Cooking in Prison

It's too long a story to tell here in full, but when I was in Lewisburg Federal Prison Camp in 1983-1984, I was a garlic smuggler for the Mafia -- who were, in fact, cooking in prison.

My nominal "work" assignment was as gas pump attendant for the prison motor pool. I shared this assignment and "office" (a little room on the side of the garage by the gas pumps, entered through a separate outside door) with an elderly Mafioso who was running an (unauthorized, of course) catering business. The trusted minimum security prisoners from the garage and motor pool work crew who drove the prison garbage truck had scavenged a discarded electric cooktop and other goodies from the bizarrely-suburban on-reservation housing area for guards and their families, and installed a kitchen in the gas station office. The setup allowed for quite sophisticated cooking! More could be done in the official camp kitchen, of course, but that was closely supervised -- mostly only guards, not inmates, could steal food from the kitchen stores.

Outside accomplices would leave groceries and other contraband (cases of liquor, etc.) for the inmate garbage truck crew (part of the garage work detail) to pick up on their way to and from the city dump, and bring back to the clandestine gas-station diner. Prisoners could subscribe to have a hot Italian comfort-food lunch delivered to them at the camp dormitory every so often. And any of the prisoners trusted to drive a vehicle around the grounds, giving them access to both information and trade goods, would come in to share the latest news over a cup of coffee and a serving of whatever was cooking whenever their vehicle needed gas -- making the "gas station" the hub of inmate gossip.

My role was to come out of the office and gas up any vehicle driven by a guard promptly, so they weren't tempted to get out of their vehicle or come into the gas station office. I also helped transport food deliveries -- hot garlicky meatball subs, or whatever the dish of the day might be -- from the garage to the dormitory, typically in my pockets or under my clothes. I was thin and had been issued an oversized overcoat, under which I could hide a lot without it bulging suspiciously. I got a free share from time to time, which was a nice diversion from the bland prison-camp fare.

The guard who ran the garage must have known what was going on, but he had a "see no evil, hear no evil" attitude as long as the inmates assigned to the garage kept the institution's vehicles running smoothly, and as long as I kept silent about the guards who routinely gassed up their personal vehicles at the prison pump. And it was nice to know that, once I had proven my tact and cooperation, the Mafia had my back, although I never needed to call on their help.