Clinton Lee Young Loud and clear
Date: March, 10th, 2015
Topic: Dirty Showers & Music reviews
Two weeks ago I was moved from B.pod to A.pod. Only difference is that A.pod is where the section for Death Watch is. Those with execution dates. A.pod A section is death watch . I am currently housed on B. Section. Also on this pod is where those with severe disabilities are housed. That is on F.section. There are a few guys that have to walk around with a walker or be in a wheelchair. The disabilities happened after they got to death row . Four of the guys got so bad they had to be moved to 10 building. That is the medical building. It is like a small drama center. One of the guys over there is around 80 years old. His name is Jackie Smith . He can’t read or write. Can not control his bodily functions. Can not even walk anymore. Has to be in a wheel chair. Can not even shower himself. The nurses have to wash him. Yet this dude is still on death row waiting on execution . Though the state would not execute him. The publicity of having to execute someone so old & broke down, that they would have to literally carry him to the execution gurney to kill him. It would not be worth, what they like to call, ‘the cost of justice.’
Max Soffar is also over there. He has a very strong claim of innocence . Though he is dying of cancer. I guess if he dies of cancer, Texas can still stick to it’s position, that it never executed an innocent person.
Back to the point. I moved over to this pod. Went to the shower the next morning, that is for the row I am housed at. I step into the shower & behold another black wall that is supposed to be white. It was blacker than any previous shower I have been in 🙁 . The other side wall was not as bad. One side though was black and brown. The next day I take the trusty hair brush & liquid detergent to the shower. After I scrubbed the wall & deflected the shower water on it. As it ran down the wall to the drain, it made me think of old oil from a car. Just that color. The next day I go to recreation with a guy, that has been on the section for several months. He lives near the shower. (Outside, the rec. area is split in half with bars. We can see & talk to each other but not touch. The roof is bars to allow in sunlight & all that. For those reading my blogs for the first time)
For those curious about the birds. Actually only half the netting is up there & the rec. yard is in good shape. It appears the birds on this end know how to act. Must be birds from the suburbs. As them birds down on F.Pod, which ironically is where people go when in trouble. Them birds are straight out of the ghetto! 🙂 ha.
While walking around, the guy was telling me he was sick the past 2 months with bad allergies. He blamed it on some negativity in his life. That it weak his system. I yelled out, “ Aint no damn negativity! It’s all that fucking mold in the dirty ass shower, that you have been breathing in for the past 9 months!” He responded. “Yeah it was in bad shape”. My reaction was, “ yeah I see no one else though to take the time to clean it.”
Now here is the deal with the showers. It is a very small room that we are locked into. 1 meter by 2 meters (3 FT X 6 FT). Ventilation is poor. Shower water is hot. Okay, picture the scene here. Locked in a small, hot, steamed up shower for 15-30 minutes every day. Breathing in this steam that has floated around nasty ass shower walls.
People wonder why they have sinus/breathing problems. A couple days later I go to the shower. I am standing under the water, thinking of a remix I want done of my song that I wrote. I am standing there with water hitting my head, eyes closed. I happen to look towards the shower door & see two different flying bugs of some sort. Not sure of the type, as I never been into bugs. I look back at the wall that was previously really bad with mold. I see a spot that I didn’t clean good enough. Thought about how it will grow back. I then close my eyes again. Though I have an urge to look to my right, so I do & I will be damned! There is a centipede climbing the wall & it is at eye level. I thought out loud. “I’m not in a shower, it’s a damn jungle!” I then started to sing the song from Lion King. “In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight…” 🙂 ha. I swear people. It’s wild in this habitat.
Though let me dovetail into about my song reviews. I have been meaning to write about several of my favorite songs. Though I need to get the lyrics of them. I can not say that I have always been a huge fan of music, in the sense that it occupied my time. As most of the songs I like. I can not even tell you the name of them, never keep track of it.
Though interestingly enough, many songs mark different points of my life. As for when I first heard the song. I remember the first time I heard the songs Simple Man by Lynard Skynard & Shooting Star by Bad Company .
I was actually in the shop with my step father. He had an old radio that he kept on the classic rock station. I am sure I heard the songs before, though was not aware of it. When the songs came on, it made me think about my mother. Which we was really close back then. The fact that I was in the shop with my step father. Who represented a main conflict element in my life at the time & factoring in on my reeling behavior. The symbolism was not lost on me.
