My Story
Above: A mug shot captures me in my former life.
I really don’t remember too much of my early years—I’m pretty sure it’s because I don’t want to. I do remember attending a private school and that I didn’t care much for that or too much of anything else, for that matter.
I also remember making a lot of bread, working with my brothers Glenn and Al, my sister Linda, mom Wanene, and particularly, my father James Dahl. He was the early force behind a bakery that was really ahead of its time, a bakery which came to be known as NatureBake. My dad created several types of sprouted wheat breads back in the 60’s and we used organically-grown wheat way back then.
Not that I cared much about that, either.
I often used to think that depression and misery were normal, at least for me. I felt completely alone, which is pretty much what I was. I now know that this is an illness and can be treated effectively. But back then, I just felt that I was born to lose.
There was one thing. I wanted to be a cowboy, and particularly a cowboy playing a guitar and singing at night out on the open range. My mother bought me a Lyle acoustic when I was 9 or 10 years old, and I took a few lessons to learn how to strum chords. Over the years, my interest waned, and for most of my 20’s and 30’s, I didn’t play much at all. But having mastered the fundamentals certainly came in handy when I picked up the ax again in the prison.
I developed an early interest in physical fitness, although I clearly wasn’t a jock. I learned a few things about nutrition and natural foods, and to this day I still appreciate simple, nutritious foods, without frills.
But I always knew there was something very wrong with me. I didn’t have friends. I would lie awake at night, unable to stop my mind from racing in circles. Some of my most poignant memories are of the times I fantasized about suicide.
Above: A rare photo from the early 90's, after a
couple of trips to prison and just before
beginning another run to nowhere.
Somewhere along the way I discovered the magic of beer. That always started out fun and would often turn weird, because I was just masking some serious underlying issues.
Smoking weed made me paranoid, and hallucinogens were almost always a scary trip for me. But that didn’t stop me from partaking on a regular basis. I was searching, and these things were going to help me find.
A transformation of sorts coincided with my first marvelous intravenous injection of methamphetamine (usually called “crank” in those days). No pain, no worries, no more searching. I actually felt alive for the first time. I knew I was on the road to hell and I didn’t care one bit.
Things didn’t go well at all for me at the bakery after that. My 8 years-older-brother, Glenn had been my closest friend and mentor during my teen years, but we had grown apart, and he would never approve of my new lifestyle. I started seeing him as the police, and therefore, an enemy to be avoided and fought. I began to see a way out of the bakery—crime. Stealing car stereos and doing burglaries kept me high, and I didn’t need a whole lot of food as long as I was loaded.
At this point, I should confess that I sucked at burglary. I would blast through doors and break windows brutally and without finesse. I often did scores where I made less than 20 bucks and left hundreds of dollars in damage. Then came an occasional big score, and those would be the ones I glorified when I told war stories later in the joint.
And it didn’t take me long at all to get there. It was less than a year before I got my first bit: 7 years for 1rst Degree burglary, which translated to less than a year for a first-timer in those days. Not that prison was a planned destination, but I succeeded in returning for a much stronger dose less than a year later. This time it was for armed robbery, over 3000 miles away in Massachusetts, and featured my first fight with cops. I was sitting in the precinct jail, and we weren’t getting along all that well. They had decided I didn’t have anything coming—in particular, food—and regrettably, I began calling them names I probably should have kept to myself. When I say “fight”, I really mean “ass-whipping”. Four officers took turns beating me with sticks all over my body, and it wasn’t until a geyser of blood erupted from my throat during a rather effective choke hold that they decided they’d had enough fun with me. The seat of my pants was torn wide open, I was bruised from head to toe and my throat hurt too much to speak as I headed to court a few minutes later. And I was still just as hungry.
Above: Age 22 with first of two daughters, Davene Michelle - Not yet shooting dope.
This time I got a little taste of prolonged adversity, but I wasn’t yet ready to cry uncle. I was able to run from myself again. I was a chameleon, keeping my mouth shut and ears open, learning how to act and how to talk and artfully dodging sticky situations. Surviving in prison wasn’t hard, except at night when I would lie sleepless for hours and wonder what the hell the point was to it all—to any of it—and consider suicide.
After serving four and one-half years in the Massachusetts prison system, I figured it was time for a change. So I moved back to hometown Portland and studied as a drug dealer.I was never a gifted criminal, but it didn’t stop me from trying. Drug-dealing really seemed to agree with me. It was simple dollars and cents, and I was never far from my stash.
