And special it was. Corporal Knapp was the leader of this rag tag bunch of labourers. Our gang was about one hundred and fifty strong. We were the first to leave the inner courtyard after all meals, it was important to the Corporal that we marched at a quick military like pace to the quarry and lowlands located at the rear of the couple of hundred acre property. Knapp was a character right out of a Peter O’Toole film, a real Lawrence of Arabia type, he wore britches some of the time, carried a mahogany cane with a brass head, had a dashing blondish moustache and spoke in a strong forceful voice, shouting was more like it as he had to be heard by a lot of people. His sidekick was a lieutenant, a quiet shorter gentlemen also in his fifties, for deputies the two of them appointed various characters of muscular ability to control the crowds, for rewards the deputies were given extra tea, biscuits and lots of lounging time. The gang marched out to the ‘Hill’ and would split up into groups. One group would grab a shovel and another group would grab wheelbarrows. In the low lying area those with shovels would load the barrow pushers with fresh cut loam and soil that would then be pushed up this fifty foot tall hill that had been constructed from nothing by the S.W.P.. One day I asked the Corporal why we were building this ‘Hill’, he responded humourously, “Gregory, it’s my job to know why we are doing this, it’s your job to do it, understand!”
There was a mid-morning tea break where we’d all sit down, on the ground somewhat exhausted as we kept a good pace, sit in the tall grass, watch the clouds roll by, re-energize, this was therapy have a cup of tea. Around this time I came up with the expression, “Cone flakes somethin Paddie?” I’d say this to some of my buddies, this guy who’s name was Shick, I’d call him Gilette, and another Garth Hudson lookalike, another junkie from Stratford, Ontario, that expression is still around, “Cone flakes something Paddie?”
Mike Everest was the gang leader, the head deputy, his buddy Jingles was the assistant leader, they were both motorcycle gang members, I’m not sure, either Choice or Vags, they were fair, kept you motivated so that Knapp and the Lieutenant could take it easy. Knapp was always shouting out orders, loved to be heard, I don’t know how many times he started the morning rant with his recollections of surviving the uprising at the prison in 1952, he’d say in his loud voice, “I survived one uprising and no one fucked me up the ass that time if I have to survive another one you turkeys won’t know what hit you.” Oh he was a larger than life character.
We’d all march in at lunchtime, have a hot meal, of soup, a sandwich, tea, loads of white bread, then take a long break out in the courtyard again, smoking as many smokes as one could afford to smoke, yakking with other friends on other gangs, getting some rays. Everyone pretty much stayed out of each others hair. Then we would line up again, get counted again, march back for more lugging, shoveling and wheel barrowing until about 4 O’clock then line up and, get counted again then march back to the courtyard. The constant coming and going became a clock. Though the work shifts could be brutal we knew they would not last long, they would be interrupted by a meal, a tea break, a march back to the courtyard.
When we arrived back at the courtyard everyone lined up again in their work groups, to be counted again, for the umpteenth time that day, they counted every prisoner about ten or more times a day, making sure there were no escapees. The odd time someone was missing or the count was off, life came to a standstill until the missing individual was accounted for. There was an hour or so of down time in the dorm before dinner was served, during this period you could pretty much take a nap if you liked, or play cards or checkers, or write letters, or read. The prison library was a well equipped space where calm bright types spent their time stocking the shelves and delivering books in mobile carts to inmates confined to the hospital, solitary confinement and other areas.
Showering would have been a pleasure but this was not allowed until later in the evening after ‘yardup’ regardless of your stench. As a genuine hunger set in I would anticipate the evening meals which were for the most part satisfactory, except the nights they served meatloaf, I never ate this or macaroni and cheese so I missed two meals a week. When those meals were served I’d eat some bread or a bag of chips from my locker. When roast beef was served each inmate was give a single approximately four inch square piece of beef sliced very thin, I recall watching some inmates asking if I was going to eat the grizzle I had cut off and left on my plate, they asked for it. For breakfast the prison served a thick sliced ‘farmers’ style bacon, a real artery clogging style of bacon, other guys didn’t like it as much so I’d ask them to get it for me, often I’d be eating ten slices with a pile of eggs or pancakes and toast and this thin red spread they called jam. On Sundays there was always a quarter chicken dinner served at lunch time, again some of the guys didn’t like their wings and I got a big pile of them on my plate, one time we counted twenty six wings, I’d pay a TM for each wing, since I was rich, a jailhouse millionaire, paying for things was easy. Those same Sundays they’d give us one of those vanilla ice creams, the ones that came in a thin paper wrapper, it was served in a bowl with a cookie, just like moms’ home cookin.
