WhiteCollarWife.com Chapter 7

Random Stories

Fish, Yogurt, Peanut Brittle and Pie

I have so many stories about Terminal Island, it gets really hard to keep track of them all. In reading through our letters I picked out a few of the funnier things and memorable ones. They are all sort of jumbled together but enjoyable.

For instance, inmates at TI made a lot of food on their own. Dan was able to get onto the yogurt list. He called me and was so excited- apparently it was a really hard list to get on. The guy who made the yogurt did a fresh batch every day and once you were on the list, as long as you could pay for it, you had a daily fresh yogurt treat. In one later letter Dan wrote on and on about how he got TWO bottles of yogurt one day- it was clearly very exciting. I looked in my fridge at my own yogurt and wondered what I was missing.

Another wonderful list to be on was the Peanut Brittle List. per his letter:

“Ok! New Development! Another guy here makes peanut brittle! I am on the list! Fresh warm peanut brittle, it is the bomb! I got 3 today: one brittle with peanuts, one peanut butter brittle with peanuts, one root beer peanut brittle with peanuts. It is currently being cooked up!”

Dan was even more excited when he got on the pie list. Apple pie, banana pie, fudge and chocolate cake. He was nowhere near as excited as another young man was though. He wrote me about a young kid named Ludlow who would greet him at the entrance to his unit whenever Dan had food waiting in his cell. They never discussed it, but wordlessly it was agreed that Ludlow would guard Dan’s cell until Dan got back from visiting and in return Dan would always give him a piece of pie. They had this charade going where Ludlow would greet Dan at the building entrance then follow him to his cell where Dan would smell the pie and see it on his bed and act surprised that it was there. Ludlow would act doubly surprised and then make a sad face (he had no money or stamps to buy anything) and Dan would tell him to get his bowl. Ludlow would run around the unit trying to borrow a bowl but no one would give him one, so Dan would lend him one of his own and offer him a slice of pie again. As Ludlow would start to cut off a piece, Dan would tell him to make it bigger and his face would light up and he would thank Dan then scurry off to eat the prized pie in his cell. Ten minutes later Ludlow would return with a spotless empty bowl and a huge smile, say “See ya later” and take off. After a week of this, it occurred to Dan that Ludlow had no bowl of his own. So Dan gave him a bowl to keep, explaining that he didn’t have room for three bowls in his locker so it would be a favor if Ludlow would take one. He felt really bad that it took him an entire week to realize the kid had no bowl. I think it was very smart of the bowl-less Ludlow to find a way to provide security for Dan’s pastries in exchange for a piece of the pie. When it came to the TV’s in TI it was a very serious issue indeed. There were four TV rooms in B Unit. They were dirty and uncomfortable and also had an extreme chair shortage issue. Inmates would claim a chair and write their name on it then take that chair to the TV room from their cell when they wanted to watch. Dan and his cell mate had a chair they shared and it never really was an issue as they both tended to avoid the TV rooms. Four TV room for 96 inmates in B Unit meant one room for whites, one for Southsiders (Mexican Americans that don’t speak Spanish), one for Pizanos (Mexican Americans that do speak Spanish), and one for African Americans. American Indians were considered white and foreigners were not welcome anywhere. The room for “whites” had three TV’s but was super crowded and they only played AMC, Sports and something trashy. The “Southsider” tv room usually played CNN but if you weren’t Mexican you were unwelcome, so Dan would stand by the glass and watch the markets and read the headlines then wander away. Usually he avoided the TV rooms altogether.

Before Dan got his Cadillac job sweeping one square of yard every day, he got assigned as assistant to the guy who ran the recreation equipment room. He was really waiting for a job teaching in the education department to come through, but that was always being delayed and meanwhile he had to have a job of some sort. He had to sit at a desk in case someone came in and requested equipment. They had all kinds of stuff- racquetball rackets, jump ropes, horseshoes, basketballs, soccer balls, chess sets, guitars, pool cues and balls, shuffle board sticks and disks, drum sticks and bass drum kicks and a tambourine. For the first hour no one came but there was a typewriter at the desk so he typed me a letter describing all of this. Then he had three “customers’ who wanted a ball, an exercise mat and a guitar respectively. After a few hours he left and came to visiting, where I was waiting.

Upon his return to the recreational desk after our visit, Dan was informed by his supervisor that there was good news and bad news. The good news was that he was done working for the day. The bad news was that there was no future for Dan in the department because they had nothing for him to do on an ongoing basis. He told me so in another letter he typed before he left that position. After that it was back to handwritten letters.

