DRIVING ALONG THE COLUMBIA

BY TRACY SCHLAPP

September 2022 we toured our newly published anthology Prisons Have A Long Memory through rural Oregon (Lakeview, Baker City, and Pendleton), broadcasting stories in prisons and out into the wider community. The tour’s final destination at Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution (EO) was well attended by 30 people from the facility’s 1600-person population. The florescent-lit room (D2 Courtroom) was appointed with neat rows of folding chairs. A bank of windows framed the railroad tracks that run parallel to EO and directly opposite stairs that lead down to prison yard. Freedom and captivity.

We stood in front of the familiar-seeming faces of prisoners; though we had yet to meet these men. Eyes were darkened, expressions held frozen and hard to read. Usually we draw out enough banter to lighten the tone. Not this night. Tough crowd. We ended the readings with Danny singing an acoustic cover of Le’Var Howard’s As Far As Far Can Go which was published in our anthology — it appears on his album G-L the 7 Letters. Applause broke the silence. A man in the back row, thanked us for visiting, as if he was speaking for everyone. And then, the men lined up to shake hands. A rather shy young man asked if we would be back next month. I stammered. We didn’t have an answer. Another person approached with a portfolio of writing. He hoped that we could take the pile and read them…maybe help publish the collection.

Every prison in the state differs, defined by the surrounding landscape filtering inside and the architecture holding people in place. Standard programming offered includes GED and some college courses, drug treatment, religious services. EO stands in the middle of Pendleton, Oregon — a town best known for its annual Rodeo Roundup. This is cowboy country. The facility dates back to 1913, built to be the state’s mental hospital. In the 1980s, the state converted it to a minimum-security prison. An on-site sewing factory employs prisoners to produce the denim and chambray uniforms worn by Oregon’s entire incarcerated population. Blue Mountain Community College stands on a hill overlooking the prison parking lot, and the college provides some course work at EO. Rural prisons have fewer volunteers and less varied and robust programs.

We tell Ricky Fay, this man holding the neatly typed portfolio of stories, that we can’t take them. We aren’t carded volunteers at EO, and while we published a book, we hadn’t planned on publishing another book. We had just finished this one! He wondered about publishing resources for folks who are incarcerated. I looked to our host, Leslie, who coordinated our visit. We agreed that I would pull together a list to send to all the people who attended our talk.

Those pages of Ricky’s writing followed us along the gusty drive winding along the Columbia Gorge. From our first prison concert tour, Bridgeworks has been called to provide something fresh to these prisons located three…five…seven hours from Portland. The facilities are long and difficult trips for family members. Most of the communities have economic struggles which makes free time a luxury and difficult to come by to run free programming in prison. By the time, we drove into Portland we had roughed out a plan for the PonyXpress. Grants were procured and workshops at a collection of prisons were underway spring of 2023. In July, we commenced publishing, including two of the pieces by Ricky that were tucked in that portfolio: Overwhelming Sense of Security and Meow.

This week we are delighted to print his submission Taking the Subway Home, a tale of ice storms in Portland, and the epic journey to deliver a Christmas Eve feast. Last year, we heard Jeffrey Sanders deliver a Kwanzaa speech during the Uhuru Sasa Culture Clubs’s celebration at Oregon State Penitentiary. Jeffrey uses the occasion to speak about the richness of Black history, to inspire the group: “Remember all the blood our forefathers, and foremothers lost so we could get an education, be treated fairly, and become healthy citizens in American and experience what equality looks like for all. Let's act with self respect for them and for ourselves.”

The Columbia Gorge tends to be impassable at unpredictable point in the winter with icy storms that leave cars and trucks stranded on the highway. We gambled on Tuesday of this week that the weather would hold as we drove in fog along the Columbia to run this year’s final PonyXpress workshop. How fitting to close at the beginning. D2 Courtroom was now set with tables formed into a large square. A smaller crew arrived relaxed. Their faces, like their writing styles, were now familiar to us. Ricky has submitted a proposal to gather a small writing community between our workshop sessions, using the newsletters we send as a scaffolding to organize their sessions. We quieted ourselves to write about seeds and then, shared our passages with one another. We marveled in the overlap we found in our thinking and the ways we stretched our ideas. We agreed to store the writing away and bring it back out when we returned in the spring. The darkest days of winter requires us to pause and let the work of the year before take — make room for the work ahead. Slowly the days will turn longer, and we will brave the weather to discover what the break has sown from stored seeds and writing portfolios. | TDS

Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution, Pendleton, Oregon.

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