The View From Scranton

Lock-Up & Lock Jaw

It all began last Thursday. As always, I awoke to a jugful of water and a vitamin the size of my ego. Dressed, brushed and signed-out for the slog. Through the door and ‘cross the street to the courthouse square and wait. And wait. And waited some more. Tuesday I'd posted forty minutes in the wet and the cold and no one showed. A call told me I'd be picked-up Wednesday. Wednesday came and so did the same result, sans wet, half again as cold. A message wasn't returned. So when Thursday rolled around to yet another rerun I figured it was time to slog elsewhere.

Bad enough I gotta rouse myself for penury, the least penury could do was show up.

So I pro-acted. Grabbed a Count of Lackawanna Transit System (COLTS) bus up to Dickson City. The Mall at Viewmont, which is not much of a mall, in a very nothing vale, and has no view. No view I could see anyway. Got off in front of Penny's and trudged, through a parking lot, up an off ramp, and on to the inaptly-named Scranton-Carbondale Expressway. I thought expressways were expressively for expressing. This four-lane, stop-light ridden thoroughfare is expressedly no such thing.

But there is traffic. Minions in their cookie-cutter sedans hitting the cake bake strip. Wal-Mart. Target. Home Depot. Circuit City. Toys-R-Us. And all the tell-tale retail parasites that latch on to such chichainery (sic).

Plus, up about a half-mile or so, adjacent to a Tuxedo Junction, lies Manpower. Since I've been reduced to half man and relieved of all my power I figured this'd be the perfect place for me to apply. Perhaps I might re-up. Or at least provoke a more suitable down.

Inside the temp agency's office I am like no other. Silk in a sea of denim. Groom in an ill-wash of unkempt. A hard-boiled egghead among the savage brute. Looking not just for the best way to keep the wolves at bay, but for a way to take over the pack.

Terminal tested, I am Exemplary. Of course. When a test consists of given answers how could anyone be anything but? Okay, speed counts too, and accuracy. And I am all about a speedy keen out to this mess I'm still inexplicably in.

Expect a phone interview tomorrow. Pass that and you will start Monday.

Then Friday morn shows the slog.

You wanna work?

Not that kinda work, but I could use the loot. I wouldn't mind getting' outta the House for a spell. I got a phoner at 2:30 though.

Not a problem.

2:30 rolls around and I phone in to the MDA. That's right, the Muscular Dystrophy Association. The folk who handle Jerry's Kids. Seems along with the Telethon they've got another fund-raising racket: The Lock-Up. Yep, The Lock-Up. Where they entice some of Northeast Pennsylvania's most ne’er do bad citizens to go to fake jail. Really. They come in a limo or a de facto paddy wagon, handcuff and drag 'em away. The bail goes to the MDA.

I was lockjawed, too aghast to tell 'em I was intimately familiar with the concept. Prison as a promotional tool for the disabled? Tomfoolery of such a hurtful subject? Had any one of these fund raisers ever spent a single day in real jail they'd never dare such a stunt. Never stick pins in the eyes of the nation’s small country of incarcerates.

But I bit. Told the slog I’d have to beg off Monday. Then I spit it out. Told the slog there’d be no way I’d call and ask people to go to jail. For charity or not. Then I bit again. Philosophically, diametrically opposed, I still might be able to do some good for someone.

Wouldn’t know until I took a little look-see.

Well, today I got a good look-see. On video, the kids are as brave and as bold and as beautiful as you’d expect. Courage I couldn’t in a million years muster. The kick though’s about as corny as it sounds. Intrude on some hapless good citizen and tell ‘em they’re on the Most Wanted List, ask ‘em if they’d like to be locked-up, wear stripes, photo-op behind fake bars, and dine out on a meal of “bread and water.” All for a good cause.

C’mon, it’ll be fun.

I don’t think so. As much as I’d like to be of civic assistance, it doesn’t do good to make a mockery of America’s gulag. Yeah, most cons belong down, the longer the harder, the better. But grinding their faces into the cement in the name of charity isn’t the answer. Good works don’t get better with demean.

So tomorrow, I’ll rouse dark and early, and make my way back across the street to the square. Let’s hope the slog’ll have me back.

posted by John Hood. @ 10:55 PM