So here I sit in my home in Waupun. It's damn cold outside and I have my long johns on under my pajamas--which reminds me of the Yard Gang at the prison in winter, 1968, when I first began teaching writing and literature classes to maximum security inmates who volunteered to enroll in the prison school. More about the school in another blog.
Headed up by a Correctional Officer 3, sergeant, at least a dozen Yard Gang inmates shoveled sidewalks and pathways inside the institution. They turned over the snow in wheelbarrows, filling them. Then, they grabbed the wheelbarrows’ handles and headed the pushcarts to a waiting farm truck under the watchful eyes of tower guards. The inmates shoveled the cold, white stuff into the truck’s box. Once the truck’s box was filled with snow, its driver headed the vehicle to the Truck Sally Port where officers used large spears and speared the snow just about everywhere. If an inmate had been hiding under that white pile, he would have been one sorry and very bloodied individual..
Large piles of snow were not allowed inside the joint because there was concern that inmates could—in an inmate takeover—pile the snow against the 22 ft. high wall and escape. I could hardly believe that was possible, but that was the security director’s explanation.
During warm weather months, Yard Gang members took care of the grounds, including the planting of flowers. Lawn mowers were not allowed. There was one old reel push mower. Most yard gang members cut grass with “kindergarten” scissors they had to turn into the sergeant at the end of the work period. If an inmate “lost” a pair of those scissors, he was immediately escorted to the hole.
Headed up by a Correctional Officer 3, sergeant, at least a dozen Yard Gang inmates shoveled sidewalks and pathways inside the institution. They turned over the snow in wheelbarrows, filling them. Then, they grabbed the wheelbarrows’ handles and headed the pushcarts to a waiting farm truck under the watchful eyes of tower guards. The inmates shoveled the cold, white stuff into the truck’s box. Once the truck’s box was filled with snow, its driver headed the vehicle to the Truck Sally Port where officers used large spears and speared the snow just about everywhere. If an inmate had been hiding under that white pile, he would have been one sorry and very bloodied individual..
Large piles of snow were not allowed inside the joint because there was concern that inmates could—in an inmate takeover—pile the snow against the 22 ft. high wall and escape. I could hardly believe that was possible, but that was the security director’s explanation.
During warm weather months, Yard Gang members took care of the grounds, including the planting of flowers. Lawn mowers were not allowed. There was one old reel push mower. Most yard gang members cut grass with “kindergarten” scissors they had to turn into the sergeant at the end of the work period. If an inmate “lost” a pair of those scissors, he was immediately escorted to the hole.
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