Everyone likes to have a nice smile. Right? Therefore, a man in prison has to take really good care of his teeth while he’s away. When a person initially gets arrested and taken to county, the jail furnishes him with a toothbrush. A very basic brush, one usually made in China or Taiwan. Some of these jailhouse brushes are only two inches long. After all, God forbid a man to make a shank out of one and stab a fellow inmate or maybe even a guard. Ever brushed your teeth with one of those stubby little bastards? Sure makes a hell of a mess. Your thumb and forefinger get covered with spittle and grit. And the toothpaste? Well, it certainly leaves little to be desired. The cheapest, most generic shit known to man! That’s all you’re getting in the county jail and you’re lucky if you get that! It gets a little better when you finally make it to the joint. At least there you can buy name brand toothpaste on the store. Variety won’t be much. But you will be able to brush your grill without getting ill.

In the old days, an inmate could get his teeth cleaned every six months here in federal prison. Nowadays, it takes an act of Congress just to get on the list. Say you have a tooth that’s bothering you, one that’s chipped or a filling that fell out in your palm. All you have to do is sign up at medical and the dentist will call you in. May take a few days, sometimes weeks or months. Time dosen’t matter to these dentists and doctors because they are running on B.O.P. time. Pain and agnoy are a plus in their mind. But eventually you will be seen.Standard operating procedure for a prison dentist is to pull the offending tooth. Fillings are few and far between. And something like a root canal? You got to be kidding me! You can forget that shit until you make it back to the street. No braces or fancy schmancy dental procedures in here. You might be able to get dentures or a partial made. But then again, that may take a couple of years. Some guys gum their food to death forever. The roofs of their mouths tore all to holy hell. One friend of mine, he accidentally flushed his bottom plate down the shitter when throwing up. Know what they told him when he went to try and get another one made? “We’ll furnish you with a blended diet. In the mean, time you’re on the list.”

Some prison dentists are straight up sadists! Guys from India, Vietnam or the Republic of Congo. Always foreigners working for the B.O.P.Those who can not, under any circumstance, get a job on the street or hold private practice. These guys love inflicting pain! Oh sure, you’ll get a shot of Novacaine in the roof of your mouth and/or in your gums.The problem is, they rarely wait to let your mouth get numb before they pull out your teeth! Oops! My bad! Did that hurt? Heh! Heh! One guy told me the dentist climbed up on the chair and put his right knee right square in the middle of his chest when pulling his tooth with a huge pair of pliers. Another one, lucky enough to be knocked out before hand, well … maybe not so lucky. It all depends on how you look at it. Told me after he woke up from being under sedation, his mouth not only hurt. So did his asshole! Now you tell me. What’s wrong with this picture? To worsen matters, the dentist was standing there smiling buckling his belt. Yeah, there are some real sick, twisted, perverted bastards pulling teeth in the B.O.P. That’s why you gotta make damn sure you do everything in your power to take care of your teeth while you can.

Occasionally, there will be a good looking female dental hygienist leaning over the chair putting her tits in your face while cleaning your teeth. And under the blue paper dental apron you’ll be getting a rise. Some joints have dental floss. Others won’t allow it saying one might fashion a rope or a garrotte to cut someone’s head off. They also say you can take dental floss and carbon from pencil lead and use it like a diamond jeweler’s string to cut through the bars. I don’t know. Never tried it. Sounds like too much goddamn work to me. And pain killers? Something to help ease the pain after having a mouthful of incisors and jaw teeth pulled? Here! Try this Ibuprofen. The cure all wonder drug in the B.O.P. Because you’re damn sure not going to get any dimerol or dilaudid. Nothing real for your ever so painful excrutiating pain. It would not surprise me if some of these prison dentists didn’t secretly film some of these brutal extractions for segments on films like, “The Faces of Death” or “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not!”

