Seventeen Days at Camp Snoopy: A Drunk Driver’S Odyssey

By Matt Garth

This memoir tells the story of a life driven by alcohol addiction, a journey which ultimately led the author to incarceration in a California prison for multiple convictions of drunk driving. Mr. Garth describes his misconceptions and fears before entering jail, sarcastically nicknamed Camp Snoopy, the sometimes harrowing experiences he had inside, the unexpected friendships he made, and the surprising things he learned that would change his life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 7, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524589059

Matt Garth

Matt Garth practiced law in New York City for over 20 years before moving to California where he taught multiple subjects in the California public school system for 11 years. Seventeen Days in Camp Snoopy, a drunk driver’s odyssey is his first book. He lives in California with his wife, Lilly. Matt has been sober, one day at a time, for over 14 years.

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Copyright © 2017 by Matt Garth.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2017903357

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-5245-8907-3

                 Softcover        978-1-5245-8906-6

                 eBook              978-1-5245-8905-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Rev. date: 03/06/2017

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CONTENTS

Dedication

Note On Characters, Locations And Events

Prologue

Alcohol Epigrams

CHAPTERS

1 In The Drunk Tank

2 Early History; First Drink

3 Tavern Heaven; The Irish Virus

4 Family Dysfunction

5 Memories Of Kenny Mccann And Tommy Sullivan

6 Descent Into Alcoholism

7 New Jersey Drunk Driving

8 California Drunk Driving

9 Arrest: Red Light, Green Light

10 First Consequences; Surrender; Fresh Fish

11 On The Bus To German Gorge

12 Intake: GP or PC?

13 Outside The Pod; Bunkmates

14 Leaving German Gorge

15 Daydream On The Bus To Camp Snoopy

16 Arrival At Camp Snoopy; Barracks 12

17 Cadged Canteen Card; Rollout

18 The Routine; Night Noises I

19 The Mexican Table

20 Dinner With The Mexicans; Observations

21 Spades

22 Night Noises II: My Fifi

23 Visitation Day: Body Odor; Bean Farts; Tears

24 Two Packets Of Coffee

25 Sergeant Rodriguez

26 Disrespect And Retribution

27 Eye Glasses; Confrontation On The Yard

28 Release; Tuna Fish Sandwiches

29 Work Release; Home Detention

30 A Moment Of Clarity

EPILOGUE

DEDICATION

There are a number of special people to whom I wish to dedicate this memoir.

To my wonderful wife, Lilly, whose love and support gave me hope and the courage to change.

To my dear sister, Carleigh, whose nonpareil editing was crucial in being able to complete this memoir, my first attempt at the written word.

To my friends and neighbors, Gary and Meg, who were also instrumental in reading and editing the manuscript and providing suggestions for improving the text.

To my lifelong friend, Tommy, whose outstanding example of sober living, informed, in large part, my own continuing recovery from alcoholism.

To Emilio, Pedro, Gabacho, Felix, and my other amigos at Camp Snoopy, who made my stay at Camp Snoopy an unexpected but positive experience.

NOTE ON CHARACTERS, LOCATIONS AND EVENTS

The stories in this narrative reflect my recollection of characters, locations and events. The names of all characters in the book, other than for certain celebrities unconnected with the story and only used for anecdotal purposes, are pseudonyms, changed to protect the privacy of those depicted. For similar reasons, most locations related to the story have also been changed to fictitious places; however, locations such as large cities, counties, states, countries, and well-known events such as the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the assassination of President Kennedy and the Major League Baseball World Series, also used for color and anecdotal purposes, have not been changed.

Dialogue is, of course, not exact due to the passage of time but has been re-created to the best of my memory.

PROLOGUE

I am an alcoholic and in this am not alone. Various studies report that, on average, 18 million people, or five percent of the population in the USA, are active alcoholics. Other studies report the figure to be 10 percent or even higher. In this country, almost 100,000 Americans die every year from causes related to alcohol, making it the third major cause of death. Alcohol is involved in 40 percent of all traffic fatalities, 50 percent of all suicides, 60 percent of all homicides, and 80 percent of all cases of spousal abuse in America. Alcohol abuse and addiction is also a global problem with nearly 3.3 million people dying every year from alcohol-related causes.

