Home Brewing During Lockdown

It's a must!

Since all of this lock down (nonsense) has made me hearken back to the times I have been locked up in jail, being surrounded by books and coffee, and all the free time in the world, I suppose it follows that I would eventually take up the hobby of home brewing (apple) wine.

I have a ton of apples.

When I was locked up in Jacksonville, Florida, I was getting drunk every night off of "wine" that I made by pouring the orange juice that we got on our breakfast trays every morning (in addition to the cartons of it that I could acquire from other inmates by bartering, say, the green eggs that frequently came on the same tray, for 2 cartons of, giving me 16 ounces of juice, in exchange for eggs that had never seen a chicken in their lives).

I would wash off the apples that we also got all the time, then cut them up using the plastic knives that we were given -knives just barely suitable for that task, but not applicable to the infliction of a lethal wound to anybody- and shove them through the bung hole of the bottle, along with whatever raisins I had, and the crust off a slice of bread (to add yeast).

I can remember once selling my cheeseburger (on a Thursday -cheeseburger day) for, I think it was 9 apples, to an ambitious detainee who apparently loved cheeseburgers -even jail ones- enough to go around begging all 60 or so guys for their apples.

Once again, I learned that there are people in this world who probably consume no fruits or vegetables at all, in their diets. I was able to buy these items rather cheaply at meal time (or just ask somebody for theirs as they were on their way to dump them in the garbage pail).

Once, and only once, during a 4 month incarceration, a single prune made its appearance on everybody's tray, occupying the partition usually reserved for pudding (hydrogenated soybean oil laden pudding -"Yuck; I'll trade you mine for your orange juice in the morning" type pudding- and I believe I was blessed with almost every other guy's prune that day, a total of almost 60, all for free.
Once the other inmates saw me getting the prune of one guy, a chorus of "You can have mine too" erupted, and I soon needed both hands to steady my tray; such was the heap of prunes on it. They worked wonders on my digestive tract.

The raisins, by the way, only came affixed to the top of a certain "creme filled cookie," and I got those by walking around and spotting them on the trays of inmates who had actually removed them, before eating their cookies; why spoil a "creme filled cookie" by eating something that might actually be healthy along with it? was, I guess the rationale.

Once the ingredients were in the bottle, the lid was screwed in place, so as to not let any oxygen into the bottle, since it is an anaerobic environment in which the desirable yeast ferments.

Then, within 48 hours the bottle would begin to visibly bulge and bubbles could be seen rising upwards through the liquid.

This pressure needed to be alleviated regularly with a few turns of the cap, which allowed it to escape, as it emitted a sound like the air being let out of a tire. They would hiss for up to 20 seconds if you had not done it in a while (more than 3 hours).
If you forget to do this, you will be reminded when the flanges around the bottom of 20 ounce soda bottles (designed to create the optical illusion that there is more soda in the bottle than there actually is) would pop outward, so that the bottle would become cylinder shaped instead. That's when letting the gas out would take up to around 30 seconds, it seemed.

After this fermentation process died down (on about days 5 through 7, when only a short hiss would be emitted after unscrewing the cap enough, the wine would probably be at about 3% alcohol, and ready to drink, if you didn't mind the heavy flavor of yeast.

After 14 days, enough of the yeast would have basically died from being poisoned by the waste product of their indulgence in the sugar, namely, an alcohol level high enough to kill them.

They would have fallen to the bottom of the bottle as sediment, sort of like a coral reef, I always thought.

I also always thought about the human race eventually making our whole planet uninhabitable because of the poison of our own waste products, but I digress...

This 14 day process yielded a wine that was not bad at all, especially when paired with a couple ice cubes in a cup. It just had to be poured gingerly, sacrificing the ounce or so at the bottom, so that none of the sediment would be drawn out of the bottle along with the wine.

I was also in a position to order, through the commissary, white cotton socks, to use as strainers, turning them into yellowish cotton sock, but turning out a wine that was noticeably better than that of anyone who had no money in their account. and couldn't biu socks, nor the 20 ounce bottles of Fanta orange soda. It takes money to make money, as they say.

I could have starting selling the wine back to other inmates for more cheeseburgers than I paid for the apples and orange juice; become a real tycoon; but I drank it.

I was in there as a material witness for the state of Florida in a murder trial.

