I once had an illicit vegetable garden in prison. We smuggled fresh veggies into the cell blocks. A thread…
My first job in prison was as a landscaper in Folsom State Prison. I was stationed at China Hill, which sits inside the prison walls but outside of the secure interior. I worked there with 15 or so other men. Our job was to weed whack the hill.
It didn’t take much work to keep the grass on China Hill at bay, so we had a lot of free time. We lifted weights using the granite blocks strewn around the hill. We played pinochle. Some of us made pruno (prison wine). All of us gardened. Illegally.
Back in the day, Folsom’s China Hill had a lot of veggie gardens. Even fruit trees. Rumor was that a violent altercation happened on the hill which wasn’t visible from the gun tower, so all the fruit trees were cut down. Eventually all fruit / veggie gardening was made illegal.
But those of us who worked on the hill had a secret agreement with the lone prison guard who worked up there with us: if we never got in trouble and always kept the landscape on the hill clean, he would pretend that he didn’t see us growing vegetables. So that’s what we did.
We grew squash, peas, chili peppers, bell peppers, watermelon, green onions, tomatoes. We brought Top Ramen and other commissary items with us to the hill and cooked spreads with the fresh ingredients.
China Hill was the only place in prison I ever saw white and black people exchange unwrapped food with each other – something that would’ve gotten folks in a lot of trouble down on the yard.
On our way out of work, we were strip searched – mostly to make sure we weren’t bringing weapons or anything back into the central compound. Bend squat spread cough. Every single day. It was routine. What we had on China Hill stayed on China Hill.
One day, it was announced that the usual place for strip search would be temporarily closed as they constructed a new building for the strip-out. For a few months, we would return to the cell blocks by going through a regular gate on the other side of the compound.
This gate was out in the open. There was no place to strip us out. No place for bending or squatting or coughing. It was too exposed. So prison staff decided to NOT strip us out at all. We would just be patted down for the time being.
For a number of months, we went through that gate and swiftly learned that the pat down wasn’t sufficient to keep us from bringing stuff back into the prison. We smuggled slices of watermelon, green onion, peppers, anything and everything we could through the gate.
Lifers who hadn’t tasted watermelon in decades tasted watermelon again. Otherwise typical prison spreads had the pungency of fresh green onion. One cell had an underdeveloped squash in his cell, sitting on the shelf, like one of those tiny decorative Halloween pumpkins.
Fresh jalapeños made their way into prison burritos – so much better than the vinegar soaked ones for sale at commissary. I ate peas with my cellee while watching Prison Break.
We weren’t able to smuggle in entire meals. No. But we did smuggle in memories. Taste memories. Memories of freedom. Memories of the last time someone had tasted this vegetable or that. It was a beautiful time. It didn’t last.
Eventually, the new strip shack opened up and the smuggling stopped. I got a job in the welding shop and let China Hill. But it was good while it lasted.
Here are a couple of admittedly terrible photos of China Hill. In the aerial photo, its at the top right and the gate we went through marked in red.
I used Google Earth’s temporal feature to go back in time to 2007 in order to find my shared garden plot on China Hill (highlighted). You can see the rows for veggies. Other plots on the hill can be seen as dark rectangles.
For those interested, here is the long form version of the story. I’d originally written it as an essay for a class with @michaelpollan while I attended @UCBerkeley shortly after leaving prison.
https://hahnscratch.com/2017/02/24/the-men-of-china-hill/