Tag: prison life

Transparency is My Solution

On By Tony CassonIn Side Story3 Comments

When my dad entered Oakdale, I had two options: hide reality from people around me, or be completely transparent about the situation.

Perhaps the best and worst part about me is my natural tendency to trust people. Instead of making people work for trust first, I give them a healthy amount with which to play–they can either build on that trust or let it crumble.

Friends and coworkers often ask me about my dad; they’ll find out about our blog or hear one of my joking comments and want more information. I tell them what happened. I tell them about his attempted suicide in 2009, and how I flew to Austin, Texas, alone for a Longhorns football game–the one he and I was supposed to see together. I tell them about giving him a kiss and a hug at Dulles International Airport before I flew back to Seattle–days before he walked through Oakdale’s doors. I tell them what he was charged with. I tell them how he’s doing–quite well–and how I’m handling it. I lay everything on the table when they say, “What happened to your dad?”

How can someone hit you if you’re giving him a hug?

Some folks may choose to stay quiet and reduce any risk of getting hurt; vulnerability is a terrible feeling. But I can’t do that. Humans are distinguished from other things because of their emotions and how they are able to control those emotions, and I believe story and truth has greater impact when a person’s emotions get involved. Can it have consequences? Yes. Do I put myself in a risky position? Yes. But I didn’t do what my dad did, and my knowing that is enough for me to be OK with people knowing the whole situation.

Societal reputation is something on my mind at all times. I’m seeking a career in public relations, and reputation is a big part of the job. People have asked me if I think my easy admittance of everything puts my career at risk, and I say, “maybe.” After all, a person might hear my story and think that since I’m Tony’s son we’re the same people. The reality, however, is that I don’t think about that; I love my dad and everything he has done to make himself an improved person. Growth gets my respect, and growth during hard times is worthy of storytelling–but who else will tell the story?

I’m transparent because it’s necessary, and I’m transparent because I’m strong enough, as is my dad.

“The Faces of Felons: The Face of Friendship, Faith and Freedom”

On By Tony CassonIn Volume 2Leave a comment

“Man is unrest, but God is just: and finally justice triumphs”  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

My friend Alan is a free man once again, enjoying the love of his wife, children, grandchildren, and the rest of his family and friends after being imprisoned for 20 months for something the 5th District Court of Appeals in New Orleans said, “never should have been brought to a jury”.

I am – along with others here in Oakdale – ecstatic that he has rejoined his loved ones.

Even though the price paid by Alan and his family was incredibly high and should never have been paid, I have thanked God often for placing him here with us.  I have also thanked God for returning him to his family and friends.

No individual looks back with fondness on time spent incarcerated. Less so those who shouldn’t have been there in the first place.  As the reality of his freedom sinks in and the joy of hugs and kisses from those who love him warms his heart and soul, I pray he remembers those here who grew to cherish – and often depend on – his friendship, his counsel, his humor, and disposition.

We will miss him, but there is not a single person who new him who wasn’t elated at the news of his victory.

It was a victory of faith. Not faith in the system that placed him here in the first place, but faith in God. Faith that the Lord would work his will to undo the wrong wrought by the hand of men.

Alan is not perfect and mistakes were made; of this there is no doubt.  But that can wait for another time.  I have started – and restarted – this segment several times.  I had a tendency to gravitate too much towards the injustice of it all, but there will be time for that later as well.

For now though, I just want to share with a little about Alan – who he is, and what he meant to myself and others who were (are) fortunate enough to call him a friend.

I owe him a debt of gratitude I will not likely ever be able to repay..  My family doesn’t know him, but they know of him and as the month – and the years – go by they will see his influence on my character, my outlook on life, and my purpose for the future.

Most importantly, they will see that he helped me find my footing on my walk with the Lord and Alan – more than anyone – taught me that it is right to talk about God and he also helped me understand that even I could do it and not feel funny or embarrassed about it.

Alan is about 5’8”, I guess and is of medium builde although his 20 months of prison life added a roundness to his belly that I’m sure will disappear faster than it took to obtain it.  He’s from Texas and sounds like it.  His impersonations of Ron White (the Blue Collar Comedian) are only missing the cigar and the Scotch! Ok,  and the hair.  He wore his hair close to his scalp, as I do, and for a man in early 50’s looks a little younger.

