Valentine's Day: 2/14 in 2-1-4

This is a a re-post from previous Valentine's Days. Why re-invent the wheel, right?

Valentines Day is a big deal at prison camp. My room -- 214, ironically -- was no exception. For guys like Mush, from L.A., but with "lady friends" from all over, it was an especially big deal. After the Super Bowl (another big event in prison camp) Mush spent almost every waking hour from the minute the Giants walked off the field, leaving the stunned Patriots and osteoporotic Madonna behind, until just hours before mail went out Valentines Day morning cranking out cards.

Some inmates wanted more "typical" portraits for Valentines Day.

He had books of poetry, he had old cards and letters that he'd written to use as templates, he hired people to make cards for him. He was a card writing machine. And he wasn't just doing it for himself. There were plenty of word-weary guys in Unit 209 who came to Mush for help with their Valentines Day mojo.

One evening, about a week before Valentines Day, I was in my usual spot... My chair, pushed against the wall, under the window at the foot of my bunk -- technically, I guess, it was the foot of Fons' rack, since he had the lower bunk, but his chair was alongside his mattress; I got the end spot near my locker.  I was drawing a heart on a card for my kids.

That's when it happened. Mush looked up, stood and came over to see what I was doing. "You're good," he said. I thanked him.

"Jonas, you think you could draw a big dick inside this card?" I looked at him. I looked at the card.

"Yep. Sure." I sent Mush down the hall to borrow some colored pencils from Dent. When he came back, I sat down at the desk and half an hour later, he was the proud owner of a penciled penis. He was quite happy with the outcome.

He took it down the hall and showed a handful of the people he was writing for. I practically had a line out the door. Over the next week, I cranked out nearly a hundred cards for more than a dozen guys. They were decorated with hearts, genitals, flowers and every sexual position that my clients and I could brainstorm. Some would come up to me and ask for exactly what they'd seen on another card. Others, though, would look at all the other cards and say they wanted something completely different: a one-off that I wold promise not to repeat for anyone else.

In spite of all the cards I worked on, I myself only received one valentine while I was at FPC Duluth. But I gained something much larger than Hallmark Holiday gratification could ever give me.

By the time Mush came to me and asked me to sketch that skin flute, I'd been at FPC Duluth four months. It'd taken that long for me to find my hustle, my incarceration calling: I was a prison pornographer.

Federal Prison Economics 101: Currency

No money coming in from the outside? FRP payment (restitution, fines, etc.) taking up all of your prison paycheck? There are other ways to make a living in prison. You just need to get yourself a hustle and put your full faith into the credit that backs the almighty postage stamp.

In Federal Prison, Stamps Are Money

When I was at FPC Duluth, the value of a 1st class "forever" stamp was pegged at 30 cents. You may have paid 45 cents for it at the commissary, but on the 'pound it was worth 30 cents. On occasion, if there was a shortage of stamps on the compound (i.e., demand exceeded supply), the price of stamps would creep up toward actual value.

Such inflationary periods only really affected stamps bought in "books" of 20. Sometimes, they actually were a book of stamps like the ones you might purchase at the post office (or in our case, the commissary). More often, a book was a cut-up collection of mismatched, well-worn stamps, often from different vintages, usually held together with tiny, black rubber bands that guys who wore braids would otherwise use to keep their hair tight. A store-bought -- or "flat" -- book, was even more valuable during inflationary periods than a regular book.

Stamp Inflation

On the FPC Duluth compound, and I'm sure the same is true at other facilities, stamps were in circulation like dollar bills circulate on the streets. A lot of them were older, many had been on the compound for years. New stamps were always being added by people who would buy them from the commissary or otherwise acquire them from the outside -- although sending in stamps through the mail or delivering them to inmates in any other way is against institution rules, they still came in illicitly. But, at the same time, stamps were removed from circulation on just as regular a basis.

Inmates mail letters, or send out art or crafts that they made. In some cases, the stamps in circulation were so old that they actually weren't "forever" stamps, and therefore valueless. Such stamps were usually passed off to new inmates before they got wise to their inability to use them and just held onto them until the next bus of eager-but-naive campers arrived on the compound. Occasionally, a more scrupulous inmate would come across a soft, faded 33¢ Purple Heart stamp and just throw it away.

 Regardless of how the stamps enter and exit circulation on the compound, there is a continual ebb and flow of supply. For the most part, this works. That is, until a more macro-level event comes along to mess up everything.

