Burton-Rose Daniel - Pelican Bay: Guard, McNamaras story

Pelican Bay: Guard

McNamara's Story

An Essay

by John Clayton

McNamara Family

Ranch Press

Crescent City

Dublin

McNamara Family

Ranch Press

Copyrigh t 2013

by Richard John McNamara

All rights reserved.

McNamara Family Press

(707) 218-5175

mcnamararichard@msn.com

Also by

McNamara Family

Ranch Press

American Modern:

Theory of Moral Sentiments

by Adam Smith - A translation

To

Mom,

Dad,

Ariell,

Morgan,

and Ricky:

They are my soul.

Steve,

Bobby,

Lance,

Darrel.

And, the Guards.

Contents

Recovering Fr om Prison

This morning, a windy Sunday, I made a hasty decision: Instead of turning left into the driveway of my house at Lake Earl Drive I drove across the street onto the ranch and past my son's place.

I told my dog Tyson to stay in the truck, and I got out and started to run. I was still in my sweat pants, T-shirt, and tennis shoes. My goal was to make it to down my 500 yard rifle range and back. The first hundred yards were a slight downhill and easy. Then for a couple hundred more I worked on my stride and my old habit of turning my wrists to set a rhythm. In High School I had been a cross country and track runner, and somewhere I had read about the wrist twist, it had become a habit that is still ingrained.

Then the ground became more challenging, my breath shorter, labored. I thought of resting at the half way point, catching my breath. I plodded, I wondered what the hell I was thinking about this morning. The last 50 yards were wet and slick, I decided to turn around by going to my right and around a tree. The ground there was soft, I slowed to a crawl, slipped, gasped: and then I was headed back. I did it and I had not stopped yet. The narrative in my brain now said I could do a little more, make sure it was more than 1000 yards, three quarters of a mile maybe, so I took the fork to the left, through the short redwood section, and along the sunny meadow. I felt good and thought of how to squeeze more distance, so I turned left again. There is a crick crossing here. It is slick again and steep, but I make the small jump it takes and make a couple of long strides adjusting automatically to the steep section, and I am in the sun again. Headed to the ranch's cross road, I cross the creek again in the opposite direction on the road and continue to the right to loop back, away from the truck, adding distance.

Now it is time to turn left, avoiding the shortening of the corners, I am across the meadow headed for home, back through the redwoods and to the left again. There is the short uphill to the truck. Finish strong I tell myself. When I ran I always finished strong, because I don't push hard enough in the beginning is what I also always hear in my mind. Just a few more steps then the barking catches my attention Confucius, my son's dog is barking at me, I yell his name, yell good dog, yell come here. And, then I am at the truck.

I am out of breath, I am in the sun, my dog Tyson is out being the happiest three legged dog alive, and leaping at me, as is Confucius, I lean down, hands on my knees. And, I realize, it is time.

It is time to come to grips with a lot of things: my health, my writing, and most of all, it is time to come to grips with my time in prison.

I need to remember who I was before prison, so I can be me now that prison is out of my life forever.

M e

The pain from running on Sunday was mostly in my inner thighs, but the joy of it is spreading to every piece of me, including my soul.

This morning I ran a klick, a little over 1,000 yards. Not as ambitious as day one, but this won't be a fast process and at 270 pounds I have to think about not overdoing it and sabotaging the long term goal. Which at this time is to be ready for backpacking this spring. I love backpacking and have hiked the Chilcoot trail in Alaska and British Columbia, Canada. I have also climbed Mt. Shasta, Mt. White Peak, and Mt. Whitney all over 14,000 feet in California, and Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, East Africa.

The trip to Uhuru Peak at 5,895 Meters (19,341 Feet) on Mt. Kilimanjaro was a reward to myself for overcoming a debilitating injury to my feet that happened in the kitchen of the Security Housing Unit (SHU) at Pelican Bay State Prison (PBSP).

It isn't accurate to say I was in prison, or that I went to prison. It is more accurate to say that prison came to me. As it came to our whole community.

My family home is at the southern end of Lake Earl, the largest coastal lagoon on the Pacific Coast of the Continental United States. My father Richard Clayton Ike McNamara and my grandparents Richard Harold and Onnalie McNamara bought this place in the 1940's after dad came home from fighting in the Pacific at Okinawa, and removing the defeated Japanese from Korea. He married my mother Jenny in 1959, the year I was born. Currently I live on our ranch in the smaller of my mother's two homes on Lake Earl Drive, Crescent City, CA. I started renting the place from her about two years ago. About Four and one half miles northeast of here, at 5905 Lake Earl Drive is Pelican Bay State Prison (PBSP).

PBSP was opened in 1989 to house California's highest ranking and most active, and therefore most dangerous, felons. Just before PBSP opened they held an open house. At the time I was attending Humboldt State University in Arcata, CA. I had come to Crescent City that morning because I had not received rent for my house on McNamara Ave for over 6 months. I was 29 years old and in my third year of College. My wife Mary Jo and I had two girls, and almost no income. But, this morning the judge had said he would not let the deputies move my renters out for another 3 days because it would then be the first of the month and they would have some money. I didn't have any money myself and the irony of the situation was not lost on me at the time.

My parents asked me if I wanted to go to the open house. As we toured the gray buildings and grounds of the new facility I saw a number of my good friends who had become Correctional Officers. Bobby Rice, Steve Hurt, Jean Rupert, Pam Doan, and others. I remember my thought at the time, that this is a good thing for them, but I am glad I am in school and probably won't ever work here.

Well of course I would work there, alongside those friends, and many other people. Babysitting what society has produced with its welfare state and drug war. Babysitting in what I have come to think of as a gay socialists paradise.

Ta lking

Chuck Summit asked me to go hiking one day back in 1999, while talking about his climbs of Mt. Whitney and Mt Shasta. Since then we have gone to many wild places. We have been on Shasta together a number of times, including my only summit, and two winter camp outs. We climbed Whitney on 9/11, summiting on the 12th, an eerie time with no airplanes to be seen in Southern California's skies. We went to Tanzania and reached the highest point on the African Continent, Uhuru Peak on Mt. Kilimanjaro.

He knows the true cost of being a prison guard. He will tell you that there is nothing worse than your mother calling you on the phone asking why a California State Senator is in the Sacramento Bee newspaper calling her son a liar. Chuck was accused by that piece of shit of participating in the mythical Wall of Silence, a fabrication of politicians and of administrators that helps them cover their mistakes by scapegoating guards. And, make no mistake, the real purpose of a Correctional Officer is to be the scapegoat, the lightning rod, for the systems failings, failings that are the fault of the Politicians, Judges, and the Administrators who run the prisons. I won't say manage the prisons, because management is a skill.