From Fed Joints to Beer Joints. The True Story of our Founders - Excerpt #1
Introduction
First, I need to make this clear. This is not a standard “innocent man behind bars” story. Let’s start with the reality that I’m not innocent, and as I write this I’m not even behind bars, although technically, I am incarcerated. Right now, I’m sitting on my bunk in a nice-looking brick building taking up space in a minimum-security federal prison, also known as a “Camp.’ The only bars here are the self-imposed barriers we inmates maintain that keep us, at least most of us, from walking away and the occasional ‘cocktail bar,’ arranged by some of the ‘campers’ after a late-night run to the local community for beverages suitable for adult consumption. Inmates running loose in the communities? True. We’ll get into that later.
But my current home is part of a federal prison compound and not far from where I’m sitting, it’s another story. Just across the road there are other prisons. Real prisons. While we reside in what is tamely referred to as a camp, the other structures own such titles as United States Penitentiary and the Administrative Maximum Security Facility, and the Federal Correctional Facility or the “The Pen”, the “ADX”, or the FCI” for short.
Unlike the semi-free security we live in, the neighboring structures have real razor-wire fences, impenetrable walls, and towers complete with blue-shirted, mirror-sunglass-wearing rifle bearers peering down at a totally different type of inhabitant. You might say real criminals. The Unabomber, a federal agent turned Russian mole, a few cartel members , and a sprinkling of terrorists haunt or have haunted the buildings there.
In stark contrast, next door to me is a former marijuana dealer doing time in a state where his crime is no longer a crime, an accountant who couldn't count, a married public official that paid off a blackmailing girlfriend with taxpayer money and old Dr. Jim. The ancient doc is in his eighth decade of life on this earth. He’s hanging out here because he knocked off the government for a couple grand in faulty billings. Not exactly a list of the Ten Most Wanted.
As I said earlier, this is not an innocent man story, although there are some people present whose case history would qualify as such. It’s also not a tale of gangs, brutality, and evil behavior. All of these will be locatable in the following pages, but as I have learned, people’s opinion of someone else’s behavior is usually arbitrary. So, I’ll tell you what occurred, and you can form your own opinion. The same is true for events that I think are funny or totally ridiculous. My perception might be somewhat skewed. I hope not, but in case it is, I will relate happenings without opining, at least not to extreme.
Everything that follows is entirely from personal witnessing, human interactions touched with multiple sessions of head shaking and bewilderment and periodic belly laughing at the bizarre world around me. Unfortunately for me, but fortunate for you, I have experienced various positions of observation. Prior to my time here at the adult boy’s club I was “behind the fence” in Chicago, Oklahoma City, and La Tuna Federal Correctional Facility in Anthony, Texas. See the world, courtesy of the Bureau of Prisons, as we say.
So, I’ve been inside and outside the wire. Oddly enough, at one time, I was involved in a career that put people in places like this. A career that, at times I second guess now, not really because of my personal story, but because of the entire purpose and scope of the federal law enforcement system and how it is implemented today.
If someone would have told me, prior to my detour in life and trip through this system, how much mental, physical, and financial waste was involved, I would have laughed or at the very least just patted them on their misguided head and sent them on their way. What a difference a stay makes.
So, let me guide you on a trip through the peculiar, sometimes violent, often incredible, periodically humorous, and always absurd world of the federal penal institution. You’ll encounter characters ranging from compassionate to evil, uncaring and lazy to wildly funny and totally unexplainable. Characters with long hair, or skinheads with tattoos, rule followers and rule breakers. And then, of course, there are the inmates. A true Halloween Parade.
PROLOGUE
Damn it, I’m bleeding. Woke up bleeding. How the hell does that happen? Am I on a damn floor? Must be, at least it feels cool on my face. My whole body hurts. Feels like I got hit by a bus. Man, it smells like piss in here. I need to wipe my nose. I think I’m drooling. I wonder where this place is, there's not much light. Wait, I can see movement. Focus….focus. Looks like feet. Two feet in weird-looking shoes. Stopped right next to me. Yep, feet with legs attached. Bare legs. Might be help. What’s that? A tattoo? A swastika. A swastika tattoo. Not the international sign for assistance. Shit. Better just lie here quietly. Oh great, he’s pushing at me with his foot. I don’t need that. Don’t know whether to puke or die. Okay. He’s leaving. I need to get up. Nazi might be back. Might bring friends. Foot nudging could get a bit more aggressive. Okay, start moving. Jesus that hurts. This headache is incredible. High school. Why am I thinking about high school? Oh yeah. Blackberry brandy. Sophomore year. Same kind of headache. Almost. Except there was no bleeding, I didn’t wake up on a cement floor and I hadn’t been jumped by four guys and kicked to sleep. Yeah, that’s it. That’s how I got here. Huh, where the hell is here?
