“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!