One time while I was getting dressed for visiting, I just wasn’t paying attention and put on a white t-shirt and tan cardigan with my jeans. I forgot I had a limited palette from which to choose colors. When I went into the lobby to sign in I immediately got stopped and they informed me I couldn’t wear that to visiting. If you wanted to be able to visit, you had to be processed in within the first two hours of visiting; otherwise, you were not getting in that day. The nearest store (Target) was not close and I would have to get back on the freeway during morning traffic so that was out of the question. (I once had the genius idea that someone should look up the rules at each facility and park a fashion truck out front, so that all the new visitors or people who mess up can just meander out, browse the racks of pre-approved clothing and make it back it- you would make a decent profit!).
Well, I took off the tan cardigan thinking it was the offending garment, and then was told that my white shirt was too sheer so I still couldn’t come in. In addition, because I was in a rental car while my own car was in the shop after the accident, I had no backup clothing with me! I had gotten into the habit of keeping a change of clothes in the trunk, but of course, had forgotten to move them to this temporary car. I gulped back sobs of panic, willed myself to think rationally and ran out to my car desperate to resolve this issue before the visiting window ran out for that day. I was also anxious because Dan would not know I got turned away. He would be waiting to be called to visiting and if I didn’t make it back in time, he would not realize it until hours later, he would just assume I didn’t make it in the first group.

There was a rundown shack at the end of the road that housed the dirtiest, stinkiest diner I have ever seen (to this day) where all the fishermen and dockworkers went to eat breakfast. I drove up in a panic, looked around the room, and asked the enormously obese individual frying some grease on top of grease with the greasiest skillet ever known to man if there was a way I could buy a shirt anywhere nearby. There were maybe seven patrons (I use that term loosely here- let us just admit they were the regulars who probably missed the boat that morning, pun intended) sitting around reading the morning paper and drinking dark liquid from grimy mugs. No one really looked up or even acknowledged me so I asked the cook again and he said he didn’t know, maybe one of the guys in the place could help me.

I walked up to the first table where two scraggly gentlemen were shoveling the remains of whatever they had ordered (betcha it had grease in it!) and asked if either of them had an extra shirt I could buy or borrow from them. They looked at me as if I was absolutely insane and then the younger one saw the panic in my face and he slowly stood up. He unbuttoned the black Levi’s collared shirt he was wearing and took it off (he was wearing a white t-shirt underneath) and handed it to me silently. I thanked him profusely (manically) and promised I would be back in a few hours to return the shirt to him, and that is when he started laughing. He told me not to worry, he had more. I threw the shirt on and raced back over to the prison, just eking into visiting before the morning count cut-off.

When the last group of us was escorted into the visiting room, I suddenly relaxed, it was all going to be ok, and exhaled. Then I inhaled- big mistake. Huge. The aroma that assailed my nostrils and caused an almost instant swell of nausea and revulsion that reached my very soul, I mean, there are not enough words to describe the epicness that this smell was comprised of. Was that god-awful stench unknown to man before this day emanating from me? Oh. My. God. At that moment Dan came out from behind the corner into visiting and walked right up to hug me. Without blinking or reacting as he got closer, he hugged me (remember, one hug at the start of the visit and one at the end, no contact the rest of the time so beggars can’t be choosers) and then he whispered in my ear “I love you but what in the hell are you wearing and what on earth is that smell?” It may have been a stinky, fish smelling, too large, strange man’s shirt but I honestly could not have cared at that moment. Not only had I averted a total crisis by problem solving but also I had done it on my own instead of totally falling apart. That was the first time I discovered my own strength and realized that one way or another I was going to get us through this even if I had to drag my sometimes obtuse mate along, kicking and screaming for the duration. Or suffocate us both by accident.

I did go back to the diner after the visit, and gave the cook the shirt to hold for the kind fisherman whose name I do not know. I also paid for his breakfast for the next week and told the cook that this was not remotely enough of a thanks to pay back my unknown savior but it was all I had on me and please make it stretch as far as possible. I sincerely hope he did not pocket my $20. In addition, if that anonymous man ever happens to read this story- thank you. I hope you got your week’s worth of breakfast and your shirt back. You saved my visit.

TRULINCS

I didn’t mind the handwritten letters because Dan was finally in a facility that had TRULINCS. For me, getting mail from him in my mailbox was such a treat. When Dan first got to prison this program was just beginning to roll out in some facilities across the country. It is a server-based email system that the BOP used to enable inmates to ‘email’ their loved ones. The reality is that it is not actual email- they have no web access- but rather it is a system where they have an account, can type letters (that get scanned and reviewed for content) and sent to people not currently residing in a prison. These people had an account as well and could respond with letters of their own. Going back to the concept of rehabilitation, it was viewed as a more high tech, real time way for inmates to interact with their families and friends.

