The Walls

The heading picture in this story should give you a clue where this is headed.

The interesting thing is that this picture was taken well before I was born. It was taken well before my parents were born.

It was taken before my grandparents were born.

This picture was taken in 1913. Nine years before my grandfather was born.

Thirty-three years before my mother was born.

Fifty three years before I was born.

At the time this picture was taken, no one had a clue that my grandfather would be born in October of 1922.

Nobody knew my Mom would be born in September of 1946.

Nobody knew that I would be born in March of 1966.

The picture you see is a place known as "The Walls". It was initially a Territorial Prison, constructed under the orders of Wisconsin Governor Nelson Dewey in 1851.

If you were to stand in the exact position of the photographer who took this picture, with your handy-dandy Smart Phone in Camera mode, you would take virtually the same picture. There's changes; but not from this angle. It's virtually the same. Except that the street is now paved, and the road is no longer that wide. There's houses on the other side of the street now.

While no one could anticipate my arrival fifty three years later, when this picture was taken, "The Walls" already had a place for me.

What you see in this picture is what is known as the "South Cell Hall", and the "Administrative Center". Just past that, which isn't clearly visible, is the "North Cell Hall". Identical to the South in every way. Later the South West and North West Cell Halls would be added adjacent to the North and South.

I spent the majority of the eight years I was there in the North Cell Hall.

Above is a picture of the North Cell Hall. The first cell you can see on the bottom is numbered 66. Straight above that is a number that is obviously 100 something but indistinct.

In my time, they were numbered differently.

Straight above the 66 you see, was known as B-3.

That was where I lived.

Prison tries to mimic straight society. B-3 was my address. It was my "house".

It was allegedly 6ft by 9ft, though I think I was much smaller.

It had a bed that was chained to the wall and could be folded up to the wall for extra space. People need exercise. How many regular guys like me who took a wrong turn slept on that bed? How many bona-fide bad seeds and legitimate psycho's slept on that bed? There's no way to know but I bet the number is high.

It had a toilet, a sink, a mirror that was like one at the Funhouse. It also had a small book shelf on the wall that wouldn't actually hold books because it was too narrow. It had a vent hole with a bar next to the toilet.

Thanks to the Clint Eastwood movie "Escape from Alcatraz" many, many nights were spent thinking that if you could cut that bar and lather yourself with Vaseline, you could get into the maintenance walk way that could possibly lead to freedom. It had a small desk that was so small that once your few possessions were on it, you had to use your bed to write a letter.

Once a week the tier tender would come by with some Comet and a scrub brush and hand it through the bars so you could clean your cell. Twice a week the door would slide open so you could go to the bathhouse and take a shower.

The toilet and sink served double duty, as did the chains on the bed.

See, you would order a tiny box of Tide (like the vending machine's at the Laundro-Mat sell). You would then wash your clothes in the toilet right after the tier tender brought the Comet.

Then you would try to rinse the soap out in the sink. Rinse, wring, rinse, wring. No matter how much you rinsed and wrang, you could always smell the Tide and another smell that is in describable. I can smell it now. Then you would drape your clothes over the bed chains to dry. And once they were dry, they were hard as a rock until you wore them for awhile.

Contrary to media propaganda, there is no cable TV, no golf course and the "elite health care" that is thrown around by people who know nothing of what goes on inside those walls does not exist.

I lost my hearing because of that "elite health care" system. I know several people who lost their lives.

Everything you've seen in the prison movies is alive & well at Waupun Correctional Institution.

My all time favorite movie is Shawshank Redemption. Because it is the most accurate portrayal of prison life I have ever seen.

In the beginning I was as out of place and naive as Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins). By the time I left I was more like Ellis "Red" Redding (Morgan Freeman) The man who could get anything. We also had our "Bogs" His name is Kenneth Jaworski. Feel free to look him up on the Wisconsin Sex Offender website to verify his existence. (Normally I protect full names here, but he's not worthy of that respect).

We once smuggled in puzzle for a guy named Otis. He was 97. He came into Waupun on a Stage Coach.

Lifer.

He put it together. We had a guy named Rick in EMC ( Electrical, Maintenance & Construction) make an ornate frame from scrap wood. We moved it from the Northwest cell hall to EMC. We smeared paste on the back, framed the puzzle and smuggled it back out, netting Otis a hundred and fifty bucks for his Canteen account for a joy he hadn't had in years. I had two carton's of Marlboro's in my possession for arranging the transaction.

Marijuana was also a hot commodity. One joint about the size of a toothpick would net two packs of "tailor-mades" . Those being factory cigarettes like Marlboro's. Alternatively a carton of roll your owns would work too.

For me it was income, but also a chance to get over on the "screws" (aka guards) because I could get it and be astounded at their stupidity and blindness in allowing me to bring it in.

Captain Thomas Borgman (yep, that's his real name too) knew I was doing it and harassed and pursued me for three years and couldn't prove it or find any evidence. I was strip searched after every visit and he never found a thing.

It came in the mail via the Appleton Post-Crescent that was delivered to my cell weekly via subscription.

The fact that I used to be a carrier and had friends who were carriers, was something he never thought of. My guys would take a newspaper, cut out the biggest ad's. They would then get another paper, find that ad put a bunch of weed on it and glue the ad they cut out from the other paper over the top. They'd open the paper, shake it, nothing suspicious and give it to me. I would then distribute.

Lock's in sock's exists. Rape exists. Drag Queens with Kool-Aide for make-up exists.
 
Guards abusing inmates exists. Guards killing inmates, through action or inaction, exists. Inmates killing inmates exists. Inmates inuring or killing guard's exists. Riot's exist and rubber bullets hurt like hell.

I've seen it all with my own eye's. I've lived it and I know reality inside the Walls.

How I got there is another story.