Saturdays and Sundays were days off for most of the population, days to rest up, to relax and there were differing ways of doing this. After breakfast on weekends there was ‘free time’ when the inmate could read, play cards, go down to the gym or sports fields where hundreds of other bored individuals were playing baseball, throwing footballs around, lifting weights, or just hanging around in groups. Some were walking around the fenced in perimeter of the five acre or so fields hoping to find a stash of drugs that might have been thrown over the wire chain link fences the night before and missed by the guards ‘sweeping’ the area prior to the inmates coming out. The razor wire at the top of the perimeter fence was a deterrent to any escape ideas. Remember, this was not a federal penitentiary, there were no gun towers. I did not once see any presence of arms, though I am sure there was a room full of weapons in case they were required.
Playing Rummy 500 was how I became a millionaire. Many guys wanted to beat me at this game. They never figured out my old move of laying a ‘live’ card down into the pile, then pick the pile up later and lay down a run of three of a kind or three in a row, then I would lay down another ‘live’ card which enabled me to pick up again a few turns later. A ‘live’ card was one that was in my hand and that was part of a set of three. The number of players in each game varied, two or three sometimes even four, I’d easily defeat them all. We gambled for canteen paybacks. Each inmate is given a sum for the work they do according to their classification. By serving more time combined with good behaviour you graduated to a different classification, I think we started out getting about $1.60 a week which was risen after three months of good behaviour to $2.00 and was capped at the highest classification at about $3.50, the motivational factor, some money for good behaviour and attendance seemed to work well.
With the funds each inmate was allowed to go to the canteen on a specified night where your account was on file, you gave the inmate attendant your inmate number, mine was #113625. The canteen had a variety of goods for sale, at non taxed rates, I think a pack of smokes cost between fifty cents and a dollar, there were a half dozen of the most popular brands to chose from, both filtered and non filtered, I was right into the Rothmans king size filters at the time. Besides tobacco they sold, gum, toiletries, chocolate bars, stamps, envelopes and small bags of potato chips for a dime a bag, these chips were my dinners on the nights mac and cheese or meatloaf was served. Pipes and pipe tobacco as well as Drum rolling tobacco was also available and by rolling your own you avoided the moochers who would hone in on your tailor mades if you weren’t careful. Some guys ended up owing me ten and twenty dollars for the rummy matches and I had about fifteen challengers who I put on the easy payment plan, setting up an account for each of them, easy payments of a dollar or two a week for fifteen weeks by ten or more people, I’d order pipes, rolling tobacco, bags of chips, candies, stamps, loads of tailor mades. I was still pretty new to the jail one had to fit in, learn their place so to speak.
The ring on my right hand had to go. A guard spotted it one day early in my sentence while I was going to the cafeteria. It wasn’t long before a friendly lieutenant stopped me in a hallway and took a look at the jewelry. He made an appointment for me to attend an office in the ‘trades wing’ of the prison. It didn’t take long for another inmate to gently saw the underside of the piece and it slid off. The ring was then placed in my possessions bag along with the rest of my things. On release I gave the ring to my brother Shane who treasured it.
There wasn’t anything left at my place in Toronto. I found this out when Boomer came to visit with Jack B. not very long into the sentence. “That brother of yours, Alex, he came and cleared out all your stuff, there was nothing there when we went over to the room on Walmer Road. That beautiful wooden statue you had paid a hundred dollars for, he gave it to one of the Vags up in the Junction for some speed.” Boomer slipped me a chunk of hash, good stuff, I remember putting it into my mouth as the visit ended, I was nervous about bringing it in and Boomer was nervous about laying it on me as the person who passed on such things was in serious trouble if there was a problem. There was however thankfully no problem. Jack to his credit left an interesting book titled ‘I Jan Kramer’ about this Dutch dude who liked to party smoke the gange and chase women.
The few visits I had from outsiders, they were difficult. I think in the future if I was doing a ‘bit’ I might pull the old Monk routine and ask folk to stay away. After each visit an immense feeling of loneliness and helplessness set in from nowhere. It knocked me over this emotion, this sadness at not being able to walk out those doors with your friends. Yet society imposes on folk the need for them to visit prisoners, as if you are in a hospital ward. Everyone is different and some inmates lived for those visits. Writing was a good tool for communication, you could control the pitch and slant of your words, convey what needed saying without to much mush, you could through words more easily turn off or perhaps better said, control the emotional buttons.
That chunk of hash was a popular item in there. In life I never needed much smoke to get off so after the long layoff the high was very intense for me, it was like starting over. The piece was a quarter ounce of nice Afghani black I had lots to share as I had resolved not to smoke much, it just wasn’t the same anymore. Robbie Cinnor my buddy from reception would invite me up to the school where he was one of the secretaries and we’d do a few tokes and put some tunes on the old eight track machine, I recall Bowie’s tune Space Oddity leaving a lasting impression on me, the song that went, ‘ground control to major Tom’ then we’d head out to the playing fields, somewhat mellower and watch the jocks kill themselves.
