I wrote this accounting many many long and painful years ago. Nothing has changed in the story so I leave it alone. I’m sure it rambles in and out of sensible thoughts and communication, because the person I once was was replaced with a dark and empty shell with such a raw and vulnerable deterioration of what happens when life, especially prison eats away at our very core. I am by no means a writer, only a story teller. My stories seem to be similar in some ways to the lives of others in the struggle to survive life and come out of it a better person. I can only hope my personal darkness has led me to discover the light in thousands of beautiful ways leading to my journey to Tucson, Arizona USA, and the compassionate souls and endless hugs and smiling faces of peace and joy I have encountered. At last I feel accepted by society.
Feel free to resend, pass along or print and passalong under the gracious name of Bajito Onda Community Development Foundation
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On the most deadly day of my life when I was going to end it all – not only my life, but the lives of many innocent persons I honestly believe I heard God’s voice speak to me.
…I went to prison for making immigrants instant citizens by counterfeiting of documents to help them cross back and forth to Mexico and other countries to see their dying mothers, to enroll their children in schools legally, to work with dignity and to contribute to the country they had come to for equal rights, fair but not rich wages and to take the jobs Americans would not even do. They built our highways, they worked in dead end food industries so they could serve Americans. I knew it was a crime, but I was badly depressed when my father my idol in life, Colonel Logan Brooks Hendrixson died in 1980. It was August of 1982 and I had been crying over my father’s death every single day for two years. Well not just that but the fact that my mother and sister stole all my inheritance that my Father left me and they moved here to Dallas and turned their backs on me so they could spend it all in front of me. It was something I never expected them to do to me – they knew how my Father loved me and I loved him. I badly needed counseling and perhaps medication but nothing existed to help me. Instead I felt that I didn’t care about my future, I was weak and easily influenced to help others even if it was against the law. I flat didn’t care a thing about myself or my future – it had all become a blur. I got arrested by the Feds.
I remember laying there sprawled on the floor as they grabbed me and threw me like trash into the center of the small room and surrounded me with dozens of rifles & guns pointed at my head, I stupidly tried to count all the agents who swarmed in all over me. It all happened so fast. I was actually typing out another birth certificate when they knocked on and then busted down the front door. I reached and hid it underneath the typewriter I guess like, ‘oh they’ll never look under here.’ The more they threw everything all over the place and the more they dug, the more they found. I began to think….’what was I thinking anyway? – my whole life fast forwarded in one knock on the door. I tried to count them there was so many. I think I counted eight cars outside my business at the time, a paint and body shop, and I counted over 20 agents, all who must have been thinking I was another Al Capone. Once again as I lay there on the floor, I was thinking…’what was I thinking?… what WAS I doing? To cause all of this. I had been sick to my stomach with a bladder infection and had had my pants unbuttoned. They didn’t bother to button up my pants and as they drug me out of my office handcuffed behind my back I remember my pants almost falling off in front of all my business neighbors and onlookers stopping to see what was happening to me, to my business, whatever. It was a sick mess and I was all of a quick sudden the center of all the attention.
I thought it was funny, well not funny but very strange that it was Immigration was the lead agency that busted me and I was put in the same holding cell that illegal immigrants are put in. I reached into my pocket to see what I had on me and there were more birth certificates… I remember wadding them up tiny and flushing them down the open cement commode. My pager kept going off over and over because they didn’t take it from me – people were calling me telling me they REALLY had to talk to me about their car or other body shop issues and all I could do was just stare at my pager in disbelief of what was going on that second in my life.
In my short career of making birth certificates for people I remember the guys who told me, ‘don’t even worry about it – if you ever get caught’ we’ll be right here to get you out of the trouble. I felt a bond with them since they were the focus of my problem and my wanting to help them – and also a rejection by my country for doing something for them – that America was not willing to do as it had done for the Irish, the Italians, the Cubans, the Germans, the Jews, the Africans, etc. What was the big deal? We were the melting pot except when it came to the generations of people who had been our brothers and sisters, raising our kids, making our gardens beautiful, feeding us their rich cooking, who built our highways and worked in our fields, raising our cattle, stocking our refrigerators with meat, vegetables, fruit and friendliness. Now it was a crime to help them.
My lawyer finally made it to the Federal Building and rescued me from the ‘bad guy – good guy’ team who refused to even let me make a phone call all day long. I had no experience in all of this – but I did know one thing. I was supposed to get to make one phone call – and I never got to make it. All I ever got was bad guy good guy over and over again. By the time my lawyer showed up I was so happy to see him, thinking he could surely make this nightmare go away. When he opened up his briefcase, there was one of my birth certificates I had made for a client of his. Ooops was the consensus.
I was finally able to leave only to come back some other day. I went to a friend’s house in East Dallas. Where I thought no one was watching me. I just slept for two days and laid low. My mind raced with all the what if’s in the world. I was just sick not knowing my future. I was such a control freak and then the embarrassment of it all hitting my friends and clients in the body shop. When I finally went back to my body shop and opened the door – there it was – the mess strewn all over the floor in piles dumped everywhere. It was the same day the notice about my big bust came out in the Metro section of the Dallas Morning News. I could not bring myself ever to read that article. Never. The guy who was my painter came up to the door and screamed at me ‘what’s going to happen to my job?’ I looked at him and said….’your job?’ What about my life? I could see I really was in this alone. And it was just going to get lonelier. Soon I started paying attention to strangers coming up to me from the street wanting to know about this and that and they were wearing those shiny reflect back sunglasses even though it was August it made my skin crawl with paranoia. Where did all these people with those reflecting sunglasses come from all of a sudden or was it just my imagination? Were they cops or clients? I tried to settle down and just take it one day at a time.
