Dope Department's Busy in County Jail

A kid from a "good family" came into my office yesterday.

He'd been out of County Jail for a few weeks. But something was gnawing at him.

"How come," he wanted to know, "it's so easy for guys on the inside to get narcotics?"

He
himself landed in jail for possession of marijuana. But it was his
first brush with the law. After two months' dead time, he got probation.

While
he was behind bars, he got something else: an education. He learned
that where there's an addict with a yen — no matter how thick the
walls or how high the bars — there's going to be a source of supply.

The kid recited the ways by which he saw dope smuggled into jail.

The
first instance happened only hours after he was picked up. He hadn't
even been transferred over to County Jail yet. He was  in the hype tank
at City Jail when another prisoner who'd just been booked retched up
four balloons of heroin and shared them with his cellmates.

At County, the kicks ran the gamut: marijuana, pills, hard stuff and inhalers.

"The guy who pushed the cigarette cart around — he's a county employee — brought in the inhalers," the young man told me.

The prisoners would break them open and chew the little Mephentermine-soaked cotton pads. They'd really get high.

In drugstores, the inhalers sell for 59 cents. In cell blocks, the price varies from $1 to $4.

"Marijuana,"
the kid continued. "I saw brought in a couple of times by other
prisoners. Usually in their shoes. Under the soles."

That's an old trick. Dope taped inside of shoes or cached in false heels.

But a method he described of smuggling in heroin was a new one — at least to me:

"A
friend on the outside will cook, say, half a gram of heroin in a
spoonful of water, dip the end of a sock into it until the sock absorbs
it, and then have the family bring in the socks.

"Some prisoners
cut up little squares of cloth from the socks, and peddle them to other
addicts. But they say that won't work if you're in on a narcotics
charge," he added. "They say that the guards soak hypes' clothes in
water."

We talked in detail about the methods the junkies used
to get their stuff into the jail. The kid was extremely articulate and,
apparently, observing.

Never once, he said, did he get any
indication that the guards were involved. But, he added, there were —
from what he could learn — five hype outfits circulating inside the
jail — all kept in the trusties' section.

I told him that a lot
of his information might be of interest to chief jailer Joe Gaalken,
and , asked if he'd be willing to talk to him — especially concerning
the county employee peddling the inhalers.

He would, he said, so I called chief Gaalken and outlined the kid's story.

The chief listened attentively while I spoke. Then he told me, "That kid — he's got good information.

"As
a matter of fact, we nailed the man with the inhalers a couple of weeks
ago. It must have been right after the boy was released.

"But,
unfortunately," he added with a sigh, "we couldn't get the D.A.'s
office to file a complaint. All we could do was fire him."

It
was only days ago that a county prisoner died of an overdose of heroin.
"We busted 20 other prisoners when that happened," Gaalken said. "We
did get seven convictions out of it."

How Do the Junkies Operate?

Then
he detailed the precautions against smuggling taken by the jail. They
were sound precautions. They made sense. And they made me wonder how
any narcotics could possibly get in.

"We have tons of supplies coming in every week," chief Gaalken said. "We just can't open every head of lettuce."

And, considering the desperate ingenuity of the dope addict, I'm afraid that's just about what he'd have to do.

Confidential File

Deep South Deep in Literary Criticism

Two
weeks ago a nursery book entitled "The Rabbits' Wedding" was hastily
removed from Alabama's public library shelves as "pure integrationist
propaganda" because it linked in matrimony a white rabbit and a black
rabbit.

Now, "The Three Little Pigs" is under attack in Florida.

Segregationists
there charged in yesterday's papers that the porkers are undermining
Southern culture. "One of the pigs is white, another black, and the
third a black and white 'mulatto,'" they pointed out in righteous
indignation.

Their spokesman, David Hawthorn, also declared,
"The book shows the white pig getting destroyed by the wolf, but the
black pig survives."

Since it's apparent that there's going to
be a wholesale burning of nursery rhymes below the Mason Dixon Line, I
can see a lucrative field for authors who want to revamp Mother Goose
to fit the southern literary market.

And being a boy always interested in a fast buck, here's my first offering, entitled: "The Three Little Pigs in Dixie."

Once
upon a time, in a sleepy village on the banks of the Mississippi, lived
three little pigs — a white pig, a mulatto pig (which was "passing"),
and a black pig.

Each set out to seek his fortune.

The little white pig was walking along a bayou when he met a man with a bundle of straw, and he said to him:

"'Pears to me you all could give me that straw so's I could build me a house."

The
man gave the little white pig his bundle of straw, and the little white
pig built his house of straw in one of the better residential districts
of the town.

The little "passing" pig was walking along Bourbon Street when he met a man with a bag of furze.

"Reckon you could spare that furze, mister?" he asked. "I'm fixin' to build me a house."

At Ease, Beauregard

The
man gave the "passing" pig his furze, and the "passing" pig built his
house of furze next door to the little white pig's house of straw
(which was all right, because what the little white didn't know didn't
hurt him).

The little black pig was walking past the town statue erected to the memory of Gen. Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard when he met a man with a load of bricks.

"I knows what you gonna say," the man sighed wearily. "Go ahead. Take 'em."

The
little black pig took them and built himself a sturdy house of brick
right across the street from the little white pig's house of straw and
the little "passing" pig's house of furze.

Then came the wolf!

"Little pig, little pig, let me come in," he demanded.

"No, no, by the hair on my chiny chin chin," answered the little white pig.

"Then
I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house in," snorted the
wolf. He huffed and he puffed and he huffed, but he house straw didn't
budge.

Slinking next door to the little "passing" pig's house of
furze, the wolf went through the same bit. But not even one furze
fluttered.

Then the wolf moved across the street to the little
black pig's sturdy house of brick, huffed once, blew down the house and
ate the little black pig.

Just then, Relman Morin, of the
Associated Press, who happened to be down there to cover the story,
walked up to the wolf with notebook and pencil in hand.

"Tell
me, wolf," he asked, "how is it possible that you couldn't blow down
the little white pig's house of straw, but you could blow down the
little black pig's sturdy house of bricks?"

"Mister, folks 'round here don't take kindly to nosey Northerners askin' questions," the wolf snorted.

With that, the wolf ate up Relmarr Morin — notebook, pencil and all. And evahbody lived happily eveh after.

(Author's note: In a subsequent article, I will delve into the knotty problem of Little Miss Muffett. That spider that sat down beside her? Black, you know.)