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
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