One night I was in a rare athletic mood and they were having a ‘Sports Challenge’, you had to watch who you were challenging cause some types of inmates were very proud of their abilities and didn’t take kindly to defeat. I picked an easy activity to participate in, the softball throw. Up to this point I hadn’t really let it out of the bag that I had been a pretty good athlete just a few years back, participating in the big three, hockey, football and baseball. When everyone else had finished their throws I went up to the area where the balls were, where the judges were, there were other aggressive inmates. I signed on, something like the draft beer challenge at U of W a few years earlier, I got a hold of a ball and I threw it further than anyone else, yards and yards further. Just walked away, sort of smiled at the biker jocks and rejoined Robbie for another blast of hash. You could discreetly toke in the fields, you didn’t want to be too obvious or the whole yard would be hanging around, naturally, bugging you for a puff or a small chunk. Besides everyone knew you had a visit and the chances were they laid something on you, there were no secrets in there. Hash was like gold in the joint, a smart trader could get anything for a half a gram, smokes, food from the kitchen, sex, if that was your thing, anything.
Robbie had an interesting life up to that unfortunate experience, being in there that is. He was the leader of a rock and roll band, of some significance. His group had cut a few records, and ended up playing on the U.S club circuit. They must have had something half decent going, coming from his home town of Sarnia which was just across a little bridge to somewhere in Michigan it was easy to see how the States was just another neighborhood to him, the way Hamilton and Barrie are to Torontonians. His band caught on well in Tucson Arizona right close to the Mexican border, and you know what the Mexicans are famous for, that’s right you guessed it…Marijuana. To supplement their musical income Robbie and his partner a nice fellow named Mike (who was also in the O.R. at the same time) started smuggling large quantities of pot over the porous border into America. Apparently it was quite simple, grease a few palms at the customs entry point and you sailed right in with truck loads of gange.
They got real big in Tucson what started out as ten pound runs turned into hundred pound loads. They bought a nightclub, brought in big rock bands to play, it was all a front for their smuggling business. In order to stay in business they had to pay off Joe Bananas the local mob boss or he was going to help them disappear. I loved Robbie’s fast lane stories, he was just a turned twenty something kid who had made it big, lived like a king and enjoyed telling me about it. His story improved, he got busted down there at a border crossing near Tucson bringing in a load of pot. Him and Mike they got thrown in the slammer, made bail just like on TV by using a bondsman to get out, had to give the guy an arm and a leg to arrange it because they were Canadians. Come court time they had a meeting before the trial, with the judge, in the judges quarters, lawyers present, Robbie, his partner Mike, the judge, the lawyers, it was agreed to give the judge ten large, that’s ten grand for you people not up on street jargon, and the charges were dismissed, on a technicality.
Robbie kept at the game, he figured he could substantially increase his profits if he brought the dope into Canada where it sold for quite a bit more. After getting popped in Arizona they folded that shop and moved home where they began working from Ann Arbour just a hundred miles or so across the border in Michigan. Ann Arbour was a big player in those days as many hip folk liked living and operating near this American dream town where the students ruled and the lax laws on pot consumption made for a friendly environment. John Sinclair a famous American Pot Martyr was constantly in the world news spreading the word attracting celebs like Ono and Lennon to his mary jane causes, ‘Free John Sinclair” was a popular phrase of the day, almost as popular as ‘No More War’ which turned on students were using as a mantra all over the States in opposition to American involvement in Vietnam and the random slaughter of Vietnamese people.
Robbie fit in well with this enclave of student unrest and he had no problem organizing truck loads of pot to cross the bridge at Sarnia supposedly loaded with his bands musical equipment. It worked for quite some time. I suppose the fact Robbies dad had something to do with Customs Canada helped. His dad couldn’t help him that day in the speed boat though when Robbie and his partner got caught on the Detroit River unloading a few hundred pounds of pot on to the Canadian side. They both got small time, two years less a day. They paid lawyers many thousands of dollars to get the light sentences, the family names were left in shambles. His dad had nothing to do with the game, Robbie he was some guy.