Inflationary Events

On the compound, several predictable, inflationary events occur throughout the year. Mind you, such events don't increase the purchasing power of stamps, just the cost of obtaining them if you actually need the physical stamps. During football season, stamps become scarce on the weekends as bookies and pool organizers hold onto bets and take the "stickers" out of circulation. So if you need to mail a letter or pay somebody that requires "cash" you should plan accordingly. Otherwise, you may be paying $8 for a flat book on Sunday that you could've had for $6 if you bought it on Wednesday.

Stamps are damn near impossible to come by in the days leading up to the Super Bowl. The NCAA Tournament also puts some inflationary pressure on the cost of stamps. As inconvenient as such times are, you can always plan ahead. Moreover, you know that by Monday or Tuesday, everyone will be paid out and you can go back to the normal pricing.

It's the unpredictable "market mover" events that cause more serious problems on the compound... we'll get to those in the next post.

Bearing Bad Weather

Last Friday night, June 21, the Twin Cities saw some nasty-ass weather. No tornadoes or anything, but straight line winds and flash-floody rain. Thousands still don't have power -- nearly a week after the storm. Random trees and branches are scattered throughout the city.

Longfellow neighborhood in Minneapolis
after Jun 21, 2013, storms.

So what does this have to do with prison camp? Because last June, almost to the day, I was at FPC Duluth during the storm that caused the worst flooding on record in northeast Minnesota. 

Built on a hill above Lake Superior, where the St. Louis River, along with numerous smaller streams, empty into the lake, Duluth received almost 10" of rain over a two-day period. That is bad.

According to the Washington Post, "Massive flooding swept throughout the region. The floodwaters submerged two-thirds of the Lake Superior Zoo, drowning 11 animals. MSNBC reported: 'All but one of the zoo’s barnyard animals died, zoo spokeswoman Keely Johnson said in a statement earlier. That included the zoo’s donkey, goats and sheep'” The Associated Press said workers safely recovered two seals and a polar bear which had escaped."

A June 20, 2012, storm caused the worst flooding in Duluth,
Minn.'s history.

Unlike the zoo animals, those of us living in the faux-natural habitat of FPC Duluth were pretty much fine. Wet. But okay. That's because the camp is situated on high ground, next to the airport. The rain was so hard that they recalled the compound to the dorms at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday night and didn't reopen it until 2:30 p.m. the next day. We lost power in the dorm for a short time during the night, and the PA system in our unit shorted out.

It started with an electronic hiss that keyed with each fat drop of rain. It was Wednesday night by the time they cut power to the PA all together. The had rain stopped, too. The obtrusive silence was broken only by breathing inmates and a slight breeze rustling the trees -- no AC, so windows are open -- in the dark, amber-lit air. I had to pee.

I climbed down from the bunk and slipped on my shower shoes, walked the dozen or so steps down the hall from room 214 to the bathroom, which was shrouded in shadow -- only the auxiliary light in the shower room was on. But I could see my way to the urinal by the light coming in from the compound through the window's broken screen.

I exhaled, savoring the relief of my relaxing bladder; finished, shook and flushed. I washed my hands and stepped to the window, surveying the compound grass in the 3 a.m. dark. The rusty red of the nextdoor commissary building was washed to an amber gray by the streetlights scattered throughout the camp. Behind the commissary, a bright white light shone from the door of the compound officer's station. All the lights were out in 211 and 210, the wide dip of law between the units reflecting the pale orange of halogen lamps. A polar bear.

A polar bear.

A polar bear glided silently, one giant paw in front of the other, its snout swinging vaguely left side to right, across the dewy grassblades. As it approached the sidewalk between unit 211 and the commissary, the bear stopped and turned its head, aiming his gaze up the length of his snout, targeting me. I sucked in a sharp breath and pressed an open palm and my forehead against the screen, as if waving goodbye through a bus window, trying to get a better look.

The bear turned away and quickened his pace as he pawed off behind the admin building, past the Special Housing Unit -- the SHU, or "hole" -- and not 20 feet from the open compound office door, disappearing down the hill toward the visiting center.

I stood there in the quiet bathroom. Water dripping echoed off the tile walls and floor. The image of the white (amber in the light) bear on the dark compound, burned in my mind like a retinal spot after a a camera flash. I waited until I was convinced the bear wasn't coming back. Then I walked to back to the room.

I was distracted as I climbed up to my rack, shaking the frame. Kou, my bunkie, started awake: "Jonas..."

"I saw a polar bear."

"Mmmm." He rolled over and went back to sleep.

Berlin, the Lake Superior Zoo's polar bear, escaped
during the June, 2012, floods.