Up the River, to the Clink
a passing night in Missoula County jail
Now I’m not saying creativity needs to be jailed, or passions and desires in general should be suppressed, but they do add risk to your general homeostasis. I’m in the sack a lot lately (Not in the passionate manner), in the sack because a damn mysterious toe injury keeps me from doing nothing. The big toe is swollen to the point of bursting, where even falling shower water adds a sizzle. I’ve been to those hospitals four times, got that x-ray, the blood letting, the ultrasound, that lead to the vague MRI, but the kind doctors are still scratching the head.
Today I had to get on with it, feel some passion… So I strapped on the moonboot and bussed down to KEXP, a radio station in Seattle that offers free in-studio performances of local and touring bands, which is the best thing money can’t buy.
The band playing today is Crumb, to which I’ll admit, I hadn’t heard them prior to watching some music videos last night, but they sounded great enough to get on the bus downtown and limp the 5 blocks to the studio. After hob-throbbing through the thoroughfares and arriving to the studio, there was a sign stating, “Capacity Reached.”
Well ain’t that a bitch.
The KEXP studio is part of a warehouse housing radio broadcast rooms (And an entire radio station, a coffee shop, and a large gathering space full of couches and tables. I saw a seat in the back on a leather couch and plopped then popped (not pooped, but they do have heaps of toilets), some more Advil. I stared at nothing in general, and wondering how I could swing the momentum of this trip, into some with that passion…
Soon the people with tickets enthusiastically queued. They entered into the dark studio, then the doorman let in a few people waiting there who hadn’t got tickets, people like me, except with better feet. I did my best leaping up, clutching an open backpack, book and water bottle, then hobbled over, but the door shut when I was halfway there, (It’s quite a large space).
That hit hard, I hobbled back to my seat, hoping nobody noticed the plight. Soon the DJ started talking live on air, which played through the gathering space speakers, the band started and sounded great, and I felt properly handicapped-but trying, like Crutchie in the Newsies. Could I get a handicapped placard? I do own a somewhat functioning car.
Welp, could be worse… I tried to read but couldn’t concentrate, thought about writing but ehh… So, there is always doom scrolling. Summer fun, mountains, more mountains, mountain rivers, abolish ICE posts, then a post announcing the anniversary passing of my favorite artist, Margaret Kilgallen.
Prior to hearing about Margaret, I’d seen an art or two, and enjoyed playing with photo editing, but wasn’t inspired to try other forms until I came across her murals and hobo-style drawings using cattle markers on trains. At the library I found magazines and books with her work, which led to the geometric patterns of her partner Barry Mcgee, then led me to Haas and Hahns, Dutch artists that uplifted the poverty of a Brazilian favela by painting enormous patterns over the concrete. Massive yet simple, clever and grand with an altruistic feeling. All this was a a strong push of motivation to create.
I started with Micron pens, comics and illustrations, then printing them poster sized and wheat-pasting them on banks during the 2000’s Occupy movement. Then I felt ready for street mural painting and didn’t stop for a couple years. After finishing a stoner job at Goodwill in Santa Cruz I’d buy whatever paint was in the discount bin at Home Depot, grab a beer, and find some alley to paint in along the train tracks. My favorite spot was a stretch of warehouses and concrete walls along a train track, where I’d stash paints and had endless space to practice each evening. One day on the way home a group of skinheads was covering the walls with grey. I asked them what they were doing and they said it was cool art, but they had orders, some sort of work release program. Well that wasn’t right, I mean, I pay taxes here, with my minimum wage part-time job at Goodwill.
I went home and recruited a friend into helping me with a big project. We collected all the paint in our means for a few weeks, hitting up all the Home Depot’s, cheap spray paint from dollar stores, and keeping an eye out for trash piles. We camped out just in sleeping bags on the railroad bridge, a foam pad protecting us from the small rocks, then after midnight painted the entire bridge with rollers until the sun rose. Good luck trying to cover all that up with a chain gang. I left town a few days later, stopping by to see the project in the daytime hours.
Now now, I wasn’t on the run with the importance of a fugitive, my Mom was having a hip replacement and needed help with the recovery. While staying with her a few months in Winchester, VA, I walked the train tracks painting, wheat pasting, stenciled on sidewalks in the town-my favorite being, “Make awkward sexual advances, not war,” and broke into the abandoned Reynolds Wrap building in Richmond, covering an entire room in pink; I’m talking about the ceiling, the carpet, windows, couches, desk, even the fire extinguisher… everything. I made friends with an artist named Claire who lived a few cities over in Chattanooga, and we painted all over an abandoned foundry downtown.
