Offensive SEO

You might remember my last article “The Good Ole’ Boy Network” before you read this one – where I went through an unbelievable amount of bullshit in a Truetlen County (a crooked corrupt county in South Georgia). Where I left you last I had just been sentenced to 6 months in a prison boot camp for a 1/4 oz. of when and 2 hits of LSD – first offense…

On February 15, 1999 I was sentenced to 120-180 days in a Probation Detention Center (a PDC – Emanuel Probation Detention Center in Twin City, GA- near Swainsboro). I was allowed to stay free until I had to turn myself in to the Sheriffs Office at 8:30 AM in Soperton, GA. I stayed awake all night the night before and my friend Johny “Cold Beer” and my girlfriend started the 3.5 hour drive to South Georgia at 4AM.

I arrived at the Sheriffs Office at 8AM and sat saying my last goodbyes to my girlfriend until 8:30 when this inbred Deputy Sheriff told me it was time to go and put me in the back of a cop car. I wasn’t handcuffed and I rode in the front seat of the deputy’s car with a police dog in the back. On the way he stopped at a county garage and went inside to get oil and left me in the car with it running, upon arrival to the center this moron left me outside (again with the car running) for another 20 minutes. Either time I could have just gotten behind the wheel and driver the fuck out of there – this is the kind of idiots we are dealing with here.

When he came back he drove the car around to the intake area, where I was greeted by a Department of Corrections Sargent who looked like he was the mutated offspring of the banjo boy from “Deliverance”. Before I even stepped out of the car the verbal abuse began – he began insulting me, degrading me, threatening me, and giving me orders military style (”sir yes sir” and all that BS) that was just the beginning of a hazing process that would make a drunken frat hazing look like an etiquette class.

I was stripped searched, de-loused and went through just about every kind of physical humiliation you could imagine, then they made me stand in a room at attention for about 4 hours with several other inmates staring at a wall with a sign on it that had the 12 “General Orders” and read it over and over again. I stood at attention the whole first day as they went through the intake process, and then I was admitted to the general population. The whole first week we had to sit in a room with the other new inmates while staff member after staff member came in and explained the “program” and continued the cycle of abuse.

My only contact with the outside world consisted of letters and one 10 minute phone call on Monday night once a week. Summer was coming, it was South Georgia, there was no air conditioning, and we had to spend all day dressed in hot jumpsuits at all times. The staff was on your ass 24/7 over one thing or another – punishment was swift and severe. You had to shave every whisker off your face each morning with a shitty disposable razor that was only replaced once a week. Every day at 6AM, 8AM, 10AM, 11:30AM, 2PM, 5PM, 6:30 PM, and 9:30PM the entire inmate population would have to stand at attention silently by their bunks while the staff took about 20 minutes to walk around the center and do a count of the inmates. Each Friday there was major inspections – sometimes you would have to stand at attention for 2-3 hours.

After the first week I began work on the “chain gang” – doing various shitty jobs no slack jawed yokel would do around there even for money (Twin Cities is not exactly an employment mecca) – cleaning up around the dump, dumpster diving, and clearing land. The inmate labor is contracted out to the surrounding counties for less money then they would have to pay than if they actually gave some redneck a job. Then, at the end of an 8 or nine hour shift, we would return to the center, get strip searched to make sure you didn’t bring anything back in (anyone who would take a job where you have to look up other guy’s asses every day is definently a butt pirate) , would be forced to go on a 4.5 mile forced run, endured more abuse from the staff (locker searches, inspections, drills), eat dinner (yum!! – I lost about 20 pounds), do more miliary drills, get about 30 minutes of free time – then lights out – they got you up at 5:30 AM each day.

One thing I never understood about the concept of the chaingang is how it serves the interest of public safety sending 12 pissed off felons out in the community with axes with one unarmed correction officer. At several points during my incarceration I thought about just cutting his head off and going home.

On my fourth week there I broke my right foot while jogging on Sunday night. The pain was so serious I could barley walk and other inmates helped carry me inside. I reported my injury to medical first thing the next morning. After a very brief examination of my injury the nurse told me that “I was faking it and if I was getting paid 10 dollars and hour to go out and work that I wouldn’t be coming to her with this crap” and sent me off to work on the chaingang again that day.

