Alright, I'm still moving in; but I wanted to post up some old stories that not too many people got a look at. I really enjoyed writing them, for what they're worth. Here's the first one, more to come as things progress.
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Like many people, I’ve had some wild times. I’m not necessarily afraid of my past or ashamed of it, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m proud of it. It’s at least funny, and makes for a good story. And really, that’s worth it enough to me. It’s such a richly funny and entertaining story (mostly to me I’d assume) that if I were to publish the entire adventure, it would never be accepted as anything but fiction. It goes a little something like this:
It was May of 2002 and the weather was just warming up in the mountains. I had graduated a couple weeks ago and was looking forward to getting a real job, but not exactly looking hard for a real job. My best friend Carl had just returned from spending a year traveling 'round the globe, the last three of which was spent in Thailand or somewhere. We usually hung out at the house Carl shared with three other guys; Monkey Boy, Jeremy, and Joe.
The Poplar Branch, as we called it, was an old 1 story brick home on a cracked asphalt line of the same name that weaved its way down into a low gulley, and back up onto the state. The yard stayed unmowed and overgrown, mostly because we couldn't give half a shit between us, but also because it felt better on bare feet and made a nice comfy pad under the Slip-n-Slide. There was an open carport attached to one end of the house that we had converted to an aptly named chillport. We bought two second hand couches, a glass porch coffee table and a few tiki torches. This was the place where we grilled the chicken, iced the kegs, and spent countless days and nights discussing the most inconsequential but equally entertaining of topics. Around the corner from the carport, in the side yard, stood Carl's one frivolous purchase: a several hundred gallon hot tub. Directly behind the hot tub was the waist-deep above ground pool (Wal-Mart, $88.43), which made for excellent contrast when jumping straight from the steaming hot tub. The backyard was pretty nondescript. A couple square yards of shin deep grass, a handful of scraggly pines, and an old newspaper dispenser. The opposite sideyard was where Monkey Boy built the horseshoe ring; home to the Pabst Blue Ribbon Weekly Amateur Horseshoe Championships. I usually lost in the first round, but that was fine by me; I was more excited about curling beers than slinging pieces of metal all over the place.
The basement was the indoor arena in case of inclement weather. Scraps of carpet had been laid over the smooth cement floor, and a decent enough stereo was put in. There was a ping-pong table and an excellent drumset that all of us, at one point or another, attempted to play. With horrible results. However, the crowning glory of the basement was this hand made pool table that someone’s old man had managed to construct. As someone who has played lots of pool, I gotta say that was one of the nicest playing, flattest lying billiard tables I’ve ever had the priviledge to shoot on.
Down in the lowest part of our geographical nook, but still within sight of the chillport, was an old unused prison. It was roughly a potato-gun shot away from our front yard, on the opposite side of Poplar Branch, right where it made its sharp bend back towards the south end of the highway. It was wrapped in the requisite twelve foot fence, with a nice barbed wire garnish on the top edge. There was a high watchtower in the corner closest to our yard that looked out over the small compound. To the south of the tower, in the shade of some trees just beyond the perimeter fence, stood the eeriest of tiny chapels, bell tower and all. Laying out to the east and south of the tower was the prison yard, and the facility itself, which was comprised of three or four one-story stone buildings. Each of these was approximately 50 yards long and maybe 40-50 feet wide. On the north side of the prison between the buildings and the tower stood, of all things, a small playground. It was this that led us to believe that it must have been an old detention home or delinquent center.
I guess it wasn’t too long before someone said what we had all had been thinking. To tell the truth, I don’t remember whose idea it was, but we all agreed: It was time for a self-guided tour of the prison grounds. This discussion took place on the late end of an evening spent sitting in the chillport sipping drinks and discussing which animal characteristic we would prefer to have. I can’t remember exactly who went. I know Joe and myself joined the contingency, but there were at least two others. Maybe Sharp and ‘Sexy’ Ralph, but I can’t remember. At any rate, we go to the end of the prison where the tower is located, closest to the chapel, and begin to sniff about for a way past the fence. We eventually found a section of where the barbed wire rim was bent and twisted so that it was pulled down and out of the way. I don’t know how many men out there have straddled a twelve foot fence topped with razor sharp barbs, but I’ll admit I was wishing I had opted to don something more protective than an old pair of jeans.
Once over the fence, we walked into the chapel. It smelled musty and undisturbed. The stillness of the place was amazing. It had been all shut up for god knows how long and you could hear and feel the stillness of the place. Like an old person’s house where the air hangs for days and nothing ever moves fast enough to cause a draft. The one room chapel was completely void of anything . . . except an old piano and the altar. I’ll admit to being scared of the dark; couple that with an eerie old abandoned prison church and you get one nervous cracker. Then Baden decided to start plucking the damn piano. The wavering notes were deafening in all that silence and stillness, bitterly out of tune and yet so fitting for such a place. I’m not sure if I stood there and wet my pants, or if I wet them as I turned for the door and got the hell out of there.
From the chapel we walked into the main yard and over to the buildings. They were all parallel to each other, long rectangular solid looking barracks. We went into the only unlocked door and were greeted by one of the more ominous rooms I’d ever been in. The darkness here was almost impenetrable. The walls and floor echoed like concrete, and the floor looked like it had been painted green, or maybe red or black, but it looked green in the dimness. The floor was littered with what looked like surgical implements; scissors, razors, glinting in the beam of moonlight coming through the door. In the center of the room we had entered stood what looked like a dentist’s chair. I remember we all stood in the doorway, the lot of us not wanting to go inside, but maybe afraid to turn our backs on the scene, waiting for our eyes to adjust to the yawning blackness.
Joe shoved his way in and walked directly past the chair and over to the wall. He was like that sometimes. He bent down and picked up something that looked like a camera, black and square, and brought it back towards the door. I guess he had spotted it from the doorway. Outside in the moonlight he opened it up and we were surprised to find a pair of binoculars. Score, can we please get the fuck out of here? After a few more minutes of looking around, we discovered that the room we were in was actually the prison barbershop, there was even a sign hanging outside the door we entered. Since this was the only unlocked door on the premises, we decided we might as well head back home.
Once back under the soft yellow glow of the chillport candles, we pulled the binoculars back out of the case and were all floored to see that they were actually night vision goggles. We found the small switch on them that turned the set on, and were excited to see that they worked amazingly well. What a find! I bet NO ONE has a pair of these! We were big into the outdoors, which included going out to the state line and exploring the caves in the area, and these babies were going to prove invaluable.
That was really the only time anyone went over there. After we told our story to a few friends, they expressed interest in going to the prison, but it always seemed none of the original group really wanted to go. I don’t think we were scared or anything, I guess the place just lost its mystery. Maybe deep down we were all hoping that there were going to be bats in the belfry, and that the barbershop was actually a torture chamber.