We me at our first prison ‘job’ in CMS (construction and maintenance services) and I put quotations around ‘job’ because we really just sat on a bench in a shop– like building and do no work except that which was required to rearrange our position to shift the load of our butts on the wooden bench.

Alan played Sudoku and I became interested. He showed me how to do it then he would tear off paper from his Sudoku book for me to work on.

We ‘graduated’ to crossword puzzles. One from the Dallas News – the “Commuter” – was our favorite.

We tested the waters of friendship and found them to be warm enough to venture a little further from shore every time we talked.

Alan is a very warm, affable, easy-going individual with a knack for humorous story-telling unsurpassed by anyone else I have met her – or anywhere else for that matter.

We laughed a lot – perhaps more than we should given our situation.  But we did it to survive and the things we talked about didn’t always make us laugh.  We also touched nerves that were exposed and wounds that were raw as we shared our thoughts about who we were and why we acted in the manner we did.

My friend is not a monster.  He is a kind, gentle loving man and his belief in God and his devotion to his word runs deep.  That he lost his way a bit is not going to be challenged by him, but I believe he is balk walking with God where he belongs, and where he is comfortable.

While in Oakdale, Alan was active with the church choir and with bible study groups.  Many people do things in prison because it looks good in their “report card” or “programming” in prison vernacular.   In Alan’s case he did what he loved to do, and what he believed was necessary for him to correct the weakness – the flaw – that caused him to wander from the path of righteousness in the first place.

Perhaps,  in order to be forgiven by society for tacitly immoral behavior, one needs to be President of the United States.  I hope his not the case and that Alan and his family are allowed to go on and try to rebuild what was lost.  The loss was enormous, and not just limited to finances, although the financial cost was high- he estimates about $180,000.00!  Plus, he lost his business & his wife had to sell the home and many of their belongings.

Ultimately, his family’s faith will make everything all right, just as their faith served them well in getting him out in the first place. God’s will was done and Alan himself wrote to me giving full credit and glory to God for getting him out – not the government, nor the courts.  After all, it was the government and the court that put him in here the first place.

There will be those who are going to say “but he broke the law!”.  True, but you don’t shoot a squirrel with a nuclear warhead. (Well, maybe in Louisiana!).  You don’t punish a moral breakdown by destroying a family and an otherwise very good man.  No – you deal with things in sensible, constructive, rehabilitative ways.

All that aside, I can say it is a good day because my friend is no longer here to tell me stories, help me learn about God, or be there to listen as I tell him news – good or bad – about things happening in my life.

He’s no longer here to save a seat in church on Sunday morning, or to talk about the board game that we were developing that is centered on prison life, always in a humorous way.

He’s no longer here to share his thoughts on life, his family, God or to listen to my thoughts.  However, even though he has

He’s no longer here to share his thoughts on life, his family, God or to listen to my thoughts.  However, even though he has physically left he is spiritually here – for me anyway – in an even bigger way.

While he may have worn the face of a felon for 20 months, he now has the face of a friend whose faith has gained him his well-deserved freedom.

Numbers 6:24-26

“Faces of Felons – The Face of Evil”

On By Tony CassonIn Volume 21 Comment

“For you are the children of your father, the Devil, and you love to do the evil things he does”                                  John 8:44 NLT

“God bears the wicked – but not forever”  Cervantes

It was the eyes the sent the first fingers of cold climbing up my spine.  The airs on the back of my neck stood up, as of they were now on alert, cautiously observing the presence of something sinister that was being projected through the two small circles swimming in those pools of pale blue that were devoid of any warmth at all.

He appears harmless enough at first; a short, slightly stooped pale man of about 40 with shoulder length, greasy looking hair that he usually wears pulled back in a ponytail.  He strides when he walks, always making me think he is angry.  His voice is moderately deep with a pronounced drawl reflecting his upbringing in Kentucky – in the backwoods of Kentucky, not the bluegrass.

He wears prison-issue glasses which is, I suppose, why I didn’t get the full effect of his eyes at first.  The glasses have thick brown plastic frames and – due to his poor eyesight – the lenses are very thick as well. Adding to the distortion is the bifocal bottom portion of the lenses.

The first time he took his glasses off and looked at me, I felt myself tense as I shivered inside, feeling like icy fingers clawed their way up my spine.

