Yesterday afternoon things warmed up over here. Snow was melting. The sun was shining. It felt like summer. Guys got together for a soccer game, on the blacktop near the tennis and basketball courts. The first game of the season.
Guys here are really into soccer. A group of about 20 guys play all spring, summer, and fall, including myself.
The teams are usually broken down along ethnic tribal blood. The Russians will dominate one team and the Hispanic inmates the other. I mostly play with the Hisipanic guys.
There is one guy here from Danbury, who is the best guy in the camp, ie., Colombian Eddie. He just got a few years knocked off his sentence. He has a friend Ralphie, also Colombian, who is also pretty good.
Then you have the Russians, who all have the same sounding names like Slav, Vlad, Misha, Oleg. There are two Vlads in here. One Vlad waddles like a penguin, and the other Vlad looks like Dracula with a peaked hairline. The Russians have pretty good players. They play Russian style — They are big guys and play rough, but they have good ball control.
I have to keep reminding them this is soccer, not ice hockey.
There are no referees, so it is rare you get called for a foul. I have to be careful not to go head to head with some of these guys who are 50 pounds heavier than me, or I will get run over.
There is one Bukharian guy, Roman Empire. He’s a mortgage fraud attorney like me, but he got ten long years, with a similar case. He went to trial and lost. That’s what happens when you go to trial; they punish you for wasting the precious resources of the federal government. Roman Empire is an aggressive player, a big guy, who likes to run guys over, he is very competitive.
So you try to pass the ball when you see him coming. But yesterday a new Jewish guy with an English accent, inmate Slider, took on Roman Empire, not knowing any better.
Slider is also a big guy, and a good player. So they banged into each other head to head. But Slider wouldn’t go down.
Roman Empire got mad. Slider was baffled, he never played prison soccer before.
He had to be explained the rules of the prison yard. But he wouldn’t back down, further infuriating the Roman Empire.
Eventually they made up.
I gained new respect for Slider. He is a new guy with a short sentence, so guys like that you don’t pay much attention to. Most guys get hammered with long sentences, so this guy can’t have any credibility.
Slider also surprised me during the Sabbath meal in the synagogue. He took on the Litvish rabbi, who has been here for five years already.
The rabbi was giving his afternoon lecture at his table, and there was some cake at the table.
The rabbi’s rule is that nobody eats or drinks at his table while he is talking. You wait until he finishes. Everyone follows this rule.
Slider didn’t know about the rule. The rabbi announced the rule to Slider before he had a chance to eat. Slider looked at him and then ate a piece of cake and washed it down with some coffee.
The rabbi was speechless. I was impressed.
Everything Must Go!
Wednesday is commissary day at the camp. Once a week inmates get to buy stuff from the prison commissary store. Most of the stuff is overpriced. Sweatshirts cost about $20; you would normally pay about $10 for them at Wal Mart. Chocolate bars, granola bars, peanuts, popcorn and other junk food you get charged a premium.
No discounts, no sale days.
You can even buy bottles of spring water or seltzer water. You can buy stuff you use in the shower, ie., shampoo, soap, deoderant, moisturizing cream.
You can buy medicine, aspirin, motrin, vitamins, but no name-brand medicine in here. The medicine is manufactured by companies you never heard of. You can also buy a bag of rugelach, cologne, coffee.
There are a number of Jewish food items in here you can purchase, kosher items. There are also religious items, like a Muslim prayer rug, American Indian bandana, yarmulkes.
Next door in the medium they have an actual store, that you can shop in once a week. That is set aside for your special commissary day. If you try buying stuff on a day that is not designated your commissary day, the Blue Boyz will tell you to take a hike. Some inmates get away with it, as the Blue Boyz are too busy to notice sometimes.
Over here the commissary items get shipped to the warehouse in individual mesh bags and then handed out to the inmates off the back of a box truck. Names are called, and you pick up your mesh bag and check to make sure you have everything.
Sometimes the Blue Boyz mess up and put stuff in there that you didn’t order or leave stuff out.
Today I never made it back to the camp to pick up my bag, so someone put the bag on my bunk bed for me. I asked the Blue Boyz at the warehouse what happened to my bag. They told me an inmate put it on my bed. They said it was waiting for me, along with a warm body that was also waiting for me on my bed.
No Hand In That Murder
In other news, the first batch of shmura matzahs have arrived at the warehouse [for Passover]. I unloaded them off the minivan driven by the Hasid from Brooklyn.
“Shmura” matzahs are not the regular matzohs you buy in the supermarket. They are hand-baked, burnt to a crisp, and shaped like a pizza pie. They taste like a burnt piece of raw dough, which is basically what they are.
The Blue Boy wanted to know why the Jews eat these matzohs. I explained that it was the bread of affliction, representing slavery, bondage — kind of like Club Fed over here.
He was wondering why the Jews killed Jesus. I told him I had nothing to do with the death of Jesus. I was locked up for mortgage fraud, not murder.
Furlough Fever
Inmate Useless is back from his three-day furlough, where he traveled to Maryland. He said it was very nice.
I told him it must be tough to come back here. I said I didn’t want a furlough because the thought of coming back, after being free, would be too much to bear.
He said I was right. He said it took him some time to adjust to real food when he went home. He has been living off the kosher TV meals for years over here, high in sodium and carbs and low in vitamins, minerals and fiber.
Last night during the Sabbath meal, our table was talking about the upcoming furlough for the foot doc. He has 15 hours to be a free man and then come back to prison.
He doesn’t have a wife or a girlfriend. He has an ex-wife with a few kids, but he is having a hard time getting his ex-wife to let him see his kids. He has parents who live locally, but they don’t like him. And who wants to spend 15 hours with your parents anyway?
The doc has no money. The feds took everything from him. He has been here a few years already.
The guys were trying to raise some money, get a furlough fund together, to make sure he has a good time over his furlough. Not sure how much a good time would cost in the local rural towns over here.
New Haven attorney Lawrence Dressler is serving a 20-month sentence in an out-of-state federal minimum-security prison for his part in a mortgage-fraud ring.
Previous installments:
• Larry Noodles & The Tossed Banana
• A Peanut-Butter View Of A “Real Prison”
• Arrival
• Tempers Flare Over … What?
• Blinded By The Light
• The Russians Take Control
• Welcome To The Hole