The living quarters were spacious town homes, 2-storied with a full basement. With it seemed never ending woods behind our row of homes. Andrews was great for the kids of the military men.

The base offered a scheduled shuttle bus that came into the housing area. For free you could ride to the movie theatre, the huge fishing lake, the swimming pool, recreation center, base exchange and hobby shop. The base, also offered little league with immaculate kept fields and a gym that was well equipped. It was the likes I’d never experienced in my young 12 years. To say it in a nutshell–a kid’s paradise!

To get to the base exchange you went down our street and turned left to a cul-de-sac. A long sidewalk passed between two separate town home buildings, then down 21 steps and across a 50 foot cement bridge which a creek passed under, some 10 feet below. All was surrounded by woods. Then up the steps on the opposite side and across the parking lot.

On the backside of the exchange was the package (liquor) store. It was here I came to know a summer delight I had never known before. Oh yes, summer always had other special delights. Watermelon, strawberry short cake, momma’s homemade Popsicles-- so many tasty things.

An ice cream truck also came through the housing area twice a day. Ringing it’s bell, it prompted kids on every block to come running to the sound carrying change they had pleaded from their parents. While this was my case right along with them, it was not my favorite summer tasty.

I would forgo the ice cream truck most days in lieu of walking to the package store. You might ask, “a 12 year old going to a liquor store???” Yep! The walk through the wooded area, across the shaded bridge allowed me to zero in on a beacon that housed my personal satisfying drink of choice.

In the package store were spirits of all types:  wine, whiskeys, gins, vodka, but I had no interest in these. I headed straight for the pop machine. The kind you lifted up the top like a freezer, made your choice and (slid around a bottle race track of sorts) put your money in then pulled up your sugary delight.

So, my choice it was new on the market, a green bottle with the words Kickapoo Joy Juice with an accompanying picture of two hillbillies whooping it up. Today it’s know as Mountain Dew. I had always preferred Crush organe to Coke, Pepsi, or root-beer. At least until that summer when I found the smooth, sugary confection  Kickapoo Joy Juice.

I would take my prize the short distance to the bridge, which every minute of the day was shaded from the hot August sun of Maryland, then sitting on the hand rail I’d sip slowly, looking at the creek winding it’s way through the woods. I would watch the suns rays as it found it’s way to the shimmering sections of water.

Each small swig was relished, but all the while trying not to make the last swig be a warm on. It had to be timed carefully so as not to be still chilled. I’m not sure if it was the combination of hot days, the cool surroundings and the creek below, but to this day it’s still my pop of choice.

The bottle label changed some years later, but to me it is still Kickapoo Joy Juice. Yes, it is perhaps a strange memory, but boy to live it then was a small precious gem during my twelfth year.

Whilst in Florida setting up a permanent camper site, I took my final days to drive to the panhandle. Outside of Panama City, about 20 miles east there is a small town called Wewahitchka. Here is where the prison sits, in the middle of a swamp where my brother Clark resides.

I had picked my mother up at the new airport in Panama City so that we might visit Clark together.

Knowing that my brother suffers from bi-polar disorder, still I was ill-prepared for his state during this time. Sure, he mustered a laugh or to at some remembrance or joke. But for the most part he was angry. Plain anger oozed out of every word and tone. At one point I had to place a hand over my mother’s trembling hand to nudge her to silence. Mom’s urging for Clark to try and rekindle his faith more, journal more, read more, etc. only encouraged an elevation of anger in his voice and agitation in his manner.

Sometimes you just have to go with the moment and let it be.

What must be remembered by all who know and love Clark is that he is grieving. Grieving has five main steps and each can be gone through again and again. And steps can overlap.

1-Denial-”this can’t be happening to me”, No crying. Not accepting or even acknowledging the loss, in Clark’s case his freedom that was soon to be taken after the crime.

2-Anger-”why me?”, feelings of wanting to fight back, or get even with those whom choose to not to keep in touch seeming to care not. Or just his whole situation and the loss of freedom.

3-Bargaining-bargaining often takes place before the loss, but in Clark’s case it may simply be an attempt to make deals with God to stop or change his situation.

4-Depression-overwhelming feelings of hopelessness, frustration, bitterness, self pity, mourning loss of freedom as well as the hopes, dreams and plans for the future. Feeling lack of control, feeling numb. Perhaps feeling suicidal.

