low-rent version of Peter Lawford.
“Martin Wombacher,” he read off the paper in front of him and then slowly looked up and peered over his reading glasses to look at me. “Are you any relation to the attorney William Wombacher?”
“Yes, sir,” I politely shot back, “he’s my uncle.”
“Hmm...drunk driving,” he read almost absent-mindedly and then looked back at me and said, “now why doesn’t that surprise me?”
I tried to stifle my laughter and then the bailiff cracked up and the cop looked like he wanted to strangle me. The judge smiled at me, shook his head and dropped the hit and run (the woman I hit wasn’t pressing charges since I agreed to pay for the damages outside of court) and I was given a 250 dollar fine, six months probation and walked (remember, this was in the days before D.U.I.’s were so heavily prosecuted.) I went home and called my uncle Bill and thanked him and told him I learned my lesson. And I did. For a while at least. Tomorrow’s post will show that it took a second arrest to truly learn this lesson.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 1:44PM 
