The plant was run down and had been poorly maintained for years before I did my short stint there. If a machine broke down, we were not allowed to spend money to fix it correctly; we were just supposed to use bubble gum, glue, duct tape or whatever possible to keep the machine running.
A business named Pack-O-Mach, standing for "Pack of Machines", found out about me. Yes, it seems as though I was beginning to establish a trend of working for places that had hyphenated names. Pack-O-Mach primarily bought and reconditioned used bakery equipment and resold it. They bought all of the equipment in the entire bakery where I had been working. They needed someone to tear the machines out of the bakery and prepare them for shipping. They asked me if I would do it. I accepted. I may as well; I had just been laid off and had nothing better to do. I figured that I may as well keep trying to pay my bills. They figured the job would take about two weeks. I had it done in less than two days.
They liked my work and kept assigning me more. Months later they realized I had never been hired and then took care of the necessary paperwork.
One of my many jobs at this place was to install and tear out equipment in bakeries. This included the disassembly and assembly of large ovens and walk in coolers, that where sometimes as large as a small house, and flour systems among many other things.
I acquired a class "A" driver's license because of it being necessary for me to drive a truck in order to transport this equipment locally and across the country.
Because of my knack for being able to improvise and come up with strange efficient workable solutions for difficult job situations and the fact that I had the proper license for driving a truck into a government facility where that license would get checked, I was chosen to go to Stillwater Prison and tear out a flour system. Also nobody else would go.
This was an experience of a lifetime, I thought. I never could have guessed that I would wind up working here later in my life and experiencing continual experiences of a lifetime with people doing time and life.
There were two truck entrances to this place. I definitely wanted to get the right one, so I circled the prison before choosing where to go. I pulled up to a gate that happened to be the correct gate. The gate opened and an officer came out to check my paperwork, ID and ask me a few questions about my business there.
Satisfied, at this point in time, with my intent being business, he had me pull into the sallyport for trucks and other vehicles. The gate closed behind me. Before letting me through the next gate, two officers started searching my vehicle. They looked under the truck, under the hood, inside the cab, and between the cab and the box of the truck. There was an officer on the wall above with a shotgun that could view the top of the truck. They had poles with mirrors on the end to see into difficult to get at places. They had me open the door to the back of the box, so they could check out the inside.
This is where their suspicions grew and my interrogation began. I had equipment in there that was necessary for tearing equipment out of bakeries. The problem was that this wasn't any ordinary bakery. They inventoried what I had so that they knew what I went in with was what I would come out with.
My tool boxes were a problem. There were two items that I remember distinctively that they took. Hack saw blades were one. They can easily break and when you are out on a job, you can't be stopping to run out and buy more of them, so I carried a lot of them. They took all of them except for the one in my hack saw. They told me that if it broke, I had to bring them the pieces and they would let me have another one. They made it clear that anything I was taking in, I better be taking out when I go.
When doing tear outs, I always carried what I called my beater box. With the tools I had in there, I could hack out walls, chisel out concrete, smash out blocks, most anything necessary to take out supposedly permanent structures that were hindering my progress and do it quickly. An officer opened up that tool box and then turned to me with a scowl on his face. I explained about these items that he could identify with being perfect tools for anyone desiring to breakout. After my explanation, he didn't seem convinced. He pulled a hatchet out of the box and said, "What's this for?" I explained that it worked well for going through walls. He said, "You're definitely not taking this in there." So that was the second item that they were upset about me having.
As I could access my tools from them if I needed something, I volunteered to leave all but my very basic tools with them.
Eventually, I was cleared to enter. An officer hopped in the truck with me and showed me where to go. There was a cement dock at the back of a building that happened to be the kitchen and bakery area. He told me that whenever I left my truck to make sure it was locked up. He left me there with a different officer that escorted me to where I would be working.
The flour system was primarily on the second floor. Part of it was positioned over a hole in the floor that led to a hopper on the ceiling below. This hopper was positioned over a large mixer. With this system, flour could be metered from the system above, into the hopper and then the exact amount desired could be dropped into the mixer.
They no longer needed this system as they were now using bags of flour that were shipped into the prison on pallets. This was simpler for them and more security friendly.
Once he had me briefed, he left me with two inmates to help me. They were good workers with a good sense of humor.
On the second floor, hidden behind part of the flour system, was an old dirty jar. There was corrosion on the inside as if it had been full of some sort of a liquid that had fully evaporated over time. One of the inmates told me that it must have been full of hooch that someone was hiding. Once they stopped using this flour system, inmates no longer had access up there and thus couldn't get at this hooch jar.
We made good progress on dismantling this system. We got to the more difficult part of disconnecting the hopper from the bin. The hopper was by the ceiling on the first floor hanging above a large mixer. It was attached to the bin on the second floor.
I needed to rig up a system to keep control of the heavy hopper by the ceiling. I needed to be able to lower it slowly so it wouldn't crash and damage something or hurt anyone.
The officers in the sallyport had a rope that I brought with me. I needed it, so I went to get it from them. They measured it before they gave it to me, so they could make sure I came back with the same length.
Tying the rope many different ways onto many different points on the hopper in order to control its descent took some time. Just as I finished and the two inmates and I were going to take out the last couple of bolts and start lowering it, a loud alarm rang.
One of the guys in the bakery told me that alarm was letting us know we had to shut down because two things were going to happen. Inmates had to go to their cells to get counted and that they had to go start serving lunch to the inmates.
I bent over at the waist, because I still had a waist then, and started to pick up my tools. One of the inmates told me never to bend over in here. He said it was dangerous. He said to always stoop down so that nobody gets any ideas.
There was a small bathroom near with a toilet and a hand sink in it. I was going in to wash my hands when one of the inmates told me to look around before I went in there, make sure no one follows me and to lock the door behind me. He said you never know when someone will be sneaking around trying to take advantage of someone that isn't savvy to this place. Need I say that I have greatly cleaned up the actual language that was used?
At this point a baker came yelling at me. He said, "You're taking that rope down aren't you? You can't leave it hanging there. You never know when one of these idiots will decide to hang themselves or someone else."
There is no way to be totally prepared for going into a place like this. There are things that normal people just don't think of and aren't aware of. At this point in time, I was still somewhat normal; or at least I could act normal enough so that I could blend in with normal people.
Working in this place, I realized that in this situation, as the saying goes, I didn't know my ass from a hole in the ground; however, it was pointed out to me that some of the people inside these walls did and would have an interest