The Walls

By James P. Muffin

James P. Muffin, born in New York and moved to Ohio around the age of nine years old. In 1971 I was blessed with my son James. In 2014 I earned an Associate of Art degree from Cuyahoga Community College. Believe in God and yourself, and never quit in the pursuit of your dreams in life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 5, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524531072

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© 2016 by James P. Muffin.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2016912624

ISBN:   Hardcover       978-1-5245-3108-9

             Softcover         978-1-5245-3109-6

             eBook              978-1-5245-3107-2

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without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Rev. date: 08/05/2016

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Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

This Book is dedicated to Lady Tish who was my greatest inspiration in my endeavor to complete my book, outside of God. She is a very rare jewel and priceless. God bless this beautiful human being and her family forevermore. You are a very special person, Lady Tish and without your inspiration, this book would not have been completed… . Thank-you Lady Tish, from the bottom, top and sides of my heart… . (smile)!

_____ Uncle Popsie _____

‘THE WALLS’

I Am James P. Muffin and this is my Story.

CHAPTER 1

I n 1972 the ‘death penalty’ was ruled unconstitutional in the States of the United States. At some point after this ruling, the convicts sentenced to die in the ‘electric chair’ here in Ohio were let off ‘death row’ and put in the main population of the old ‘State Penitentiary’. The old ‘State Penitentiary’ had been opened in the year 1834 in what is now, downtown Columbus. The old penitentiary still stood and housed ‘prisoners’ now in the year 1972. Amazing, the prison was 138-years old and still going strong.

Many of the ‘ex-death row’ convicts who were released from ‘death-row’ came to ‘A&B block’ where I was a ‘range-man’. I was ‘serving’ a consecutive life sentence (20-years-to-Life) with an armed robbery (10 to 25-years) at the age of 17 and unfortunately, only had approximately one year in the system.

These men coming off of ‘the Row’ you would think would be really mean and aggressive, however, most were quite the opposite. Most of these ‘cons’ were quite, respectful acting (i.e., not making a lot of unnecessary noise disturbing other convicts living in the same area). These ‘convicts’ did what most of the other men did while in their cells. They would lay on their ‘bunks’ and listen to ball games on their radios, read books, write letters, study for various types of educational programs, play cards or chess with their cellies, work out, doing push-up’s, sit-up’s, dips off their toilet, etc. In actuality, these cons were practicing the old prison philosophy of, doing their time and not letting the time do them

Doing time meant utilizing your time doing something. Preferably making use of your time in a productive way. In essence, stay busy and your days and years will pass more swiftly. On the contrary, if you do nothing or no more than you have to, your days and years will pass much slower. This is just how it goes when doing time. However, I am getting a little ahead of myself, telling you about when I was 17 years old. Instead, I would like to present my journey to you from the age of 16 years old.

Today is a beautiful sunshiny day for most of Cleveland, however, the sunshine was irrelevant to four juveniles with robbery on their minds. Ultra-man was 17 years old a friend of mines, a 10th Grader going to the 11th grade after summer vacation was over. He never made it. Sleepy was a 17 years old friend of mine out for summer vacation, going to the 11th grade, who never made it. Frank was a 17 years old friend of a friend and someone I didn’t know. Last, is myself, I am 16 years old, in the 10th grade, going to the 11th at ‘Glenville’ high school, and I also didn’t make it to the next grade at ‘Glenville’.

Unfortunately, this turned out to be a tragic day for too many people. If I could undo the damage of this day’s event, I wouldn’t hesitate to do so, however, I know this is not a reality. Instead I convey my deepest sympathy to all of the people, and the families this crime hurt so terribly. The sum of this day resulted in two people dying, myself shot, and on my way to spending 25 years in the penal system.

June of 1971, summer vacation is in effect and I, like many other students am very glad it is. Unlike some years, I do not have a summer job this time. Some days have passed, I still do not have a summer job and I truthfully have too much ‘idle time’ on my hands. When you are young, your character is still being formulated and you can be very much influenced by your environment, circumstances, finances, peer pressure, etc. Bearing this in mind and remembering the old true ‘saying’, ‘idle-time’ is the devil’s workshop, you have a possible explosive situation in the making. Unfortunately, in my case it manifested as an explosive situation.

I got with some people who had been planning a robbery and wanted another man to ‘pull-off this robbery they had planned. I was ripe for trying to get some ‘easy money’ or so I thought would be some easy money. I was wrong. When I said I was ‘ripe’, I had circumstances with myself which helped influence me towards getting into trouble or doing something in which I could get into trouble for doing.