I picked up the habit of stealing something just about every time I went into a store—a pack of smokes, a lighter, a candy bar and a Slurpeee--even though as a meth-slinger, I always had the money to pay for it. I got a rush from it. I got so arrogant about it that I would do it right in front of the store owners or employees, daring them to do something about it. That practice got me my 3rd trip to the joint, on a 2nd degree robbery and assault charge. At least I hadn’t got busted for drugs, I was thinking.
When I got out this time, after another 20 months, I had it all figured out. I just wouldn’t steal—that’s what always got me in trouble. Turning my back on my “personal savior”, meth, was not an option. So I continued my dope dealing ways, better connected than ever, knowing all of the fool-proof tricks to keep the cops from finding my stuff. I was selling a pound of pure methamphetamine a day in chunks of a quarter-ounce to a quarter-pound. Boy, was I cool.
I made it a whole 6 months before my fool-proof plan snagged. I had failed to register my car, due to several days’ Christmas closure at DMV, and had had somebody steal me some tags from another vehicle to get by. On my way to a customer’s place at 1am on January 2, 1997, a Clackamas county deputy pulled me over. No big deal, I thought. I had my dope stashed in a safe spot—I would go to jail for a few weeks for misdemeanors and a parole violation.
But the officer found $3500 on me and figured I was no-good, so he ordered a k-9 search of my vehicle. Under the hood, they found a half pound of meth, a half pound of weed, and a .380 semi-automatic pistol. I served 90 days for a p.v. then was released pending charges. It turned out to be an illegal search on my vehicle, a technicality that would get me out of that one. But for all I knew, I was facing four years and my system was flawed. I decided to lay low.
Above: A visit from Amy Troy and the Channel 8 news crew.
I had a lot of money owed to me and set about collecting that. I had been out of jail for about 10 hours when I was driving with my girlfriend to Bend, Oregon and she got pulled over for driving recklessly. When they searched the car, they found a quarter-pound of meth.
2 busts in two counties in two days on the street. I was in a lot of trouble. We were able to bail out in Deschutes County before they realized I was a parole violator—I still had some luck on my side. But now, I was really feeling desperate. I was marked and decided to go on the run.
About a week later, my girlfriend picks me up on the street in NE Portland and I’m thinking I’m finally going to get me some of that good stuff after months without and then snuggle up and get some much-needed sleep. About 2 blocks later, police lights are flashing behind us. She pulls over, I jump out and run away, and she goes to jail again.
The next time I saw her, we got a motel room and managed to get a night’s sleep before the police started pounding on the door. The officer had been doing his rounds and became suspicious of the vehicle I had borrowed from a customer, had nosed around, opened the unlocked car door and found a loaded, sawed-off shotgun under the driver’s seat. But as he was standing outside the motel-room door, he was just telling me that the car’s window was partially rolled down and that I should close it since it was raining. I told him I had no idea who the car belonged to.
He left, but I knew he’d be back—with friends. I decided to make a run for it. I wrestled with two cops and can of pepper-spray for about a minute and a half, according to the police report. I lost.
Ok, so I am sitting in the clink with 3 serious cases in 3 counties. Didn’t expect to get out this time. But as the 90-day parole sanction wore down, it began to look as if I could bail out if I could come up with $2700 for 2 counties, as I was already bailed out in Bend. I still had connections, and I pulled it off.
A few weeks later, I traded my car for the day for a friend’s pickup—can’t remember why—and was driving down 82nd Avenue. The police just happened to be looking for a truck like the one I was driving, and pulled me over. The officer accused me of stealing the truck and charged me with other offenses I knew nothing about, and had me handcuffed before I decided I wasn’t going without a fight. I bled all over the street that day.
Above: Getting some attention from the Portland Tribune.
Sitting in the Justice Center that evening with a bunch of charges I hadn’t committed and much more serious ones (like assault on police) which I had, I was informed by a deputy that I could bail out with the $3700 check I had on me when I got arrested (the only reason I got to keep the check was that it was from the Gresham Police Department to reimburse me for cash they had taken from me during the last arrest). If I waited overnight, I knew my parole officer wouldn’t be letting me go anywhere. So I put a rush on it, and was out by 1am.
