Milkman Mike’s Personal Story Part 1

Milkman Mike’s Personal Story Part 1
Life in Never Never Land
Places I never never want to see again
Part I



I’ve decided that it’s time to update my personal story, as I see my past a little different than when I first told it in 2001, and thru the years, my past has been unfolded to me, a little bit at a time. Things that I’d forgotten about, things I didn’t want to remember, and that which even to this day, don’t know if it’s fact or a stories that I built up in my mind.

I first shared it with a bunch of Prison convicts/addicts/alcoholics in the Amends Recovery Program at CRC (California Rehabilitation Center) in Norco, California, sometime in 2001. I ended up there after serving 3 or 4 prison terms beginning in 1992, along with 3 or 4 parole violations. County jails had been my second home up until 1992, and as someone once told me, “Mike, you are doing LIFE on the installment plan”, which well I was. My agenda up until 1992 was going to county jails about every 2-3 years and serving 6 months to 1 year sentences. It included work furlough centers, work farms and minimum security housing.

I hit the California Department of Corrections (the Prison System) (the Big House) (the Pen) at the age of 45 years old in 1992. All the jail time I did was always somehow related to alcohol and drugs. In 1992, I got my 4th DUI in a 5 year span, and due to changes in the laws, was sentenced to 16 months, the low mandatory prison term. I went to San Quentin, and then to Pelican Bay State Prisons. In the next 8 years, I was to see the insides of Folsom State Prison, Tracy, and CRC, with a couple more terms in San Quentin as well. In 2000, I pleaded with the judge for a recovery program instead of the 5 year sentence they were going to give me. The judge’s words in January of 2001 “I am going to try something with you Mr. Olson, and send you to CRC. Even though your problems are alcohol related and CRC is for addicts, we will send you there in hopes that this will work for you, as nothing else in the past has”. I actually had to convince the judge that I was an addict as well as an alcoholic.

My prayers were answered, “beating” the 5 year sentence for a 9 month program. Little did I know that those 9 months would turn into 29 months. I had been “out” there for about 37 years, abusing alcohol, drugs, and most of all, myself and my family. My higher power must have deemed it necessary for a long term recovery program for me. That’s what it took to get my clean and sober.

The 29 months in recovery was the beginning of my almost 10 years clean and sober. I’ve decided to tell my story in segments of my life, as I see it now, or maybe I as I THINK I saw it then. There will be a lot that will be left out, not only to protect myself, but others as well. Some things I will tell in detail and some not. The details might be for those that can relate to the times, maybe jog their memory and give them and others more incentive not to want to go back out there. I know that I will also benefit from this, as thru the years, I’ve learned that once I start typing and thinking, the more that is revealed to me.

Where it began

I was brought into this world in 1946 by my father (addict/alcoholic), and my mother (19 years old), and they divorced when I was about 2 years of age. I had an older brother that my mother had at age 16, and we were both shipped off to foster homes. I was to live with a woman (Lou) and a Jewish man (Izzy). Izzy sold costumes and jewelry to the “show girls” in the Bay Area and Nevada. They divorced about 4 years after I started living with them. It’s kind of ironic, but years later when I met my wife, it turned out that her mother, a showgirl and stripper at the time, knew Izzy also, and bought costumes and jewelry from him at about the same time I was living with him. My wife had recollections of being in his shop on Geary St. in San Francisco as a child. We visited Izzy together a couple of times and Izzy recalled her mother.

Lou then married a Japanese fella (Art) that was a preacher. My life from 4 to 9 years of age was involved heavily into religion and the church. I played the accordion at the church functions and studied the bible. This was a complete opposite of the life that was in store for me later.

In the winter of 1955 my mother came and pulled me from Lou off the steps of the Church in Los Angeles, and brought me to her home in South San Francisco. At the time, I hated my mother for taking me away from the woman that I had grown to love and thought and believed to be my mother. I can remember lying awake at night in bed crying, and thinking that GOD had abandoned me. I held onto this idea until I was sent to CRC in 2000. Although I went to Catechism as a youth and somewhat practiced my faith, my inner thoughts would always go back to those days.

My life changed dramatically when I was brought to the Bay Area. My older brother was the only person that I was close with, even with 2 younger step brothers, and a step sister that came along a few years later. The only problem being was that my older brother was already getting into trouble, and I, looked up to him no matter what. In just a few short years it would turn out that I would follow in his footsteps.