5-Acceptance-there is a difference between resignation and acceptance. You have to accept the loss, not just try to bear it quietly. Realization that it is his own doing that will keep him from living in freedom. Finding the good that can come out of the pain of loss, finding comfort and healing. Our goals turn toward personal growth. Stay with fond memories of life outside of prison.

At this visit I found Clark to be angry, at his own admission, at everything and everyone. He won’t go outside to the ‘yard’ because it angers him to not have the ability to do more or go further. It’s simply reminds him of what he no longer has. He’s angry with family that refuse to visit or write.

He has a lot of depression as of this visit with his feelings of numbness and lack of control. I don’t believe him to be suicidal, but more self-preserving. His anger and numbness at this time keep him protected.

When starting this website, Clark was elated to have an outlet. With time his manic state of writing seemed ceaseless. But then, as is normal with the disorder, he cycled down. Believing his writings useless and childlike, he stopped.

He has promised to send me the rest of his novel work to be proofed and then I will forward the first two chapters and the last at the request of a professor friend of ours in Florida.

It is my hope that he will resume writing again soon, but I do understand the need for him to cycle up once again before this is possible.

Please consider writing Clark and if you ever will be in his area ask him to send you a visitor form as it will need approved before you would be allowed to see him. And check out the prison site here to learn about visiting rules. His mailing address is on the Contact page.

Lisa Coleman Griffiths

But I will, bit by bit, keep sending it page by  page. I want to convey, to give thoughts. How good my words flow in my head at times when the pen is not in my hand, or is it only perceived as being so. I am untrained to write. My mind for the most part is a super ball in a 4×4 box.

Why should I write? I ask it over and over. Is it ego? I must say yes. Is it looking for recognition? Yes! Why? I’m nothing special, no great mind. A life not lived in full, as to impart some golden nugget for others to draw from. To nourish and and lift up. Somehow I still crave.

I love the words of gifted writers of history. A well written auto biography. Oh, the gifted of words! I read where Jack London once said, “Inspiration does not come easy. It is coaxed with a club.” If this is so, with me I need a bigger club.

I found in sports, or at least was schooled, ‘practice makes perfect’, which was amended to ‘perfect, perfect practice makes perfect’. If true, the grind of sitting down at least every day to write, as I’m told I should do, will reap little in growth. To practice garbage. Garbage in, garbage out as they say.

My sister Lisa is so gifted in writing, a late bloomer as they say. With formal schooling? Yes, but an innate ability beyond me. I envy her, but am so proud of her. For she gives me encouragement. She gives me an avenue to attempt, when I have little else for self esteem, sense of worth.

I try, the one less than gifted. The hack. Spilling words upon the lines of the page not knowing where much goes except a period. And then not even knowing that for sure. So I will try again, perfect or not, maybe at times raw, but not nearly as raw as my emotions, which I desperately want to say upon the page.

Daddy built walls for bedrooms in the homes that we lived, for you see, my bedroom was always in the basement. My sisters would get the two rooms in the upstairs, my parents the master bedroom.

I loved my rooms. They were more spacious then the master bedroom of each house and always a bathroom of my own in the basement. In many ways I felt special. Some might think otherwise, but for me I much preferred it.

Daddy could throw up a wall and door in no time, and make it look part of the original house plan. His tools simple—hand driven drill, two types of saws, hammer and screw drivers. With these he created my inner sanctorum, my space, my world—posters, desk, freestanding closet, the oval braided rug and record player.

My mother always commented, “If only your sister’s kept such a straightened room.”

Daddy’s tools had a special space wherever we lived. His cardinal rule was if ever they were used, they were replaced as they were found.

In later years, my parent retired to an old two-story home in Sedley, Virginia. A town small and quaint, it harkened to the early 1800s. They turned the old house into a beautiful, comfortable home appointed in the most detail by Momma. To explain its nature, from a fireplace in the kitchen the three bedrooms upstairs were all heated by through ventilators from its first floor heat.

Daddy loved to tinker and putter with his projects. He loved to mow the vast acreage. On a section of land, some 40 yards from the house on a lower tier of land, a garage stood. It held the mower, planks of old wood and various items for such a homestead.

Ten yards from the garage, sitting on the lowest level of land, sat a building of about 20 feet long by 8 feet wide. It had separate sections—shovels, rakes and more wood were held here. In the room next to it, you stepped up into a 10×8, one window room. This was my Daddy’s room. He had always wanted such a room over the years and now it was so.