If you saw Jurassic Park you will remember seeing the eye of the Raptor through the door window as he peered into the kitchen where the children hid, trembling in fear, consumed by terror.   Those are the eyes I speak of.  They are his eyes and I cannot shake the feeling that they are the eyes of a predator.  Eyes that are pure evil.

It is true that the bible tells us not to judge other lest we be judged. But I shall quote H.L. Mencken here, who once wrote “it is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom and mistake.”

Tomorrow I will ask the Lord’s forgiveness, but for now I am compelled to tell you a little more about this face of evil.

I have known this individual – let’s give him a name; I’ll call him ’Billy’ – since I first arrived here almost a year ago, and my thoughts about him never progressed beyond a queasy discomfort whenever I found myself in his presence, until he acquired a new ‘cellie’ about 6 months ago who turned out to be a rather likeable fellow.  In the course of extending friendship to the new guy, time was unavoidably spent in the company of the other.

We try not to probe too deeply into the other people’s business unless encouraged to do so. As far as Billy was concerned though, I was curious because I had heard a disturbing things about him, but nothing directly from him. So, one day I asked him point blank (I have been called ‘blunt’, I prefer straightforward), “have you ever admitted to being, or been diagnosis as a pedophile?” ‘Billy’s’ response was nothing more than an eerily steady gaze from behind those thick lenses. After about 10 seconds of silence I told him I took his silence as an answer.  I told him we are very different and, like it or not, he was the reason myself and others were so hated in prison, and in society.

It was just a statement of opinion, not an emotional or impassioned discourse, but I was met, again, with the silent stare.

After this “exchange”, beyond common courtesy, we didn’t have a lot of contact.  He shared a room with someone I like so a certain amount of contact was inevitable.  Life went on, as it tends to do, until a few months later when he got in a scrape with a couple of D.W.B.s.  All 3 went to the hole.  None of the 3 were missed.

Almost 4 months later – only a few weeks ago – I was walking through the unit and someone informed me that ‘Billy’ was out of the hole and was visiting in the room of someone else I knew.  Out of courtesy, I stopped to say hello, and – again – out of courtesy I said “glad you got out”, and automatically extended my arm to shake hands.

The affect that simple gesture had on me was astounding.  It was like I had grabbed hold of death itself as a feeling of pure evil rippled through the damp, icy chill of his soft hand into mine, and spread rapidly through my body, leaving a trail of unexplainable and indescribable fear and loathing in its wake.

Later that day, in speaking with others that I knew, I described the sensation I had when ‘Billy’ and I shook hands.  No one was surprised.

No more was said or thought about the incident or ‘Billy’, until the wee hours of the morning – probably around 2 or 3 AM – when he invaded my sleep in a dream (nightmare?). All I remember of it with any clarity is that we were in a struggle, and I was trying to handcuff him to prevent his from doing something horrible.  As I pulled on his wrists, he suddenly slipped my grip and my arm actually flew backward in my sleep and struck the bar covering the narrow window next to my bunk.  I awoke with a start and cried out as the impact hurt.  I was breathing hard, as if just actually going through a struggle and I was slightly damp from sweat and totally weirded out by the dream.

Apparently I hadn’t disturbed my ‘cellie’ for I listened and his soft snoring appeared uninterrupted.

‘Billy’s’ actual charges are no different from my own, and perhaps it is wrong for me to presume him capable of anything worse than what he has already done.  I possess no powers of prophesy or clairvoyance – I have no way to ‘see’ any future evil on his part, but he has served most of his sentence and will be released sometime in March.

Whatever makes me feel the way I do, I just have a very uncomfortable feeling that he will be heard from again, and I am already sad for whomever is involved in his return to notoriety.

In the novel and movie “The Green Mile” there was also a ‘Billy’ and when he reached through the bars and grabbed John Coffey, John recoiled in horror as he ‘saw’ in his mind who ‘Billy’ was and said “you a bad man”.

Again, I make no claims of clairvoyance, but surely someone somewhere got a chill – some feeling – some sense of evil or horror from coming into contact with a face that was evil.

Hopefully, I’m wrong, but my feelings are shared by others.

May we all be proven wrong.

An Incarcerated Christmas Story

On By Tony CassonIn Volume 21 Comment

by Tony

My mother loved the holiday Season.  Her normally bright smiling face was a little brighter, her smile a little bigger during the holidays.

She suffered from macular degeneration among many other things, and was legally for several of the last years of her life.

