CHRISTMAS WEEK AT CAMP ELKTON - PART 1

Christmas sure snuck up on us quickly here at Camp Elkton.   The weather warmed up after Thanksgiving and melted all of our snow.  There have been a few storms that rolled through the Eastern seaboard but the snow seems to be attracted to the larger cities.  We get some of the left overs of the snow but it has not amounted to much.  Our snow crew teams do not get many early morning calls to clean the snow.

It turned cold here this week and the sky has cleared.  The snow on the ground barely covers the grass.  The change in temperature seems to have brought about a cold virus here in the unit.  Don, our retired miltary man here, has been hit very hard by the virus.  He has been hacking and wheezing through the night. You can tell it is severe by the deep sound of the cough and the heavy wheezing.  It makes you feel badly for the man and at the same time you are glad you don't have it. With the close company we keep here you wonder as you listen to him how long it will be before it makes the rounds to you.

We do have a medical department here but we have to pay $2.00 for a sick call visit, much like a co- pay at the urgent care facility on the outside where you are. Here at Camp Elkton we call this the "Don't-Care Clinic".   They generally are not interested in how you feel.  This is more of a triage to make sure you are not going to die and wind up with a lawsuit from your family.  Don was diagnosed with bronchitis and they gave him some steroids but they waited until it was quite advanced.  Residents here are good about "sharing" and I am the recipient of their good will.  I have come down with this cold virus now.  I hope it passes before Jeannie comes out to visit. For now, I will save the $2.00 co-pay.

One of my homeboys, Larry "Da Lutran", was a classical organist for the Lutheran church (hence the made-up last name) before he moved into our community this summer.  Like many of us here, he has been frustrated by the worship services we have at the Elton chapel.  I prefer the contemporary worship services that we have back at NRC and he prefers a more old-school worship service. More of a classic style of hymns and liturgical service. Larry abhores the contemporary worship style. I told him I graduated from the hymns to Contemporary worship.  He calls this mode of worship that I like "happy clappy" and the songs used in that service are 7-Eleven songs.  I asked him what he meant by that and he tells me that so many of these songs are 7 words repeated 11 times.  I laughed, but I instantly thought about the song "O Happy Day".  A song that has worn out its welcome on my list of favorites.  I argued with Larry about the Happy Clappy part as I am particulary fond of this style of worship.  We have agreed that people are akin to different styles of worship and both are acceptable to God.  We also agreed that it is not worth arguing about and we we can poke jabs at each style, as long as he agrees that I am right  at the end of the day!  Hahaha.

Larry is a fantastic organist who plays with passion on the keybards.  He carries a picture of the organ he played inside his offical Lutheran Hymnal that he had sent in to use here.  He has long grey hair and beard that he is letting grow wild.  He wears a headband made out of a scarf that looks much like a fez the shriners wear, only without the top and tassle. You can see his grey hair squezze out the top of his headband almost like a crown.  It is a unique look that only Larry can pull off.  When he is playing the piano or the organ here he plays with dramatic hand motions and really puts his shoulders into the movement.  His feet are sliding across the floor as though he had all those wooden petals that a real Lutheran organ would have.  It is a sight to see when he plays. He has also earned the name the "Mad Organist".

One day, after a chapel service, Larry cornered Pastor Culp and had me join him to ask if we could do a traditional style Christmas Eve service here.  Larry had an order of service already written out with six lessons of Chirsts birth and the classic carols that would go along with them.  Pastor Culp looked it over carefully and committed to verify the calendar for that that night if we committed to practicing and taking care of the details.  The deal was made.

Down the hall from the chapel, the recreation department has a small practice room with a studio piano, bongo set, and drums placed in it.  Anyone can sign up to use it and no talent is required. Each inmate is limited to two hours per week   This means that we had to have several members of the newly forming Chrismas eve choir to sign up for rehearsal time. So now we had daily rehearsals and sometimes twice a day.  

The choir was not a regular choir.  In fact, you probably would not have seen a choir like this in any church. Russ, another homeboy from Wisconsin, is our leader but he doesn't like to use traditional hand gestures of a choir director as he leads, rather he prefers to lead by correction after the fact.  Paul the Italian Catholic joined the choir and brought great enthusiasm to the group.  His ability to curse made it very untraditional but colorful.  Matt is another guy from the Catholic church who has suffered from cerebral palsy all his life but has not let the disease define him.  Dave who loves to speak in the Kermit the Frog voice, when he does not sing, joined our choir and sometimes helped with unscripted and mostly unwelcome dance moves.  He is not shy about "leaving the closet".  Bruce is other member who has severe insecurities about singing but worked hard to get it just right as he practiced.  With the exception of Russ, the choir members were not in any other choirs here at the camp, which started some buzz in the community as a new choir was formed.  We already have a Catholic choir and a pentacostal choir but now we have this new group and Nobody rehearsed as much as we did  for a single performace.  The other choirs only rehearse once a week but our choir practiced daily.