However one day I did notice a little truck parked across the street. It was a busy street so it wasn’t all that rare for someone to have parked there. My paranoia finally kicked into high gear and I ran across the street and up to the passenger side of the little cream truck and sure enough! I had caught one. On the guy’s front seat was a huge pistol, a recorder right next to it and the long mic was aimed right at my shop. I told him ‘who are you and what in the hell do you want?’ I was so mad but so helpless. They still were spying on me. He just sat there – didn’t move – didn’t say a thing.
I called Woody and told him about it. I had been arrested on August 4, 1982. When I called Woody he said, ‘uh bad timing – bad news’. He and I had always had such a kindred relationship that no matter what happened to him it happened to me right afterwards and vice versa.
We met up in person. When I had been out of my shop I had often stayed over at Woody’s apartment for the whole weekend. Parties, swimming, cooking out – hanging out, etc. What I hadn’t realized was that the Feds were also tapping his phone and there was my phone going right into his apartment. On a totally separate case, some of Woody’s wild friends were fairly big time dope dealers. I didn’t do dope so I didn’t really care what other people did. I figured Woody was dabbling in it because people used to call him up asking if he had any golf balls. One time he told me ‘go figure Hendrixson… a golf ball is white and weighs one ounce’. Either that or since we both moved here from Arkansas – he used to call it mom’s homemade apple pies. Yeah right, he was selling apple pies.
Well his pie and golfball business had also landed him in the slammer four days after I was there. His happened on my Father’s birthday. That was the worse thing for me. It killed me.
After I got arrested Woody came and got me every day and would always pat me on the shoulder in the car and tell me ‘its gonna be alright Hendrixson’ we’ll get you through this – we always do. He was my security blanket after my Dad died. I believed him. Now this! When he was released from the Federal building on his own case where there was a sting of 35 people arrested on these drug dealing charges I was there to comfort him. Now it was the two of us as always in a mess together. Since he was number 35 on the case he had, his chances did seem more hopeful than me being the only one they would be looking at.
Soon I had to make the appearances into the Federal courtroom. I forget the judge’s name, maybe Barefoot Sanders… I’m not sure. I was in shock the whole time in there.
Needless to say, with each time I entered the Federal building thereafter I felt worse and worse. There was a snake of a guy who did something called a ‘pre sentencing investigation’ on me. I had never been arrested in my life. I was a good person with depression problems and I obviously had made some very bad choices. Now this. I remember the day when he told me…. ‘you are nothing more than a wolf in sheep’s clothing’. Wow! I thought, he is so wrong. I am really a nice person and this is not really that big of a deal for him to think this of me. I was still very innocent.
I began attending the hearings with these lawyers of mine. Supposedly they knew so and so and were going to do something about all of this to make it go away. At first they said I had like four charges of counterfeiting citizenship documents or something like that. My lawyers said they were going to throw it in their face and tell them that the word counterfeit only referred to money not to documents – I was so proud of them that they had caught that very important loophole. But when we went back to court after them asking for a dismissal the Feds came back with another story. This time I was charged with 120 fraudulent creation of birth certificates and 555 possess with intent to sell illegal social security cards. And everything carried a potential sentence of 5 years each. Suddenly I no longer had any faith in my lawyers. I was calling Woody from the pay phone in the Federal Building wondering why he wasn’t there with me. He wasn’t worried about it he said, ‘just keep telling them you’re innocent’ was his advice. He never went to court with me. I was scared to death. So as I sat there each time there was another hearing I began to notice a pattern of the other people who were further advanced in the process than I was. Every single one of them was found guilty by pleading guilty. Not one had a jury trial because they were told if they wasted the government’s money they could be stuck with their entire charges and multiple sentences. And I then noticed that every single one of them was sentenced to prison. Not one received probation. Seemed that probation was a thing for the state charges but not for Federal.
So sure enough, my lawyers brought me into a room with pre-sentence investigation guy and another guy – I’ll never forget – Mr. Shaw. Mr. Shaw was a big guy who had this little meeting with me and asked me about where I would like to try to be sent ‘if’ I was sentenced to prison.
Of course I just knew I would never be sentenced to prison for something this non violent, just a few bad choices which they surely knew I was sorry for by now and would never do again – ever. This was a huge enough wide awake wakeup call for me.
The day of my sentencing Woody did make it down there. So did miraculously enough my mother and the family I lived with before and after prison.
I realized that with all that potential for hundreds of years in prison they gave me no choice but to say ‘nobody had anything to do with my pleading guilty but I plead guilty anyway’ – the deal they finally offered me to stop the mountainous charges from getting huger was for me to shut up and admit I did it. Hell they did catch me red handed so there was no need to tell them ‘I’m innocent’ till they gave me a thousand years in prison. I just wanted it to be over and get on with it. They told me if I pleaded (like all the other fools before me) It would only be for one charge of up to 5 years maximum. It sounded a whole lot better than centuries behind bars.
I stood up with my lawyers and said the fateful words. I plead guilty blah blah blah. The judge said whatever he said and hit the gavel down. All I heard was something about three years. Out of a possible five – it sounded okay. My mother jumped up and screamed out ‘three years probation!’ – my lawyers turned around and told her. He didn’t say anything about probation.
