"DEJA VU" by Steve Savage "King of the Beasts"

November 12, 1977. Two weeks before my Trial in the Philadelphia Federal Courthouse was to begin, I experienced a dream that greatly disturbed me.

THE DREAM

I was in New York City, on the second floor of a building, located at the northeast corner of 43rd Street and Fifth Avenue, in the space that had previously been occupied by Radio Station WNEW.

I walked down a flight of stairs to the street below to the Deli.

Someone, for some unknown reason, handed me an umbrella just as two burly "cop-like" men moved toward me.

I opened the umbrella, grasped the handle, and found myself floating upwards, like Mary Poppins, away from what I sensed was a certain danger.

As quickly as the umbrella had lifted me to the safety of "beyond reach," it as slowly lowered me into the grasp of the "Fedora'd Faceless Wearers of XXL Trenchcoats."

"Let's go!" one of them said, "You're going to Candlewood!"

For days, because the dream was so vivid, I asked everyone I knew if they had ever heard of, or knew where "Candlewood" was. No one seemed to know, and as the days wore on, it began to fade from my consciousness because there were more immediate problems that demanded my attention.

November 29, 1977. The Trial in Philadelphia was over. I was given a maximum sentence of 65 years in Federal Prison.

As soon as the words of the sentence had been pronounced, I walked over to embrace and kiss Anna who had been in the Courtroom every day of the Trial. I was then led away to begin serving my sentence immediately.

I knew, at that moment, why it was that I had spent that year in the Kagnew Stockade twenty years earlier. It was to strengthen me and to prepare me for this time.

My sole possession, which I was allowed to retain, was my Lockman Foundation New American Standard, Leather Bound, Thumb-Indexed Bible.

Imprinted on the cover, in Gold Lettering, is the enigmatic name "THEOPHILUS;" someone who was unknown to the people of the time that Luke wrote his eponymous Gospel and The Acts of the Apostles.

After several weeks of Odyssey through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, shackled and chained hand and foot, on bus rides that went nowhere, caged with murderers, rapists, drug dealers, and addicts, I was brought to the Metropolitan Correctional Facility in New York City.

Several more weeks later, I was chained and shackled again and, once more, "Put on the Bus." After several hours ride, I saw signs that read "Welcome to Connecticut."

Soon, thereafter, the bus slowed down as it approached the large imposing facility that was Danbury Federal Prison.

The Prison Guard assigned to the bus stood up and turned to face and address his seated, shackled prisoners.

He began to look and sound, for all the world, like a Beverly Hills Tour Bus Guide, before a "Captive Audience," enthusiastically naming all the Celebrity Inmates with whom we would be sharing company: G. Gordon Liddy of Watergate fame, George Hurst, inventor of the Hurst Shifter, Sonny Wortzik, the Bank Robber played by Al Pacino in "Dog Day Afternoon," among others.

As the bus was about to enter the private road that led to the prison, I glanced to the right and saw a large sign, upon which were written the words:

"WELCOME TO CANDLEWOOD ESTATES"