Friday, September 29, 2006

Creepy Crawlies I've seen on Home Visits

Other than the Parolees, of course.
The Sex Offenders were slugs, they slithered and left slime tracks.

No, I'm talking about insects and parasites, alive and dead, I have had the misfortune to encounter in the course of making required home visits to the reported domiciles of Parolees. Or folks released from prison on something called Mandatory Supervision.

I have to explain that last. Back in the day, when the Earth's crust was still cooling, and I was laboring in the Fields of the Board of Pardons and Paroles, the prisons of Texas were overcrowded. They were under a Federal Judicial mandate to empty. And Barefoot Sanders meant: Pronto!
So, Texas installed revovling doors in their prisons that were called the Mandatory Supervision Release Program. This brain far...er, uh brilliant idea, brought to you by Austin's Finest Beaucrats, was a formula for the release of inmates. If their time served, plus their "good time" [which, for those of you unfamiliar with prison slang, is time they have served with no rule violations] equaled their total sentence, that had to be released. It didn't matter if they had not participated in any type of rehabilitation program, it didn't matter if they had participated in any educational program, if they had been there on a probation or parole violation, which SHOULD have meant that they served ALL of their original sentence before being released, they would in reality, do what came to be derisively called the "90 day Turnaround" and they knew it. But that's a subject for another blog. Trust me, I won't forget.

Back to Creepy Crawlies:
I went to do a home visit with a Parolee one night at a No-Tell Motel out on the highway that goes through town. His Mom had gotten tired of his routine and kicked him out. She's the one who told me where he was stayin'.
He was surprised to see me when I show up at this fine establishment that was his new home. He answers the door wearing a pair of unsnapped, but thankfully, zipped dirty jeans, no shirt, no shoes, dirty hair, TV blaring MTV. I told him I'd wait by the door while he found a shirt and turned off the TV.
Of course I had to shout this, but he turned off the TV and said, "Yes, Ma'am."
While he is hunting for the least dirty shirt among the piles of clothes scattered around the piles on the floor, I take a glannce around the room.

Standard cheapo motel room. Dirty, matted shag carpet. TV bolted to the wall on a metal arm. Lamp with a cracked shade on a cheap, warped bedside table.
Threadbare sheets thrown back on a sagging mattress. One chair, stuffing coming out in about four different tears in the covering, grease stains and ground in dirt obliterating the pattern of the upholstery. And polka dotted wall paper?

By now, Bad Son has his shirt on and, leaving the door open, I take a baby step into the room so I can take a better look at this Polka dotted wall paper while I ask about his job, if he's got his NA sign in sheet, has he got his Parole fee and his restitution fee for Friday?
When I get a better look at this Wall paper I realize it NOT wall paper. It's dead roaches stuck to the wall. So Many dead roaches all over every wall that it, my hand to the Goddess, looks like polka dots. I immediately check my feet, cause I feel something crawling on them. But no, nothing there. Must have been phantom roaches I felt.
I tell Bad Son to be on time Friday, and to bring the receipt for his UA he needs to take sometime this week and remind him to bring his pay stub, too.
And I get the heck out of there.
At least those roaches were dead. And at least it didn't smell.

3 comments:

Kristin said...

Howdy, from one former parole officer to another

HollyB said...

Hi Kristin. How'd you find me?

HollyB said...

G,
All things being equal... I'd rather be in where was it? Cleveland? But I'd really rather be in Terlingua!!!

Hugs, Darlin'.