He said prison time to be served. Whoa! That was a whole new scenario…. Now it made sense to me – why Mr. Snake in the grass pre sentence investigator and Mr. Shaw had taken me into the little room asking me about where I would ‘like’ to go if found guilty. It was because the whole thing was a pre-arranged set up deal. I was doomed from the start. I just didn’t realize it. Now I was ushered off to Mr. Shaw’s office again – this time feeling like I had just been shot with some deadly disease and had it to bear all alone. Now Woody and my mother and my friend just stood there looking at me with a blank look on their faces. I had really done it this time I felt like saying. And where were all the guys who if I got caught they were going to save my butt.
I was sentenced to three years in prison. My best friend and sidekick Woody Yates took me over there. I remembered them making me in the entrance area long enough I thought about leaving back out to the world. They had trusted me on my own recognizance to turn myself in. I was nervous of course but had no idea of what would lay ahead – not even one second of it. Soon a guard came, she was a small Hispanic woman and she motioned for me to come through the heavy steel door she had another guard open. It rolled open clanking as it went and as fast as it slammed open it began to close. I hugged Woody and I walked into the ‘box between the two doors’. I turned to see a very sad looking Woody just standing there looking at me. I was so taken by the whole experience I didn’t really have any feelings about it. I was just trying to get on with whatever would be the first step towards my release someday not really realizing when that may ever be. I realized I knew nothing about this experience because only someone who was going through it could ever know how it feels. It was like dying or something very lonely and alone in a unique experience that others around me could see me going through it but I was the one who had to go through with it – no turning back.
Shortly after my arrival onto the unit I remembered the so-called Christmas ornaments every fifty feet or so hanging from the bleak ceiling. I thought to myself ‘I guess they even have a sort of Christmas in prison.’ The elevator I came up on let me out close to a center area with a a table and chairs around it. Women were welcoming back others who had been gone on a special furlough. I thought ‘welcoming someone back to prison is sick.’ It was December 27, 1982, while sitting in the guard’s office waiting to be processed I heard a guitar playing and a beautiful voice singing. I asked, who is that? The guard turned to me and said, ‘it’s a nun – Sister Marie’. Wow I thought… no wonder I was in prison if they were sending nuns.
All I could think of was to tell the guard who I later found out was also an exconvict for killing her husband and spent 11 years for murder – I told her mistakenly that I was there just to be good, serve my time quietly and get out of there. She laughed in my face and said ‘we’ll see about that now won’t we?’ I knew I should not have let her see my fear of the unknown but thought I would give it a try anyway.
A few days into this adventure I was standing at the door to the unit waiting to be let out to go to the chow hall. It was only 4pm and they were feeding us so called dinner. As I stood there a big black woman came running up on me and pushed me up against the wall, saying ‘you better get outta my face!’ I was so surprised because I was just standing there minding my own business and she ran up out of nowhere. I remembered a movie line and I bowed up and told her ‘hey! If you feel so damned froggy then just jump!” as amazingly as she appeared she vanished and backed off. I thought wow that was weird and I just got here.
I learned to play games, lie, cheat, fight and to fight back, and most importantly I learned how to become respected and left alone….through fear and emulating psychotic behavior. It was a whole lot better than what they had been putting me through. But once I mastered it – that violence and striking fear into the hearts of those who may prey on you… I could not change back to my old innocent self. I learned what we call now how to ‘rock and roll’ prison style. Prison became the place no one feared being sent to by society because we were already there – we were out of society’s sight and mind. We were the forgotten ones – the ones who society thinks will never return. In one aspect – we were free of society – not free in society. The guards were actually jealous of us – we did nothing but waste day after day doing nothing constructive or rehabilitative. But they also did nothing to protect us – we were on our own day and night. Screams of rape and beatings rang out night after night striking fear into our own hearts wondering when it would happen to us. No one stood up for anyone. I learned what real racism really was. It wasn’t just about black or Hispanic it was white and others as well. No matter what you were it wasn’t good in that place. Plus there were also men inmates who caused many of the fights and made my life even more of a living hell. I was told day after day to allow myself to become ‘programmed by prison’. It made me crazy and I began to have images like movies in vivid color coming into my head of how I would sort of reach out of my own mind with my hands and grab whoever was telling me something I hated to hear, no matter what it was, and I would slowly begin to kill them until I had done so in a bloody fit of rage – I could see it happen so clear and became so good at it those violent ‘movies’ soon became my source of entertainment. I began to worry, was I merely becoming programmed or was I losing my mind in this place. I would go back to my cell and at night I would have nervous breakdowns of weakness and hopelessness, but in the day or around other prisoners I put on a facade of
I, like all convicts thought that the shoes we stepped out of to enter prison would be right where we left them and we would just step back into them when we got out and continue our life as it was when we left it on the shelf. That is where all convicts are sadly mistaken, because prison is just beginning when they return… and sadly it never ends. No employment for exconvicts – criminal record. No apartment, home purchase, no credit, no car loan, no voting, no family acceptance, people thinking of you as an untrustworthy person, afraid of you, family rejection even moving away, the only fear was the fear of returning to the unknown. Prison becomes a functioning society without bills and responsibility. I became just another number stripped of dignity and humanness.
