LIFE AND TIMES OF A CORRECTIONAL OFFICER
By R. Mark Shepard

(Chapter 15)

Searches of inmates, their property and living quarters always reveals a wide variety of Items. These various items range from Apples to Zip Guns...to 'Buck'.

The season for sports always brings out the best in the down home convict winemakers and their talents to make the best brew that you could swallow, IF you have the courage. The easiest wine to make is the Tomato, Potato and Rice Wine because of the easy accessibility of these items from the Kitchen.

If real yeast is not available to make the wines of choice, then any old - and I do mean Very old - bread or pastry is used to help the fermentation process. The homemade wine or, as the convicts call it, "Buck" has to sit and cook in a warm environment in order for it to reach it's proper Fermentation or alcohol level. The buck is cooked in plastic jugs, plastic bags or what ever an inmate can get his hands on.

After everything is achieved, the buck is distributed and sold, and passed out in any kind or type of container that is available.

No one, and I mean no one, can say, "I’ve seen it all" or that you've been there or done all that. You will never see it all, and should never say that you cannot be taught anything, anymore than what you already know. Even with the number of years of experience, I have never stopped learning n or being amazed at what inmates will think of or do next. 

During a search for some Buck on a weekend night, during a Sports playoff game during which the buck usually flows quite freely, Buck was found in many different containers, but none of the finds was as surprisingly hidden, or nothing less than obvious, or just plain dumb-founding as the one I am going to tell you about.

This certain Dorm housed mainly the handicapped inmates. It was also the dorm where the kitchen help slept. It was famous for officers being able to find a lot of homemade wine and other kinds of contraband there. 

When you see an inmate in a wheelchair with a Catheter bag hooked to the side of it, anybody, I don't care who you are, gloves on or not, you are not going to touch that bag, whether it is empty or full...Except for the leaky Catheter bag that smells like Buck. 

After seeing this, I would say that this is the lowest, most disgusting, nastiest way to store and pass out the homemade brew. Imagine, here is a bag that some inmate has not only urinated in, but the tube the Buck is poured from was stuck, at sometime or another, in his Penis. 

I don't care how much you wash the bag, and think it's clean, not to mention whatever disease or diseases he may or may not have had... If I was a very thirsty inmate, and that was the last thing on earth to drink, I would have to just go ahead and die before I would drink a cup of buck from someone's Catheter bag.

Like I said, if you think you've seen it all, you're Wrong!

CONTACT MARK SHEPARD
markshepard2003@yahoo.com

(Chapter 16)

LIFE AND TIMES OF A CORRECTIONAL OFFICER
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