I played sports and was average in most, even though I was a small person, smaller than the average boys my age. I started acting out the “tough” image, getting into fights, hanging at the pool hall and at 14, got involved in burglaries with my brother. It wasn’t long before I started my own “ring”, and after about 2 years of robbing homes and businesses, got caught. I was sent to a Boys Camp in La Honda for 8 months, and while there, lifted weights, learned boxing, some martial arts and street fighting. When I got out, I used these newly acquired “skills” to cause one hell of a lot of mayhem.

In my senior year of High School I started drinking wine and then whiskey with a couple of my friends. The first few times I got sick, but continued to drink until I could “hold” it. The night before graduation pictures and ceremony practice, my friend and I got drunk at the yearbook signing party. He passed out on a car, and we both ended up getting arrested. We got out in time to participate in the senior function, and in the end, were allowed to graduate on stage.

We lived in the suburbs and drugs were not out in the open yet, as they would be later on in the 60’s. There were drugs around, it’s just that they were kept hush hush, and hidden from the small towns. My older brother was into speed at the time, but I wasn’t aware of it at this time. I would later see him with it, and he would tell me it was medicine for a cold. He hung out at a house down the street a couple of blocks, and that’s where the drug people were at that time. Later, when I worked at the neighborhood drug store as stock and sales clerk, I would start stealing a variety of drugs and my brother would sell them.

My drinking accelerated, along with my weekend wildness, and my parents gave me an ultimatum. Either do as we say or move out. I moved out and got an “apartment” in San Francisco. The “apartment” was a one room studio with the bathroom down the hall which I rented for 15 dollars a week. It was on Stockton St., right before the tunnel to Chinatown and North beach, and up the street from the Tenderloin.

When I moved to the big city, I was working at an insurance company on Stockton St., so the apartment was about a 5 min. walk. I had started there as a mail clerk, delivering mail throughout the companies 6 or 7 floors and moved up to IBM operator and operated one of the first computers, a Honeywell that took up a whole room. The majority of the work force was young, and it wasn’t long before I was going to parties all over the Bay Area and drinking up a storm. I learned very quickly how to make an ass out of myself while drinking. I was one of those drinkers that gets loud and boisterous, and wants to argue and fight. I thought I was a tough guy, but when I think back, I believe that the reason I won so many was that I was smart and knew how to pick my fights, and could and would, use anything available for a weapon.

There were a lot of “side roads” in my first 18 years that led to what I would become in my adult years. Here are a few quick notes that I recall as I’m writing this story:

My 18th birthday – Out drinking in my friend Tom’s 56 Plymouth in the rain, in Redwood City. He rear-ends a car driven by a pregnant woman (she didn’t lose the baby), I go thru the front windshield head first: 80 stitches in my head. Tom (Italian with a big nose) BREAKS his nose on the steering wheel. Nose gets gigantic! I lose almost 2 pints of blood, next night drink a ½ pint of Vodka. Drunk, drunk, drunk……… again.

14 years old – Friend and I have early morning paper routes. Garage door open, I spot a purse hanging on the kitchen door. I take it and run.

13-14 years old working in a pharmacy as stock clerk and cashier. Pocketing money everyday, taking cigarettes, sports cards, comic books and whatever else I could get my hands on.

12 to 18 years of age – Hustling pool in the pool halls. My brother would take me to the big-time pool halls in San Francisco and get them to spot the little “kid” points. I usually ended up winning money.

15 to 18 years of age – Brother and I would pick the locks of coke machines with a fingernail file in gas stations, hotels, motels and stores. Lot of businesses used them then as a safe for their receipts and we stole hundreds in a single night.

15-16 years old – Car lots kept the keys in new cars in those days and we would take one to get home and leave the car around the corner.

In the 60’s a lot of the small grocery stores were owned and operated by the Chinese. There were a few stores up in the Excelsior District in San Francisco that would sell liquor to minors and we knew right where they were. We were buying our own liquor at 16 and 17 years of age, when the older guys at the bowling alley stopped buying for us. It was a regular trip for some of us each and every weekend in our senior year.

My friends dad owned a brake shop and one night we took one of the customers cars to make our liquor run to the city. We ended up getting drunk and when he was driving me home, rolled the car into one of our neighbors fence. We ran, but the homeowner recognized me from my paper route (one of my customers) and told the police who we were. Off to jail for the night, I think I was about 17 at the time.

This is the end of part I of my story and for your information; I was 18 years of age at this time. I will continue with Part II that will include my graduation to the bar scene and drugs. Stay tuned, this might take some time.