My life was over, I was finally caved in and broken and so weak, I had no future and the past I had was miserable, not even worth remembering. My present was black, filled with despair and rage for anyone or anything within a thousand miles of my rejected heart. The only time I could ever feel was with pain, sweet pain usually from beating my own self in the face and head often blacking my own eyes, mouth and nose. It was the only time when I was able to cry tears and know I was at least still alive and not totally dead inside. It felt like it was the only time I was in control of my own life and emotions. Without the constant threat of if I did something else I would be sent back to prison. Something else I also wanted to be in control of, not only when but how I went back to prison. The streets of Dallas held only darkness, humiliation and rage for me. Everywhere I turned more rejection, snickers, backs turned, and hopelessness. I felt no love and I had no purpose when I said …. There is nowhere for me where I will be accepted…. Except back in prison or in a coffin. I was crying so hard I knew it was my final act in and against society. The same society that had never accepted me back – even after I had so called ‘paid my debt to them’ whoever they were….. Now it didn’t matter – now they would all pay. I was standing in a small shack behind the family’s house where I lived who also rejected me – I was in the dark and my chest feeling like all I had ever received instead of the love I wanted so bad was a trash can where in a darkened corner I sat alone while more wadded up trash was tossed into me. I never knew a purpose in life. I thought because I was an exconvict I could fight my way through any battle in life after prison – I had never felt fear and nothing intimidated me – I had become known as the fierce ‘Del from Hell’ and I laughed about my reputation as a societal psycho back from prison, smarter than ever before, a product of its cold and furious environment… I had told a neighbor who was about the only person who would even speak to me, a sweet Mexican lady who always told me she cared about me when the family I lived with would lock me out of the house, nail the windows shut and throw my belongings out into the rain and mud. I had tried and tried not to believe I was going to commit a mass act but I felt it inside me coming for a long time – I had lied to her and told her I badly needed a gun to protect myself. I knew as an exconvict I could not possess a gun plus I had become too crazy to have one before but she had believed me and had brought me an uzi. In Oak Cliff where I lived drive by shootings are an everyday occurrence.
I was holding that loaded uzi close to me – as cold as it was – I felt like it was protecting me from society’s hatred and rejection. It was about to help me get even after all the years of pain. I don’t even remember the year anymore. I just know it had been about seven years.
I was leaning against a table in the dark building. It was dark because it was the darkroom for the little printing business I had started because no one would hire me. I was trying to stop sobbing and crying and wipe away my tears, so I could reach for the doorknob and go out into the light with a deadly mission to kill others even if it meant my own going out in a gunfight with cops. It was all I could see in my mind. The shooting the killing, my dying or being taken back to prison – finally it was going to end. Finally it was going to be over forever. Life in prison, execution or dying. I thought I had no other future – I thought my life was over.
When I received This Calling…..
“YOU LISTENED TO MAN AND YOU ENDED IN PRISON LISTEN TO ME AND SEE WHERE I
LEAD YOU”
This work in serving only God my friends has Replaced the family that Abandoned me when I
Was in prison – with Hundreds of thousands of others just like me. Nothing will ever come
Between my God given Family of Bajito Onda my violence has been replaced with peace.
My worldly greed has been replaced with giving. My hatred for children has been replaced with love and passion for others to hear their tiny voices. My misunderstanding and lack of compassion for prisoners had led me to being one of them.
On the most deadly day of my life when I was going to end it all – not only my life, but the lives of many innocent persons I honestly believe I heard God’s voice speak to me from behind my left shoulder about eight feet away.
I went to prison for making immigrants instant citizens by counterfeiting of documents to help them cross back and forth to Mexico and other countries to see their dying mothers, to enroll their children in schools legally, to work with dignity and to contribute to the country they had come to for equal rights, fair but not rich wages and to take the jobs Americans would not even do. They built our highways, they worked in dead end food industries so they could serve Americans. I knew it was a crime, but I was badly depressed when my father my idol in life, Colonel Logan Brooks Hendrixson died in 1980. It was August of 1982 and I had been crying over my father’s death every single day for two years. Well not just that but the fact that my mother and sister stole all my inheritance that my Father left me and they moved here to Dallas and turned their backs on me so they could spend it all in front of me. It was something I never expected them to do to me – they knew how my Father loved me and I loved him. I badly needed counseling and perhaps medication but nothing existed to help me. Instead I felt that I didn’t care about my future, I was weak and easily influenced to help others even if it was against the law. I flat didn’t care a thing about myself or my future – it had all become a blur. I got arrested by the Feds.
I remember laying there on the floor with all the guns pointed at my head, I stupidly tried to count all the agents swarmed in all over me. It all happened so fast. I was actually typing out another birth certificate when they knocked on and then busted down the door. I reached and hid it underneath the typewriter I guess like, ‘oh they’ll never look under here.’ The more they threw everything all over the place and the more they dug, the more they found. I began to think….’what was I thinking anyway? – my whole life fast forwarded in one knock on the door. I tried to count them there was so many. I think I counted eight cars outside my business at the time, a paint and body shop, and I counted over 20 agents, all who must have been thinking I was another Al Capone. Once again as I lay there on the floor, I was thinking…’what was I thinking?… what WAS I doing? To cause all of this. I had been sick to my stomach with a bladder infection and had had my pants unbuttoned. They didn’t bother to button up my pants and as they drug me out of my office handcuffed behind my back I remember my pants almost falling off in front of all my business neighbors and onlookers stopping to see what was happening to me, to my business, whatever. It was a sick mess and I was all of a quick sudden the center of all the attention.
