Working in food services here at Graceville Correctional and Rehabilitation Facility affords me some benefit. We eat very well, and a lot of the time we get to eat items that the compound does not â fresh salads with cucumbers, tomatoes, pepper jack cheese and diced chicken breasts. Stuffed bell peppers, Tater Tots or shredded chicken fajitas with peach cobbler for dessert. Really, really good stuff using very good ingredients.
In the chain gang, there has always been a black market and a high demand for quality ingredients back in the dorms. A lot of convicts do not eat the trays here since the great T.V.P (textured vegetable protein) âBitch-Titsâ scare plagued the Florida Department of Corrections. They instead make all their meals using food sold in the canteen. Even then they sometimes require help from the kitchen. Thatâs where a lot of food service workers make money bringing back stuff like cumin, garlic powder, ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, bananas, tuna, sardines, chicken broth, bone in and boneless, white meat and dark. Eggs are a hot commodity, both hard boiled and scrambled.
Anything not readily available in Canteen is brought back from food services â illegally, of course. The contraband is generally strapped to the inmates via Saran wrap or tied to their nuts to hang between their legs, and, believe it or not, this is an acceptable form of conveyance.Â
Of all the items available for stealing, the onion is the most coveted, at least at this camp. Large, white and sweet, the onion is used raw or cooked in all âbricksâ and âgoos.â Cooking the onion is made possible by the use of a stinger, a device used to boil water made of Brillo, wire and a few other items which are then plugged into an outlet or light switch. Everyone wants onions, especially the âSauce Man.â
Recently, there was an opening for me to sit at a different table for meals. My presence was requested at the behest of the three remaining members of the table after the fourth E.O.S.âd (End Of Sentence). They had a group discussion and nominated me to take his spot namely because Iâm not a child molester, Iâm relatively funny, I shower regularly, donât ask them for food off their trays or fart at the table, something that was apparently a real problem for them in the past.Â
I graciously accepted and moved from the table I was occupying with my bunky N.Y. Eddie, the most miserable Yankee in history, and Big Dread, a Puerto Rican dude also from N.Y. Unlike N.Y. Eddie, I liked Dread very much because he was funny, saying things to Eddie like, âYour breath looks like it stinks. I feel sorry for your spoon.â And, âYou look like some sort of creature from the Childrenâs Television Workshop.â Dread is right, you know. Eddieâs face looks like a crushed Coke can and heâs so bitter I wouldnât be surprised if he had an actual hand up his butt like a Muppet. So now I sit at my new table.
âEnter the Sauce Man. Sauce Man is a 50-something dude who specializes in making different sauces by combining seasonings from ramen noodle soups and other sauces and ingredients.â
Enter the Sauce Man. Sauce Man is a 50-something dude who specializes in making different sauces by combining seasonings from ramen noodle soups and other sauces and ingredients to make surprisingly good BBQ sauce, honey mustard and even McDonaldâs Big Mac sauce, which tastes dead on.
He can make Thousand Island dressing if he has the right ingredients, and he makes them all by taste. Being a new addition to the table, he makes his creations readily available to me free of charge, something I am grateful for because sometimes the regular chow trays need all the help they can get. All he asks in return is that if we get any condiments on our tray that we relinquish them to him for the next sauce. I suddenly had an idea to help him in his sauce-making venture. I told him that I work in the kitchen and that if he needed anything that I could get my mitts on to let me know. He immediately responded with an earnest look of hope on his face, âCould you get some onions?â I said sure, but I didnât know when Iâd be able to. Wouldnât you know, the very next day onions were everywhere! Fortunate for me, right?
At the end of the day, I filled my tumbler that I take to work for water with what amounted to two-and-a-half fresh, sweet, white onions already cut into strips. When it was time for the officers to search us, we went into the search room and did our dance of the nuts ânâ butts with no issue. But coming out and walking down the hallway to head back to the dorm, there stood Officer Cousin Fucker (O.C.F.), the epitome of backwoods, hillbilly, po-dunk you could imagine being on the cover of Guns & Ammo magazine.
He was a tall, rail thin man with big ears and patchy facial hair that resembled Emperor Ming from âFlash Gordon.â He looked like a walking toothpick with buck teeth and wall eyes, so youâre not ever sure if heâs looking at you, which gives him this air of confusion like you handed him a football bat. And O.C.F. loved his job. You could imagine this kid had a very tough time in school. His appearance being as gangly as he is probably got him ass kickings of biblical proportions. As my luck would have it, the waterhead honed in on me like a tick on a tampon.
âHey, Inmate Whidden, come âere, yuk yuk. Whatcha got fer me?âÂ
âNothing for you,â I respond.
âOh yeah, whatcha got in that cup?â
Shit. How unfortunate. I opened the tumbler stuffed full of onions.
âHey, Boss, they were leftover from todayâs prep and were just going to be thrown out. Waste not, want not, correct?â Wrong.
âOh, yeah,â he says. âI got something fer you. Come with me, fucktard.â
I already knew where this was leading ⊠The O.I.C.â s office (Officer-in-Charge) aka, the captain, where I would be made to eat the entire contents of my tumbler.