CHAPTER 1
NOVEMBER 13, 2009, LA TUNA FEDERAL CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION, NEAR ANTHONY TEXAS. APPROXIMATELY 4:30 PM.
“How long do you think we’re gonna have to sit here? It’s been like eight or ten hours or something, hasn’t it?”
“I don’t know kid,” I respond to the questioner, a twenty-something, five and a half foot stocky-built blonde Floridian who has attached himself to me, mentally speaking. He hooked up with me on the bus ride to our current location while we were shackled and seated next to each other. He hasn’t shut up since we met. Nervous talk. Talking about his mom. Talking about his house. Talking about his time in the Navy, his dog, his dead uncle, some girl from Manila, the Cubs, and on it went. I respond rarely. When I do, it’s “uh-huh” or a grunt. Some mindless punctuation for his verbal flailing.
Admittedly, being subjected to his wandering brain expulsions is an improvement over my Con-Air flight from Oklahoma City. I was seated next to two young-looking guys from parts unknown. Young-looking was an understatement. It appeared they’d be lucky if either could buy a legal beer. Just like my Florida companion, they were nervous. Unlike him, they didn’t talk much. Which would have been great, except that one of them cried the entire trip and about halfway to our destination, the second one announced that he was sick. Air-sickness bags? Nonexistent. Across the aisle from us, a guy with a big gut and a bird nest beard keeps winking over at the junior jailbirds beside me while he makes them offers of some diverse and rather unconventional libidinous deviances. As if to enhance his offer, he flashes a cavernous smile featuring several dark nubs that were probably once teeth situated below tentacle-like eyebrows and a fashionable tattoo of what looks like an eyeball on his forehead. It was like being on an airborne version of “Deliverance.”
In response, Weeping Willie breaks into a full wail while beseeching numerous divine, soul-saving entities such as Jesus, God, and a handful of patron saints to rescue him from suffering a pre-prison posterior penetration from our neanderthal neighbor or any of the plane’s now guffawing passengers.
Not to be left out, the sickly kid next to me suddenly lets out with a moan of “Oh no!” By the look on his face some type of distress or unstoppable bodily malfunction is about to occur.
Fortunately, he didn’t throw up. Unfortunately, he lost bowel control. This, in the prison airline industry, is what is referred to as a situation. I’m sure it’s in their handbook. Handcuffed, shackled, and seated next to a crier and a shitter. Yes, a situation. I came to the realization that the only thing worse than being a passenger on a plane that crashed, was being a passenger on a plane you wish would crash.
I asked a large, official-looking guy with a dark jacket walking by if it would be possible for me to move to cleaner pastures. He tells me he is an Air Marshall. That’s a wonderful thing. I feel his mother’s pride. So, how about my request? Mr. Air Marshall tells me that he can’t move me in mid flight. “Deal with it,” he says. I give him my best “well fuck you too” smile and he walks away. So, I’m stranded. But as with everything, there is a bright spot. Even this kid’s sudden colon collapse has a silver lining. The female air Marshall seated directly behind me, who’s a little on the chunky side, has decided to move. She’s been eating what appears and sounds like potato chips, rapid fire for some time, evidenced by the multiple fried potato fragments periodically flying into view and occasionally landing on me.
She says she can’t sit there anymore. The smell is too intense. I understand her plight. That’s why I’m sitting on the interior seat leaning as far as I can from the youthful defecator to my left. As she passes by me, I am struck in the head by a swaying butt cheek the size of Mount Rushmore’s Roosevelt’s head. Obviously, the mid flight rule doesn’t apply in her case. As she hips her way to the breathable air section, I sadly realize I have just experienced my last female physical interaction for a long while. I hope it was good for her, too.