St Pete, Dec 7-1980
Welcome to St Pete Straight. I spend 52 days on first phase and go home on 2nd. Life is weird, but going okay until I start school. I talk to a girl I met at a runaway shelter before I entered, and expect get in trouble for it, so I split.
For the next 18 months, me and Straight play a sick dance of wills.
In St Pete: Doug Hemminger is working his way up kid staff crushing whoever gets in his way. Dave Crock is on a roll. Sick bastards like Mike M wait for a misbehavior to act up. 5th phasers ignore you and your requests. Misbehaviors are sat on daily, and the madness has Miller Newton and his wife's approval. They ordered me restrained on more than one occasion. The Atlanta program group is forming up, and preparing to leave soon. Cincy is doing the same. Peanut butter diets are handed out like candy. I decide to "sit" and my parents are banned from open meetings as a motivational tool. Or to keep my mom away? Hmmm
Excercise raps of insane lengths, violent fighting misbehaviors, multiple restraint cases at the same time moaning in the periphery. Arm carving is common on both sides of group. Millers incessent screaming seems always around the corner.
Shipped to Atlanta: I wouldn't work in St Pete, so as puninshment, I am sent to ATL. The group is quieter. The motivation is not as manic. The singing is better, and sitting it out is accepted better by the group than in St Pete. In St Pete, a sitter/sponge is provoked to sit up, look at speaker etc. until you fight. In Atl, the fighting is almost non-existant. All night marathons are not done in 1982 ATL. The Tilly/Buttimer crowd is definately more sane than Newtons world down south.
Another poster once wrote how M Newton arrived in ATL unannounced one day until he broke into a confrontation rap by SCREAMING at the group for not confronting hard enough. I remeber that. The staffers were shocked, and the wide eyes in group showed it.
Here is Miller SCREAMING fuck this and FOS that as it degenerated into a "Atlanta program is Straight Lite" rant by Newton.
Things got worse after that. I bailed in dec 1982 and did not return.
Conclusion: Atlanta was kinder and more "southern" in its way of screwing up your head, but in St Pete, the rules and penalties were swiftly enforced by coercion, violence or deprivation. I had sat for months in ATL without even being stood up...they knew I wouldn't change for them. In St Pete, that NEVER would have been allowed. They did me a favor when I was shipped north.
Bill
ps I just was re-reading this and had a vivid flashback to being sat on in Atl to the outside of group by the doors facing Austell Rd. Ah, Atlanta WAS violent too.
[ This Message was edited by: tampa survivor on 2002-11-07 06:16 ]