Sundry Items

This one was fun as a game for a guy named Bruce, who played spades with "school" as a partner. Apparently from a wealthy family, he never did disclose to me where he had not been able to get out, as most guys with money could.

In any case, he laughed at my antics the most, and his amusement became a motivating factor for me to continue jests. I once made him laugh at me while I had begun to buy and use washcloths for cloth napkins, as napkins were something I was sorely missing from being outside. Especially with the slop that was served, and with most things being soupy in consistency, a napkin was important to me, and I was tired of using my hands to wipe my mouth, and washing up only after a meal. My crutches would get full of grease and water while I crutched from the table to the cell's sink. So I ordered washcloths at 50 cents a piece to use as napkins. Never saw it or never had it imitated. Bruce sure was impressed so much he called attention to me from the whole of the dayroom. It may have been a bit much for me to tuck the "napkin" in my shirt collar, but well worth the laugh. Just hearing it made me smile.

The sketch here above was fun for him to guess at each of the items. He enjoyed the excercise, and I did enjoy having the likenessess acknowledged. He shook his head in amusement and walked away. My best critic, thoug none were too harsh, and some were downright polite. The worst was Julio who told me I didn't know a thing about shading, but his criticisms are obviously accurate. I don't pretend to know what I am doing in this medium, I just happened to pick a subject not otherwise done by the guys around me, and in a way not usually approached.

The images of Cartoon Characters, Girls, Flowers, etc are all entertained by in large. The religious image is handled extensively, and the animals to a lesser degree. The subjects I chose were those in my surroundings, and unfortunately for the purpose here, the best of them went for sale, for gifts to friends I made in there to send out (especially if a portrait) or sent to my own family as a thanks for the gesture they would offer me.

So what I have is here, adn will continue to be posted. The items here include all sorts of things that are common for jail, but unusual to the first time inmate. The bunk starts off the image which includes also the cell door, the visiting booth, the outside rec yard, the turtles, the writing tools (maybe not so unusual unless your addicted to the computer's wordprocessor and come to value the expense of paper and pen in the system), the playing cards and chess sets that dominate the dayroom activites, the shoes and clothes everyone inside wears except for teh staff, and the telephone which is the only other extension of the outside world other than the others mentioned.

The "world" is what it's referred to inside. Sharply dichotomized from the place where I was.

Dayroom

This is the sketch I first did, as I can best recollect of the dayroom. Much interest in what I was doing, with a response from "Youre crazy, theyre going to get you with plotting an escape" to "that's really good, you should do that for money". I also got "Why would you want to draw this place, you should try and forget it in your drawings, youre not supposed to want to remind yourself of this miserable place" In any case, I hope the photo comes up, because I've already tried twice to post this image without a response from this website.

Ash Wednesday

I woke up excited that day that the Lenten season had begun. I knew that carnival was desperate this year in New Orleans, so shortly after the Hurricane's devastating effects. I knew we could have ashes this day, as I had seen them on other inmates while I was downstairs early in the morning for my bandage change. What time, I did not know, and how, neither.

Sometimes they actually let us sign up for religious services. Sometimes, even after just signing up, we were actually called upon to go. If anyone didn't sign up, it was usually because of disinterest in the general dissapointment we could expect, or because the guard would refuse to do the extra work to put out a sign in sheet and call in the names and sid numbers of the inmates about to be transferred to another area for an event. So, generally speaking, yes, the sign in sheets never came. Not for AA, not for art class, not for church of any denominations available, not for the law library, and not for anything. When they did, it was a "nice" guard, meaning he fulfilled his responsibilities in some way. I don't exaggerate that there is little else for these guys to do on the floor. Other guards would complain themselves that there ws absolutely no reason not to get upset about this. These were generally speaking th e same guys who would allow themselves some quiet time at our expense, keeping us hours in our cell whil they performed the same duties they would while we had dayroom time, usually citing a vindictive little lie to cover themselves. "There was a reasonable disturbance". "The inmates did not respond to a request I made". Usually this was an easily detectable lie, as there was never any interaction, or very little really, with the guards. "I couldn't find the pencil sharpener". The sharpener excuse was seriously used twice in one week for teh same sharpener, which I had just seen myself in the office. I was told that "that is the blue one, I'm looking for the red one". Nobody knew of any existence ever of any red sharpener. The same guard the same excuse, twice. "There's going to be a shakedown if I don't find it". There obviously was never a shakedown, as the lie would have to include a whole unit of "turtles", or riot geared sherriffs. No pencil sharpener was ever found, and after the incidents with this sherriff, nobody else ever mentioned it.