This memoir is not a self-help book or a manual on how to recover from alcohol dependency. It is, rather, the story of where my alcoholism took me – to jail in Seacrest County, California, due to a third misdemeanor conviction for driving under the influence (DUI) of alcohol. The time I spent in jail turned out to be only 17 days of a seven-month sentence thanks to pure dumb luck and severe overcrowding in the Seacrest County jails at the time; nevertheless, that experience in jail had a sobering effect on me and escalated my need and desire to stop drinking. Going to jail was not supposed to be part of my life story. I am a retired attorney, admitted to the bars of three states: New York, New Jersey and California. I practiced law in large and medium-sized law firms in New York City for over 20 years. I am also a retired, certificated public school teacher in California, my second career, during which I taught multiple subjects at different grade levels for 11 years. Due to the extent of my education and the years of legal and teaching experience, one might think I would be immune to becoming addicted to alcohol. I was not. Nobody is immune.

Alcoholism is an equal opportunity disease. It can be contracted by anyone: male or female; young or old; rich or poor; possessors of graduate degrees and doctorates, or high school dropouts; by persons of any race, ethnic group, nationality, or sexual persuasion; and by believers in God or non-believers. Alcoholics rise to the highest levels of the most responsible professions and careers or wind up among the growing numbers of the homeless. Alcoholics can be found among doctors, lawyers, teachers, congressmen, military leaders, scientists, clergymen, world class athletes, world leaders, or among those toiling in low-paying jobs, the unemployed, and the unemployable.

To be sure, there are certain people who are at a higher risk of becoming alcoholic. Studies have shown that there is a genetic predisposition to alcoholism. If one or both parents are alcoholic, their children are four times more likely to become alcoholics than the population at large. Up to 30 percent of the sons of alcoholic fathers become alcoholics.

I was an excellent candidate for becoming an alcoholic, possessing many of the high risk factors. My father, along with my paternal and maternal grandfathers, were alcoholics, as were two of my father’s siblings and one of my mother’s. I began to drink in mid-adolescence and most of the male friends of my teenage years were heavy drinkers. Like my mother, I suffered from depression that became more severe as I grew older. I used alcohol to relieve the depression and to change my mood.

Since my alcohol addiction is so connected to how and why I wound up in jail, this memoir contains not only the story of the 17 days I was incarcerated, but also memories of my alcoholic history, and of some of those people who influenced or were affected by my abusive drinking.

It is often said at Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings that the truly horrible stories about where drinking can lead go untold because they wind up buried with the drinker. To my great sorrow, I have known people who were unable to tell their stories, including my own father and one of my closest boyhood friends, both of whom died as a direct result of the physical deterioration caused by their alcoholism.

I drank alcohol for 40 years. Jail was only one of the many consequences of my alcoholism. In the scheme of things, that consequence paled in comparison to some of the others I experienced, including loss of family, loss of a career, loss of my self-esteem, and, for a long period of time, loss of myself. Those 17 days I spent in jail, however, set the stage for that singular and God-given moment of clarity I would later experience, allowing me to surrender to my disease, end my denial, and stop digging my own grave.

In that moment, I was finally able to put away the shovel and embark upon a life of sobriety, regaining, along the way, a new family, a new career, my self-esteem and myself. In that moment, I cheated Mr. Al K. Hall, the personification of the drug alcohol, from sending me into the darkness without telling my story.

ALCOHOL EPIGRAMS

All excess is ill, But drunkeness is of the worst sort. It spoils Health, dismounts the Mind, and unmans Men. It reveals Secrets, is Quarrelsome, Lascivious, Impudent, Dangerous and Mad. In fine, he that is drunk is not a Man: Because he is so long void of Reason, that distinguishes a Man from a Beast.

William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude, 1682

Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunk Christian.

