A halfway house is designed as a way to allow a person a transition between prison and freedom.  For many guys this means getting a driver's license, some for the first time in their life, and getting a job so they can afford to set up a place to live.  Those guys usually need the entire six months to get their life on track.  It is not an easy thing to do.  Without the halfway house these guys would go from prison to the street with a few hundred bucks in gate money and a bus ticket to wherever had been their home when they were arrested.  Without family support those guys have little chance of staying out of prison.  The halfway house gives them the only real chance they have without family support.

The halfway house was for both state and federal prisoners.  Most were state prisoners with just a few federal prisoners.  We all lived in the same building, but they had two six men rooms for federal prisoners.  Those rooms, just like the cells in federal prison, were separated by race.  I was in a room with two other white guys.  The other six man room was full of black inmates.

I'll explain something about the race thing here.  In Ohio where I was an inmate before moving to federal prison, all of the cells were forcibly integrated.  Meaning each two man cell had a white guy and a black guy.  They claimed the feds forced this, but I don't think that was the case.  Whatever the reason, the entire Ohio system was like this.  Every white guy had a black celly.  The federal system was the exact opposite: segregated.  The feds never put guys of different race together in a cell.  A black and white guy could cell together if they chose to, but that would be a huge mistake in that each guy's own race wouldn't like it at all.  Somehow this same mentality was applied in the privately owned halfway house.  The rooms housing state prisoners were integrated, the ones for federal prisoners segregated.

So my two roommates were both white collar criminals who had done there time at federal camps.  The true "Club Fed."  They were impressed that I had come from McKean, which was still famous for its riot.  One of the guys was an investment banker who violated federal banking laws, the other into some form of illegal trading that I never figured out.  I'll call them the banker and the trader.  The banker was my age, the trader in his 60's.  I didn't care for the banker and the trader didn't like him either, so the trader and I teamed up.

All of us had to go through a process so that we could be transferred from the halfway house to home detention.  All of us had six months to do and all of us had wives and homes to go to.  To go home, the first thing we had to do was find a job.  The difference between the three of us was that I needed a job for income, neither of those guys did.  The banker went to Pittsburgh to find a job and the Trader and I went out together looking for work.

The Banker lied about his criminal conviction and got a job at a bank knowing they would figure it out in five weeks, but it was enough to get him home.  He later told me that the only reason he took the job was to get a hold of their customer list.  That should have tipped me off as to how sneaky of a guy he was.  The Trader found a part-time retail job for minimum wage, but just enough to qualify him for home confinement.

On my first weekend at the halfway house I was allowed to go out during the day, which didn't allow me enough time to go home, so Mary drove down to Pittsburgh alone so we could spent the day together.  A river ran through the little community where the halfway house was located and I'd already discovered a nice shaded spot on a bend of the river with an isolated bench, so that's where we went.  We just sat on the bench holding hands and looking out over the river.  We talked some, but mostly we just held hands and slowly got use to each other's presence again.   Being together again felt natural and right, but also uncomfortable.  Like neither one of us wanted to say or do anything to mess it up.  Just a little awkward, but not in a bad way.

After we'd sat like that for some time we both heard the sounds of geese honking.  After a few seconds it was evident they were flying up the river towards us, but were blocked from our view by the trees in the river's bend.  When they were close enough to hear clearly I said, "Six geese."  I'm not sure why I said that, but I just blurted it out.  Less than a minute later the geese came into view and flew by us.  Six of them.  Mary looked at me but didn't say anything.  We continued to sit in silence until another group of geese were making their way up the river.  From the sounds there were more of them this time so I tried to estimate their numbers from that sound.  "Fourteen." I said confidently.  When they flew by we counted nine geese, which caused us both to laugh.

Still holding hands we continued to sit together in silence, but something had changed.  The thing with the geese had removed some invisible barrier.  The uncomfortable and awkward feeling was gone.  As I was thinking this Mary let go of my hand and nuzzled up against me.  I put my arm around her and held her as tight as I could.  We sat there like that until I had to return to the halfway house.   This simple day, alone with Mary, becoming comfortable with each other again, will always be one of my favorite memories.  

