Post by Jolly on Sept 8, 2020 12:45:02 GMT
Junior is my wife's uncle. He retired after twenty-five years at Angola, where the inmates and fellow guards called him Walking Tall. Maybe that's because he's 6'4" or more likely, it's because he once broke up a fight between two inmates by knocking both of them out with a shovel. Junior is the prototype for the laid-back, laconic country boy, who is a lot smarter than what he looks like.
He thought when he retired, he'd never have to fool with inmates again, but he'd been home less than a month, when he got a telephone call from the local sheriff. Junior, you need to come see me...I've got a proposition for you. Turns out, the sheriff wanted to start a truck farm for the parish jail.
The jail is considerable size, housing a couple hundred inmates, some of which are state non-violent prisoners. The sheriff knew that Junior had grown up on a subsistence farm and had also worked the vegetable fields at Angola (those are extensive...Imagine a two hundred acre truck patch). The Pea Farm would exist on idle land the parish owned and would supply produce for the jail and multiple food banks in the parish.
And that's how Junior became the manager of the Pea Farm for almost twenty years. Sweet corn, field peas, green beans, okra, cucumbers, tomatoes, cabbage, mustard greens, carrots...There is always something growing on that forty acre farm. They've got a good size Kubota tractor with implements, but it's still labor intensive. The inmates stand in line for the jobs. No inmate is assigned to the farm, it's voluntary, but the perks are a)you get paid twenty-five cents an hour, b) you get out in the sunshine and fresh air, c)they have a cook shack at the barn, where they can eat whatever they grow or Junior will occasionally bring them a beef roast, chicken or some other meat to cook or barbecue, and d) Junior digs in his own pocket and treats them to a junk food meal once a month (pizza, Popeye's or hamburgers).
The amount of food they grow is astounding and keeps the jail supplied, along with a lot of hungry people through out the parish. And then they closed the Pea Farm the first of this month.
Cost savings, said the new sheriff. Working inmates in the hot sun is inhumane, the new sheriff said. Can use the inmates labor other places, the new sheriff said.
What the new sheriff didn't say, is that the people who got the new food contracts for the kitchen at the parish jail, contributed tens of thousands of dollars to the new sheriff's political campaign. And I suspect those contributions will be on-going, helping to plump up his re-election war chest. And the land at the Pea Farm? Well, can't have Parish land growing up in weeds...The rumor is that a local developer - who just BTW, happens to also be a backer of the new sheriff - is trying to put together a deal to buy the land from the parish...At a reasonable price, if course.
The point of the story...Doesn't matter if it's during the time of Jesus, the 1500's of Europe or modern day America, people are still the same. Politics is a dirty business, populated by loathsome people...
He thought when he retired, he'd never have to fool with inmates again, but he'd been home less than a month, when he got a telephone call from the local sheriff. Junior, you need to come see me...I've got a proposition for you. Turns out, the sheriff wanted to start a truck farm for the parish jail.
The jail is considerable size, housing a couple hundred inmates, some of which are state non-violent prisoners. The sheriff knew that Junior had grown up on a subsistence farm and had also worked the vegetable fields at Angola (those are extensive...Imagine a two hundred acre truck patch). The Pea Farm would exist on idle land the parish owned and would supply produce for the jail and multiple food banks in the parish.
And that's how Junior became the manager of the Pea Farm for almost twenty years. Sweet corn, field peas, green beans, okra, cucumbers, tomatoes, cabbage, mustard greens, carrots...There is always something growing on that forty acre farm. They've got a good size Kubota tractor with implements, but it's still labor intensive. The inmates stand in line for the jobs. No inmate is assigned to the farm, it's voluntary, but the perks are a)you get paid twenty-five cents an hour, b) you get out in the sunshine and fresh air, c)they have a cook shack at the barn, where they can eat whatever they grow or Junior will occasionally bring them a beef roast, chicken or some other meat to cook or barbecue, and d) Junior digs in his own pocket and treats them to a junk food meal once a month (pizza, Popeye's or hamburgers).
The amount of food they grow is astounding and keeps the jail supplied, along with a lot of hungry people through out the parish. And then they closed the Pea Farm the first of this month.
Cost savings, said the new sheriff. Working inmates in the hot sun is inhumane, the new sheriff said. Can use the inmates labor other places, the new sheriff said.
What the new sheriff didn't say, is that the people who got the new food contracts for the kitchen at the parish jail, contributed tens of thousands of dollars to the new sheriff's political campaign. And I suspect those contributions will be on-going, helping to plump up his re-election war chest. And the land at the Pea Farm? Well, can't have Parish land growing up in weeds...The rumor is that a local developer - who just BTW, happens to also be a backer of the new sheriff - is trying to put together a deal to buy the land from the parish...At a reasonable price, if course.
The point of the story...Doesn't matter if it's during the time of Jesus, the 1500's of Europe or modern day America, people are still the same. Politics is a dirty business, populated by loathsome people...