Herman Melville, Moby Dick; or The Whale, 1851

Alcohol ruined me financially and morally, broke my heart and the hearts of too many others. Even though it did this to me and it almost killed me and I haven’t touched a drop of it in seventeen years, sometimes I wonder if I could get away with drinking some now. I totally subscribe to the notion that alcoholism is a mental illness because thinking like that is clearly insane.

Craig Ferguson, American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot, 2009

CHAPTER 1

IN THE DRUNK TANK

I awoke from an alcohol-induced sleep to find myself lying on a cold floor, still wearing clothes except for my sneakers, socks, and belt. I was shivering and my cheek was stuck to the floor with congealed saliva, which had dribbled from my mouth while I slept. I opened my eyes to discover that my drunken wanderings from the night before had landed me in the drunk tank of the Brumoso, California police station, after yet another arrest, my third in California in the last five years, for drunk driving.

It was early in the morning of a late summer day in 1997. I was a few months shy of my 50th birthday. In addition to the missing items of clothing, I noticed everything that had been in the pockets of my jeans was gone — keys, wallet, cigarettes, lighter and pocket change.

I sat up and noticed I was not alone. There were two other arrestees in attendance sitting with their backs propped up against the wall across the room. They appeared to be Hispanic, and both were swarthy and brawny with elaborate tattoos carved into their massive arms. They were glaring at me. Not wishing to unintentionally dis them, I broke eye contact. Waves of a massive hangover washed over and through my body. My head felt like a high-speed train was clanging through it. I was nauseous, my heart was pounding, and my mouth was dry as a bone. Everything hurt, even the scant hair remaining on my head. I needed to drink some water and to pee.

The drunk tank was a rectangular room with no windows and a large metal door, locked from the outside. A single bulb on the high ceiling provided the only light. The entire space was industrial grey with cinderblock walls and a poured concrete floor. There was a filthy sink and a lidless metallic toilet bowl in one corner, closer to me than to my two scary tank-mates. The toilet bowl was decorated with excreta from prior inhabitants. A foul odor, part fecal, part stale booze and part unwashed body-stink, permeated the room. Not wanting to expose my private parts to my two mates, I decided to hold my water and to slake my thirst later.

I stole another glance at the two men. They were speaking to one another in Spanish and appeared relaxed. I slid my fanny back to the wall behind me and propped my knees up, assuming a position similar to them. Summoning the courage to speak with the men, I called across the length of the room.

Either of you guys have any idea when we might be getting out of here?

To my surprise, one of them replied in a soft voice.

Yo, gringo, not for a couple hours yet. Where’d you get popped?

After the few moments it took my throbbing brain to retrieve that information, I answered. I think on either Cleveland Avenue or Rancho Brumoso Road. At the top of the exit ramp.

Both men nodded and the second man replied. Damn if those ramps ain’t where duh booze buses (patrol cars) hang a’ night. Ya first pop, boss?

I took a moment to consider. No. I got multiples.

He responded. Goin’ to the cooler, old man. Ya feel me?

Both men started to chuckle, each revealing some spectacular metallic teeth. I put my head back against the wall and squeezed my eyes shut to block tears from leaking out. I began to reflect on what my latest escapade with Sir Al K. Hall would cost me. Jail time for sure. Up to a year. Menacing images of living in a cage, beatings, and gang-rape flashed through my mind. As did thoughts of taking off and disappearing upon release from the drunk tank. I was consumed with fear.

CHAPTER 2

EARLY HISTORY; FIRST DRINK

I have learned a number of hard truths about myself over the course of my sobriety. In the movie, The Natural, a baseball drama starring Robert Redford and Glenn Close, there is a climactic scene between them where a line delivered by Ms. Close struck me as quite profound. Ruminating about the mistakes we all make in life, particularly when young, she describes life as consisting of two parts, the first being the life we learn with, and the second being the life we live after that. In my case, the first part lasted a full half-century, where despite a modicum of intelligence, I was unable to admit my life had become unmanageable and revolved around the insanity of my drinking. In sobriety, I came to understand that I was born an alcoholic, and most of the important decisions I made during my life, even before I picked up my first drink, were based upon alcoholic thinking.