This was through the machinations of a guy from the state's attorney general's office named George Beteh.
I was told somewhere along the way that George was the number 3 prosecutor for the entire state of Florida, and that his specialty was murder trials, and that he had sent more convicts to the electric chair in Starke, Florida^ than any other prosecutor. He had been hand picked by the state's attorney general to handle this particular case, and it would be a moment for him to shine, with all eyes upon him, so high was the profile of the case, which involved the fatal shooting of an unarmed and innocent man, who left behind a wife and 5 year old daughter. The families picture had been blown up and put on the front page of the local newspaper, along with a plea for anyone with information to come forward.
It was only another day or so before they arrested a guy I knew named Bobby Quesnel.


So, just because the number 3 prosecutor in the state was bucking to be number 2, and my testimony was important to his case, as damning evidence against Bobby, as that was the name of my acquaintance,* and because I was a homeless guy who lived in the woods in covert, underground "houses" that I fashioned using pickax and shovel and lumber, implanting grave doubts in his mind about his ability to find me come trial time, he finagled a way to incarcerate me in the Duval County Jail.
123 days of my life were spent there, just so George could just ring for me, when he needed my testimony.

Given those circumstances, I was confined to the nicest part of the jail.
A lot of the other guy's were being held as witnesses against "bigger fish" and thus were shielded against possible retribution by them by being put in the pod where I was.

A lot of them were "officially" being held for trial pursuant to warrants that the state was able to dig out of its ass, or rather its morass of paperwork...a fine from 10 years prior that had never been paid, was a fine reason for picking someone up whom they didn't want to have to go searching for. Some of the charges were laughable.

One guy, who had shown himself to be unreliable about staying in contact with the states attorney (in between , was arrested while walking down the street, shortly after he was subpoenaed to testify in some important trial, for being a peeping tom voyeurism?) and was scheduled to appear on that charge shortly after the big trial was to be.

It kind of makes you think twice about coming forth as a witness, despite the Crimestoppers reward.

Another category were those who were wealthy enough to be able to actually hire a lawyer to sue the jail over something, rather than to just threaten it, like so many inmates, who didn't get a pillow, or who requested to see the nurse then had to wait 3 or 4 days to be allowed to do so.
Or for having listed "soy" as an allergen on their intake form, but then being served the pudding, anyways.

There was a guy (named Donald Black, originally from Moose, Wyoming, population 80, FYI) who was a wealthy corporate CEO or something, and lived in a big house in the same gated community where Jacksonville Jaguar players lived, who adopted a little girl from, I forget what country, whom he then then attempted to make his wife.
There was some fraud involved, such as his having paid a lady to marry him, so as to simplify the adoption process.
He was in my pod.

So, such is the zoning of the Duval County Jail. If the sixth floor (referred to as: "The Planet of the Apes" among Caucasians who are out of earshot of African Americans) was the south side of Chicago (the baddest part of town) then, I was living in Park City, Utah (where the water is pure and the Osmonds hail from) or something.

"So, you were in the suburbs, then..."

What gets me is that, the entire system has to be in on the shenanigans.

Didn't it strike the F.B.I. agent who peacefully arrested me in Federal Way, Washington as odd that he was to pick me up on a charge of writing a worthless check on the opposite side of the continent.

What did the two(!) agents think, who had flown all the way across the country (at an expense to the state of $943 for each of their tickets each way, plus $943 for me on the return trip [I was able to glance at the price on them, when they produced them for the boarding stewardess] plus the cost of our meals, which one of them swiped a plastic card with the Florida "flamingo" logo on it to pay for, in addition to their having to have been lodged overnight, after the 8 hour flight the day before) after becoming curious over what the big deal was about me, and looking at my paperwork to learn that about 5 grand was being spent to bring me to justice on a charge of writing a worthless check for $967.00?

The agents informed me that they were not allowed to talk to me about "anything about that," after I had tried to assure them that I wasn't going to try to bolt on them, and that they didn't have to handcuff me for the whole flight to Jacksonville.

The two guys who had accosted me at the BP station where I worked (which was about .4 miles from where I had fashioned myself a beautiful, but invisible, home in the woods) had both been in sport coats and ties.