âYouâre going to make me eat these onions, arenât you?â
âYouâre going to eat every last bit, Motherfucker, hee yuk yuk, yes, sir. And you better not throw âem up, either, or Iâll beat yer ass!â
I thought it a little excessive to threaten bodily harm due to vomiting, but that wasnât a concern. I love onions. I decided to fiddle with him a smidge. âSakes alive, I thought you were just going to make me throw them away. Do you think I could have some salt to go with them?â
He actually took the question seriously. I was floored.Â
âYou canât have nothinâ, and yer gonna eat every last bite, heeyuk!â
On the way to the captainâs office, the rest of the food service âfun-ployeesâ were walking with us. So everyone was aware of what was going on, and I decided that if he thought that I was serious about the salt, then he was actually as stupid as he looked. So I asked him, âHow much do you think them onions weigh, Stretch?â
âI donât know, but you gonna eat every last bite!â
âWeâve established that Iâm going to eat all the onions, repeatedly. I was just wondering, for the record book.â
He had no retort.Â
We got to the captainâs office, but the captain was on the phone. There was only one other officer in there, a Black gentleman, young and in great shape. Cousin Fucker announces that Iâm going to eat the entire contents of my tumbler or he was going to kick my ass. âGet started, Motherfucker.â
About five minutes into my meal, they all put on their face masks because the odor from both my cup and my mouth was kicking like a six-legged ninja. Cousin Fucker looks at the other officer and sees that heâs having a hard time.Â
âOh, yeah, you donât eat no onions, do ya?â
âNah, man. Theyâre disgusting. Say, dude, if you donât mind me asking, what were you gankinâ those onions for, anyways?â
âYou could tell he didnât think too much of Cousin Fuckerâs little game. I didnât mind at all. âI was getting them for the Sauce Man. He makes a really good BBQ sauce.ââ
You could tell he didnât think too much of Cousin Fuckerâs little game. I didnât mind at all. âI was getting them for the Sauce Man. He makes a really good BBQ sauce. And he asked if I could get him some onions. They were throwing some out, so Bobâs your uncle. Just making some sauce. No biggie.â
He nodded in understanding because every dorm has a sauce man.
âWell, he ainât making none today, heeyuk, yuk, yuk,â said Cousin Fucker.
Then the other officer piped up. âYeah, but buddyâs over there smashing onions like a straight gangster, and Iâm over here ten feet away, eyes waterinâ and shit. I donât know how you doinâ it, Playboy.â
I get down to the end and tilt my cup to O.C.F. to show him that the cup was empty ⊠well, almost. At the bottom was about two inches of pure onion juice. He looks in the bottom of my tumbler then slowly and dramatically looks at me and says, âDrink it.âÂ
At this point, Iâd been eating fresh, raw onion for 15 minutes. Iâd be lying if I said it didnât get a tad rough towards the end. The fumes were very potent and my mouth was stinging. But I really did love onions and am thankful for that fact. If I had been stealing carrot coins the outcome would probably be a very orange puddle of vomit in the middle of the O.I.C.âs officer, accompanied by the Captain, Cousin Fucker and the other officer rubbing my face in it.Â
I downed the onion juice while staring directly in the eyes of O.C.F., then finished the meal with a fumey, loud onion burp. That was a mistake, not because it was taken as a sign of disrespect, but because it completely and utterly gassed the shit out of the office. They were absolutely stunned. The Captain stood up, hung up his phone and said, âOh, my gawd! Leave now while you can. Go before I paint the wall with you!âÂ
He turned to Cousin Fucker. âYou dumbshit! It stinks to high hell in here! You bring him in here, blah, blah, blahâŠâ The fading of an epic ass-chewing. Thatâs all I heard as the door was shutting. I saw the look on Cousin Fuckerâs face when I downed the juice but before the burp: disappointment.Â
By the time I got back to the dorm, word had already spread. I told my story and received praise from my fellow convicts. I also smelled like a Wendyâs for two days, even though I showered half a dozen times. I told the Sauce Man that I was sorry, I got knocked off muling onions back. He said, âNo, man, I heard what happened and Iâm sorry.â
The next day, I went to work, put my hairnet on along with rubber boots and went to my area in the dish pit to organize and get shit ready. I lifted the lid on the first pan I encountered ⊠onions. Fresh, sweet, raw onions sitting there waiting to be thrown away â or taken back to the dorm to be made into BBQ sauce.Â
Did I get some for the Sauce Manâs sauce, nay, for our tableâs sauce? You know I did! I wouldnât be a convict if I didnât go for it again. Though this time I only filled the tumbler a quarter full, just in case.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Here are our ground rules:
- You must credit Prison Journalism Project. In the byline, we prefer â[Author Name], Prison Journalism Project.â At the top of the text of your story, please include a line that says: âThis story was originally published by Prison Journalism Projectâ and include a link to the article.
- No republishing of photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission. Please contact inquiries@prisonjournalismproject.org.
- No editing the content, including the headline, except to reflect changes in time, location and editorial style. For example, changing, âtodayâ to âlast week,â or San Quentin to San Quentin, California. You can also make minor revisions for style or headline size, and you can trim stories for space. You must also retain all original hyperlinks, including links to the Prison Journalism Project newsletters.
- No translation of our stories into another language without specific permission. Please contact inquiries@prisonjournalismproject.org.
- No selling ads against our stories, but you can publish it on a page with ads that youâve already sold.
- No reselling or syndicating our stories, including on platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. You also canât republish our work automatically or all at once. Please select them individually.
- No scraping our website or using our stories to populate websites designed to improve search rankings or gain revenue from network-based advertisements.
- Any site our stories appear on must have a prominent and effective way to contact you.
- If we send you a request to remove our story, you must do so immediately.
- If you share republished stories on social media, please tag Prison Journalism Project. We have official accounts on Twitter (@prisonjourn), Facebook (@prisonjournalism), Instagram (@prisonjournalism) and Linked In.
- Let us know when you share the story. Send us a note, so we can keep track.