Straight Life - Art Pepper [167]
And that's how you don't get rousted a lot of times for things. Sometimes we'd be out on the yard and the guards would walk up to a group standing against one of the blocks and grab everybody and shake them down for contraband. They'd find shanks, narcotics, outfits, gasoline for bombs. They would find stolen items and dirty books that were smuggled in by the guards. (The convicts pay the guards and then rent out the books, two to five packs a night.) They would find glue that people sniff, in hand lotion bottles, white glue from the shoe factory. You might have contraband shoes on. Your shoes have your number on them. My number was 64807. I might be wearing shoes that didn't carry that number. You've paid four cartons of cigarettes for those shoes, or you've stolen them from someone, or someone in the shoe factory might have made them. Sometimes a guard will bring shoes in to a certain convict. He'll wear shoes that will fit this convict and take them off and put on the convict's old ones. And if you were wearing starched clothes-say it's a weekend, you're expecting a visitor, you can't get back to your cell, you're locked out, and you've got these clothes on that you paid two or four packs of cigarettes to get. You've been saving them for this day to look sharp. The guards will roust you and strip your clothes off right there in the yard and march you to Fourposts and interrogate you. They'll try to get you to cop out on who you got the stuff from. And they'll take your starched clothes and throw them in a big tub of water. They have a pile there of the oldest, beatest clothes in outlandish sizes, with tears in them, and they'll just throw you a pair of pants and a shirt, and that will be what you wear until you can get into your cell again.
Now, I've had them walk up for a shakedown, and they'd see me standing there, and they would draw the line at the guy standing next to me: "Alright, let's clear the way. Clear the way. Let's just move out. Clear the way." And they'd get everybody in the area right next to me, and they wouldn't shake me down because I had juice.
We got the guards' clothes and the clothes of the women that worked outside, and we'd send them to the employees' dry cleaning plant. A panel truck would come. The same kind of truck that took the bodies away from the gas chamber. When the truck came in the morning at ten I'd take off the dirty clothes I'd worn to work and put on some others I'd stashed in my desk. I'd put my blues under a guard's overcoat. Ernie, who was in charge of the plant, would have straightened the guy that was driving the truck or else I would lay a couple packs of cigarettes on him, and when I was loading the truck I'd motion to the guy that this was for Ernie from me, but the guard would be watching so I'd have to do it real cool. I'd just shake the coat or flick it back so the driver could see there's blues underneath. He would take them to Ernie, who'd wash them, starch them, press them, and send them back in the afternoon. Then the driver would touch a certain overcoat and nod to me, and I'd know my clothes were under that. I'd take the coat inside. Guards were coming in to get their stuff; they'd be waiting; and if somebody came in and saw his coat and wanted it and my blues were underneath I'd be in trouble. I'd get somebody to turn the guard, and I'd grab the thing real fast, go into our little shitter, take my blues out, and sneak back in with the guard's coat. It was really a scene, and it was exciting. It was very exciting. And after work when I went through the gates the guards could see that my clothes were freshly pressed. They'd look and give me a little smile.
I'd do a favor for a guy who worked at the ODR, take his clothes and shoot 'em through, and he would give me a couple of steaks. I'd put them in our toilet, and I'd eat one. I'd take the other and stash it down in my shorts and sneak it in to Ernie. And then, again, going through the gate, the shakedown