My dad and the state pen

My father was born in 1925, in rural Mississippi, so as you read this story remember that the world was quite different back then.  Two of my great uncles were guards at the state penitentiary in Mississippi known as Parchman Farm.  The older uncle was chief of the guards and his brother was the guard in charge of death row.  When my dad was 4 years old his mom, in what everyone agrees was a moment of unusual weakness, allowed him to spend a couple of days around Christmas time with his uncles at the state pen.

Apparently he was a huge hit with not only the employees of the pen but also many of the inmates.  It seems a group of the more notorious inmates had young sons themselves and knew that they would not be allowed to see their children, so having my father around, especially during Christmas, turned out to be genuinely meaningful to them.  So much so that they asked his uncles would they please allow "the kid" as they called him to visit again.  The uncles' response was they were not sure his mother would allow her four year old to hang out at the state penitentiary and they were in fact surprised she even let him come in the first place.  The inmates told my great uncles that his mom should have no concern, that they would personally guarantee his safety.

Somewhat skeptical but still thinking this was a genuine opportunity to reach out to group of pretty hardened criminals, many of whom were serving a life sentence, the two uncles agreed to "see what they could do".  Sure enough after much begging and pleading my father was allowed to return to visit the following summer.  Within an hour of my dad's arrival, information got back to his uncles that in fact they should have no concern about the safety of their nephew.  Every inmate in the entire prison had gotten the word that any man who messed with "the kid" would not live to see the next day and at the age of four my father was given free reign to go where he wanted at Parchman and "the kid" began a regular series of visits to the farm.

Obviously, Parchman Farm has a lot of ugliness in its history, but it looked quite different through the eyes of a four year old in 1929.