Down on The Farm
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A few nuggets:
- Most of the vegetables raised on Angola go to the prison dining halls. I'm pretty sure some wind up at Raymond J. LaBorde and Dixon (two other prisons).
- Most prisoners are paid for their work. No, it's not much, maybe 25 cents/hr on the bottom of the totem pole. Better jobs pay better. The cooks at Camp A and the greens keepers on the golf course (Angola has a public course) get paid the most. They also have the best shot as post-prison employment. Camp A trustee cooks often work at the governor's mansion.
- The cattle on The Farm are not slaughtered and eaten on The Farm. It's cheaper for the state to raise good strains of cattle, sell them at auction for breeding or slaughter, then use the money to buy cheaper cuts of meat for the dining halls. Things like chicken leg quarters, sausage, hamburger meat, bologna (I like Angola smoked bologna and white beans) or anything that will stretch.
- Convicts are not Free Men. (That's what the cons refer to when talking about non- prisoners; Free Man or Free Men) But if you work hard on The Farm, keep your nose clean, you'll work your way into better jobs, some with a lot more freedom than you think.
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My wife's uncle is universally known at Angola as "Walking Tall". He had a crew working the vegetable fields and he had to keep separating two of the guys.
Well, one thing led to another and they tied up. He hollered at them to stop and they didn't. Well...
My wife's uncle is about 6'4", an old rodeo cowboy and tougher than woodpecker lips. The cons say he just flew off his horse, picked up a shovel and put both cons on the ground.
I asked him about it and he said it wasn't nothing.
" You take a good swing and hit a man in the kidneys with the backside of a shovel. He'll lose all interest in fighting".
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The thought of going to jail is enough to stop me from doing any bad things! LOL
(Though probably some US prisons are pretty good when compared to some Asian prisons. In Thailand for example, you will be not doing very well if you dont have someone to bring you food on a regular basis)