The "perra" of the situation is hearing the guys get on each other without acknowledging the lie at all, or the apparent oppresion. "Give back the pencil sharpener before I kick your a**". "If somebody doesn't give that thing back, and I find out who has it...". Yeah, no red pencil sharpener. Never was. I drew every day, and after a month and a half in the same unit, never saw it. The guys I sat with, we all drew. Nope, never red. Only the blue one in the office. C'mon, guys, who'd have come up with it after it never being around?

So the ashes came by way of a Catholic nun. I was proud to be Catholic in there. I was probably the minority it seemed, at least in my unit, as most guys were Christian. Bible study abounded, and after dinner every night there were up to two different bible studies, sometimes even three. This among very few men.

Well, the Catholic nun came in and passed out flyers. The detoxing inmates who were kept in their cells for 23 hours a day were let out for it, and as I was with the seperated group who had to be locked up while they had their time, I never saw these guys otherwise. You can imagine, they were all Catholic, apparently.

So the sheet had prayers and hymns. Psalms and responses. We responded to her prayers, and sang to the song which opened and the "Our Father" to close. (Or maybe it was the other way around) In any case, she put ashes on my forehead after I had waited in line, crutching myself with much effort toward the front. It was a lot to stand through the ceremony, if that's what you could call it, and we generally were all huddled in an area of teh dayroom. What was it like? I'll post drawings, but be forewarned, I started mailing out the sketches after a little practice got me good enough to gain a likeness, so what's left in my files/posseeion are the ones I practised the others with. They're lousy, but it's what I have to post.

The ashes were too light to see by the time I had a visit. I hadn't gotten the response I wanted out of my visitor. The mommy of mine who never missed a visit. The blessing that that is, I will try and describe in greater detail later. For now, suffice it to say, it takes hours of waiting to see an inmate, and under very troublesome conditions. It's a lottery which can frustrate the most patient of people, and most people do not continue to endure the process. I was greatly blessed. Many of the men were in no position to even compare their visiting with mine. One guy I spoke to had no visits in months. I had heard that story over and again. If any came, for most it was "a menudo" The ones that did get them were generally out in a short while, making bail most likely.

So now I'd like to talk about the mail and the art of the inmate population. It's something in of itself. The drawings are of a style and theme that seperates it from anything mainstream or anything apart from perhaps some tatto shop drawings. Even those are no clear representation of all of what is seen in the walls of the institution. But I'm tired and I want to get a sketch up with this. If I'm going to, I better scan it now and post it soon. Before I dream of things which have nothing to do with my time on earth.

Injuries

My leg wsa broken in two different places, two different bones. I had the thing reset manually by a vicious doctor who told me only to breather as I writherd in pain, yelled, and tried to kick him away from my leg while having no feeling strong enough to outdo the pain (so as to kick him successfully).

After the original reset, the surgeons gave me the option of surgery, or not. I accepted and was taken to the OR for pins and stabilizers, which I wore for two weeks.

Well, it was supposed to be two weeks, but as one finds in the public detention center, the schedules for surgeries and such are contigent on how well things are being run that day. Just because you have a doctors appointment, doesn't mean that the thing will be kept. I knew of one guy, a bank robber, who was waiting for the lens of his eye to be surgically reattached for over a month (it was supposed to be an immediate thing). I suspected, and couldn't contain my cynicism, that the result of his gang shooting at fellow officers during the heist and getaway, that the neglect on part of the sherriff's and staff served as retaliation. Another guy is still waiting for a bullet to be removed from his hand, after many many months. I knew him for two months during which he had only one doctors appointment.

