Georgetown, Ga. ? As hard as it was to spend 35 years in prison for stealing a black-and-white television, Junior Allen has found freedom frustrating, too.

Despite extensive prison records in North Carolina, where he has spent more than half his life as inmate No. 0004604, Allen has been unable to establish his identity in rural Georgia, where he now lives with his sister, or in Alabama, where he was born 65 years ago to sharecropper parents.

The monthlong effort to get a birth certificate and photo ID only hint at the new challenge he faces – that of transforming himself from less-than-model inmate to average senior citizen.

“It’s like I never existed,” Allen said. “I went to Columbus, Georgia, and they said I had to go to Alabama. I went to Alabama and they said I had to go to Georgia.”

His most immediate goal is to get a driver’s license. He has already revived a 1984 Dodge Aries that had been parked in his sister’s yard.

“I’d like to live the rest of my life at peace, maybe get some of the things I need – transportation and a job and maybe a hobby like fishing,” he said. “I love to fish. I’ve already got two or three places picked out.”

Allen was a strapping 30-year-old in 1970 when he walked into the unlocked home of an elderly North Carolina woman near Benson and took her $140, 19-inch black-and-white Motorola. He hid the set in the woods and never watched it. Police quickly arrested him at his labor camp by following his footprints.

When Allen emerged from the Orange Correctional Center in late May, he had a slight stoop, prison bifocals on his nose, and flecks of gray in his mustache.

When Allen arrived in the Tar Heel state, he had already been hardened by years as a migrant farm worker and itinerant construction laborer. By then, his rap sheet already included burglaries and a violent assault.

State records say Allen roughed up 87-year-old Lessie Johnson and stole her TV. Allen was not convicted of assault and denies he hurt the woman.

Under the law of the day, a jury sentenced him to life in prison for second-degree burglary – a crime that today would carry a maximum punishment of three years. Bitter at his punishment, Allen admitted he was not the best-behaved inmate.

“When you know you are right and the man is wrong, I put up a defense,” he said. “I got a lot of little minor write-ups.” He had 47 infractions from 1972 to 2002, including gambling, weapons possession, lock tampering, misuse of medicine, profane language and making a verbal threat.

He was denied parole 25 times.

“About three years ago, Allen was told he’d have to change his behavior to have any chance of parole,” said Melita Groomes, the North Carolina parole commission’s executive director.

Around the same time, Allen’s case caught the attention of University of North Carolina law professor Rich Rosen. “What first struck me was the ridiculous amount of time for the crime he had committed,” Rosen said. “It was an absurd amount of time. The prosecutors thought it, too.”

Rosen persuaded Allen that his best chance of getting out was to put away his bitterness.

Allen cleaned up his act, and with no infractions for three years, Allen’s case went before the parole commission last year, for a 26th time, and he was finally ordered released.

“I’ve got a lot of catching up to do because I’m way behind,” said Allen, who hoped to find work as a fork lift operator as soon as he can obtain the photo ID required to apply.