12:26 AM - My First Prison Experince *Graphic Content Category: Life

The summer of 77’ Ray and I shared an apartment together on the south side of Fort Smith. While Ray was at work one day a chick he was seeing came by asking to buy two ounces of weed. I went into the broom closet where I had a 3 lb. stash and sold her what she needed. I noticed that there were a couple of Sheriff’s deputies on the upper floor of the complex but really didn’t pay them much mind. Later on that evening our front door came crashing down with shouts of “search warrant” and “up against the wall scumbags.” An hour or so later Ray and I were sitting in the Sebastian County Jail. The chick was a rat.

Out on bong and hanging out at Tilles Park, Marlin Sallee pulled up one sunny afternoon in his Trans Am asking if I knew where he and Mike could buy some pot. I walked over to a hippy friend of mine a few parking spaces down and got two ounces of homegrown from him. I took it back to Marlin and Mike. Little did I know Mike was an undercover Arkansas State Police Officer and Marlin had gotten busted with a few hundred hits of acid a couple days earlier. Busted again, 19 years old, headed straight to prison. Again, for trusting someone I shouldn’t have.

Time to “pull chain”, cuffed and shackled down like a dog, myself and 6 other men were shuffled into a Sheriff’s can headed south to Cummins prison farm, aka The Big House. One by one we were called into the Building Major’s Office. “Drug dealer huh? Who did you sell marijuana to? Little Kids!” yelled the Major as he slammed his slapjack into the side of my head. “No, I sold it to my friends. To my friends!” And an undercover nark of course although I failed to mention that. Strip searched I remained buck naked and humiliated as I walked down the prison hallway around the corner to the laundry room.

While quickly putting on my whites I watched as big, bald headed, tattooed convict stepped out from behind the half door and proceeded to beat the hell out of the inmate standing directly behind me. Blood splattered on to my new brogans when the man’s head hit the floor at my feet. All the while I’m thinking to myself….damn, do they do this to everybody? Later on I found out that the guy who was assaulted, raped a 4 year old little girl. The Building Major had sent word to convict population, one’s on his way. Back in those days it was standard operating procedure for all baby rapers to get beat within an inch of their lives.

On to 8 barracks in my thick canvas whites and Chinese made brogans it was time to get my head shaved. With three or four strokes of the dull clippers I went from hippy to prison “short hair” in a matter of seconds. Looking around the open barracks I began to examine my surroundings. Old broken down spring beds with ratty mattresses, windows busted out and screens torn away, dim lighting and dilapidated plumbing. I’d never seen so many tattooed, buffed out, muscled up men in my life. Nazi signs and Nazi war birds on their chests, FTW (Fuck The World) on their shoulders, and the Love and Hate on bare knuckles. Talk about a culture shock. There I was standing in a world away from a world without a clue as to what it’s like to do time.

Sitting on a bench toward the back of the unit I watched as everal black guys shot craps on a blanket on the floor. Suddenly I heard whistling and the shuffling of feet. The inmates in front of me started to scatter. I saw one inmate take the dice skillfully handing them off to another then another. Correctional Officers surrounded the area now ordering each of we “short hairs” off the bench for a strip search. After searching and not finding the dice we sat back down and a few minutes later the game resumed. A treacherous looking convict and also “floor walker” came to the guy sitting next to me and said, “You just came in today?” “Yes” he answered. “Then take this razor and go into the bathroom and shave.” The man did as told. The same man that just got assaulted in front of the prison laundry room.

Moments later I heard a bunch of noise coming from the bathroom. Then yelling, screaming, thudding, and pleading. Suddenly the baby raper emerged covered in blood from head to toe. I noticed his mouth bleeding profusely and later on I found a tooth next to the bathroom sink. The floor walker and several other old school cons held the baby raper down while a black inmate stricken to a wheelchair beat him with his fists. After checking into PC (Protective Custody) I heard the inmate was once again repeatedly beaten. In those days, that’s just what happened to men who raped children, traumatizing their lives forever. And I imagine they still do some of that to this day. No one cares for an child molester. Most get lenient sentences because the courts don’t like to have the children themselves testify reliving the horrible abuse they endured at the hands of a freak.

Many of the beds were double bunked. Sheets were hung from the top bunk covering the view of the bottom bunks called “covered wagons”. That’s where all the homosexual activity occurred. I remember one particular convict “punk” by a tattoo on his forearm. It was a Cobra, Don Prudhomme the “Snake” Cobra, like the decal on his top fuel dragster. 20 years later I saw that same prison punk, yet he wasn’t a punk anymore. He was the “daddy” and he had a punk of his own. Lots of homosexual activity in the Arkansas Department of Corruption. A young boy that came in with me was approached by an old con. He apparently wanted him for his “boy” but the “boy” in question had just been released from the state prison system in Missouri and was wise to what was really going on. Another of our group wasn’t as wise. He inevitably became a prison punk and was that way for many, many years after.

Fighting mosquitoes and laying in a puddle of sweat I finally fell asleep totally exhausted. Three weeks later I was transferred to the under 21 unit Tucker. Glad to get away from Cummins I was thinking maybe I’d have it a little bit better. It reality it was even more dangerous than the big house itself. Wild kids everywhere with LIFE sentences. Stabbings, locks in a sock flying, hoe squad in the day and punks crawling the floors at night. I survived and over the years I returned to Cummins and Tucker on new bits or on parole violation-each and every time getting this indescribable eerie feeling as I walked through that hallway door near the yard desk. The most dangerous place on earth has to be Cummins Prison Farm in Grady, Arkansas.

Tripper

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