I thought it was funny, well not funny but very strange that it was Immigration was the lead agency that busted me and I was put in the same holding cell that illegal immigrants are put in. I reached into my pocket to see what I had on me and there were more birth certificates… I remember wadding them up tiny and flushing them down the open cement commode. My pager kept going off over and over because they didn’t take it from me – people were calling me telling me they REALLY had to talk to me about their car or other body shop issues and all I could do was just stare at my pager in disbelief of what was going on that second in my life.
In my short career of making birth certificates for people I remember the guys who told me, ‘don’t even worry about it – if you ever get caught’ we’ll be right here to get you out of the trouble. I felt a bond with them since they were the focus of my problem and my wanting to help them – and also a rejection by my country for doing something for them – that America was not willing to do as it had done for the Irish, the Italians, the Cubans, the Germans, the Jews, the Africans, etc. What was the big deal? We were the melting pot except when it came to the generations of people who had been our brothers and sisters, raising our kids, making our gardens beautiful, feeding us their rich cooking, who built our highways and worked in our fields, raising our cattle, stocking our refrigerators with meat, vegetables, fruit and friendliness. Now it was a crime to help them.
My lawyer finally made it to the Federal Building and rescued me from the ‘bad guy – good guy’ team who refused to even let me make a phone call all day long. I had no experience in all of this – but I did know one thing. I was supposed to get to make one phone call – and I never got to make it. All I ever got was bad guy good guy over and over again. By the time my lawyer showed up I was so happy to see him, thinking he could surely make this nightmare go away. When he opened up his briefcase, there was one of my birth certificates I had made for a client of his. Ooops was the consensus.
I was finally able to leave only to come back some other day. I went to a friend’s house in East Dallas. Where I thought no one was watching me. I just slept for two days and laid low. My mind raced with all the what if’s in the world. I was just sick not knowing my future. I was such a control freak and then the embarrassment of it all hitting my friends and clients in the body shop. When I finally went back to my body shop and opened the door – there it was – the mess strewn all over the floor in piles dumped everywhere. It was the same day the notice about my big bust came out in the Metro section of the Dallas Morning News. I could not bring myself ever to read that article. Never. The guy who was my painter came up to the door and screamed at me ‘what’s going to happen to my job?’ I looked at him and said….’your job?’ What about my life? I could see I really was in this alone. And it was just going to get lonelier. Soon I started paying attention to strangers coming up to me from the street wanting to know about this and that and they were wearing those shiny reflect back sunglasses even though it was August it made my skin crawl with paranoia. Where did all these people with those reflecting sunglasses come from all of a sudden or was it just my imagination? Were they cops or clients? I tried to settle down and just take it one day at a time.
However one day I did notice a little truck parked across the street. It was a busy street so it wasn’t all that rare for someone to have parked there. My paranoia finally kicked into high gear and I ran across the street and up to the passenger side of the little cream truck and sure enough! I had caught one. On the guy’s front seat was a huge pistol, a recorder right next to it and the long mic was aimed right at my shop. I told him ‘who are you and what in the hell do you want?’ I was so mad but so helpless. They still were spying on me. He just sat there – didn’t move – didn’t say a thing.
I called Woody and told him about it. I had been arrested on August 4, 1982. When I called Woody he said, ‘uh bad timing – bad news’. He and I had always had such a kindred relationship that no matter what happened to him it happened to me right afterwards and vice versa.
We met up in person. When I had been out of my shop I had often stayed over at Woody’s apartment for the whole weekend. Parties, swimming, cooking out – hanging out, etc. What I hadn’t realized was that the Feds were also tapping his phone and there was my phone going right into his apartment. On a totally separate case, some of Woody’s wild friends were fairly big time dope dealers. I didn’t do dope so I didn’t really care what other people did. I figured Woody was dabbling in it because people used to call him up asking if he had any golf balls. One time he told me ‘go figure Hendrixson… a golf ball is white and weighs one ounce’. Either that or since we both moved here from Arkansas – he used to call it mom’s homemade apple pies. Yeah right, he was selling apple pies.
Well his pie and golfball business had also landed him in the slammer four days after I was there. His happened on my Father’s birthday. That was the worse thing for me. It killed me.
After I got arrested Woody came and got me every day and would always pat me on the shoulder in the car and tell me ‘its gonna be alright Hendrixson’ we’ll get you through this – we always do. He was my security blanket after my Dad died. I believed him. Now this! When he was released from the Federal building on his own case where there was a sting of 35 people arrested on these drug dealing charges I was there to comfort him. Now it was the two of us as always in a mess together. Since he was number 35 on the case he had, his chances did seem more hopeful than me being the only one they would be looking at.
Soon I had to make the appearances into the Federal courtroom. I forget the judge’s name, maybe Barefoot Sanders… I’m not sure. I was in shock the whole time in there.
Needless to say, with each time I entered the Federal building thereafter I felt worse and worse. There was a snake of a guy who did something called a ‘pre sentencing investigation’ on me. I had never been arrested in my life. I was a good person with depression problems and I obviously had made some very bad choices. Now this. I remember the day when he told me…. ‘you are nothing more than a wolf in sheep’s clothing’. Wow! I thought, he is so wrong. I am really a nice person and this is not really that big of a deal for him to think this of me. I was still very innocent.
