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Apr. 25th, 2013 04:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang! is one of those memoirs that's fascinating to read partly because you have to take it with a grain of salt.
So Robert E. Burns is a WWI veteran from New Jersey -- notable mostly for being exceptionally short -- who, upon returning home with severe PTSD, wanders away from his respectable middle-class family and becomes a drifter. One morning, he sort of accidentally falls in with some petty criminals and ends up helping to rob a grocery store for four dollars. Because it's a stupid, petty robbery, they are almost immediately caught and Burns gets sentenced to six to ten years of hard labor. After a few weeks of extreme misery on a chain gang, Burns pretty promptly decides on ESCAPE OR DIE TRYING; his escape is successful and he makes it to Chicago.
All this is probably true, and if what you're looking for is an an account of life on a chain gang -- which I was -- it's a super useful reference, and worth reading just for that.
Once he's in Chicago, Burns -- by his own account -- eventually gets caught up in this epic romantic drama where his landlady falls madly in love with him and essentially blackmails him into marrying her, and Burns (by his own account) is all, "I will share your bed, I will even marry you, but YOU CANNOT BUY MY HEEEEART and if TRUE LOVE comes along I am dumping you like a hot potato." Eventually Burns becomes a successful newspaper owner, and of course at this point TRUE LOVE comes along in the guise of a hot young music student, and he dumps wife #1 like a hot potato as promised, and wife #1 proceeds to tell the authorities that he's an escaped convict and get him arrested, in what Burns characterizes as an act of pure spite.
All of this -- for obvious reasons -- I take with something of a grain of salt. (ALL I CARE ABOUT IS LOOOOOOOVE! says Burns. Sorry to seem cynical, Burns, but I feel like there may have been SOME LESS THAN PURE MOTIVES in marrying and then dumping your landlady here.)
Anyway, by this point, Burns is a Notable and Respected Citizen and back in touch with his respectable family and his case is lobbied hither and yon, including extensive bribery of various officials, but to no avail; back to the chain gang to finish out his stint he goes. I sort of have conflicted feelings about this, because, on the one hand, yeah, clearly, NOBODY deserves to be on a chain gang and it's horrible and unfair, but on the other hand . . . sorry all your wealth and social status couldn't buy your way out of the justice system, dude?
Once it becomes clear that nobody is going to reverse his case, Burns manages to escape AGAIN, and lies low in New Jersey for a while, and then decides "eh, screw it" and starts publishing his anti-chain-gang manifesto, which is this book! Which basically ends with "HERE I AM, HANGING OUT IN NEW JERSEY. COME AT ME BRO"
And then -- this is the part I found out from the internet after finishing -- it gets made into an award-winning movie starring Paul Muni, and the governor of New Jersey is all "well, I'm not extraditing this celebrity author," and Burns gets the credit for helping expose the terrible conditions on chain gangs, which leads to the eventual abolition of the chain gang system. Happy ending!
(And for the curious, TRUE LOOOOVE drops out of contact once he escapes prison and is never heard from again.)
So Robert E. Burns is a WWI veteran from New Jersey -- notable mostly for being exceptionally short -- who, upon returning home with severe PTSD, wanders away from his respectable middle-class family and becomes a drifter. One morning, he sort of accidentally falls in with some petty criminals and ends up helping to rob a grocery store for four dollars. Because it's a stupid, petty robbery, they are almost immediately caught and Burns gets sentenced to six to ten years of hard labor. After a few weeks of extreme misery on a chain gang, Burns pretty promptly decides on ESCAPE OR DIE TRYING; his escape is successful and he makes it to Chicago.
All this is probably true, and if what you're looking for is an an account of life on a chain gang -- which I was -- it's a super useful reference, and worth reading just for that.
Once he's in Chicago, Burns -- by his own account -- eventually gets caught up in this epic romantic drama where his landlady falls madly in love with him and essentially blackmails him into marrying her, and Burns (by his own account) is all, "I will share your bed, I will even marry you, but YOU CANNOT BUY MY HEEEEART and if TRUE LOVE comes along I am dumping you like a hot potato." Eventually Burns becomes a successful newspaper owner, and of course at this point TRUE LOVE comes along in the guise of a hot young music student, and he dumps wife #1 like a hot potato as promised, and wife #1 proceeds to tell the authorities that he's an escaped convict and get him arrested, in what Burns characterizes as an act of pure spite.
All of this -- for obvious reasons -- I take with something of a grain of salt. (ALL I CARE ABOUT IS LOOOOOOOVE! says Burns. Sorry to seem cynical, Burns, but I feel like there may have been SOME LESS THAN PURE MOTIVES in marrying and then dumping your landlady here.)
Anyway, by this point, Burns is a Notable and Respected Citizen and back in touch with his respectable family and his case is lobbied hither and yon, including extensive bribery of various officials, but to no avail; back to the chain gang to finish out his stint he goes. I sort of have conflicted feelings about this, because, on the one hand, yeah, clearly, NOBODY deserves to be on a chain gang and it's horrible and unfair, but on the other hand . . . sorry all your wealth and social status couldn't buy your way out of the justice system, dude?
Once it becomes clear that nobody is going to reverse his case, Burns manages to escape AGAIN, and lies low in New Jersey for a while, and then decides "eh, screw it" and starts publishing his anti-chain-gang manifesto, which is this book! Which basically ends with "HERE I AM, HANGING OUT IN NEW JERSEY. COME AT ME BRO"
And then -- this is the part I found out from the internet after finishing -- it gets made into an award-winning movie starring Paul Muni, and the governor of New Jersey is all "well, I'm not extraditing this celebrity author," and Burns gets the credit for helping expose the terrible conditions on chain gangs, which leads to the eventual abolition of the chain gang system. Happy ending!
(And for the curious, TRUE LOOOOVE drops out of contact once he escapes prison and is never heard from again.)
