At my age, the future is necessarily considerably shorter than my past, so I spend some time rummaging around in the attic of my long ago.
I’ve noticed that as I’ve gotten older I might not be able remember where I left my wallet ten minutes, but I can recall something that happened five decades ago. One of those distant incidents is a trip I once made to a local prison.
I recall being slightly unsettled when heavy iron doors clanged shut behind me.
Concertina wire coiled atop a chain link fence like some loopy silver snake.
The people closest to me wore blue uniforms and carried side arms. Loaded, I presumed.
I was in the Big House. My sins and crimes had finally caught up to me; the truth about my secret life had finally come out.
Actually, I was in prison back decades ago when my wife and I were living in a wonderful little town called Hawkinsville in Pulaski County (Yes, Virginia, they have one of those in middle Georgia, too.). I was on the grounds of the Pulaski State Women’s Prison, but I didn’t have reservations or plans for an extended stay no matter how hospitable the staff was.
Younger folks who have never seen the Paul Newman flick Cool Hand Luke will not know what I mean when I say that when I was in there I never heard anyone say, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”
The truth is the warden, a lady named Rose Williams, led me on a brief tour of the facility as part of a story for the local weekly newspaper I was working on. In that prison, the women at the time were working on garment manufacturing, not license plates.
The facility didn’t have much in common with Hollywood’s version of prisons, even the ones in the movies today. I didn’t see any leg irons or a “hole” in which unruly prisoners could be put until they learned some manners or got some religion, though something called a lockdown was pointed out to me as a place where lessons were taught. I got the point.
I did peer into the prison laundry where awful things happen in many prison movies. (See Redemption, Shawshank.) This one, however, was neat and bustling.
I didn’t hear anybody scream or shout. Not a voice was raised the whole time I was there except to talk over the rattle of machinery in the industry building.
The grounds were neat and clean. The prisoners were neat and clean. The buildings were neat and clean. Almost like a dormitory atmosphere. The operative word is “almost.”
But everyone who was incarcerated wore the same khaki outfits, and they didn’t walk up on or approach those who didn’t wear khaki. They stopped at a respectful (read “safe”) distance, faced the non-khakians, and waited for instructions until they passed by.
This was clearly not a small college with the doors locked to keep the residents safe. It was a prison with the doors locked to keep the residents inside.
And no matter how courteous everyone was and no matter that no one was shackled or chained or abused — those doors were still locked and those walls were still there.
My trip taught me that a manifestation of Hell can be neat, clean, and polite.
The author is a man of a certain age whose guided tour of the Pulaski State Women’s Prison made an impression on him that still remains.