confessions
"Yes, " says I.   "Why do you ask? "
"Oh, we just always read the btf to keep up on what's happening, " says he.
I asked to make a telephone call, but the fingerprinter told me to wait until they took me downstairs for questioning.
Sgt. Frank Fryman took me to his office.   About tight or ten men stood in the small room -- two uniformed firemen, Sgt. Fryman of the LPD, Sgt. Richard Arnett of the Fayette County Police and various other policemen and detectives.
"You write for the blue-tail fly, don't you? " asked Fryman.
"Yes, " I said.
"Does the btf pay anyone to work? " he asked.
"No.   It's all voluntary work, " I answered.
I called my house on Lexington Avenue to say that I had been arrested. Then I proceeded to tell the men in the crowded room that they had made a mistake.   I told how I had walked by the police van parked on Euclid and Lexington an hour earlier carrying a half-full bottle of Canada Dry Ginger Ale.   As I had carried the bottle to my home to put it in the refrigerator, the policemen sitting in the van had ' not stopped me.
I had walked back down Lexington Avenue to the corner of Euclid to join three friends who had waited while I went up to the house to leave the ginger ale.
We had walked to campus to observe the sit-in, and I became separated from my friends.
A few minutes later, I had seen an orange glow illuminating the Student Center and heard someone yell "Fire!" I also had seen the cordons of riot-equipped LPD men with their clubs and guns, so I had decided to go back home.
They had grabbed me as I was on my way.
My explanation was interrupted when Sgt. Fryman's phone rang. My father had heard I'd been arrested and called long-distance from Madison-ville, Ky.   As we talked, I complained to him that the questioning room was so crowded that it made me nervous. Amazingly, the room emptied except for Fryman and Arnett.
Fryman told my father that he would
release me if I revealed the names of the three people who were with me when I had the green bottle. Fryman and Arnett also promised that they would not arrest my friends but would only question them to see if our stories coincided.
I also told them where I had purchased the ginger ale.   I had been a nickel short of money to pay for it, so I was sure the store clerk would remember me.
One friend was with me when I bought the ginger ale and the other two had helped us drink it, so I knew they would verify that the bottle contained ginger ale and not gasoline, as the arresting policemen apparently supposed.
But they didn't release me.
The police questioned my friends, expropriated the ginger ale from my refrigerator to check for fingerprints, and talked to the store clerk.
I'd been arrested around midnight. At 3 a.m. Judge James Amato arrived. He told me that "The Lexington Herald" had set my bond at $50, 000. "I wouldn't set your bond that high if you'd burned down City Hall, " he said. Judge Amato set the bond at $2, 500.
Sgt. Fryman took me upstairs to the holdover.   At the elevator, we were met by the turnkey who earlier had insulted me, apparently trying to provoke me to insult him back.
"Treat her as well as possible, " Fryman, knowing they'd made a mistake, told the nasty turnkey.
I was taken to the holdover cells, already occupied by three drunken women recently released from Eastern State Hospital.
One woman repeatedly complained that a policewoman had tear-gassed her.   Another incessantly screamed at the turnkey and the male prisoners within shouting distance.
"I'm a good girl, " she yelled at the turnkey and male prisoners.   "I don't sell my body. "  Then she would beat her leather shoe against the bars and start yelling again.   The turnkey would not let her call her psychiatrist at Eastern State Hospital.
The urinals had a water faucet on top.   Made me wonder where the drinking water came from. There was no privacy.   No warning was even given for prisoners to get off the John before^the male turnkeys, policemen, detectives or a janitor walked by or entered the cells of the female pri-
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TO WEAR
soners.   I wonder if female turnkeys, policewomen, detectives or cleaning women walk by or enter the cells of male prisoners with such audacity.
I lay on a top bunk --a two-inch thick wooden board with no blanket or mattress      listened to the screaming, looked at the bare light bulb, felt the cold air from the open window on the other side of the bars.   I knew my parents would get me out.
Early on the morning of May 6, Sgt. John McClure of the LPD came to my cell and asked me to come downstairs with him for questioning. We reached the elevator to go downstairs when I began to wonder why he wanted to talk with me.
"I told Sgt. Fryman everything last night, " I said.   "And he questioned my companions.   I'm tired now and don't think I know anything else to tell you. "
McClure was surprised that I had already been questioned.   He said Fryman had not filed a report of my or my friends' questioning.   So he let me go back to my cell.
The lawyer my parents had obtained bailed me out the next morning. I went home, took a bath, washed my hair, put on a dress and appeared at the afternoon arraignment.   We asked for a postponement until May 20.
The next afternoon my parents and I were on campus and decided to go to the assembly at the Student Center patio and talk to one of my professors there.   We were near the Office Tower when we saw cordons of green-uniformed, helmetted and gas-masked National Guardsmen with fixed bayonets marching from Buell Armory.
We figured the National Guard was going to use tear gas so we went back inside the tower.   We took the elevator to the eighteenth floor and watched the fantastic scene of green National Guardsmen on one side and grey state policemen on the other side of a small, peaceful assembly of students by the Student Center patio.   We looked down from the top floor of the Office Tower to see the riot-geared troops close in with a tear gas fogger, as if they had a can of Raid and the students were insects.
The May 20 hearing was postponed by the prosecution, and finally, 51 days after the absurd arrest, just long enough for me to serve the purpose as the alleged arsonist for the do-no-wrong Lexington police machine, I was acquitted because of "insufficient evidence."
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