The care I can go on about. As I had also a hole puncture on my rear cheek, I needed immediate attention everytime I showered, as well as a bandage change once a day. The hole was so big that they used a wet to dry packing. This means simply that the nurse takes a strip of gauze and wets it with a solution before shoving it in my cheek's gaping hole. Over this they placed a dry bandage and tape.

Some nights the nurse would cart up at 2:30 am. This would mean that I stayed awake enough to get my bandage changed, as well as that breakfast would come in an hour to quell my hunger pangs, which usually was one of the reasons I couldn't sleep. Other nights, I'd be forgotten. Tom never forgot, that's why I liked the guy. Larry would do a good job after he and I had a fallout, but once in a while I wouldn't get service, and usually it was up to me to find out why. Negligence, a need for renewing the order (which I had no way of knowing from night to night usually), etc.

Back to the leg. I started on crutches a few days from the surgery, and finished off watching television between hits of morphine to taking vicadin for a couple hours, before getting a transfer to the infirmiry of the Bexar County Cooler where I did not have any pain killers. Sure, I had a perscription for them, but it was no use since they don't carry all kinsd of medicine there. It apparently prevents the use of illegal perscription drugs.

I eventually had a visit with the physicians assistant in the infirmiry. They didn't have doctors, and the pain I felt at the time was so great that simply moving my leg was a huge effort (imagine going to the door from the cell and getting the tray of food and carton of milk with crutches and sometimes very little desire to move, even though the rations are scarce and hunger is real) I was weighed, and my orientation to the place was that I was never orientated.

I skip past the processing, or booking, which was lengthy and with the bizarre appearance of a high school friend, who with a very different appearance (from string bean to ripped) slapping high fives to the SWAT team gearing up to leave. Apparently Arnie works for warrants.

more to come...

Mug Shot

My criminal intent. To spend three months in Bexar County Jail, waking first in a hospital bed with a dull ache that I realized too soon would be much much more. The paper shirt I am wearing was given to me from the hospital, where I was in a secure unit with around the clock surveillence from the Sherriff's Dept. Sometimes they would give me my daily phone call, at other times they would refuse it for no reason. I was laid out most days in the hospital bed sleeping off the pain. At one point I did have another patient in the room who preferred getting himself released from the hospital to rush to his stay in the county jail. I had better food there in the hospital, although I was definitely misled by this gentleman. I also had a view out a window. In any case, I was not in a hurry to be away from the medical treatment I felt I needed to help manage my pain and get me walking again.

I had a group of nurses tending to me. One of which was particularly bad. Her name escapes me now, but she seemed to have the notorious vengeful attitude that makes the nurses of her ability become the stars like the Nurse Ratchett's. She was evil and vindictive, and would do anything to not respond to my needs. She, like the orthopedic doctor who reset my leg, were pleased to hear that I was in pain. When I was in need of something, it had to be a big complaint, and something for which I could report her negligence if I needed her to respond. If it was something like needing to go to the bathroom or needing a shower or needing more painkillers, she happily dismissed my requests as superfluous.

Another nurse, a gentleman, was the best I could ever come across. He helped me sponge bath, and when I showed him the puncture on my rear end, which by then had gone days without treatment, he tended to it and reported it. He appeared as he said he would, and he was entirely helpful in managing my pain.

Other nurses may have been affable, and helpful, but inconsistent in their service. I did seem to get my meal trays on time after the initial waiting of two days at first. Supposedly the first day was to make sure their was no internal damage, and the second day a bonus.

The cast maker was of the highest quality individual, but that comes a month later. I rush ahead.

After the traumatic lesson of the orthopedic who reset my leg occurred, I held onto the dignity I felt I could muster, as he said, "well, I know I'm going to sleep well tonight." I clutched onto my pillow and choked back the extremem pain I was still feeling, and trying to avoid feeling the exhaustion from enduring so much pain from letting me fall asleep again, which it eventually did.