Young and dumb in a manner of speaking, no money, my mother was on ADC. My father and fantastic stepmother lived in Buffalo, New York, I had two older sisters whom I thought it was more important that my mother spend what money she could on them than on me. I had no job, I moved and got out of touch with a very good and positive friend named ‘Lim’ and a couple other friends. I had too much free time, my girlfriend was pregnant, Sleepy was talking about an easy ‘Job’ he and someone had planned together. Sleepy said they already had pistols and a stolen car. Most of us have heard of following your ‘first mind’. I’ve learned through personal experiences over the years that you will be much better off more times than not if you ‘follow your first mind’. My ‘first mind’ said, ‘leave it alone, James, don’t do it.’ I should have listened. Unfortunately for too many and myself I didn’t listen.

When I had made a commitment to do this I was nervous inside. Thinking about this particular robbery and the people involved in it just didn’t feel right with me. However, I was going to do it. It was agreed that we would meet at Bertha’s house the next day, Friday. Rather, four of us met at Bertha’s house (Ultra-man, Sleepy, Cha Cha and myself) and from there we went to meet up with Frank. Cha Cha is like a little brother to me and I wouldn’t let him go with us. Frank is the one who ‘cased’ and planned the place we were planning on robbing. He had a real nice stolen car and guns. All we had to do is meet up with him in the ‘Projects’ and go from there.

It was close to ‘noon’ time when we met up with Frank. Weather wise, it was a beautiful sunshiny summer day. Ultra-man, Sleepy and I go into this apartment, Frank closed the door, goes into another room and comes back with two pistols which he sits on the kitchen table. Frank and Sleepy already have their guns. Sleepy had told me, him and Frank had done some other robberies together in the recent past. These two felt comfortable with each other, in so far as each knew what he was doing and would have each other’s back in a robbery situation.

Ultra-man and I had never done robberies with Frank and Sleepy. Part of the objective of this robbery was to check each other out. If all went well and we liked each other’s work, then we could do some other robberies together in the future. Ultra-man picks up a blue steel .32 revolver which looked new and the pistol left on the table was an older looking .32 owl head revolver. I picked it up, really didn’t like it, but I figured it would do. I checked for bullets and stuck it in my waist. The four of us leave out. Frank takes us to a clean ‘68 Cutlass’ yellow with a black top and stolen. Ultra-man and I get into the back seat, Frank is the driver and Sleepy in the passenger seat. We ride around and arrive at the target, a clothing store. We park in front of the store. Ultra-man, Sleepy and myself get out and go into the clothing store, leaving Frank behind the wheel of the ‘Olds Cutlass’ with the engine running.

Immediately after entering the store and looking around, I see the set-up isn’t as Frank said it was. There wasn’t suppose to be an armed guard in there, yet there was. I didn’t feel right. I told Sleep and Ultra-man I didn’t like it, let’s go. We looked at a few things like we were going to buy and we left the store. Frank wanted to know what happened, why didn’t we rob the place? I told him it was an armed security guard in there. He swore there wasn’t one in there when he cased the place. Perhaps when he checked the place out there wasn’t a guard or he was in the bathroom or something at that particular time. I don’t know. I am not disappointed the robbery of this place fell threw. We drive off.

While riding down Chester Ave. we pass a large bakery company with two men sitting in front of the security guard shack playing cards. Some kind of way the idea hits me to rob them, it would be something to take the security guards guns. They wouldn’t be expecting this. I am dressed in a black, red & white knit sweater, black shadow stripe pants, black dress shoes, a medium afro and I’ve darkened my mustache and sideburns in an attempt to look older. The .32 owl head was stuck in my waist under my sweater. We continue to drive east on Chester, passed under a bridge to the main intersection (East 55th), made a U-turn turn around to the other side of Chester and started driving back in the direction of the guards.

There is an empty lot right before the bridge we are about to go back under. I tell the driver to pull in the lot. Once we are in the lot and Ultra-man and I are out the car, I tell Frank to give us a few minutes to walk down the street to where the guards are at, then pull up with the car. We should have their guns and money and be ready to roll out when they pull up. Ultra-man and I get out the car and start walking down the street. We arrive and approach what we earlier thought were two guards. The one sitting on the left as we approached didn’t have a guard uniform on, the one on the right did. They were sitting in chairs with a small table in between them playing cards. Ultra-man was on my left side closest to the street. I went for the guard on the right, he was closest to me.

