The Knights of the Jolly Ranchers

Background: I ran Employability Skills workshops in the Racine County Jail for ten years. The program doesn’t exist anymore because county law enforcement defunded the “alternatives to incarceration” agency they had utilized for more than twenty years. Those programs were highly regarded and well documented at preventing and reducing incarceration. After the county ended those programs they contracted with a cheaper agency and I have no idea how it works now. 

The thing you need to understand, of course, is that empty jails don’t make as much money as full ones. See how that works? Voters notice if their county jail is in the red or black. They rarely ask or care if the incarcerated population is going down. 

FYI: When the law enforcement officials in your state or community ask for bigger budgets, who suggests budget shortfalls be addressed with more support programming and less incarceration? There are many statistics to back this up. Google ‘Cost-effectiveness of rehabilitation versus incarceration.’  But like I said, there are fortunes to be made in jailing folks. Social workers? Not so much. 

And here you go:  https://wisconsinexaminer.com/briefs/federal-addiction-treatment-grant-cuts-hit-wisconsin/

…

I remember their old guy names. Walter, Howard, Clarence, Kenneth, Ricky. There were many more. Sometimes one of them will come to mind and I look them up in circuit court records or obituaries to see if that guy is still around. Many are. Many are not. 

The older men often reminded me of lost or abused dogs. They held back and were wary but within a few days, if treated with respect and helpfulness, they’d warm up. You could tell when they felt safer because that’s when they’d begin to laugh. Old guys laughing in jail is rare, good music.

To me the mystery was how much they longed to be worthy. Years of addiction, failure, loss of relationships behind them – and yet they craved to be valuable and needed. It was heartbreaking. They knew what was important even if they couldn’t get there. 

I doubt if any of you know these particular men but I will tell their stories with wrong names. You will know these are true stories because there will be no glorious redemptions or astonishing successes. 

…

Ricky was a small old Black man who looked like leather left outside too long. His skin was ashy and very wrinkled. We all get wrinkles on our faces but his arm skin wrinkled when he moved, his wrists wrinkled when he wrote. His dark eyes darted like a lizard’s, often a sign that even though he was past the miseries of the withdrawal that happened to guys when first incarcerated, he still was watching for anything to take the edge off. (With the money on their books from their families these adult men ate astonishing amounts of candy. I’ve never looked at Jolly Ranchers the same since.) 

We were talking about how to list both past jobs but also their skills; most had not thought about all the things they knew how to do such as cooking, minding kids, lawn care, cleaning. 

Ricky sat back in his plastic chair. “You mean like music?”

That surprised me but, “Sure! What kind of music do you know?”

His grin stretched his wrinkly face and suddenly his mumbling voice became confident. “Drums! Been playing rhythm all my life. When I was a teenager the Jackson Five came to town looking for band members and I tried out. Didn’t get it, but I was good and I got that close.”

So many of these guys had been to cool places and knew amazing things and people. 

…

Howard was tall, quiet, and smiled as beautifully as an old movie star. 

I’d made his resume and it wasn’t even up to the standards of jail guys. Most of his life he’d been a doorman until the hotel at which he’d worked closed years before. Since then he’d only had odd jobs. 

The guys were out on job search and would be back early afternoon. I’d gone for a walk and was also on my way back when I heard a voice tentatively calling my name. “Miz Mary Beth?” The old guys always called me Miz or Miss even though I told them they were welcome to use my first name.

I turned and it was Howard. We were three blocks from the jail so we walked together. I asked him ordinary questions and his story tumbled out politely. He came from a family rooted in Mississippi. He didn’t know how his parents ended up in St. Louis but that’s where he grew up. He’d graduated from high school the same year as me.  

As politely as I could I asked him. “You’re a high school graduate yet I can see you can barely read or write.”

He was apologetic. I told him that it was pretty common in my groups but usually among people who had not finished school. How did that happen for him?