Anyone know what amalgam is? It’s the only substance the Bureau uses to fill an inmate’s teeth. Cheap ass shit! Not good for humans in any way. Then again, we’re nothing but crash dummies left to the hands of sadists for experi­ments like Jews tortured by Hitler’s doctors in the second world war anyway. No screw in or expensive vinyl teeth here. No silver or gold fillings and no fancy gold caps for the gangbangers from Memphis or NYC. Just your standard prison barbarity. I’ve had a few teetn pulled in prison. And let me tell you, it wasn’t any fun at all. Getting a tooth pulled beats the hell out of having a toothache though. Unless the dentist straddles your chest with a BFH (big fucking hammer) and a chisel to knock it out. Fortunately, all my teeth are in pretty good shape. I’ve always taken care of them since I was a little, bitty boy. Soon to be released from federal prison, I’ll once again be back out there with all the rest of you smiling faces! So smile! It ain’t all that bad! I’m Tripper! Better Days!

“Get ready for chow!” comes yelled from down the hall. It’s 4:00am, inmates rise, brush their teeth, and make their bed. Barracks after barracks is called one-by-one releasing convicts to the mess hall. Inmate hoe squaders living on the east hall go first as they are the first to hit the fields. Garden squad, fence crew, and regional maintenance go next. Then comes the rest of the dogged and weary inmate population. Watered down grits and powdered eggs are served along with rock hard biscuits you could break a window with. Inmates all around, grim looks on their worn and tired faces, wearing ragged white uniforms. No one’s looking forward to working. No one likes the hoe squad working in the fields. Trying desperately not to puke their morning meal, men trudge back to their hot, open barracks for 15 or 20 more minutes rest. Until the tell tale sound of, “One hoe! Catch out! Two hoe! Catch out! Three hoe! Catch out!” and so forth and so on until all 23 hoe squads consisting of 20 to 30 men each march down the hall heading for a hard days work in the fields. This is what the judge referred to as hard labor. This is what’s known as the hoe squad in the Arkansas Depart­ment of Corruption.

At the end of the east hall stands 20 or so hoe squad riders dressed in uniform, boots and cowboy hats. Some of the meanest, sorriest, low life bastards on the face of the earth stand there ridiculing inmates as they hurriedly march past on their way to hell. “What the hell are you looking at boy?” the Field Major with his shiny bronze oak leaves on his collar yells at a passing inmate with a wander­ing eye. Spurs jingle on the cowboy boots of the riders, all dark and wrinkled from the sun and hung over from the previous night’s whiskey and beer. The epitome of the southern redneck, no one likes a hoe rider. Hell, they don’t even like them­selves. Their wives and children are happy to see them leave for work. With names like Sargent Outlaw, Lieutenant Savage and Captain DeJarnette, these hardcore bastards are mean to everyone, even the horses they ride each and every day. Through the sally port gate, each convict is lined up in a deuce, counted and roll is called. Unshaven, sunburned men with burr haircuts and six-pack abs, prepare for a day skateboarding levees and flatweeding ditches. A long, hot day dead ahead, everyone is mad.

Garden rows are miles and miles long. Some seem never ending. The hot summer sun beams down on everyone’s head as they run backwards chopping at the hard earth with a 10 lb. hoe so dull it couldn’t cut hot butter. Everyone’s doing an ass load of time. Everyone’s pissed. Hoe riders yell and scream sitting atop their steeds, one hand on their sidearm itching for a convict to make a run for the treeline. A prison punk suddenly asks, “Boss man! Asking for permission to hang it out. Gotta Pee.” Spitting on the ground the rider looks at the punk and says, “Squat like a Bitch and pee boy. You know you take it up the ass back in 12 barracks. So squat like the whore you are to take a piss. You’re not worthy of standing up to pee like a man.” Humiliated but needing to urinate, the prison pretty boy steps out of line, squats as told, and takes a piss. “Now get your bitch ass back to work!” yells the rider. “Before I shoot your queer ass and say you ran across the levee.” Other inmates see what’s going on but know to mind their own business as it could just as easily be them being picked on. Men continue to run backward chopping at the ground with hoe squad riders talking trash and converging on the weak who can’t keep up with the gougers working on their row.

