A Mark Of Pride?

In the old days if someone went into the service and off to war it was assumed that they would come home with a tattoo.

That is, if they came home at all.

They would get their branch of service and where they fought and maybe something saying "Mother". Traditional stuff.

A few years ago I had a dorm worker who had the word "Death" tattooed across the front of his throat. Young kid, early twenties. Not a bada**. He got in trouble alot for his mouth but nothing serious.

I saw that tat and said "Oh yeah, I'll bet your mother is proud of you!" He just shrugged and walked away.

Whatever. He's not my kid.

Tonight out on the rec yard while they were standing in the snow they were talking about their tats and what they wanted to get. One guy said "Yeah, I want to get either 'Murderer' or maybe 'Psycho Killer' on my chest."

I looked out to see who was doing the talking. Yeah........ He's in for drugs and burglary. He's a killer, all right.

If I ever had a kid that went to prison the last thing they would see before they left was my biggest skinning knife and a soldering iron. I'd say "You cover yourself with stupid tattoos in there, I'm going to remove them when you get back out."

And if I ever own a business and some twit with "Death" tattooed across his neck comes in looking for a job I'll make him hit the road so hard he skids ten feet down the sidewalk.

What the snap are they thinking?

One Of Those "Oh Snap" Moments

I thought that I had considered all of the ways that I might get killed doing my line of work.

I've imagined getting stabbed or sliced or just beaten to death.

I've imagined being thrown off the walk and coming to a sudden stop on the concrete.

I've imagined catching something icky and going out slowly.

I've even imagined being accidentally shot by another staff member. I've seen most of us around guns. Aint nobody here Annie Oakley.

But it never once even crossed my mind that I could be taken out by an immense fireball of diesel fuel. That just never occurred to me.

Lt. Pinocchio came wandering down to the house this evening and as he strolled up he asked "Do you smell diesel fuel over there?" and pointed to the other side of the pod. I walked over and sniffed, but my sinuses are all clogged up and I couldn't smell anything.

After we went into the office he sent Ms. Twang out to see if she could smell it and she could. So the Lt had me call one of the yard dogs down with a key for the gate and we went out to investigate.

In between our house and the next one up we have an emergency generator. They test it every thursday right before BG and I get in. We have alot of electrical problems and we have several generators. They come in handy.

As soon as we hit the gate the wind shifts and I can smell the fumes. We wander over to the generator. I can see small puddles in the mud all around the concrete base. Melted snow? Or something more?

Intrepid me sticks his finger in the puddle and gives it a sniff. Diesel! And then I look around and realize that I am standing right in the middle of several large puddles of spilled fuel.

Oh snap.

I start to reach for my radio and think better of it.

Then I carefully step my way out of the mushy bomb I am standing on and go several feet away before calling for the Lt. I have no idea how much of it is spilled into the ground and whether or not there might be an underground tank or just a pipeline. Just in case, I want to get as far away from the thing as I can.

So...... what do you think our chances are of getting the 24 hour maintenance guy on call to come in on a superbowl sunday?

Zero to none, it turns out. He calls back and the two inmates who work on the generators with him go out with a pipewrench and just shut off the fuel to the generator at the pipe and go back to finish watching the game.

And, as it turns out, that generator runs the power to all of the control rooms to all of the houses on this side of the camp.

So if this snowstorm they are predicting for tonight manages to knock out the power (like has happened in the past) guess what?

No lights, no power doors. We would have to manually open every single lock.

Things could get ugly real quick.

Hoo boy.

Never saw that one coming.

Ooooohhh...... I'm Scared!

Jeez..... You'd think I'd be all blase' about hearing these guys talk tough. But every once in awhile one of them just rocks me back on my pins.

There's this little wobblehead over in C-wing. Maybe five foot four and a buck sixty. Scrawny. If he's not complaining of mental problems, he's having chest pains so somebody will pay attention to him. I refer to him as "Schmelvin".

He's just kind of pathetic, if you know what I mean.

We had him out on the rec yard and one of the old heads was blowing him up about what a tough guy he is. Ol' Schmelvin puffed his chest all out and told them about one time he spent five days buck naked out in the woods in Alaska during the winter on a bet.

Hmmm.......

I spent four years in Alaska and the average temp there during the winter was forty below. The last winter I was there it was eighty below.

I wonder what part of Alaska he was in?

Maybe the southern part, where it's warmer.

Yeah.

And then the old head asks him "Do you take all those meds because you need them or just to get high?" And Schmelvin says "Oh, I need them. I have mental problems, you see."

There were a few barely suppressed snickers and giggles from some of the other cages at that point.

And Schmelvin goes on to say (Let me check my notes, I want to get this just right): "Lemme put it this way..... If I wasn't taking my medication, this whole fence would be down and several CO's would be dead."

And then he started dancing like Micheal Jackson.

Okey dokey.

When it was time to take them in, I told BG that he'd better cuff Schmelvin up himself, because I was skeert.

He just snorted at me and shook his head.

I get alot of that.

My Hero

KP is my hero.

When I grow up I want to be just like him.

Behind that homespun trucker/biker facade is a mind like a steel trap.

One of our more troublesome wobbleheads started throwing a fit tonight about the nurse not giving him one of his meds. I don't know if she gave it to him or not, I wasn't there. But he started kicking on his door and calling Code 16 and demanding to see the Sarge.