TI was the first place we saw that had TRULINCS and it changed things for Dan and myself in a good way. It wasn’t available when he first got there, only towards the end, but once he was able to use it having that form of contact was a game changer for us. Up to this point, I wrote him a letter every single day and usually spoke to him twice a day for two minutes in the morning and then for five minutes before the phones shut off. Aside from visits, this was the extent of our contact. Letters were rough because we knew that they were reviewed and read- and there was always the possibility that someone would take it and use it against us somehow. Why anyone would want to read the pages and pages I penned describing my longing for Dan to come home and the hardships that each day brought, I don’t know. Our phone calls were all recorded and listened too as well. Visiting was the only way to communicate without the risk of letting a third party into our discussions. But all three of these forms of communicating were limited by time- Dan had to get through the phone line and use limited minutes to talk to me, letters took time to get delivered by the post office and then by the facility (they had to be checked for contraband and inappropriate content) and visits were restricted to certain days. If I had something time sensitive that I needed to tell Dan, I either had to risk telling him over the phone or hope that by the time I was able to discuss it with him, it was not obsolete or too late. The TRULINCS system was not instant- there was approximately a two hour delay between the time Dan penned an email and the time it actually got delivered to my inbox, and the same was true for what I sent him.

The system had a built in filter- it scanned each email for specific words and if it caught one, your email could get held up for much longer than two hours and possibly not delivered at all. If a suspect email was received, the inmate receiving it could be called into the counselors office to explain it, but I don’t think that ever happened to us. We did, however, experience a length of time where it was trial and error as we tried to figure out what words would trip up the system and cause a delay. For instance, you could not use words like ‘bomb’ ‘death’ ‘murder’ ‘gang’…common sense really. Once an email was flagged by the system, a staff member would have to review it before it would either get delivered eventually or held back indefinitely.

The way we learned this was because I would email Dan the lyrics to songs every day. It was a nice idea that we could share the words and listen to the song on the radio at the same time (I tried to stick to current popular songs mostly). I kept sending him the lyrics to this one song that had just been released that I was obsessed with- The Killers ‘Are We Human’. For some reason, he never got that email, even though I sent it a few times. Finally it dawned on us- the system was keeping it from being delivered because of the word ‘Killers’. Sometimes the most innocent words would get caught and it became somewhat of an exercise in creativity for me to find new ways to describe things so they would not get delayed.

This song used to make me cry- the line “Now in the morning I sleep alone, sweep the streets I used to own” rang so true to me. It verbalized the extent of how we had gone from ruling our own life to hitting rock bottom, losing almost everything. Dan LITERALLY swept the streets (his square foot of concrete).

I sent him news articles via email, updates about life and funny anecdotes, transcripts from movies and books…anything I could share with him that would make him smile and occupy his time. He would print these and read them later at night in his bunk. We worked out a code with each other where I could write about something and he would know what I meant or whom I was referring to, and to anyone else it would be meaningless- it was in this way that I was able to let him know about other inmates or people in our lives that I didn’t necessarily want the staff to know we were discussing. I also had to deal with the tenants who were renting our house in New York while he was away, so having email enabled me to ask Dan questions about renting it when it was vacant or repairs… it was just a very helpful lifeline that made things a lot better for us in the long run.

Email was not free- it cost five cents/minute and there was a thirty minute time limit per session. I think TI had four computers, although one was always broken. The computers themselves were locked up but the inmates could access the keyboards and screens. Realize, some of the people serving time were there for electronic fraud and were computer geniuses, so they would not be allowed access to the computer room because they might find a way to crack the security and gain access to the prison network or something. Dan was able to email with our families, friends and some lawyers although he kept those ‘legal’ emails to cordial unimportant topics and emergencies only. Having the ability to type up a quick email throughout the day and send it to him to let him know I was thinking of him was such a source of comfort for me. The flip side, receiving a notification that I had a message waiting for me was amazing too- it made me feel connected when oftentimes I felt so lost and alone.

Sometimes when I was out at night in a club or with my friends I would sit down and type up a quick “I’m thinking about you and miss you” message and sent it, knowing he would get it first thing in the morning. Since the computers were shut off at a set time every evening, I knew that the latest I could receive an email was 11pm and not to expect anything after that time. I had to help everyone get signed up to correspond with him this way, and then I had to warn them all that not only was everything they wrote ‘public’ but that they had to watch out what words they used or risk getting Dan in trouble. The plus side of involving everyone in TRULINCS was that Dan could reach out to everyone on his own and let them know what he was thinking. Instead of writing letters, mailing them to me and then having me distribute them to the correct person, he could maintain a connection with them on his own. This really helped him get through a lot of the sadness that permeated every day and gave him an emotional support network he did not have until this point.