I was born in 1948, in Dutch Valley, New York, a member of the Baby Boomer generation. I grew up in a ramshackle, two-family house on a tree-lined street in Dutch Valley. It was one of the oldest and worst looking houses on an otherwise pretty block. I was the middle child in my family, which consisted of my mother (Terry), my father (Joe), my sisters Gloria (five years older), and Carleigh (three years younger), and my maternal grandmother (Veronica). We lived in the upstairs unit, which contained four bedrooms and one bathroom for the six of us. I had to share a bedroom with my grandmother, and I fell asleep each night in one of the two twin beds, staring at her false teeth on her bureau, along with the miscellaneous detritus therefrom, floating in a glass of water. Being the only child not having my own room was a major resentment I internalized as I was growing up. Poor me. Poor me. Pour me a drink.

My mother’s sister and her husband lived in the downstairs unit with their four daughters; hence, I was the only male child in a house with nine females. This became another resentment, as I was often excluded from games and outings with my sisters and cousins.

Making matters worse, my father worked long hours at his job as an executive in a large suburban department store some 25 miles away, Mondays through Saturdays. Because the store was open on Monday and Friday nights, he frequently did not arrive home until the wee hours, long after I was asleep. I later discovered that on many of those late nights, he was not working. Instead he was drinking, playing cards, and chasing women. On Sunday, his only day at home, my father, who ran a small bookmaking business to supplement his income, spent his day studying the daily racing form, taking wagers from relatives, friends, coworkers and others, and watching whatever sports were on TV. He had little or no time for me or anyone else in the family. My mother had a full-time job, working as a secretary/assistant, first to our own family physician, and then to a psychiatrist. It was my grandmother who was left with the job of rearing three children, and she was, for the most part, an unhappy and irascible woman. Other than one of my female cousins, who was a year older than me, and who occasionally deigned to offer me companionship, I was pretty much left to my own devices to entertain myself. Being the only boy in the house, coupled with lack of parental attention in my formative years, created in me an invisible wound, i.e., being so overlooked and ignored that I felt unseen and insignificant, a major reason I grew up introverted and shy.

I often thought of myself as the forgotten child. I was certainly lonely and very self-conscious due to my small stature and late pubescence. Depression, another disease I have had to deal with during my life, had started to create a hole in my gut which I tried to fill up with booze beginning in the summer of 1963, when I was 15 years old. That summer marked the beginning of a 40-year love-hate affair and battle with the sauce. I suppose it could be said that summer was also when I lost my innocence, just as the innocence of America was shattered for me and many others when President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas a few months later.

By 1963, my family had relocated to an apartment in Dutch Valley several blocks away from our former house. I was a sophomore and still hung out with my friends from the old neighborhood. One of those friends was Pete Schmidt who first introduced me to hard liquor on a warm and muggy day in August. We were behind the detached garage of his Tudor-style home. Both Pete and I were about to become juniors at the same high school. Pete was a tad crazy. He had a full range of colorful curse words, many of which I adopted into my own speech and used around my friends. Pete spit a lot and often made unusual sounds and uttered words and phrases that had no particular connection to the conversation at hand. One of his favorite phrases was Oonga means out, A-la means in. When I first heard him say it, I asked Pete what it meant. His answer was an enigmatic smile.

Pete also possessed a vile temper which got him into a lot of scrapes both in the neighborhood and at school. He reminded me of the Teddy DuChamp character in Stephen King’s short story, "The Body," which was later made into the movie Stand by Me. Teddy, played by the then young actor Corey Feldman, was a skinny boy with a malformed ear due to the ministrations of his abusive and alcoholic father. He was, at once, lovable and loyal to his friends but often angry at the world and given to picking fights with boys much older and bigger than him. Pete had those same tendencies.

Although Pete, like Teddy, often took a beating because of his slight physique, he always fought like a cornered badger. He wore his hair long in those days when crewcuts were more or less de rigueur for adolescent males, gooping too much Brylcreem on his dirty blond locks which he combed into a