(2/11) “Back in the day my name was Walter Miller. It was a...

(2/11) “Back in the day my name was Walter Miller.  It was a pretty normal childhood.  We grew up poor, but nothing really dramatic happened until I went to a Sam Cooke concert at the age of fourteen.  I was excited to be at that concert, so I pushed my way to the front row, right near the stage.  The crowd was really moving, because it was dance music.  And Sam Cooke didn’t like that.  He kept telling people to sit down.   And after only two songs, he got so angry that he walked off the stage.  So I screamed at the top of my lungs:  ‘Sam Cooke ain’t shit!’  And in North Carolina, back in 1964, that was enough to get me arrested for disorderly conduct.  Things went downhill pretty quick after that.  My mother was raising eight kids on her own, so she couldn’t control me.  I got into all sorts of trouble.  I lifted purses from unlocked cars.  I was stealing government checks out of mailboxes.  I got bolder and bolder, until one day I got busted stealing from the band room at school.  They shipped me off to a juvenile detention center called Morrison Training School.  I hated everything about that place.  The food was terrible.  The kids were violent.  I still have scars from all the times I got beat up.  Every night, while I was falling asleep, I could hear the whistle of a freight train in the distance.  And I always wanted to know where that train was going.  So one night, when the guard turned his back to check the clock, I ran out the back door, toward the sound of that whistle.  And that was the first place I ever escaped from.”