The Greatest Gift
My true story of having the craziest prison job at Club Fed
One foggy morning (pretty much every morning there is foggy) we were working normally, mowing some building complex in our red FEDERAL INMATE jumpsuits, when Kenny came around driving a little white bus. Like a little municipal commuter bus. This was something we hadn’t seen before.
Kenny directed us to load up all our gear onto our trailer and had Pinbeck drive it all back to 44. Then he told us to get on the bus, and we did so.
I was pretty sure I knew what was going on. There had been some problem. One of our guys probably winked at some stroller mom and she phoned in a panicked complaint. Or someone cut his finger changing the string on his trimmer. Any of a number of things like this meant that all the red-suited guys had to be collected, brought back to Kenny’s civil engineering headquarters, and given a “safety briefing”. This happened every few weeks, the ultimate pointless CYA move.
Safety briefings were really the cherry on top of a miserable existence. Evenings and weekends we had to live at the stupid prison camp, living at the whims of COs who didn’t care if we lived or died, just cared that we felt like shit. They’d treat us however they needed to treat us to keep us feeling that way. Our workdays at the Air Force Base, on the other hand, were a step up. We were in the real world, interacting with real people. Most of them were accustomed to our scary red jumpsuits and it didn’t bother them, so we got to live our days (for the most part) as human beings with a speck of human dignity. But whenever a Safety Briefing came down, all of that washed away and it was as bad as being back at the camp. It was an hour of condescending, miserable, talking-down-to-us like we were morons. Kenny knew the Safety Briefings were pointless, but he had to go through all the motions.
So we were pretty sure what was in store when Kenny came up in the white bus. A couple of our guys asked him what was up but all he’d say was “Just get on the bus.”
Kenny drove us around for a while. We visited each of the places where some of our guys worked. He directed some of them to get on, and others to get off. We stopped at a few places where we normally never worked, and he’d drop off a few more guys. Clearly this was no safety briefing. It was definitely weird, and was about to get weirder.
Out of about 30 or so guys that we had working at Vandenberg, we were down to 12 or 15 or so on the bus. When I looked around to see who we had left, a pattern emerged. All the guys that Kenny had dropped off in various places were the ones he often referred to as “knuckleheads.” Career criminals. Lifetime losers. Guys who would break the rules, guys Kenny wouldn’t have trusted as far as he could throw them. All of us on the bus were the others. Normal guys. Guys who were there to do our time quickly, keep our noses clean, and get back to our families. The guys Kenny trusted.
Definitely weird. But about to get weirder still.
Vandenberg AFB (now Space Force Base) occupies a pretty big chunk of the central California coastline. If opened to real estate development it would easily be worth billions. The bulk of the base, the buildings and the town and all the contractor industrial complexes, were toward the south end. The north end, however, was largely barren. It was where the Minuteman ICBM silos were. Each is spaced a few miles apart. I’m not sure how many there are, but we probably drove north on a winding coastal road for a solid 30 minutes or so.
We never saw another car. This is one of the most remote places on the California coast.
We had given up wondering what was going on. We knew Kenny wasn’t going to tell us, and we knew none of us had any clue, so we all sat in the bus quietly and enjoyed the view. The beautiful rocky coastline is not a sight we had much opportunity to observe like this.
Finally he pulled into the parking area outside one of the missile silos. This one was literally right on the coast. Its security fence ended at the rocks were the waves were washing.
Kenny opened the bus doors and said “You guys have about 20 minutes.”
We were aghast. We stood, uncertain, and got off the bus. We walked among the tidepools. We took our boots off and felt the wet sand. We felt the sun on our faces and smelled the salt water, and listened to the rush of the waves. A seagull squawked. Crabs crawled among the sea anemones.
I don’t think any of us spoke.
The 20 minutes felt like a lifetime.
When Kenny opened the bus doors again, we all filed straight back. As we each stepped on board we thanked him and shook his hand. And then we were on our way back, but the prison and 44 and all ahead of us didn’t seem half so horrible anymore. They would never be our reality; they were temporary annoyances, and real life would continue.
To this day it remains one of my happiest memories.