Friday with Corey "A Failure to Communicate"

Today I was up early to shower and dress before hopping in the car for my 45 minute drive to visit Corey at the Taft Camp. Rod was to join us later in the morning, first he was scheduled for a checkup with his surgeon, related to his AAA surgery Oct 6th (from which he is recovering slowly but surely). I arrived at the visitation building, checked in and walked inside to find an available table. One of the things I like about the Camp visitation as compared to visitation over at the adjacent Low Security Prison (where Corey spent the first 3 years of his sentence prior to being transferred here) is the very fact we CAN choose our own seating, we needn't wait to have a guard on duty select it for us. Also we have regular size tables, and can sit next to each other, as opposed to across from each other.

Anyways, I selected a table that has become one of our "regular" spots to sit, funny how we are such creatures of habit (well some of us are), and was pleased to see friends of ours, Susie and her husband Ron, sitting at an adjacent table. Susie drives up from San Diego every friday to visit her husband, on occasion she is a welcome overnight guest at our home, those times she is able to visit at the camp two days in a row before making the almost 5 hr drive back. I stopped and chatted with them a few minutes before sitting down at my table to wait for Corey.

Corey had asked I arrive around 9 am this morning, and I was johnny-on-the-spot as always. I took my place at the table, waited a little while, decided to change my dollar bills into coins that are more readily accepted by the vending machines, then went back to sit down and wait some more. Minutes passed...5...10.....15...20....Javee, one of the regular inmate orderlies (and a friend of Coreys) came by to say hello and also to join me in wondering what was taking Corey so long to show. At one point he went back to the Control Room to verify the guard who had checked me in had indeed remembered to call Coreys name on the intercom...he said he had. So again I sat and waited, as I watched other inmates show up for visits with family or friends who had arrived and been checked in AFTER I had been.

FINALLY, as Javee and I are chatting, I see a smile cross his face as he looks across the room...Corey is coming into the visitation room. Well it seems, as famously worded in Paul Newmans movie Cool Hand Luke, there had been a "failure to communicate". Corey had decided this time he would wear his warm gray sweatshirt to visitation as the weather has really cooled off, and he had just gotten over a cold. Often we've seen other inmates wearing their warmer gray sweatshirts in visitation, and though Corey had never worn one in before he understood it was "allowed". Well I guess it depends on which guard is on duty any given day. The rules set forth by the establishment (in this case the dress code at visitation) we've learned are always subject to interpretation" by whichever guard happens to be on duty. Today the guard on duty believed gray sweatshirts were NOT allowed to be worn to visitation, so when Corey arrived at the outside entrance to the Visitation Bldg, he was greeted with "Leavell, seems we have a failure to communicate"...I wonder how long he'd been waiting to use that line??? LOL ...though I have to add, the guard was friendly and kept it light, but proceeded to tell Corey he needed to go change into a white T-shirt, gray was not allowed in the visitation room. Though it is always a complete waste of time to argue with a prison guard, Corey did argue the fact that as stated in The Rules visitors to the Camp are not allowed to wear white, gray or khaki colored clothing because those are the colors the inmates wear, in the units, the yard, and in visitation. Regardless as to whether Corey was right or not, the guard wasn't about to lose face, and instructed him to return to his Unit to change his clothes. Hence the long wait before we were able to begin our visit today. I was just happy to see him, and to spend the day with him.

In retrospect, my wait today was nothing compared to a young woman who had the misfortune of arriving for her visit close to 10 am. It is between 10 and 11 normally that the guards do a "standing count" of the inmates throughout the facility. I believe there are 3 such "counts" during a 24 hour period, morning, afternoon and late at night. No inmates are allowed to move about the compound at those times, until the count is cleared. So I watched her sit and wait patiently, all alone and looking a little bereft, for almost an hour and a half for "her inmate" to be allowed to proceed to the visitation room.