Judge didn't even look up as he sentenced the crowd of us. “Maybe the food will do you good.” Obviously, he'd never been there. Out Key Road. Like every judge, he knew nothing of where he was sending us, only that his job was simply to send us. Sweep us clean of any possible annoyance to the convention trade. Keep the alleys free of our offal (since there were no public toilets). Keep Atlanta, “the next international city” sanitary, godly.
As to the food, everything was deep-fried and hard as pebbles. Gray in color, rubbery at its tenderest, abrasive in texture. A vast improvement, for sure. (“The food will do you good.”) The grease hadn't been changed since the previous century when the farm was established.
Key Road was way out the rural extremity of the city. We passed the fed facility housing Wayne Williams, the serial killer, on our way. Wayne and the boys in that fed facility had it way better than street drunks in the lockup, wherever they were deposited. The drunk tank was and remains the butt-end of the criminal justice system. Bottom-most rung of the ladder. Whether in the city jail or out Key Road, or at its worst in The Fulton County Jail. It was dismal as hell. To put it succinctly.
Now, there were fights for sure. It was not a peaceful place and the guards didn't care to be bothered with the likes of us. Practically everyone there had been raised in violence. A critical ingredient in fact, turmoil and fighting, and one I did my best to avoid. Most did the same, had seen enough already. (I don’t know about you but I hate fights. Love, not war, that's what I say), and there was one which to me pretty much said it all. When this obviously gone kid (he was clearly mentally at a total loss, a slight kid, stayed to himself muttering occasionally when I would pass him on the way to the head, was constantly being picked on and beaten, and had no business being in population) got his eyes and nostrils plucked while the guards just stood and watched what they clearly viewed as a circus, a perk of their employ. He was totally gang banged. I remember, to the death of me, what that kid looked like. What a mass of burger. Just all broke up. I remember thinking, knowing that this was one sure time when there was nothing to be done. Watching the remains of him, still alive, being carried on the stretcher to the ambulance; a simple heap of mangled inerasable memory not to be dismissed. It is no different in any war, foreign or local or immediate as a foot away. Poverty and violence were as well depicted in their marriage in that bloodbath as ever I've seen it. The poor killing the poor and mad. And ultimately wondering what would become of him.
I saw all three “correctional” facilities in the Greater Atlanta area more than once, Key Road itself half a dozen times between '82 and '86. The last time was the weirdest because I was obliquely starting to resurrect myself from the street. I'd been taking two courses in an MS program at Georgia State University -- in criminal justice, oddly enough. Including, or especially, a course in the rights of the Accused with Jim Maddox, a UVA Law product with whom in ‘70 I'd first worked (very briefly-I'd discovered the Great Speckled Bird, and the alternative way displaced my academic momentum which to that point had been quite serious) in a program which included assisting (providing cheap grad student grunt labor) as he coordinated reform of the Georgia Constitution. Clearly an opportunity with a future and some challenge. But this was so typical of the times for me! Don't ask me to explain what prompted it. To so cavalierly toss out the future like an empty half-pint. One of so many bridges taken for granted and burnt beyond recognition; part of my ongoing duty to self to burn it down to the water-line and then see what comes of it. Guess I was just born with a wild hair. (The incident in the Fulton County Jail with that poor kid was certainly one thing that came of it!)
God knows where I'd be if I'd stayed with even one of those main chances. But I had turned a curious corner and did many things for the pure hell of it, believing only I would pay. Only I would be present to see what would come of any of it. Or such was my warped view of things at that time. “And let the devil take the hindmost!” was a favorite and only somewhat facetious mantra I would often invoke to self. Because I was young and immune and would never become one of those hindmost. Not a chance in Hell of that, No Suh!
Shall we say those days were simply different. Harmless for everyone but myself, or so I saw it. Only these days, these days when you might be reading this, with a clearer eye can I begin to appreciate, that what I did affected more than just myself. The booze was already thoroughly blinding me to all the spillage of my antics. The repercussions for other folks were out of view. And I was blind to what was happening within myself.