When mom got healed, I got back out west. Claire, who was on break from Uni, and I drove to Missoula, arriving just in time for summer. We painted frequently on the public graffiti wall and other spaces, with our eyes on several abandoned buildings downtown along the river near the Orange St. bridge. The back of the buildings pressed up against the river and river trail, lots of public exposure and could be a cozy spot for hanging out, watching tubers go by while having a sunset beer, so we planned a composed project to make the space useful.
Towards the end of summer on a hot afternoon, we cased the spot from a nearby vantage point before climbing over a railing then lowering ourselves to ground level. We started making triangle and spiral patterns with painters tape, covering the entire back wall, about 20 x 6 feet. Then with high quality spray paint we faded red and yellow throughout. While waiting for the last painted area to dry we peeled the starting area off. We thought it looked incredible, the bold paint over the peeling decay of the brick wall gave a 3D impression. Claire started brush painting a person sitting on a rock while I started a large painting of a person based from a sketchbook doodle.
We were both tunneled into work when I noticed some motion above us. It was a clean-cut square head with a wishful mustache, poking around the corner. I looked straight at his surprised eyes and he quickly recoiled out of site. I jumped over to the wall and pulled myself up, seeing a hospital security guard in his pickup-truck calling for backup. He seemed nervous and excited like it was the first time he got a semi in months, hoping to do something with it.
Past him was our only way out besides swimming across the river. But new flip-phones weren’t waterproof and weren’t cheap, and wet shoe smells never leave. Without much discussion we climbed up and walked briskly towards the street avoiding eye contact. The security dild, with a full on chub by that point, got out of the truck, posturing with a taser and demanded we freeze. So we booked.
We sprinted across Front Street then through traffic on Broadway, going hard for a couple blocks before turning into an alley. We lost him, so started walking casually to catch our breathe, but were quickly found. We sprinted onward but were cut off at the exit of the alley by several newly arrived security vehicles. They surrounded us and ordered us to stop, so we smiled and polity flipped them off, then began running. I broke throught the Red Rover line but they grabbed Claire by the back of the shirt and another put his taser to her neck.
I saw a wee bit of red and about-faced, walking quickly towards them, ordering them to get the fuck back. Luckily they did, but had us sequestered with a taser perimeter. I was ignorant if security guards have legal power, especially off their property, but we gave up, figuring even if a legal grey area they might use their tasers, and we didn’t want to feel that shock. I was polite, perhaps a bit arrogant by calling them rent-a-cops, but tried to reason with them, explaining we weren’t bothering-but beautifying. The head dild didn’t care and explained the nearby hospital, St. Pat’s, had just purchased those abandoned building with the intention to renovate them into a computer training center for new employees, and it was added to the perimeter checks.*
Soon a regular cop pulled up to the scene who seemed rather tired or apathetic. He put us into the car without handcuffs or a body search, while the security dilds enthusiastically briefed him, pandering the cop for a pat on the back and a “Thatta boy, we could use a guy like you on the force.”
“Uh huh, right, right,, alright then,” was all the cop said.
They handed him a hand written incident report, which he tossed onto the passenger seat without reading, he hauled away his luggage. The ride to the county jail was only a few minutes. He drove into a basement garage and quickly deposited us and our backpack with an intake cop, then drove back above ground. They checked in my backpack and our pocket belongings before handing over orange jumpsuits, orange dyed Hanes underwear, orange socks and orange flip-flops.
After changing in private rooms, and handing over our civilian attire, we were separated by gender into processing cells before switching to our overnight bed cells. There was only one guy in the cell with me who was excited to have company. He owned a small but successful construction business, had a wife and 3 kids, he was on parole and it was his birthday. After work he celebrated by buying a 6-pack, and carrying it home in a plastic bag along the river path. His PO happened to be driving by and saw the suspect can outline in the bag. She headed him off at an intersection, inspected the bag, then arrested him. The 6-pack was a violation of his parole. It didn’t seem like a big deal to me, but he’d violated parole once and was granted it again, now he supposed he’d have to finish his 1.5 years. He didn’t seem very bothered by this life style change, perhaps he was tipsy? I hoped his wife and children weren’t completely dependent on his wages.