I remember actually turning & staring at the radio as the song played. It has been maybe 20 years. Yet I can still picture everything. Even the clothing I had on that day. My favorite Metallica song is One . The first time I heard it, I was sitting in the room of my friends sister. I had always had a crush on Melissa when we were younger. We were all sitting in her room, when she played the song. I do not remember when I first heard the song Dear Momma by 2pac . Though when I hear the song, I remember the time I got my mother to listen to it. She was laying on my bed, on her stomach facing towards my radio. I was sitting on the floor by the radio. We had been talking, when I suggested she listen to the song. My mother was no fan of rap music. Once she found a Snoop Dog CD & she threw it out my window. She did not like hard heavy metal either. She was messing with my radio one day & I had a Pantera CD in it. Farer beyond driven. She pressed play & listened to about 3 seconds of it. Matter of fact, I was in the shop with my step father that day. She came storming in & yelled at me. “You are not going to have this trash in my house.” She then snapped the CD in half. Then threw it down in front of me & walked back to the house. I shrugged my shoulders & went back to doing what I was. (This was not the same day I heard the previous songs in the shop.) My mother was always very unapologetic about her positions on matters. 🙂 As time went by, she stopped trashing my CDs.
The picture on my website of me in the blue shirt. With my arm around Jessi. She is in the yellow shirt. I had the bowl hair cut & we were sitting in blue chairs. Okay, that picture was taken when I was 14. I was in Waco at a placement that the prosecutor agreed for me to go to, to keep from going to TYC. That is a whole blog in itself!
The facility was co-ed. Though of course the boys & girls were housed separately. There were two girls there that were some kind of good looking. One was Lacy & the other was Lindsy. Lindsy had rich parents. She had that kind of personality. In the U.S it is called preppy. Lacy though, she was the opposite. Plus was the best looking. She got there not long before I did. When I first got there, the dorm I was on went to the cafeteria for the place. All the dorms went at the same time. I was talking to a guy & happened to see Lacy walking on the other side of the cafeteria. She had on these tight pants. She was built like a mini-Iggy Azalea. I asked the guy who she was & if she was hooked up with anyone. He said no. I said “Lord have mercy, I know I’m going to try to change that”. Ofcourse he later told her a whole bunch of something else. So she had this attitude towards me. Okay, there is a sidewalk that if a person was at a certain privilege level, he or she could walk on it. Reason why it was required at a higher level , as it was considered a co-ed area. Me and this guy that fancied himself a cowboy. We were sitting on a picnic table in front of the dorm we housed in. There were different dorms for different stuff. I was on the anger management dorm, which was dorm 4. Dorm 1 was all girls. Lacy was 15 at the time. Okay, so Lacy & this goth girl named Emily were walking back & forth on the sidewalk. We had a boom box outside & Chris was playing Garth Brooks . We were talking & I was watching Lacy. She was going through all kind of effort to intentionally not look at me. That is when I knew I just had to create the right moment. Chris changed the radio over to a mix tape. After a bit, the song Nice and Slow by Usher came on. I told Chris to turn it up loud. Lacy & Emily were walking back towards our end. They could hear the radio, I jumped on top of the picnic table & started to dance like how Usher does in the music video. That made her look. The part of the song where he sings “Good loving, don’t keep me waking..” I pointed at her, as I was singing that part. She busted out laughing. I knew right then it was a wrap! I ran over to her & found out why she was all attitude with me, cleared that up & boy got the girl. Actually, even with Garth Brooks , the song Rodeo . I was 10 living in Gilette, Wyoming with my dad & sister Christy & my dads girlfriend. I had a girlfriend named Holly. She had a twin sister. It was hard to tell them apart, I had to look at hair length. Anyways, Holly was big into country music, horses & all that stuff. I kept the TV on MTV. Holly lived a couple of blocks down the road. It was like a really nice trailer park outside of the city limits. Her & her sister came over. My dad was gone somewhere with his girlfriend. I knew he had some country music CDs. I knew who Garth Brooks was. I wanted to impress Holly.
My mom bought me these tight wrangler jeans & cowboy boots, that I never wore! As I did not want to be some little cowboy. I could not stand to have on tight jeans! I hated it! Me wanting to impress Holly, I put all that stuff on & put on a Garth Brooks CD. The song Rodeo seemed like an appropriate song, as it dealt with horses! I selected it + pushed play. I really liked the song & it is now one of my favorites by Garth Brooks . Though it was all for nothing. As when Holly came over she looked at me all crazy. I guess she was liking the whole opposities attract thing. Holly’s sister later lied to me about Holly. I broke up with Holly for a girl named Heidi. Every Heidi I met while free seemed to have a … ‘fun personality.’ She was the first Heidi I met & was no exception. I found out she kissed all the boys on the baseball team. 🙁 Heidi had the little blonde beauty pagent look. I wonder how many kids she has now?
I should have stayed with Holly! 🙂 They were both 11, I was 10. Too damn young for all the complex interactions. Thinking back to all the stuff I got in when I was young. If I had a daughter, I know damn well, I would be a complete nervous wreck.! ha-ha. I remember while living in Wyoning, a guy I was friends with. We would do stuff like, sit under a bridge/overpass watching cars go by. Smoking Camel brand cigarettes, looking at a stolen Playboy magazine. He was 14 & a run away from Tennessee. Both too damn young.
Alrighty then, I am going to bring this one to a close. I will be, hopefully soon, posting more song reviews under that part of my site. I thank you for reading these words & I am grateful for any & all support. Until next time.