John Ford is 56 years old and he spent 40 of those years in prison. He’s been beaten and threatened and he’s seen cellmates tossed to their deaths. Yet with each new chance at freedom, he lasted only weeks – if not days – on the outside.

How can you write succinctly about a life of crime and the revolving door of prison? How can you restrict yourself to column inches when writing about the despair of a dangerous life and dingy cells?

You start at the beginning, I suppose.

As a kid, John Ford was beaten by his adoptive father. John tells a story of being lashed with a dog leash and then thrown into saw blades. He went to bed bloody and was unable to get up in the morning because dried blood held him fast to the bed sheets.

The first time he went after someone with a weapon he was 14 years old. John had a crush on a classmate and the girl complained she was being abused by another boy.

“It was the first time another human being had shown me any kindness. I wanted to hurt the person who was hurting her,” Ford said.

No shots were fired when Ford got a gun and went after his childhood rival. But there was violence and he was sent to the Maine Youth Center. Ford thrived in a place that would have frightened most.

“I was with people my own age, I was eating three meals a day and I wasn’t being beaten,” Ford said. “Basically, I was having a ball.”

Once free, Ford threatened his step-dad with a gun. No more beatings, Ford warned. He used the rifle as an exclamation point.

He also fired at passing cars on the highway when the drivers refused to pick him up. Back then, 14-year-olds who were deemed incorrigible were sent to Thomaston.

So, here’s a kid who was years from growing a beard housed with the state’s most dangerous criminals. Young John Ford entered Thomaston at 14, when most of us were still shooting marbles and adjusting to changing voices.

“A lot of the older guys, they looked out for me,” Ford said.

Ford was so comfortable in the prison environment that he went back to Tommy Town many times. He spent a total of 35 years in there by the time he was done robbing convenience stores and pizza joints and carrying guns everywhere he went.

During one stint inside, he dropped a brick on the head of a guard. That got him a fast trip out of Thomaston and a move to the Adult Correctional Institute in Rhode Island. He stared up at eight tiers filled with notorious criminals. An inmate took a disliking for this young punk from Maine. A noted mob boss stepped in to save him.

“He liked my Maine accent,” Ford said. “That might have saved my life.”

From there, a prison in Massachusetts for stealing guns and selling them for cocaine. Then back to Thomaston.

Along the way Ford married a woman who wrote to him in prison and then he married another young lady. No easy feat considering he never spent more than two months on the outside.

Thomaston was his home. There, he knew the rules and the people to be avoided. He knew when to stand his ground and when to back down. Prison life was the life he knew.

“One morning I got up in my cell and decided to make some coffee,” Ford said. “I was at the sink and I looked in the mirror. My hair was gray and most of it was gone. It seemed like I was a young man just a few days ago. Years had passed like weeks.

“A lot of people become institutionalized. But me? I don’t want to die in a cage.”

By the time I met John Ford at a Dunkin Donuts, he had been free for three years, living in downtown Lewiston and looking for something to fill his hours.

“I live in a tiny apartment. There’s nothing to do all day,” Ford said. “I’d like to talk to the kids now. I’d like to talk to them before they really mess up and tell them what it’s like.”

So far, no one wants him. Ford wants to talk to kids in schools, at county jails or in the youth center. He wants to tell them that they could grow old in prison. The weathered lines of John Ford’s face speak of what happens when you make too many bad decisions.

In the age of DARE officers and public service announcements, no one sees the need for a broken-down con like John Ford.

But really, who would impress the kids more? Some rookie cop working the school halls? Some substance-abuse counselor who’s never felt the tidal tug of addiction himself?

Or someone like Ford, who used guns and drugs as means of expression and paid the price in years?

“I’ve taken a lot away from society,” Ford said. “I really want to give something back.”

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal’s crime reporter.