I began attending the hearings with these lawyers of mine. Supposedly they knew so and so and were going to do something about all of this to make it go away. At first they said I had like four charges of counterfeiting citizenship documents or something like that. My lawyers said they were going to throw it in their face and tell them that the word counterfeit only referred to money not to documents – I was so proud of them that they had caught that very important loophole. But when we went back to prison after them asking for a dismissal the Feds came back with another story. This time I was charged with 120 fraudulent creation of birth certificates and 555 possess with intent to sell illegal social security cards. And everything carried a potential sentence of 5 years each. Suddenly I no longer had any faith in my lawyers. I was calling Woody from the pay phone in the Federal Building wondering why he wasn’t there with me. He wasn’t worried about it he said, ‘just keep telling them you’re innocent’ was his advice. He never went to court with me. I was scared to death. So as I sat there each time there was another hearing I began to notice a pattern of the other people who were further advanced in the process than I was. Every single one of them was found guilty by pleading guilty. Not one had a jury trial because they were told if they wasted the government’s money they could be stuck with their entire charges and multiple sentences. And I then noticed that every single one of them was sentenced to prison. Not one received probation. Seemed that probation was a thing for the state charges but not for Federal.
So sure enough, my lawyers brought me into a room with pre-sentence investigation guy and another guy – I’ll never forget – Mr. Shaw. Mr. Shaw was a big guy who had this little meeting with me and asked me about where I would like to try to be sent ‘if’ I was sentenced to prison.
Of course I just knew I would never be sentenced to prison for something this non violent, just a few bad choices which they surely knew I was sorry for by now and would never do again – ever. This was a huge enough wide awake wakeup call for me.
The day of my sentencing Woody did make it down there. So did miraculously enough my mother and the family I lived with before and after prison.
I realized that with all that potential for hundreds of years in prison they gave me no choice but to say ‘nobody had anything to do with my pleading guilty but I plead guilty anyway’ – the deal they finally offered me to stop the mountainous charges from getting huger was for me to shut up and admit I did it. Hell they did catch me red handed so there was no need to tell them ‘I’m innocent’ till they gave me a thousand years in prison. I just wanted it to be over and get on with it. They told me if I pleaded (like all the other fools before me) It would only be for one charge of up to 5 years maximum. It sounded a whole lot better than centuries behind bars.
I stood up with my lawyers and said the fateful words. I plead guilty blah blah blah. The judge said whatever he said and hit the gavel down. All I heard was something about three years. Out of a possible five – it sounded okay. My mother jumped up and screamed out ‘three years probation!’ – my lawyers turned around and told her. He didn’t say anything about probation.
He said prison time to be served. Whoa! That was a whole new scenario…. Now it made sense to me – why Mr. Snake in the grass pre sentence investigator and Mr. Shaw had taken me into the little room asking me about where I would ‘like’ to go if found guilty. It was because the whole thing was a pre-arranged set up deal. I was doomed from the start. I just didn’t realize it. Now I was ushered off to Mr. Shaw’s office again – this time feeling like I had just been shot with some deadly disease and had it to bear all alone. Now Woody and my mother and my friend just stood there looking at me with a blank look on their faces. I had really done it this time I felt like saying. And where were all the guys who if I got caught they were going to save my butt.
I was sentenced to three years in prison. I served about and was released determined never to return to prison no matter what it took. What I learned in prison, I learned the hard way. My best friend and sidekick Woody Yates took me over there. I remembered them making me in the entrance area long enough I thought about leaving back out to the world. They had trusted me on my own recognizance to turn myself in. I was nervous of course but had no idea of what would lay ahead – not even one second of it. Soon a guard came, she was a small Hispanic woman and she motioned for me to come through the heavy steel door she had another guard open. It rolled open clanking as it went and as fast as it slammed open it began to close. I hugged Woody and I walked into the ‘box between the two doors’. I turned to see a very sad looking Woody just standing there looking at me. I was so taken by the whole experience I didn’t really have any feelings about it. I was just trying to get on with whatever would be the first step towards my release someday not really realizing when that may ever be. I realized I knew nothing about this experience because only someone who was going through it could ever know how it feels. It was like dying or something very lonely and alone in a unique experience that others around me could see me going through it but I was the one who had to go through with it – no turning back.
Shortly after my arrival onto the unit I remembered the so-called Christmas ornaments every fifty feet or so hanging from the bleak ceiling. I thought to myself ‘I guess they even have a sort of Christmas in prison.’ The elevator I came up on let me out close to a center area with a a table and chairs around it. Women were welcoming back others who had been gone on a special furlough. I thought ‘welcoming someone back to prison is sick.’ It was December 27, 1982, while sitting in the guard’s office waiting to be processed I heard a guitar playing and a beautiful voice singing. I asked, who is that?
