Sprung

Back around July of 1971, my older brother and I went to the Marion Jail to visit a friend of his who was, at that time, a guest of the County. The old jailhouse, having been built in 1901, was a bleak environment of stone and iron bars and in every respect, a bad place to be.

It was the heat of the summer that found us standing beside an open second floor window where a slight breeze might be felt coming through the bars. The window sash had been cocked to stay up because the sash wieghts no longer held the window.

At some point I leaned on the window sill which displaced four or five molecules of the window frame, just enough to send the sash crashing down in a shower of flying glass.

The Jailor and his Deputy came running up the stairs in typical SWAT team fashion, to get to the bottom of what he might have thought was a failed jail break. We explained the situation which seemed to suffice but the less than amused Jailor proclaimed that our visit was officially over.

That's right.

We were kicked out of jail.