I'm out!

Five years, four months, and 13 days after going through those gates I am now out of prison. I know I’ll be back, inmates and staff alike have a high recidivism rate. I’ll at least have to go back in two years in order to keep my NMCA Accreditation. The prison is short one more guard but it’s worse than that. No longer bound by the Hatch Act I can now tell you some stories and situations that are both funny and scary at the same time. These things didn’t necessarily happen at my prison or happen at all and the names have been changed because everyone there knows who they are. If it happened.

My favorite is the story of the Major and the V.P.

The Major wasn’t the tallest person when I first arrived at the Prison only because Captain Brush was 7ft 1in. The Major maybe weighed more but there wasn’t much fat on him, especially for corrections. His Texas Longhorn parents named him Audie Murphy and he did his best to live up to the name.

The V.P. refers to the officer who gets to drive in circles for six hours. Vehicle Patrol drives around a narrow strip of road looking for any breach of security, like a hole in the fence. The road is a bit bigger than a high school track. Who was V.P. at the time is lost to history mainly because there was nothing to differentiate him from many other morons on V.P. I told you these stories were scary. The V.P. is well armed, including a pistol. For some odd reason policy states that the pistol will be in its holster strapped to your side. Most times that pistol is in its holster sitting on the seat next to the officer. It’s more comfortable that way. Problem is sometimes it’s harder to keep track of and that is not good when it comes to a loaded weapon.

Well one fine clear morning the Major is walking down the corridor when an inmate, an inmate mind you, points out the V.P. truck and asks the Major “What’s that black thing on V.P.’s roof?” Major looks but the truck has passed from the narrow view through the barred window. He decides to go out to the rec yard to get a close look. There were around 170 inmates outside and as the Major walked out they all began to laugh. From his new vantage point the Major watched as the V.P. came back into sight. Right on top of the roof right over the driver could be clearly seen a black holster with pistol attached as per policy. Most V.P. officers put it there as they sign over the post paperwork and then place it on the seat. This V.P. had neglected that last crucial step. By the time the Major made his way back to the front to talk to the V.P. he had discovered a new shade of purple. The mentoring that followed between the Major and the V.P. is still talked about by seismologist everywhere.

I'm a prison guard.

I am a prison guard. Now we aren't allowed to call ourselves guards, we're called correctional officers, like garbage men are called sanitation engineers. It was explained to me like this: “Dogs are guards, you’re an officer!” I’m not sure I fully understand this since our dogs at the prison are called K-9s and are also considered officers and most of the youngster guards here call each other “Dawg”. Correctional officer, prison guard, bull, screw, whatever, that is nevertheless what I do.

I did not grow up thinking “When I grow up I’m going to work in a prison!” Like many of my friends I had no idea what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Besides party. So when a school counselor suggested that because of my love for math and science I should become an Engineer I thought “Cool!” I enrolled at Purdue and became a Boilermaker. Since I liked a beer with a shot and Big Ten football I felt confident I had made the right choice. Two and a half years went by while I learned differential equations and had a physics professor demonstrate Faraday's law of induction by shocking the hell out me. Slowly I realized the horrible truth, Engineering didn’t have a damn thing to do with trains! So I decided to be a cowboy.

Again, I liked Budweiser and the Dallas Cowboys so I thought I had found my calling. Since I grew up on a ranch I was pretty sure I had no misconceptions about the job and because Ag Business was way easier than Engineering I could continue my minor; drinking and doing drugs. I knew that our ranch was primarily engaged in wool and lamb production but I was OK with that, I had already heard all the jokes. Things actually went pretty well until the 90’s when scientist figured out that the drought we were in was actually the norm and the barely adequate moisture of the 50’s through the 80’s was abnormally wet. That came along with Al Gore reinventing America, an America without a wool industry. So the family decided to sell and I had to find a new occupation. I mean being a cowboy is great if you’re the boss, but you sure ain’t going to make any money as a ranch hand.

Walmart was hiring so I applied, said I’d do anything. I mean one gets used to the finer luxuries of life like eating and I missed it. And Walmart, bless them, hires even the mentally handicapped. “Hello, welcome to Walmart!” I could do that. However apparently they did not agree, I didn’t even get an interview. Ditto the banks, hotels, convenient stores, etc. where I applied. So I looked for an industry that was desperate for workers. I became a truck driver. After an accelerated two week truck driving school I went to work for Swift Transportation Co. Now every other trucking company will send their drivers to school for at least a month and many veteran drivers think that’s too short, but as I said this industry is desperate for drivers. Now I’m not going to bad mouth Swift, every other driver on the road will do that. I’ll just say they did one thing right, after a year they fired me.

What other industry is as hungry for bodies? Corrections! And so I am a prison guard.