The kid has the emotional age of about a ten year old. There is no reasoning with him. Not that I have ever managed, anyway. If he doesn't get what he wants he kicks on his door and calls code 16 all night long. I've never managed to get along with him.

KP went up there and told him that he was basically beat on his meds if he didn't get them at the med pass. There is a set time that he is supposed to get them and if he doesn't get them at that time then he's just beat.

The only way he was going to get any satisfaction was to file a complaint about the nurse. Then she will make sure he gets all of his meds all of the time.

But if he does that he is going to piss off the nurse and she won't do anything extra for him, like giving him antacids when he has a tummy ache or aspirin when he has a headache. He will have to fill out the paperwork and get them from the pharmacy like everybody else.

And she won't be nice to him anymore.

Left him in a moral quandary, scratching his head and trying to figure out what to do.

And it shut him up for the rest of the night.

Like I said, KP is my hero.

Later on in the evening he was telling us that one of the offenders had asked him if he had gone to college. "Sure thing" he said. "I have a masters degree in 15th century american literature."

They were impressed to hear that. They said "Why are you working here, then?"

To which he replied "Not much market for that kind of thing around here."

The whole time he's telling this story COI Coffee is sitting over by the desk and nodding his head and wondering the same thing.

About ten minutes later, when we were off on another topic he suddenly says "Hey! There was no 15th century american literature!"

Exactly.

KP is my hero.

This Is Not A Mensa Clubhouse

And I'm not just talking about the inmates. There are nights that I am surprised more of us don't get lost on our way to work.

I suspect that it is the general miasma to the place. An overwhelming stench of stupidity in the prison itself that occasionally drags our IQ down a few points after a long and arduous day.

Some nights we can sit around and argue philosophy and the teachings of Sun Tzu and how they relate to working in a prison. Working here is very much like fighting a war and some of that stuff actually applies in a real sense more than in a metaphysical one.

And then some nights we wonder how many packets of cereal we can pack into the nurses coat before she will notice. In our house, you always have to check your lunch box and coat pockets before you leave. Trust me.

Tonight, towards the end of the night, we were standing out front smoking and KP was telling us horror stories about the cattle business and what happens to meat before it gets to the dinner table. That was icky. Right in the middle of that, The Cowboy sticks his head out of the bubble and says "Hey! My girlfriend just realized that chinese people eat nothing but chinese food! Don't you think they'd get sick of it after awhile? I know I do!"

And my brain began trying to viciously claw itself out of my ear in an attempt to escape.

The conversation went downhill from there, amazingly enough.

On they way out, I ran into Sgt Puddle, who was telling me about the new Robert Jordan book. That made me feel a little better until I got up to the Comm room to turn in my radio and cuff keys.

Vinnie was up there and said "Hey! If you're interested, there's midget wrestling at the strip club this weekend! It just doesn't get any better than that! You wanna go?"

My brain made good it's escape at that point. I do hope it comes back soon.

Poker Face

I met a future denizen of Raccoon City and probably the Hive this morning.

I can't/won't go into detail about who or where or why.

It's personal.

I've never actually met him face to face or even laid eyes on him. He was only a lump under the covers of a motel room. But I'm sure I'll be seeing his face very soon.

A small time drug dealer and a child molester and a domestic abuser. A petty street punk. One who has apparently evaded actually going to prison up to this point. I think that luck of his is going to run out fairly quickly.

He's invaded my space, so to speak. Popped up on my radar in a very personal way.

That doesn't bode well for his future personal happiness.

When he finally does go to prison I really do look forward to the day he comes into the Hive running his pie hole. I want to look into his face just one time.

Of course, I will have to report it up the chain and explain my connection with him and get him transferred to another camp.

I just want to see him one time. I want him to look into my eyes.

I won't even put my hands on him.

I won't need to.

Gritty

It's our favorite time of the year. Winter. When as soon as the first flake of snow is detected in the sky half of every shift calls in sick or stuck.

I have known a few people who called in because of the snow who lived less than a mile away from the prison. I offered to go and personally drag them to work, but so far the upper management has seen fit to decline my generous offer.

Pity.

It's also the time of year when they employ tons and tons of "traction enhancement material" all over the sidewalks of the prison. In a normal world, this would consist of rock salt or even sand. The State, in it's infinite wisdom, uses this ridiculous mix of small gravel (containing a few large rocks) and some sort of ash that has the consistency of powdered lead and containing one granule of rock salt per ten pounds of cinders.

When this concoction is spread upon an icy patch of sidewalk, the gravel is immediately picked up in everyones' shoe treads and carried into the house and the cinders become a slippery sticky grey paste that splashes up onto your pant legs and makes the whole place look like the Toutle River valley right after Mt. St. Helens erupted.

For the next several months every surface or every floor in the institution will be covered in a grey patina of ash, cinders, and small rocks. The wheels on many desk chairs will be ground down to nothing by rolling over the gravel left by careless feet. The entire place will be covered in grey crud and every single person will crunch when they walk.

Of course, they won't spread a gram of this mess out in the parking lot, where sometimes it takes you half an hour just to get out of your parking space.

But it will be flung with reckless abandon just outside of every housing unit where it will all be tracked back inside within an hour.

I don't know what the grey stuff is. They call it "cinders".

I probably don't want to know what it really is.

I'm proposing building a huge parabolic mirror to focus the suns rays and blast away the ice and snow all over the camp. I'll even offer to man it now and then.

But if you are walking across the yard and see the big beam of light coming in your direction.....

I suggest you run.