Some reflections upon what I sincerely hoped was to be my final county jail experience:

• The place was populated by a mass of unfortunate crack dealers caught up unaware in the latest wave of Federal arrests. Street-level peddlers, they failed to learn that even small amounts of crack cocaine could draw long sentences, because the US Congress, in its infinite wisdom, had decreed that crack cocaine was more dangerous than the drug in its powder form, and therefore deserved much longer sentences. Suprise, surprise.
• Again, I was assigned to a section composed solely of Federal inmates being warehoused by local correctional authorities, in the absence of a nearby Federal facility.    
• To say that the newly-arrested individuals in this lockup were upset is an understatement. The circumstances of their respective cases had somehow dawned upon them, and they were all looking for that mythical get-out-of-jail card, a bond. Unfortunately, this  was not about to happen for most of them, so they took to reaching out, via the collect in-cell collect call telephones, to any sympathetic person, or a bondsman who claimed to have the ear of the US Attorney on bail.
• I arrived during Mardi Gras time, and for those who think that this holiday is limited to New Orleans, what they call the Mother of all Mardi Gras takes place in the adjacent city of Mobile , Alabama.  Is there ever anything so Orwellian than sitting in a county correctional institution, watching a local Mardi Gras on the jailhouse television at dawn?
• My cell had an extra bed, and so I was to get a roommate. He arrived, quite young, scared, and playing all those prison films in his head. When he asked me whether he would be harmed whilst in custody at the jail. I happily showed him how to make a knife out of the blade in his disposable razor and a toothbrush. His eyes opened wide, and he immediately asked the guards for a transfer. Was he intimidated by my matter of fact style?
• Every time I saw the US Marshals come into the jail, I  hoped for a ticket out, as I was anxious to get back to the easy life of a Federal prison camp. The food was poor to inedible, and I wanted out as soon as possible. Unfortunately, I was to spend a few weeks there, carefully watching my cellmates. I definitely felt that I needed to get out of there forthwith.

Then came the day - wonder of wonders, I was being shipped back to old Eglin, where I had spent the better part of eight months after arrest. I was tired of this county jail routine; all the travel, no privileges, let me please go back to where I started out from.