I learned to play games, lie, cheat, fight and to fight back, and most importantly I learned how to become respected and left alone….through fear and emulating psychotic behavior. It was a whole lot better than what they had been putting me through. But once I mastered it – that violence and striking fear into the hearts of those who may prey on you… I could not change back to my old innocent self. I learned what we call now how to ‘rock and roll’ prison style. Prison became the place no one feared being sent to by society because we were already there – we were out of society’s sight and mind. We were the forgotten ones – the ones who society thinks will never return. In one aspect – we were free of society – not free in society. The guards were actually jealous of us – we did nothing but waste day after day doing nothing constructive or rehabilitative. But they also did nothing to protect us – we were on our own day and night. Screams of rape and beatings rang out night after night striking fear into our own hearts wondering when it would happen to us. No one stood up for anyone. I learned what real racism really was. It wasn’t just about black or Hispanic it was white and others as well. No matter what you were it wasn’t good in that place. Plus there were also men inmates who caused many of the fights and made my life even more of a living hell. I was told day after day to allow myself to become ‘programmed by prison’. It made me crazy and I began to have images like movies in vivid color coming into my head of how I would sort of reach out of my own mind with my hands and grab whoever was telling me something I hated to hear, no matter what it was, and I would slowly begin to kill them until I had done so in a bloody fit of rage – I could see it happen so clear and became so good at it those violent ‘movies’ soon became my source of entertainment. I began to worry, was I merely becoming programmed or was I losing my mind in this place. I would go back to my cell and at night I would have nervous breakdowns of weakness and hopelessness, but in the day or around other prisoners I put on a facade of
I, like all convicts thought that the shoes we stepped out of to enter prison would be right where we left them and we would just step back into them when we got out and continue our life as it was when we left it on the shelf. That is where all convicts are sadly mistaken, because prison is just beginning when they return… and sadly it never ends. No employment for exconvicts – criminal record. No apartment, home purchase, no credit, no car loan, no voting, no family acceptance, people thinking of you as an untrustworthy person, afraid of you, family rejection even moving away, the only fear was the fear of returning to the unknown. Prison becomes a functioning society without bills and responsibility. I became just another number stripped of dignity and humanness.
My life was over, I was finally caved in and broken and so weak, I had no future and the past I had was miserable, not even worth remembering. My present was black, filled with despair and rage for anyone or anything within a thousand miles of my rejected heart. The only time I could ever feel was with pain, sweet pain usually from beating my own self in the face and head often blacking my own eyes, mouth and nose. It was the only time when I was able to cry tears and know I was at least still alive and not totally dead inside. It felt like it was the only time I was in control of my own life and emotions. Without the constant threat of if I did something else I would be sent back to prison. Something else I also wanted to be in control of, not only when but how I went back to prison. The streets of Dallas held only darkness, humiliation and rage for me. Everywhere I turned more rejection, snickers, backs turned, and hopelessness. I felt no love and I had no purpose when I said …. There is nowhere for me where I will be accepted…. Except back in prison or in a coffin. I was crying so hard I knew it was my final act in and against society. The same society that had never accepted me back – even after I had so called ‘paid my debt to them’ whoever they were….. Now it didn’t matter – now they would all pay. I was standing in a small shack behind the family’s house where I lived who also rejected me – I was in the dark and my chest feeling like all I had ever received instead of the love I wanted so bad was a trash can where in a darkened corner I sat alone while more wadded up trash was tossed into me. I never knew a purpose in life. I thought because I was an exconvict I could fight my way through any battle in life after prison – I had never felt fear and nothing intimidated me – I had become known as the fierce ‘Del from Hell’ and I laughed about my reputation as a societal psycho back from prison, smarter than ever before, a product of its cold and furious environment… I had told a neighbor who was about the only person who would even speak to me, a sweet Mexican lady who always told me she cared about me when the family I lived with would lock me out of the house, nail the windows shut and throw my belongings out into the rain and mud. I had tried and tried not to believe I was going to commit a mass act but I felt it inside me coming for a long time – I had lied to her and told her I badly needed a gun to protect myself. I knew as an exconvict I could not possess a gun plus I had become too crazy to have one before but she had believed me and had brought me an uzi. In Oak Cliff where I lived drive by shootings are an everyday occurrence.
I was holding that loaded uzi close to me – as cold as it was – I felt like it was protecting me from society’s hatred and rejection. It was about to help me get even after all the years of pain. I don’t even remember the year anymore. I just know it had been about seven years.
I was leaning against a table in the dark building. It was dark because it was the darkroom for the little printing business I had started because no one would hire me. I was trying to stop sobbing and crying and wipe away my tears, so I could reach for the doorknob and go out into the light with a deadly mission to kill others even if it meant my own going out in a gunfight with cops. It was all I could see in my mind. The shooting the killing, my dying or being taken back to prison – finally it was going to end. Finally it was going to be over forever. Life in prison, execution or dying. I thought I had no other future – I thought my life was over.
As I opened my eyes to reach for the door I saw a tiny tiny light piercing through the covering on the windows. It was pitch black in there because it was a darkroom. At the moment I saw the light come in I thought ‘a light is coming into my darkness’.
It was at that same moment I heard a voice kind of over to the left and slightly behind me. The words were clear and calm….“YOU LISTENED TO MAN AND YOU ENDED IN PRISON LISTEN TO ME AND SEE WHERE I LEAD YOU”.
I thought, that is so weird, especially now at this second of my worst hopelessness ever. I thought.. is there more?
I heard it again. It sounded like a Father’s voice, strong, wise, compassionate, loving, forgiving, understanding. I know it was God who spoke to me that day. Why had I never heard it before, and why now? My mind was made up – I had my finger on the trigger of the uzi. I was ready to lunge out the door as I had countless times before in fits of black rage, running away from whatever it was that haunted my mind.