After two weeks in the halfway house I was given my first weekend pass to go home.  I now had a driver's license and Mary had managed to buy me a car, but I wasn't yet allowed to have a car so Mary picked me up and took me home.

Remember our dog Lady, the Rottweiler that threw all of my fish over the side in Prince William Sound, Alaska?  Her reaction to the first time I came home was an event I'd rather not remember.  I'd just step in the door and was hugging all the kids.  Some of the kids ran to me with unbridled joy at my being home but a few held back watching their siblings with cautious reserve.  So it was one of those moments where I was happy beyond words but I was also paying close attention to everyone's reaction and attempting to figure out the best way to reintroduce myself to my family.

Through this joyous and cautious homecoming, Lady was having no problem displaying her feelings about my return.  Without question Lady remembered me as her body twisted and contorted in unbridled canine joy.  She whined and barked and made noises I'd never heard a dog make.  I couldn't help but notice the show she was putting on and I wanted to wrap her up in a hug, but I ignored her and gave all my attention to my children.  When Lady figured she'd been ignored too long she bit me in the crotch.  It wasn't a bite meant to hurt, but one to get my attention.  Nor did it hurt, but it did get my attention.  My reaction was one I wish I could have taken back the instant it happened.  When she bit me I reacted by hitting her in the head.  It was a convict reaction.  I was attacked so I responded with force and without thought.  A survival reaction.

Lady yelped and retreated and my family was stunned to silence.  I made a brief apology to my family then went after Lady to make up with her.  I'm not sure how everyone else felt about that homecoming, but it terrified me.  Like everyone in the family, I loved that dog.  Lady was family.  It shocked me that I would strike her.  She hadn't hurt me, nor had she meant to.  Yet my reactions were so geared towards prison life that I wasn't able to process the innocence of her action.  In the days that followed I gave a great deal of thought to what had happened with Lady.  I made a conscious effort to tone down my reaction to things that went on around me.  It didn't always go well.  Transitioning to normal life after prison is not easy.  Little things that people ignore on the street are a challenge that can't be ignored in prison.  In those first few weeks I had to stop myself from attacking a guy who cut line in front of me at McDonalds and had to reign myself in when another guy gave me the finger in traffic.  In prison those things are called disrespect, something that could not be allowed.  I made a conscious effort to adjust, but I don't think I made the full transition.

Another thing I remember about this first day home was that when things had quieted down and I was sitting in the kitchen, Becky climbed up on my lap and snuggled for several minutes without saying anything then asked me to never go to prison again.  I lied to my daughter and promised her that I would never go to prison again.  I'd meant that promise with all my heart when I made it, but I was unable to keep it.

I had convinced a local computer store to hire me, which wasn't difficult given my experience, but it was a farce that caused me to waste two weeks because the guy didn't have the money to pay me.  After that I found a job with a Pittsburgh moving company that hired ex-cons.  That job worked me hard, but paid well and qualified to get me home confinement.  I worked there for five weeks until I was allowed to go home.  Once home I had to answer to a federal probation officer, but it was easy to convince him that I needed to quit the moving company job.  For one thing Pittsburgh was too far from my home to drive every day and the other the company hired ex-cons.  One of the requirements of my federal probation was that I couldn't associate with known felons.

It only took a few days to get a job with a local Internet Service Provider (ISP).  At the time most people got on the Internet through dial up, and outside of the big cities most ISP's were local or regional companies.  I was the only employee at their New Castle Pennsylvania store.  My job was keeping the local POP (the dial up connection) running and do whatever computer repair and upgrade business came through the door.  It was a boring job that didn't challenge me but I had to have a job while I was on the home confinement program.  The day my home confinement ended I quit that job and started my own computer company.  I called it Tech Call to match the web site I'd set up called "techcall.com."

One of my first customers was the Trader I'd met at the halfway house.  He had a simple database he needed.  It was a joy to work for the guy.  He knew exactly what he needed and paid on time.  He really was a class act.

