Sir Long Chain Charles

by Clay Walker

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The true no-holds barred story of one man's endurance on a Virginia chain gang and in the Virginia state penitentiary of the 1950's. The story follows the author from the crime of an eighteen year old - taking money that was owed to him - through his incarceration on a chain gang, his escape, return to prison, another chain gang and finally parole. Take a birds-eye view of...moreThe true no-holds barred story of one man's endurance on a Virginia chain gang and in the Virginia state penitentiary of the 1950's. The story follows the author from the crime of an eighteen year old - taking money that was owed to him - through his incarceration on a chain gang, his escape, return to prison, another chain gang and finally parole. Take a birds-eye view of the harsh realities of a chain gang camp where vicious, ignorant gun-wielding guards held the power of life or death over prisoners; and how the prisoners dealt with life there, sometimes cruelly, permanently disabling themselves by cutting their heel tendons to escape the severe non-stop work, and sometimes humorously. Follow along on a heart pounding escape, and then journey into a maximum-security prison where the rules are entirely different, and life was cheap. See what it took to survive and endure in order to return to the 'free' world. Long Chain Charlie was an integral part of the Virginia Department of Corrections and as such became known as Sir Long Chain Charles by my choosing - something to be respected for it's service. I knew the first time I stepped on board Long Chain that I was being taken to a rolling hell - the guard's terse introduction as he handcuffed me to the seat told me that. "You can try to escape if you want to. If you do try, I'll kill you. It's simple as that." I was an extremely youthful looking eighteen year old who could pass for fourteen, fresh from the mountainous backwoods with a brand-new ten year sentence, but I believed him, and couldn't help but think that this was just the tip of the iceberg, my introduction to the Virginia penal system: a cold, dark gray bus encased in bars and heavy wire mesh, taking me to a cold, dark gray penitentiary. It was going to be a long ten years. The Commonwealth of the state of Virginia was the only penal system to my knowledge that was fully self-sustaining. There were thirty-two chain gang camps, part of them black only, part of them white only, a huge state farm, each county had it's own farm, even most of the chain gang camps had them. The two I was in certainly did. Then there was the block plant, the lime plant, and the nearly twenty-four hundred convicts at 500 Spring Street, the penitentiary, were kept busy in the shops. There was the knitting mill for socks, underwear and t-shirts; the tailor shops for the uniforms and going-out clothes; the furniture shop, the tag shop, the machine shop. All the inmates were fed, clothed and maintained by their own hand. This same system would work in every penal institution today, or on the other hand, maybe it wouldn't work because today the jail birds would start screaming "We got rights ' and some facet of society would come along and say "Their rights were violated. Release them " thus releasing and creating more two-legged slugs onto the streets that society has to condone. I am proud to say that after everything I have endured in the Commonwealth of Virginia's penal system, I still emerged human.(less)

Paperback, 252 pages

Published June 4th 2008 by Dog Ear Publishing

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