A Life Wasted

Federal Prison

The feds have prisons all over the country and you can be sent to any of them, but they all ways try to send you to one close to home, which is how I ended up at the medium security federal prison known as FCI McKean. McKean is in the north central part of Pennsylvania near the town of Bradford. The prison looked more like a modern college campus than prison; however the double fence topped with razor wire gave it away. Modern American prisons haven't practiced anything resembling rehabilitation, but the Warden at McKean did the best he could, so it wasn't a bad place. Federal prisoners throughout the system called it "McKean the Dream."

I arrived in McKean's general population late, so was only there a few hours before 10:00 pm lockdown. Like the other two guys I came with, I was given a bunk in the open common area. McKean has the standard modern prison design of a large open common area enclosed by two levels of cells. The design affects is a large open feel for the inmates and clear view of each cell by a single correctional officer. The clever design was somewhat negated by overcrowding in that they had set up a dorm area in one area of the large common room. It was in the top bunk of one of these open area beds that I spent the night.

The next morning I woke more than a little confused. When I opened my eyes the first thing I saw was the high ceiling, giving me the feeling I'd slept in an auditorium. The next thing I noticed was an attractive woman a few feet above me and ten feet away. She seemed to be watching me sleep. When I focused I realized she was standing on the second floor walk way. At first I thought I was seeing a female correctional officer, even the Ohio State prisons had those, but soon realized she wasn't a CO. This woman was wearing tight short-shorts and a halter top. She had large breast and it was obvious she didn't wear a bra. Confused by what I was seeing, and uncomfortable with her stare I crawled out of bed, dressed and went to another area of the large common room.

Seeing this woman dressed like that bothered me. It was clear she was an inmate because no staff member would ever dress like that inside the prison. I'd heard all kinds of things about "Club Fed," even that they had co-ed prisons (which they don't) but I hadn't considered that I would end up in one. I didn't have a problem being around women, but I was troubled about my wife's reaction to my being in a co-ed prison. It wasn't until later that night that I learned that "Brenda" wasn't a woman, but a male transgender with a convincing female look. This doesn't sound shocking today, but for me it was a great shock.

Like all federal prisons of that day, McKean had a factory that inmates could work in if they wanted. I applied for and got a job in the factory almost immediately. McKean's factory made wood products, mostly office furniture. They had two complex German made CNC machines that used a computer to move an eight foot square table to cut out large items like desk tops. One of those machines had been broken for nearly a year, but the other ran twenty-four hours a day. Because of my programming background they wanted to train me on the CNC computer. The computer on the broken machine worked fine so they began training me on it my first night of work.

I was so drawn to the working machine that I couldn't focus on the program training. I'd never seen a computer controlled machine before and I was instantly drawn to the concept. Thirty minutes into my training I couldn't stand the thought that this machine didn't work, so I stopped my trainer and asked about what was broke. I'd worked on so many computers that I was confident with anything, but as the guy explained, this computer worked just fine. The problem was the machine didn't respond to its commands. My trainer was the broken machine's main operator so was able to explain the exact circumstances behind when it stopped working. When he finished I smiled and asked for a screw driver.

The problem was that the computer didn't communicate with the rest of the machine. I didn't know machines but I knew a lot about communications. When I got the computer open I located the modem and opened it. As I suspected wires ten and eleven were wired pin to pin. This modem didn't communicate across the phone lines so it was what was known as a "null-modem." The difference in a regular and null modem is that pins ten and eleven had to be crossed on a null modem. When I explained this to the inmate operator he went and got the staff supervisor and I explained it again. They had brought in experts that couldn't fix the machine so were now waiting on a factor tech from Germany who was due in sixty days, so he doubted a new inmate worker could figure out the problem less than an hour on the job. I was confident when I showed him the two wires that needed reversed so he went and got the soldering iron I would need to do the job. It took the iron a minute to get hot and me half that time to de-solder and reverse the two wires.