As he spoke I began to listen, all the while never for one moment believing there was a sane bone in my body. I already had battled sanity vs insanity and insanity had easily always won out. I just was afraid to tell anyone. I kept it inside me until pain could release some of it. The real and only thing that kept me going was my printing. It was always a challenge. And I made money in doing something that I continued to conquer day by day. But today was different. I didn’t care anymore – it was a deeper sinking feeling than when I was arrested.
The voice told me, ‘I need someone like you to speak to others like you… broken, hopeless, without purpose, psychotic, lost, numb from pain of suffering failure and rejection – to go and prevent young people from going down the same path you have just crawled back up from.’ He said, ‘young people have no life experience or the wisdom to make good choices in their lives’. I thought, ‘wow I can’t stand kids’. But I continued to listen. He said, ‘you need family, you need love, you need acceptance in your own life that you have waited years for from your own flesh and blood family – so if you go to the lost, and open your heart and your mind to them, you will find those things and much more – and it will become a sort of therapy for you to begin to be whole as never before.’
He said, ‘I’m going to take away all your worldly possessions, but I will replace them with others’. He said, I want you to begin to work on what is like a puzzle with a thousand pieces, but you must build each piece one by one without knowing what the puzzle looks like – you must build it on faith. I thought, ‘I know now I have gone over the psychotic edge for sure’ – but I kept listening. I had thought I was strong enough to never pray to God, never go to church, and never ask for help. Now I was hearing what made the most sense to me in my whole entire life. I kept listening.
He said, once you have built many pieces of the puzzle, they will begin to fit together and the lines between them will disappear so you will begin to see the picture. I thought – A THOUSAND PIECES! – there was no way I was going to do a thousand of anything. I was too busy – if I did lay down the gun and take this ‘challenge’ on.
Bu I have to admit it sounded wonderful for the first time in my life. He said for me to think of prison as a bridge from my old life to a new one. He said, continuing, “when you have built all the pieces to the puzzle all the lines will disappear and show you the entire picture – at that time, is when life will be breathed into it and it will begin to move on its own and at that time it will carry you with it.” He also said that if I could be the marketing strength for huge corporations who hired me to do their graphics and promotions I could do it to prevent others from going to prison.
I thought to myself, and if I did do this I would also be keeping a victim or victims from harm so it would be a double salvation. But why me? Why such a horrible person like me – that is why I thought for sure I was not worthy of hearing God speak to me – I was the worst person I knew – I did not even love myself and neither did my own family – how then could God love me? I did believe at the time that if there ever was a hopeless, violent person chosen for working with others like me – I would be great for the task at hand. I certainly knew it all far too well.
It was then I took my hand off the doorknob, and I laid down the Uzi – I decided then in my heart that the words I was hearing was truly that of God speaking to me.
I remember the day I was ‘told to go before the Dallas City Council’ and let them know of my wonderful work reaching young people. I was so embarrassed that I had registered to speak and for only three minutes. All I took with me was a recording of a song a young man sang about how Bajito Onda had given him hope and had helped him stop selling drugs and being with gangs. I remember how shocked they were that I had done something so seemingly ignorant and out of place I began to cry. I could not even speak my three minutes because I cried the entire time – knowing that what I had done was so ridiculous yet I felt God needed to send them a new type of message and I was his only messenger trying to serve I did not know any better. They went ahead and gave me another three minutes and applauded me for my boldness for standing up for youth. I practically ran out of there and spent the next many years working in private with kids and others on probation, parole and even into prison.
This work in serving only God, my friends has fully replaced the family that abandoned me when I was in prison – like hundreds of thousands of others just like me. Nothing will ever come between my God given Family of Bajito Onda. My violence has been replaced with peace. My worldly greed has been replaced with giving. My hatred for children has been replaced with love and passion for others to listen to their tiny voices. My belief that prison happened to someone else but could never happen to me led me straight into the cells of hell.
If you will only ask yourself. WHO ARE YOU SERVING? IS IT YOUR FAMILY? IS IT YOUR FRIENDS? IS IT PERHAPS YOURSELF? OR IS IT GOD? If you worry about heaven or hell, if you worry about trying to control and conquer your life and all the obstacles in it – then perhaps you are not putting God first in your life. You could be doing what I was doing…. ‘listening to man – and that will always lead you out of God’s path and the light of His love and Grace.’ At this Holiday season, although my mother and sister have never accepted me into their family again – where used to I languished horribly over it, now I have moved on and made a new family that doesn’t reject me, hurt me and belittle me – I could not be happier, I could not feel more loved, I could not worry less than I do because if I just stay focused on all Bajito Onda Many Ministries of global works and peace in prisons and communities, I will receive far more than I will give, because without God in my life and in the lives of the entire Bajito Onda Family we would not have all the many blessings we have received. When you walk away from man, you will find God. When you listen to God – God will listen to you.
I leave you now, and I tell you that I have about put the thousand pieces of the puzzle together. It has taken me about fifteen years or maybe even more. I’ve lost count. But so many miracles have happened in my life I have seen lives I never believed would ever stop selling drugs or being lost and violent animals turn into warriors for Christ and for peace. I have been inside prison with men serving eight hundred years – sixteen life sentences – tell me that Bajito Onda is their family and they have hope and love in their hearts because I took the calling that deadly day in my life. They wish they had done the same but they did not hear God speak to them until it was too late.
It is never too late my friend,
Many humble blessings,
Del
BAJITO ONDA GLOBAL FOUNDER – POST OFFICE BOX 42101 – TUCSON, AZ USA – 214-275-ONDA – 520-414-9269
