The Mother Lode

When it comes to buying commissary, I have to be conservative. I had a pretty good job before the police knocked on my door and arrested me on that fateful day in 2008, but now both the job and all my savings are gone and will never be recovered. Since I’ve been convicted of assault after my encounter with Fudd, I will be restricted to maintenance pay for any job I get in prison for one year. (Maintenance pay is $5.00 per MONTH.) So now I’m almost completely dependent on what my family sends me, and I have to make the dollars stretch. Right now, I’m trying to get by on $6.00 of food per week. And with the commissary prices in prison, that’s barely enough to buy anything.

Much to my disappointment, when the cops took inmates out of their cells for transport to my designated prison this week, I wasn’t called out. I’m still in the queue. The guy I’ve been talking to for the past few days did leave, though. This tells me one thing: I have to be leaving next week. He’d been here only 2 or 3 days longer than me.

As a consolation prize for me failing to get the heck out of here, he left me all of his remaining commissary. He put it in a paper bag outside my cell door before he left. Normally you leave all of your stuff to your cellmate, but he saw it fitting to give his things to ME.

My first clue of what was in the bag was given to me by the officer who unlocked my cell door to hand me the bag several hours later. “Christmas came early! There must be 50 pounds of s*** in this bag!”

The bag he handed me was filled to almost bursting. Inside was a new container of honey, packs of unopened candy and cookies, a box of saltine crackers, a bag of flour tortillas, a jar of peanut butter, half-full pouches of Tang and instant tea, half a bag of chips, and a few more items. He even gave back the Snickers bar I gifted him. Wow! There was more food than I knew what to do with. No wonder he was sending me all those food trays during the weekend. He had some serious groceries in his cell!

I’ll have to thank him again when I meet up with him at my new prison. One thing for sure:  my starvation days in the ADC are over.