Author: Old River
“Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner.” ~ Lao Tzu
At Georgia State Prison (GSP) in the mid 1990’s, “Blue Duck” was what everyone called the Georgia Correctional Industries (GCI) Blue colored window cleaner… which was made with alcohol. They should have know better than to give a prisoner anything with alcohol in it 🙂
Each and every morning, Monday through Friday, the Chemical Control Officer and her two orderlies came around to all the dorms to drop off their 6-Pack of morning cleaning supplies and chemicals. In order to clean our cells and the dormitory to be inspection ready by 9:00 am.
It was early when they dropped off the 6-Pack, probably around 6:30 am. I was living in the B-Unit side of GSP. The more civilized side. A-Unit housed the wilder ones. The prison was basically split in half after the federal government took over and rebuilt GSP in the 1970’s.
I was living in A-Building, in the downstairs A-1 dormitory at the time. Facing the front of the prison, left to right, was the B-Unit side which consisted of A-B-C Wings or buildings. The A-Unit Side was buildings D-E-F- G Wings. Each Wing or building was two storied, having both an upstairs and a down stairs cell block or dormitory.
Each Wing or building was split in half, exactly centered, by a Central Control Station sitting right in the middle. The Central Control Station had no less that one officer who could look into, and could control the electric locks to all entrance & exit doors, and to every cell door in all four of the dormitories. The Central Control Officer(s) could visually see into all four dorms.
So each Wing (building) had four Dormitories per Wing (building). For example; A-1 dorm was downstairs & A-2 dorm was upstairs. A-3 dorm was downstairs & A-4 dorm was upstairs. Each dorm had a counselor’s office, a mop closet, and approximately 28 one man cells each.
Before people figured out that they could make two finely crafted butcher knives out of the two metal slats that were welded into the frames of each GCI chair bottom… we had chairs to sit in, in each and every cell located in all the Wings and buildings. Gangs were unheard of back then.
Living in A-1 dorm there was a tall, slim, elderly black man who was on the alert each and every morning for when the chemical detail arrived. Just as soon as he heard the back door’s electric lock “click” open, he’d run up the back stairs to the back door in order to be first and only one who retrieved the chemical six pack. About twenty minutes later I heard a noise in the dorm that sounded like two people fighting… So I come out of my cell to investigate.
Living in a cell directly across from me, in the dark with his cell light turned off, the old black man had fallen over the chair in his cell, and was wrestling with the chair trying to get back up. I walked over to check on him and asked if he was alright? He said yes, that he was okay now… but that Blue Duck had kicked his ass 🙂