A friend of mine is currently doing a small stint in the Crawford County Jail. He didn’t kill anyone. If he had, he’d be out by now. I hate to take a cheap shot at local injustice, but it’s just too darn easy. In any case, today I’m shooting a different target.
Before a couple days ago, I knew nothing of the protocol involved in mailing things--letters, pencils, paper, etc.--to a jail. So, before I dared send potential contraband to the clink, I decided I’d make a call to find out what items are pokey Kosher and what sort of paper might be folded into a “shank.”
To look up the number I first went to the Internet. I Googled the Crawford County Jail and waded waist deep through information that would bore paint off the wall, including photos of policemen that, except for their mothers, I can’t imagine anyone suffering through. After nearly nodding off two or three times, I found two numbers: One was either that of a witch or a fax number, as I recognized by the high-pitched screeching. Nobody answered the second. Or, you could say using my keen powers of deduction, after nearly 100 rings, I concluded that no one was going to pick up.
No biggie, I thought. Unless you’re looking for celebrity gossip, annoying recycled E-mails or pornography, the Internet is not quite what it’s booted up to be. Next stop, the phone book.
I dug out one of my 300 phone directories with Steelville listings, including the one that was propping up the kitchen table. But there was, of course, no “Jail,” “Incarceration,” or any of the dozens of synonyms under which the phone company tends to bury topics that might otherwise be too easy to find. It’s sort of like doing a word jumble, except that it urges you to curse and break things. I consider my vocabulary to be at least as rich as the average hotdog vender, but apparently even I’m not familiar with all the potential terms the Yellow Pages people might dig up in their 18th century thesaurus for the word, “jail.” So I directed my search toward the police. Interestingly, the closest thing to “police” was “polyethylene,” and the closest word to “sheriff” was “shears.”
I flipped through several other books cover to cover and found the same lack of information and wealth of absurdity. I can remember when the sheriff’s number graced the front of the phone book, or was at least inside the cover. That would make a little more sense than “Emergency Calls” and a corresponding blank, as one book provided, so you could write the numbers in yourself? Are you kidding?
Perhaps I’m a little out of touch with the times, but I’m thinking the phone book should provide phone numbers, especially emergency numbers. Shouldn’t finding information be getting easier? Seriously, you can call your mother from a submarine off the coast of New Zealand on a device you keep in your pocket. OK, I’m not so sure of that.
I finally tossed all my telephone books in a pile and burned them while I danced around laughing maniacally (Just kidding. Couldn’t find a match). I dialed information, for which I’m sure they’ll sock me for 5 bucks or more, and the woman gave me a wrong number. What a shock! There was no answer, not even any sound--discernible by man, anyhow. I imagined it was a number they gave out during coffee break: “The Stooge Number” (By this time I was getting a little paranoid).
I had finally fallen on my last resort. There was no choice left but to call 911. Mind you, I was especially apprehensive of calling that number because, well, I had always been told it was for emergencies, such as your neighbor’s leg being severed by a farm implement, your wife being mauled by a rabid raccoon, or a meteor landing on your house.
We’ve all heard stories of people abusing 911. A teenager is going to the prom in twenty minutes, and she has a pimple. A guy whose voice requires subtitles says he’ll die if he doesn’t get a beer in the next five minutes (been there). A ten-year-old boy cleverly covering all his bases frantically reports that his dog has just swallowed his homework. I’ve heard all these and a thousand others that were just as comical. But I was left with no choice.
I called the number expecting a good scolding by a hairy chinned lady named, “Murna,” or worse, someone sending a car over to arrest me. On the bright side, I would learn everything I wanted to know about jail. A lady answered, “911, what’s your emergency?”
To my relief, I found out I wasn’t going to the slammer for calling in a non-emergency. At least I was happy at the moment. Later I wondered again if it wouldn’t be better to publish certain numbers and save 9-11 for someone hemorrhaging from the neck instead of perhaps Scrabble game support. I used to envision police cars in route, firemen sliding down the poles, emergency rooms being sterilized at the sacred 911 alert. Turns out they’re screeners for the sheriff and possibly part-time Butterball Hotline attendants.
I also learned that not everyone is good enough to call the sheriff. In the middle of my inquiry to the lady, she asked me who I was, to which every smart aleck answer came to mind from “Barack Obama” to “Jimmie Hoffa.” The conversation reminded me of the dispute at the Gate of Oz.
“Please Ma’am, I’d like to talk to the Sheriff.”
“What? Nobody talks to the Sheriff! Not even I talk to the Sheriff! Not even the Sheriff talks to the Sher….
“Well, how do you know there is a sher…?”
After I had bitten five pencils in half and broken a couple knuckles on the wall, she finally gave me a number, the same number the previous operator had given me that I now guessed went to someone’s beeper from 1986. Suffering from dialing rage and a little worn out from talking to people whose apparent job it is to drive you crazy, I began to lose my telephone etiquette. I told the lady I wasn’t falling for that ol’ number again.
Following a brief wrangle in which I promised her I had dialed that number many times and would surely have got it correct at least once, she said, “OK, you can use this one,” as if it were a number she’d normally only give out to Batman. But at last she granted me, though grudgingly, the sacred sequence of digits that finally produced an actual person willing to help, someone in a bubble underground in a top secret location, I suppose. Just as I’d given up hope, a nice lady whispered to me some extremely classified intelligence. Ready for it? You can send books, pencils, paper, no pens, no paper clips. Remember I was looking for information about things to send to the jail? Even I’d forgotten by that time.
I’m not going to publish the number she gave me. No matter. By now they’ve probably changed it, burned all record of it and put the one person privy to it in the witness protection program. Besides, I might end up violating Code 346-11, section C4-17, article 845 of God knows what.
Sarcasm aside, and yes, I’ve poured it on thick, isn’t it strange that we call this the Age of Information? It seems technology has taken a big step backwards when in the age of cell phones, web cams and whatever the hell a “Blackberry” is, it might be simpler to drive to Mayberry and use the big box with the crank on Aunt Bea’s wall. Seriously, something’s wrong when you have to dial 911 to thank the sheriff for retrieving your Weed Eater. Crazy world. Makes you want to build a cabin in the woods and eat grub worms. Well, probably not.
Please don’t call 911 for holiday decorating tips. It’s really for serious business. Well, mostly.
Mark Brenton
Cuba