Okay… lets get serious… if you live in Southern Cali or watch the news you already know… it is way too damn hot to think about anything of substance this week past the fact that it is way too damn hot. And I know us khaki suits do not deserve or ask for any sympathy so I won’t start complaining (maybe just a little) but I will say… if you are out there hoping that we are being punished… trust me when I tell you… this heat is whoopin our ass in here so unrelenting punishment is certainly the order of business at the moment.
I will leave you with a snap shot of my day this past Friday. I went to work at the normal time… just before 4:30am… and even at this time… I had a ‘glaze’ by the time I walked into the kitchen. The day started per usual… get everything ready for “Fish Friday”… today we were doing fried fish (bad idea to use the fryer for an hour by the way) so flour… egg wash… flour… fry commenced first thing. We get everything cooked and prepped as fast as possible so that we can set up and hide in the back of the officers dining room (OM) where there is a big fan that was brought in for them while they eat… fan equals prison version of heaven. Unfortunately for the rest of the kitchen… the entire dining room… the back hallway… the kitchen itself and the bakery… no fans… hot ovens… hell in San Pedro.
Officers start to come in around 8:45am and service goes as planned until about 11:05am when we hear over the loud speakers… “Institutional Recall. Clear the yard minus food service”. This means that everyone on the yard must report back to their housing unit besides the workers in the kitchen… so in the kitchen is where I shall stay. You never want to hear… “Institutional Recall”… nothing ever good comes from hearing those words so immediately… myself and my number 2 look at each other with the knowing glare of… “this is not going to be a good afternoon”. And we were correct. We break down the food… get everything cleaned up and take a seat at one of the booths in the dining area just after 12pm… and now we wait. You never know when the “lock down” is going to end in a situation such as this… could be an hour… could be the entire day into the evening… you just don’t know until you hear those magic words over the loud system… “10 minute move. This begins the 10 minute move”. And only when we hear these magic words… will we be released from our kitchen prison inside the actual prison…
Hour after hour passes… I’m drinking water as if I am about to be Tom Hanks in Castaway and have not stopped sweating for one minute since 4am. I am pacing around the OM aimlessly and then I decide to venture out into the compound dining room and to the kitchen area to use the restroom. Big mistake. I walk out of the OM dining room and immediately get smacked in the face with blistering heat and humidity. And the scene is straight out of a zombie movie. The kitchen workers that have been stuck in T.I.’s version of hell are sluggishly dragging their near lifeless bodies around the dining area… some are taking (or have already taken) most of their clothes off… some are sitting at the tables motionless… just staring at their hands. I saw two guys laying on the floor shirtless with their heads pointed toward each other… right arm extended outward with their palm facing the floor and a cup balancing on the top of each persons hand… both just dead eyed fixated on the balancing cup in front of them. I have never seen anything like it. I rush to the restroom and get back to safety aka the OM as fast as humanly possible… I cannot risk getting infected by whatever happened to these zombie prisoners out there.
Finally… much later… “10 minute move. This begins a 10 minute move” and we cautiously venture out of the kitchen for the first time since it was still dark out that morning. As we walked out… I felt as though I was one the football players in the movie “Varsity Blues” as they walk out of the strip club after partying all night and the morning sun is too much to handle. Okay… maybe that is a bit dramatic but you get the point. And the cherry on top… our “freedom” from the kitchen just means that we get to walk to our housing units which are just as hot… if not worse.
Heat waves are awesome.
Okay… enough complaining.
Stay Healthy. Stay Active. Stay Cool out there!