"There was a hollowness in the pit of his stomach, which he told himself was simply a fear of going back to the world on the outside." --Neil Gaiman, 'American Gods' (10th Ann. Edition)

November 2, 2024

Dear Readers,

Howdy! I hope things with all of you are going well.
As usual, it's been a while and I have a lot of news for you. This may be my last posting, and I wanted all of you to know what has happened.
As I previously let you know, I have been put in for a transfer. On Friday, August 23rd, I saw my case manager as I was leaving the Chow Hall after lunch, and decided to ask if he had heard anything. He told me that he did have news for me, but hadn't seen me to let me know. He said I had been "designated," and that I should get my stuff together as I would be leaving soon! Yikes! He wouldn't tell me where I had been designated (staff policy), but he did say it was to Texas, which is what I wanted.
Then, at work on Monday, the 26th, a staff member came up to me and told me that I needed to go to R&D (Receiving and Discharge)! That meant I was being packed out! I had hoped that I would have another week to get myself together, both physically and mentally, but no such luck. I went back to the unit and packed all my stuff and took it to R&D, where I had 3 boxes packed. At the time, I was happy with the staff member at R&D 'cause he let me take some extra stuff, but my feelings have since changed, which I'll explain later. The guy in R&D also wouldn't tell me where I was going, but did tell me it was one of the three places that I told him I wanted to go, and I saw that he put "FTW" on the boxes, so I knew I was going to Ft. Worth—not my first choice, but it was my second.
Once you're packed out, that means you're leaving soon, and since it was Monday, and the bus goes on Wednesday, that meant I was headed out in just a couple days!
As I'm sure I've mentioned before, every single time I'd been transferred it had been from the Hole (except for the move from Butner 1 to Butner 2, which doesn't really count since it was right next door), so this would be my first time in all these years to go through a normal transfer.
That Wednesday morning, they got us up at 3 AM (ugh!). We went through being out-processed and then walked out to the bus (there were 6 to 8 of us being transferred). When we got to the bus, it was filled with guys from FDC-Tallahassee who were going to the camp in Pensacola, FL, a couple of hours east of Marianna, which was our first stop. We dropped off the guys going to the camp, then headed back west and stopped at the Santa Rosa County Jail, and then headed back west—passing the exit to Marianna sometime around noon (why the fuck did we have to get up at 3-freakin' AM when we passed Marianna over nine hours later?!!), and finally got to the transfer center at FDC-Tallahassee, where we were let out.
As I may have mentioned the last time I went through Tallahassee, I was only there overnight and left early the next morning, so I was hoping this would be the case again. No such luck. Instead of locking us in our cells (which would have let us know we were leaving in the morning), they didn't lock us in after all. Damn!
Tallahassee was a complete shithole! There were beds for about 78 guys in our unit, with only two TVs (one controlled by the blacks and the other was Spanish), three tables with four seats each and very few complete books (many of them were torn up). They would unlock the doors at 6:30 AM, Mon-Fri, then lock us down from 8-10 AM so the orderlies could "clean," then unlock us again. As I recall, we were locked down at night around 9 PM (or was it even earlier?). On Aug. 31st we were locked down during the day, which I believe was due to a staff shortage.