More on my dad and the state pen

I have mentioned earlier that my father at the tender age of four was a regular visitor to the Mississippi State Pen.  He spent most of one summer there and a group of the inmates built him a small wagon that he could ride around the property.  They borrowed a female goat from the state farm heard and rigged up a harness so the goat could pull my dad and his wagon around the property at Parchman.

As the summer drew to an end, the inmates wanted to allow my father to take home his wagon and the goat that had become more of a pet to him.  The warden told them that he really did not care about the wagon as it had been built from scrap iron that was worthless; however, the goat was property of the state.  The farm actually did raise much of the food that was consumed by the inmates that lived there. Of course my father was quite distraught that he would not be taking his new pet goat home with him, but the inmates who had built the wagon came up with a compromise that was acceptable to the warden.  The inmates agreed to skip the meat at their next meal in exchange for the goat.

Of course my father was very excited to have a new pet goat, but his excitement doubled when the next spring his female goat came up pregnant meaning that he would now have two pet goats.  In fact the nanny goat gave birth to a new kid, but unfortunately at about three months of age the baby ran away.  My father in fact remembered that over the next several years his goat would become pregnant quite often.  Unfortunately every new goat invariably ran away from home at about 3-4 months of age.  Each time my dad was distressed to loose this new goat, but he always knew that his mom would try to cheer him up by making his favorite meal of ribs for dinner.