A month later I got a call from the Banker.  His job was more complicated and involved that customer data he had stolen.  I didn't realize he'd stolen it until later or I'd have never done the job for him.  Not that I'm a prude, it's just that I don't like people who violate a trust.  So his job was a complex data conversion that took me too many hours for the $600 he paid me.  More accurately I should say for the worthless $600 check he wrote me then put a stop payment on it.  After several discussions with him and then one with his bank I learned that this guy routinely issued stop payments on his checks. Not wanting to let my parole officer figure out I'd done business with a crooked ex-con banker I let the matter drop.  But I did count off six months on my calendar and marked the banker's name on that date.  You see I'd had a similar experience with a New Jersey Insurance company a decade earlier so I knew something about banking laws governing stop payments.  They are only good for 180 days.  When the magic day appeared on my calendar I drove to Pittsburgh and presented the check to his bank.  The check had "Payment Stopped" stamped on it so the bank wasn't going to honor it.  After I quoted their bank's regulations on this to them, they called their main office, then cashed the check.  The local bank manager handed me the cash and said, "Well done.  This guy is a jerk."

So back to my early days with Tech Call.  Mary had a rented house in Sharon Pennsylvania.  Not a bad neighborhood, but neither of us liked city living so buying a house was our first priority.  But until I made some money we were stuck there, so it was from this small house that I operated Tech Call.  One of the early tech calls was an email from Roberts street, which is where we lived.  I asked Mary if she knew where this house was.  She pulled back the curtain and pointed across the street.  I emailed back and set an appointment time.  We parked our cars behind the house, which was accessed through an alley, so I drove my car around the block to his house.  I spent an hour fixing his computer then left with his check.  He never realized I lived across the street.

Over the next few months I did non-stop tech calls like this one, though none so close to home.  I was charging $40 per hour plus whatever I could make on parts markup, so I wasn't doing bad.  In no time we were spending our free time house hunting.  Because our credit was horrible we were forced to look for a house that an owner was willing to finance.  This eliminated any house listed with a realtor so we did our house hunting by driving through the country and reading all the area shoppers.  So given our limited ability Mary was shocked when I stopped and backed up on a road to where a Century 21 sign advertised a house for sell.

We couldn't actually see the house, only the sign and a drive way that led back into the woods.  I told Mary I wanted to see this one.  She shrugged but didn't say anything.  We drove back slowly as this wasn't the kind of place you should be going if you didn't know the folks who lived there.  When we saw the house both Mary and I looked at each other.  We both knew this was the place. Movement in the sky caught both Mary's and my attention.  We looked up to see a bald eagle soaring overhead.  As former Alaskan's, we knew what an eagle looked like.  We loved eagles and both of us knew this was all the conformation we needed. We soon figured out the house was empty, so we had a look around.  First we walked down to the creek and listened to it gurgle in the shade, then we walked back and had a look at the barn.  Then we went to the house and looked in the windows, though we couldn't see much as most of the house was high off the ground.  Mary tried the door but it was locked.  My sweet wife then said to me, "I'd really like to see the inside."  I could never deny my wife.  In about a minute I picked the lock and let us in.

Later that night at a dinner with our pastor and a few other couples from our church we were telling them about the house and when asked how we got inside I said, "We gained access."  The pastor's wife said, "Hold up.  'We gained access.'  Who talks like that?"  I guess I do.

We had decided not to call Century 21 as that wouldn't do us any good.  While touring the house we figured out that there were no electrical outlets or light fixtures so knew it had to be an Amish owned house.  None of the neighbors were Amish so I went to the Court House the next day to figure out who owned the place.  From the owner's name I was sure he was Amish.  So Mary and I drove around the scatter Amish community until we saw someone out walking.  I asked if they knew where the guy lived and they gave me directions.  Benny, the Amishman, didn't actually own the house, his brother did, but Benny was managing his brother's affairs so he and I met and soon made a deal.  We also became friends.