Juvenile delinquency (1955)

38 JUVENILE DELINQUENCY is not committed to the ranch; he is placed at the ranch because we do everything we can to relieve any stigma being attached to the ranch. Mrs. Johnson and I work constantly—we have to. Eight at the present time we are receiving invitations anywhere from Blyth, Calif., to Ontario and from Barstow to Newport Beach, inviting us to attend the commencement exercises of boys who are going to graduate. It is pretty hard to set yourself that far, but we do our best. Chairman Kefauver. You mean boys that have been to the ranch and who have gone back to school ? Mr. Johnson. Who have gone back to school, who would never have graduated had they not had the benefits of the Twin Pines program. I would like to invite you on Friday afternoon and the rest of your team to come out and see 14 boys mount a stage, an outdoor stage, dressed in caps and gowns to the tune of an organ, playing in the mountains, and receive their diplomas like any boy in any public school would receive them. I would like very much to have you come and see that. On graduation exercises that we see in so many institutions they ask, "Is the boy ready to leave?" The party that is going to take the boy away from that facility picks up the boy and before the boy has an opportunity to say goodbye to some of friends he is taken away. At Twin Pines Ranch we do differently. On the day of graduation we hitch the hitching rack outside the bunkhouse and there are many horses bridled, and we do have horses there too—What is a ranch without a horse?—on that morning the horses are saddled and bridled and hitched to the hitching rack outside the bunkhouse. That is indicative of how near the boy is going to leave that day. Over the breakfast table, after the dishes are cleared away, the superintendent announces who is going to graduate, and then each staff member talks to the boy. Sometimes it is an admonition, but mostly always praise. And it goes on that wa}" through the day until the noon hour, when we have the boy seated at the guest table with his guests. It is an honor table. After the meal is over, he is presented with a farewell gift, which is a wallet and the next presentation is made by the super- intendent, and that is the money he has saved while he has been at the ranch. We do pay them 25 cents a day for their labor there, for their work. We then go to the corral, which is some quarter of a mile away from the boys' bunkhouse, and around the old ranchhouse, and there in the center of the corral is a huge white snubbing. And around that snubbing post we form a human wagon—tlie men do and the boys—and in the meantime the superintendent, riding in the surry, and the graduates riding on their favorite horses, ride up to that area. When we get there, the buggy is racked some 40 yards down the road headed out, and the graduates hitch their horses to a hitching rack outside the tack room which is adjacent to the corral gate. We then go in and join this wagon wheel. As soon as this forms, it starts whirling around to the tune of Roll on Wagon AVheel. The song ended, the iDoys and the wheel breaks and we separate all over the corral. And then as they reform the wheel spoke by spoke, with the graduates standing a short distance away, the first boy walks in and the last boy turns and admonishes that "T" stands for truth—always be truthful. The next boy walks in, the last boy turns and admonishes the youth who is leaving "W" stands for "Winner," always be a winner and so on until all the letters of Twin Pines Ranch have been used.