One of them, a stocky white man, showed me a badge, told me to toss the cigarette I was smoking and to go with the second guy, a large black man, who merely walked alongside me to the Crown Victoria he had pulled up in, and then opened the front door and gestured me into the passenger seat (not the cage in back) where I sat without being handcuffed, as he drove us to the Kings County Jail, where I was placed in an open dormitory which was like a lounge with a TV and a coffee table laden with magazines. There was a bookshelf full of books and about a half dozen bunk beds, where the half dozen of us that were there were each able to get a bottom bunk.

In the morning another two F.B.I. guys arrived to bring me to the airport for an 8 hour flight to Jacksonville which I did have to endure being handcuffed for.

They were also, apparently, forbidden to discuss anything about my being a witness in any murder trial, or anything. What murder trial? We're here concerning a worthless check!


The original "offer" made by George Beteh over a long distance payphone connection from downtown Jacksonville, to Federal Way, Washington, was for me to be able to go to the airport on my own, where a ticket would be waiting with my name on it, and then I would be flown to The River City, where I would check into a hotel, all expenses paid, and be given a per diem, as I whiled away the weeks leading up to the trial, living like a tourist.
Like a reward for my testimony. Who knows how large the per diem would be, coming from a state that seemed to consider 5 grand chump change...

The agents who had picked me up at the BP station might have been under the assumption that I would willingly surrender myself and acquiesce to being brought back to Florida, and in fact I would probably try to break free of any handcuffs that were restraining me from being able to take advantage of such a deal. They may have even given me a rental car, so I could scoot around, visiting friends.


Little did I know that the trial wouldn't go off until the middle of July (I was picked up in Federal Way on October 27th of the previous year). The trial would be "pushed back" several times, because of them losing track of witnesses, ironically. 


But, the problem with the proposed arrangement was that I no longer had any "Daniel" ID on me. I had been living and working under a different alias, and had acquired "valid" Washington State ID to go with it. That's kind of why I wasn't worried about the worthless check warrant. I had a clean slate, with no credit history, no criminal record, and the world was embracing me. Jobs were easy to get and life was easy.

I could have just continued working, and living in the woods, never to re-emerge as Daniel, but the federal marshals had taken to harassing my parents in Massachusetts, showing up at their door and giving them only the vague information that I was being sought "in connection with a murder in Florida," which, my father took to mean that I had obviously killed someone, otherwise, why would the federal marshals be at the door?
They said that they could subpoena their mail deliveries so as to possibly intercept any letter that I might have send, to use the postmark to zero in on me.
And, I think they even said that (if they wanted to) they could enter their house and start tearing it apart, right then and there, looking for clues to my whereabouts.
And, if we find out you're lying...
And the fact is that, they had their murdered in custody, Beteh just wanted my little bit of testimony to prove that it was premeditated (Bobby had been talking to me and Beth about taking his gun and "going out and doing what I have to do," a coupe weeks before he actually went out and robbed a Dominos Pizza place, shooting and killing a guy in the process.

Then, after Beth repeated the conversation to them (she had already written him off and was already looking for the next guy who would be willing to rob and kill just to keep her in jewelry) Beteh needed to find me so I could corroborate it; otherwise it was just hearsay.

And this was just so he could push for the death penalty.

And that was important enough to him to justify scaring the hell out of an elderly couple, and having them living with the dreadful thought that their son may have killed someone, and that there was a nationwide manhunt underway for him.
 
I swear some of these "justice" people live in their own realities. Them and their "by any means necessary attitudes.

So, I got in touch with Beteh, and he asked me if I had ID and if I could get to the Seatac Airport in the following days.

I couldn't think of how I could ask him to put the ticket in a different name without arousing suspicion..."Oh, that's just an alternative identity that I use some time, not to worry, George"...so I was kind of in a pickle.

And, little did I know that, given the circumstance of my having left Jacksonville, then began a new life with a different identity, the defense attorney was going to pounce on the opportunity to try to get Bobby off by accusing me of being the perpetrator of the crime, weaving an intricate plot in which I was trying to frame Bobby to get him out of the way, because I was in love with Beth.

Heck, just the fact that I left Jacksonville shortly after the murder, and was found living in the woods at the total opposite end of the continent and that I had dyed my hair a different color, might have been enough for some fickle Grand Jury to indict me.

There were actually several other rather bizarre coincidences that could be woven into a story that made it seem plausible that I was the real killer.