The one big downside to the computer room was that Dan had to wait until move to get in, and then hope there was an open computer for him to use before the next move. If not, he would be stuck in the room without having anything to do for an hour. On a positive note, if he was in the computer room and no one else was waiting, he could use the computers for the whole hour. The thirty minute time limit was only in place if there were other inmates who wanted to use the computers too. At five cents a minute, email was an expensive form of contact but the end result of being so connected, almost in real time, was absolutely worth it.

Back in SHU

TI was like prison boot camp for us. We learned the real ropes of what this experience was going to be like. In mid December Dan got thrown into SHU and this time it was even more of a problem than before. We had been waiting for his transfer to Taft to be approved, and any sort of perceived misbehavior or issues, even if Dan wasn’t at fault, could derail that. The official story was that an officer heard that Dan was going to get beat up and they were placing him in SHU for protection. Cute. The real story was that someone who wanted to mess up his transfer spread a rumor that Dan paid a guy to beat him up so he could get moved to a camp. Besides the obvious part where getting beat up wouldn’t have gotten him into a camp, there was the fact that we already had the transfer paperwork and confirmation in our possession- but the inmate who spread the rumor didn’t know that fact. I was livid.

I found out all of this because I showed up for my regular Friday morning visit and was turned away. At first no one would tell me anything, but I refused to leave (I was learning when it was suitable to stand my ground even if I was scared) and when I pushed to speak to a Lieutenant I finally got a few answers. The rest of the answers came in the mail via letters from Dan. I felt robbed. Even though I should have been allowed a SHU visit, I was denied that as well. I was furious that someone could dislike us enough to make up lies and put the transfer to a camp in jeopardy. And now I had an added stress- I had to let our families know that they couldn’t email Dan until he was out and that brought on an onslaught of questions and worry. I have a large family- I had to answer each person separately and reassure them that it would be ok even though I had no idea if it really was. It was just too much.

We had a lawyer in New York who was dealing with an assortment of issues for us and I pushed him to press for answers and a resolution. He was maddening- said there was nothing to be done, just wait it out. I couldn’t accept that. We had another lawyer in California who had handled civil cases for us and he actually tried to get in to see Dan and push for answers but was denied. At least he tried! Before all of this happened I made contact with an amazing Rabbi who worked for a program called Aleph. They advocated for religious rights for inmates and made sure they got kosher meals and the ability to pray and all sorts of things. This Rabbi was aware of Dan’ situation and pending transfer to Taft and used many of his connections to try to get Dan moved. He proved to be an amazing contact throughout the duration of our prison experience, and an incredible friend to Dan. He got involved at this point, trying to push for Dan to be transferred immediately. At least someone was getting something accomplished.

Meanwhile I was slowly starting to feel the crazy coming back to the surface. No contact from Dan and I didn’t know if he was ok or in transit or hurt. I only had the words of the CO’s telling me he was in SHU, no actual confirmation from Dan himself. I trusted no one. It was weird to watch myself spiraling silently in my apartment. I didn’t go out for a few days, just wrote endless pages and pages to Dan. And fielded the calls from our families. There was nothing new to tell them, nothing good to say- the pressure of SHU this time was tenfold because now I had all of these additional worried people leaning on me and looking to me for guidance and reassurance. (I had none). I said I would update them as I found out and that they should all rest easy because it would be fine. (I had no idea if that was true).

A few days later I got a letter from Dan — he was in SHU, he was not hurt and he was hoping to get out in a few days. He also had a 72 year old bunkie who was in prison for violating FCC regulations by running an anti-Bush radio station. The guy had a BA in economics and considered himself a political prisoner. Weird but harmless. Thankfully he was able to loan Dan a pen and gave him some paper so he could write to me.

He was released back into general a few days later, some pounds lighter, and anxious for a visit. Another crisis dealt with , handled and done.

I was exhausted. Glad we had made it through that one. Should be easy breezy from now on, right? Wrong.

Dan disappeared again. NO time to be tired! After a few frantic calls and some inquiries I was able to confirm he was headed to Taft. We were five months into this nightmare, although it felt like a century already, and I thought I could finally see some sort of silver lining. LOL. Silly rabbit, there’s no silver lining in prison.