In the large hallway near the cells was a TV monitor showing the cameras looking into the cells. I heard a guard yelling down the hallway and studied the monitor. It was Claire in downward dog, killing time with yoga. The guard yelled at her to quit it several more times over the next 20 minutes, which my cellmate and I found very entertaining. Eventually the yelling stopped and some light processing began before being shown to my overnight cell.
The new cellmate was a grizzly-husky guy, who certainly looked the part of a jail inmate. Naturally, my first thought was please don’t rape me, but he slept like a log, never moving throughout the night. I refrained from drinking any water, as the open toilet was near his bed and I didn’t want to splash him or wake him with the flush. The cell was small, besides the beds and toilet, there was a small desk with an attached concrete stool, the only things on the desk were a tiny lotto pencil and rule sheet. Underneath my mattress written in marker was a melancholic poem I read over and over, copying it down on the rule sheet to take with me, finishing just before lights out.
I slept well, and in the morning was escorted to the male side of the cafeteria. The breakfast had a funny pudding, apple sauce, a mealy apple I didn’t eat, and some other mixtures of meat that tasted fine, like a gravy. The toasts was decent quality. I dipped that into the gravy and sampled everythign else while fantasizing about asking the guards if they had anything artisan or organis. Overall the meal was unique and could’ve been worse, it was nice having a quantity of choices.
After breakfast I was led into an office like room along with all the other new inmates, where a judge would perform an arraignment through a monitor and webcam. I met my court appointed attorney, a young Native man with long hair, frayed jeans, and a red flannel. He was polite and soft-spoken, and I told him I was not guilty and they would never take me alive.
Soon Claire entered the room and I let out a proper guffaw. She sported the same lovely orange jumpsuit but with the metallic flare of wrist and ankle shackles, quite an outlaw. She strutted the runway confidently and completely stole the show. All smiles and a good morning salutation to the group before commenting on the lovely breakfast. When the judge appeared on the TV, the attorney stated our not-guilty plea, we were given a court date, and led to a room to switch back into our civilian attire.
I wanted a memento, so didn’t remove my orange dyed underwear, which didn’t go unnoticed. The clerk cop at the belongings booth immediately asked where the underwear was? I told him they were soiled and lost before biting my lip. He sighed, counted my wallet cash, handed over the backpack, had me sign a paper, then pointed down the hallway leading to the hot summer sun. Outside I immediately looked inside my backpack which contained the painters tape and spray paint cans, matching the tape remaining on the wall and the cans matching the same color-red hot evidence; the cop hadn’t even looked in the backpack. Claire was soon released and we walked downtown to get huckleberry shakes from our favorite cafe, Butterfly Herbs.
Claire couldn’t wait for the court date because her final year of university started in a couple weeks. Over the phone she had a meeting with the judge and settled on a $200 fine, but nothing on the record, while my court date came a few months later. The judge had no evidence, no list of the backpack contents, not even the incident report from the dilds, so they had to recollect the event history from the security guards, who were all present and prepared. The judge told me that my friend pleaded guilty, so obviously, I was also. I replied, “Ma’am with all due respect, she ain’t no snitch, and you ain’t got nothing on me, your arnor.”
The St Pat’s security dilds were frothing... They had photos of the art, multiple witnesses that we evaded, and were quite frustrated the backpack evidence hadn’t been confiscated. The head dild said he saw us painting red handed, to which I pointed out that in the photo the majority of the spray paint was yellow, not red. My attorney chuckled. The cop was there and still seemed apathetic, never feeling the need to talk.
When the judge was looking at the photos, she gave a slight purse of the lips and head tilt, which I interpreted as her thinking, not bad. I think she was surprised it wasn’t just graffiti tagging. She called my attorney and I to the podium. She said I was obviously guilty and would set another court date where I would be found guilty by association, but didn’t want to waste time. She offered a compromise, I would be let off without any charge, but had to donate $100 to the Missoula county fund called, “Funky Money.”
I told my attorney it seemed fair, I wasn’t into gambling, and thanked him and the judge for their time. At the payment office I handed the clerk my debit card and asked, “Where does this funky money end up?”
The elderly clerk said, “I’m not sure but I think it goes to buying the fake presents underneath the city Christmas tree, and we always buy extras of them cause they get stolen or vandalized.”
I felt it was a good use of my money, feeling like a wee Santa and providing an opportunity for drunk vandalism.
* 15 years later they are still abandoned and have some decent street art, plus regular graffiti tags.
