Few people know I practically grew up at the women’s prison at Lansing.
It isn’t something I think about very often, not because it was an unpleasant experience but because I think about other things these days.
You know, things like hormone replacement programs, taxes, the click-click of my electric meter, which hair color makes me look younger, if I’ll have enough money for fresh fruits and vegetables after I fill my gas tank.
Life-things I call them.
Like, would that little lady really have beaten me up after I started playing a slot machine she left? Wouldn’t getting beaten up by a short, short, really old person classify as a life-thing?
It happened as I was actually leaving a casino. (I was there doing research.) I had one of those little card-money-things with a couple of dollars on it so my choice was to stand in a long line while other people counted their winnings, or to just stick it in a machine on my way out and leave totally broke as I’m used to doing, for the sake of research of course.
I didn’t just decide to lose the rest of my money, I chose to lose it really fast in a dollar machine. (I’m really just a penny person). I was ready to move on when I realized I’d won a couple of dollars. That’s like 200 pennies, I realized. So I hit that sucker again. I hit again. That’s two times in my life.
Lots of pennies.
Then that scary little lady interrupted me.
“Are you playing ‘my’ machine,” she asked staring up at me.
I looked down at her. You know how you never think of anything clever to say in those situations? Well, I did. I was marvelous, my dears, absolutely marvelous.
“I’m playing ‘this’ machine,” I responded graciously, sizing her up and deciding I could take her down in a flash.
“Well, I turned my chair sideways and told the guard I was going to get change,” she answered right back in a very firm voice, almost growling at me. She was squinting too, I mean like we’re talking evil, narrow, black-as-coal eyes, and she actually appeared to be growing taller. A female version of Hulk Hogan, I suddenly thought.
“Well, why didn’t you say so,” I answered, taking my meager earnings from the machine and flying out the front door.
Was that a life-thing? Could I have taken her down? What does any of this have to do with growing up at a prison? Well, not much, unless I did take her down and went to prison.
I?was actually gathering information for a story on one of my favorite bureaucrats when I began to think about those fun days at the state prison.
My high school bud, Jan, and I joked a few years ago over her mother’s reaction when I asked her if Jan could go with my family to see my grandmother at prison one Sunday afternoon.
Her mother relaxed a little when she learned my grandmother was the assistant superintendent and was free to come and go as she chose. My grandmother was there for the first 16 years of my life or so, and she was the first honest to goodness women’s libber in my life.
I remember what I thought was a beautifully tended college campus. A small hospital building that an aunt ran for a while. Tap dancing on a big stage. Catching toads after dark out front of the administration building, and then waiting impatiently for warts to pop out on my hands.
Birthdays at the prison. Wow!. They were wonderful. I carried arm loads of rag dolls home from my special friends. Annie, she was my grandmother’s assistant, always remembered my birthday.
She took care of my grandmother’s suite and kept everything nice and neat. Mother didn’t like me hanging around Annie. Seems she put poison in her husband’s pancakes ? both of ’em, husbands, that is. I just figured she was so sweet and loving that they must have had it coming.
I can’t end this before remembering one July 4th in particular.?Dad helped with the fireworks most years. They’d set them off on a baseball diamond. And this one year, somebody really messed up
They all went off at the same time. Dad was running and yelling bad words. The ladies were clapping and laughing and jumping up and down. I think mother fainted. Grandmother, as I recall, was very stoic.
Olga was her name. And she took me in my first bar. We went to a big hotel in downtown Kansas City to see Charley White ? he was billed as the man with a thousand tunes. I had the distinct impression that ol’ Olga had been there before.
I only saw Charley that once. Mother found out where I had been and limited by adventures with grandmother after that to supervised visits.
So, why in the world did I think of Olga?
Well, it’s not that hard to understand if you live in my world. It gets lonely here sometimes.