I had the unique experience of spending 2-1/2 years of time on the world in Florida with her and my stepdad – Pop – who had a stroke at the end of 2004.

My duties included yard and house maintenance, cooking, shopping, shuttling them to their myriad of doctor appointments, and among other things, putting up the Christmas decorations when that time of year rolled along.

Mom was an incredible woman, and dealt with her physical limitations with as much strength and determination as any person could expect to – more than many would.  She went to the “Lighthouse for the Blind” in Ft Lauderdale to learn how to deal with her disability and she learned her lessons well.

In fact, with her ability to maneuver around her home including the kitchen and with the relaxed look on her face as she looked directly at you when she spoke with you, it was often easy to forget she really couldn’t see much at all.

I recall setting up their artificial Christmas tree, which had to be 15 years old – Pop always got his money’s worth out of something.  It had been shortened a little through the years, and some of the color-coded tags had fallen off, and the whole process of just setting up the tree itself and getting it all fluffed up was a task in and of itself.

The first Christmas I was there my stepsister, Adrienne – ‘yo Adrienne’ to me – set it up, in fact so she can offer first hand testimony to the challenge.

The lights would come next, and there were a lot of them, in fact 1,000 for a 6’ tree, and they had to be wrapped on each branch, from tip to trunk.

Pop would put most of the ornaments on, and when it was done it was a pretty sight.  A lot of depth to the lights, what with them placed all the way to the trunk and all. And bright. Possibly bright enough to be seen from space if placed in the front lawn.

But what exactly, could Mother see?  As she sat with her signature smile across her kind face, I asked, “What do you think?”  “It’s beautiful” she would say, rocking back and forth and hands clasped in front of her not unlike a child.

I would laugh and tease her “what the heck are talking about, you can’t even see!”

She would feign ignorance and say “Just stop it! That’s not true!”

“Ok, then – tell me, exactly what do you see, really?”

“Well”, she would say hesitantly. “I can see a bright light, like a halo, along the outline of the tree”, and she would draw the outline with her hands out in front of her.  She continued, “the inside of that outline is black”.  She sat back and looked up at me.

“That’s it?” I asked.  “That’s all you see?  No ornaments or anything?”

“Pretty much”, she said.

“Then, why do we go though all of this?” I asked tactlessly.

“Because I remember”, she said, looking at her past with a smile on her face, as she sat in her favorite chair.

I love my mother immensely, as do my children, my siblings, their children, and just about anyone else who ever met her.

She was the gentlest, kindest, most loving person I have ever known and any capacity I have for love I got from her.  I miss her tremendously, as we all do.

I am also thankful, in a way, that she is with God and not alive today for as much as I love her , I don’t think I could have faced myself in the mirror knowing how she would have been during these holidays that just past.

As it is, I am confident she is with all of us all, watching from Heaven, with the perfect vision  the Lord has given her back, and that she is reassured by him that this too shall pass and we will all get through this my children, my brothers and sisters and their families, my friends, and myself.

She helped me to see all the lights and decorations on the tree that wasn’t there this year.

Was this a horrible holiday, this Incarcerated Christmas?  Not at all.

And I’ll tell you all about it next time. . .

TOC via Social Media

On By Tony CassonIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

by Anthony

Social media helps anything and everything, these days — even if you think I’m full of crap, it’s a reality (you’re using SM right now). So, to further promote my dad’s blog, I’ve created a simple Facebook page, and I’ve tweaked the website. You will notice social media sharing buttons above and below each blog post: one for Facebook and one for Twitter. To instantaneously — or close to — share a post on your Facebook or Twitter accounts, simple click the appropriate button(s).

Via Facebook, you will be able to get fast updates about what’s going on with my dad from Oakdale as well as family reactions (i.e. from me). Not everything, as is quite obvious, is published on this blog; I’ll make use of my frequent Facebook-ing and Twittering, and you should take a look.

Enjoy!

Turn On Your Lights!

On By Tony CassonIn Volume 22 Comments

By Tony Casson

On the subject of the viewing of child pornography via the internet, it is important to TRY to understand–and for many, I realize it will be very difficult TO understand, which is why I said TRY–to TRY to understand that in many, many of today’s prosecuted cases for possession of child pornography obtained via the internet, the behavior is not so much criminal intent as it is a moral meltdown of major proportions. Continue reading “Turn On Your Lights!” →