Blogings of a Jailbird (pt 1)
As some of you may or may not know about a month and a half ago I got busted going 100 in a 65 (message me for the details if you like). Anyways what follows is a sort of journalish type thing of my thought process as I went through 48 hours in the slammer (or whatever other slang word you wish to apply)
(I forgot to take paper so this is all from memory)
Two hundred twenty two miles. That's what the odometer reads as I slide into a parking space in front of the five story building butting up against the brick red courthouse. Putting the car in park I begin to go through my mental checklist, making sure I have everything I am taking in with me and putting everything else away. Rifling through the many pockets in the clothes I have on I remove everything that I can't take with me. Cash, Check Card, Cell Phone, Pocket Knife, and a Liz Claiborne sticker. The cash and check card get locked into the glove compartment. The cell phone pocket knife and sticker get shoved under the seat where I hid my CD player. I shut off engine and turn off all the lights. In the darkness that follows I pick up my reading material open the car door and step out onto the street. Closing and locking the car door I make my way across the carefully architectured landscape and into the front door.
Once inside I notice a distinct absence of human presence. I walk up to a window with a metallic coating on it that is supposed to conceal what is behind it. There is a speaker box there...but no button. As I start to walk away a deep gravelly voice issues from within. "May I help you?" Uh yea I'm supposed to report here for my jail sentence. "Sit down over there" Turning aroud I walk to the only place available to sit. An uncomfortable looking wooden bench. Within a minute or two a heavy steel door to the left of the window opens and a sheriff sticks his head out and jerks his head in a "follow me" gesture. I get up cross the room in three long strides and enter the door.
Once through that door he goes through another door like the first. Both doors lock behind us with an extremely audible click. In front of us is another set of doors (looks something like an airlock...) with the word INTAKE painted in solid white block letters. We go through the first door, which thunders shut behind us, and then through the second, which also thunders shut behind us, into a room whose shape is so odd it cannot be described. Pointing me to a stainless steel bench that stands about a foot and a half off the floor the sheriff tells me to sit down. I sit down in front of two other sheriffs, a Corporal and a Deputy. We go through all the necessary paperwork (they even take my picture) and then they direct me to a room that is caty-cornered to the stool I was sitting on. This door is labeled with the same solid white block lettering as the first, it says SHOWER/JAIL CLOTHING. I walk into that room and the same sheriff who brought me back stands in the doorway and say "strip." I take off all my clothes down to my boxers and my socks (why I tried to keep my socks on I don't know) and he goes "The underwear too. I have to search you." So off come the boxers and the socks. Once I'm completely naked he tells me to turn around, pick up one foot, pick up the other, turn around again, open my mouth, pick up my sack squat and cough. Once that is done he leaves telling me to take a shower and then put on the orange jumpsuit on the bench. So I shower and dry myself and then back on goes my underwear and socks (the rest of my gear gets locked in a room) and then a faded pair of orange pants that had me looking like a flood was coming, a t-shirt that matched and had the words "Allegheny Regional Jail" in big black block letters on the back, and a pair of too small orange slippers (go figure they wouldn't have size fifteens...). After leaving the now steam filled room I receive a plastic blue storage bin and am told to "follow me" the original sheriff and the deputy escort me back through the "airlock" and to a waiting elevator. We get in, the doors automatically close and we go up to the second floor.
We get off the elevator and just to the right there is a rack with some plastic-y loooking matresses and a bunch of pillows of the same manufacture. The sheriff tells me to pick up one of each. When I'm done doing that he escorts me through the "airlock" which has DORM#2 painted on it in the same block letters as the other doors. Once inside I find myself in a roughly 40ftx20ft (rough estimations) room with eight gunmetal grey steel bunkbeds that stand about four and a half feet off the ground. The bottom bunks of all eight are already occupied so I pick a top one close to the TV. Once I have all my stuff put down I look around for a closer look. Right next to my bed there are two stainless steel phones bolted into the wall. Right next to them there is an octagonal table with four stainless steel stools attached to it. Three more of these seperate the two rows of bunk beds. There are two "windows" in the room with some kind of opaque covering over them so you can't see out. I think they were also double-paned because you couldn't tell the temperature by touching them. These two sets of windows are covered by about six vertical bars (painted forest green) and two horizontal bar (also green) each. There is a camera and each of the far (in relation to my bunk) corners of the room. Behind the camera nearest my bunk is a utility sink, two toilets, two showers and two sinks with the stainless steel equivalent of a mirror over both of them.
Since I arrived to the jail at 2200 and lights out is at 2300 there wasn't much to do before the lights went out and a sheriff came in to turn off the TV.
