Valet Reader

“In West Philadelphia born and raised, on the playground where I spent most of my days, chilling out, maxing, relaxing all cool, and all shooting some b-ball outside of the school, when a couple guys, they were up to no good, started making trouble in my neighborhood, I got in one little fight and my mom got scared, and said ‘you’re moving with your auntie and uncle in Bel-Aire.’”

Errr, oops, rewind, wrong story. It should be a little something more like this…

“In South Philadelphia born and kind of raised, in the alley where I spent most of my days (and nights), chatting it up, grovelling, fighting like mad, and all smashing some skulls outside on the street, when a couple of friends, they followed me along, we started making trouble in the city of brotherly love, I beat someone silly and the cops got mad, and I said I’m going to Indiana to get away from it all. The cops caught up with me and sent me to jail, just like they said they always would, I made some new friends and tried to turn my life around and this here is the story I’m going to tell.”

In all likelihood you’re familiar with American History X. After all, it was a pretty popular and powerful movie. I don’t like to be cliche but it would be ridiculous of me not to recognize the similarities between this book and that movie. The book itself at one point actually makes a reference to this fact, but rest assured Frank Meeink is a real person unlike X’s fictional Derek Vineyard.

Meeink’s story is exactly something that you would expect to see a 20/20, Dateline or 60 Minutes news story on. It’s got all of the right elements. Obviously you start with the hatred, move along to addiction, followed by fathering children, turning around, returning to addiction and eventually becoming whole again. But, I will say that reading it in autobiographical form was a lot more powerful than a short television vignette. Sure you may not get the actual visuals but they’re really not necessary. The words are themselves all the visuals you need.

It’s really quite a scary story. For me one of the hardest things was reading about Frank’s upbringing. It was physically hard for me to continue reading about his mother and the way he was treated in her home. If reading something like that doesn’t make someone grateful for the way they were raised I really don’t know what will. This is of course the beginning of his story and as you can guess it only gets harder from there.

His affiliations with hate groups began once he was all but forced to find a new family when he was finally kicked out of his own home. The unusual part about this “hate” period in Frank’s life was his aversion to drugs, something which would become extremely prevalent in his later years. As these stories go eventually Meeink was caught for one of his many acts of violence (he was eager to beat up college kids, jews, S.H.A.R.P.S (skin heads against racial prejudice) and frankly anyone else that got in his way) and eventually shuttled off to jail. From this point on in the story you can see and feel the emotional changes occurring within and can get an idea of how things may turn out. Yet, as the reader you really don’t know whats going to happen next or at the very least what you expect to happen doesn’t.

By the end of the story it is not hard to feel a great deal of relief and happiness to know that it doesn’t really take much for a person to see how hurtful they can be. In Frank’s case his transformation occurs in jail which by all means seems to be almost the hardest place for that to occur. In order to preserve some sort of mystery regarding the book I won’t give away what happens in the jail but it is a very uplifting part of this book. (And Frank, if you happen to read this what ever happened to your friendship with Little G and Jello?)

Aside from the changes in himself during his time in jail it was his friendship once out of jail with a Jewish business owner who employed him that really set him on the course to racial recovery. It was at this point in his life that he realized that all he had been told and taught about Jews was not true. Eventually he found himself calling his boss a friend and in due time became associated with ADL (anti-defamation league) and began to speak about his experiences as a skinhead. It would be nice and fluffy if this is where his story ends but it’s not. Unfortunately for Frank the story continues with yet another breakdown, his drug addictions once again get the best of him and time and again he is forced to deal with this problem and the consequences associated with it.

Honestly, I wasn’t so sure how I was going to feel about this book going into it. I’ve read my share of similar tales and have seen enough movies like American History X to make myself a little leery about yet another tale of bad boy gone good. But, this one was good. Good in that it was written well, unlike another book which I recently read that was an autobiographical tale, and the way Frank tells his story is powerful and the prose is more than adequate.

There is an interview following the text of the novel that offers a little more insight into Frank which was helpful and offered a peek into Frank’s person more so than the book itself did. It was a nice touch to finish the book off with.

At the end of the day I am skeptical on this books true power though. The likelihood of it changing lives it hard to see as I wouldn’t expect many hateful people out there to pick it up. With any luck hopefully it will be read in various classes and teach something to people that being humane is human. I would though suggest picking it up and reading it if your into these kind of stories. I left a lot out of my review including his love interests and his development of “Harmony through hockey” both interesting elements of Mr. Meeink’s life and worthy of hearing about. I don’t usually appreciate stories that take you on a journey from hate to love, but I did come to appreciate this one.