As per title and yes I realize it contains overlap footage of other posts but they all contain more info. than the last post. OK? I grew up on the Darrington Unit basically, due to the fact my mother was battling cancer and my father had a career in the oil industry. This was from 1969 off and on untill 1975. The Fred Gomez Carrasco hostage takeover was in 1974 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1974_Huntsville_Prison_Siege and was an extremely lengthy and first of it's kind prison break out plan due to how well they'd orchestrated it as well as how quickly the Warden had to out think the inmates as their demands were relayed via the in-house phones back then on the spot, not to mention just how crazy their demands were but the plan was to obtain an armored car, huge steel home made helmets to be bullet proof and bullet proof vests then find a helicopter to fly to mexico, yes I know it was all stupid...they were inmates, convicts. I will never forget asking my father how and why my Uncle Sam (yes, his real name) went to work at a prison, he said "well boy after being home two weeks after coming home from WWII your grandmother said it's time for you boys to get up and find jobs and he drove to the prison and went to work that very day". I asked, that day..no uniform or nothing? Son, he said, if you were white, clean-cut and sport'n a hat back then you were the man, you didnt need a uniform. Silly me asked "Daddy, whats the man"? They rose before dawn and put on their boots, spurs and Stetsons to ride horse back for close to 10 hrs. a day supervising inmates picking cotton, peanuts, corn, green beans...everything by hand. So damn hot the horse's saddle would be soaked smooth through with sweat. You did'nt mess up back then, because if you did you had to deal with the man and you did not want to deal with the man. The prison compound was a huge massive complex containing the prison that housed 1,800 inmates, the name of that particular unit was Retrieve Unit when I stayed with them and my uncle was a "Field Major" his job was to supervise all 50 or so horseback officers known as "High Riders" and their Sergeants as they fanned out amongst thousands of acres to supervise inmates on how they wre gonna do what they were going to do but anyway aside from the prison building itself was a paved road that was somewhat similar to the quant street that the Beaver and Wally lived on, three large two story homes each one gradually getting smaller than the first, each one very sounthern colinial style, everything is red brick/white trim, thats were the three wardens live. The Warden and his two assistant wardens, a warden for the building and a warden for the field. then on down the street are nice brick homes, big picture windows, large yards, kids toys, bicycles, hippitty hops too! and trash cans and mailboxes. During the summer which is usually when I stayed there, there'd be tons of kids outside playing, riding bikes, climbing trees, playing baseball on the convivts outside baseball diamond that they might get to use twice a year but when the first daylight count horn went off you knew it was time to quickly pack ya shit up and jog on off to your respective homes and wait for the second horn to blow to let you know the count has cleared...it was like a 1950's air raid siren, loud, tall and yellow. one night when my uncle and I headed to the swimming pool that was for the officers and their family's use and we stopped by the first guard tower for him to lower the key down to the pool I asked my uncle why those guys inside the fence line got to stay outside when it was getting late and he said "well boy thats not no priveledge, they've got to stand on top of those old wooden coca cola boxes standing on their ends all night, then they better get their goddamn asses out there tomorrow and pick twice as much cotton and by god keep they better keep their mouths shut". I just hadda ask, but what if they fall off and go to sleep? Well boy nobody likes being shot at for attempted escape for nod'n off. Obviously it was his decision to put them standing there all night on a coca cola box, 'bout 12 of'em too. The kids I played with that lived there began school about a week before I had to begin and the big yellow school bus would come down the street with an armed officer riding the open door way at the front of the bus as the driver tooted the horn and all the scream'n kids would board up wearing their new school clothes and the bus would make a u-turn and head back down the road away from this huge yet small city in the middle of nowhere South of Houston and another summer was over.