That day I mowed a field (probably 200 yards x 200 yards) with a heavy push lawn mower for 8 hours and a broken foot, all while this sadistic corrections officers sat in the shade, chewed tobacco, laughed at me, and threatened me with disciplinary action if I didn’t pick up the pace. The next day my foot had swollen up so much I couldn’t barley put on my shoe. Again I went to medical, only to be told that there was nothing wrong with me, and I was sent back into slavery for the day. This went on day after day for a week until I finally convinced them that something was wrong and I was excused from the chain gang, but for some stupid reason I still had to go on the 4.5 mile run each afternoon, stand at attention 8 times a day, and do the military drills. While the rest of the inmates went out to work they made me sit in a room facing a wall for nine hours a day in a chair – no reading, no sleeping – nothing – just sitting there.

Finally two and a half weeks later I finally convinced them to get me an X-Ray. They transported me to Riedsville Maximum Security Prison, and the x-ray confirmed what I had been saying all along – my foot was fractured. So for the last 14 days I had been marching, doing 4.5 mile runs, and standing at attention on a broken foot. My leg was put in a cast and I walked with the aid of crutches. For the next 6 weeks every day while the other inmates went out to work I sat like a vegetable in the room 9 or 10 hours a day – after a while I was looking forward to returning to life as a slave.

After six weeks they removed my cast and sent me straight back on the chain gang, no period of recovery – I still could barley walk because my foot was so stiff, but I was glad not to be sitting in that god damned room while time ebbed.

After a few more weeks I had about a month or so of my sentence to complete and disaster struck again. The inmates are housed in four dorms (60 prisoners to a dorm) and one day the trash can in the dorm caught on fire because someone left a burning cigarette in the trash (it was forbidden to smoke in the dorms). I was the first to spot it and took the cover off in an attempt to extinguish it. I put the fire out, but the room still was blue with smoke – a guard came in and asked what the hell was going on. There was no way out of it so I explained what had happened. The guard got really pissed off and made the whole dorm line up. Everyone in the dorm was to be punished, unless someone came forward and turned in the person who started the fire. Some of the other inmates tried to blame me for starting the fire because I had explained the obvious to the guard, and they said I was a “snitch”. These same inmates all made written statements saying they saw me put the cigarette in the trash, even though I don’t smoke. I was the scapegoat for the fire.

After the warden read the statements, I was sent to the hole (24 hour a day solitary lockdown) for starting the fire. While in the hole, the warden came in and explained that he was planning on revoking the remainder of my probation (10 years) and sending my to prison for destruction of state property. I was terrified…here I was with no contact with anyone who could exonerate me and a bunch of stupid happy cons happy that they aren’t the ones going down for it laying around in the dorms.

Other than the fear of going up the river for 10 years, in a kind of sick way – in liked the hole. It gave me a chance to catch up on my masturbation, I didn’t have to deal with anyone else, and the staff stayed out of your face. After about a week of being in the hole you begin to forget if it’s night or day. You are in a room with a steel bed, a toilet, a sink, and an intercom that would go to the main control room. Every once in a while I would get on the intercom, in what I thought was the middle of the night and fuck with the corrections officers, saying something like:

“Good evening and thanks for listening to W-HOLE Radio being broadcast from lovely segregation unit #2 here in scenic Twin Cities, GA…Today in news: well, we have no idea what happened. Today in sports: we have no idea who played. Today’s weather: we have no idea, we haven’t been outside. The weather in the hole is a balmy 80 degrees and will remain that way through the rest of today, next week, and next year…and now for a brief selection from Kenny G doing ‘Just the Two of Us’.”

Then a voice would blare back at me to shut the fuck up…but what the hell are they gonna do – throw me in the hole?

After a week and a half some other inmates finally came forward and signed statements that I wasn’t the one who started the fire and I was let out of the hole. I spent the last month or so of my sentence just dealing with the usual day to day bullshit and slavery until Friday, July 16th when I was released. At 8:30 AM they let me walk out the front door where I was met by my useless piece of shit ex-girlfriend (who had been fucking my even more useless piece of shit best friend the whole time I was in), and I was a free man again…YAY!! I’ll tell you one thing the Georgia Department of Corrections left me feeling anything but correct…oh well…life sucks then you die, go to hell, and get screwed again…