SPENT THE 50th HS CLASS REUNION
--IN JAIL
About 95 classmates, relatives and friends started the recent two-day celebration of our 50th high school graduation with a pizza party—behind bars...
...at the undergoing-refurbishment and long abandoned Ohio State Reformatory just north of Mansfield.
A highlight of that frolic was a tour of the 1800s era castle-like dungeon, from the basement’s hideous solitary confinement cages to a then rifle-toting guard’s watchtower high on the roof.
Real inmates marching in the exercise yard of the replacement facility next door were quite visible as a chilling dose of reality.
The state’s newer maximum security prison—also housing death row—was visible in the near background.
In the top photo classmates are hearing stories about the ancient facility’s library; now a decrepit, empty mass, still confined by its paint-peeling walls. It was easy to imagine cunning miscreants whispering escape plans over there in a shadowy corner.
In the middle picture classmates are dwarfed by the western cellblock which itself was dwarfed by its companion cellblock on the other wing of the prison; that one a solid steel range of cells five stories high and reputed to be the largest in the world at its time.
Below, three pews cast only shadows now in the prison’s Catholic chapel.
--IN JAIL
About 95 classmates, relatives and friends started the recent two-day celebration of our 50th high school graduation with a pizza party—behind bars...
...at the undergoing-refurbishment and long abandoned Ohio State Reformatory just north of Mansfield.
A highlight of that frolic was a tour of the 1800s era castle-like dungeon, from the basement’s hideous solitary confinement cages to a then rifle-toting guard’s watchtower high on the roof.
Real inmates marching in the exercise yard of the replacement facility next door were quite visible as a chilling dose of reality.
The state’s newer maximum security prison—also housing death row—was visible in the near background.
In the top photo classmates are hearing stories about the ancient facility’s library; now a decrepit, empty mass, still confined by its paint-peeling walls. It was easy to imagine cunning miscreants whispering escape plans over there in a shadowy corner.
In the middle picture classmates are dwarfed by the western cellblock which itself was dwarfed by its companion cellblock on the other wing of the prison; that one a solid steel range of cells five stories high and reputed to be the largest in the world at its time.
Below, three pews cast only shadows now in the prison’s Catholic chapel.
I’m not sure how effective all those services were of time gone by.
The new prisons next door are even larger than this one.
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