Several years back, I tried to purchase a new shot gun.  Don’t remember exactly why.  Maybe because the old Remington 1100 that Dad had given me as a Christmas gift decades earlier was getting lonely in my flimsy gun safe. 

Whatever. I jumped on I-25 and drove south to the Cabela’s super store perched on the slope of a bluff overlooking Denver in all its rapidly metastasizing glory. 

Having made my decision on a gun with a salesman, he led me to a computer that automatically administers background checks to determine who’s fit to purchase a firearm. I was grateful he didn’t stick around to look over my shoulder as I went though the questionnaire.

The first few questions were softballs.  But when I got to the one that read “Have you ever been adjudicated a mental defective or committed to a mental institution?” I hesitated.  Yes, I’d been committed to a mental institution.  But that had been decades before, probably about 1973.  Would the state’s records even go that far back?  And if I answered “Yes,” would I have the opportunity to talk to someone in the store about my case?  And what if I simply lied and answered “No,” what would happen?

It didn’t take long to decide to stick to the truth.  I didn’t know for sure, but was pretty confident that a lie would set me up for a felony charge. Which, at best, would mean a protracted, embarrassing, and expensive legal fight.  And, at worst, a prison sentence.  

Not to mention the most obvious consideration:  I would be lying.

So, I clicked the “Yes” button.  Instantly, the screen went blank and I was directed back to the counter where I’d left the gun with the clerk.  Sheepishly I said, “I was denied at the computer.  What do I do now?”  

“I’m sorry,” he answered as he locked the gun in the glass case behind the counter.  Although he acted as if my problem was an everyday thing for him, he went on, “There’s nothing we can do here.  You’ll have to go to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.  Maybe talk to an attorney.  Or,” he continued, “join Legal Shield.”  He handed me a card.  “They might be able to help.”

To Buy A Gun

A few days later I was in the office of an attorney who was part of Legal Shield, a prepaid plan for gun owners.  Don’t remember his name; he probably wasn’t glad to see me. Prepaid plans like that stir up a great deal more chaff than wheat.  And I was definitely in the chaff category.  But the quick discussion convinced me that my next stop should be the Denver Probate Court, the entity that would have made the determination that I should be committed to Mount Airy Psychiatric hospital.

It’d been years since I’d been in the Denver City and County Building.  But the broad hallways with the little clusters of worried people huddled around their attorneys outside courtrooms were the same.  I wondered around some before I found the probate court.  Its filing room smelled like old dust. The bulky, pasty faced clerk who looked like he’d been there as long as the dust, asked, “Can I help you?”  

“Yes, thanks,” I said.  “My parents had me involuntarily committed to the Mount Airy Psychiatric hospital back in the early to mid-seventies.  Can you show me how to find my file?”  No sense beating around the bush with a probate court clerk; they must see commitments like this all the time.

“Sure,” he answered, leading me to a bank of filing cabinets. “The index is organized by year and then last name of the respondent-which in this case would be you.  What’s your name and what year did you say?”

“It’s Swalm,” I said before spelling it out. “Early to mid-seventies.”

“Ok,” he said, stooping over and pulling out a bank of index cards.  “This is for 1970.  It continues here for ’71 and goes on here,” he said, pointing.    

“Thanks,” I said as he walked away. I began fingering my way through the cards.  Nothing for 1970.  Or 1971. 

Or, to my surprise, ’72.  Which was the most likely year.  The year I was pretty sure I took a break from CU Boulder to write the “great American novel.”  And when I endured another nasty breakup with Lolly.  Which, in my despair, drove me to Christ.  

But nothing of the wild whipsaws of that year showed up in the probate court records.  Or for ’73.  Or ’74.  Or ’75.  Or ’76.  

At which point I gave up and concluded that the record wasn’t there.  I even went back a second time a few weeks later just to make sure.  Nada.

A Figment Of My Imagination?

But the two Denver sheriffs who escorted me out of my folks’ basement, put me in the back of their patrol car, and drove me to Mount Airy weren’t a figment of my imagination.  Nor was the soft-spoken teenage girl at Mount Airy who washed her hands so much that they bled.  Neither was Dr. Walker, my psychiatrist, who ordered the anti-psychotic, Mellarill, for me without telling me it caused constipation.  An omission which caused my mania to bubble to the surface in an angry outburst toward him.  Or the girl, a little older than the hand washer, whose distended belly held the child that was destined to be aborted.  Or her boyfriend that visited her in the evening, somehow banging her in the bathroom, while their buddies stood guard.  Or the court appointed attorney with whom I talked to get him ready to represent me in the hearing I’d demanded to challenge the commitment.  The commitment my parents had requested because a pheasant hunting trip with dad had gone sideways.  Badly.  

All that had happened.  I was sure of that.  Even if the court file had vanished.  

But what did happen to it?  Sure, it could have just slipped into a crack somewhere.  And there are plenty of cracks for what would have been a slender file to hide in a room full of hundreds, no thousands, of files.  And since that’s the simplest answer, it’s probably the right one.

But that’s not the answer that appeals to me.  

My Dad, Paul, was a Denver City Councilman.  Before that, he’d served a two year term in the Colorado House of Representatives.  At one point, before us kids talked him out of it because of his history of heart attacks, he seriously considered running for Governor of the State of Colorado.  From abject poverty as a child, he built multi-million dollar businesses.  Along the way, he’d survived polio, tuberculosis, rheumatic fever, whooping cough, and small pox.  A smart, tough, hard working guy, he didn’t tolerate obstacles gladly.  

Was a guy like that going to let a crazy son like me cast a potential shadow over whatever he might want to achieve?  I don’t think so.  

So how tough would it have been for him, the City Councilman, or State Representative, or the gubernatorial candidate-or whatever-to saunter into the Probate Court, talk to some lowly clerk, and make that file go away?  Or, if that was too risky, hire someone to do it for him?  Probably not too tough.  

And was I, the crazy son, going to object to having my past wiped clean?  Why would I?  It was decades before I was willing to talk about Mount Airy with anyone other than my wife.

So what do I do now?  Jump through a bunch of bureaucratic hoops to try to fix my record just so I can buy a gun?  And maybe even be forced to testify, under oath, that I was never committed under a mental health hold?  

You gotta be crazy.