Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, September 4, 1995 TAG: 9509050024
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: HOLIDAY
SOURCE: DENNIS STOCKTON
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
I have an understanding with the guards who make these hourly checks. Sometimes they come by the door and holler and I just holler back, or either I'll just wave at them. I certainly don't have any complaints with them. They're just doing their job.
While I sit here in my cell under death watch, I am working on an assignment from my ``editor'' at [the Virginian-Pilot]. He wanted me to write a piece about the way things have turned out for me, and the way things might have turned out. I've said many times that most stories in real life do not have happy endings, and mine is one of those.
It was about two weeks ago when I heard the news on FM-98 radio. It was 5:28 a.m. The DJ read a news bulletin: Mickey Mantle was dead.
We all knew Mick was very ill with cancer, but this seemed so sudden.
That news flash took me back to my boyhood, to 1951. The first time I heard the name Mickey Mantle on Mutual's Game of the Day, I was 10 years old.
That was a magic name, Mickey Mantle.
I lived in Shelby, N.C., in those days. I always dreamed of being a major league baseball player. From the first time I heard his name, Mickey became my favorite player. Since he played for the New York Yankees, they became my favorite team, and still are.
Mickey played right field for the Yankees during his first season in 1951. Joe DiMaggio retired at the end of the season and Mick would be installed in centerfield, where he would remain for 18 glorious years - a Triple Crown, three Most Valuable Player awards, pennants and World Series championships.
But in 1951, Mick was only 19. If I practiced up and made the Yankees by the time I was that age, Mick would only be 28, with years of playing time left. Thus I'd get to play with him. I decided that was the way it was going to be.
I threw and batted lefthanded. I learned that lefthanders made the best pitchers, so I began the long process of becoming a pitcher. I also practiced hitting. With DiMaggio gone, Mick needed a good hitter ahead of him in the lineup so he could drive in more runs. The Yankees were short on pitching and could use another good hitter - and I figured to fill both needs.
Anyway, when my family moved away from Shelby back in 1953, that was one dark day. We moved only a few days after Mick hit the much-discussed 565-foot home run off of Chuck Stobbs of the Washington Senators. I hated moving. I was leaving behind a group of friends that I played baseball with from can-to-can't-see. The only friend I had when we left Shelby was my hero, Mickey Mantle.
The town we moved to was Mount Airy, N.C., Andy Griffith's hometown. Some people have said the Mayberry we watched on TV was modeled after Mount Airy. But from my experience there, Mount Airy was no Mayberry. Mount Airy long ago came to be called ``Little Chicago,'' and for good reason.
I'm no murderer, but I certainly can't make the case that I'm a choirboy, either. I've spent most of my adult life involved in some kind of criminal activity, or in prisons and jails as a result of those activities. All my troubles started in the years after we left Shelby and settled in Mount Airy.
It would be hard for me to count all the criminal acts I've committed over the years, and I don't say this in a manner of bragging. It just happens to be the truth.
It wasn't until 1980 that I was arrested for a crime involving violence. My first ventures in crime included breaking and entering, forgery, safecracking and arson. Most of the money I made during brief periods of freedom came as the fruits of these crimes.
For a brief period in the '60s, I hauled moonshine. NASCAR legend Junior Johnson was a folk hero from my part of the country for his ventures in moonshining and I, like him, figured to use my moonshining as a springboard to landing a ride in a competitive race car. Next to arson, hauling liquor was the easiest way to make money.
As for arson, well, I'm one of the reasons you have to pay such high insurance premiums. There's just no way I can tell you with certainty the number of times I flicked my Bic, after being paid to do so, so that someone, most times prominent businessmen, could collect insurance. And those same people are now anxious for me to be dead. Most are retired now, unsure of what I may or may not have said about them. They would hate to spend their retirement years in prison. If you read this and fit in that category, let me assure you it is not my intent to give out your name to anyone. Go on and enjoy yourself, for you have nothing whatsoever to fear!