The bench upon which he worked went the width of the shed, jars meticulously separated and neatly placed. Screws, brads, nails, wiring devices, his hand tools neatly arrayed on the wall above the bench. A radio sat atop the bench for his listening pleasure.

At different times, on arrival to visit, I’d ask where’s Daddy? Momma would tell me he was down tinkering. I would walk down and find him there with Char, a black female lab that followed him around the property. In looking back on these times—of him in that room, with a plaid shirt, his hat for the day (he loved his ball caps), he looked most content.

Parkinson’s was clinching its grips more and more. As he worked on his projects, I believe he found great solace just sorting and re-sorting his jars, listening to music with his dog by his side.

It was cozy, rustic to be sure, but his inner sanctuary, still. It was also here that he kept his golf clubs on the wall behind and next to the door. Easy access when he’d pull out the nine iron and hit some shots.

On every visit we’d hit some shots across the property and back to the shed—the shed being the target for who could lay their shot up closest.

I do not know how long that shed stood before it became his, or if it still stands. I can still picture his open sweat shirt, plaid shirt, ball cap, baggy pants, standing at the bench, empty jar beside a pile of screws, his fingers moving and sorting them. Then Daddy would turn to say, “Hi” with his smile of warmth and soft kind eyes. “Hey son. Come in!”

Yeah, that’s my Daddy. Simple needs, a life lived simply, good.

As a small child, I could count on her playing hymns during the week, her then dexterous fingers landing flawlessly over the keys. The sound of music filled our home. Momma had a voice that most assuredly could have been good enough for opera. Maybe not diva quality, but for sure in the supporting roles had the proper training was afforded her with fortunate circumstances.

Momma’s beautiful voice sang solos in church services. It was a sense of great pride to see her standing solo amongst the choir giving praise to God with the voice he had blessed her.

The upright always had sheet music and the hymnal in its place on the piano stand—countless pages of sheet music in the bench seat. To hear her singing and playing gave our home a warm welcoming place for our family.

On a particular Saturday, prior to a Sunday service, she sat at the piano becoming familiar with a hymn, trying to perfect her delivery. I sat on the living room floor playing with my Lincoln logs. As I casually looked up across the room, I became aware of and thought, “How can she sing, play and move her feet on the pedals at the same time?”

I lost all interest in the cabin I was building and stretched out fully prone, supporting my head with elbow on the floor, hands on each side of my face. Here I watched her most intently for ten minutes, it must have been—I was entranced.

At some point Momma turned in her seat and saw me watching her. She smiled and patted the seat next to her signaling me to join her on the bench. I jumped to my feet and took my place next to her.

Momma asked, “Want to help me Clarky?”

“Sure!” Not knowing how I might do that.

Momma slowly closed the hymnal and pulled out some sheet music. It was a contemporary song of the early sixties, but I’m not quite sure. She opened to the first page of notes. “Now sing along,” she said. I edged closer to the keys and then she instructed me to turn the page when she nodded her head.

We started, and with anticipation, I waited for my cue. I sang the words, humming at those I couldn’t pronounce, but all the while really listening to her angelic voice. I acquainted myself well in the page turning, or at least I believed I did.

Upon completion of our mother-son duet, she put her arm around me, pulled me close and kissed my head. “Thank you, son.” I so remember shining brightly at that moment.  Somehow I had helped my dear momma at something with which she was good. It was then that I wanted to learn to play.

This was never to materialize, however, except for a feeble attempt on my part a couple years later. Momma started me on lessons, but soon enough I lost interest. The calls of boyhood, times outside, called louder than the piano keys.

Momma was not one to force this issue. If I really wanted it she would have pursued it tirelessly. As an adult I regret that choice.

The instilling of music in me was solid. Because of Momma, late in life I listen to operas on the radio performed at the met in New York City. On one particular performance, lost in the moment, the voice was so much like Momma’s that tears flowed from my eyes.

Seemingly projecting her into the performance from my cell, the voice soothed, at least for a short time. With Momma so far away and the opportunities of my life missed, my eyes filled with her ebbing.

The gift of music that she filled me with in my youth is a comfort that sustains me behind bars—life such that it is. In the still of the cell, in the dark of night, I remember lovingly, her gift—and her gift to me.