James Hall says he took the job as
correctional officer because he needed the money. There were times when San Quentin
struck him as a giant party, others when it looked like a preview of hell. It is
definitely fodder for his writing. Unexpected and unorthodox, James has a B.S. in
business administration and plans to attend graduate school in either law or creative
writing. His favorite book is Trinity by Leon Uris, and he has a special
interest in great sots of the twentieth century. He has been described as a quiet
and unobtrusive man who drives like a maniac and drinks very strong coffee.The following is an excerpt from I, Pterodactyl,
In 1984 we had gangs on every tier. Whites on five,
Mexican mafia on four, Nuestra Familia on three, and Crips on two. The inmates
were supposedly locked up, but it didn't matter. They made knives, spears, zip guns,
and match bombs. And if they ran out of weapons, they hurled piss or boiling water.
But the truth is, a lot of the time it struck me as a giant
party. I remember once, while sweeping the trash on Broadway, an inmate yelled,
"Man you like this shit, don't you?" It seemed ridiculous, but I did like it.
I liked pushing a broom to Tower of Power. I liked feeding the white boys
dinner to Led Zeppelin. I liked hearing every northern Mexican crank up his box for
"96 Tears." And I liked laughing with the other long-haired scraggly
guards about some off-the-wall thing that this inmate said or that officer did. This
was "the hole." Conformity to the rules and the assumptions of the
department stopped at the big steel door. |
The essay I, Pterodactyl appears in the book
An Ear to the Ground,
an anthology of the works of Václav Havel,
Arun Gandhi, Horton Foote, and 75 emerging writers. |