After a healthy month or so on the S.W.P. I got the notion to teach some kids basic reading and writing skills, one kid in particular Danny attached himself to me much like a younger brother, he was of Italian decent. I don’t know where his home town was, maybe London or Kitchener. You met these guys on your floor as they were in the same dorm, poor kid, could hardly write or read, he was very likable, his background was an endless rap on juvenile delinquency homes, a fatherless home life to which I was empathetic. I talked my way into the school principals office for an interview. Mr. Ewing was the principals name. If he had a first name I never knew it, as a creature Mr. Ewing reminded me of a Great Horned Owl as his demeanor was similar, we got along right from the start. He called my plan a terrific idea, sort of an ‘experimental school’. All I had to do to get it going was to find a couple of more pupils from the inmate population. This wasn’t that difficult as there were some other kids on the S.W.P. who needed some upgrading. I approached this pale faced dark haired French Canadian kid called Roger a pea souper from the Ottawa area and his cousin Albert a pimply faced 16 year old also from Ottawa. They were both smallish but made up for their lack of size by carrying themselves in the mould of the classic bad guy, like mini-French accented Jimmy Cagneys. The fix was now in, the two French kids went for interviews at the school and Mr. Ewing sent out slips the following week for the four of us to attend the school at 1PM on a Thursday afternoon, a great day.
The lieutenant of the SWP crew took me aside, shook my hand, told me not to fuck up in so many words and told me about the new work situation being approved by himself and Knapp. In the future I would teach these rascals in the afternoons and go to the S.W.P. in the mornings.
Mr. Dresser was the actual teacher in the school which had three classrooms, only one of which was ever used during my tenure. Mr. Dresser wore a blue checked sports jacket that contrasted well with his thin build and short cropped blonde hair. His body language told me he thought Ewing was making a mistake in giving me this opportunity. When I went to his class to borrow an unused globe and mock up of the planets and some notebooks and writing materials Dresser was uneasy, I could tell uneasiness in a person. My charges appeared on time, were for the first week or so eager to learn. I had them write and print the alphabet to get an understanding of their abilities and also had each pupil do some reading for me. Their abilities to read were quite poor, their writing skills very weak, I was surprised at the students lack of these basic skills, skills I thought everyone had, this was distressing and it made teaching difficult.
When the kids started to mess up in class, to show lack of interest, it didn’t surprise me, I didn’t have any authority over them and was not comfortable pretending that this was working, the one lad from London was still interested but Roger and his cousin kept skipping classes and this was the demise of the experiment after less than a month. Like I always say though, “good comes from bad” and this was no exception as the two fellows who worked at the school as secretaries, Steve Jeorger and Robbie Cinnors were being transferred to the Brampton facility for upgrading classes. Mr Ewing suggested I put in for one of the positions with the Work Program, I did and I guess Ewing had the fix in as I was working the desk at the school within days, being trained by Jeorger and Cinnors for the simple duties they held.
This was considered a plum position within the prison population, secretary of the school. There were many reasons for this. One excellent benefit was that you had a set of keys to get into the second floor school area at almost anytime up until last count. The school had audio equipment in the form of an eight track player as well as a TV set connected to the exterior antenna and a radio that received both AM and FM frequencies. It was a great place to escape to in the evenings, to have a toke if you were so fortunate and to chill out, get away from the madness of the dorm and the inherent repetitiveness that went with the dorm life. I never once saw a guard up in the school area. Besides having daytime classes the schools various rooms were also used in the evenings for meetings by organizations in place to assist those who wanted help with anger or drugs counseling as well as counsel for those who drank excessively and some with problems with relationships who had been ordered by a judge to receive help while incarcerated.
Folk would come in from the street and work with inmates, my job was to see that the inmate got to the classroom and this was done simply by issuing them a pass slip for that event by typing it up during the day. The slip was delivered to the inmates dorm or cell, they received the pass when they came in from whichever work detail they were on, it was an efficient system although breakdowns did occur. The laymen and women who came in to the prison established close relationships with the inmates. After some time it wasn’t unusual for them to be asked to bring in items for prisoners, things like pills to weed. Private mail was sent out this way as all other mail supposedly was read by the staff before being sent to the addressee. I still haven’t forgotten the rules concerning mail, it remains a very poignant memory. At that time inmates were allowed a letter a week which had to be written on prison issue paper. This paper came in the form of a standard size white page lined in almost half inch increments, the letter had to written in pencil. From time to time I have received letters from prisoners and the instant I see the pencil written pages I am reminded of my own incarceration.
I caught on quick to the typing assignment which was the main function of the secretary as well as answering the telephone for Mr Ewing who’s office was situated next door, the door between his office and my area was open so he could easily ask for some assistance. When Mr. Ewing requested a task he did so in the most polite fashion instilling in his aides a feeling of worth and usefulness. He was an old codger Ewing was, had an owl like energy and look, quiet but efficient, and his style of management was quite effective considering the misfits he encountered. After only a few months in this jail I had made a huge jump in my status and there was a degree of confidence that came with this accomplishment, it mattered not to me that I was in jail and climbing the ladder, it was a ladder, like the praise the dead junkie in Windsor had given me for the Gypsy Caravan writing.
Posted by selrahcyrogerg on 2013-12-04 13:13:16
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