The plan was to have a couple of readers in the service to alternate in the service.  Pastor Culp had to be one of them as he was the offical chaplain.  However he had a reputation of going off script and free-lancing his thoughts.  Sometimes these rabbit trails of monologue would go for several minutes and then lead to another rabbit trail. Before he is done you forget why he started on this trail.   He does this in weekly services often.  After 15 - 20 minutes of this we lose track of the point he was trying to illustrate.  Larry feared that he would do this in the Christmas Eve service so he needed a plan.  Larry asked me to read the scripture in our rehearsal time to get a feel for how this would work.  He liked my ability to follow the punctuation so he assigned me to read the Scriptures.  He then decided to have me read everything with the exception of the last lesson.  He felt obligated to include Pastor Culp and that it would be safe to let him have the last one.  After all, if he went over our allotted time, it would be on him.

We had our final meeting with Pastor to go over the script that we wrote out.  We learned that Father Bernie pulled a fast one on us and scheduled a Catholic Mass for Christmas eve in our time slot.  So now we had to wait until they were done with thier service and dismatle the cathedral so that we could prepare for our serivce.  Larry was very dissapointed and ready to throw in the towel.  I could see how important this was to him and I reassured him that we would still have ample opportunity to have a serivce even if it was later than usual.  Word was spread about the special service and people were becoming interested in it.  Some were even surprised that we were doing this without using the existing choirs.  It was as though we had created a bit of a rift in the balance of the churches.  It is good to be radical once in awile.

Christmas Eve came and we had access to the chapel for final rehearsal.  Larry tuned up the organ to his liking and we connected a guitar amp to the organ.  This gave the organ a powerful sound in the Elkton Tower Chapel.  I found some problems in the script and made some last minute re-writes for the evening.  While we waited for the Catholics to finish the service, Pastor Culp invited me to sit in his office as we waited.  We talked through a few details.  I had written out the script for his lesson to give him an idea of the flow we were seeking.  I had told him that he could modify and make any changes he desired but he told me he liked what I had put together and would roll with it.  So we chatted about our families and my life before prison.  It was a nice conversation in the short time we had.  He is a good man with a high level of tolerance and understanding.  God has certainly gifted him for this role.

We had a good turn out for the candle light service - without the candles.  As I suspected, there were many there who normally do not attend any of the services.  It was nice to see new faces.  I stayed on track for most of the lessons and flubbed my lines a few times.  I was thrown off at the begining when they broke out in a routine habitual clap session they do in our regular services.  The choir did well and I didn't hear any of the foul words used in practice when mistakes were made. Kermit used a human voice the entire time and the "closet door" remained closed.  The organ pumped loud pipe sounds through the amp which sat right next to my ear.  I may have lost a little more of my hearing that night.  It was really nice to hear a room full of men belting out those classic carols.  O little Town of Bethlem,  Hark the Herald Angels Sing, What Child is This, We Three Kings, Silent Night, etc.  The service was about 45 minutes which had to be a record in the Elkton chapel.  This worked out well with the double scheduling so we didn't need to rush back for our recall.  It felt like a service we would have back home.

Finishing a service early or on time is so unusual here.  Most services the chaplain has to escape the service to accomodate needs of people from other faiths.  Tonight was different.  It was a graceful departure.  The choir gathered outside Pastor Culps office to chat.  Pastor Culp joined us and we had a pleasant conversation together.  Again, it felt much like a service back home.  I step back to watch this take place and I recalled how it seemed as thought the next step was to go out to Applebees and continue the conversation over some appetizers.  So I told everyone there that we should go to a local Applebees and that I would buy for them all!  This brought a good laugh as we knew it wasn't possible but the idea was welcome just the same.  Instead we headed back to the housing unit while Pastor Culp went home to build a fire and help his wife wrap presents.

Every year the BOP hands out a Christmas gift bag to inmates all over the nation.  These bags are filled with different typs of snacks from the commissary provider sealed in a large clear plastic bag.  Everyone knows they are coming and the day they arrive is very special.  After lunch on Tuesday, the voice announced a recall notice and everyone went back to the unit. We waited anxiously, knowing we were getting our federal Christmas present soon.  They brought each unit one at a time and had them line up on the sidewalk near the compund office near the visitation room.  We then entered the West entrance of the "Valley Ridge Mall" and walked down the hallway toward the commissary, the Elkton Walmart.  Inmates who work in the Commissary handed out the bags one at a time as we walked by the door.  There were several cops keeping watchful eyes on the whole process to make sure nobody was given an extra bag.  At the end of the hallway, the food service cop was handing out a bag of butter cookies and two packages of expired hot chocolate as a bonus gift.  Perhaps they were stocking stuffers  - without the socks.  We paraded back to the unit with more guards on the sidewalk to prevent us from re-entering the line to get another package.

The atmosphere of the unit was electric with excitement as inmates tore through thier bags.  The rustle of plastic bags filled the air.  Many didn't waste any time eating the food.  People were walking around the hallways holding up the items they wanted to trade.  It reminded me of trick or treating when I was young.  I remember how I would want to trade the candy I didn't like with my sisters.  I think we liked too much of the same items so it was hard to get more of my favorite candy.  The same was true here.  Everyone wants the bags of popcorn.  We can't get popcorn here anymore unless you are in the visiting room.  Well, that's not completely true, they are selling carmel corn for the holidays at the commissary.  I have several bags stocked up, but I wish they wouldn't have put all that carmel on it.  I will just have to suffer through it.

Stay tuned for Part 2 -- McFreedom