In my time, fences would not buy used stolen property. It had to be brand-new merchandise, straight from the retailer's showroom. If you stole something that was used, it was good only to keep and use yourself.
When breaking into stores I first looked for cash or a safe. Other times a place would be so full I'd have to go and unload and come back and load up again.
I recall getting a small Sentry safe out of a store one night. Two others were in on this job with me. Anyway, we didn't have any tools for opening a safe. Once we'd unloaded and sold the rest of our haul, I left my partners in crime sitting outside the city limits and, with that small safe snug in the trunk of my car, drove home to get my safe tools.
I'd just turned onto my street when I got pulled over by two cops. They got out and shined their flashlight all over my car (It was a Chevy; I liked Chevrolets because they have the best engines and offer the most trunk space). It was sitting low in the back with the safe in there. One cop asked, ``Dennis, where you headed?''
I answered, ``You know as good as I do where I live,'' pointing up the street. ``Where you reckon I'd be going this time of night?''
After another look around my car with his light, the cop said, ``Okay, you can go,'' and I did. They followed me, and I turned into the driveway. I got out as they drove slowly up the street. Once they were over the hill, I made my way to the basement and quietly got my tools.
I was back at the car, seconds away from opening the trunk, when a police radio squawked. I quickly ducked down beside the car, scooted around to the front and glanced up the street. Sure enough, their car was backed into a side street with the lights out. I waited perhaps 15 minutes. Then I heard their car. It passed out front with the lights out, going slowly back down the hill.
I waited another five or 10 minutes and then loaded my tools, backed out of the driveway and set off to pick up my friends and get that safe opened. As I drove by the Bunch-o-Lunch cafe, I saw the cop car parked outside, the officers inside getting their nightly free meal from the owner. When I got back to where my friends were waiting, they gave me hell for being gone so long. From there we went on to a secluded place and opened the safe. It took me less than four minutes to get the door torn completely off that safe. I can't say how much money was in that safe. Let's just say it was worth our while.
But the really easy money came from arson. You'd be surprised how many of your neighbors get in on this ``gravy.'' I recall a period when I'd been on escape for nearly a year when I went by the business of an acquaintance to learn he was in dire straits. A rival business had gone up directly across the highway from his and it offered a much larger selection of goods and a larger parking area.
When my friend asked how much it'd take to get the other place torched, I told him $500. He responded by saying he'd give a thousand. I quickly accepted.
Among the goods that other store carried were at least a hundred country hams. I borrowed a pickup from a friend and was parked behind the business of the man that hired me an hour before the rival business closed. When it did, I waited till all the employees were gone, then walked over and pried open the door to check the place out. I carried along a five-gallon can of kerosene.
I returned and got the pickup, loaded it with hams and cigarettes and then went down the aisles with that kerosene. Back outside, I flicked my Bic before climbing under the wheel and driving away.
The next morning when I drove up to get paid, I found the ashes still smoking from the fire. The entire roof had collapsed. A mile before getting there I smelled ham. I learned I'd missed a storeroom filled with more hams.
The friend that hired me was pleased with the results - so much so he bought the stuff I'd loaded from across the road. Paid me a good price, too.
Of course, that's the way things really were. Sometimes I think about the way things could have been.
Years after my family moved away from Shelby, I was pitching for a prison team in Butner, N.C. Tommy Byrne, a Yankee scout and former Yankee player who played with Mickey, was there and watched me pitch. I can still remember seeing his gold Cadillac parked behind the backstop.
I was so nervous I walked the first two batters. But then I settled down and pitched a pretty strong game. We won, 17-0.
Afterward, Byrne came up to me and told me he liked what he had seen. He said I had potential. That was his word: ``potential.''
Right now I'm looking at a Mickey Mantle baseball card I've had since 1983. It's sealed in plastic. Since learning I have a killing date, I've given away some of my things. I've given my Mantle card to a little boy I know, the son of a good friend. Every boy needs a hero, and mine was Mickey Mantle. Mick, as I see it, you were the greatest. May you rest in peace.
by CNB