Earlier today, I was sitting in the day room with three other prisoners...
...who, like myself, have already been incarcerated for at least several decades. And if anyone knows about "old timers" who've been locked up for a long time, we will often talk about our early years when we first came to prison as naive "new jacks."
So today was no different. What started out as a friendly conversation about football games, quickly morphed into talking about our early years of incarceration and the experiences each of us had at the start of our respective sentences. The good parts, and the bad ones. It was a social "tell all" of past memories, adventures, and lessons learned.
For me, the main topic was my arrival at the infamous Attica prison. It was here when in the early 1970s a total of forty-two prisoners and guards were killed, when the then governor of New York State ordered the retaking of the prison. Groups of inmates had previously taken over one of the facility's outdoor recreation yards. They took a number of guards hostage, too (the full story).
I was in the Army back then. I was out of state at the time, and don't remember much about the incident, as I was hundreds of miles away from New York. As a young soldier in my late teens, I seldom followed the news.
Nevertheless, it was a headline story. But I had no idea at the time that I would actually end up in Attica. Coming to prison was never in my thoughts. Too bad I couldn't see into the future and thereby turn its course.
Yet there I was, a young man now stuck inside Attica prison with multiple life sentences to do, and no idea how to do jail time correctly. Yes, one's time in prison, in order to not get hurt or even killed, had rules to learn and to follow. And your very life actually depended upon how you handled the rules.
Inside Attica, the work hardened guards had their rules, some of which were posted, while others were unwritten ones. Yet both counted. The unwritten ones were just as real as the ones that were posted. And to break any one of them meant punishment.
Which, in all frankness, could mean anything from the loss of privileges for a while, or getting beaten senseless by the guards for breaking their rules. Or getting beaten up by your fellow convicts for breaking theirs.
Yet it was here at Attica, where I spent my first three years learning the rules for both groups. I learned when to stand up, and when to just be still and "chill out." I learned when to say yes, and when to say no. Most of all, I learned to keep my mouth shut and to simply "go with the flow."
And when it was time to be transferred, I left Attica with one of the most important things a convict can have... it's the label of a "standup guy." I ended up with a good reputation amongst my peers. It's a reputation that has followed me for the past 48 years, and more. Thank God!
D.B.
So today was no different. What started out as a friendly conversation about football games, quickly morphed into talking about our early years of incarceration and the experiences each of us had at the start of our respective sentences. The good parts, and the bad ones. It was a social "tell all" of past memories, adventures, and lessons learned.
For me, the main topic was my arrival at the infamous Attica prison. It was here when in the early 1970s a total of forty-two prisoners and guards were killed, when the then governor of New York State ordered the retaking of the prison. Groups of inmates had previously taken over one of the facility's outdoor recreation yards. They took a number of guards hostage, too (the full story).
I was in the Army back then. I was out of state at the time, and don't remember much about the incident, as I was hundreds of miles away from New York. As a young soldier in my late teens, I seldom followed the news.
Nevertheless, it was a headline story. But I had no idea at the time that I would actually end up in Attica. Coming to prison was never in my thoughts. Too bad I couldn't see into the future and thereby turn its course.
Yet there I was, a young man now stuck inside Attica prison with multiple life sentences to do, and no idea how to do jail time correctly. Yes, one's time in prison, in order to not get hurt or even killed, had rules to learn and to follow. And your very life actually depended upon how you handled the rules.
Inside Attica, the work hardened guards had their rules, some of which were posted, while others were unwritten ones. Yet both counted. The unwritten ones were just as real as the ones that were posted. And to break any one of them meant punishment.
Which, in all frankness, could mean anything from the loss of privileges for a while, or getting beaten senseless by the guards for breaking their rules. Or getting beaten up by your fellow convicts for breaking theirs.
Yet it was here at Attica, where I spent my first three years learning the rules for both groups. I learned when to stand up, and when to just be still and "chill out." I learned when to say yes, and when to say no. Most of all, I learned to keep my mouth shut and to simply "go with the flow."
And when it was time to be transferred, I left Attica with one of the most important things a convict can have... it's the label of a "standup guy." I ended up with a good reputation amongst my peers. It's a reputation that has followed me for the past 48 years, and more. Thank God!
D.B.