Standing above the prison yard, Guard Tower 7 forms the hub of the penitentiary.
"We used to have parties outside, and I'd get that Yard Guard insecticide that shoots out 50 feet".
With its yard guarded by howling black dogs straining at their leashes, the place suggests a giant, festering Pandora's box that harbors all the emotional, spiritual and political ills of the world.
With great conspiratorial fervor transparent to our parents, I'm sure, we would bike down to the tracks after school and goof around or sit on the rails and watch the water until the freight-yard guards chased us away.
They take their hustle so seriously that I've witnessed them get into fights over trash cans or other areas on the yard where guards most often spit.
The pennies, worth $76,000, were first stored in a wrecking yard and guarded by a night watchman at a cost of $400 a week.
But later, when she was in the rec yard, the guard there disappeared, too, once more leaving her unprotected amid a group of inmates.
There, under the watch of correction officers in the yard and guard towers, about 600 play basketball, lift weights, walk on the track, talk on outdoor pay phones, take outdoor showers and watch professional wrestling and soap operas on televisions which are protected from the elements by little hutches and positioned in front of grandstands.
This play, a not-so-simple relatively short gain on a night when the Saints set an N.F.L. postseason record with 626 yards, gave guard Carl Nicks flashbacks to the 2009 season, back when Thomas was similarly healthy and proved a catalyst for the Saints' playoff run.
On Sept. 9, 1971, Attica prisoners rioted, seizing control of an exercise yard and taking guards as hostages.