Five minute water break is called. All stop hoeing and move quickly to get in line behind the mule drawn water cart. The water salty and hot, is all there is. All there is to sustain a man for three more hours of hard labor and march­ing back to the prison and a tray full of tasteless slop. Suddenly, an inmate falls to the ground and passes out from heat exhaustion.The hoe rider approaches the man on horseback. The horse, already knowing what to do, raises his right front leg and steps down on the passed out inmate with its hoof. He applies just enough pressure to where if the inmate really is unconscious, he won’t move. Yet if he’s faking, he’ll rise to the occasion with a quickness. The truly heat ex­hausted inmate is then cuffed behind his back, shackled at the ankles, and tossed in the back of the field major’s pickup to be taken to the prison infirmary. Once there, he is revived via IV, then sent back to the barracks. If it’s morning time, he catches back out with his squad after lunch. If it’s afternoon, he lays in ’til morning. Heat stroke or not, everyone does their time on the squad.

Lots and lots of fights working out in the hot ass field. Inmates, hot, mad and mean, tend to want to assault each other at the drop of a hat. It’s usually the blacks and the whites fighting. In prison you are automatically pegged against eachother really. One day I saw a guy get hit in the head with a brick. Another man got chopped in the arm with a hoe. Riders sometime fire a warning shot into the air to break up a fight. Usually both men go to the hole. Lots of snakes lying around in the tall, green Johnson grass. Usually water mocca­sins but sometimes a copperhead or two. Man you should see those black boys jump when some inmate yells, “Snake!” One time I killed a rattler. Cut his head off with my dull ass aggy. Then took his rattle back with me to the barracks. That night when it finally got quiet and everyone laid down to rest, I shook the rattle throwing the blacks into a sheer state of panic. A long days work, one might see 2 dozen dead snakes tossed on the top of the levee when marching in. I still don’t like snakes to this day. Fuck a snake, and fuck the hoe squad!

Sometimes a squad might have to clean out a ditch wading in water up past their waists. Mosquitos and leeches chomping at the bit waiting to suck your blood. I came in many a day covered from head to toe in mud. Only to have to take a shower in a big open bay covered in mold and filth. I’ve picked cotton, cucumbers and peas. Okra sucks to pick. You’ll be itching like hell after a day in the okra patch. The knees of your prison whites will be worn out after gathering cues all day. And man are the towsack of those bastards ever heavy! Lots of mosquitos in the asparagus field. And how ’bout that milo? Anybody know what milo is? It’s some kind of grain grown for livestock feed. Hell, just looks like a weed to me. But you better not cut down the boss man’s milo.’Cause if you do, you’re sure to get a write up and then be thrown in the hole. Yeah, fuck the hoe squad and those redneck mother fuckers sitting on their horses watching over you with their guns. If ever there was a deterrent meant to cause a man not to want to come back to prison, it has to be working in the field on hoe squad.

*Milo Field

One more thing before I close out. Legend has it, there were several convicts working out in the field one day when the sky got dark and gloomy and it was about to come a storm. One inmate had been cursing all day saying goddamn this and god­damn that and another inmate kept urging him to stop taking the Lord’s name in vane. “If there is a God! Let him strike me dead!” popped out of the inmate’s mouth. Suddenly, a lightning bolt shot out of the clouds striking the inmate killing him dead. Electricity traveled through his body into the next man, then into another, blowing the bottoms of their feet off and it singed the hair on their body. Guess the old boy should have listened. Just goes to show you, God sometimes comes down hard on the wicked and evil. And working on hoe squad can be dangerous in more ways that one. Shot by a rider for trying to flee, bit by a poisonous rattle snake, or struck down from the heavens by the hand of the almighty creator. Anything is subject to happen on the hoe squad. Fortunately, I survived though my memories are vivid. Just wanted to give everyone a little insight on what it was like to work on the prison hoe squad. Please stay out of trouble. I am Tripper! Better Days!