The trial kept getting pushed back, and eventually they couldn't hold me any longer by law, on a charge such as a worthless check. There are some "speedy trial" kind of laws on the books.

So, they wound up letting me out of jail, right before that limit was reached; most likely, because they had to; although Beteh framed it as if he was doing it out of the kindness of his heart: "I can't, in good conscious, just keep you in here indefinitely while they keep pushing the trial date back..."

"Good conscious?!? You send people to the electric chair, you godless, ruthlessly and ambitious Indian bastard!"

How many times have you been so stellar in your performance, so good in the courtroom that you were able to send an innocent man to be fried by 10,000 volts?

Do you have a nickname for that?

Do you go home and kiss your wife and say: "I pulled the rabbit out of the hat again, today, dear?
And then kiss your kids and say: Daddy loves you so much, and he's going to send you both to Ivy League law schools?"


George hadn't shown any kindness in his heart after he figured out a way to lock me up and save the state the expense of the hotel and the per diem and the rental car, and the freedom, had he?

They let me out in late February of 2000, but somehow (they are all in it together) arranged it so that I would be on probation, with the stipulations that I wouldn't leave the area, or I would be violated and put back in jail, and that I had to call in every Thursday morning to George's secretary to "report in" that I was still alive and able to testify.

The next Thursday at 9:00 Am, I called in, as instructed. His secretary was pretty brief: "So, you're alright? Good. I'll be expecting to hear from you next week, bye."

The next week, I did call in. From Federal Way, Washington.

I wanted to go back to my house in the woods to get my backpack, because I had some good weed in it, plus I had a good bottle of white wine that I had been looking forward to drinking after I got off work on the morning of October 28th, about 4 months prior.

"Hello, how are you doing?" asked his secretary.

"Pretty good."

"Are you still staying at the same place, with your girlfriend?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Then there was a slight pause on her end.

"Where are are you calling from, because the line sounds a little weird."

"Oh, I'm at the beach..."

This wasn't really a lie because I was indeed at the beach, I was just looking out at the Pacific, and not the Atlantic ocean.

"Oh, Alright, be sure to call in next week, same time...bye."

It is quite plausible that a call coming in to her downtown office from Jacksonville Beach would sound just as "weird" as one coming from 3,500 miles away. There is just something scratchy and static filled about Jacksonville beach phone lines, maybe because of all the hurricane damage and the salt water getting into the relays, or something.

So I was able to get my backpack with the weed still in it, my Mark Palermo ID still in it (I guess the feds either never searched it, or were only concerned with dragging me back to Jacksonville) and was able to get my last couple paychecks from the BP to go with a third one that was in my house in the woods.

I went to Trader Joe's and bought some fish, and had one last fish-grilling over the fire, along with the bottle of white wine, which was still where I had put it in my house -the wisdom of making your house invisible from every angle...

I have a feeling that certain people might have freaked out had it come to light how much money was spent, how many corners were cut and by what means I was brought back to Florida; which extradition laws were skirted, who it was that Beteh called for which favor, and perhaps which articles of jurisprudence were breached behind Beteh's gung ho efforts to get the witness he wanted on the stand.


The point I'm trying to make is that, when I was in jail, I brewed a lot of wine.
The guards never shook down our block looking for contraband, probably as a reward for us testifying for the state. 

*He was the thug boyfriend of a girl whose family I knew well, and even stayed with for almost a year after I moved to Florida.
I met the guy, and found him to be of slight figure, weighing probably 130 pounds, half Hispanic and half white -looking sort of like M&M, the rapper, if you shrunk M&M down a size or two, by putting him in a dryer, or whatever.
I think Bobby used the whole thug image thing as a defense, given that he was not a very physically imposing fellow.
I call that The Bulldog Persona.
In Bobby's case, he looked like the stereotypical "skinny little spic that is very fast with a knife, which he will brandish in a heartbeat," type of guy. Not to stereotype, though...

^Starke, was notable, besides being the home of "Old Sparkey" as being a notorious speed trap, where you had better have a speedometer in your car which has been finely calibrated, before you drive that stretch of Rt. 301, so that it won't be reading 45 miles per hour exactly, when you are really doing 45.015 miles per hour, otherwise, you will get slammed with a ticket and hit with a hefty fine. I guess that little burg has to pay its electric bill somehow...