You Never Know When You Will Meet
Someone You Almost Knew
McAdoo, a dude who spends the winter at the Slabs with his
wife, took me up north from the Slabs to visit some
junkyards and try to find a manual tranny after my
auto tranny lost third and reverse at the Slabs.
We ended up at a Indian casino, after checking the local junk
yards and finding no tranny. He went inside to do some
gambling. I don't gamble. I walked up to the main road
where there was a fast food joint... forgot the name of it.
I ate a burger and was standing outside. A clean
shaven dude, with a travel bag came up and asked me if I
knew which bus would take him to the Social
Security office in the town. He had hitchkiked from the east to there.
It was Coachella or Indio.
There was a sign where we were standing that listed the
routes of the buses and one of them led into town. He
mentioned that he was trying to get SS, he was 62 or
so, but was having a problem. He had a lot of years when he
made no earnings that had been posted. Plus, he
did not have a birth certificate, etc.
I said to him that I had the same problem he did when I
filed for SS. Those blank years were when I doing time in
federal prisons. It really reduced my benefits,
as it was designed to do. He then said that he had the same
problem. He had spent several years in
federal joints-- for what I never asked, as most ex-cons
will never ask-- but that some of those years
were in the Federal Correctional Institution in
Chillicothe,Ohio. I was there from 1959-61 in airplane
mechanic school getting a A&P license issued by the
Federal Aviation Agency.
He said he was there, too, during those years. He
described the layout of the place, dorms A, B, C, etc. Where
AMS was located in relation to the power plant
and mess hall and the letter of honor building next to the
hospital that you would have never known unless you
were there. Turns out we had been sleeping in the same cell
block but never knew each other.
There was nothing I could do to help him with SS. Once
I knew he was a real ex-con, who knew what he was talking
about, been there and done it, I wished him
luck. Bought him a meal in the fast food joint, laid $50 on
him.
So, someone who has a story that may seem fantastic,
may be telling the truth.
Folks, just my opinion.
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