THE CONSTITUTION AIN'T IN EFFECT IN OKALOOSA COUNTY

DAY SEVENTEEN: Prison Diary January 19, 2013 Solitary Confinement Okaloosa C.I., Crestview, FL

Only thirteen days to go, unless the powers-that-be have mercy, acknowledge the wrongness of their constitutional violations, and suspend my remaining days of solitary. “Disciplinary Confinement should be the last resort,” those magnanimous prison rules state. Sure, right, uh-huh, forget it. Men got to jail for stealing bread. Sound familiar? “Les Miserables.” This is called in prison parlance, “getting the butter from the duck.” How do we silence this guy? Hmmm. Don’t give them any ideas. No, Virginia, I am not suicidal, I don’t harbor thoughts of harming myself or others, so if I wind up hanging from a bedsheet with boot marks on my chest, that wasn’t CPR they were applying. Don’t give them any ideas. I’m not worried about the officers – I can’t complain about them. On the whole they are fair and do a good job. Don’t let the mail grinches near me with any sharp implements! It’s bad enough trying to send out legal mail without enduring buckets of verbal abuse.

Today is my younger brother, Danny’s, 59th birthday. Hard to believe. I remember it like it happened yesterday. I was four years and four months old, and was amazed to see such a red-faced baby against the white sheets of my mother’s hospital bed.

“That’s not my brother, that’s an Indian baby!” I said. Four year olds in 1954 knew nothing of P.C. and Native Americans. Texas was cowboys and Indians territory.

They are bringing evening chow, so I will cut this short. I wanted to mention that something astounding happened a few nights ago – breaded fish filets! Not the compressed fish patty, but real fish, with commercial breading, like something you’d get at Captain D’s, if you frequent such plebian establishments. It wasn’t very big, but it was tasty and real. It had to be a major foul-up on the food suppliers’ part. We haven’t had any type of fish for many years, and that was always the scary patties. They probably meant to send the possum and soy patties (what I call the mystery meat), but an illiterate worker grabbed the wrong cases. We will probably not see them again in my lifetime.

Goodnight all, see you tomorrow.

Charlie