Midtown Miscreant presents.......The Prison Pilgrim

I'm faced with a conundrum. I've got two previous posts that I want to use for my annual Thanksgiving post. They are both heart warming as a mother fucker, and will leave you feeling nothing but peace and good will toward your fellow man. Both stories make me all weepy ,warm and fuzzy inside. I can't chose one over the other, so I'm going to let you clowns decide for me. This first story was penned last year about this time. I'll throw the other one up on Friday since I'll be busy working on some other stuff, and won't be doing the Fast Eddie Friday thing. I've got a deadline coming up for my first paid thang. So make do with these Midtown Miscreant left overs. Oh I almost forgot, have a safe holiday. Don't drink and drive or do any other stupid shit. Be sure and let me know if you prefer todays story over the one I'll post on Friday. If you hate them both, go shit in your hat.

So we all know the story about Pilgrims landing on Pontiac rock and infesting the local natives with the flu and Oprah. Those who didn't die from the white mans bugs, succumbed to soul killing mainstream pop culture and shitty self help books. Most of the white people died too, and those that didn't survived on dry butterball turkeys and canned yams. Okay, I may have my time periods and facts a little askew, but you know the story, so play along. What many of you couldn't know, is that Pilgrims land on one rock or another in a steady stream on a daily basis. Here's the totally fictitious, unauthorized, fable, of one such pilgrim.

Freddie the fish could see the fence and razor wire off in the distance. He had travelled a great distance, several hundred miles, belly chained and shackled to a fat guy who smelled like Parmesan cheese and feet, which really aren't that different, smell wise. Freddie was cold, hungry, and afraid. A stranger in a strange land. When the van pulled through the gate and in to the Sally-port, Freddie wondered why they called it a Sally port, why not a Sheila, or Martha port. Freddie didn't have long to think about this before the van pulled through the gates and upchucked it's cargo of hapless new arrivals. There to greet these weary Pilgrims was a member of the first of two tribes that inhabited the Rock. The greeter was a member of the tribe known as Hacks, also called screws, turn keys or guards. He ushered the pilgrims in to a sterile gray room, made them strip, and sprayed them with a bug sprayer, gave them ill fitting clothes and foam hospital shoes.

Freddie was sent to a settlement known as cell block C, where he was set upon and beaten, robbed of a book of stamps, some Marlboro's, and his girlfriends picture, which he later found stuck to a shower wall, covered in what appeared to be Tapioca and hair gel, but that's another story. The first winter was a hard one for Freddie and the new arrivals. They found the other tribe of natives, the Convicts, were less than hospitable. Trips to the canteen to replenish supplies were fraught with peril and danger. More often than not the pilgrims were set upon by the convicts, beaten and robbed of their ramen noodles and snickers bars. It was after one such encounter that Freddie met a friendly Native, a large fellow named Poke-yer-haunches, or Bubba for short. Just as the Native Americans brought gifts for our forefathers , and helped feed them through that first harsh winter in the new America, Bubba came laden with gifts. Candy bars and cigarettes would routinely appear on Freddies bunk, along with notes welcoming Freddie to his new home. Only later would Freddie come to discover that those things came with a heavy price, one that would exact a horrific toll on Freddies identity, and make him walk like a duck who had been shot in the ass.

Like all pilgrims, Freddie learned to adjust in order to survive. He can be found to this day, on the prison yard , corn rowing convicts hair for smokes and cokes. He looks different, his clothes are too tight, his shirt is tied in a knot, midriff, his eyebrows are penciled in with shoe polish, and he rubs cherry kool aid on his cheeks for a rosy glow. Oh yeah, he goes by Mercedes now. So there you have it, a thanksgiving day story to warm the heart. Don't think too harshly of Freddie, a pilgrims gotta survive.