A southern sheriff's jail, part 2 of 2

A few more weird stories to tell and I'll get to the epilogue ...

In case you're wondering about the purpose of the mesh bag, it was used to put your dirty clothes/towels in to be washed and dried overnight, twice a week. Each bag had a number corresponding to your storage bin. So in the morning, the guards threw the washed bags on one of the tables and we were to find ours and make sure all of them were accounted for. One morning, there was one bag left, which was apparently grabbed by one of the wanna be-gang guys before breakfast.

Later that afternoon, the guards came in and left with him -- and he never came back. Turns out the extra bag was from the women's block, and he decided to dress up in somebody's underwear for the day. Yeah. In addition, the women were stuck in lockdown all day because guards were sure someone had stolen the missing bag. Drag Gang-banger?

After Wolf, we got a 70-year-old DUI arrest who drove his car into a ditch in front of a sheriff's deputy while chugging a beer from a case on the front seat. He was completely wasted even after booking. He kept mumbling about ants in the cell and a quarter under my bunk. Somehow, somebody found a friend of a friend he knew that could post bail.

With just two days left, I thought we'd make it without another roommate. I was wrong. We got someone worse than Wolf. This guy was 400 pounds, hadn't showered in weeks, and peed all over the floor instead of in the toilet. I felt so bad for my bunkie, getting stuck with him at the time I finally heard my name on the intercom to pack my stuff.

Thankfully, I think my bunkie got moved to a private cell or to the trustee block. And Wolf got moved back to room with I.P. Freely.

OK. I'll tell the hardest part in the epilogue. All questions welcomed.

 

Damn it. Three more quick vignettes ...

1. Bunkie was a huge car guy. His stepfather is one of the top car interior guys north of Atlanta. When he found out I had not only driven a Carroll Shelby Ford Mustang GT, but had Carroll Shelby along in the passenger seat, I was like his hero.

2. In addition to "Squirrel," my other nickname was "Pit Bull." I've always had an affinity for card games -- played a ton of Hearts and Spades in Boy Scouts and high school, love Cribbage and Gin. And I'm very stoic, mainly because I'm very calculated when I play. I don't chit-chat because I'm busy keeping track of what's played and what hasn't. One of the guys realized how good I was, so every time we got a new guy on the tier who wanted to play Spades, he'd say, "Let me go get Pit Bull." And he'd make up some story about how I had done 15 years in federal or something. So I'd come over and we'd thrash them. They'd ask how I was so good. My response was, "Boy Scouts" and then I'd laugh.

3. You can imagine the cards would be pretty much trashed with two tiers using the same deck, day after day. I asked the Inmate Services lady if we could get a replacement deck, and she responded, "Not unless someone donates a deck to every block." So the next time I chatted with Gwen, I told her to go to Dollar Tree and get enough for the facility. The next day, we had new (albeit cheap) playing cards, to everyone else's amazement.

I still deliver decks of cards whenever I'm going by there around the middle of the month.

 

And I've read back through these and they read like a really bad Vicki Lawrence sequel to "The Night The Lights Went Out."

Ugh. Sorry.

 

Very compelling stories, and bonus points for the wresting references.

 

I actually laughed at these parts:

and

Somehow, I could visualize those things with you, and they made me chuckle.

Did you ever rule that "meth" couldn't be used in Scrabble games because it's shorthand/slang? I'm guessing you wouldn't have dared...

 

The most amazing part of this entire ordeal might be that you only saw one black guy .... In prison. In Georgia?

I'm not trying to make any point here, other than to note, typically black men make up a large percentage of the nation's prison population. And you were in a jail - in the south - with a ton of white guys?

Also stunned you were in an under-crowded jail.

 

1. Our county is in extreme northeast Georgia and only has a population of just under 30,000. According to Wikipedia, the last racial makeup was 96 white, 2 percent black, 1.5 Latino. But yeah, I was surprised as well.

2. With a 200-bed facility, it's the largest in the circuit by far. Plus, the sheriff can handle a pretty large churn rate. When I showed up, the block was 100 percent full. I don't think it ever dropped below 28 of 36, and those were upper bunks on the lower tier. And if it gets low, he either gets more transfers (and double dips the inmate cost from the other county and the state), sets up a DUI/license stop or raids the meth houses. He runs it like a hotel for indigents.

 

Yeah, I had to bend the official rules a bit for their word knowledge. In addition, I was allowed to "help" if someone was stuck, but then had to help every player in turn. Me and my big vocabulary finally came in handy!

 

I am wondering if you’ve given any thought into writing a short memoir about this experience, tied into your writing career in newspapers, with NASCAR.com and PGA.com? It’s a hell of an entertaining story and you’d bring a unique perspective to our (Broken) justice system and what it’s like to be an upper middle class white guy serving time.

 

I have thought about that, particularly for those guys who are in there for months and months without even knowing when their cases will even get heard. At least one inmate had done 14 months, and several others were eight and nine months in.

Until I'm actually released as a ward of the state (one year and five days, hopefully), I'm a little hesitant to stir up too much trouble when violating the judge's orders would require me to serve the full four years. And it took a lot mentally just to get down in words here what's been stuck in my head. You "know" me, but for the most part, only a handful of forum members actually have met me in person -- and I'm not exactly sure who they are! I don't know if I'd be willing to open myself up to retribution/fallout from the detention community, depending on the outlet. And don't want it to get harder on the people inside.

I am conflicted. But will continue to consider that possibility. Appreciate the kind words, @Pony_Express.

 

I understand all of this, but I would read the hell out of it.