As we approached, the two men looked up at Ultra-man and myself. I noticed the uniform guard didn’t have a gun in his holster and that puzzled me. I asked him for a light for my cigarette and when he started to reach into his pocket for the light I pulled the gun from under my shirt, I pointed it at him and told him to give me his wallet instead. Ultra-man had simultaneously pulled and pointed his gun at the other guy. I know they both were surprised.

My man remained seated, took out his wallet and handed it to me. Both men looked to be in their 50’s or early 60’s. I keep my gun pointed at my man and the other man who is in front of me but to my left started to stand up and turn to face Ultra-man who had his gun pointed right at the man’s stomach. In the meantime, our get-away car pulls up and stops in front of the driveway a few feet from where the four of us are standing. It is at this point the situation turned disastrous and weird.

The big man Ultra-man had his gun on reached into his right pocket and started to pull his hand out with something in it. The scene seems to go into slow motion. To my fucking surprise I saw what appeared to be the brown ‘butt’ of a pistol as his hand was slowly emerging from his pocket. A second or an eternity later as I continue to keep my gun on my man, the other man’s hand is almost clear of his pocket and I see without a doubt it is a gun in his hand as his hand is exiting his pocket. I am between him and the security guard and his back is towards me.

He clears his pocket with a gun in his hand. He brings his hand up and points the damn gun at Ultra-man’s head and fires. The bullet hits Ultra-man in one of his eyes, blows it out and he went down. Why Ultra-man didn’t shoot him first, I do not know, however what transpired next is he started turning around to shoot me. I couldn’t believe what was happening but I wasn’t going to let him fucking kill me too. I never wanted to hurt anyone nor did I think anyone would get hurt. Once the gunplay started, there was no stopping it. Ultra-man was lying on the ground as the shooter continued to turn with the pistol in his hand. There was no doubt in my mind as to what the consequences would be if he completed his turn. I didn’t want him to shoot me in my head as he did Ultra-man. I started shooting and I hit him three times. The get-away car peeled off when Ultra-man got shot and was going down the street without me. Damn, Frank had pulled off without me.

The big man was still on his feet after taking three bullets. I hit him in his head with my gun and he went down. Then I started running down the street fast as I could in an attempt to catch the car. The uniformed security guard evidently picked up Ultra-man’s and the other man’s pistol and started shooting at me as I ran down the street. If you are from Cleveland, you know that on this part of Chester there were no poles, no trees, no nothing to put between myself and the man shooting at me running down the street.

Hearing the gunshots behind me I ran harder and kept zigzagging in an attempt to make myself less of a target. I continued to call for the car to stop as I continued trying to catch up with the car to no avail. Finally the car stopped some distance ahead of me and the back door flew open. I was maybe a couple feet from the car when I felt one of the bullets hit me on the right side of my lower back. I stumbled and Sleepy reached out, grabbed my shirt and pulled me into the car. I slammed the car door. Frank already had the car in motion. The security guard shot his last rounds at the car speeding away.

We were moving pretty fast and made a left turn around a corner and a quick right around another corner when the car cut off and rolled to a stop. I do not know if the wires used to ‘hot wire’ the car hit naked metal on the bottom side of the dashboard and shorted out the electrical system or did the shots fired by the Security Guard disable the car, however, the car wouldn’t start back up. Ultra-man and I had strange dreams last night. Ultra-man told the three of us with a laugh, he dreamed he got killed. I dreamed I got shot in the back. Damn.

Sleepy and I had been friends for a number of years and were close like brothers. I tell Sleepy, I’m hit, I’m fucking hit. Sleepy said, You’re not hit Popsie, don’t say that shit. I am I tell him, right here in my back. I twist around in the seat to show him my back. There was a tiny hole where the bullet entered the right side of my lower back and it took an angle in an upward direction and stopped in the front of me. There was a lump right below my right pectoral muscle.

I touched the lump of the bullet under my skin. Sleepy looked and said, Damn Popsie, you are hit and not much blood is coming out. I think you might be bleeding more on the inside and that’s not good. I’m getting you to a hospital. We both got out the car and I leaned on the trunk of the car. Sleepy said he was going to get me to a hospital, even if he had to hijack someone’s car to do it. Sleepy flagged down a car about to go past. Fortunately the man stopped.

Sleepy told the man I was in a dice game and someone robbed it and shot me. Would he take us to the hospital? I am glad the man said he would take me to the hospital for a couple good reasons. Number one: I needed medical attention and number two: Sleepy wasn’t playing about getting me to the hospital. Had the man refused to take us, Sleepy would have taken his car be it he had to shoot or not.

