My recent post about being accused of larceny has gotten me thinking about going to jail. About the couple few times I went to jail, about the time I was walking down railroad tracks in Miamiville and my Dad told me he might be going to jail. Got me thinking about visiting folks in jail. Mostly, I thought about my Uncle Larry and Norwood Jail.
Norwood Jail was kind of sort of straight out of Mayberry, North Carolina, USA. But it wasn't really. It was in the sense that it was a small jail, in the city hall, in a small town, but not a country a town. A city town. Norwood was odd. It was an egg yolk city surrounded by Cincinnati, industrial in makeup, neighborhoody, narrow-minded and beautiful all at once. It was a town, city that had too much money and didn't know what to do with thanks to GM, US Playing Cards and a host of other heavy manufacturing companies. A great tax base. So the city fathers built a new state of the art high school with a computer facility that rivaled small colleges; a radio station, a television station and a planetarium. All of which was used by less than one percent of the school's population because we were more interested in smoking pot, skipping school, chasing girls and spending time in vo-tech. We had our own public works, pools, pretty good parks, a real tank in what tried to pass as a public square and our own Mayor's court. Where my uncle, the Mayor presided and my other uncle got to spend time in jail. Presumably sent there by his brother in law. Please, reader, keep in mind, this is all hearsay; I wasn't there to witness it myself. So I'm passing down an oral tradition I've heard across rooms and in bar rooms while sitting on stools talking about my relatively famous and infamous uncles.
My point is the town had some money, at the time and it did some great things with it that went underutilized. We had a great football stadium with a constantly losing team, parks with pools, and an overly attentive and completely bored police department. They didn't have a state of the art jail. The jail... the jail was awesome. I spent at least three nights there, not all in a row, three separate nights and not all of them full, I suspect two of them weren't even documented. I was just dragged in for being a general nuisance and pain in the ass and made to set in a cell, forced to have a teen-ager "time out".
As the story goes one of my Uncles, we'll call him Otis, had a penchant for partying it up a bit, flying off the handle a bit, driving too carelessly on the rare occasion, being in the middle of a brawl everyonceinawhile, pulling a gun on someone now and again and in general being sort of a trouble maker. Ahhhh.... role models. He scared the living shit out of me. Terrified me. One look from Uncle Lar... er Otis and you'd march right out of the room. It was great being a spectator, but if got caught in his net, well, look out. Or so I'm told. Generally, he'd just pick me up by my feet, swing me around, shake me up and down and hug me so hard I could feel a turd trying to squeak out of me ass. I loved him.
Well the other uncle was a role model of another sort, at least from where I was standing as little boy. Well dressed, articulate, important and all knowing. He didn't squeeze me till my eyes popped out but I got hugs and treated with respect and thoughtfulness. He was just plain nice, and filled with patience. I loved him too in a different kind of way. I saw the best of both men as a little boy.
So, later in life, when I was gett'n into trouble, wearing leather jackets, pierced up, sporting Mohawks and in general doing my best to be a social misfit, every once in a while the town's "undercover" cop would pull over, take his gun off and asking me to "take a shot". Apparently he thought I was tougher than I thought I was. I never "took a shot". But he would drag me in and I get to sit in that cell for a while.
I thought about both those old boys. I was in there town, smarting off like one, wondering what it'd be like in front of the other in "Mayor's Court". I never got the opportunity to find out what that was like because I was always released in the morning or another town's Police came to pick me up for some warrant and minor infraction. In an odd sort of way, it was reassuring, sitting in a Mayberryeqsue jail cell. One of my uncle’s names scrawled across the wall announcing he was here the other residing over the bench. If I was there long enough I got served what I was told was Norwood Jail standard meal rations. Two White Castle hamburgers and a small cup of coffee.
If I'm misfortunate enough to spend sometime in the Natick Jail I wonder if I'll feel so reassured. It's been a long time since I got to "cool" off and I'm hoping I don't have to anytime soon.
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