Now I was really in trouble. But I wasn’t quite done yet.I was in the Cameo motel on 82nd and Sandy with several pounds of 2nd rate weed to sell but none of the stuff I needed to get the job done. So I sent a guy to get me a small amount of crystal to keep me going. He didn’t get back quick enough, so I called someone else and she got there before he did. But I was too tired to fix and I fell asleep, only to be awakened by an emergency medical team when I didn’t respond to the checkout order. When they came in, they saw the dope on the scale and the big bag of smoke I had intended to weigh into smaller packages before I checked out
I was duly scared out of my wits, and decided I had to leave everything in the room and make a run for it. And not a moment too soon, as the police were just pulling in as I was “nonchalantly” strolling out the door, down the steps, and around the corner before the clerk had a chance to give me up.
Now, not only was I running from 5 serious felony cases in three counties, I had to hide from my connections as my horrific string of “bad luck” had transformed me from a high roller to a man on a precipice. I began to see that I had nowhere to run, and nowhere to hide for long. I disconnected from my once-comfortable circle of criminals, found a pretty little exotic dancer to make my final nights bearable and stayed off the streets. After this, I had several close calls, but managed to make it 2 months before they got me one last time, in a high speed chase down Northeast Prescott Street. I wrecked my car into a pole trying to take a corner at about 50 and got out and ran, injured and weak from hard living. I jumped a fence, another fence, and was headed off by a perimeter of police with more of that pesky pepper spray.
And don’t let me forget to tell you: I had another quarter-pound of meth and a stolen .40 Glock in my car at the time.
All in all, I had probably spent 3 years on the streets from the time I started dong meth. I used to think, with the pleasure I got when I was high, any price I ended up paying would be worth it. But that was the dope and the adrenaline talking. It is amazing to look back and remember the horrible feeling I had, sitting in that jail cell facing a multitude of serious charges, and to realize things couldn’t get much worse. And that this time, there was no way in hell I was getting out of this. I had to face it.
Above: At the Portland Farmers Market.
Photo: David Plechl
That moment was the beginning of a very painful and difficult transformation that is thankfully, still going on today.
I hadn’t had friends on the street. I had had customers. Some of them even dropped me a line or two. Having seen me do a Houdini a couple of times before, and since they all owed me money, they figured they should keep tabs on me. I had a reputation for collecting my debts. But as soon as they knew I wasn’t going to be around for a decade, they quit being distracted with me.
Here was my situation: If I fought the charges. I would lose. The Feds were going to indict me on the Armed Career Criminal statute, and I would certainly do 20 years, if I didn’t plead guilty to the assault on police officers in Multnomah County, plus commercial delivery of methamphetamine for a net total of 10 years. With the arrogance I was stubbornly trying to hang onto, I fought it until my lawyer told me the feds were preparing to indict me for the ACC. I succumbed, and saved myself a chunk of grief. My choice was to get out of prison before I turned 45, or fight it and re-enter society as a senior citizen. Not really a hard choice: really, really bad, or much worse. All of my other charges in Multnomah County would be dropped and the other counties’ either dropped or run concurrently, and I could get settled in stateside.
The first few years of my bit were pretty tough, to say the least. I fell in with guys I had known on the streets or in my other prison sets. I hooked up with a supply of drugs for a minute, but it dried up and I was facing myself once again. My depression and hopelessness were just about unbearable. I withdrew as much as possible, wishing I didn’t have to leave my cell for chow, wishing I didn’t have to share the room with another pathetic soul.
I slipped in and out of this state for months, then years. I had heard of antidepressants, but somehow, I told myself I was tougher than that. Sure, and that’s why I “self-medicated” all of those years, right? I don’t know when I finally found the humility to see a shrink, but it turned out to be just the tool I needed to start seeing things as they really are. And the more I started seeing the truth, the more humble I became. And the more humble I got, the more I began to see.
Above: Jamming with friends and the Food Fight Vegan Grocery.
I had been playing my guitar during these painful years, and writing some pretty painful songs. But when I started taking the medication, I began to make incredible progress as a musician. I also went to school for computer drafting, and found that I seemed to excel at everything I did, and that suddenly I was incredibly hungry for knowledge. Life had not suddenly become easy; life had just become something worth living.
As I completed various assignments on the computer, I began to think of designing bread the same way. A lot of years had passed since I worked in the family bakery, and I hadn’t even considered whether doing it again was an option, but suddenly it all seemed to make perfect sense. I belonged back with my brother, Glenn, and his bakery more than I ever had. I had something to contribute this time: a clear-headed dream of making some really great bakery products.
Now, if only Glenn would see it that way. I wrote him a letter and his response was “love to have ya back, bro!”, and that was the beginning of Dave’s Killer Bread.
To be continued soon...