One Hellified Week That Ended On A Good Note

 

August 19, 2023

I may have to continue using "hellified" in my messages, since that best describes recent weeks' events.

On Monday, the 14th, it began like a typical day. The heavy steel cell doors banged open and the cell lights came on at 5 a.m., after the guards counted, shining flashlights in our eyes and blasting orders over the loud intercom speakers.

Most men marched to breakfast, while others drank cups of canteen coffee and watched the TV news. At seven a.m. they began blaring, "Inspection ready, class A uniforms, inspection team is on its way."

Yeah, right. Do you remember the children's story of the little boy who cried wolf? He made so many false calls that when a real wolf showed up, nobody believed him. That's the situation here. They call inspection ready so often, when the administration actually shows up, many are caught by surprise and find themselves in trouble.

This was a real inspection, though. A group led by the warden did a walkthrough, passed our dorm, and cleared us. At 8:30 a.m. they announced "evacuate the dorm."

Uh oh! Everyone knew what that meant. Mondays are favorite shakedown times for the K-9's, searching for dope.

Sure enough, before long three young Belgian shepherds showed up with their handlers. Almost 200 men stewing on the treeless recreation field watched the gung ho sniffers strain at their leashes, entering our building.

Did I mention that this past week was the hottest one in history, at least since Fahrenheit invented the thermometer?

No way could this old man swelter on that merciless rec yard. I went to a guard who appeared to be in charge and explained that at almost 74 years old and a multiple skin cancer survivor, I couldn't stay out in the sun more than 15 minutes. She told me to sit in the shade of the canteen awning. Thanks. I did. In the next five minutes several old timers and a few younger ones drifted over and joined me. Follow the leader.

The dogs took a couple of hours to discover no dope in the building, and after peeing and sniffing, left the compound. I once proposed posting signs after negative shakedowns: THIS BUILDING IS CERTIFIED DRUG-FREE BY FDOC CANINES. The authorities didn't go for it.

Tuesday seemed like déja vu all over again. Evacuate the dorm. Everybody out. What could this be? Pest control. The spray man. Back to my shady spot under the canteen awning.

I don't know why they bother. Whatever watered-down chemical they spray has no effect on the super-roach colonies infesting our cells and lockers. No one smelled anything either.

Wednesday came. I had a ten a.m. callout to the law library to research my pending parole hearing. I had just sat down when the radio announced, "Level 2 lockdown. All inmates return to their housing area. Prepare for master roster count."

Another day dead, wasted. Nothing happened. No one surreptitiously exited the prison.

They did it over and over again, for hours, counting and recounting. Only a drill. If this had been a real crisis, it would have been even more screwed up.

Thursday, 1:14 a.m., I am awakened by a flashlight shining in my eyes. A guard standing in my doorway asks me if I wanted to go on my medical trip to the RMC prison hospital at Lake Butler in North Florida. Yes, of course. I have to go. I am scheduled to see the cardiologist, Dr. Wallah Salman, for my test results.

They come for me at 4:00 a.m. I sit in a cage in the mental health building for an hour. The transport guard chains me up like Houdini, handcuffs, black box, waist chain, leg irons. This guard and I have a history that goes back a couple of years. Certain staff members have an attitude toward elderly, intelligent white men who know the rules and don't kowtow. It goes with the prison territory.

He clicked the handcuffs several clicks tighter, cutting off circulation. Both my wrists are bruised still.

Next negative, I was the only person riding in the notorious torture device known as the dog box van, a metal box built for sensory deprivation. Every pothole bruised my spine.

I was the first one called by the cardiologist. Despite the abnormal ECG, the cardiologist cleared me to go. "You're old," he said. "Get used to it."

Eventually we made it back to Lake C. I. I took two Tylenols and laid down on my bunk, to recover.

Friday was remarkably quiet. I attended the Toastmasters International Gavel Club meeting in the chapel. We are dealing with members transferring to other prisons, the losses hopefully offset by recruiting new arrivals. We have two outside sponsors, very nice lady volunteers, members of the outside Clermont club, who have had a positive impact on this group. Because of their efforts, our Club has been able to participate in many activities that are not only enjoyable, but also have resulted in personal improvement for our members.