He hesitated. “There was always a lot to do for my younger siblings and my folks so I missed a lot of days. And back then no one seemed to care if our schooling meant much, I guess. No one was checking too hard on what we knew.” 

That was so telling. Schools just passed young people from one grade to the next so mostly what Howard learned was that he must be dumb. After that he learned ways to hide his illiteracy. Mostly he did this by not attempting anything that required reading. If there was a failure here, it wasn’t his. 

He kept talking, “I liked being a doorman. I like people and I like being helpful. It was hard when the hotel closed and I never got another steady job after that.”

Walter was a gentle man raised in the overwhelming racism that cut him off at the knee before he was out of school. We waste people in this country. 

Yes, I’m sure he drank too much. Probably because it was the only path he ever found where he could be as kind to himself as he was to others. 

Howard was the person in my mind when I wrote this story last year. https://marybethdanielsonstories.substack.com/p/everything-begins-with-yearning

…

Kenny was tall, wide, and as burly as a tree in the Up North Wisconsin woods he loved. He had a ponytail taffy brown hair streaked with gray and his light colored eyes lit up when he smiled, which was often. He made jokes, asked questions, was easygoing and friendly. He could talk about hunting, fishing, and engines. He’d been a mechanic until alcoholism made him too unreliable to keep a job. And then too sick.

Kenny had cancer which had been diagnosed before he was arrested. Not long after he was in my group, he was transferred back to his house on the ankle bracelet. Not only was the jail compassionate, but there was also this. While incarcerated the jail was required to pay for his care. At home the medical debt was his. 

He came into the office regularly since I shared space with the ankle bracelet program. While he waited his turn to talk to the agent he’d sit in the chair by my desk.

I remember him grinning at me. “What’s new in your life, Ms. Mary Beth?”

I leaned back and ginned, too. He reminded me of my competent and good natured cousins. “Well, tonight my husband and I are going to look at a used truck. Any tips?”

He sat up straight, wiped the easy going look off his face, furrowed his forehead. “Man, I wish I could go with you. This is something I know how to do. Well, open the hood and look around the valve cover. There should be no oil, dirt, grit, or wetness there.”

I wrote that down because I didn’t know what a valve cover was. I told Len after work; he stood thinking and then said yeah, that was a good tip. The truck we saw that night had a couple inches of extra black oil just on the lip of that part of the engine. Dirt was stuck to it right where Kenny said it should not be. So we didn’t buy that bright and shiny truck.

…

There was a fast talking guy with a distinctive eastern European name. Small and compact with sandy hair that flopped in his blue eyes; he was always ready to make or laugh at a joke. On his first job search day he called HR at a company where he use to work and was hired back by them. This was in his hometown which was twenty miles north of Racine and he didn’t have a car. His family paid the amount needed to spring him from incarceration. He was released and came straight to my office. He needed a ride home. He didn’t have a phone. Could he use mine? Sure. 

I can still see him calling his buddies. He moved fast, dialed fast, and talked fast. However, it was the middle of the day and no one could leave their job to get him. 

 “Oh fuck it, I’ll walk.” Like I said, twenty miles. 

I gave him a bottle of water, half my peanut butter sandwich and a handful of Jolly Rogers. That was the last I saw of him. He was in his fifties, likely with undiagnosed ADHD that he had self-medicated with booze all his life. Like a small shark in a world that was too fraught for him, he just kept moving. 

I just looked him up. He passed away a year after that last time I saw him. He’s buried in a plot with his mom. 

…

Read this poem. Hymn to Church Basements by Joan Kwan Glass 

https://www.slowdownshow.org/episode/2023/05/04/870-hymn-to-church-basements

“I prefer my angels banged up & salty,

chubby from eating cookies instead of shooting dope.

They pull splinters from their wings,

hug the newcomer too tightly,

shake their heads at me when I don't raise my hand to share. 

No matter how tough I try to look, no matter how long it takes, 

they say keep coming back, kid.

Tonight, the addict who overdosed last month, 

the one who had to be revived with Narcan,

is making the coffee.”