Even though I had volunteered for Landscaping, Burger kept me on a short leash initially.  I did have two inmates who vouched for me, which meant Burger was willing to generally give me the benefit of the doubt: there was Smiling Sal, the New Jersey con man and thief who had some ties to organized crime, and Chuckie, a very funny and loud little guy who was in prison for white collar securities fraud of some sort.  Chuckie lived across the aisle from me in our building, and he was the inmate who gave me the nickname “Lucky.”  Unfortunately for me, he didn’t mean that as a compliment, but as a backhanded insult.  Chuckie and I would play gin quite often, for “meats.” “Meats” were pouches of tuna, mackerel, and salmon which were one of the accepted currency forms in the prison system (besides stamps).  They cost about $1 each at the time, and anybody on a weight-lifting or workout program, or a protein-heavy diet, would eat a ton of this stuff.  They’d mix it with mayo, or with instant rice, or even make tacos out of it.  You could always find somebody willing to buy meats off of you for 70 or 80 cents on the dollar in piles of ten pouches; you give them the meats, and they would buy you what you wanted from commissary in exchange.  I love fish…except for mackerel, tuna, and salmon, that is.  So I never ate the stuff; I would just buy it for currency, or to trade or give a barber for a haircut. 

Chuckie considered himself a very good gin player.  I happen to be one as well, a skill which my father proudly taught me.  I have some very fond memories of playing gin with my father for a penny a point.  He never took it easy on you or let you win, but he would point out when I started playing in predictable fashion or making really stupid moves.  So by trial and error I learned to play quite well.  But for some reason, I didn’t NEED to play well against Chuckie, because I was always so incredibly lucky against him (hence the nickname).  It didn’t matter who was dealing, or what the stakes were.  On two out of three hands I would seem to get dealt a beautiful gift of a hand, and instead of being greedy I would always try to knock quickly and rack up some easy points.  It was quite demoralizing for Chuckie to deal a hand, and after we’d each played a card or two stare in disbelief while I knocked with three.  “You’re not even a good player!” he’d scream at me.  “That’s just fucking LUCK!”  then he’d retreat to his cube and hurl the meat pouches at me one at a time as hard as he could, hoping to smack me in the face.  Sometimes he’d take his deck of cards and rip them up, tossing them out the window or in the trash.  “Fuck you Lucky, I am never playing gin with you again.  You fag!  Faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaag!  I’m just kidding, I’m just kidding…..you faaaaaaaaaaggggggg!”

But, time and time again, he’d come back to play…usually within 10 minutes.  “Okay Lucky, that’s it, let’s double the stakes this time.  I’m going to kick your ass, you fag!  I’m just kidding, I’m just kidding.”

“I’ll knock with six.”

“You motherfucking lucky bastard!  Fuck you!”

…and the cards fly out the window again.

Smiling Sal, on the other hand, carried himself like a true Wiseguy.  He never got depressed and rarely got angry (he preferred to get even).  There wasn’t a single racket going on in the prison which Sal wasn’t somehow involved in.  Cigarettes had been banned for some time, but somehow there seemed to be a constant supply for those who were willing to pay for them (upwards of $4 for a smoke).  I am certain Sal was involved, but I never asked in what way.  He would have told me though, because he trusted me to keep my mouth shut.  Sal was also the main prison bookie, willing to take bets on any pro or college game, for meats or stamps.  On occasion he’d have to get rough with somebody for not paying, but usually the people who bet were regulars and paid eventually.  Every once in a while they’d drag him up from to the Administration Office to accuse him of one infraction or another, and to let them know that they were on to his scams.  But Sal never backed down, and never admitted anything, because he knew that if they could prove anything, they wouldn’t waste time talking to him about it.  He went so far once to deny knowing anything about gambling or being a bookie, and then as he walked out the door, offering the staff 3 to 1 odds that he wasn’t involved in that kind of thing.  Sal was a good guy, and full of funny stories.

Despite the dusting of snow we’d received the day I signed up for Landscaping, as luck would have it the real snow wasn’t going to start for a week or two.  In the meantime, we spent our days raking leaves.  There were always tons of leaves to rake, and if we couldn’t find any on the compound itself, Burger would send us into the nearby woods to rake them from the ground.  In many ways this was mindless busy work, but I didn’t mind it at all.  I was getting fresh air, exercise, and time away from the housing units.  Plus there was the added bonus of listening to the lazier inmates bitch and moan about what a waste of time this detail was…and enjoying Burger’s responses to their complaining, or when he caught them slacking off.

Sarcasm was Burger’s favorite weapon, or outright insults if that didn’t work.  During one of my first days raking leaves, it had started to rain, but Burger wasn’t showing any signs of bringing us back to the Landscape garage.  After a few minutes, one of the grumpier inmates piped up.

“Yo, Burger, it’s raining!”

“Well, how about that, you figured that out all by yourself without a college education?”

“Well how hard does it have to be raining before we can stop raking these stupid leaves?”

“A hell of a lot harder than this!”

Insults were usually reserved for special occasions, but sometimes he liked to mix sarcasm and insult together.  One day he was yelling at an inmate, telling him to get his “lazy Mexican ass out of that chair and into the truck!”

“Yo Burger, I tell you, I not from Mexico, I no Mexican.  I am from Guatemala!”

“Okay then…Southern Mexican!”

Pretty soon, the inevitable snow arrived, and the real fun began.  In the winter, the Landscape detail gets divided into three pieces.  The regular day shift basically stays the same, but they also create work details (by pulling inmates off of other details like Orderly or Rec duty) called Landscape 2 and Landscape 3.  Those details, hated as they are, are still just about the easiest jobs in the whole place.  If you’re on Landscape 2 or Landscape 3, you’re assigned to a particular area like Front Sidewalk, Front Circle, Unit E Walkway, Unit F Walkway, and Staff Parking Lot.  If it is snowing heavily, or icing up, and the staff at the Medium Security facility decides to call out the snow crews, a CO comes by and finds you (or wakes you up).  Landscape 2 was responsible for snow and ice from 4pm until midnight, and Landscape 3 from midnight until 8am.  But with counts every few hours at night, the worst these guys could expect would be to get called out once or twice in an vening, and even then only once or twice a week…and, with no CO’s watching them, they could do the absolute minimum amount of work, push a shovel or a street broom around, throw down some dirt, and go back to bed.  And that was it; they had no responsibility during the day at all.  But MAN did they bitch and mown when they had to work for ten minutes!

Actually it was Landscape 2 that had it easiest, because Landscape 3 had a habit of being called out right after the 5am count, so they could clear the walks and put dirt down before the day staff started to arrive.  And Burger lived only a few miles away, so he had a nasty habit of showing up at 630am and – if he didn’t like the job they had done – having the Landscape 3 crew called back out to work again.  Still it was a joke of a job.  They didn’t get paid anything (12cents an hour for hours Burger thought they actually were called out to work, which meant a buck or two a month), but they didn’t have to DO anything either.   They’d spend their days at Recreation, watching TV, or doing anything else they felt like.

Landscape 1, the day crew…we were the real workhorses.  8am to 4pm, seven days a week if necessary, we were the ones they called on to deal with the snow and the ice…and there was a LOT of it!

[[Watch for Part 3 in the next few weeks]]