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Last revised: April 5, 1999

The judge says, "You are hereby ordered into custody of the State of California and shall remain so encumbered for the rest of your natural life." In plain English, LWOP, life in prison without the possibility of parole. The end! Finis! Farewell! It's all over now, baby blue! >From now on, Mama Bear is gonna take care of you. No more teachers! No more books!

Poof! No matter how much publicity the crime and subsequent trial received all begins to fade from the memory of the rabidly enraged public. Maybe half the spectators thought he should have been executed; hanged or gassed or trampled or stoned or worse-like Richard Allen Davis. Three weeks later they are heard saying, "Richard Allen who?" "Polly who?" "How's that spelled?"

But what about the LWOPPERS! As the years roll by and become decades and the players in the case begin to drop off until there's no one left who even remembers anything of the heinous circumstances surrounding "that fateful night", what becomes of the LWOPPERS? Are they all crowded together somewhere in a big cement holding cell grumbling about the unfair judges? Are they forgotten by family and friends to become not only institutionalized but also to become the institution itself? Do they care about anything we the free could relate to? Or, frighteningly, do they care about everything we the free relate to? Do they take walks from here to there and consider it far enough? Or do they get to the end of their walk and scream for go to take them away in a hurry up wagon? Do they run as fast as they can so the gunner will shoot them dead in the middle of the lower yard in front of the others just to get it over with? Do they sit alone in a cell and write or read or watch TV or walk from the front to the back for ten hours at a time reciting the alphabet or a nursery rhyme or the Gettysburg Address or the Constitution or EVERY GOOD BOY DESERVES FUDGE or the lyrics to THAT'S LIFE or I DID IT MY WAY or YOU ONLY HUR THE ONE YOU LOVE or AIN'T SHE SWEET or IF I HAD IT TO DO ALL OVER AGAIN I'D DO IT ALL OVER YOUR!

In San Quentin, up until 1982, the first tier of West Block was called CITIZENS ROW and was the designated safe zone for the old timers...the OLD old timers; the prisoners who were doing life without the possibility of parole and somehow managed to get to a point in their debt to society when they are rewarded. Some of them had done forty years; some fifty. One old Italian prisoner had been behind bars for over sixty years. For some unexplained reason, something about a new ruling, the old man was eligible for parole. It was an option he had long since eliminated from his consciousness. When his counselor said, "Mr. Sclafani? Would you like to go home now?" Mr. Sclafani's response was quite unexpected.

"DO I WANNA GO HOME NOW? DO I WANNA GO HOME NOW? FUCK YOU! NO! I AIN'T A GOTTA NO HOME! ALL A MY FRIENDS THEY DEAD OUTA ONNA THE STREETS! ONLY FRIENDS I GOTS INNA HERE! FUCK YOU! WHAT I GONNA DO I GO HOME NOW? LOOKA ME! LOOKA ME! WHAT I GONNA DO? WHA? YOU GONNA HIRE ME? I GONNA GO TO WORK FOR YOU? YOU GONNA HIRE A 92 YEAR OLD WOP CON? WHAT I GONNA DO FOR YOU? I MAYBE GONNA DO YOUR LAUNDRY, EH? FUCK YOUR LAUNDRY! FUCK YOU! YOU WANNA AN ANSWER? OK! FUCK YOU! THERE'S MY ANSWER! FUCK YOU!

But it was time for him to leave prison life, the only life he knew or remembered. They shook his hand at the gate, handed him his two hundred dollars and sent him on his way. The last thing anyone could remember of him was seeing him walking away from the gate shaking his bowed bald head and mumbling something like, "Where they think I'm gonna go?" He had no perception of the speed and destructive power a car could produce. A half a mile away from the prison and ten minutes into freedom he was killed by a car that he wasn't even watching out for. Most who heard the story were saddened by Sclafani's fate but those who knew him on the inside all knew it would have been a lot sadder had he lived.

Citizens Row faced the bay but the windows were too high up for those who lived there to be able to see out. Perhaps it was best that way. The bar wasn't put in place until eleven or twelve o'clock at night so all the cell doors remained open until then. The old timers could walk or visit or hustle or simply stay in their cells and give thanks to the gods for small favors. Some of them became master cooks by lockup standards and could prepare gourmet feasts with the most basic of ingredients; bean and meat burritos from stolen and traded fritos which were pulverized and mixed with the right amount of water and pounded into tortillas; vegetable dishes with cream sauces made with who knows what, and so on. These master chefs had menu lists with prices on them which were circulated throughout the first tier and orders were taken up to a designated time each day so it could be determined just how much of a certain ingredient was needed. These "restaurateurs" were always successful as theft was an important part of the formula. The one thing that tends to ruin restaurants out on the streets made great profits for the prisoner entrepreneurs.

As the sunlight dimmed each night and the lights of the block were the only source of illumination, these ancient men would slowly move from place to place like a band of white haired ghosts slipping unhurriedly through time. For many of them all that was left was the privilege of being there on CITIZENS ROW. It was their world within a world within a world.

Then the system began to explode. The population doubled and tripled and doubled and tripled again and again. Chaos reigned its specter across the state. Suddenly there were plans on the table for massive expansion. Twelve prisons statewide were soon to become 41 prisons and the computers belched out their commands: This must change! That must go! There is no room for this here! Move it there! People who had no business being in a position of power promoted and received more and more power and things were decided regardless of their ultimate outcome. And...and...CITIZENS ROW...and the privileges thereof...and the ancients...one day...were taken in handcuffs one by one out from the first tier of West Block, Bayside, and marched across the lower yard like a line of hunched over white-haired Walt Whitmans and loaded onto a gray and green bus called THE GOOSE and taken far, far away from CITIZENS ROW forever.

Any comments may be written to:
Ben Aronoff
P.O. Box 227
Sebastopol, CA 95473

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Send Email to Charla Greene at Welcome to Hell

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