Finally, Saturday arrived, what I had anxiously been awaiting for weeks, a visit from my brother, Dan Norman, niece Tammy Norman, and aunt, Alice Walker, from Tampa. They were the first ones there. We had a good time together, talking about the past and future, although our time was cut short due to the overcrowding in the mini-visiting area. We took a photo together, which accompanies this message. Getting old. Hanging in there. Still a special treasured time to visit together.

So I am back in the dorm, after showering and calling my dear wife, Libby, on the sole working pay phone for over fifty men. The fellows are watching preseason NFL football, and I am joyfully thinking about my visit with Libby tomorrow.

When I have more hellified news, I will share it.

All the best.

Charlie

 

In the Heat of the Day and Night

 

Tuesday, August 1, 2023

It has been a hellified week, record, sweltering heat, hassles from the guards. Thunderstorms and lightning knocked out one of two pay phones for fifty prisoners. WiFi went out.

My decent cell mate got transferred to Miami. I had the weekend and a few days of solitary peace, then I got my old cell mate back, the junkie idiot who spends $100 a week on drugs. As I speak he is passed out on his locker. Is he breathing? Do I care? Slow suicide. One day he won't wake up.

Two weeks ago the two inmate canteen men got locked up, resulting in a long hot weekend of no cold sodas, freeze-pops, sandwiches, chips, cookies, or any other high-priced edible available as a substitute for the inedible chowhall food furnished by Aramark, best-known for food poisoning in prisons nationwide. Their main entree is a gray piece of dry meat called a "rat patty."

Four surviving, starving feral cats living in a storm drain beg for food at chow times, and prisoners throw them scraps from their trays. The cats will eat dry peanut butter sandwiches, pasta, chili mac, hot dogs, scrambled eggs, hard biscuits, and the rare fragments of baked chicken. They sniff the rat patty and run away. They are smarter than we are.

They hired one new inmate canteen worker, to service 560 inmates, including 140 patients in the mental hospital, 80 more in confinement, the infirmary. They will open the yard for rec and canteen for an hour or so. At least one hundred men will get in the canteen line. Most won't make it. The new canteen man is slow and inexperienced.

They can spend $100 from their canteen debit card each week. I look at the men purchasing full canteen bags of food only to see many of them hand off their bags to the dope man.

You have to keep canteen items for several reasons, the main reason being if you go to confinement your canteen food goes with you. They used to store canteen in the property room while someone was in confinement for no reason, but the rats and mice ate it, costing the prison money for reimbursement. So you keep your canteen in lockup.

In confinement you need coffee packs to trade for books to read, stamps and envelopes for letters home, to tell your families your situation, to trade for the occasional decent food trays. Other canteen food items are like money.

It is a hard existence for those with no canteen. The smart prisoners are always stocked up and prepared for anything.

When our family moved to Florida from Texas in the late 1950's, my father worked as a laborer for a dollar an hour, for eighty hours a week, no overtime. On Friday evenings we went to the Winn Dixie for groceries. My father gave my mother a twenty-dollar bill, which bought five bags of food for five of us for the week. The cashier usually gave my mother some change back.

I hadn't been able to get to the front of the canteen line for the past couple of weeks. My canteen stash was low. This morning I was lucky enough to get to the canteen window. My medium-sized blue mesh canteen bag, filled, was still smaller than the five brown paper bags my mother paid twenty dollars for so many years ago. My bill? $85! I couldn't believe it.

None went to the dope man. One bag of cookies will go to a vegan prisoner to bring back his chicken leg quarter for me, the only real meat they serve we can identify. I will eat and drink some. The rest I'll keep in my locker for confinement insurance.

Libby and I had a good two-day visit this past weekend, although it was noisy and crowded. My brother Dan, Aunt Alice, and niece Tammy hope to visit in a couple of weeks. If I'm lucky I will make it back to the canteen window to buy photo tickets for the occasion. More later.

peace, joy and love,

Charlie