Yesterday I was driving down one of the main streets in our downtown area and I noticed that the windows of the downtown businesses are being painted for the annual Prison Rodeo, when it dawned on me how that scene might play out to someone new to this area. McAlester is home to Oklahoma's maximum security prison and death row, along with several minimum security areas. The rodeo is held each year with inmates from different facilities across OK participating. Each facility brings their own rodeo "team" and compete for bragging rights. For one weekend the general public is allowed "behind the walls" in the OSP arena to watch the events, which are, by the way, interspersed with real professional cowboys and traditional rodeo events, not just inmates. The rodeo isn't quite what it used to be (what is?) in this area. Gone is the parade and street dance with the prison band, but the Warden still holds his annual bar-b-que on the prison lawns and you can enter certain areas of the buildings to view the inmate art show. As I was driving back to work after lunch, it just struck me that having men in gray jumpsuits with the word INMATE written in caps across the back, standing on the sidewalks downtown wasn't a cause for alarm, but instead sort of a normal "oh its that time again, boy that snuck up on me" reaction. Certain inmates are allowed to paint rodeo event pictures on the windows of the storefronts during rodeo week celebrations.
It just made me wonder, if you were in my corner of the world today, what would be going through your mind as INMATES worked on the streets as the non-felons of the world passed by without even a second glance?
No comments:
Post a Comment