Tuesday, May 19, 2015
Happy Hogan's Motor Court
I lived with my sister, Crestview Apartments. No criminals there.
Or at Darsell Acres, or Melody Falls Condos.
But if you were to draw a rope around the three, you’d pretty
much gather all the folks not incarcerated in the city of Laurel Vista.
Prisons and jails being the main municipal feature.
I commuted to my job as Chicken Inspector, at the Cluck-Cluck
Farm in Bent Oak.
Well, Sis and I called it that, the job. Anyway, Foreman of an
operation it’s needless to go into. Think feathers.
One day I was tried, arrested, and sent to Daryl Bell Hoxey
Private Prison.
The work of Judge Streamline Carter! Actually, the trial had been
held without my knowledge. Then, they sent the officers to take
me into custody.
“Well, it’s only two years, and I’ll get out in one,” I counseled Sis
while we read the order as the cops fidgeted.
Lynne put up with nothing! And I had to be ripped from her grip.
They never named the charge, by the way. And haven’t yet.
But she was down every throat she could find! All authorities
insisted I had my day in court. But I hadn’t, of course.
But everybody she talked to believed it, and waved away facts.
Which is how you become one.
Her efforts did get me transferred from inelegant Hoxey to
a halfway house, the former Happy Hogan’s Motor Court.
A startling resort in the twenties and thirties, but now a
rustic ruin, more or less. But some cottages had been
partially refurbished, and I got one. A third of it Fifties style,
formica everything, and a twelve inch Motorola black and white.
Hey! Quite comfortable! The catering service brought the food
I ordered, and I cooked it myself.
Unfortunately, not much of a chef, which Lynne discovered
after a visit.
So, she moved in. After notifying the Hogans, who were fine
with it. Especially after telling them she was a bookkeeper, and
would straighten out their...uh, you couldn’t call them records,
since the motel part still secretly ran and got mixed up with
the inmates, who would frequently help with luggage for the tips.
Well, you couldn’t tell which from which, and a couple from Rhode
Island had been held a full week past their checkout date.
Courtesy of Bung Slater, who was the ostensible overall warden
over three such “arrangements.”
We’re awfully good friends with the Hogans, dinners at their place
or ours weekly.
Anyway, when my sentence due to end, they persuaded Bung we
tried escaping when we went to Lowes, which we did frequently.
He just winked, so we’re here indefinitely, I guess.
Lynne’s in a fury of remodeling, but kept the thirty-forty-fifty
flavor. Mostly thirty. She threw out the TV!
You’d expect John Dillinger to answer when the door chime
plays Prisoner of Love.
By the way, I’m no longer a prisoner, but as my fellows toasted
at the banquet, “An honored member of the Enforcement Community.”
Lynne married Chip Hogan, who took over when he finished grad
work at Syracuse. His parents moved to Indialantic, Florida.
Quite an age difference, Chip and Lynne, but he pipes that she’s a
dynamo in the office AND in the bedroom!
The three of us visit regularly and have seen rockets go off at
Cape Canaveral.
Believe it or not, the cons run the operation while we’re gone--
though we question the embezzlers politely upon return.
Labels: crime, Criminal Justice, jail, judge, law enforcement, motel, prison, private prison, privitization