I lost consciousness at some point during the short trip to the hospital and then we were there. Sleepy and i got out of the car. Instead of Sleepy leaving while he had the opportunity to do so, he saw that I didn’t look so good and he decided to take me all the way into the hospital. Once inside, he tells someone I had been shot and needed help. Whoever was there, helped to put me on one of their stretchers with legs and wheels. I was taken to a room and there I stayed for awhile or what seemed to be a long time. At different times while lying there, I lost consciousness. One time I looked across from me and on another stretcher laid the man I had shot. He was still alive. He recognized me also. It was a strange, terrible predicament I helped to create and put myself in. I felt bad inside my heart and physically I didn’t feel so good with this bullet in me. I knew too that my whole life had changed for the worse, I was in a lot of trouble and I wouldn’t be waking up from this nightmare. The older man on the other stretcher had to feel worse than me.

While having these thoughts I passed out and when I gained consciousness again my mother was standing next to me, holding my hand and the big man was gone from the room. I do not know how long I had been in this room before I was taken to the operating room, however it seemed to be a long time. When I was conscious next, I found myself in another room with a tube in my nose to my stomach. Another tube was pushed into the hole of my penis. Two more tubes coming out the right side of my stomach. There were tubes attached to my arms. A long white bandage was taped to the middle of my stomach and a policeman was sitting in a chair by the window watching me.

I was in a lot of pain and couldn’t move or talk without creating more pain. The bullet had been removed and some things repaired on my insides. The doctor or doctors cut me down the middle of my stomach from right below my chest (pectoral) to below my navel. Later I was told by one of the doctor’s they didn’t sew my stomach in order to close it back. He told me I was very fortunate because ‘clamps’ had recently been invented to close wounds and had been used on me. I was told the clamps leave less of a scar. That was fine with me. Especially fine with me when I first saw what my stomach looked like under the bandage

I had a 110lbs sand filled weight set with a couple light dumbbells that I would work out with from time to time. I also did push ups, jumping jacks and isometric exercises. I’ve been fascinated with wanting to be physically strong since I was a small child. I didn’t have a Charles Atlas body, however, I did have a strong built. So when the doctor told me the clamps would leave a less ugly scar, I was glad. My body looked and felt terrible. Don’t get me wrong, I was very glad to be alive. However, the way my body was right now, (cut up as it was) and weak, plus being scared, I didn’t feel so fortunate.

Besides for being in serious trouble, I was in the hospital for about a week. My dad came to visit me. He lived in Buffalo, New York and was married to my other mother, my stepmother, Lupe. I loved them both very much. I cannot recall many of the details of the time in which I stayed in the hospital except I met a beautiful young Italian lady named Marie (she was friendly and nice with me) and I was in a lot of pain.

Being in pain was hard to forget because I was in pain all the time.

The only time I didn’t hurt would be when I would finally call the nurse and she would give me a shot of morphine or something in my butt. The only thing about getting ‘shots’ was I really didn’t like ‘needles’ and I would resist taking the shots until I couldn’t bear the pain anymore. Whatever they gave me was a blessing because it took the pain away. At this time, it felt almost like it was the end of the world. I was in a lot of trouble and there was no turning back the hands of time and undoing what had already been done. I recall always seeing a cop in my room when I was conscious. I saw my father a few times and my maternal mother Betty also came to see me in the hospital. One time I woke up and I didn’t see a cop in my room anymore. I was puzzled, I was glad about this. My dad never admitted to it, however, I know it was because of him as to why I didn’t have the policemen guarding me in my room anymore.

My dad was a very intelligent man, worked hard all of his life and he knew some important people. In his younger day he enjoyed hunting, fishing and shooting. He used to shoot at the policemen’s gun range and some of his friends were policemen. My dad had a lot of friends on all levels and it didn’t matter to my father what color, race or religion they were. He liked people.

When my mother Betty would come to see me in the hospital, she had a way of making me laugh like no one or nothing else could. She would get me to laughing and it would hurt my stomach so much (because my abdomen muscles had been cut in half). I would beg her not to make me laugh and threaten her with I was going to call the nurse if she didn’t stop to get her off of my back. I think she was just so happy with me still being alive. I was her only son and the baby.

Some days had passed and I learned I would be going to juvenile court soon. In the meantime, I somehow found out that I could actually get out the hospital and go home. I really didn’t feel well enough yet to leave the hospital, however, I could not resist the opportunity to go home. I knew I was