My Not-So Extended "Vacation", Part 1

June 18, 2013

For the past few days yours truly wasn’t trying to attempt to pack my bags and go on a much-needed sabbatical. I only wish I could afford to do something that drastic while leaving everyone in suspense. That I may actually do one day and see what develops. Late in the evening of  Tuesday, June 11, around 11:30pm, I get a knock on the motel door that Mariah, my long-time roommate, and I currently reside. Turns out it was the local fuzz searching for someone I’ve never heard of. Then, the cops ask for our ID’s. Damn. Reality just hit me in the face:  an outstanding warrant (my THIRD, by the way) for my arrest in neighboring Ogle County over something I know I should’ve taken care of. Click-click go the handcuffs on my wrist for the third time in three years, leaving Mariah in a state of shock. I spent the next day and a half locked in the Winnebago County slammer,   (don’t ever eat the food there. Keeps you hungry!) awaiting transportation to Ogle County. Here we go again!  

Serves me right for having all this time to pay something off like a simple traffic ticket and not trying to pay it off. Lord knows I have had my chances, too. Yes, this area has a high unemployment rate. Getting around Rockford is hard enough to get around without a set of wheels. Alas, I am a terrible procrastinator, and repeatedly putting this violation for not yielding to an emergency/ state trooper on the freeway (also known here as Scott’s Law, named for a Chicago-area cop who was killed in the line of duty by a drunk driver not in the passing lane) the back burner only added to the problem. That Tuesday, that tension came over.   They were also a bit pissed I never made it to those mandatory appearances in front of the judge, who basically will not give you much of a chance of succeeding. You are aware that you can’t just think hopping on a Greyhound bus will get you to tiny Oregon, IL, pop. 2200. Sorry. Everything there is drive-in, drive-out. Try to remember that when you get released down there. Smaller communities like Oregon must strongly get their share of revenue from traffic tickets like mine and others. I just had situations over the years that prevented me from making payments on this offense. I’m saying that I didn’t take care of old business and I paid the price that Tuesday evening, again.

As I write this I am stuck in the Ogle County jail, wearing a baggy button-front orange jumpsuit awaiting another confrontation with the same judge I have seen in my other appearances here. He’s looking at finding me in contempt of court and keeping me in this dump for up to a month or until the bond (now at $521) is paid. This Friday can’t come soon enough. I want to get home. So hoping for a “Get out of Jail Free” card and finding a way back to Loves Park.

June 20

Still here at Ogle County Jailhouse. The food’s a bit better than Winnebago, but I’m not recommending it. There are at least 12 other guys in here. Like my last time here, I was stuck with the “boat”, a hard plastic tub-like structure that I had to sleep on. The sleeping mats were never easy to sleep on. Most of the folks in this particular cell block were kept me up well past the nightly 11:00pm lights out curfew. Some played dice games and others played card games like spades. Me? Well, when I first arrived, I asked if someone had a pen and paper for me to write. One person, “Eric”, handed me a full-length notebook w/ perforated sheets. He’d let me keep it as long as I had something to write about. The pens were basically a joke. Unlike the normal-sized pens, these were only half that and lack the gripping needed to write with them. When I started writing with these much smaller pens, my already messy handwriting looked like I had a stroke or something. I told him that I have a blog site and wanted to use the time in jail writing on my feelings being incarcerated once again. What else was I going to do, produce a Broadway production of Xanadu?

The guards gave me a few semi-breaks this time. First, they were going to give me the standard flip-flop shoes that all inmates wore. Since I have big feet (size 13), they let me wear my own sneakers sans the shoe strings, of course. While you’re incarcerated there are mainly two ways to let people know how you are doing behind bars, writing them, which does take forever, and calling those folks collect. This is where having a calling card comes in handy. Just dial someone’s number, say who’s calling and hope the other party accepts the $10 charge for six lousy minutes! These guards were nice enough to get a few numbers on my cell so I could try to call them. Those respective parties didn’t know I was attempting to call them. They didn’t recognize the 866-number on the caller ID. Eventually, my friend Judy, who helped starving Mariah get some food from a nearby pantry, noticed that it was me calling collect to get a hold of someone to let Mariah know I was ok, even in the Ogle County Jail. There is also video calling. This is where inmates can have visitation requests to see friends and family for about 2 minutes apiece via a video box in the cell. Keep in mind of this interesting fact: the visiting party’s names MUST INCLUDE their MIDDLE NAMES!! Hell, I don’t even use my own! These county folks are strange at best! I’ve seen a few inmates come close to breaking down while chatting with their loved ones, which almost instantly think of how Mariah was coping with me away from home--again. My Link card had just kicked in, and it was in my wallet, in Oregon, IL, not in Loves Park with Mariah.

At the time of my arrest, the NBA Finals were the talk to the cell blocks. Could the reigning world champion Miami Heat and their bally-hooed Big Three lineup of LeBron James, Dewayne Wade and Chris Bosh withstand a battle vs the lineup of Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, Manu Ginobli and the four-time NBA champion the San Antonio Spurs, who hadn’t lost in the Finals? The series was one of those match-ups that will be talked about for a long time. The Heat survived the Finals 4-3 to repeat as NBA champs. However, there was something else going on at the same time. The Stanley Cup Finals pitted an Original Six matchup with Chicago vs. Boston. (Blackhawks eventually won the Cup in six games.)Whoo, what a match! During both of these series I heard a lot of crowd noise both in the cell blocks and in the hallways. Some of these guys had some Windy City ties. How could I blame them? They were the ones talking all the trash through those games! If I was at home, I’d be watching these games in peace…and the Spurs probably would’ve won, too! Yakkity, yakkity yak went the inmates in Cell Block K. The next door rivals in Cell Block J, which is where I was during Christmas 2011, made their own share of racket.  Several times a day they would bang the walls, talking about how much one side is manly black and another side is pro-redneck.  I kept me distance and spent my time writing this or reading the Never-Ending Story, which the movie was adapted from. What total chaos commencing on a nightly basis! Some nights they went until about 4 am, talking about almost any thing that was on their minds, which was almost about anything. I just hoped my stay in this place was going to be a short one.  

to be continued...