I realize that was kind of long winded but I wanted to convey most of what I saw and experienced leading that first night. Tomorrows blog will be part two and will cover the From the end of this one until the time I got back in my car to drive home. If I start to run uber long I will break it down and cover this weekend in three parts instead of two.
~Superman
(I forgot to take paper so this is all from memory)
Two hundred twenty two miles. That's what the odometer reads as I slide into a parking space in front of the five story building butting up against the brick red courthouse. Putting the car in park I begin to go through my mental checklist, making sure I have everything I am taking in with me and putting everything else away. Rifling through the many pockets in the clothes I have on I remove everything that I can't take with me. Cash, Check Card, Cell Phone, Pocket Knife, and a Liz Claiborne sticker. The cash and check card get locked into the glove compartment. The cell phone pocket knife and sticker get shoved under the seat where I hid my CD player. I shut off engine and turn off all the lights. In the darkness that follows I pick up my reading material open the car door and step out onto the street. Closing and locking the car door I make my way across the carefully architectured landscape and into the front door.
Once inside I notice a distinct absence of human presence. I walk up to a window with a metallic coating on it that is supposed to conceal what is behind it. There is a speaker box there...but no button. As I start to walk away a deep gravelly voice issues from within. "May I help you?" Uh yea I'm supposed to report here for my jail sentence. "Sit down over there" Turning aroud I walk to the only place available to sit. An uncomfortable looking wooden bench. Within a minute or two a heavy steel door to the left of the window opens and a sheriff sticks his head out and jerks his head in a "follow me" gesture. I get up cross the room in three long strides and enter the door.
Once through that door he goes through another door like the first. Both doors lock behind us with an extremely audible click. In front of us is another set of doors (looks something like an airlock...) with the word INTAKE painted in solid white block letters. We go through the first door, which thunders shut behind us, and then through the second, which also thunders shut behind us, into a room whose shape is so odd it cannot be described. Pointing me to a stainless steel bench that stands about a foot and a half off the floor the sheriff tells me to sit down. I sit down in front of two other sheriffs, a Corporal and a Deputy. We go through all the necessary paperwork (they even take my picture) and then they direct me to a room that is caty-cornered to the stool I was sitting on. This door is labeled with the same solid white block lettering as the first, it says SHOWER/JAIL CLOTHING. I walk into that room and the same sheriff who brought me back stands in the doorway and say "strip." I take off all my clothes down to my boxers and my socks (why I tried to keep my socks on I don't know) and he goes "The underwear too. I have to search you." So off come the boxers and the socks. Once I'm completely naked he tells me to turn around, pick up one foot, pick up the other, turn around again, open my mouth, pick up my sack squat and cough. Once that is done he leaves telling me to take a shower and then put on the orange jumpsuit on the bench. So I shower and dry myself and then back on goes my underwear and socks (the rest of my gear gets locked in a room) and then a faded pair of orange pants that had me looking like a flood was coming, a t-shirt that matched and had the words "Allegheny Regional Jail" in big black block letters on the back, and a pair of too small orange slippers (go figure they wouldn't have size fifteens...). After leaving the now steam filled room I receive a plastic blue storage bin and am told to "follow me" the original sheriff and the deputy escort me back through the "airlock" and to a waiting elevator. We get in, the doors automatically close and we go up to the second floor.
We get off the elevator and just to the right there is a rack with some plastic-y loooking matresses and a bunch of pillows of the same manufacture. The sheriff tells me to pick up one of each. When I'm done doing that he escorts me through the "airlock" which has DORM#2 painted on it in the same block letters as the other doors. Once inside I find myself in a roughly 40ftx20ft (rough estimations) room with eight gunmetal grey steel bunkbeds that stand about four and a half feet off the ground. The bottom bunks of all eight are already occupied so I pick a top one close to the TV. Once I have all my stuff put down I look around for a closer look. Right next to my bed there are two stainless steel phones bolted into the wall. Right next to them there is an octagonal table with four stainless steel stools attached to it. Three more of these seperate the two rows of bunk beds. There are two "windows" in the room with some kind of opaque covering over them so you can't see out. I think they were also double-paned because you couldn't tell the temperature by touching them. These two sets of windows are covered by about six vertical bars (painted forest green) and two horizontal bar (also green) each. There is a camera and each of the far (in relation to my bunk) corners of the room. Behind the camera nearest my bunk is a utility sink, two toilets, two showers and two sinks with the stainless steel equivalent of a mirror over both of them.
Since I arrived to the jail at 2200 and lights out is at 2300 there wasn't much to do before the lights went out and a sheriff came in to turn off the TV.
I realize that was kind of long winded but I wanted to convey most of what I saw and experienced leading that first night. Tomorrows blog will be part two and will cover the From the end of this one until the time I got back in my car to drive home. If I start to run uber long I will break it down and cover this weekend in three parts instead of two.
~Superman