GARY - Pop Tarts and Summer Sausage

*This post is quite rough, written as it was between the hours of midnight and 1AM after I had decided to get to bed early. My eagerness over this blog and my excitement over my brother's impending transition out of the California Department of Corrections and 'Rehabilitation' have driven me too far from practicality. I'm attempting to squeeze in my exercise, cooking, kids, appointments, Facebook, shopping, cleaning, laundry, you name it, plus add that extra chunk-o-time for this. I simply must land on a schedule of sorts whereby I strike when the iron is hot, but, then set it aside for a time, returning to finish the job on another day. We shall see. This needs work but the idea is down.*


Though the procedures have changed over the many years of Gary's incarceration in the fine California State Prison system, the basics remained the same. He penned a list, checking it twice, and mailed it to big sister; big sister would review the list, check her pocketbook, fund raise from family members if necessary, and cull what she could reasonably collect. In the later years, he perused a catalogue of items, ranging from food to toiletries to underwear, painstakingly copied the name, item number, cost, weight, and sent the wish list my way, hoping for whatever I could fulfill via online ordering. Before the catalogues and computers arrived on the scene, the list was scratched from his head and from the meager larders of other inmates. Upon receipt, I would shop the aisles, keeping track of ounces and pound, allowing for the box and scales error margin at the post office. Of the two, shopping for the box in person was a pleasurable and tactile experience. I felt more connected to Gary knowing that he would soon touch each item I had touched. The website method, however, was generally easier and shipped out in a timely manner.

The lists varied. There were usually a few regulars. Foods he craved to fill nutritional voids, snack voids, emotional and entertainment voids. Prison life is, and was, notoriously void, overall. Dietary voids were part and par for the course - all of it rough. Meat and real dairy were scarce behind those walls, thus I could count on such items as:

2 - Heidelberg Summer Sausage 8 oz. $2.39 3021-014
2 - Beef Summer Sausage 8 oz. $2.39 3021-013
1 - Cheese Ritz 18 oz. $4.19 14002-018
(this was the closest he would come to cheese on this package; the site's stores were depleted of processed cheese food)
1 - Peanut Butter, Jif 30.50 oz $4.99 3111-523
1 - Dennisons Chili 17 oz. $2.19 3111-856
2 - Cup o' Soup, Beef 3.5 oz. $0.59 3111-550

Often, he hoped to relieve his sweet tooth with such lovelies as:

1 - Sour Gummi Worms 6.5 oz. $1.49 3111-110
3 - Red Vines 3.0 oz. $0.70 3111-074
1 - Chewy Chips Ahoy 18 oz. $4.19 14002-016 (oh,how he wanted these)
1 - Pop Tarts, Frosted 16 oz. $2.99 3111-523

And, when the salt chaser followed the sweet, he longed for:

1 - Pringles, Regular 9 oz. $1.99 3111-252
1 - Flamin' Cheetos 15 oz. $2.49 6027-027

If I could swing it, he suggested supplements he thought might help him either keep from losing more weight, as he tended to inexplicably drop pounds at odd times over the years, probably his liver, and to possibly help him bulk up and get healthy. We, both Gary and I, now realize that he will never 'bulk up.' A tall and thin guy, whenever Gary puts on any kind of poundage, it all goes straight to his belly in the form of an almost perfectly round pot belly, something which belongs more on those pet Vietnamese pigs than on a man:

1 - Century Multi-Vitamin, 130 tabs 6 oz. $8.99 16950-001 pg. 103
2 - Serious Mass, Choc. 12 lb. $39.99 each 3065-221 pg.100
(These expensive supplement items I was unable to ever purchase. Just dreaming, he was.)

With clothing, if it was t-shirts or tube socks or shower shoes, I checked them off and tossed them in, either literally or virtually. Shoes, however, were a continual challenge as each facility had a specific set of guidelines and rules for clothing, especially the larger items, from color to cost. Very strict. It behooved me to proceed with caution when on the prowl for footwear. The advent of website ordering went a very long way in easing the stress of this particular segment of the process. Oh, how I once agonized over my choices, worried the watchful eyes of the intake guards would find a discrepancy and deny Gary this tiny pleasure in his hard life.

1 - Skechers 5114, White B-Ball $49.97 Size 9 pg. 58

Finally, in the entertainment category, his need and passion for music came to a head. He owned a guitar which was bought for him courtesy of a family pooling of money for a holiday or birthday. Thus, music tabs, strings for his instrument of choice, and magazines with slick covers showing hard rockers and jazzy fellows made his cut. I regularly tried to accommodate these sections of the order form, knowing it was an outlet, an escape, a self-soother.

1 - Adamas Strings, Nylon (Black tr.) 1 oz. $6.47 pg. 91

Once a business quarter, Gary and the many men with whom he lived under loveless skies, behind concrete walls, within steel bars and sharp wire, eagerly awaited the small slice of life coming their way from the outside. Upon taking receipt, grown men ripped into the contents of their boxes with the eagerness of kids in summer camp, ferreting out their favorites - coffee, honey, Snickers, Jolly Ranchers, even shampoo - and lined up their feasts by the day. Gary, Mr. Social Director on his good days, planned group meals with several other men, sharing Ramen flavored with hot sauces and crumbled crackers with chunks of summer sausage floating in the broth, all heated on stingers, AKA small personal-sized hot plates. Perhaps licorice and Skittles for dessert. They enjoyed the feast before the famine. They devoured the love represented by the meager contents, repeating the cycle four times a year. As Gary was loathe to see a fellow inmate, bereft of outside lifelines, who never fell into the receiving line, there was a great deal of sharing of his provisions. Thus, his supplies did not often last past the first month.

It has been almost a full year of no packages with Gary out of prison. I don't really miss them. Or the stressful process with its niggling anxieties and worries. While awaiting his fate in jail now, he now does his own grocery shopping. Though his weight remains in steady decline mode, I shoot him a cashiers check each week courtesy of the nest egg gifted to him by friends and supporters in my family and church and pool of friends before his October release. He manages it, spending and saving, and yes, sharing. It is what I can do as he faces the positive prospect of not only feeding his belly under far better circumstances, but feeding his soul and his mind with a diet far richer in nutrients than the one he has endured for almost half of his life. (Ironically, we are hoping for hospital food! Now you know, live through a few years of prison fare and even hospital vittles are enticing.) Jello, anyone?